When fitness tracking goes wrong

From quantified smug to quantified mug, here is a cautionary tale of what happens when fitness gadgets compete with chips, stress and cider

Fitness-tracking apps didn't help when the chips came calling. Tummy not writer's own. Photograph: Pick and Mix Images/Alamy

 

As 2012 drew to a close, I was 94kg and miserable, after a slow-but-steady decline into a classic case of blogger’s physique.

It was the inevitable result of unhealthy eating habits and an overly sedentary lifestyle, punctuated by occasional, forlorn attempts to cultivate a gym habit. I was unfit, unhappy and frequently unable to walk out of a newsagent’s without a big bag of crisps.
Cue technology. As a latest resort, in January 2013 I bought a Fitbit One activity tracker and installed its app onto my smartphone, along with MyFitnessPal to track my calories intake, and RunKeeper to track exercise.
Out with the Quavers, and in with The Quantified Self. And it worked: by the summer of 2013, I was 84kg and happy. I went to the gym two or three times a week, ate healthily, worked at a standing desk, and occasionally spent a couple of minutes in front of the bedroom mirror gawping at my newly rediscovered angularities.
Oh, and I was smug about it. Quite a few friends and colleagues complimented me on my weight loss, to which I’d blush and say that I wasn’t going to become one of those people who bang on about how apps and gadgets have revolutionised their fitness. Usually going on to bang on (a bit) about exactly this.
I was a quantified smug. And it’s pretty much at that point that things started to slide.
Fast forward to April 2014, and I weigh 94kg again. MyFitnessPal and RunKeeper are gathering digital dust on my homescreen, and while the Fitbit One is still tracking my steps diligently, its app is equally unloved.
The salads and cereals are once again jostling with crisps, chocolate, late-night pasties, wine and cider in my diet. The standing desk is still standing, but some days I take my computer off it because I feel a bit of a fraud using it.
I don’t look in the mirror much, but occasionally one of my sons cackles to the other about “Daddy hatching a baby”, which is certainly a new spin on motivational encouragement.
I now feel like a quantified mug. But is this a case of the human letting down the technology, or the technology letting down the human?
The answer is a bit of both: tracking numbers can get you so far, but in the longer term, they can only work hand-in-hand with the human doing the tracking. What I’ve learned, belatedly, is that apps and gadgets are not what made me get fit.
Instead, they were important, motivating tools to track my progress on the way up to a healthier place, but didn’t help much as I slid down the other side. There are lessons here for the next generation of fitness tech products.
Lesson one, which is a personal one: for me, unhealthy eating and drinking is about stress. Like many freelance journalists, I tend to slip into a cycle of taking on too much work (which brings stress about the workload) then swinging back to a period of … less work (less stressful initially, but usually culminating in money-worry headaches).
On a bad day with an overflowing inbox and a forgotten deadline or two, I’m just a few steps from my kitchen. I’ll often find myself there absent-mindedly chomping down whatever food comes to hand, as a short-term cure for the tight knot of tension in my stomach. It just happens, usually – often I don’t even notice myself taking those few steps.
Drink? Too much sugary tea (and if I’m out, Coca-Cola) in the daytime, and wine or cider in the evenings: not quite in liver-bothering quantities, but certainly at middle-thickening levels.
The first six months of 2013 coincided with a less-work period – thus generally positive thoughts about healthy eating and exercise, as well as time free for the latter. Come summer, as money fear led to more work (and stress), crisps, cider and chips made a triumphant, belching return to my diet.