Whether you wear a Fitbit, Garmin, WHOOP, Oura Ring, or Apple Watch, a wearable fitness tracker can be an excellent motivator to move your body more.
Many of them can track your calories, sleep quality, and step count. Undeniably, they can be a useful tool for improving your health and habits in multiple ways. But are these trackers actually accurate? And does their accuracy matter?
What Your Fitness Tracker Can’t Tell You
Perhaps the area where fitness trackers struggle most is calorie counting.
In a well-known Stanford study of seven popular devices, heart rate tracking held up well, but calorie estimates were a bit variable. Even the best device was off by about 27% on average, and the worst by 93%. This means that a workout your watch (or ring) logs as 500 calories could really be closer to 350 or 650 (which is a huge difference).
Trackers are reasonably good at estimating how long you slept, usually within 5 to 10 minutes of a clinical sleep test. They’re far less reliable, though, at breaking that sleep into light, deep, and REM stages. They also tend to count time spent lying still as sleep, which can make your night look slightly better than it was.
What Your Fitness Tracker Can Tell You
On the other hand, there are upsides to having a fitness tracker!
In the same Stanford study mentioned above, six of the seven devices measured heart rate within 5% of the true value, with accuracy varying with intense exercise. The estimated steps are also among the more accurate measurements, with Garmin leading the way.
One thing worth keeping in mind with any fitness tracker is that trends over time tell you far more than any single day’s number (more on this below).
How to Use Your Fitness Wearable for Your Health
Ultimately, a tracker’s biggest benefit is motivation. Using a wearable fitness tracker has been shown to increase activity by around 1,800 steps per day on average, with the best results happening when it’s paired with clear, specific goals.
However, the numbers on your tracker shouldn’t necessarily run the show. Fixating on hitting a target, or feeling deflated by a “bad” score, may do more harm than good. Your tracker works best as a personal benchmark; for instance, it can show you whether you’re moving more than you used to.
And the best tracker? It’s the one you’ll actually wear, and that motivates you to get moving more or redefine some of your daily habits.
At Posture & Wellness, we help you move comfortably so you can make the most out of every step. If pain is getting in your way, book your FREE discovery call with our Finsbury Park team today. BOOK NOW.