I recently got an activity tracker for my birthday. Truth be told, I asked for it because I wanted to test out the capabilities of a particular model, the Fitbit Charge 2. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen the craze that’s become the Quanitified Self movement. Essentially, people are tracking everything they do, see, and feel. It’s quite fascinating to say the least. I’m interested in tracking for health, well-being, and longevity. I’ve had a Garmin for years and that has been my exercise tracker when I’m running, biking, swimming, or hiking. I don’t use it for skiing and I used to just take a quick look at the steps. Now I’m much more interested in utilizing all this amazing technology to track heart rate, sleep, and even encourage me to breathe.
Here are 5 reasons to begin tracking your activities.
Track Your Steps.
The most common reason people buy fitness trackers is to track steps. 10,000 is the magic number! Yup, 10,000 steps per day. Why that many you ask? Actually there are 300 peer reviewed studies that show people who get in at least 10,000 steps each day have lower blood pressure and better cardiovascular fitness among other health benefits.
Track Your Sleep
I’ve always been a pretty great sleeper and when I got my Garmin fenix 3 a couple of years ago I thought, oh, it tracks my sleep, great I’ll check it out. The truth is that after 2 weeks of tracking the results were directly correlated to the amount of time I slept. For instance if I slept 6 and a half hours it said I had 65% good sleep. If I had 8 hours I had an 85% good night’s sleep. 7 hours was 70% and so on. I felt like it wasn’t really telling of any patterns.
Lately, however, I’ve been using my Fitbit Charge 2 and it gives a whole lot more information. It gives awake time, REM, light sleep, and deep sleep. It also gives me a benchmark of others my age and gender. I find that quite fascinating. There are times when I go to sleep much later than I’d like and I have a client early in the morning. There’s nothing I can do except suffer with lack of sleep. The information shows that I’m awake more than others, it shows that others in my category have less REM sleep and that I’m smack dab in the middle of light sleep and deep sleep amounts. I love seeing this info because it helps me make decisions about the next day. I’ll try to get to bed earlier or meditate prior to going to bed.
Track Your Heart Rate
Not all trackers have a heart rate monitor, but I recommend getting one if you can afford it. Your ticker is arguably one of the most important muscles in your body and it’s important to know what’s happening and to see if there might be some sudden or not so sudden changes along the way. I love that I can check in with my HR while I’m on the run or even walking up the steps. It gives me a sense of where I’m at. Of course, thanks to the sleep tracker with heart rate, I know my resting heart rate upon waking. That gives me a baseline. And since I’m an endurance athlete I’m also very aware of my heart rate during intense physical activity.
This all gives me a great data set so that when I do see my doctor for my annual check up, I can more accurately inform her of my health throughout the year. I will see any random things that might happen. Your greatest tool is knowledge of your own health and these trackers provide you with exactly that.
Be Shamed by a Device!
I know, it’s ridiculous and doesn’t seem like a super positive reason to buy an activity tracker, but I have to say, that little buzz alert makes me feel guilty and I want to get off my ass and get moving. It might not always be pleasant, but a lot of personal trainers aren’t pleasant either. Their job is not to be your friend, their job is to get you moving. This is one way to do it. When shopping for your device make sure you get the alerts that encourage you to move, most do.
Live Longer
As you see, I’m a believer. I think that the activity tracker rage is not going away and it’s only going to get better. And yes, I do believe that someday we’ll have microchips in our neck that assess our day’s intake and output. It will rate how well we completed our day and give us the proper feedback and corrections to make the next day better. I know, science fiction, but it’s happening sooner than we may think. And I’m sure it will make things better and help keep us living longer, healthier lives!
Originally published on the author’s website.