Lots of people wonder: 'Should I get a fitness tracker?"
The answer: It depends.
For some people, including myself, it can be a really helpful tool. This is especially true if you…
✓ Are numbers-oriented. For instance, maybe you have an engineering, actuarial, or accounting mindset.
✓ Have more advanced goals. Think elite athletes, bodybuilders, models, and other people who get paid based on how they look or perform.
✓ See data as information—nothing more. The numbers don't define you. They aren't part of your identity. In this case, fitness tracker data can be helpful—because you can view it as just that.
A fitness tracker can be a valuable tool in promoting an active lifestyle, monitoring health metrics, and providing personalised feedback and motivation to help you reach your fitness goals. Here are several reasons why it can be a helpful tool:
Activity monitoring
Fitness trackers can track your daily physical activities, such as steps taken, distance covered, calories burned, and active minutes. This information can help you set goals, track your progress, and motivate you to stay active.
Heart rate monitoring
Many fitness trackers come with built-in heart rate monitors that can provide real-time data on your heart rate during exercise and rest. This information can help you optimise your workouts, monitor your cardiovascular health, and ensure you are exercising within your target heart rate zone.
Sleep tracking
Fitness trackers often have sleep-tracking features that monitor your sleep patterns, including duration, quality, and stages of sleep. By analysing this data, you can gain insights into your sleep habits, identify areas for improvement, and make adjustments to enhance your overall sleep quality.
Goal setting and motivation
Fitness trackers allow you to set personalised goals based on your activity level, weight loss targets, or specific fitness objectives. They provide visual feedback and reminders to keep you motivated and accountable towards achieving these goals.
Personalised insights
Many fitness trackers have accompanying mobile apps or online platforms that provide detailed analysis and insights into your activity data. These insights can help you understand patterns, identify areas for improvement, and make informed decisions about your fitness and health.
Integration with other apps and devices
Fitness trackers often integrate with other health and fitness apps, allowing you to sync data and comprehensively view your overall health. They can also connect with other devices like smartphones, smartwatches, or smart scales, providing a holistic approach to tracking and managing your fitness journey.
But for others, fitness trackers can work against them.
Fitness trackers can leave some people feeling like they never do enough. These folks tend to see weight, heart rate variability, or sleep quality as a statement of who they are.
You're more likely to fall into this category if you…
✓ See the behaviour you'll track as a chore, making comments like, "I have to do this to lose weight."
✓ Don't feel you have a choice. You might say, "I don't want to exercise, but my doctor told me I have to."
✓ Do the behaviour to avoid feeling guilty. In other words, you exercise because you don't want to feel bad about not exercising.
Fitness trackers can sometimes make people feel pressured and compare themselves to others. These devices set goals and track things like steps, calories burned, and active minutes. While this can motivate some people, it can make others feel bad about themselves.
Fitness trackers can make these feelings worse for people who already tend to be hard on themselves or want everything to be perfect. They might always compare themselves to others or feel like they're not meeting their goals, making them feel guilty or like they've failed. This can make them not want to exercise at all.
Also, fitness trackers might not always measure activities accurately or give accurate information to everyone. This can be frustrating and make people not trust the device, which can make them not want to use it or believe what it says.
It's important to remember that fitness trackers should be used as tools to help improve yourself and stay motivated, not as strict measures of success or failure. It's important to listen to your body, set realistic goals, and focus on overall well-being instead of just the numbers the tracker gives you.
There's nothing wrong with experimenting with a fitness tracker to find out if it's right for you. (Well, besides the expense—if you don't like it.)
But they're also not necessary for success. (People were "optimising" their health way before Fitbit, Garmin, Oura, and Apple Watches came along.)
You could find a fitness tracker to be awesome. Or it could be awesome for a while and then completely unnecessary or even frustrating later. Or it could be a poor fit from the get-go.
If you're using one, every now and then, ask yourself:
"How's this working for me?"
Is it helping your motivation—or hurting it? Do you appreciate the data—or ruminate over it? Does it keep you engaged in a healthy way—or leave you feeling guilty and frustrated?
Your answers will give you all the data you need to know what to do next.
For more information on fitness trackers, click to view an article from Precision Nutrition - Are fitness trackers worth it?