{"id":1281,"date":"2014-02-03T07:16:09","date_gmt":"2014-02-02T20:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1281"},"modified":"2014-02-03T07:16:09","modified_gmt":"2014-02-02T20:16:09","slug":"do-fitness-trackers-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1281","title":{"rendered":"Do fitness trackers work?"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>\u201cIf you want to change some behavior, whether it\u2019s flossing your teeth, eating more fruits and vegetables, or getting more exercise, keeping a record of that behavior is a sensible place to start,\u201d says Blair.<\/li>\n<li>The activity tracker without counseling wasn\u2019t enough. Only those who wore the tracker and received group and telephone counseling lost more weight\u2014about 13 pounds more\u2014than the control group.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>http:\/\/www.nutritionaction.com\/daily\/diet-and-weight-loss\/fitness-trackers\/<\/p>\n<header>\n<h1>Fitness Trackers<\/h1>\n<h2>Can they help you lose weight?<\/h2>\n<div>\n<div><a title=\"Posts by Stephanie Scarmo\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nutritionaction.com\/author\/stephanie-scarmo\/\" rel=\"author\">Stephanie Scarmo<\/a>\u00a0\u2022 January 29, 2014<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div>\n<p>Rupert Murdoch wears one on his left wrist. \u201cThis is a bracelet that keeps track of how I sleep, move, and eat\u2014transmitting that information to the cloud,\u201d the international media mogul told an audience in Sydney, Australia, last November.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt allows me to track and maintain my health much better.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Act now to download your FREE copy of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nutritionaction.com\/FREE-Health-Advice-Diet-and-Weight-Loss\/Trim-Calories-Per-Bite-to-Trim-Pounds\"><em>Diet and Weight Loss: Trim Calories Per Bite to Trim Pounds<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>without cost or obligation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Personal activity trackers\u2014like the Jawbone Up, Fitbit Flex, and Nike+ Fuelband\u2014are the latest personal fitness gadgets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome of them, like the BodyMedia armband, measure total energy expenditure, as well as intensity of activity and bouts of activity,\u201d says Steven Blair, professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you sit for 10 minutes, and then get up and walk for one minute, it detects the different intensities and durations,\u201d Blair explains. \u201cIt\u2019s a more complex device that gets us closer to the truth than simple pedometers or accelerometers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Are activity trackers worth their price tag\u2014from $10 for a step counter to over $100 for a more sophisticated armband?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you want to change some behavior, whether it\u2019s flossing your teeth, eating more fruits and vegetables, or getting more exercise, keeping a record of that behavior is a sensible place to start,\u201d says Blair.<\/p>\n<p>A recent study hinted that activity trackers might help people lose weight.<\/p>\n<p>Blair and his colleagues enrolled 197 overweight or obese middle-aged adults in a weight-loss program for nine months. Fifty received only a weight-loss manual (they were the control group), 49 got the manual plus an activity tracker to wear, 49 got the manual plus counseling sessions but no tracker, and 49 got the manual, the counseling, and the tracker.<\/p>\n<p>The activity tracker without counseling wasn\u2019t enough. Only those who wore the tracker and received group and telephone counseling lost more weight\u2014about 13 pounds more\u2014than the control group.<\/p>\n<p>But for people who just want to know how physically active they are, \u201cit\u2019s not necessary to have a really complicated and sophisticated device,\u201d notes Blair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA simple pedometer could tell you how many steps you\u2019re getting. And if you\u2019re getting 3,000 per day and you know that\u2019s not enough, you can set a realistic goal of 1,000 more. And next week you can check to see whether you met that goal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Source:\u00a0<em>Int. J. Behav. Nutr. Phys. Act.<\/em>\u00a02011. doi:10.1186\/1479-5868-8-41.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIf you want to change some behavior, whether it\u2019s flossing your teeth, eating more fruits and vegetables, or getting more exercise, keeping a record of that behavior is a sensible place to start,\u201d says Blair. The activity tracker without counseling wasn\u2019t enough. Only those who wore the tracker and received group and telephone counseling lost &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1281\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Do fitness trackers work?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-data-saving-lives","category-healthy-habits","category-quantified-self","category-rapid-learning-health-systems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1282,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions\/1282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}