Anecdata point: I was very active before I got an Apple Watch, but having the watch has increased my activity in two ways. First, it scratches the part of my brain that loves routines; meeting a daily goal provides a dopamine hit beyond that from the activity itself. Second, it provides an extra nudge on days when I might otherwise have said “ah, I’m feeling lazy/tired/unmotivated etc., I’m going to skip today.” I didn’t initially think I would care about the rings, but I think they’ve contributed to my health overall.
I replaced Strava (explicitly starting and ending my run) with aiming for 10k+ steps per day.
I ended up much more active since I was incentivized to do activities that would incidentally increase my steps, like walking during a phone call, rather than having a rigid, more stressful “I am on a run” state where I’m fixated on my pace metrics.
Running is better than walking, but walking a lot is probably better than running a little. This is not a fitness tracker specific observation and I'm sure it varies from person to person, but my experience has been that if I look for opportunities to just be active rather than focus on more strenuous exercise, I tend to engage in a lot more physical activity. In my case, I think the increase in overall active time probably balances out the fact that the activity is at a lower level, especially since I end up fitting the extra active time in where it's likely replacing no activity at all rather than replacing more beneficial exercise.
As I said, this isn't really a fitness tracker specific experience since I don't actually use one. But I think there's some interesting psychology at work here that a fitness tracker probably amplifies. Aside from people with certain health issues, "walk more" is a pretty easy task with a very low bar to entry compared to the health benefits. You likely don't need special equipment or a membership to anything or a change of clothes or a shower after and it's pretty easy to feel like you can fit into your day even if you're tired or busy. You could reasonably argue that going for a run after work isn't that much more of a heavy lift than going for a walk, but I'd bet good money that I'm not alone in feeling like it is a lot of days. And that ultimately matters in terms of how likely people are to actually be active.
I still run. But I walk too. And I now don't feel like I'm messing up any sort of pace metric when my run becomes a walk or a phone call or I drop and do 30 pushups every kilometer, etc.
It led to a large increase of daily activity.
It's like how I became a home cook when I bought my first bluetooth headphones. Suddenly I could comfortably listen to Youtube debates and podcasts and audiobooks, needed something to do with my hands while listening to them, and ended up learning to enjoy spending time in the kitchen.
It's funny how little changes can have a large impact on your daily life.
I think both are good for different kinds of endurance, so it would seem good to do both - brisk walking for the slow burn some times, and high intensity (or interval training) to get the heart rate right up other times.
If there's one thing the human body has evolved to do over aeons it's running.
One can marvel at a slow motion video capture of a sprinting cheetah - the fastest running mammal -, where every bit of their body springs into beautifully orchestrated action. One can equally marvel at the same capture of the ruthless efficiency of an endurance running human - the longest running mammal, by far. Every bit of the human body engages towards that efficiency, from kinetic action via immediate energy storage and release via tendon springiness (not just in legs but all the way through the upper body, recovering vertical fall energy, as well as lateral counterbalance motion to be released for forward motion) to the cardiovascular system acting as a massive thermal regulator (via breathing mostly, blood and lung moisture as heat carrying fluids, but also fingers+hands that move for balance double as finned heatsinks), enabling the evolutionary prey hunting strategy of outrunning them to exhaustion.
Running does not damage joints because that's what we evolved to be ever since we started standing upright and to be able to do so as long as possible both in duration and age, and even if we take a hypothesis of extreme selective pressure since the days when food started coming from fields and livestock, a few thousand years would have barely put a dent on our physiology being evolutionarily built for running; instead, running with no or bad warmup by stomping on concrete with bad or unfit shoes and bad posture biased by our modern sitting-all-the-time world does.
I've heard this before[1] but anecdotally I just know lots of serious runners with serious injuries, to the point of needing surgery. If you're in a running club I bet you do too.
I don't know any cyclists or swimmers where the sport by itself has caused that kind of damage.
