![]() wrist) and how the device is worn (loose vs. He also discussed how the location of the fitness tracker (hip vs. Montoye stressed that the difference could be partly due to the limited amount of time recorded for each activity, as subjects were only monitored for five to 10 minutes. “So, if you’re sitting on a bike and your arms are stationary and your hip is stationary, they aren’t going to record any activity.” “In these activity monitors, the main technology in them is an accelerometer, which tracks changes in movement,” Montoye says. Cycling was the worst activity recorded all the monitors significantly underestimated the number of calories burned by 37 to 59 percent. ![]() On average, the amount of energy exerted, or calories lost, was overestimated by 16 to 40 percent during ambulatory activities, such as walking, jogging and climbing stairs, and underestimated during household activities, including vacuuming, gardening and sweeping, by as much as 34 percent.Īccording to the report, the calories burned while walking were overestimated by three out of the four monitors by 26 to 61 percent. how many were actually burned according to the team’s equipment were considerable. The differences in calories recorded by the wearable technologies vs. They monitored the participants’ progress with a portable metabolic analyzer (to get a true, breath-by-breath analysis) and four different activity devices: two wrist-worn trackers (Fitbit Flex and Jawbone UP24) and two hip-worn trackers (Fitbit Zip and Fitbit One).įitBit and Jawbone were chosen because in 2013, when the group was in the advance planning stage of the study, the companies “occupied about 85 percent of the wearable technology market,” Montoye explains. ![]() For the report, his team had 30 healthy adults, of varying ages and fitness levels, perform 10 different activities of varying difficulty for a short amount of time. His skepticism inspired him to evaluate how these new consumer-based activity trackers stacked up to his team’s medical equipment. “I was a little bit skeptical, just because I know how hard it is to measure activity even with the research-grade monitors.” “When you look at the literature, there is really not a lot of information on how well these wearable technologies work how well they track variables that they are displaying on their apps,” says Alex Montoye, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor of clinical exercise physiology at Ball State University. ![]() The group’s findings come at a particularly inopportune time for Fitbit, as the company is currently facing a class-action lawsuit alleging its product, specifically its heart rate technology, is faulty and inaccurate. The study, which will be published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise later this summer, found that FitBit and Jawbone are significantly over- and underestimating calories burned during certain physical activities. Your fitness tracker may be accurately counting your steps but not the correct number of calories burned, according to a new report by the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. ![]()
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