不顯示數字的體重秤有助於減肥？

The scale of the future does not have numbers or dials. It won't even tell you how much you weigh. It doesn't have a screen to display your weight because, if you ask behavioral economist at Duke University Dan Ariely, weight is a metric of the past.

未來的體重秤沒有數字和錶盤，不會告訴你有多重，甚至它連顯示體重的屏幕都沒有。如果你想知道原因的話，杜克大學的行爲經濟學家Dan Ariely會告訴你，體重只是一個關於過去的測量數值。

Ariely has spent his career researching the invisible machinery of human choice: why we neglect to save money for things we need we know, why we lie to our friends, and to ourselves.

Airely一直致力於探求人們決策過程的不可見機制：爲什麼我們會忘記爲那些必需品存錢，爲什麼我們會欺騙朋友、欺騙自己。

Recently, he's turned his focus toward the choices we make about our health. Why, Ariely wondered, do people have such a hard time making healthy choices?

最近，他開始研究與健康相關的抉擇。Ariely想知道，爲什麼做出健康的選擇這麼難呢？

Ariely imagines the common bathroom gadget as a gateway to better understanding our health, a way to subtly reshape human health behavior one pound at a time. But in order to do that, Ariely wants to rethink the scale's design.

Ariely認爲，通過浴室裏一個常見的小物件，可以更好地瞭解人們的健康狀況。這是一種塑造健康行爲的巧妙方法。爲了達到這一需求，Ariely想要重新設計一款體重秤。

Most scales remind people of the shame, regret, and self-disgust they feel when they step onto one.

當普通體重秤上的數值又上升一格時，人們會感到羞愧、後悔和自我厭棄。

Even the simplest nugget of data can be misleading. When you see your weight go up two pounds, you assume you've done something wrong. When you see your weight go down two pounds, you assume you've done something right. Most of the time, you haven't done anything at all.

最簡單的數據也可能會誤導你。當你看到體重增加了兩磅，你會覺得你做錯了什麼。當你看到體重下降兩磅時，你會以爲已經做了一些正確的事。其實大多數時候，你什麼都沒做。

"It's incredibly confusing and demotivating," says Ariely. "So we said, 'OK, let's rethink the numberless scale.'" More encouragement, less data. Ariely's dream of the unquantified self.

Ariely說：“這簡直是撲朔迷離，讓人失去了減肥的動力。所以我覺得，我們要再考慮一下不顯示數字的體重秤。”更多的鼓勵，更少的數據。Ariely想要一個不被量化的體重秤。

The smart scale designed by Ariely captures bone density and muscle mass in addition to overall weight, and it connects to your phone. You simply step on, and step off. And it never tells you how much you weigh, not even in the app.

除了測體重，Ariely設計的智能秤還可以獲取骨密度和肌肉量，同時關聯着你的手機。你只需要站上去，然後下來。秤上不會顯示你的體重值，APP上也不會。

Instead, it analyzes all the granular information about your body and translates it into simple humanspeak: either you're doing fine, or you're not.

但是，它會綜合分析身體相關的所有信息，並將其轉換爲最簡單的人類語言：你做地很好，或者你表現不好。

Everything else happens in the scale's app, which connects to the scale via Bluetooth. The app also pulls data from the health kit on your phone — so, if you wear a smart watch, or track your workouts through a mobile app like Keep, it can synthesize that data along with your weight.

APP與體重計通過藍牙連接。APP可以從手機上安裝的健康工具中提出數據 —— 因此，如果你佩戴智能手環，或使用像Keep這樣的APP跟蹤記錄運動，它可以將這些數據與體重數據綜合起來。

Then, it then presents your health on a five-point scale: Either you're a little better, a little worse, much better, much worse, or basically the same.

然後，它會以五個等級呈現你目前的健康狀況：好點了、有點不太好、好很多了、變差了很多、或沒什麼變化。

The five-point system takes into account the way people actually gain and lose weight. A few pounds up or down means nothing at all, especially if it's not sustained over time.

五檔分類考慮到了人們實際增重和減肥的過程。體重上升或下降幾磅沒有任何意義，特別是如果這種變化並沒有持續一段時間。

So the app creates a running average of weigh-ins over the past three weeks, and uses that to give feedback rather than your weight in a given moment. "If you're within one standard deviation," Ariely says, "then we say, 'You're just the same.'"

因此，這個APP計算的是三週內的平均重量，然後反饋信息，而不是直接顯示體重值。“如果體重變化是在標準偏差範圍內，APP會顯示，‘沒什麼變化。’”Ariely說。

He thinks this approach will help people better understand how their choices are affecting their health overall, rather than what makes someone gain or lose a few fractions of a pound in a day.

他認爲這種方法可以幫助人們更好地理解自己的選擇如何影響健康狀況，而不是讓某個人在一天內增加或者減少一點點體重。

A five-month study to test the screenless scale has shown that in a control condition, people who used a regular scale gained 0.3 percent weight every month; People in the other group, using the numberless scale, lost 0.6 percent weight per month.

以測試這種不顯示數字的體重計的效果爲研究目的的一項研究進行了五個月。研究結果顯示：使用普通體重計的對照組平均每個月增重0.3%；使用無數字體重秤的實驗組，平均每個月減重0.6%。

"That means we can take an everyday object, like a scale. Look at it from perspective of social science, think about it in a different way, and design it in a way that will be more compatible with how we make decisions to get the best results. It is not just the scale," Ariely says in a speech.

Ariely在演講中說，“這意味着我們可以將日常生活中的一個物件，比如體重計，通過社會科學的方法，從不同的方式去思考，然後將其設計得與我們的日常決策更相容，以幫助我們取得更好的結果。除了設計體重秤，這些知識還可以用在其他事情上。”