Myself, running gave me rather unpleasant sciatica by inflaming a tight psoas muscle.
I can compare it to road cycling and it's night and day. I can ride a 150 miler when I'm not that fit or flexible and once the tiredness has worn off I'll have no issues. I remember running a half marathon once when I was fit but without long, structured training and I was limping around for a week afterwards.
You could argue that's due to improper training or warm ups/downs, etc. but it just seems that running is very hard on the body for something we're evolved to do above everything else.
Anecdotally, I also know several cyclists in their 80s still riding about happily. I'd guess they'll ride until they don't want to any more and not because of injury.
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1. I think it was the premise of the book "Born to Run".
Serious runners are a whole other thing to a casual runner. I did a 20-30k per week for a decade without problems.
When I doubled that - which required a very intentional effort on my part - and ended up with injuries. But was able to address the underlying issues without too much drama.
I'm not in a club but am a runner myself, although currently in a trough ever since I got a kid, and in the process of picking the habit up. I do know a bunch of long-time runners far above my level (a couple doing trail). Most injuries I heard about are ankle or knee sprains. When tracing the root cause of injuries most of those appeared to be:
- accidents (an overlooked hole or bump in the ground)
- skipping (or rushing) a warmup
- seeking performance or improper recovery, thus soreness/tiredness during effort, thus pushing it into the area where muscles and tendons could not compensate for the strenuous effort anymore.
My mother's SO has been a runner (and bike rider) for most of his life and is still running and riding despite nearing its 70s (TBF he is dialing it down, mostly because of age). AFAIK he never had a serious injury due to running; he certainly does not have lasting damage. One key thing seems to be that except in his early youth he's never been looking for performance, instead it's more of a lifestyle habit for him. Effort, yes, strenuousness, no; the long scale game not being a marathon or something, the long scale game being several decades of healthiness.
> I don't know any cyclists or swimmers where the sport by itself has caused that kind of damage.
Conversely, I do. Again it's a performance seeking scenario. There's a swimmer who started to have severe back issues (started with butterfly, a few years later he could only back crawl). A couple cyclists started to suffer knee and hip issues because of the repeated continuous pressure heightened by leaning forward during a high-lever effect ~90deg (well, closer to 90deg than when running) pedal push. Several suffered chronic Achille's heel or popliteal tendinitis. Again, a performance seeking scenario, combined with an apparatus that that allows you to go "beyond spec" to eke out the most energy-to-speed ratio.
That said bikes are brilliant, and extremely efficient at transforming downward energy into forward motion.
> I can ride a 150 miler when I'm not that fit or flexible and once the tiredness has worn off I'll have no issues
The above efficiency note biases bikes a lot. My previous comment was not an argument against bikes at all, it was about trying to dispel the blanket canned statement that "running is the worst and very damaging to joints because impacts, you should not do it".
> I remember running a half marathon once when I was fit but without a long, structured training and I was limping around for a week afterwards.
However you slice it, a half marathon can already be quite straining and requires, as you mentioned, intentional training to be achieved without damage in our modern societies. Now, running a 5K three times a week at a brisk but not strenuous pace should not produce any damage if proper form is used (assuming bad form all bets are off anyway and even 1K could easily smash your joints and back if one constantly hits heel first, but then again bad form on a bike can be quite disastrous as well).
You mention it almost in passing but really this is exactly what makes running so high impact and what negates millions of years of adapted shock absorption.
There are ongoing debates about whether modern running shoes allow "heel strike" running rather than using the ball of one's foot to hit the ground, so - perhaps - modern running shoes are themselves enabling a maladapted and higher impact running technique. This is far from settled though as I understand it.
Agreed, it was not so much en passant as much as I did not want to elaborate a comment into an essay ;)
Also agreed, running heel first feels like a terrible idea (and that's a skateboarder talking here, so I know my share about impact ;) Indeed at the very least a lot of downward energy is lost, uncaptured by Achille tendons: it really seems like a lot of waste to turn yourself from a digitigrade to a plantigrade, foregoing a whole joint and lever in the whole of that whip-like system.
