Researchers from UTMB studied 13 of the most popular wearable lifestyle activity monitors to study the effectiveness of behavior change techniques. Elizabeth Lyons, senior author and assistant professor at UTMB's Institute for Translational Sciences, was the lead researcher on this study. "We tested all of the monitors available (late last year) that fit our criteria for a lifestyle-oriented monitor — that is, we did not include monitors intended to measure only individual bouts of activity," Lyons said. "They all had to measure activity across the entire day. We decided to study them because we are currently using one type, the Jawbone Up24, in a trial." Lifestyle monitors increase functionality of standard pedometers and offer much more feedback, according to Lyons. Measuring activity can be challenging without the assistance of some type of monitor. "I like to say that you can't fix what you don't know is broken, and a lot of people don't know just how broken their lifestyles are," Lyons said. "Just wearing a monitor for a few days can be really eye-opening."