It seemed to everyone (even to me, I confess), a useful tool to understand how many calories are consumed during the day and physical activity, but no. The fitness bracelet and fitness apps like Fitbit or Jawbone , which detect sustained activities and tell you how many calories you are burning, may not give us the help we hope, quite the opposite! They may even make our weight loss efforts less impactful.

This is what some experts have established referring to the famous trackers that are so fashionable now: according to a survey that lasted two years, the fitness bracelet does not help you to work harder, but it is discouraging and only gives the security that you can have from the the fact that you have a technological gadget to help us, but in terms of motivation it is more a diet with training in which we monitor the results by ourselves.

In fact, of the sample of obese people analyzed, the group that had the ftness bracelet supplied after a year of diet and training, at the end of a subsequent monitoring period, lost less weight than those who had to check by other means ( food diary, more frequent measurements, more frequent weighings) your progress. The difference is about three extra pounds lost for the second group.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), but the spokespersons of the companies that produce these trackers assure that the new features of their products enhance the weight loss of those who use them, and not demotivate them to lose weight as they do. argue the researchers.