That’s nice and all but it’s an objectively verifiable fact that runners get injured very frequently.
> In fact, at least 50 percent of regular runners get hurt each year—some estimates put the percentage even higher—sometimes from trauma, such as a fall, but more often from overuse.
Contranecdata: zero change. I am not motivated by numbers. On bad days I couldn't care less that the numbers are low, and it's good, otherwise it would add to the stress/depression that probably led to those in the first place.
I don't mind it too much because it can visually show memorable anomalies in near past (like here I was ill, here I moved, here I had a fun day of walking), but I really dislike those "ring" gamifications when it tells me when I reached 10k taking me out of flow and making me realize I walked a lot.
What worse, it taught me what 10k of steps feels like, which makes me measure where I am at during extended walks instead of being in the moment enjoying walking!
What I really want is those non critical activity stats to be hidden in real time and only be available for like a month ago and earlier. In its current incarnation it feels like it's aimed at people who consciously make themselves do things instead of enjoying them, it's not healthy...
I don't feel that way. I went through a pretty big exercise slump over covid and I bought an apple watch at the start of 2021. If you make your goals modest at first, the numbers will be easy to hit and every couple of weeks the fitness app will suggest you raise them - if you raise them each time it suggests, you'll eventually hit a manageable goal where you're spending 30-60 minutes exercising per day.
The gamification aspect was really good for me to get off the couch and actually do something but now that I have good habits going I naturally enjoy the extra walk/yard work/gym workout. I don't really pay that much attention to my daily goals anymore, but if I look down and it's 4 PM and I see that I'm a bit short on today's exercise goal, I might consider taking the dog for a second walk or making an unplanned trip to the gym. It's not the end of the world if I don't make it, but it's pretty cool when the month ends and I get the "you hit your exercise goal every day for august" notification.
> What I really want is those non critical activity stats to be hidden in real time and only be available for like a month ago and earlier.
This is an approach I have also considered for an app of mine. All data close to now is saved in the database of course, but in no way visible before a week or so has passed. I think it makes one's connection with one's personal data healthier.
Yeah. The problem though, I would rather it didn't use its own database and relied on Health APIs... so this feature would have to be implemented in Health APIs themselves, I suppose.
Its studies like this and my own experience that makes me so annoyed that Google seems to be intentionally killing the FitBit brand.
They first removed all of the social features, which was a massive encouragement for large swathes of my friends and family. You have one family member that is training regularly for 5ks, half-marathons, marathons, etc and its always nice to just be able to get anywhere close to their steps for the week. Have a friend that you usually can beat, all of a sudden you're encouraged to hop on the treadmill and get an extra 1000 steps in that day. Theres a poor alternative called Stridekick, that seems to check all the boxes as a replacement, but just somehow is just poorly designed enough to be an app no one actually wants to use.
Now they've issued an update that is bricking Fitbit devices and are just sending out coupons to buy a new one.
Whats frustrating is that the market seems completely devoid of anything currently to replace them. All the halfway decent options are all huge clunky smartwatches. If you have no interest in apps on your wrist, because you already own a phone, it seems like the only option is the ugliest Garmin I've ever seen or Chinese ones of unknown quality that do not connect to any of the fitness ecosystem. When my FitBit seemingly got hit with a bug that killed it, (worked fine one day, then suddenly battery only lasted an hour after just over a year of owning it), I desperately looked for an alternative and ended up stuck getting the cheapest FitBit. It really wasn't an option to forgo not having a device as my insurance pays me up to 90 bucks a month for hitting my step goals.
You are really missing out if you are getting hung up on Garmin's appearance. Their fitness system is top of the pack. There is a reason why if you go to any competitive fitness event it's all Garmin watches on peoples wrists.
