Over the past few years, fitness trackers have grown in popularity to the point where it seems like every other person has one on their wrist - they’re all around us! As more people have become health- and fitness-conscious, the technology built to assist us in our pursuits has grown and evolved a lot in order to keep up, which means that these fitness trackers are becoming both more affordable and more functional.

Are they crucial for fitness success and improved health? I don’t think so, and they’re not necessarily for everyone.

But can they help? In my opinion, absolutely.

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Personally, I am totally in favor of fitness trackers. Why? Wearing one can be a great way to increase your awareness of your behaviors, it provides accountability if you want it, and gives you information about patterns and keeps an account of your improvement regarding your fitness.

Now there are tons of options for fitness tracking devices out there with an almost overwhelming list of capabilities, which gives you the option to get one that’s as general or specific as you want, depending on your goals and preferred activities. With just your tiny device and the help of some well-designed apps, you can track everything from your steps to your sleep, your calorie burn to your caffeine intake… If you’re interested and disciplined, you can compile a pretty extensive set of statistics about your health and fitness on a daily basis.

This can be SO helpful for me as a coach, especially with my remote clients that I don’t get to see all the time, because I can get a more detailed and accurate picture of what my clients are really getting done in the gym and in the kitchen. The more information I have, the better I can help my clients achieve their goals - through the use of these devices and related apps, so much information is automatically compiled for me that it takes a lot of my guess work out of the equation, and together we’re able to get to the client’s end goals much faster. 

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This isn’t just the case if you’re working with a trainer or nutrition coach though - if you’re tinkering with your own plan and building a healthy lifestyle for yourself, having this ongoing information to look back on can shed light on what works best for you, or where you could make a calculated change or make some improvement.

To me, the single best side effect of using one of these devices is becoming aware of your own behaviors. It’s completely natural and incredibly common to overestimate the caloric expenditure of exercise, and to underestimate the caloric content of food. With fat loss as most of my clients’ primary goal, getting a realistic view of these two factors can be one of the major keys to success. 

If a workout is super hard for you, you might assume it HAD to have burned 1000 calories when in reality it was only 350 - a pretty big spread, right? And that salad from your favorite restaurant has vegetables in it, so it must’ve been a low calorie choice, right? Many restaurant salads (though masquerading as health food) pack as many calories as the cheeseburger or slice of cake your friend sitting next to you is eating… Depressing, yes, but important to acknowledge!

Knowing exactly how many calories you burn each day, and during your exercise activities, is a great place to start building your balanced life. It’s much easier to see if you’ve achieved your activity-related goals if you have numbers to rely on - you know for sure each day whether you’ve done what you set out to do. Numbers don’t lie!

If you take it a step further and track your food intake alongside it, you won’t have any doubt about whether your calories you consume are exceeding your calories burned - again, taking the guess work out of your fitness is incredibly helpful.

By having access to all of this quantifiable information about your efforts, it’s so much easier to put an accountability plan in place, too. It becomes easy to compare your workouts and your daily burn, to create or join contests and competitions to boost motivation, and to be a participating member of the various fitness-related communities tied to the trackers and the apps they accompany. Lots of people find (and give) encouragement through purely online groups of like-minded individuals if they don’t have a support system in person, and through these outlets find great motivation and make lifelong friends across the world - pretty sweet, I’d say!

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Lastly, I love that these devices store all of your information throughout your fitness journey. Just like taking progress pictures, you can clearly see how far you’ve come when looking back on your past. Not only can this help you to keep tabs on the milestones you’ve hit, but also can point out the parts of your program that have been most (or least) effective for you.

It doesn’t have to be fancy, expensive, or complicated to do the job. My best advice would be to pick one that’s affordable first, that you like the looks of (who wants to wear something every day that they don’t think looks good?), that is known to be as accurate as possible and has the most features you think you’d ever want… In short, read a shitload of reviews!

I bought a pretty basic wrist watch style tracker that I love, but when I bought it I didn’t think I’d be doing much swimming - now that summer is on its way, I kind of wish it had the capability of tracking my laps. Learn from my mistake! If it has extra features, even if you think you’ll never use them, go for it - you never know what you’ll get into in the future! :)

Basically, like any other purchase, make a point of getting the most bang for your buck - that’ll help your tracker to last the longest for you as you become fitter, since you may find yourself embracing activities you never thought you would!

I know this is a very pro-tracker post, but that’s how I feel! For me, the more information I have about my clients the more effectively I can do my job of helping them reach their goals. By the same token, the more statistics I have about my own fitness the more easily I can get to (or stay) where I want to be.

The only downsides that I really worry about as a fitness coach regarding trackers are possible obsession with the data in unhealthy ways, or losing sight of a balanced life in favor of extremes. 

**I think that it’s always important to keep HEALTH in mind, not just "fitness" - to me, that means choosing appropriate and achievable goals and timeframes, not going off the rails in any direction, and making sure you’re taking care of your whole body, mind, and spirit.**

Do you use a fitness tracker? What do you think about them?

Please feel free to comment, up vote, or resteem if you’d like to! :)

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