You may have a fitness tracker that tracks your calories, steps, and activity. In fact, it can tell you when to get moving or to breathe because you’re stressed. Are you sitting too long? Your fitness tracker tells you to get up. Are you burning enough calories? Don’t worry. It proudly shows you how many calories you burned today. Is your heart rate high enough while you are exercising? No problem. Your fitness tracker has got your back.
It’s a good thing you have your fitness tracker to keep you on track while it records your data. All you have to do now is hit the goals for steps, distance, calories, and daily active minutes!
The Truth About Your Fitness Tracker
Fitness Trackers are amazing. The technology cannot only track advanced types of data about you, but it can also show you notifications and reminders to keep you on track for your busy life.
Even as this technology becomes more precise, fitness trackers are not 100% accurate. In fact, a study concluded that results can be very different between brands. For example, some brands like Fitbit were better at measuring steps, while others like Apple were better at measuring heart rate. However, none of them proved to be accurate with calories. Yet, people tend to plan their fitness goals around them. So, should you stop using your fitness tracker?
The Role of Your Fitness Tracker
Fortunately, you don’t have to ditch your fitness tracker. In fact, it is an effective tool. Here are a few ways that fitness trackers can help you accomplish your fitness goals.
Motivation
Although studies have shown that fitness trackers may be inaccurate, they can help keep you motivated. For example, if you want to walk 10,000 steps daily, your fitness tracker can help push you to get in a few more steps when possible. If you are trying to run 20 miles a week, your fitness tracker can constantly remind you how many more miles you must do. As a result, fitness trackers can help you move more.
Tracking You Over Time
Fitness trackers do all the remembering for you. Depending on which model you use, they can record all sorts of data over a period of time. No matter if you’re training for a marathon or another goal, fitness trackers can provide a visual representation of your progress. Tracking yourself shows your progress and helps you make small course corrections along the way. Furthermore, it can increase your chances of reaching your fitness goals.
Feedback
Feedback is important to let you know how you’re doing. Fitness trackers can provide feedback in real-time. For example, you can monitor your heart rate while you exercise to determine if you should increase or decrease the intensity. On the other hand, you can use a fitness tracker to see how much sleep you get each night, which can be valuable if you’re trying to improve the quality of your sleep.
Feedback is critical to help you make adjustments along your journey. As a result, you may reach your goals more quickly.
How to Use Your Fitness Tracker
Your fitness tracker is responsible for collecting data and providing you with the motivation to keep you on track. You should not look to your tracker to tell you when to move. Instead, you should always determine if you can exercise based on how your body feels.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of moving to hit your daily steps or weekly challenges because of a notification from your fitness tracker. As a result, this can lead to overtraining, sickness, or even injury if you don’t adjust your workload when you’re not feeling 100%. Instead, let your fitness tracker record the good and bad days.
In time, you’ll learn when to take a break based on how you feel. Your fitness tracker may also show you patterns in your heart rate, sleep, or performance. As a result, the data collected by your fitness tracker may indicate that you may be doing too much before your body tells you. Regardless, it’s okay to take a short break. Fortunately, you won’t lose all that hard work by skipping a workout or two to recover.
The Takeaway
Fitness trackers are a valuable tool, even though they are not 100% accurate. Instead of letting the fitness tracker tell you at what level you should be working, you should judge your level of effort from how your body feels, which will let you push yourself a little harder on your own terms. If you let your fitness tracker tell you what you should be doing, it can lead to overtraining, sickness, or injury.
You can certainly reach your goals without a fitness tracker. However, it is an effective tool that may help you achieve your goals faster by keeping you motivated and providing you with valuable feedback throughout your fitness journey. So the next time you get a notification from your fitness tracker to move, first check in with yourself and see how your body feels.
FitTrend’s mission is to help you along your self-improvement journey, promote an active lifestyle, and help you achieve your goals. Our journal can help you track your workouts, weight, mood, calories, and more. Also, FitTrend allows you to connect supported gadgets to your account to make it easier for you to update your journal automatically. Create your account today and start using FitTrend for free!
Disclaimer: No content on this site should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
