Love your new Fitbit? It may only help you for one year.
The study from the University of Pittsburgh found that weight-reduction programs help patients maintain a weight loss of eight to ten percent, but, after one year, results vary.
Not-so-surprising results
It’s a finding that makes sense to Lindsey House, a weight management dietitian with St. Elizabeth Healthcare and personal trainer.
“In that first year, our accountability is usually higher,” she said. “We’re checking in with someone weekly or monthly, and our motivation is higher that first year, too. Maybe we need to lose weight for our knees or back to feel better. Once we lose enough weight for the pain to go away, though, we lose momentum.”
The answer, House said, is finding new ways to stay motivated, such as working toward a new fitness goal.
“It’s reinventing the motivation along the journey,” she said.
Don’t throw away your Jawbone yet
Reinventing doesn’t mean eliminating mindfulness or monitoring devices, though.
“When we’re mindful about our eating and think about the reasons behind our eating, it helps us change our behavior,” House said. “When we incorporate behavioral health techniques, we see much better, much more consistent and long-term results.”
Indeed, House said when people work on making better nutrition and fitness goals, as well as making behavioral changes, they’re more likely to succeed.
Devices keep you honest
And monitoring devices are helpful because they’re handy, and because they provide an unbiased report of our caloric input or fitness level during the day.
They’re also accurate.
“Technology is a great tool because all too often people have an idea in their minds of how many calories they think they consumed in a day, but they’re typically at least 100 calories off,” House said. “They don’t realize that a 25-calorie creamer in their coffee ““ when multiplied by more than one cup of coffee ““ or a few nibbles off their kids’ plates can add up quickly.”
According to the study, the number of digital devices per person has increased from 1.8 in 2010 to 3.5 in 2015 worldwide. Yet while devices offer us objective data at our fingertips, they don’t give us the human feedback that can keep us from losing sight of our goals after a year.
“Life tends to get in the way, and when it does, we tend to fall right back into old habits,” House said. “If we don’t have someone to put us back on track, we can’t maintain what we’ve worked so hard to achieve.”
