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#126 - Fitness Trackers: How They Help (and Hurt) Your Progress
25 Plays11 days ago
Fitness trackers are everywhere, but are they actually helping you get results or not?
In this episode, I break down the science, benefits, and pitfalls so you know how to use them effectively.
You will learn:
• What fitness metrics to pay attention to
• The biggest mistake people make when using fitness trackers
• How trackers can boost motivation and accountability without running your life
• The dos and donts so you get the benefits without the stress
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Transcript
Introduction to Fit-ish Project
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome back to the Fit-ish Project with your host, Latham Bass, where we make fitness and health simple for regular people like you and I. We got a weekly episode coming at you, as we always do.
Benefits of Smartwatches and Fitness Trackers
00:00:14
Speaker
Before I get into this, if you can leave a review, if you have not done so, I do appreciate that.
00:00:18
Speaker
But with this week's episode, I wanted to talk about smartwatches and fitness trackers. And the reason being is because I've been seeing more videos about these little gadgets that we wear on our wrist and There's a lot of good that comes from
Potential Downsides of Trackers
00:00:32
Speaker
these.
00:00:32
Speaker
As I've mentioned before, I've been wearing a fitness tracker for years now. I think I've had mine for around eight years or something like that. So I've been wearing one of these for a long time. I'm a big fan of these things. I love all the information. I kind of geek out on all that stuff. And it's really nice to just have to track and see progress and see trends and to use as accountability and motivation, all that different kind of stuff.
00:00:54
Speaker
But there's also some downfalls to these fitness trackers if they are not used in the right way. And so I wanted to actually talk about some of these things with Apple Watches and Garmin's and whoops and orders and Fitbits and all those different things. A lot of people are wearing these things in one of the articles that I saw it said upwards of over 50% of people are wearing these things.
00:01:15
Speaker
And if you're listening to this fitness podcast, there's probably a good chance that you have something like this or that you are measuring your workouts in some sort of way. So I wanted to talk a little bit about these things.
Beyond Weight Loss: Broader Benefits of Fitness
00:01:25
Speaker
And before we even get into all that, like what's the actual point of wearing some of these things? Well, the idea is they are going to make you more fit.
00:01:33
Speaker
And what's the point of getting more fit? think obviously we all know that being more fit is super helpful and super beneficial to our health. But I think oftentimes exercise just gets lumped in with something that we do to lose weight and we kind of lose sight of the big picture and why it's so important be fit. And so when we think about exercise, like living a longer life, living a better quality of life, feeling better, having better mental health, looking better, lowering your blood pressure, having a stronger immune system, having more muscle mass, less aches and pains, better energy and
00:02:05
Speaker
on and on. There's just so many different benefits that you get from exercise and from being more fit and being more healthy. And I think that realizing that fitness is not just something that you do to lose weight or something that you do because somebody else told you to do it, but because it's just going to make your life that much better and allow you to live a longer life. And Using these fitness trackers can help you to get more fit. That's the whole basis of these things. Although some people just wear them for entertainment or the fashion piece of it, like Apple watches and things like that.
00:02:36
Speaker
But there is a lot of good things that you can get out of using some of these fitness trackers. And I wanted to get into that.
Effective Use of Fitness Trackers
00:02:42
Speaker
In today's podcast so I want to talk a little bit about some of the good things some of the not so good things and then most importantly, like how to effectively use these things to become more fit to lose fat to build muscle and to just feel better overall because that is the ultimate goal of these fitness trackers is to help you be more fit and healthy.
00:03:01
Speaker
And so when we talk about fitness trackers, why do people even get these things in the first place? So there's three main reasons that people get these to help them out with their fitness journey. So the first thing is they track progress really well. So you can start to see different trends on whether you're getting more fit with your heart rate, with how many steps you're getting in, VO2 max, with your sleep, with all these different metrics that these things track, you can start to actually see whether or not you're making progress and see if you're trending in the right direction. so That's a really big piece of it.
00:03:31
Speaker
Awareness and accountability is the second really big piece of this. And so trackers make you realize whether or not you are being sedentary. And if you're not being super active, these can be a good spark to kind of get you going.
00:03:46
Speaker
Along with that, you just have the daily things going on with as far as like telling you if you're getting enough steps in, you have your rings that you need to close. If you're wearing an Apple Watch, you have little reminders on some of these fitness trackers that just help to hold you accountable. Because if you have the numbers there, it's very easy to see whether or not you're hitting your daily targets or not.
