Wearable watches and other technology has taken over the health and fitness industry. Using it seems like a great idea on the surface but be careful that you aren’t using it the wrong way.
The idea of having a piece of technology always on your wrist/finger which keeps track of some of the many health and fitness statistics is awesome! You can track your steps, weight, heart rate, sleep patterns and in many cases answer calls and texts to boot. The marriage of data and convenience could not have been better. Some of the wearables can even detect your movement and pretty much start themselves or at least ask you if you are exercising…cool but at the same time kind of creepy.
The question that I have is: Once the data is recorded what are you actually doing with it?
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- Daily step tracking?
- Goal weight tracking?
- Daily calories burned tracking?
- Tracking your sleep patterns?
If you’ve answered yes to any of the above, is it leading to positive habit change or do you plan to use the wearable for the rest of your life? My assumption is that the goal of the wearable is to create positive habits which would make using them a short term experience. The interesting thing is that the companies that have designed this technology have added enough features to make you NEVER want to take them off.
To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using these devices to help you along your health and fitness journey. Unfortunately, we have gotten so used to having these things track our every move that we actually get upset when we don’t “start our watch” before exercising or they don’t work like they have been in the past. Recorded or not, the activities that you take part in still count toward being successful/healthy. I doubt that anyone records every event that they watch or attend but they still find a way to enjoy it just the same.
What I am saying about wearables is that you should be careful to NOT get addicted to having or using them with no real reason for understanding why you are doing so. I recently “broke up” with the fitness features of my watch after using it for years. I no longer record my workouts and if I knew of a way to NOT record my steps I would do that as well. I did this because I am at a point in my health and fitness journey where I know who I am and what I do on a very regular basis to maintain my health. The watch will not give me any data which will positively change my behavior nor will it “motivate” me to do more than I am right now. If that changes in the future I may go back or add a device to help me toward my next goal.
I continue to use my watch for texting and other features but no longer using the fitness side has led to a freedom that I didn’t know that I was missing. No longer do I feel the need to “start my watch” for any activities in order for them to count. I just show up, get it done with as much intensity as I feel necessary that day and move on. It did take a few weeks to break the habit of defaulting to my watch before exercising but it has been a pleasant change for sure.
