Can you remember the time when a gym junkie picked themselves up and hit the gym without anything but their headphones to keep pumped?
Over the last few years, gym goers have added a new accessory to their healthy lifestyle, little accessories that can be worn, yes, you’ve guessed it, the all famous fitness tracker. It’s not that these trackers haven’t been around for some time, it’s just that now they’re more affordable.
The aim of wearing one of these trendy items is straightforward, monitor your steps, measure distances you’ve walked or run, track your sleep, and in some cases measure your heartbeat. With all these benefits, you’d think that everyone now would be slim and trim, right? Well, a lot of people have noted that their trackers are actually holding them back and for some helped them put on weight rather than the opposite.
When trackers first hit the market, they were expensive devices that cost hundreds of dollars. But, manufacturers quickly realized that they weren’t flying off the shelves, so what did they do? Lowered the quality to lower the cost which meant sales would skyrocket. Sadly, by doing this, it meant that its accuracy got flushed down the toilet as well.
So, this means you can’t trust the information your little tracker is telling you. You could have taken more steps than it was able to count, your sleep could be more restless, and it’s possibly not tracking distances very well. So, why bother wearing it at all?
It’s kind of in the name, tracker, how can something track your activity if you left it on the nightstand? It can’t! So, that means it becomes a constant part of your look. If you’re the type that doesn’t mind wearing a watch all the time, then by all means, invest in one. But, if you can’t stand having something on your wrist, then you might want to keep it on the shop shelf.
Take a walk down the street and look at the people walking around, you’ll know who’s wearing a tracker almost right away. They’re not necessarily offensive looking, most of them are slim, black, and very minimalistic looking, but would you want to wear the same piece every single day? We all own at least two watches that we alternate between depending on the occasion.
Just imagine wearing your tracker and your watch, you’ll feel kind of weighed down!
The aim of a tracker is to keep you motivated by telling you how many steps you’ve taken in an hour, day, week, month, and so on. In theory, this is something amazing, but in reality, that’s not how the human psychology works.
We’re human, so if your tracker tells you that you’ve taken a remarkable 17,000 steps, you will feel the need to reward yourself by over-indulging yourself with… Yes, you guessed it: FOOD! What was the point in knowing you’ve taken all those steps after all?
Technology is ever growing, so a lot of the trackers around today can actually tell you how many calories you’ve burned on any given day (while wearing it). But, here’s a thought, how is it able to tell you how many calories you burned doing squats because you’re pretty stationary?
That’s just the problem, the tracker can’t give you a fully studied calorie burn number, so it estimates based on what information it does have. Oh, let’s not forget, these numbers are generic, it doesn’t take into account that you might have a fast or slow metabolism. So, you might not want to rely on the false number you see on your phone at the end of the day.
Alright, a fitness tracker can tell you how many steps you’ve taken, the distance you’ve moved, or the type of sleep you got. It cannot, under any circumstances, change what you could be doing wrong or right.
You could be working out and then eating all the wrong food because you have the need to reward yourself, or you could be eating healthy food and just not working out hard enough. How can your tracker change your mindset? So, if you’re not willing to work both sides of the spectrum right then maybe you shouldn’t invest in this accessory at all!
Scientists have been trying for so many years to understand sleep, and they haven't been able to reach any solid conclusions. And even with all the technology around today, we’re not any closer to understanding why some people struggle to get enough sleep and others seem to sleep like a baby all the time.
So, if scientists and advanced technology can’t give you a definite answer, you’re somehow expecting your tracker to give you the answer?
