Nowadays, everybody and their dog has a fitness tracker (yes, that’s right, they sell them for dogs too). Is being hyper-aware of your every step healthy, or is it excessive? Today, we’re tackling fitness tracker pros and cons.
Full disclosure: I’ve been wearing and using FitBit trackers for years. I paid for all devices myself, and have no other relationship with FitBit or any other fitness tracker company (formal or otherwise). Opinions are my own, but I believe in full transparency, so there you are!
All right, now let’s get into the world of fitness trackers.
The Basics
What exactly is a fitness tracker? Fitness trackers range from simple pedometers (step counters) to high-end smart watch-esque devices that measure steps, distance, calories burned, flights of stairs climbed, sleep, pace, and more. Oftentimes, these trackers can be synched to your phone and are compatible with other fitness/health apps. You could have something as basic as a simple step counter all the way up to a device that tracks your every move, bite of food eaten, water consumed, time slept, and more.
Now, again for full transparency, this post is going to be primarily opinion-based. While I believe my opinion is fairly well-educated due to my credentials and experience as a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Personal Trainer, they are still just that, opinions. I’ll try to include the science when available, but the realm of fitness tracker research is still fairly new. We don’t have good enough data yet to suggest that fitness trackers are helpful or harmful.
Possible Benefits
- Heightened awareness. While fitness tracker-specific research is still relatively new, we do have good data to suggest that self-monitoring helps people make healthier lifestyle changes. Basically, sometimes you don’t realize how little you move throughout the day until you notice that you only have a couple hundred steps tracked. Heightened awareness can be the first step to making a change. You need to know that a problem exists before you can solve it, essentially.
- Positive progress. Being able to go back to older data and see how the little (or big) changes you’ve made are making a difference can be really motivating. It’s especially exciting to be able to bump up your daily goal a little bit because you’ve found success at consistently meeting it regularly.
- Achievement motivation. In addition to what I mentioned in #2, many of these devices and apps give you virtual badges or rewards for achieving certain goals. People with a bit of a competitive edge may find this especially motivating to get them moving more. Some, like FitBit, even have friend challenges where you can compete against people you know who also use FitBits. This can be a fun, motivating way to encourage you to find creative ways to be a bit more active throughout the day.
- Community support. While this can really vary based on device and apps used, many fitness oriented apps and devices have some kind of “community” aspect. You can connect with other people, share ideas and struggles, and challenge each other to move more. This may be especially helpful for those who don’t have a strong support structure at home, or who don’t have a lot of friends or family who are active.
- Non-fitness related benefits. You may have a watch-type fitness tracker that allows you to use it as…a watch. Many devices also have alarm, timer, and stopwatch functions that can be useful. Some even display phone notifications, or have contactless payment functionality.
Possible Harms
- Over-awareness. Now, while it might be beneficial to have a general understanding of your health behaviors being hyper-aware isn’t a good thing. Constantly checking your steps, and devoting large chunks of time in your day specifically to your fitness tracker is a sign things might be going too far.
- Over-prioritization. Placing more emphasis on hitting your step goals than other things in your life isn’t great either. If you’re leaving friend or family gatherings early to “get your steps in” before the end of the day even though you haven’t seen these people in a while is not a healthy thing. Pacing your house at night and pushing your bedtime further and further back because you “haven’t gotten all your steps” is another possible warning sign. Absolutely, getting regular movement is important, but it’s not the most important thing ever and shouldn’t be. If you’re having trouble prioritizing other things over “getting your steps”, it might be time to take a break from tracking.
- Over-emphasis on “steps”. I think this can be the hardest thing about using a step tracker, you realllly want to get those steps. For me, this meant prioritizing working out on the treadmill at the gym instead of the elliptical because you got more steps that way. The thing that’s important to remember, however, is that step-gaining exercises aren’t superior to non-step gaining exercises. If that means lifting weights and not hitting your step goals for the day, that’s 100% fine. Once again, this is a matter of prioritization. Stretching, swimming, lifting weights, yoga, there are so many fantastic ways to be active that aren’t going to garner lots of steps. That’s just the reality.
- Enforcing disordered behaviors. While I think it might be a bit of a stretch to suggest that a fitness tracker will cause disordered eating or exercise behaviors, it can certainly enforce these behaviors in people who are already engaging in them. For someone who has an unhealthy relationship with food, movement, and their body having a tracker can be triggering. It tells them exactly how active they’re being, how many calories they’ve burned, etc. This, in turn, can help them reinforce these unhealthy behaviors. It’s another tool to aid them in disordered behaviors…
- Focusing on the numbers. Your fitness tracker can only really give you numbers. It can’t really tell you how healthy you are or aren’t. It just spits out a number. And the accuracy of these numbers may vary wildly between devices and people. A great example of this for me is when I was watching a high school graduation. The ceremony was over 2 hours of me just sitting there and somehow I managed to hit my step goal in the middle of it despite not having taken a single step since it began. I figured out that all of my clapping for each graduate walking across the stage was actually giving me steps…oops!
- Guilt. Having this number goal to achieve every day can cause some negative feelings if you don’t achieve it. And since in tracker-land every day is the same, it’s harder to give yourself a break when you need it. Having an extra busy day, being sick or injured, events, travel, there are so many VALID excuses why you didn’t get all your steps for the day.
- Feelings of dependence. Now, this might just be very personal to me, but at one point over my years of using FitBit trackers I would get legitimately upset if my tracker died and wasn’t recording my steps. I literally had to have that thing on me at all times to track what I was doing, or I felt crappy about myself. Like the exercise I did without a FitBit strapped to me somehow didn’t “count”. I would even make it a point to NOT move as much when it was charging. My logic was that I didn’t want those steps to “go to waste”. Definitely not what I would consider a healthy relationship with technology right there…
Honestly, I think fitness trackers can be a great tool for some and an equally harmful tool for others. You may experience some, all, or none of the positives/negatives that we’ve discussed. In my time using FitBit trackers (over 5 years) I’ve used them in both unhealthy and now, thankfully, healthier ways.
Before purchasing a fitness tracker, either for yourself, or someone you care about, I think it’s important to really think about how this device may affect you/them. If you’re currently using a fitness tracker, take a second to think about how it’s actually impacting your life. What are the positives for you, what are the negatives? If the negatives are outweighing the positives, it might be time to discontinue your use of the tracker. At the very least, it’s a good time to really take stock of what’s going on with you. Is your relationship with food, activity, and your body in a good place? Will a fitness tracker help this relationship? Will it hinder this relationship? And keep in mind that all of this may change as time goes on.
For me, my relationship with my FitBit started out in a very unhealthy place. It gradually became more positive until now, when I believe I’m able to use this device in a healthy way. For some people, this may happen as well, for others discontinuing use altogether may be needed. And for some still, their relationship with fitness trackers may just always be peachy. It’s all very individualized, and is a decision that you ultimately need to make for yourself.
I will say, however, that I 100% don’t believe you need a fitness tracker to be healthy. There’s no evidence to suggest that, and there’s a million other great tools out there.
Have you ever used a fitness tracker, now or in the past? What has your experience been like?