How well do Fitness Trackers Work?
High-tech fitness gadgets such as Fitbit or UP band are all the rage. You’ve surely seen people using them at the gym or know someone who has one.
In general, these sleek pieces of wearable tech are meant to encourage people to lead a healthier lifestyle by counting steps, monitoring heart rate, keeping track of body weight and measuring perspiration. These are useful for helping you get motivated, but the question is: do they actually work? A closer look at some of the key features these devices offer will help find the answer.
Counting Steps
You’ve probably heard people say they need to take a few laps around the block or head to the park to reach their daily step goal. Unfortunately, what counts as a step varies from band to band.
Because of this, it’s important to find a tracker that is accurately counting your steps. After all, if steps are undercounted you can get discouraged with your lack of progress, whereas over counting can deny you benefits.
However, it’s important to remember a fitness tracker won’t magically get you to walk more. That part is up to you. All it can do is provide you with raw data about your progress, which will hopefully push you towards your fitness goals.
Tracking Heart Rate
Besides counting steps, many fitness trackers also show your heart rate. To do this, most use an optical sensor on the underside of the band. While potentially useful, these monitors can’t always be trusted. Instead, you should use it more as a way to see when your heart rate accelerates so you can maintain or reduce it accordingly.
This feature can be useful, though, especially if you’re training to increase your endurance. With that said, once you get into the 160-170 BPM range, many fitness trackers’ accuracy drops significantly. Luckily, you can use a fitness app on your phone since they often provide the same data. If you decide to go the smartphone route, just make sure to protect your privacy (and fitness info) when connecting to unsecured networks to upload your data.
Calorie Tracking
While these fitness trackers can’t directly track how many calories you burn, they can calculate this figure based on the amount of steps you took and your heart rate. The further you move away from raw data, though, the more likely this data is to be inaccurate. Like heart rate tracking, it’s best to take any calorie counting feature with a grain of salt. Still, if you’re interested in knowing approximately how many calories you’ve burned, it’s a useful feature. Just don’t go sneaking in more snacks because your fitness tracker said you burned 500 calories.
So, Do Fitness Trackers Work?
Well, the jury is still out on this one. On the one hand, a recent study suggests that people who wear these trackers don’t actually lose weight. In fact, they lost less weight than those who did not wear a fitness tracker. This can be attributed to people associating the use of a fitness tracker with automatic results, which can cause them to work out less. On the other hand, they can work for people who are already motivated and keep you focused on exercise goals by providing visual representations about progress. Also, fitness trackers can bring you back to reality. How often do you overestimate how much you actually walk? You might not even be aware that you are miscounting and these types of mistakes can hinder your progress. A fitness tracker is a good wakeup call if you choose to listen.
Ultimately, a fitness tracker is just another tool in your arsenal. It’s only useful if you have clear goals. Don’t get caught up in trying to hit a certain number, but instead use it as another method of obtaining helpful fitness metrics. This will decrease the amount of pressure you put on yourself while still offering some useful data about your habits.
About the author: Cassie Phillips is a freelance tech writer and fitness enthusiast. She believes a good fitness program can include both holistic practices and modern technology.
Leave a reply
“We couldn’t recommend Kylie highly enough.”
“Having ongoing training is essential for our team and our business. It’s important to look after the people that look after others. Kylie has the experience, professionalism and knowledge to engage with our team and help them understand about human behaviour and why people do what they do. In the wellness and health industry it’s a different sales and service delivery and it’s imperative to keep on top of these understandings to perform at our best to help others. We couldn’t recommend Kylie high enough.”
- Amanda Bracks - Owner Soulful Fitness (2019 Fitness Australia Boutique of the Year)
“She’s the best speaker they’ve ever seen.”
“I have worked with Kylie over many years. She has helped me as a Business Mindset Coach, as a motivational speaker for my gym clients at both Vision Personal Training & now at Flow Athletic. I bring her in to train my Personal Training teams in mindset, communication and how to coach our clients better and excel in our own personal mastery as fitness leaders. At my recent Fitness Business event, my gym owner colleagues were blown away by her talk, saying she is the best speaker they have ever seen. After every event we always get rave reviews about her talks and training. I highly recommend Kylie’s work as a coach & speaker.”
- Ben Lucas - Founder & CEO, Flow Athletic
“So many things are just falling into my lap.”
