Fitness trackers Yeah or Nay?

Fitness Trackers & Smart Watches

We are breaking down the Pros & Cons

Fitness trackers have immense popularity these days. These wearable technologies can help you lead a fitter and healthier lifestyle and are helpful when you want to track your fitness and health goals. . Whether your goal is to track your heart rate, your sleep quality, active hours, daily steps or capturing your workouts, it is easier with a fitness tracker.

People who are new to fitness and interested in developing new habits greatly benefit from some type of tracking tool. Classic/traditional tracking can be recording and scheduling workouts on your calendar. However, if you are looking to be further inspired and increase your motivation smart watches and fitness trackers might be perfect for you!

Today we are breaking down the pros and cons of this latest fitness trend!

Top Benefits of the Fitness Tracker

1. Track your steps, distance, workout time, calories, sleep and monitor heart rate

Fitness trackers come with these basic features to give you an insight of your steps, heart rate, active hours and sleep log, which will help to track and improve your goals.

Quality of your sleep greatly affects your metabolism, mood, health, energy levels and overall well being. Today, many fitness trackers can track sleep patterns and show how deep or light your sleep was, how long you’ve slept, and how many times you woke up. Such information will help you make better choices before going to bed and improve your sleeping patterns over time.

By measuring heart rate, fitness trackers help to monitor heart rate during workouts, to reach your targeted intensity, when to stop and not overdo exercises.

2. Track your water intake or reshape food habits

Being active is not the only thing that is recommended to help you with your health and happiness. A healthy diet that is rich in variety and all food sources is ideal, especially for active people. By now we all know that drinking plenty of water each day is important for the body to function.

A tracker will let you log your food as well as your water intake. You can enter your water intake per day, food choices and then calculate the quality of your diet plan to make better choices each day. There are lots of apps that are compatible with your smart watch to make tracking your progress easier.

3. Set your own fitness goals

There’s nothing more motivating than setting your own fitness goals and working daily towards achieving it. Whether it’s a weight loss program or training for a marathon, fitness trackers help you set goals and achieve them over time. Goal setting keeps you focused and motivates you to accomplish them.

4. Stay Connected

Many fitness trackers can also notify you as regards to your incoming calls, text messages or emails without you having to look at your smartphone. Most tackers have Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connectivity features, with which you can sync to your smartphone.

There are so many other benefits such as access to calculator, agenda, breathing apps to help when in stress (quick relief) and many more apps that you download on your smart fitness tracker or smartwatch!

Disadvantages of a Fitness Tracker

The pros of fitness trackers outweigh their cons. To emphasize, there are very few disadvantages of using a fitness tracker.

1. They are expensive

2. Your goals and features might not be aligned

Not all fitness trackers are alike. For example, if you’re a serious runner, the trackers without GPS will probably not be useful. Without a GPS you won’t be able to track distance completed, average pace or positive/negative splits. The lack of data can make pursuing performance goals more difficult. We recommend chatting with friends who use the technology and find out what they love and hate about them before making a purchase. (See point above).

3. Battery run-time can be disappointing

One more device to be charged daily! The battery run-time of fitness trackers can be a critical issue, as most of them do not last long. And, it can be quite frustrating to charge these devices on a daily basis.

4. Too much focus on numeric data

It’s really easy to get obsessed with performance. There is a risk that tracking your fitness can create unhealthy and obsessive behaviours. People who have overcome dis-ordered eating, over exercising or have a history of obsessive behaviours around food and exercise could find a fitness tracker problematic. If you find yourself becoming obsessed by the data, or notice an unhealthy connection that robs you the joy of your workout, it might be time to put the watch away.

Wearable fitness trackers are one of today’s top fitness trends as they encompass an array of technological features. They can be a fun way to boost your motivation and can help keep you on track with your fitness and daily movement habits. Just note that at the end of the day, no technology is perfect but if you feel inclined to try them, we hope you find one you enjoy and that you have fun with them!

What do You think? We would love to hear how you are integrating smart technology to help support and motivate you to move your body! Drop us a line and share your personal experience with us.

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