Maybe look into a Whoop device. Their business model is unique in the space as it's a subscription, but the tracker itself is solid, has no screen and can be worn a number of ways if you don't want it on your wrist.
I have the Venu and I think it looks alright for everyday wear. The Vivomove and Lily lines also have physical hour/minute hands and really downplay the smartwatch aspect if that's your thing.
Surprisingly positive. Personally thought activity trackers might have a fairly short term interest effect, with boredom or laziness after several months.
"wearable activity trackers increased step counts on average by around 1800 steps per day, walking time by approximately 40 min per day, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) by around 6 min per day."
"effects were in favourable directions (ie, negative effects suggesting improvement in BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, glycosylated haemoglobin, and waist circumference and bodyweight, and positive effects suggesting improvement in aerobic capacity)"
"strong effects on step counts at 4–6 months (increase of 1127 [95% CI 710–1543] steps per day), [...smaller effect on] step counts up to 4 years (an increase of 494 [251–738] steps per day), [...another found] small but non-significant beneficial effects up to 1–2 years (BMI –0·21 kg/m², 95% CI –1·06 to 0·65).
My personal experience is just one data point, but an activity tracker has been an important part over the last 4 years of improving my health dramatically. 4 years ago I was sedentary, and was experiencing some pretty nasty hip pain that was really starting to get in the way of even my sedentary life (standing or walking for an hour or two became amazingly painful for days).
This week, according to my watch, I have 870 "Activity Minutes", I use my treadmill basically every day, and I never would have imagined I would say this, but I enjoy jogging. My hip pain has much more manageable.
Part of that is definitely the encouragement from the fitness tracker. Part of it is also using the data from the fitness tracker to adjust my activity and sleep. Part of it is my health insurance has a gamification where I earn money for activity, and also get to low key compete with others. I think it pays me nearly a grand a year for activity, all told.
Sleep monitoring is big, but did you lose weight and bring your BMI < 25?
There's no drug that can deliver the same, positive health impact as going obese/overweight to "healthy" BMI. Losing weight is typically not about more exercise.
> Losing weight is typically not about more exercise.
Losing weight is about figuring out a way for you to be in a caloric deficit. Once you learn that, you know exactly* how much exercise impacts weight loss.
300 calories is what I can typically burn on a treadmill session. That's accounts for about a third of my deficit goal. What it really means is that I can eat 300 more calories that day, which helps tremendously to keep me from feeling too hungry.
*okay, nothing is exact with weight loss but you get my point.
Agreed, I didn't lose weight by exercising. I lost weight by going into a calorie deficit. It takes about 3,500 calories to gain/lose one lbs. Like you, my target deficit is around 900 calories a day, I really don't count the calories in exercise. "You can't outrun a bad diet."
900 calorie daily deficit? That is crazy. How can anyone maintain that for long periods? Did your ever try just 300 calories? Easier and more sustainable.
Can't really call it crazy without knowing what weight they started at. Plus, the goal isn't to have a sustainable calorie deficit. The deficit is a temporary thing.
I'm also in the same boat, trying for a 1,000 Cal deficit. I, personally, find it easier to do that than 300 cal. I can eat low calorie density foods and be satisfied at ~1,400 Cal a day, but at 2,000 a day it's too easy to slip to 2,400... I've been able to sustain that for 6 months at a time.
Remember, 1-2 lbs a week is generally what is recommended for weight loss, that works out to 3,500-7,000 Cal a week, or 500-1,000 a day.
Ok. I would call this shredding in the body building arena. This makes much more sense! I thought you were running a long term 900 calorie per day deficit. That sounds like an expressway to (emotional food hunger) hell.
I did lose weight, I went from a BMI of 39 to 33, so still obese. That has definitely helped, but I'm quite sure that exercising has been the bulk of feeling better. We already ate fairly healthy, but did ramp it up further as part of losing weight.
