Activity Trackers Misguide You: Here's Why

Number Of Steps

Assumption: the more steps you take, the healthier you will be

Truth: the number of steps taken is unrelated to level of health.

Can you evaluate the quality of an essay is by counting the number of letters it contains? No. The end.

Number Of Calories Burned

Assumption: the more calories you burn, the less fat you will have

Truth: a calorie is a unit of measurement, and that’s it

A “calorie” is unit to represent energy, just like a “gram” is a unit to represent weight. For the sake of tangibility, let’s use grams for an example.

If I said to you: humans need to eat 1,000 grams of food per day to be healthy. Would that make sense to you? It doesn’t to me, because that would mean that as long as I eat 1,000 grams of anything considered food, I will be fine. 1000g of fun dip will surely kill me.

Maybe you’re thinking: “No… calories are different. Calories in must equal calories out. And carbs have less calories than fat.”

Whether you’re using gram, calorie, or any other quantitative measurement, it’s irrelevant. The concept of the calorie started when scientists were trying to figure out a way to quantify malnourishment to determine the minimum amount of food needed to help starving children survive. Now known as the “kcal”, or kilocalorie, they used this to inform governments how to develop aid programs to eradicate starvation and the developmental problems associated with malnutrition.

Conclusion: the calorie-counter is adding value if your survival is in question, you are on the brink of malnourishment, and you need to make sure you have enough food to remain alive.

If you want to be healthy, and go beyond survival, calories are irrelevant. It’s the nature/quality of what you put into your body that matters.

Heart Rate

The body is complex beyond comprehension and constantly in flux. Because we can notice our hearts beating, we measure it.

Elevating the heart rate has become a measure for working hard in a fitness context. Some people actually set goals to have their heart rate hit a certain number. Under certain medical circumstances, people monitor their heart rate to ensure they remain under a particular rate. However, making an effort to exceed a certain rate doesn’t make sense.The more efficient your body is, the lower your heart rate will be, and while it will naturally increase, the less severe the fluctuation to and from a resting rate, the more efficient your system.

Measuring heart rate in fitness context is not necessary. You should be able to just feel your heart beating if you pay enough attention. Leave the external monitoring to healthcare professions in the hospital.

Breathe

Among other things, the Breathe app on the Apple Watch reminds you to breathe, and also lets you set a breathing rate. Here’s why this is a problem:

I know this is supposed to be for reminding you to take a few moments throughout the day to pay attention to your breath. The problem is, you should continually be aware of your breathing all of the time. Think about the last time you paid attention to your breath. How long has it been?

Air is the most immediately essential element for survival. Plug your nose and see how long you can stay alive without it. All vital functions in the body are directly connected to inhalation and exhalation. If your breathing is peaceful, everything else will be much more at ease.

Another important aspect of breathing is that there are harmful consequences to forcefully holding breath. These apps / counters / videos that tell you how many seconds to spend inhaling, holding, and exhaling are not helpful. Overriding your natural breathing is damaging, do not do this.

If you aren’t consciously aware of your breath throughout the day, this is something you need to bring to the forefront of your attention. Do not outsource this awareness to a wrist gadget. And please, do not take instructions from a technology product on how and how often to breathe.

Conclusion

Tools and technology can be used in any way, to enhance or hinder our life. If you find you need to outsource basic awareness of how you’re living, like getting up, breathing, being calm, sleeping - to a device, maybe it’s a sign that you are missing fundamental things in your life, like balance and being present in each moment.

A basic practice like sitting on the floor quietly for 10 minutes in the morning, even if only to be still enough to feel your heart beating from the inside out, is one way to start re-balancing your day.

Sometimes, we complicate things that are actually very simple. Yes, living things are complex, but life can flourish on its own. You just need to get out of your own (and everything else’s) way.