We are constantly bombarded with advertisements, coupons, discounts, and aromatic smells that all persuade us to gorge ourselves with delicious meals. Try as we might, sometimes our life schedule just gets too busy… as such, we rely on convenience in order to get our daily sustenance.
How often do you go to Dunkin’ Donuts to grab yourself a coffee and a hot breakfast? Delicious, I know! But this kind of lifestyle could take its toll on our waistline and health. Sometimes it is a struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
This is where the brilliance of fitness tracker watches comes in!
Fitness trackers are all the rage these days and for good reason! From its age-old ancestor, the pedometer, fitness tracking devices and applications have come a long way and are able to measure multitudes of different activities.
These fantastic little inventions help keep track of the calories you’ve consumed and also the calories burned throughout the day! Some of them are waterproof and some of then include advanced accelerometers that can measure the altitude of your surrounding area.
In this article, you will read up on the many benefits of engaging in physical activities on a routine basis, how fitness trackers can help get you off your butt, review of the best fitness tracker watches of 2018, and some tips to maintain your motivation!
The Importance of Exercise
Exercise is an extremely important activity that we should all strive to do more of. Study after study has proven over and over again that exercising promotes a whole mess of benefits and can really improve the quality of life for an individual.
Ranging from disease protection to increased endurance, engaging in physical activity is always a positive habit to develop for people of all ages.
If you don’t exercise, your muscles will become flabby and weak. Your heart and lungs won’t be able to effectively function and your joints will become stiff and easily injured! The old saying is true: “If you don’t use it, you lose it!” Some of the benefits of exercising on a regular basis include:
Weight Loss And Weight Control
Exercising is one of the most important components to leading a healthier lifestyle and losing weight. Exercise can help prevent excess weight gain or help maintain weight loss.
When you engage in physical activity or if you do anything that makes you sweat, you burn calories. The more intense the activity, the more calories you burn; Whether it is going for a short walk or swimming for miles at the swimming pool.
Exercise is also a key to weight control because it burns calories. If you burn off more calories than you take in, you lose weight. It’s as simple as that.
This is why so many experts and individuals recommend exercise to be part of your weekly routine. Regular trips to the gym are fantastic but anything works! Just try to find time to exercise each day! Purchase yourself a pull-up bar, or maybe go for a jog around the block!
Don’t worry if you can’t find a large chunk of time to exercise every day, just keep at it and try to develop healthy habits. To reap the benefits of exercise, just get more active throughout your day — take the stairs instead of the elevator or try to stand more often rather than sitting. Consistency is key.
Combat And Prevention Of Future Health Complications
Do you currently have any health concerns on your mind? Are you worried about heart disease? Are you concerned about high blood pressure? Or maybe your doctor told you were diagnosed with pre-diabetes.
No matter what your current health concern you may have, exercising is a sure-fire way to help you take that first step towards leading a healthier lifestyle.
Being active boosts “good” cholesterol and decreases unhealthy triglycerides. This keeps your blood flowing smoothly, which decreases your risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Exercising also helps to strengthen our resilience against various other health complications and diseases. Regular exercise helps to prevent or manage a wide range of health problems and concerns including:
- stroke
- metabolic syndrome
- type 2 diabetes
- depression
- a number of types of cancer
- arthritis and falls
Our bodies were meant to move and our bodies actually crave exercise. Regular exercise is necessary for physical fitness and good health. Try and incorporate more exercise sessions into your weekly routine!
Improves Mental Health And Mood
Exercising has also been proven to improve the mental health of the individual. Essentially, working out and exercising allows the brain the release these feel-good chemicals called “endorphin” that gives us that euphoric feeling.
Exercising is also a great way to blow off some steam after a stressful day. It’s also a great way to gives yourself an emotional lift. A gym session or brisk 30-minute walk can help. Remember, physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you feeling happier and more relaxed.
Another big benefit of exercising regularly is how you may also feel better about your appearance and yourself. This can boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem in extraordinary ways.
Exercising with weights and other forms of resistance training develops your muscles, bones, and ligaments for increased strength and endurance. Your posture can be improved, and your muscles become more firm and toned. You not only feel better, but you look better, too!
Boosts Energy Levels
When you engage in physical activity frequently, it helps your body in a very interesting way! Regular physical activity can improve your muscle strength and boost your endurance.
When you exercise, your body uses energy in order to perform those sweat-inducing exercises. Aerobic exercise involves continuous physical motion, such as walking, swimming, and bicycling. It improves your stamina by training your body to become more efficient and use less energy for the same amount of work.
Engaging in physical activity delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues and helps your cardiovascular system work more efficiently. And when your heart and lung health improve, you have more energy to tackle daily chores, parental duties, focus on your career, and much more.
As your conditioning level improves, your heart rate and breathing rate return to resting levels much sooner from strenuous activity.
With increased levels of energy also comes…
Increased Sex Libido, Giggity
As we just learned, regularly engaging in physical activity can improve energy levels and physical appearance. This has a profound impact on your confidence level which may also boost your sex life.
When we begin to feel good about how we look, the things we accomplish on a daily basis and seeing the results of our training, it has a magnetic effect on ourselves and the people around us. When we feel good about ourselves, we resonate that everywhere!
