Convenience and Motivation in a Little Package
Having evolved from the humble pedometer, fitness trackers may now track heart rate, steps taken, exercise type, exercise intensity, distance travelled, calories burned, skin temperature, perspiration, or sleep patterns — all to help you maintain or improve your health.
Many fitness trackers also have functions to set goals and select training programs, as well as tracking weight, mood, and dietary intake. Most have idle alerts, give reminders for achieving goals, and offer rewards for achieving streaks and meeting milestones.
They also have wireless connectivity to mobile devices, enabling you to access data and performance analysis. With your tracker, you can also connect to the internet for social networking and for participating in team goals and competitions.
Approximately 14 million people were wearing fitness tracker devices in 2011— this number is expected to increase to 171 million by 2016.
Not only can they enable you to improve your fitness levels, they are also predicted to become the way of the future in disease management and health promotion. Doctors are reporting that patients want to incorporate the data into their medical health assessments, and health professionals are looking at using fitness trackers to monitor patient progress in disease and following surgery.
Whatever your age and whether your goal is to lose weight, monitor your health, increase your fitness level, or train for a specific event, there are many reasons why you should consider getting a fitness tracker:
1. They Improve Your Health
With idle alert monitors and reminders, they put fitness at the forefront of your mind. They get you moving.
In one study of 51 post-menopausal women, fitness trackers increased physical activity on average by 38 minutes per week. Any increase in physical activity is beneficial; increased physical activity reduces blood pressure, improves thinking, reduces stress, depression and social anxiety, and keeps you mobile for longer with ageing.
Also, following surgery or a setback, physical activity leads to a more rapid and more complete recovery. In comparison, physical inactivity increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, and metabolic disease (diabetes, for example) and reduces life expectancy.
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2. They Are Unbiased
Fitness trackers give you an accurate activity assessment, providing feedback on how much activity you actually do or don’t do.
They avoid unreliable memory recall and wishful thinking. This provides you with a baseline from which to start any exercise program. Designing an incremental fitness program from an accurate baseline avoids launching into activities too hard and too fast, helping to avoid injuries.
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3. They Are Like Having Your Own Real-Time Personal Trainer
One of the best things about fitness trackers is how motivational they are. With some, you can select fitness programs and set your own short and long-term goals. You can track progress and get alerts when you are on a streak or near achieving a milestone.
Many people report that this makes them work a harder. For example, most people aim to achieve 10,000 steps per day. Many who are not quite there at the end of the day will take an extra walk to reach their target.
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4. They Help Build a Healthy Lifestyle
They help you become aware of habits and help build healthier habits. For example, many people tend to have bad habits with sleep, calorie expenditure and food tracking. They can help build a healthy bedtime routine, encourage you to take the stairs instead of the elevator, and choose healthier foods over unhealthy ones.
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5. They Can Help With Achieving Weight Loss Goals
Fitness trackers provide you with real-time feedback on activity levels and calories burned. Many allow you to also track food and drink intake. This provides you with an estimate of calories in and calories out to meet your daily weight loss goals.
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6. Mobile Connectivity Can Help Make Exercise Fun and Keep You Active for Longer
With social networking, you can have the benefits of group fitness and a support network even when you are alone. Become involved in social fitness games, join fitness teams, and compete to meet fitness goals and earn badges.
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7. Tracking Personal Metrics Is Not New to Athletes
Fitness trackers are the latest technology for training for events. Particularly if they have built-in GPS, fitness trackers can track progress, speed and distance and identify areas of weakness. It can help triathletes, for example, track leg and transition times to identify which areas need working on.
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8. Heart Rate Monitors Are Useful for Undertaking Safe and Effective Work-Outs
Some fitness trackers include heart rate monitors, which are great for pregnant women and people with heart disease who are advised not to increase their heart rate above a particular level.
They are also good for improving aerobic exercise and endurance. For an optimal aerobic workout, aim to exercise with a heart rate at 60 – 80 percent of your maximum heart rate for 30 minutes three to five times per week.
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9. They Are Good for Personal Health Monitoring
Resting heart rates provide a measure of overall fitness levels. Tracking heart rates can also be useful for cardiac or respiratory patients.
Monitoring sleep patterns can help identify sleep issues, such as sleep apnea. Migraine and allergy sufferers, as well as diabetics, have used fitness trackers to monitor food consumption and activity levels and shed light on habits that might be influencing their symptoms.
New apps are being produced and tested all the time and the use of personal monitoring devices in healthcare management is expected to escalate. Future devices may include blood pressure measurements and blood oxygen levels.
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