00:04:05
Speaker
And then the third thing right along with that would just be motivation. Having some of these goals set or having some of these targets set on your apps or on your watches can really help to spark some of that motivation in order to keep you going and moving in the right direction. And so those are three of the main reasons that I see people getting these fitness trackers.
00:04:25
Speaker
And when it comes to these fitness trackers, some of these things measure so many different health markers. And if you're just the average person who just wants to be a little bit more fit, feel a little bit better, have better energy, maybe lose a little bit of weight, some of this stuff can be overkill or even be a little bit overwhelming.
Essential Metrics for Tracking
00:04:41
Speaker
As I mentioned, I'm a person who kind of geeks out about this stuff. So I really like seeing all the charts and the graphs and the numbers and all that stuff. But When you think about it at just a basic level, there's just a handful of things that you really need to focus on. And outside of that, the other stuff really doesn't matter that much. So I thought it'd be helpful to just go over some of the most important things to focus on.
00:05:00
Speaker
So the first one and probably the most basic one that's been out there forever is just steps. And when you think about the very first fitness tracker that was ever made, it was just a simple pedometer. And the only thing that people use these for was to track their steps.
00:05:13
Speaker
It's just a little tiny device that you would put on your hip and it would count your steps throughout the day. And that was really the first basic thing that we had to start tracking how active we actually were. And Talked about walking so many different times on this podcast, but it's just one of those things that when you do it more often, you are going to be healthier. You're going to see tons of health benefits.
00:05:33
Speaker
It helps you with weight loss, weight maintenance, better mental health, less sedentary, have less aches and pains, all those different things. And so steps is something that I always recommend that people track.
00:05:45
Speaker
when it comes to even my clients it's one of the things that i really focus on having them start to pay attention to is how many steps you're getting in a day because a lot of people will think that they're active or think that they're moving around ton throughout the day but one of the most basic things you can do to start figuring out how much you're actually moving throughout the day is to track your steps Steps would be number one on that list. The second thing, obviously your workouts are tracked on these.
00:06:09
Speaker
And these are really nice, especially for like cardio type workouts, you can start to see like your mile times, you can start to see your average heart rate or your max heart rate, different things like that, which is really helpful.
00:06:20
Speaker
It's also nice just from a motivational standpoint with tracking your workouts. I know some people will say things like, I didn't wear my watch when I worked out, so the workout doesn't count. And so it's it's nice to kind of go through a workout and see how hard you're working and see how long you worked out and different things like that. So tracking workouts is another good
Insights from Tracking Sleep and Heart Metrics
00:06:38
Speaker
one.
00:06:38
Speaker
Sleep is one that a lot of these things have on the fitness trackers as well. That's really helpful. And probably the biggest thing that I took away from wearing my fitness tracker ever since I've got it was just the importance of sleep and how much it can be affected by certain things like alcohol or stress and how much bad sleep can start to affect things like your resting heart rate, your HRV and other different metrics like that. And just realizing how impactful sleep is on everything and how connected it is to everything else. And so when it comes to a lot of these fitness trackers, they will break down sleep in different stages.
00:07:15
Speaker
And from the things that I've read and gathered Those parts aren't as accurate as we would like, but from just a basic standpoint of knowing how much time you're spending asleep in your bed, it can be very helpful. So if you're seeing whether or not you're actually getting six, seven, eight hours of sleep, you can tell that from these fitness trackers and just having that basic information is enough to be helpful and start to help you build better habits.
00:07:41
Speaker
Another thing that I tend to pay attention to is resting heart rate. It's a really easy way to see if you are getting more fit over time. As you start to get more fit, your resting heart rate will start to get lower. So you may start out at 60 or 70. And as you start to get more fit, get more in shape, maybe lose some weight, you're going to see that number start to go down, which is a good sign that your heart is becoming more efficient and you are becoming more fit, which is really helpful.
00:08:07
Speaker
It's also helpful in seeing with how recovered you are on a day-to-day basis. So on a certain day, let's say your average heart rate is around 50. If you wake up one day and that heart rate is closer to 60 or maybe even a little bit higher, it could be a sign that you're not as recovered as you would like to be. And maybe that you've also just been stressing your body for several days or you just had a really bad night of sleep. And it could just be a sign to take things a little bit easier.