> Taken together, the meta-analyses suggested activity trackers improved physical activity (standardised mean difference [SMD] 0·3–0·6), body composition (SMD 0·7–2·0), and fitness (SMD 0·3), equating to approximately 1800 extra steps per day, 40 min per day more walking, and reductions of approximately 1 kg in bodyweight. Effects for other physiological (blood pressure, cholesterol, and glycosylated haemoglobin) and psychosocial (quality of life and pain) outcomes were typically small and often non-significant.
Sources suggest 3-4000 steps on average for Americans, so an extra 1800 is actually a pretty big deal. 40 minutes of walking is no small thing for many.
AFAIK (brisk) walking 40-90mins a day is the only exercise shown to increase longevity, and that in the US it is a target that is routinely not met. Sounds like a really substantial improvement (as long as the "brisk" target is also met).
When training for cycling I use heart rate zones to choose the right level of exertion for a workout. Zone 2 (115-145bpm roughly, in my case) is widely thought to be the lowest intensity range that yields positive training adaptation.
So, I wonder- is a brisk walk maybe equivalent to low zone 2 exercise? Or lower than that even?
I'm being completely serious when I say (as a non-doctor), that unless they have a specific heart condition, I presume it would substantially lower if they did some brisk walking. To give you another idea of just how low intensity "brisk" is, one indicator I've seen used is "you can talk in a conversation with relative comfort, but you couldn't sing without getting a bit out of breath". That's how general the advice is, and that's sufficient to improve longevity. More is better, but you're already somewhat close to the bottom of the J curve just doing that (marathon level and beyond is where more is worse again, if I'm remembering correctly).
This isn't my original source, but what I found that seems to agree with my memory: 10.1016/j.pop.2013.08.002
There are recommendations for other exercise in there, but none of it is related to longevity, based on my skim.
I'll add to the anecdotes here: I lost 90 lbs and got fit over the past five years, and my Fitbit played an important role in that.
Initially, it was helpful for me to be aware of my overall physical activity. Weight loss is mostly diet, but I didn't have a clue about my average steps or my heart rate during exercise.
I got to watch my resting heart rate drop from the 70s down to the 40s as I picked up cycling, hiking, and regular walks.
When I began weightlifting and other more strenuous training, I then understood my heart rate zones and could track my progress.
Gaining a deeper understanding of my body and seeing progress over time was very motivating. Definitely a big positive for me.
Most effective if you are being observed by strangers, rather than your future self.
Has ramifications for diet (food logs a very effective intervention, maybe more than any particular regime), and it strikes me that it's also part of surveillance states' playbook.
Peter Attia cites the Hawthorne Effect here and in his podcast episode on good v bad science:
Impressive results, but I think it is important to keep in mind that most of the examined studies in this meta-analysis combined wearable activity trackers with an intervention. The effect of only using a wearable is probably much smaller and the duration of the effect is unclear.
From the limitations section of the discussion:
“Although this umbrella review provides strong assurance of the efficacy of wearable activity trackers in increasing physical activity, few of the systematic reviews and meta-analyses examined the effectiveness of wearable activity trackers alone. […] the multifaceted interventions yielded effects around 50% larger than those using wearable activity trackers alone.”
What's considered an "intervention"? If your phone or watch sending you notifications to be more active counts, doesn't every activity tracker come with that feature? I can imagine wearing an apparently-inert bracelet that gets your activity reported back to researchers at the university would have a smaller motivational effect.
Indeed, almost all trackers come with notifications and in the study notifications are included in the wearable-based intervention.
The result of 50% larger effects in multifaceted interventions versus wearable-based interventions is from a study by Brickwood (2019). In this study, they distinguish wearable-based interventions (interventions that included tools such as regular emails, text messages, online algorithms, or smartphone apps) and multifaceted interventions (using in addition established behavioral change techniques such as group or individual counseling or information sessions, financial incentives, or telephone counseling).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6484266/
After an ios update where my phone started tracking a move ring (I was lazy and accepted some new defaults) I was definitely more motivated to close it every day. I noticed I was walking more so a few weeks ago when my old watch died I bought an apple watch so that I can also “count” my active workouts like lifting weights too.
