For adults with overweight or obesity, receiving daily personalized feedback through wearable devices did not lead to greater reductions in body fat or waist size than simply tracking habits on their...
Mechanism
Synthesis from 1 study
Daily automated messages from wearables may make people tune out their own progress because the messages feel the same every day and don’t adapt to what they’re actually doing — this makes them less likely to change their habits, especially men, so their body fat doesn’t go down even though they’re...
Most probable mechanism
When people get daily automated messages from their wearables, they may stop paying attention to their own progress because the messages feel repetitive and don’t connect to their personal goals — this makes them less likely to change their habits over time, especially in men, which is why body fat and waist size don’t improve even when they’re tracking activity — as seen in the study with DOI 10.3390/s26103256.
Repeated exposure to automated, non-personalized feedback reduces attentional engagement with self-monitoring data, diminishing the cognitive salience of behavioral goals.
Reduced attentional engagement leads to decreased motivation to adjust dietary or physical activity behaviors in response to tracked data.
Diminished behavioral adjustment results in no net change or reduced long-term energy balance, preventing further reductions in adiposity.
Evidence from Studies
Supporting (1)
Community contributions welcome
Wearable-Measured Physical Activity Goal Adherence and Body Composition Change in a 12-Month mHealth Weight Loss Trial
Contradicting (0)
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