Physical exercise, like a healthy diet, not smoking and drinking alcohol in moderation – is one of the key pillars in preventing almost every chronic disease and a lot of other ones too. But how fit is fit enough?
There is plenty of disagreement about ‘ideal’ amounts of exercise and the intensity required to gain the optimum health benefits; but one thing experts all agree on is that we need to do more of it.
It’s great to take a regular walk for 30 minutes or more each day but is that enough? What about your day to day habits? How many steps do you usually take each day? We should be aiming for around 10,000 but what does that look like and how do you know you’re getting there?
Counting the steps
In recent years, pedometers have become popular ways of measuring – however accurately – our activity levels. These days, they’ve reached a whole new level of sophistication – and accuracy – with the proliferation of the wearable health tracker.
There’s a whole range of them on the market now, often referred to for short as ‘wearables’ because they’re worn on your body, usually on your wrist. They can monitor not only your steps but other vital signs during the day – as well as your night time sleep patterns. And if you hook them up to your computer or smartphone, they can give you a whole lot more information.
One of the great things about fitness trackers is, once you start using them, you’ll look at what you do each day differently. Suddenly, it’s not just about how much time you spend at the gym or on your daily constitutional. Now you can track any activity you do during the day – taking the stairs instead of the lift, walking to the shops instead of driving, or playing nine holes of golf.
Having a wearable fitness tracker makes it easier to set fitness goals and track progress. If you make a small improvement – but keep doing it regularly – then it will show up on your tracker. As your first goals become easily achieved, your tracking device will set new goals.
Monitoring and feedback is a key element in the success of these devices. The feedback helps keep you motivated and if you like, you can share your progress within a group or even a whole web based community. But be warned, it can be quite addictive (in a good way)!
The range available on the market is changing and improving all the time but here is a selection of some popular and affordable options that are easy to find.
The range from Fitbit
Fitbit was the ‘first to market’ with fitness trackers and they have a good range available. One of the easiest to use is the Zip which tracks your steps, distance and calories burned – and you can send all these stats to your computer or phone where they’ll load up into free graphs and charts to show you what’s happening over time.
- The Zip is priced from $68.
The Flex is similar to the Zip but it also tracks your sleep. So during the day it tracks your steps, distance, calories burned, and stairs climbed. At night time it measures your sleep quality and will give you tips to learn how to sleep better and wake up refreshed.
- The Flex is priced at around $129.
The Fitbit Charge HR will give you your heart-rate continuously as well as the steps you take, distance travelled, calories burned, stairs climbed and your sleep at night. All of this data can be viewed directly from the device’s small OLED screen, which is also capable of displaying call notifications from your smartphone. Other features include a silent alarm to gently wake you up in the morning and customisable daily goals.
One of the downsides with the Charge HR is you must remove the band before you shower or go for a swim.
- The Charge HR is priced at $180.
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vivofit from Garmin
Vivofit is a fitness tracker from Garmin and it gets to know your activity level and assigns you personalised daily goals. You’ll wake up in the morning and your vivofit will greet you with your new daily goal. As you meet your goals, it will adjust your goal for the next day, gradually pushing you towards a healthier lifestyle.
The vivofit keeps you active during the day. Often we sit down for prolonged periods and this decreases our body’s production of fat-burning enzymes. You can reverse this by taking frequent, short walk breaks during the day. The vivofit lets you know when you need to move – a red move bar appears on the display after one hour of inactivity and builds when you’ve been sitting for too long. If you walk around for a couple of minutes, the red bar disappears.
Take up the online challenge
The vívofit tracker can stay on for more than a year without a battery change. If you set it to sleep mode when you go to bed, it will monitor your sleep to give you your total sleep hours as well as periods of movement and restful sleep. It’s water-resistant so you can shower or get caught in the rain with no problem.
- The vivofit is priced at around $129.
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Jawbone
The Up24 from Jawbone is a popular fitness tracker. It will track everything from your steps, distance covered, calories eaten and sleep quality. The battery gives you 14 days before you need to recharge. You can set a vibrating alarm to wake you up in the morning and daily activity goals.
The Up24 is also waterproof, meaning you don’t have to take it off before you shower – but it’s not so waterproof you can swim in it.
If you are after a heart monitor in your fitness tracker, you can go for just-released Up3 and it will give you a single resting heart rate each morning so you’ll know if you’re affected by factors such as stress, diet and mood. The Up3 measures the resistance of body tissue to tiny electric current but some other trackers like the Fitbit Charge HR, can give you your heart rate in the middle of a workout so if you want that much information, go for that one.
Another point about the Jawbone Up24 and Up3 is they don’t have a screen – you have to log on with your smartphone to get the information. Some people say this is too fiddly when many other trackers have a screen of their own so check if this works for you.
- The Up24 is priced at $150 and the Up3 is around $229.