00:08:34
Speaker
Right along with that, very similarly is HRV, which is just another way to measure fitness levels and another really good way to measure recovery day to day. And so when we're talking about HRV, that stands for heart rate vari variability.
00:08:49
Speaker
And all that means is that when you think about your heartbeat, it's not on an exact metronome. So it's not steady rhythm, beat after beat after beat. There's a little bit of delay in time in between those beats.
00:09:01
Speaker
And that is what your heart rate variability is. And so when that is higher, that's a good sign that you recovered, that your nervous system is feeling good, that you're able to be more reactive, that you're able to push your body, that you're little bit sharper and things just feel good. Like your body is ready to go.
00:09:17
Speaker
When your HRV is lower, that means that you may be a little bit run down, maybe you're stressed, maybe you need a little bit more recovery. And so similar to the resting heart rate, it kind of goes in the opposite direction. So if your resting heart rate is high and your HRV is low, typically you're a little bit less recovered and maybe you need little bit more rest and sleep and things like that.
Challenges with Calorie Tracking
00:09:39
Speaker
The last thing that I'll mention, which is probably the thing that people will focus on most, but is the least useful, is calories burned. And the reason why this is the least useful is because the accuracy around how many calories you burn in a day from some sort of fitness tracker or smartwatch that you're wearing is just very inaccurate.
00:10:00
Speaker
From the studies that they've shown, it can be off anywhere between 20 30% all the way up to And to just give you a simple example around that, let's say your watch said you burned 3000 calories in a single day.
00:10:16
Speaker
If that is 90% off, you could be closer to 2000 calories. And the reason why this becomes problematic, which I'll get into a little bit later is because when people focus on how many calories burned and they start to use that as a reason to eat more food or how much they should be eating or, oh, I burned 500, 600, 700 calories in this workout, have this 700 calorie dessert.
00:10:36
Speaker
i can have this seven hundred calorie dessert those numbers aren't accurate. So now you're just eating more and now you're starting to gain unwanted body fat and things like that. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that more detail later in this, but I wanted to get into some actual good things to focus on when it comes to these fitness trackers. And I have three things for the do's and then three things for the don'ts. And then we'll get into some practical things to actually put these things into practice. So some of the things in good ways to use this, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, is using these to track progress.
00:11:11
Speaker
You want to make sure that you're using these to track trends and not necessarily focusing so much on just single numbers in the day to day. And reason being, because some of these things aren't as accurate as we would like them to be.
00:11:22
Speaker
When it comes to step counts, when it comes to like your heart rate, these are pretty accurate. But as I just mentioned, when it comes to things like calories burned and a few other things, they aren't quite as accurate. And so using these things to track some of these metrics can be helpful over the long term.
00:11:38
Speaker
And not just necessarily focusing on that day to day because a single snapshot just in your day to day doesn't really tell you a ton. But when you start to look at trends, you can see whether you're progressing in the right direction. And so things like your resting heart rate going down over time, that's a good sign.
00:11:55
Speaker
If your VO2 max is going up, that's also a good sign. If your steps are going up or you're maintaining your steps and you're getting eight, 10, 12,000 steps a day, that's another good sign. If your HRV is trending upwards over time, that's another good sign you're getting more fit.
00:12:10
Speaker
If you're getting that seven, eight hours of sleep on a consistent basis, that's another good sign. And so you wanna make sure that you're starting to look at trends over the weeks, over the months to make sure that you're trending in the right direction.
00:12:20
Speaker
And if you're not trending in the right direction, well, at least you have some data there that you can start focusing on some of these things where maybe you're slipping a little bit. And so use these metrics to track progress over time.
Objective Data vs. Personal Awareness
00:12:31
Speaker
The second thing, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, is using these to motivate you. So some of the things that these watches do really well is they start to gamify some of these things and so some of these fitness trackers will have like badges that you earn or it'll show you like how much of a streak you're on if you've gotten so many steps so many days in a row it'll give you different challenges where you can challenge other people and These things are smart because they start to play a little bit on our brain as well. You get little dopamine hits and it starts to help with building habits when you're checking off some of those things, when you're achieving some of these badges or hitting some of these streaks. And so using these apps in these fitness trackers to motivate you is really helpful.
