Fit Bit And Other Fitness Trackers Lead To Weight Gain + More Fitness In The News!
By admin
Remember that guy that used to do podcasts with me?
It seems like forever ago that Dan and I sat together for a Lifting Revolution Podcast.
To be honest, he took a hiatus because we were worried that you (and other readers/listeners) didn’t dig our he said/she said bickering when talking about life changing fitness topics.
But after brainstorming, we’ve decided that that bickering is what makes the podcast and what ensures that you get the best information. We bring different opinions to the table and hopefully that helps you out!
It was great to be back on the mic with Dan and we had a great time talking about some of the biggest stories and studies roaming around the online world.
Stories that I can not wait to share!
So without further ado… let’s do this!
Fitness In The News: Trackers Making You Fat, Exercise To Blame For Obesity Epidemic & More!
PODCAST
Don’t Have Time To Listen Or Want More Details?
I understand that life is busy and perhaps you read LR while eating breakfast or between work projects. So if you don’t have the option to listen to the podcast (which when you get the chance I strongly urge), then you can still find out the top stories here!
Plus, all the show extras.
To read the original article, simply click on the headline. 
This was a really interesting study!
It was performed on 58 women and found that those that ranked themselves as “stressed” from the previous day had a lower metabolism than women that were carefree.
Make sense, right? Stress has such a huge affect on everything from mood to hormone production.
Cortisol and insulin are both linked to stress… the more stress the more the body produces of both of these fat storing compounds.
More specifically, the study claimed…
But get this…
Out of all the ladies, only 6 were in the non stressed group. SIX! As a biology student, I can say that this is a rather small study group. My professors would not have accepted a group of 6 against a group of 52 as a viable sample.
Which is why, I am not putting down the study or the findings, but I do hope that the study is expanded so that more solid numbers can be determined.
Yes?
One thing that I won’t argue… stress has a huge affect on our overall health and this doesn’t surprise my in the least.
How To Cut Stress?
- Read
- Journal
- Do something just for you every day!
- Go for a walk at lunch or close your door and turn off the lights
- What do you do to destress?
(Quick sidenote… Dan and I both purchased Jawbones thinking they would be great for helping us move more throughout the day when we weren’t training. We quickly learned that once we understood our baseline, it was pretty unimportant and unnecessary. Mine also broke after 2 weeks.)
This story is less of a research study and more about individual fitness tracker users who have experienced the opposite of what they expected out of their $ 100+ piece of fit gear.
Weight gain.
Why in the world would people see the pounds pile on rather quickly after using a fitness tracker like the FitBit or Jawbone?
For one, the equation that these devices use to calculate how many calories users burn/require is just that… an equation. It is a rough estimate and unfortunately that rough estimate can lead to unintentional overeating.
Here is the problem that I have personally seen with fitness trackers.
They take your exercise and then add the calories that you burned back into your daily requirements.
So for example, if your MyFitnessPal tells you to eat 1300 calories a day, and then you run 3 miles… it will then tell you to eat a total of 1600 calories to make up for those burned.
Ugh… no!
Don’t do this. If you’re working out to lose weight, you’re trying to burn calories, not burn them just to eat them again, right?
Just don’t track your calories with these trackers. It makes life so much easier and so much more rewarding when you see the weight fall off, not creep on. Here’s a post I wrote on how to use MyFitnessPal to your advantage!
Other issues with the tracking world…
Rationalizing cheat meals.
One day you almost did double your walking goal. That’s awesome… so in your head you rationalize that your walking success should be rewarded with some cocktails or perhaps a few slices of pizza.
According to your tracker you burned 1500 calories from moving so what’s the harm?
The harm is that it all adds up.
Do we thinking tracking is a good idea? If it encourages you to get up and move more, then yes!
But Dan and I also discussed how we feel it’s still in the “beta” phase and there is so much more to come from trackers in the future that will help much more.
I loved that Dan made this point…
When home scales came out, they were likely thought to be the next big thing for fitness and health. Now, they have literally destroyed women as it’s something for us to obsess over.
Do you know anyone that has become obsessed with tracking? I do!
For years and years we’ve been lead to believe that the reason obesity continues to rise is because we are eating crap… and more of it.
This study tries to fight that argument and states that as a country our caloric intake hasn’t changed much over the past 20 years… It’s our laziness and lack of exercise that is causing Americans to get bigger and bigger and bigger.
I actually saw this article on a friends Facebook last week and to be honest, I rolled me eyes.
So I was really excited when Dan and I choose it to be a topic of conversation today.
I 100% agree with the article that over 50% of Americans aren’t exercising, especially women. We don’t move enough, we sit down far too long every single day, and we make way too many excuses to not exercise.
Every single day… we should move every single day. Do you?
Dan made some great points here about daily movement and how walking 2 miles isn’t exactly the type of exercise that is needed to help fight obesity and allow your body to be at its best. <— Listen in the show!
As for our caloric intake… I call BS on this.
We all know good and well that the amount of calories we take in and the portion sizes we eat are much larger than they used to be.
And I have proof..
Here’s a table I snagged off the National Institute Of Health’s website…
I think it give a pretty good vision of how eating habits have changed.
There was also a study done at UNC Chapel Hill…
Hamburgers have expanded by 23 percent; A plate of Mexican food is 27 percent bigger; Soft drinks have increased in size by 52 percent; Snacks, whether they be potato chips, pretzels or crackers, are 60 percent larger.
Not surprising, the prevalence of adult obesity in the United States has increased from 14.5 in 1971 to 30.9 percent in 1999. Read The FullReport
We would of course love your thoughts on this! Personally, I think we can agree that it’s a combination of both lack of exercise and an increase in food.
And last but certainly not least…
When did working out become work?
When we do something that we don’t really want to do, we feel that we should be rewarded for it.
Apparently working out falls into that category as people look to exercise as an excuse to over indulge later.
Oh, I worked out today, I can eat the Oreos!
Just an example, I don’t have Oreos on the house.
That study in the article, had two groups of employees…
1 group was told to go for a nature stroll while the other was told to go for a walking workout.
Same time, same walk, different results.
The walkers that went on the “workout” came back in and ate 206 more calories than the strollers of chocolate candy.
Why? Because they just worked out, they can indulge.
We have to stop thinking of exercise like work and start thinking about it as fun. The body needs it, craves it even.
How To Have Fun Workouts
- Do them regularly to make fitness a habit.
- Find something you enjoy doing! If you hate to run, don’t run!
- Have fitness friends.
- Set goals… register for an event!
- Play around, don’t limit yourself to one type of fitness. Experiment!
Thank to Dan for making a comeback! We hope you enjoyed it.
Let’s chat…