Fitness trackers are incredibly popular, and they’re only becoming more prevalent. At their most basic, wearable trackers provide a general idea of your activity. While most will register walking and running, to accurately record other activities like yoga and strength training. As such, using fitness trackers effectively to improve your health and fitness relies on a few key principles.
1. Fitness Trackers Can Show You What to Say, But Not What to Do
One of the most significant benefits of wearable devices is their ability to facilitate communication between you and healthcare or fitness professionals. Trackers provide enough data and are accurate enough to help track goals and identify trends in your lifestyle. A wearable device allows you, at any fitness level, to set realistic and simple goals and offers an easy way to monitor your progress.
Fitness trackers give people simple, measurable data that makes fitness easy to understand, data can also help us give recommendations on an appropriate fitness program depending on how active they have been.
Some wearable devices include sleep monitoring and a calorie or diet tracker as well. Much like activity tracking, the device is not going to be 100 percent accurate at measuring these metrics. However, they do provide a general idea of how much sleep you’re getting, and a track record may motivate you to get to bed earlier.
Similarly, the calorie tracker should never be a replacement for meeting with a registered dietician for significant weight management. But again, if recording what you eat helps motivate you to maintain a healthy diet, there’s no harm in taking advantage of that feature.
2. Fitness Trackers Can Quantify Habits, But Not Form Them
The data from fitness trackers can, with a fair degree of accuracy, allow you to quantify your lifestyle habits. By creating a record of your daily activities, such as how much you move, sleep or eat, wearable devices can give you a better grasp on your general health.
But the gap between recording habits to changing habits is significant, and establishing healthy habits from a fitness tracker involves more than simply wearing one. To get the most out of your wearable device, you must use it regularly and you must be willing and able to adjust your habits to improve your health, rather than only monitoring the level you’re at.
3. Fitness Trackers Can Gauge, But Not Guide
The shortcomings of fitness trackers are important to note. By and large, trackers tend to undercount how far people walk and overestimate the degree of vigorous activity. They aren’t totally accurate and cannot compete with the precision of professional-quality devices.
Yet, when used as a gauge of how active you are being compared to your activity the day before, they can provide valuable motivation for the formation of enduring healthy habits. Recording physical activity, sleep habits and diet can educate and motivate you to improve your daily habits. But ultimately, the foundation of a fit lifestyle will not be a fitness tracker.
Furthermore, focusing on good nutrition and working out safely may be more beneficial than monitoring. And a fitness tracker cannot replace a certified health and fitness professional when it comes to establishing fitness goals. Fitness trackers provide useful information and a general idea that can pave the way to achieving milestones, but wearable devices are not the only resource to get in shape.
Working with a trainer, even if it’s only a few times, can set you up for long-term success. They can help with exercise program design as well as teach you the hows and whys of exercise that you won’t get from a gadget.
4.Select a proper fitness tracker
Those looking for a device dedicated to tracking daily activity, workouts, and sleep have a vast number of choices even without including members of the smartwatch family. To help you decide on the best fitness tracker for your needs, there are a few things you’ll want to take into consideration:
- Comfort and design: Since you’ll be wearing your tracker daily (even to bed if you want to track sleep) comfort is a priority. If it’s not comfortable, you won’t want to wear it often, which defeats the whole purpose of a fitness tracker. The same goes for design. If you have a small wrist, you may want a tracker with a sleek and more understated look. Or maybe the display is most important to you, and you like the idea of being able to read the time and date as well as your fitness stats. Lintelek fitness trackers come in all shapes and sizes, so you’ll be able to find one that suits your style.
- Features: Not all fitness trackers are created equal when it comes to this arena. If you’re looking for a no-frills fitness tracker, then one that tracks steps and your sleep might suffice. However, if you work out often or want more insights into how your activity impacts your overall fitness level, a more advanced tracker with a heart rate monitor or a built-in GPS may be the one for you. You should also consider the types of workouts you like to do. For example, if you’re a swimmer, waterproofing is a must. Just starting out on your fitness journey? A device that gives you coaching and goals to work towards maybe the extra motivation you need to stay on track.
Lintelek fitness tracker can offer you enough choices.
- App experience: Most fitness trackers are designed to work in tandem with your smartphone, syncing the data collected with a downloaded application. This allows you to gain even more insight into your health and save the information collected to track your progress over time. Unfortunately, not all apps are created equal, and you may find there are some app experiences you prefer over others. It’s important to choose a fitness tracker like Lintelek that gives you a good app experience. Easy navigation and compatibility with your phone’s operating system is a must.