00:13:15
Speaker
and along with that i've talked about just setting daily disciplines or having these small actions that you can do day in and day out and so when you can start to set goals around some of these things with like steps or with workouts in a week or even just having the goal of i want to lower my heart rate five beats over the next couple of months i want to increase my vo2 max a little bit i want to increase my hrv over the next two or three months as i start to implement this cardio plan All those things and setting goals around those things can help to keep you motivated to help you do the things that you need to day in and day out. And so using these as motivation is another really good thing to do.
00:13:53
Speaker
And then the third thing and probably the most important thing is just using these things for accountability. There's the old saying that what gets measured gets managed. And a really big thing that I see hold so many people back and why they stay stuck is because they feel like they are doing certain things, but in reality, they're not doing those things to the level that they need to be doing consistently enough to actually see progress. And so what I mean is like,
00:14:20
Speaker
You ask people how active they are in general. Most people will tell you I'm pretty active or I get so many steps in my day or I exercise a decent amount. But until you have some data to back that up and actually look at how many steps am I getting in a day? How many times per week am I working out?
00:14:37
Speaker
You don't really know. You're just going on feel. And when you don't have the numbers and you're just going on feel, a lot of people stay stuck because they feel like they're doing things better than they're actually doing. And the studies will also tell us this. People will typically overestimate how much activity they're getting in a day.
00:14:54
Speaker
But then when you start to look the numbers, when you have these things to look at, you can just start to see objectively, I'm getting 5,000 steps in my day. Okay, that's not nearly as much as I thought I was getting and that's not as much as I need to be getting. So I need to start to ramp that up. And so having the numbers and having this tracker can start to just provide that accountability for you to help you hit those goals that you need to be hitting rather than just feeling like,
00:15:19
Speaker
you're doing the right things, but they're not actually seeing the progress that you want to see. Similar things would be like some people feel like they're getting enough sleep and then you track your sleep and you realize, oh, I was getting into bed in seven hours, but I'm actually only asleep for five and a half because I'm on my phone for 45 minutes and then I don't actually fall asleep for another 45 minutes. So I'm actually only getting five and a half hours, but I was going to bed at 11.
00:15:46
Speaker
waking up at six. So I figured I was getting seven hours, but then you actually look at it and it's like, no, you're actually only asleep for five and a half hours. That's very different than getting seven hours of sleep. Again, it just takes the guesswork out. It takes feeling like you're doing all the work and putting in the effort and not really seeing the progress and spinning your wheels. It takes that out of it and it helps you just stay more accountable to hitting those targets and to doing the things that you need to do in order to see the results that you want to see.
00:16:15
Speaker
When it comes to some of the things that you want to avoid, and I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but focusing on the calorie burn numbers on these apps is a mistake. Reason being because they're just not very accurate. If in the future they're able to create devices that are more accurate about these numbers, then maybe it won't be such a bad idea. But I've just seen too many people that focus on calorie burn or I'll see somebody who says, I burned 3000 calories. I can have this like extra...
00:16:46
Speaker
meal or this extra dessert or this extra food. And I just know being around so many people and helping so many people with this, just as far as like knowing how many calories certain people need, you can't just tell by looking at somebody, but I have a general idea based on how big a person is, how much activity level they have and how much muscle mass they have, where they're going to be roughly with their calories.
00:17:08
Speaker
And a lot of people, again, they just overestimate how much that number actually is. And then they underestimate how much they're actually eating. So it turns out to be very problematic very quickly when you start to focus on calorie burn numbers within a workout or within how many calories you're burning in a day. So that is something that I would definitely avoid. it and it's probably the biggest mistake that I see when it comes to using these fitness trackers.
00:17:33
Speaker
Number two is to make sure that you don't stop listening to your body. So these things are just tools to help you make better decisions, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it knows exactly what you should be doing for that day. And so for example, like a lot of these things will give you recovery scores or they'll give you readiness scores or things like that based on some metrics on like how well you slept, how stressed you've been, all those sorts of things. And it'll give you a score and tell you You're really ready to perform today and really ready to get after it. Maybe have some intense exercise or other times it'll tell you to pull back a little bit. Maybe you shouldn't do things. Maybe you should recover a little bit.
