When it comes to exercise, knowledge is power. A new breed of wrist-worn gadgets can tell you more about you and your fitness regime than you ever knew.
The fitness tracker is a pedometer, heart-rate monitor, sleep accelerometer and kilojoule/calorie tracker in one. This device can measure everything from kilojoules burned, distance covered, varying activity levels throughout the day and even sleep efficiency. But are they really helpful? Let’s look at a few pros and cons of wearable fitness trackers.
Benefits
A wearable fitness tracker motivates you: Keeping track of what you do can improve your health. It can help you to follow a healthier diet, sleep better and exercise more. The device informs you about the areas you need to improve.
The social aspect of the tool is also a major advantage. Most devices allow you to join public groups, create private groups with your friends or use social media services such as Facebook to share your stats with others. The friendly competition created by this form of socialising acts as a great motivator.
You don’t have to do it yourself: Keeping a log is a certain way of reaching your health, fitness and weight loss goals. The problem is human error, that is people can stop maintaining the log. Fitness trackers take care of that. The devices capture all the necessary details and then sync up to servers in the cloud to deliver a clear picture of your health at the touch of a finger.
It is habit forming: If used diligently, fitness tracking devices can help you develop healthy habits. When you stick to something long enough it eventually becomes part of your lifestyle. The healthy habits you establish will live on, even should you stop using the device.
It helps you to make an informed choice: Once you’ve been tracking your progress a couple of months, you’ve built your own health and fitness timeline. This data will help you understand more about how your body reacts and allows you to make more intelligent choices about what to change to maximise progress towards goals.
Disadvantages
The accuracy is questionable: Many devices base their calculations on generic programmed settings for particular categories such as age, gender, height or weight. So, the information you receive will be approximate but not necessarily exact.
It is a 24/7 thing: Fitness tracking devices are designed to be worn all the time, which may be a big disadvantage or inconvenience for some people depending on their job or lifestyle.
It only collects data: These devices are created to collect data, but, information is just information. It’s up to you to do something with it. Your tracker will let you know when you have been idling too long, but it cannot physically kick you off the couch. It will tell you that your morning coffee latte is derailing your weight loss programme, but it can’t stop you from drinking it.
It may be misleading: A fitness tracking device records all activity. So, depending on how it is used, you may be misled into thinking that you are doing more than you actually are. Three thousand steps broken into 50 step segments around your office is far different from 20 minutes of stair climbing or a 3 km jog on hilly terrain.
Conclusion
The key to success with these trackers is to remember that they provide merely estimates and that your daily workouts and kilojoule intake shouldn’t be based exclusively on these numbers. Further, it is very important to note that these fitness trackers are simply a tool and not a determination of your health. Keeping this in mind, these tools can certainly enhance your fitness regime.
Sources
http://www.fitstream.com
http://www.ourfitnesshouse.com
http://www.fitho.in