Is it smart to lose the smartwatch? New York Times writer Lindsey Crouse thinks it is, at least if your attachment to the device borders on addiction. Crouse tells us that she ditched her technology when she realized that she couldn’t stop thinking about the damn numbers. Crouse gives us two good reasons to say good-bye to our watches: one, they really are addictive, as attested by Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, and the author of “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence;” and two, they don’t reliably help people achieve their health goals. A 2016 study involving more than 400 young adults with a BMI between 25 and less than 40 found that those who used activity trackers actually lost less weight than participants without the technology.
What to do? Katherine Zeratsky, an editor for the Mayo Clinic’s nutrition and healthy eating guide, says such academic evidence shouldn’t persuade us to lose the watches. Instead, she says, we should think about using them more wisely. Zeratsky offers these tips:
- Use the tracker to get a baseline of your daily movement and then set a goal 2,000-3,000 steps higher.
- Use it as a motivational tool to encourage movement and as a historical record. If you have a bad day, you can look back and see that it was only one day among many good days. This perspective may keep you from falling off the wagon because of “all or nothing” thinking.
- Use the information from the tracker as a guide but not as permission to throw dietary discretion out the window.