I recently bought
myself a wearable fitness tracker as a means of tracking my day to day activity
levels and monitor my sleeping patterns. If I'm completely honest I'm still,
roughly a month into owning and using the device, finding out how to operate
and interpret all of the functions and data, but am nevertheless enjoying my
newfound ability to self-quantify.
Many of you will
own a fitness tracker and ay already have a few years on me in terms of
experience in their use. You might use yours to count your steps, give you an
idea of calories burned during exercise or keep an eye on your heart rate. Each
tracker on the market seems to have its own pros and cons but I opted for the
Fitbit Charge HR. This device is in the mid to upper price range (I paid around
£100 on Amazon) and reviews of its functionality are pretty damn good.
From what I can tell, I’m currently able to track and access the following information:
- Steps
- Heart rate
- Distance travelled
- Sleep patterns
- Calorie burn
- Hourly activity
- Floors climbed
I’m still a bit
stumped as to why Fitbit think that people have any interest or use in knowing
how many floors they’ve climbed. I have a sneaking suspicion that they wanted a
certain number of functions and were scrambling around trying to find a cheap
way to add one last one in! Apparently the device has an inbuilt altimeter
sensor which detects changes in elevation and counts one floor for every 10
feet elevation gain.
Now, I’m an active
person and ensure that I schedule in timeslots each week for structured
exercise. I’m fortunate in the sense that I work at a gym and therefore find it
pretty convenient to bang out a workout either before, between or after seeing
my clients. But outside of these dedicated training sessions what I’m also very
aware of is something called my non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT).
This is essentially the energy I expend for everything that I do aside from
dedicated exercise such as working out at the gym, powerwalking or playing
football. As we all know, our ability to create and maintain a healthy, lean
and robust physique is to a great degree determined by the energy that we expend,
in that if we consume fewer calories than we consume, we’re more likely to
limit unwanted body fat.
In my opinion, NEAT
is a really important and often underexplored consideration in our quest for
health and fitness. Have a think about the healthiest people you know. No, not
the strongest lifters in the weights room or even the quickest runners over
100m. I’m talking about the healthiest people who you’d imagine will live the
longest. If I do this I’m picturing people who partake in not just high
intensity and physically demanding activities but also lots of low intensity,
low impact movement. This could be using a bicycle to travel short distances or
time spent gardening or home DIY.
When I look at the
data that my new Fitbit churns out I don’t really take it as gospel. While it
actually seems to be quite accurate in some respects, such as counting my steps
when I walk on a treadmill, it’s definitely a long way off in others, like my
daily calorie burn. I mention the calorie burn as I’m in no way confident that
my device can possibly have a handle on my caloric energy expenditure as it
doesn’t have the ability, for example, to consider the thermogenic effect of
the foods that I eat, or differentiate between the intensity of two
weightlifting exercise sessions. I’m not sure it would even recognise a long
bike ride due to the lack of movement if worn, as it’s intended, on the wrist.
So, I personally
use my device to help me compare step counts from one day to the next, in full
appreciation that it won’t be 100% accurate. Nevertheless I feel that it
certainly motivates me to keep moving and makes me more aware of periods of
inactivity. I’ve been known to jokingly proclaim that ‘sitting is the new
smoking’. Whilst I usually say this with a smile on my face, it’s actually a
problem that’s very much at the forefront of my consciousness. By ensuring that
we minimise the time we spend sitting, and increasing our NEAT through what
many would consider negligible small movements and fidgeting, we can genuinely
make a big impact on our health. The benefits of standing more for improvements
in posture alone should be enough to convince us to be more mindful of the time
we spend on our bums. But the added body composition and fat loss advantages make
it a total no-brainer.
I’m sure I’ll cover
more on this subject in future blog posts but I hope that this short
introduction to the subject is enough to at least make you think.
NOW GET UP, MOVE
& LIVE TO 100!

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