What are Fitness Tracker and How Do They Work?
• Fitness tracker are often worn on the wrist or as watches.
• They track various metrics, including distance traveled, sleep duration, calories burnt, and heart rate.
• Modern activity trackers are used in conjunction with smartphones to accept calls, respond to messages or emails, and manage calendars, among other functions.
• They give storage capacity for information that you will analyze further.
• As wireless technologies progress, fitness trackers now include GPS, Bluetooth, wifi, and cellular connectivity. This keeps them constantly connected to wireless gadgets.
• The illustration shows many of the most incredible fitness trackers available from Samsung, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Apple, and Fitbit.
• Fitness trackers keep track of the user’s daily activities, encourage the user to exercise, and offer battery information to charge. In addition, they send users calendar notifications to remind them of essential occasions.
The Advantages of Fitness Bands
Let’s examine the benefits of these fitness bands that provide a plethora of capabilities.
Fitness Tracker Motive You
Tiredness is a natural result of working in offices all day. However, finding time for exercise is not always straightforward in these circumstances.
A good fitness tracker keeps you inspired and encouraged to engage in physical activity by generating periodic reminders.
Fitness Tracker Counts Calories
If your primary goal is to reduce or maintain weight, you must adhere to correct eating habits.
Your smart band estimates calories burnt to keep track of your activities, which you can view on an activity tracker or smartphone app.
You may create a diet plan based on this information and achieve the desired weight.
Fitness Tracker Monitors Heart Rate
Fitness bands benefit you regardless of whether you are an athlete, fitness fanatic, or just starting to attend the gym.
Our heart rate increases whenever we engage in physical exercise. The fitness tracker keeps an eye on our heart rate and prevents us from overdoing it when jogging or exercising. This enables you to fine-tune your workout’s intensity.
Fitness Tracker Monitors Sleep
Additionally, the fitness tracker tracks your sleep patterns and provides recommendations based on them. This enables you to sleep at the optimal time and indicates when you are in the most profound slumber.
Sleep deprivation has a detrimental effect on your metabolism, emotions, cravings, and energy levels.
The data provided by the tracker enables you to make more informed decisions before bed and gradually improve your sleeping patterns.
Daily motivation
Even a modest amount of motivation may propel us onward. Our fitness tracker operates similarly. It serves as a motivator for us to achieve our fitness goals.
You may configure notifications for many sorts of activities. Therefore, it will give you recurring reminders to perform that action.
If you sit and work for extended periods, it serves as a reminder to walk or exercise. Thus, it enables you to have an active lifestyle.
Begin eating healthfully
Simply exercising or engaging in physical activity is insufficient to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Additionally, balanced eating programs play a critical part in this.
In your tracker, you may configure a water intake warning. Additionally, you may use the tracker app to create a diet plan.
It calculates calorie consumption, which your fitness level may adjust.
Establish your fitness objectives
It is critical to have an active lifestyle to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
The most powerful incentive is to establish personal fitness objectives and to work toward them regularly.
Whether it’s a weight-loss program or gym training, fitness trackers assist you in setting and achieving objectives.
It offers regular notifications to keep you engaged and motivated, allowing you to achieve your exercise objectives even more effectively.
Maintain Contact
Without touching your phone, the fitness tracker enables you to see all of your critical alerts, including calls, emails, WhatsApp, text messages, and Facebook.
Many fitness trackers now have wifi or Bluetooth connection, enabling you to sync your gadget with a smartphone and store your daily activity data for later review.
Resistant to Water
Specific gadgets, such as an IP68 waterproof fitness band, may be worn for up to 30 minutes in 1.5 m of water.
If you intend to wear your tracker in the pool, it should have a 5ATM (50m depth for 10 minutes) certification. This indicates that the gadget will withstand immersion in water up to 50 meters deep.
Thus, here are some benefits of using fitness bands. Apart from that, you can perform various other tasks with your smart band, such as app notification, silent / reject calls, alarm, idle alert, phone locator, and weather forecast. Additionally, music control is one of the smart band’s additional features that assists you in tracking your daily activities.