It’s not a huge effect but it’s definitely helpful.
It’s great that the otherwise annoying “attention hacking” from my devices feels like they’re actually helping me.
And whoever came up with the ring design deserves a lot of credit, they look and feel really good. The default notification settings are a bit too chatty though.
Got one on sale after New Years when Garmin was clearancing out the old Instincts to make way for v2 of the same. My intention was just to be more aware of my activity level and at least make informed choices.
The imaginary internet points have proven remarkably effective at keeping my step count up since then. I hate admitting as much, but I guess in this case it's a force for good?
I found that even the distance computer on my bicycle was not producing actionable data - only anxiety.
Nowadays, I consider non-actionable data as a cost. If it is entertainment, then that is luxury for which I accept the cost. Otherwise, I cut it.
I used to love fancy dashboards with everything and extra cheese - not anymore: I try to understand what is input to my actions and what is blinkenlights.
With no distance computer on my bicycle, I feel free: I cycle daily wherever I fancy and the numbers don't matter ! I still consider distance at the planning stage but, once I'm on the road I don't want to think about it.
Same experience. Eventually I realized the data wasn’t providing me anything useful and it was just zapping the fun of being active. When I go outside the last thing I want to be thinking of are metrics and other such self improvement things.
So the study says it increases activity. But it also says: “Effects for other physiological (blood pressure, cholesterol, and glycosylated haemoglobin) and psychosocial (quality of life and pain) outcomes were typically small and often non-significant.” so what’s the point of the extra activity?
> In total, 39 systematic reviews and meta-analyses were identified, reporting results from 163 992 participants spanning all age groups, from both healthy and clinical populations. Taken together, the meta-analyses suggested activity trackers improved physical activity (standardised mean difference [SMD] 0·3–0·6), body composition (SMD 0·7–2·0), and fitness (SMD 0·3), equating to approximately 1800 extra steps per day, 40 min per day more walking, and reductions of approximately 1 kg in bodyweight. Effects for other physiological (blood pressure, cholesterol, and glycosylated haemoglobin) and psychosocial (quality of life and pain) outcomes were typically small and often non-significant. Activity trackers appear to be effective at increasing physical activity in a variety of age groups and clinical and non-clinical populations. The benefit is clinically important and is sustained over time. Based on the studies evaluated, there is sufficient evidence to recommend the use of activity trackers.
That seems remarkably effective. It’s in line with my personal experience as well. Unfortunately, it also occupied a part of my daily headspace. I was exercising more with the tracker, but without the tracker I enjoy exercise more as it feels less goal-oriented.
I'm very physically active, and I still feel driven to hit my watch's 10k steps and 10 floors goals to keep the streak going. Even though 95% of the time when I haven't hit the steps it's because I've been on the bike instead.
Seeing my estimated VO2 max number rise and my resting heart rate going down is super motivating on my Apple Watch. I thought it would feel like a boat anchor being tracked all the time, but I really enjoy seeing all the heart metrics.
My Apple Watch isn’t perfect but it’s pretty accurate in measuring exercise nowadays. It was much rougher in the first year or two though, they have certainly improved the hardware and software.
Guess I’m one of those weird ones who returned my Fitbit and never use my Apple Watch. I liked them to establish baselines for new activities or trails but anything else was a hindrance. But even then what’s the point. Maybe I don’t think of exercise as something to maximize. Just has to be good enough.
It many cases hindrance came from comparing walks. When it’s much better for me to just pick the walk that suits my mood, not the most strenuous.
