Wearable electronics: Will they help you lose weight?

More On Call with Dr. Samir Gupta stories on Globalnews.ca

The holiday season is in full swing and for many people that means lots of eating, drinking, and weight gain.

Many of us will find a wearable fitness tracker under the tree this year. But can these fancy devices actually help us to lose that holiday weight?

Studies show that the average winter holiday weight gain is only about one pound, but about 10 per cent of people gain over five pounds.

People who are overweight and obese to begin with and those who report being less active over the holidays tend to gain more.

This might suggest that monitoring activity is key to controlling weight gain.

In that regard, activity tracking technology has evolved in leaps and bounds.

Pedometers simply count how many steps you take each day, and have been around since the 1960s.

Today’s advanced devices not only track steps but also distance covered, calorie consumption, and heartbeat.

Get daily National news

Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.

Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up

By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

They can be worn on your hip, your wrist, around your arm, or even built into your shoe.

Most of them can also be set up to alert you when you’ve reached a certain preset exercise target. But the first issue is accuracy.

Several studies have looked at this, and as it turns out, there is a large amount of variability in accuracy between devices.

Higher end devices are pretty good at measuring steps, but distance can be inaccurate in devices that are not linked to GPS, and calorie burn measurements are generally pretty unreliable.

The other issue is that these devices can’t make adjustments for the impact of different weather or terrain on exercise.

Although early studies did not show that wearing one of these devices could actually influence people’s activity level, a recent small study showed that women who used a Fitbit with web-based tracking exercised an average of 62 minutes more per week and walked an average of 789 more steps per week than those who wore a simple pedometer.  

So these devices can provide a nudge in the right direction, but clearly people need to be motivated to act on that prompt.

How much do you need to walk each day?  

We’ve all heard the target of 10,000 steps per day.  

Studies have shown health benefits from walking this much, but the reality is that this is more of a marketing tool than a scientific recommendation.  

Exercise requirements are different for each person, and a big part of the equation is how many calories you are consuming.  

For the average person, 10,000 steps per day is about eight kilometres. This can be a daunting target that might discourage some people from even trying.  

Research shows that walking even 30 minutes three times a week, or 1.5 kilometers a day will lower your risk of heart disease.

So with the warm weather that we’re enjoying, why not plan to do some walking over the holidays?  

If you don’t have an activity tracker, you can also use Google’s walking directions to track your distance and an old fashion watch to track your time.