Our Top 10 Fitness Tracker Tips

Wearable activity and fitness trackers like FitBit, Jawbone, Nike trackers, Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy watch, and iPhone-based apps are sweeping the nation, creating competition among friends and family, and motivating Charleston residents to achieve their fitness goals and track their health metrics.
We at Port City Plastic Surgery love staying fit and living a healthy lifestyle. This spring, we are falling in love with our activity trackers too! Dr. Widenhouse and his wife, Cindy, use the social component of FitBit to keep tabs on their fitness goals, and find a little healthy competition to be a motivating tool.
“One evening I found myself actually sneaking out to exercise!” says Cindy. “I couldn’t believe that my husband was so far ahead of me on the leaderboard that day. We have found that activity trackers, when combined with support and encouragement from friends and family, are a powerful motivator to stay on the right track.”
If you don’t already have a fitness tracking device, make sure to do your research – check online reviews, ask about battery life, determine your activity level, learn what activity tracking it offers, and more. Once you have your effective and affordable fitness tracker, here are our top 10 tips to get the most out of your wearable fitness tracker.
1. Choose the Activity Tracker that Works for You
Most fitness trackers come as clip-ons (Fitbit One, Withings Pulse), which may be carried in your pocket, clipped to a waistband, or even hidden in a bra. There are also wristbands you can wear (Fitbit Flex, Nike Fuelband, and Jawbone Up) to automatically track your activity. Picking a device that you’ll be comfortable wearing all day – with all of the health features you want – is key to actually using it. For example, if you care about sleep quality tracking alongside your step counts, you can automatically rule out certain devices and opt for fitness watches instead.
2. Don’t Expect Perfection
Reviews have found that activity trackers don’t always agree on how many steps someone takes during a day. While these discrepancies can be frustrating, it’s important to remember that the larger activity patterns are what will help you change your habits for the better. Most devices on the market today are very effective at tracking these larger patterns and provide relatively accurate readings – focus on finding one that will meet your overall needs rather than finding the “best” fitness tracker.
3. Customize It
When starting out with a fitness tracker, it’s important to take a look at what your life is like now. Are you sitting at a desk for the majority of the day? Do you bike to work? Do you have an overall active lifestyle? Decide what you want to achieve with the activity tracker. What are your goals? Many activity trackers automatically set a goal of 10,000 steps per day. This can be a lot for someone who has a basically sedentary lifestyle or not enough for someone who is active. Make sure you tailor your fitness tracker to YOU, and don’t try to do it all at once, or you could burn out.
4. It Only Works If You Use It
Make it a habit to check your progress and how many steps you’ve taken in a day. This could be right before you go to bed, right before dinnertime, when arriving home from work, etc. Keeping tabs on yourself will help you stay as active as you want to be. And, of course, make sure you’re tracking workouts so you can see your energy expenditure and calories burned throughout the day.
5. Integrate with Smartphone Apps
Third-party developers have built a whole range of smartphone apps that integrate with wearable fitness trackers, allowing you to use more data in ingenious ways. Many have added GPS tracking and a social component that allows you to track how you stack up against your friends or share data with your personal trainer. If you’re already on your way with an activity tracker, take the next step and check out apps like LoseIt!, MapMyFitness, MyFitnessPal, Runkeeper, Sleepio, Strava, Withings, and more. Pick the one that helps you achieve goals that are relevant for you and you’ll be “off to the races.”
6. Find Healthier Options
Many apps that integrate with fitness trackers allow you to track what you eat and have enormous databases of food in their system, including food and menu items from popular grocery chains and restaurants. Checking the database via your smartphone can actually help you choose a healthier option when you’re on the go, even matching it up against your fitness levels. Many fitness trackers also allow for blood oxygen tracking and sleep tracking to check how much sleep you get as well.
7. Create Reports
When you’re using all of this technology day by day, it makes sense to use it to create reports of your “macro” activity patterns. The right fitness tracker will have an automatic reporting function, but you have to go in and actually run the report. If you are doing well, positive reports will keep the fire alive. If you are slacking a bit, they can provide the motivation needed to pick up the pace.
8. How You Wear It
How you wear your basic fitness tracker can help them deliver the best results. We’ve heard that wearing a wrist activity tracker or fitness wearables on your non-dominant wrist can deliver more accurate results for tracking steps, calorie expenditure, heart rate zones, and more, for example.
9. Go Social
Researchers have found that those who post their activity, number of steps, or runs and get encouragement from – or compete with – friends and family are more likely to make lifestyle changes and stick with them.
Working out gets easier with a buddy, and it can be fun to compete with people who are aiming for the same level of activity you are. Having someone a few hundred steps ahead of you on the leaderboard can be a great motivator to get off the couch and stroll around the neighborhood.
10. Keep Learning
Getting stuck in a rut or going on “auto-pilot” can derail even the most well-thought-out and monitored fitness goals. Most fitness trackers, outdoor enthusiasts, and weight loss apps have active communities of users on their message boards, groups, and blogs. On the message boards, people ask questions, discuss experiences, share recipes, and offer encouragement and support to other members. The groups offer a smaller community of members that have specific interests in certain topics. For example, you can find groups on Couch to 5K users, Fitbit Users, Weight Lifting, and more. So for best results, reach out to others and never stop learning.
Begin Your Fitness Journey in Charleston, SC
Board Certified Plastic Surgeon Dr. Brian G. Widenhouse specializes in body contouring, breast surgery, tummy tucks, CoolSculpting, liposuction and more to help you look great for whatever is on your schedule this summer.
Take some time for yourself and schedule your evaluation today! We are confident you will be thrilled with your results – and more motivated to stick with your exercise and healthy living routine – if you work in collaboration with Dr. Widenhouse to choose the procedure that is best for you. Get ready to truly become yourself this summer! Contact us today.
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