Most tracker apps have a setting you can apply that indicates which wrist you’re wearing it on, your dominant or your non-dominant hand. This is mostly so that the steps algorithm can adjust (somewhat imperfectly) for how your dominant hand sees a lot more motion throughout the day. As such a couple questions are interesting here:
1) are you using that setting, and is it set correctly?
2) are you by any chance ambidextrous?
Regarding accuracy in general, a quick scan of the abstract didn’t comment on it, just noting that people who wear trackers tend to be more active and have the health benefits associated with that.
In general, step tracking at the wrists is actually fairly difficult and many activities both interfere with recognizing steps (walking a stroller is a big one) or register as steps despite not having taken any (washing the dishes will get you a lot of steps). There’s a reason Fitbit has allowed for wearing a tracker on your hip for many years. You can also enable step tracking on your phone, and it will be quite accurate as long as your phone is in a hip pocket.
All of that said, the latest research on the subject shows that you’re best off being active, where activity is defined as 150 minutes per week of heart-rate elevating activity, whether that’s walking or something else. There’s also a strong effect for walking immediately after a meal that has some separate benefit with respect to regulating blood sugar. If you can combine the two, even better.
They might not be step accurate against each other, or on different wrists, consistently wearing the same one in the same place will give you enough to benchmark your progress - eg the readings will be consistently wrong by the same margin of error.
You may be moving your arms in different ways. To compare reading counts between two devices I’d use both on the same wrist.
But I think in the end it really doesn’t matter how accurate they are if the effect is one that these devices make us move more.
If you want you can turn on automatic GPS tracking on most smartwatches so you won't have to worry about that. That said, I haven't had that experience - my watch and my phone are bang on if I am to count the steps myself manually.
For me it was increasing physical activity that made me want to get the tracker, so I could see how I was progressing when I started swimming. But perhaps it has helped me keep at it!
I do about an hour of swimming twice a week now - started at half an hour once a week, then gradually increased the time, then started going more than once, it's made a big difference! I also wanted to improve my diet (and cut sugary drinks like soft drinks and juices), and then after a year or two found that I was losing weight to the point where I was a bit lighter than I wanted to be, so I had to increase how much I was eating a bit to make up for the deficit. That had definitely never happened before, I'd been gradually increasing my weight prior to that.
Other studies show that outdoor walking relieves stress(1) and provides an opportunity to think about problems differently (or perhaps "creatively")(2), in those 40 minutes a day would be more than sufficient to experience advantages.
However how those 40 minutes take place would affect the result. Merely counting 40 minutes of doing chores is not the same as an extra 40 minutes added deliberately to a person's day. Similarly 40 minutes on a treadmill is unlikely to feel as relaxing as a walk through nature. Drawing detailed conclusions from activity studies is problematic, but the broad conclusions are consistent: the body likes movement and lots of it.
Well presumably if there's a threshold effect, +40 minutes should have shown an increase because it would have pushed people who were already walking over the threshold.
As if walking briskly would make people with shitty lives and situational depression (like, tons, judging from statistics and related depression drug usage) happy?
Exercize is good for endorphins and depression, but let's not oversell it on inducing hapiness.
Walking at the sides of busy roads is very different from walking around a calm neighbourhood, or even a park, a forest or any other environment which is not high-density urban or industrialized, polluted and ugly roads.
The good options are inaccessible to a large part of the world's population during work week.
Therefore this study misses crucial factors and is an excersise (pun unintended) in absurdity.
Still, I also see some positive effects from Apple Fitness gamification even without the watch, and I'm privileged enough to be able to reach a park in 15 minutes.
Walking in American cities is awful, but if you live in a good country that limits vehicle access its super relaxing to walk around the city and see all the cool stuff going on.
No toxic fumes. No engine noise. No risk of sudden death. Just the low background noise of footsteps, chatter, people laughing, etc.
I know it's fun to hate on America but that's bs. We walk several miles in our city every day and it's great. We'll walk in state parks or near our cabin on the weekends but there's nothing wrong at all with walking in an American city.
