Why Orangetheory Isn’t Working For You: The Problem With Smartwatches and Fitness Trackers

Let us know if this sounds familiar: you just finished a killer workout in Long Island and are feeling good about it -- and better yet, your smart watch shows it! It’s saying you burned 600 calories (wow) and congratulating you on a job well done, so you leave the gym feeling really good …

… then you get home and decide to treat yourself to your favorite indulgent snack because, why not? You burned 600 calories after all! 

… And then your friend calls and asks if you want to go out for drinks and you say sure, I burned 600 calories today, I definitely deserve it!

And then the weekend goes on like so and before you know it, you’re not seeing any progress on the scale or in your measurements, even though you worked out so hard. What gives?  

The problem might be the very fitness tracker that you’re using to gauge how well your workouts went. The technology used in smart watches, calorie counter apps, and workout programs that track your heart rate make these devices really great tools that can help you monitor key metrics for fitness and nutrition. Unfortunately, they aren’t always accurate, and they certainly aren’t enough to depend on to reach your goals. 

Here’s why you shouldn’t be relying on those wearable fitness trackers or the metrics at Orangetheory alone if you’re trying to get fit. 

Is the fitness tracker on my smart watch accurate? 

Personal, wearable fitness trackers like Fitbit and Apple Watch are awesome tools in many ways. They can tell you how many steps you’re taking, remind you when it’s time to get up and move around, track your heart rate, and, of course, calculate how many calories you burned during the day.

Unfortunately, fitness trackers and smartwatch calorie counters are also not completely accurate. 

Whether you’re using a personal wearable device like your Apple Watch or one of the trackers at a gym like Orangetheory, your calories burned are estimated based on a variety of factors like your heart rate and anthropomorphic data like your current height and weight. But the key word here is “estimated.” In reality, these tools are prone to a wide variety of variations and calculation errors that leave you with a number that probably isn’t as accurate as you’d like. 

Take this 2022 article published in the Nature Public Health Emergency Collection, for example. Though the authors of this review definitely credited personal fitness trackers for their abilities to open up doors and guide people on their fitness journeys, they also discovered that the algorithms used to calculate those metrics were not always publicly available, nor were they validated with high-quality studies. Researchers also found that wrist-worn devices fell short since they could be influenced by other factors like temperature, humidity, the way that they were worn, and even the skin tone of the person wearing it. 

In other words: the ways that your Apple Watch or Fitbit calculates your calories burned are only estimates, and there’s no guarantee that they’re accurate readings. 

Why am I gaining weight even though my smartwatch is saying I should be losing? 

What’s more: no matter how accurate and up-to-date your own device may be, relying on those numbers can still hurt your progress more than it helps it. 

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, you know that it can be a mental game just as much as a physical one. So when it comes to using fitness trackers to gauge your calorie burn, it can really end up backfiring if you take those numbers at face value. In fact, it can even make you gain weight if you then use that information to make your decisions for the rest of the day. 

A randomized clinical trial was conducted by the University of Pittsburgh to evaluate just that. It randomly assigned 471 adult participants to intervention groups where they either self-monitored their diet and physical activity or used a wearable device and app. The researchers here found that the group that used their wearable fitness trackers actually ended up losing less weight than the group that tracked their workouts and diet in more traditional ways!  

One key reason that may be the case is that those inaccurate “calories burned” readings may actually encourage people to eat more than they would otherwise. If you feel like you’ve done a great job with your workout and burned a huge number of calories, you’re probably going to be more prone to rewarding yourself at the end of the day -- and even if your fitness tracker says you burned a ton of calories, it’s often easier than you might think to make up that deficit in a couple of drinks and extra snacks. 

What’s worse: those trackers and calorie counter apps aren’t great for your mental health either. 

We all know that numbers and metrics are huge influencing factors on your fitness journey (after all, we’re all familiar with the calories-in versus calories-out idea, and we’re betting you’ve definitely measured your progress by stepping on a scale or taking measurements). But true health is also a holistic, big-picture journey, and unfortunately, changes to your mental health can also negatively impact the decisions you make along the way. 

For example, a small study found that using fitness and calorie counter apps triggered some very negative focuses in some participants: namely, the participants became overly fixated on the numbers and reported themes of app dependency, obsession, extreme negative emotions, and excess competition. 

The takeaway here? While fitness trackers are good tools in many ways for understanding how hard you’re working, they can also quickly do more harm than good especially if you’re already in a bad mental space around your health and wellness. 

The bottom line 

Wearable fitness devices are an incredible innovation when it comes to fitness. They give you numbers and metrics that can show how hard you’re working out -- and if you know anything about fitness and nutrition, you know that those numbers are crucial. 

However, they are not enough on their own. In fact, if you take your fitness tracker numbers at face value, you could be severely overestimating how hard you’re working … and that can lead to a snowball effect of poor nutrition and lifestyle decisions. If you really want to take your health and wellness to the next level with data-driven results, your best bet is to talk to a human professional like a certified trainer or nutritionist. If you’re in Long Island, check out Prevention Performance for a more accurate training program that gives some context to those numbers.

Written by: Rachel Palumbo