Sports darling! Can fitness trackers really help you lose weight?

Some people use fitness trackers as an aid to monitor their exercise progress. The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology published a recent study from Duke University in the United States. The authors recruited 800 subjects with full-time jobs and randomly assigned them to wear fitness trackers, wear fitness trackers and receive cash rewards for meeting targets, wear fitness trackers plus charity-based incentives, and a control group that did not wear them.

In addition to cash or charitable incentives for reaching the goals, the authors also provided all groups of subjects with a small weekly (less than $3) cash incentive for participating in the experiment. After six months, the authors analyzed the data and found that the subjects who wore fitness trackers and received cash rewards for meeting the target were the only group whose daily steps increased. However, when all incentives stopped after six months, only 10% of the subjects continued to use the fitness trackers over the next six months. After the incentives were stopped, the group that had previously worn fitness trackers and received cash incentives for meeting targets showed a lesser decrease in exercise than the control group. However, their exercise levels were still insufficient to improve their health (including weight, blood pressure, and oxygen capacity).

The study was published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology

This article is from ELSEVIER Global Pharmaceutical News