A study of measuring the effectiveness of selling your car to increase physical activity would be very interesting.
But in our present economical logic who would profit from such a study and finance it?
There's probably a lot of infrastructure work that would have to be done for that to be practical for a lot of people. I'm lucky that where I live in Australia I can actually do quite a few trips without the car (I would quite like an electric bike with some cargo storage to be able to do more, but I haven't made the fairly big investment yet), but the situation in a lot of places in the US (especially suburbia there) seems like to get a lot of places, walking and cycling can be quite dangerous or inconvenient.
Improving this definitely should be a priority for cities though, on so many points (climate, reducing pollution, improving health from the exercise, reducing car traffic by moving trips to other modes, reducing car noise, etc. etc.)
To add my own anecdote. I am easily drawn in by the numbers game and, as a result, I started to walk even in conditions that would keep me at home several years ago. Freezing weather, rains, serious heat.
My immunity has improved a lot, and I think it comes from the relentless exposure to all kinds of Central European weather. I no longer experience bouts of cold etc., and except for Covid, I didn't have anything flu-like even in winter, when there was an obvious wave of respiratory diseases all around.
I feel this is a no-brainer and it's nice to have a meta study confirm it. I won't be surprised if we start seeing health insurance plans offer rebates or discounts to people who use them.
I was really surprised to read of the positive results. Because I naturally assume that fads are just fads, based on marketing or fashion, and all the activity tracking watches that appeared over the last decade really seemed like a fad.
I feel like the gamification and reminders on the Apple Watch are not that compelling, but having long term history tracking of some stats actually is interesting.
A few years ago I moved out of the suburbs and in to an inner city apartment. Decided to just get rid of my car and walk everywhere. I made no effort to actively exercise, but just went about my daily life. What surprised me is that since I went car free, my average heart rate has been constantly declining and my weight has as well. I don't follow any kind of diet and don't really do intensive exercise (until recently).
Just getting rid of my car and walking around massively improved my health in ways my apple watch can pick up.
I have personally seen multiple health insurance plans offer a free Fitbit upon enrollment in their targeted coaching programs. They find the highest cost patients, typically with cardiovascular or diabetes risk, and use the data from a Fitbit, a bluetooth connected blood pressure monitor, glucose monitor, to identify who is at greatest risk and target them for "coaching," which tends to be a form of outsourced telehealth.
At least one such insurance plan has been around for a few years now. See e.g. All Savers Motion. (Can't find a link that gives plan details that isn't a PDF, sorry.)
With regards to the worth of the gadget... Is it better to be slightly more physically healthy but have less privacy, or retain privacy but miss the potential benefit? This is a question for present age.
You'd think that knowing the amount of steps you do etc in a day would certainly be your information for one's own eyes only, but no - corporations are heavily involved.
> [...] equating to approximately 1800 extra steps per day, 40 min per day more walking, and reductions of approximately 1 kg in bodyweight.
My morning walk is about 40 min per day and about 4km (distance varies but I'm pretty reliably 6km per hour) and that works out to about 4500 steps. So 1800 steps in 40 min more walking seems to be a REALLY slow walk, less than 3km per hour.
I used mine for the past month or two to track my activity and plan my weight loss - it's been surprisingly accurate. Being able to log calories right from my wrist instantly is great to prevent me from forgetting, and the total caloric expenditure estimation has been surprisingly accurate as compared to results on the scale.
As a longtime P90X (video workout series) devotee, I’ve enjoyed a similar effect before the trackers. As Tony Horton says, “keep showing up, keep pressing play.” Routine creates healthy habits.
How about a mental activity tracker to increase mental activity ? Too much physical activity makes me dumber. Playing bullet or blitz chess might consume as many calories as walking per unit time.
Give me Google Glass so I can do both! I rarely add new gadgets to my life but I can’t help but constantly wishing I could watch lectures while exercising. The exercises aren’t something any other type of visual display could supplement.