“I finished the Spiritual Awakening Course yesterday and I found it truly amazing. An incredible next step after our coach training. I feel so much more enlightened and “opened-up”. It has really opened my eyes to the power of the universe and the energy flowing in each of us. I loved it – thank you.
I am feeling so lucky at the moment. So many things are just falling into my lap. I visualise it and set my intention to manifest it and it comes. Things such as getting more clients, needing help to put my business online, not knowing how to get known in my local community etc. Courses / insights / clients have just fallen into my lap at the right time.”
Of course I am still learning and growing, but the course has really helped. Thank you”
- Katharine Williams - NLP Coach, Limitless Growth
I started my coaching business from scratch before I’d finished the course!
“Before I met Kylie I was feeling very lost working full time in law in Sydney CBD. I’ve known my whole life that I was here to help people, but I just didn’t know exactly how. So when I found Kylie, it just was really fitting that it was going to help me ground my magic. I started the coach training and had an amazing time. It was beautiful to go through the process of having a mentor that had that spiritual element and that holistic element, as well as the very grounded science-based knowledge as well. So that really helped me to conjure that for myself.
I started my business before I even finished the course. I just started putting myself out there. And now I’ve gotten it to a point where I’ve got really grounded solid message, and two years later am running a multi-6 figure coaching business as a leading pioneer in my niche, helping clients all over the world.”
- Ari Kala - Psychic Development Coach
“I have never been this happy or powerful.”
“Before I signed up with Kylie I had a busy PT business… I was exhausted and on the brink of burnout and no matter how hard I tried, I had reached a ceiling in my income that I just couldn’t break through. After completing my NLP Coaching certification, I found my true voice and the energy of my business has been completely transformed. I’ve created an online program, up-levelled my entire business and totally smashed my previous income goals. I make decisions more confidently and I can help my clients create change in their life even faster. On a personal level, NLP gave me the inner strength to leave a toxic situation and rebuild myself which lead to me discovering the love of my life! Today I am living the life that I’ve always wanted – but just hadn’t been able to put into words. I have never been this happy or this powerful. If you want to manifest the life of your dreams I would not hesitate to reach out for help from Kylie.”
- Danni Vee - Women's Health Coach, My Fit Tribe
“I made 30K in new sales the month after graduating”
Before attaining my NLP Coach certification, I was an online trainer who was getting excellent results for “some” of my clients. I used a mixture of experience, intuition and an exhausting “helicopter-parent” style of accountability coaching. It was like the 20% of the clients who weren’t getting good results took up 80% of my effort, and it was draining my passion for my business. Completing my Certification with Kylie has been the best decision of my career. The very next month after finishing I created a new program and made $30,000 in new sales. I now have a repeatable system to coach my clients and I can get them both immediate AND long-lasting change, sometimes in less than 40 minutes. In the past 12 months, I have doubled my freedom and fulfilment in my business I have created raving clients who snap up my offers.”
- Bianca Aiono, PT Business Mentor & NLP Coach
“I’ve noticed big improvements in my finances and client retention”
I signed up with Kylie because I knew that to have a bigger effect as a PT I needed to improve my understanding of how the mind works. Through NLP Coach training I now have great coaching techniques that break through all sorts of negative behaviour patterns. I’ve noticed big improvements in all areas of my life including my own personal finances and my client retention. This has allowed me new freedom to work on scaling my business and helping even more people with less one on one time from myself. The coach training has given me the ability to fully unlock the power of your mindset and those that don’t have this skill are only tapping into a small amount of their potential.
- Blake Worrall-Thompson, Performance Coach & PT
“Magick happens every time!”
This morning I had a kick-ass coaching session with Kylie Ryan. We’ve been working together for a couple of months, and she’s the perfect person to help me integrate the rapid transformations I go through regularly. I’d been getting this vision of my fully mature creative and entrepreneurial self. His discipline, commitment, and command of wealth was 10x what mine is now, but it wasn’t really about money for him. Our coaching sessions usually roll with me saying, “Kylie, I want to be, do, and have EVERYTHING” and Kylie helping me find the archetypes and parts that aren’t integrated and bringing them together. MAGICK HAPPENS EVERY TIME.
- Dane Tomas - Creator of The Spiral
Featured In
Comments (2)