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There's Even More Evidence That Fitness Trackers Don't Work (fortune.com)
Turns out it's really hard to persuade people to exercise -- even when they have access to how many steps they've taken, and even when they get paid for it. A staggering 90 percent of people stop wearing fitness trackers when given the choice. Fortune reports: In the new yearlong study, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, researchers randomized 800 people in Singapore who had a full-time job into four groups. Some wore a Fitbit Zip and were paid a small amount of money to get moving -- which they were instructed either to keep or to donate to charity -- while others didn't wear Fitbits. Researchers measured their physical activity, weight, blood pressure, the body's ability to use oxygen (called cardiorespiratory fitness) and their self-reported quality of life. For the last six months of the study, all incentives were dropped, and people could choose whether or not to continue wearing their fitness trackers. (About 40% of people had stopped wearing it in the first six months anyway.) The cash seemed to work at first. Those who were rewarded with cash did an extra 13 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each week and added 570 steps to their daily counts. Raising money for charity had no effect. But once the monetary rewards stopped, so did the improvements. By the end of the study, just 10% of people were still wearing the trackers.
The devices' primary purpose is their namesake - to track the physical activity of the owner. Whether or not that encourages the owner to be more active is another story. It would be like saying a new automobile doesn't work simply because it didn't encourage its owner to drive more.
Now why would you want to install Windows 10 on it?
Table-ized A.I.
The judicial system can force you to wear a tracker and most people would be horrified at the thought of wearing one.
Somewhere out there someone in a marketing department figured out a way to make people pay to wear a tracking device... KUDOS!
It's hardwired into our brains: Don't expend energy unnecessarily! Conserve your bodyfat as much as possible, tomorrow or the next day or next week there may be nothing to eat! Famine is coming! You must survive long enough to breed! Doesn't matter that we're not hunter-gatherers anymore and that you can op into your car and drive 5 minutes to the grocery store and get enough food to feed yourself for weeks, or that there's an obesity problem, it's hardwired into our caveman-like brains to conserve energy, move only as much as necessary. Also, the vast majority of people find exercise to be unpleasant, therefore they'll avoid it any way they can, even if they know on an intellectual level that it's good for them, they'll feel better in the long run, live longer, be happier -- doesn't matter, it's unpleasant right now, emotionally they just can't bring themselves to do it, therefore they don't. For what it's worth, while abstract reasons to exercise regularly like "To be healthier", or "Because I want to lose weight" don't work, having a non-abstract reason, like "I want to run a (half) marathon next year", or "I want to participate in such-and-such sport so I'm training for that" seem to work better.
1. enroll in paid fitness tracker program
2. put it on your dog
3. ???
4. Profit!
Try it! Library of Babel
Study summary: Select a bunch of people who aren't currently using a tracker and encourage them to use a tracker. Then drop the encouragement and see what sticks.
If you want to see if fitness trackers work, use a self-selection group. Find a bunch of people who have been wanting to get in better shape but are not currently vigorous exercisers (or whatever standardizable measure of success you can use), and divide them up randomly. Give some fitness trackers. See how it impacts them. Doing it this way would take groups who are both interested (want to) but not necessarily motivated (experience reward which encourages effort) to exercise regularly and identify between them.
Problems with this approach: poor reporting (one group must self-report; the other has actual data); and masked reporting has an impact (a group with a fitness tracker that tells them nothing will do extra work to ensure data IS there). It's actually worth it to study a group without a tracker, a group with a tracker, and a group with an occluded tracker who are also self-reporting (to compare perception to data). Likewise, the act of reporting creates confounding.
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Think of it as an entrepreneurial opportunity. My very active Dachshunds could run around all day wearing half a dozen for a cut of the payment.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
A lot of people have this great idea about getting in shape, becoming healthier and what not. the problem is all the crap they are fed.
Drink this fucking protein shake, eat 6 meals a day, train HIIT, do weights, callisthenics, 3 times a week, 7 grams of protein per ounce, buy this gizmo, use this electrode belt, avoid fat etc etc.
All-of-a-sudden become fit is a research project. You need 10,000 steps a day, people that take stairs have less chance of heart disease and so on and so on.
Guess what most people do? choose the easy fucking way out. Step 1, buy this fitness device (because you'll need it with all the fitness you're gonna do right?!), step 2 follow magic formula??, step 3 get fit
Here's my "magic formula" to get fit: Move your fucking ass. Do whatever workout you want that is COMPOUND movement at the intensity you can SUSTAIN. Listen to your body, if you're feeling depleted take it easy, if you're feeling pumped put your back into it.
It's the same thing with gym memberships after the Olympics, 2-4 weeks later they never come back. No fucking gizmo is gonna lift those weights, run up that hill or do 100 burpees for you. That's you that has to do that. Do it. -remember that when you're watching other fitter people work. (You know, NFL, NBA, Olympics, they're at work)
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I've been following them for some years. The best approach for continuous is not using pressure, but sound and vibrations to calculate the corresponding blood pressure. Several of them have gotten as far as clinical trials, but none of them is in the market yet. I think the main problem is the large size (on the order of a smartphone that you have to strap on).
I think they'll have better luck if they can do it with several smaller devices that communicate with a larger device (perhaps a smartphone that doesn't need to be worn) to correlate the data.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.