00:18:11
Speaker
And these things are helpful, but they're not the end all be all. There's a lot of times where it might say that you didn't get great recovery, but you're still able to go out and crush a workout and you feel great within that workout.
00:18:22
Speaker
and An example of this is a lot of sports teams will have players wear fitness trackers. But they don't show the players the data because they don't want it to affect them. And so basically, they don't want it to you have a negative effect on them based on the placebo. Because if you see that, maybe that yellow score or red score or low readiness score, your watch is telling you you need to back off, you're probably going to think that you also need to do that.
00:18:47
Speaker
And so rather than just strictly focusing on that, you also need to think about, okay, how do I actually feel today? like how does my body feel? Do I actually feel super run down? Like, is this accurate? Or do i actually feel pretty decent? Like, could I go out and do some things and get a good workout in and and still feel good? So you don't want to stop listening to your body and let this little wearable that you have on your wrist be the decision maker when it comes to the things that you should be doing.
00:19:12
Speaker
Use it as a tool, but don't use it as the end all be all.
Conclusion: Holistic Health Strategies
00:19:16
Speaker
And the third thing I would say is don't let the perfectionism take over when you're using these things. So don't get into the all or nothing mindset because some people get really obsessive about these things or they get into the mindset of if I can't hit these targets, then what's the point of doing it at all And so you don't want to get in that mindset for any reason, but especially when you're using these fitness trackers, don't let these things discourage you from doing something. Something is always better than nothing. Even if you don't hit that daily target or hit your goal for that day or hit your goal for that week, you still want to make sure that you're progressing and trending in the right direction.
00:19:51
Speaker
Don't be one of those people who pushes it way overboard. You're like, pushing yourself to get your steps in even when you're sick or things like that. Like, cause like some of this stuff can get really unhealthy and obsessive when you start to hyper-focus on these things.
00:20:04
Speaker
And I read a little bit into this as well. And this is something that can also backfire when it comes to sleep, for example. So people start to track their sleep. and they realize that they aren't getting as much sleep as they need to get. And every day or every morning, they're checking their sleep score and seeing how they did.
00:20:22
Speaker
And rather than this being a good tool, a positive thing to help them start to make better changes, they start to get anxious about it or they hyper fixate on it. And now when they're trying to go to sleep every night, they're thinking about this score and it's actually making them stay up later, causing them to not be able to fall asleep. And so it can actually backfire in certain ways when you start to get too hyper focused on these things. And so I think bringing this all home, the biggest thing to realize is that these things are a tool, but you still need to listen to your body because that's the best option. And using these things as a learning tool and starting to realize when you do have certain nights of sleep or when you're stressed or when you have hard workouts and starting to realize how you feel both in your body, but also what these apps and these fitness tracks are telling you, then you can start to make the overall best decisions.
00:21:08
Speaker
The second thing i would say is just to continue to focus on progress and trends over time and don't get too hyper focused on the day to day stuff. If you're trending in the right direction, if you're seeing all those metrics that we talked about go up and trend in the right direction, then you're in good shape. You don't need to hyper focus on a single day because a single day doesn't tell you that much.
00:21:30
Speaker
And then the last reminder that I would say, or the last thing that I would tell you is even though these things do have a lot to offer and there's a lot of ways that they can help you improve just to understand that some of these things and some of these metrics and some of the just algorithms that go into these things aren't as accurate as we think they are. And so these things help and they help to make you more fit and more healthy and things like that. But understand that like there is some discrepancy in accuracy isn't always as high as we think it is. And so again, it's just a tool. It's not something that you need to rely too heavily on that can be helpful to help us move more and feel better and learn more about our body.
00:22:12
Speaker
But at the end of the day, it's just a piece of equipment. It's just a piece of the technology and it can certainly help, but it shouldn't be the sole factor or the sole thing that you focus on in order to improve your health.
00:22:23
Speaker
Hopefully this was helpful and you learned a little bit about this and you can learn how to use fitness trackers in a little bit better way to help you hit all those goals that you want to hit, get more fit, get more healthy, feel better, look better, all those different things. And with that being said, that is all I have you. Have the one-on-one coaching app in the show notes if you are interested in getting some help with your fitness goals, losing some weight, building some muscle.
00:22:49
Speaker
losing fat, feeling better, all that good stuff. You can always check that out in the show notes, see if it's a good fit. But I appreciate you listening and we will see you next week