Are activity trackers a help or a hindrance when it comes to weight loss?
David Minton, Director of LeisureDB, featured in the January 2017 issue of Health Club Management discussing activity trackers and wearable technology.
"It's good that wearable technology and physical activity trackers are being debated, but we need to put them into context - we're only at the start of the journey of their functionality. We're at the stage where we can only use tracking information as an indication and not take it too seriously. If companies like Nike and Microsoft have withdrawn their devices, it shows we're at a very early stage.
There's so much confusion over healthy eating and weight management. Monitoring activity is only part of the answer and people need to be careful about setting their calorific intake based on the information from a tracker: most people tend to over-estimate their physical activity levels and under-estimate what they eat.
Going forward, to make trackers more effective, there needs to be more use of artificial intelligence. There also needs to be more gamification. This needs to be fun - it shouldn't be boring or dreary."
Find the original article via Health Club Management.