Regular physical activity may enhance arousal for women. And men who exercise regularly are less likely to have problems with erectile dysfunction than are men who don’t exercise.
Promotes Better Quality Of Sleep
Regular physical activity can help you fall asleep faster and deepen your sleep. I know that after a long day of work and exercising, I’m always ready to go to sleep.
It’s a good feeling being able to sink into the comforts of your blankets while your muscles heal away. Just don’t exercise too close to bedtime, or you may be too energized to hit the hay.
What Are Fitness Trackers And How Do Fitness Trackers Work?
A Fitness Tracker, also known as an activity tracker, is a device that is utilized to help monitor and track fitness-related activities. These activities could be walking o running, how much calories you’ve consumed, heart-rate monitoring, and measuring your quality of sleep.
Fitness trackers have become increasingly more advanced over the years and have become capable of doing much more with each new update. They come in many shape and forms to suit your particular style and they also link to your mobile phone for easy access to your daily activity levels.
Fitness trackers stay quietly on your wrist and are able to:
- Count your steps
- Track your sleep
- Monitor your heart rate
- Calculate the difference between a light jog and a mad sprint
But how exactly does your fitness tracker come up with all the statistics that appear on the accompanying app? I won’t get into the exact science but the fitness tracker is able to do all this and more due to the advancements in sensor technology.
Simply speaking, fitness trackers measure motion with the use of a 3-axis accelerometer that is able to track movement in every direction. Some fitness trackers also come with a gyroscope too to measure orientation and rotation.
The data collected by this device is then converted into steps and activity and from their into calories and sleep quality. It’s not a perfect science yet but the results are unanimous: owning a fitness tracker and staying committed to leading a healthier lifestyle has positive effects on people!
Some fitness trackers also contain an altimeter that can measure your altitude, which is handy for working out the height of the mountains you’ve climbed or the number of flights of stairs you’ve managed to get up and down during the day.
All of this information is collected and crunched to create an overall reading, and the more sensors your tracker has, the more accurate its data. These sensors measure the acceleration, frequency, duration, intensity, and patterns of your movement—taken together that’s a good bunch of data and it can help a tracker work out if you’re walking down the road or just waving at someone you know.
Watch this video to get a better grasp of how Fitness Trackers work!
What Are The Benefits Of A Fitness Tracker?
Motivation
One of the biggest benefits of owning a fitness tracker is how it offers the best hope of staying amped up and ready to work toward fitness dreams; it helps fuel your motivation and inner drive!
Research states that fitness tracking devices encourage a significant increase in fitness and physical activities for their wearers. Rather than feeling like a chore or drudgery, a fitness tracker allows your fitness routine to feel more like a game or fun activity.
These tools help you stay motivated about your progress even when the results don’t feel obvious.
While personal motivation is ultimately a key component of physical activity, many people also enjoy the benefits of posting their activities on social media – and many fitness trackers’ apps promote linking up with other fitness trackers in your area, creating workout groups, and hosting challenges.
Also, many models of fitness trackers are retail-priced at over $100. For many, that can be steep for a little band that wraps around your wrist and displays information most athletes don’t need to know to motivate them to workout.
But this is part of that psychological encouragement. If you’re dropping the cash for it, you might as well use it your advantage.
Accountability
We’ve all been there: we get so excited about going back to the gym, eating healthier, and staying active! Week one goes great! Week two is okay. Then by week three or four, our motivation begins to dwindle.
One of the most challenging aspects of fitness is a lack of accountability. Getting in shape is often a solitary goal, and many feel as though no one knows or cares about their progress.
It’s easy to push aside your fitness routine or choose to forget about your health responsibilities. However, many fitness trackers come with personalized reminders and other accountability tools designed to keep your health goals at the forefront of your attention.
It’s far more difficult to brush off your fitness schedule when you’re consistently given firm reminders of its importance.
The only person you’re truly competing against is yourself! Fitness trackers track your goals and your progress, psychologically encouraging you to walk more steps than you did yesterday; to run faster than you did yesterday; to sustain that peak heart rate for just a little longer for that intense interval training.
Research shows that wearing a fitness tracker – even if it’s just a basic pedometer! – can increase a user’s activity levels by 30 percent!
Safety
When the topic of tracking devices comes up, many only think of the weight loss or fitness benefits. However, these devices offer deeper benefits.
Those with heart conditions and other serious medical issues should strongly consider using fitness tracking devices, not only for health improvements but also as a medical warning device. Many newer models come with safety tools such as sleep monitors, heart rate monitors, and blood pressure trackers.
People with medical concerns that require their heart or blood pressure to remain within specific ranges benefit from the devices’ easy tracking capabilities. These wearables prevent dangerous heart rates and other concerns from sneaking up and posing health risks. For some, this simple tech tool can very well save their life.
Style
Like I said before, fitness tracker watches have become all the rage. Everyone and their mothers want one now.
As such, most of these companies have taken careful consideration as to the design and elegance of their product.
You’ll see many devices out on the market that is rather appealing to the eyes! Be sure to look at the design and see which activity tracker fits your own unique style! Fitness trackers come in all shapes, sizes, and colors!
Sincerely,
James Kim
