I do not use one. I have a wife… (pause… pause a little more …) who uses one. And she is privy to others’ daily fitnessing.
I’m a little more private when it comes to my vitals.
What say you?
I don’t share my info. I’ve never consistently walked 10k steps a day and I think that’s a construct.
I have read that people get really anxious over their stats (steps, exercise, sleep, etc.) not being good enough. With sleep especially, I can worry a lot about not getting enough. OTOH I like knowing if I’m tired bc I’m not sleeping or if I’m tired for a different reason. So I try to take the stats with a grain of salt.
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I might prefer monthly stats instead of constant nagging.
I mean, my wife… (you know what to do here)… gets scolded for sitting down too long, when we were on a road trip over the weekend.
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I actually do like the hourly nagging to stand, but I need to figure out how to change when that starts. On weekends I would love for it to start after 8. If I’m actually sleeping after 7 then I probably need that sleep.
I use my Apple Watch for steps and heart rate. Heart rate is useful when I set the treadmill to different inclines so that I can see what speed I need to set it to keep up a consistent effort.
It also counts floors climbed but only when walking up stairs or a slope, not when the treadmill is on an incline.
I used to pay attention to the exercise rings but since I closed them by going after my step goal, I just ignore them.
GAINZ!!!
GAAAAAAIIIIINNNNZZZZZ!!!
I have a Fitbit. (Fitbit 3, I think.) I use it to track sleep, though it generally doesn’t catch the first 90 minutes or so. I also use it for heart rate monitoring, though I’ve noticed how it sits on my wrist can impact the reading.
Beyond that? If I want to track walking distance and pace, I use the pohn’s built-in stuff. Yeah, great to get step counts from the Fitbit but that’s not what I’m using to measure myself against.
a fine line between constant monitoring oneself and obsessing in an unhealthy way
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Obsessive people are going to obsess over something.
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I’m not worrying about whether I get 10,000 steps in, but it is useful to know that you’ve only walked 2,000. (I track on my phone, not watch.)
I try to get in at least 5,000 steps a day, which really isn’t that much. But now that I roll out of bed and into my computer chair, it’s very easy to have practically no physical activity multiple days in a row, just like it’s easy to put on 20 pounds if you aren’t paying attention. So I think it’s helpful to be able to track, though I don’t care about sharing/competing.
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This.
Very similar to diet app trackers. I think they’re both useful if you have specific, short-term goals in mind - i.e. losing 5lbs over the next 8 weeks, or training for a 5k in a couple months. You can use both to track your progress to make sure you hit your goals.
Long-term, I don’t think people need to track calories each and every meal just like we don’t need a device telling us exactly how much effort we put in to a workout or how many steps we took in a day.
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I should add that we’d need to use these trackers religiously over a short timeframe (2-3ish months, I’d say) to get a general idea of what we need to eat in a day or how many calories certain types of workouts burn.
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