A 12-week consumer wearable activity tracker-based intervention reduces sedentary behaviour and improves cardiometabolic health in free-living sedentary adults: a randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Reducing sedentary behaviour significantly improves cardiometabolic health and plays an important role in the prevention and management of cardiometabolic diseases. However, limited effective strategies have been proposed to combat the negative effects of sedentary lifestyles. Although consumer wearable activity trackers (CWATs) can effectively improve physical activity, they were only included as part of a multiple behaviour change technique. In addition, it is not known whether these devices are also effective to reduce sedentary behaviour. Therefore, we aim to investigate the efficacy of a single component CWAT-only intervention and the added value of a multicomponent (CWATs + motivational interviewing) behaviour change intervention to reduce sedentary behaviour and increase physical activity within sedentary adults. METHODS: In a three-armed randomised controlled trial, 59 (male/female: 21/38) sedentary adults were randomly allocated to a control group (n = 20), a CWAT-only group (n = 20) or the CWAT + group (CWAT + motivational interviewing; n = 19) for 12 weeks. Physical activity and sedentary behaviour were assessed using the activPAL3™ accelerometer. In addition, anthropometrics, blood pressure, plasma lipids and insulin sensitivity using an oral glucose tolerance test were assessed at baseline and after the 12-week intervention period. RESULTS: As compared with the control group, the CWAT + group significantly reduced time spent in sedentary behaviour (- 81 min/day, confidence interval [95%]: [- 151, - 12] min/day) and significantly increased step count (+ 3117 [827, 5406] steps/day), standing time (+ 62 [14, 110] min/day), light intensity PA (+ 28 [5, 50] min/day) and moderate-to-vigorous PA (+ 22 [4, 40] min/day). Body fat mass (- 1.67 [- 3.21, - 0.14] kg), percentage body fat (- 1.5 [- 2.9, - 0.1] %), triglyceride concentration (- 0.31 [- 0.62, - 0.01] mmol/l), the 2 h insulin concentration (- 181 [- 409, - 46] pmol/l), the quantitative insulin sensitivity check index (- 0.022 [- 0.043, - 0.008]) and total area under the curve of insulin (- 6464 [- 26837, - 2735] mmol/l min) were significantly reduced in the CWAT + group, compared to the control group. No significant differences within the CWAT-only group were found. CONCLUSION: A 12-week multicomponent CWAT-based intervention (CWAT + motivational interviewing) reduces sedentary time, increases physical activity levels and improves various cardiometabolic health variables in sedentary adults, whereas self-monitoring on itself (CWAT-only group) has no beneficial effects on sedentary time. Trial registration The present study was registered (2018) at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03853018.