Disadvantages of Fitness Tracker
While the benefits of wearable fitness trackers are well-documented, the downsides might be numerous as well if you are not a careful user.
Ranjith Shroff was presented with a wearable fitness tracker by his wife for his 30th birthday in December last year. “I was ten kg overweight at the time,” he recalls. Shroff began exercising every day and kept a close check on his daily calorie consumption due to his new gift. “I was committed to my program for the first two months and shed six kg,” he recalls.
However, his employment as an assistant director required him to travel frequently and extensively worldwide for productions. “Initially, I carried the band with me on all of my travels.
However, if I neglected to carry it, I was unable to work out. I needed to track my heart rate, the number of calories burned throughout the workout, and my sleep pattern – it was almost addictive. As a result of my frequent pauses, my weight fluctuated, “Shroff says.
This prompted him to abandon the device temporarily. “I wish I had been more informed and prepared before making such rash lifestyle changes.”
Several studies have been conducted on the numerous health advantages of wearable fitness trackers. According to experts, such devices encourage users to be physically active.
However, users should be equally mindful of the risks associated with overreliance on them. They caution. Sucheta Pal, a Zumba education specialist and master trainer for Zumba, coined the word ‘techorexia’ to describe how individuals develop an obsession with their wearables to the detriment of genuinely enjoying the workout. “A buddy was into outdoor running, but instead of appreciating his runs and the surrounding scenery, he grew fascinated with his wristband and began competing with himself to improve his step count. These wearables are an incredible invention, “She clarifies.
What should you consider before strapping on a wearable fitness tracker? Experts provide a few pointers.
Not Walk, But Work
While experts agree that the typical individual should walk 10,000 steps per day, there is a distinction between walking and being physically active. “Individuals can accumulate those 10,000 steps while performing daily tasks such as going around the home.
However, this becomes deceptive when users of such wearables are content with the notion that they have done that 10,000 steps and do not exercise. A particular percentage of those steps must be derived from continuous cardiovascular exercise, such as cycling, “Venu Adhiya Hirani, a nutritionist and fitness instructor adds.
Misleading Calorie Count
If you enter the calories ingested in an app and then connect it to your wearable, the latter will assist you in calculating the calories burned. “However, some applications include predefined food items and their associated calorie counts depending on the developers’ expertise,” Hirani notes.
“For example, if you consume a chappati, the app will compute the calories depending on what the app developer has pre-entered. It will not take into account the type of chappati you eat. Thus, although a light, phulka-style chappati will contain fewer calories, a larger chappati will include more. However, the app will calculate the same number of calories for both.”
Health Risks
Paul asserts, “Always visit a trainer first, who will evaluate you and then determine your training regimen. These are data-monitoring wearables.
Thus, while they can tell you how many calories to burn, they cannot advise you on how to do it.” Hirani concurs. “Physical diseases such as heart problems, for example, will be ignored by the app. As a result, the consequences can be catastrophic.”
Remember Not To Be Dependent
Praveen Tokas, a celebrity trainer, notes that individuals frequently feel “blind” without their electronics, which is never a good indication. “These users bring their gadgets on vacations and to business conferences. And when they do not, they fail to work, “he clarifies. “Allow the device to assist you in refining your workout. Allow it to define you, not the other way around.”
Concentrate On Maintaining Concentration Levels
According to Tokas, such devices can occasionally distract customers during exercises. “And this is not a good thing, particularly during a high-intensity workout, when individuals prefer to fidget with the device to determine how many calories they have burned. This affects their heart rate and the number of calories they burn.”
Accuracy is Important
Tokas argues that while heart rate is an excellent measure of calories burned during aerobics, additional, more precise measurements should be examined during weight or strength training.
“In addition to heart rate, additional measures such as post-exercise oxygen consumption are monitored during weight training,” he notes. Moreover, there are further questions of accuracy. “At one point, I had three devices attached to my body during a workout, and by the end of the day, they were all reporting different statistics,” Pal explains.
