‘My FitBit made me fat’

FITNESS tracking devices are all the rage right now, but relying on a bracelet to look after your health could make you gain weight.

The FitBit is a popular fitness tracking device that records the number of steps you do in a day. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

IN 2013, when David Stewart tipped the scales at 90kg, he slapped on a FitBit, thinking it’d be a quick way to shed the weight. Instead, the opposite happened.

The activity band tracked his sleep and exercise and gave him a goal of 10,000 steps a day — approximately 8km — to complete. But every time he would meet his fitness plan, he’d gorge on pizza, doughnuts or ice cream, gaining more than 9kg over the course of four months.

“It just gave me a licence to let me eat whatever I wanted,” said Mr Stewart, now 45. “It’s a good tool to keep you active, but it’s nothing more than a tool.”

More than 20 per cent of adult Americans wear fitness trackers, according to a survey by tech company Forrester, but not everyone’s scale is moving in the right direction. A September study by the University of Pittsburgh found that people who had activity monitors lost less weight than people who weren’t wearing them.

David Stewart gained 9kg in four months while using a fitness tracker. Picture: David Stewart/Annie Wermiel

One possible reason: While activity monitors track how many steps you take, the number of calories burned fluctuates from person to person depending on factors such as height, weight and metabolism.

“Walking 200 steps, I can be burning [a lot fewer] calories than you do,” said Dori Arad, a registered dietitian and exercise physiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital.

He says he’s seen an increase in patients who’ve had trouble losing weight while using activity monitors. Plus, while it sounds impressive, FitBit’s 10,000-steps-a-day goal doesn’t have a very scientific origin, nor does it guarantee weight loss.

The first pedometers were sold in Japan in the early 1960s and named “manpo-kei”, which translates to “10,000 steps meter.” That number was decided by a group of doctors who believed the average person takes about 5000 steps a day — and if that number increased to 10,000 or above, they’d be healthier.

Mr Arad doesn’t recommend this step count for everyone. Health experts recommend you get about 150 minutes of exercise at moderate intensity every week, and Mr Arad says 8000 steps a day could get you to that goal.

“I use steps with my clients, but not necessarily 10,000, because some need more, some need less,” Mr Arad says.

A FitBit representative said: “We are confident in the positive results our millions of users have seen from using FitBit products.”

Mr Stewart ditched his FitBit in 2014 and hired personal trainer Chris Piegza to whip him into shape. Mr Stewart now clocks in at 81kg.

“Activity monitors can be effective,” Mr Piegza said, “but you need some sort of supervision by a trainer or peers who can monitor your progress and guide you to the right path.” (For those who can’t afford a personal trainer, Mr Piegza suggests finding a workout pal to keep you in check.)

Simón de Swaan started using FitBit in 2012 when he weighed 77kg to jump-start his fitness routine. Instead, his weight fluctuated slightly, and he gained around 2kg, despite running up to 32km a week.

“The FitBit is a crutch sometimes,” said Mr de Swaan, 51. “I go, ‘Well, if I’m gonna get my steps in, I can binge eat’ … I think the FitBit gives this false sense of, ‘Now I can eat more’.”

To turn back the scale, Mr de Swaan stopped relying on activity monitors in 2015. Now he focuses on working out five days a week, doing high-intensity interval training, and eating a balanced diet of veggies, proteins and complex carbs.

Food coach and personal trainer Brigitte Weil agrees that fitness trackers have given clients permission to eat things they normally wouldn’t.

“They’d order that extra glass of wine or slice of cake on top of their food plan,” Ms Weil says. “[Trackers] allow people to make excuses for themselves.”

Instead, she says, people should focus on what they put into their bodies over how many steps they take.

“My biggest recommendation would be to set up a food plan geared toward weight loss and not let workouts be an extra allowance to eat more,” she says.

Being wired up to fitness trackers has also made us overly dependent on outside sources to tell us information about our own bodies, says psychologist Alexis Conason.

“We consult our FitBit to decide whether to exercise rather than relying on how our body feels,” Ms Conason tells The New York Post. “This type of disconnection from our body’s internal signals can lead long-term to overeating, sedentary behaviour and health problems.”

Rather, Ms Conason says the best approach is to engage in pleasurable forms of physical activity.

“Once we do exercises that are fun and enjoyable, it’s no longer about being a chore or counting steps, and we’re able to better take care of ourselves,” she says. “That kind of activity is much more sustainable to achieving your long-term [health] goals.”

This article originally appeared on The New York Post.