A little over a month ago, I got back into a familiar routine, one I’ve drifted in and out of for well over a decade: I started hyperfocusing on my health “data,” tracking workouts and rest on an Apple Watch, calories in and out on an app, and my weight and body composition on a smart scale. I’ve relished in doing this sort of thing, off and on, for my entire adult life, because it gives me a sense of insight and control—but this time, I wondered if spending all day, every day thinking about my “health” was really that, well, healthy.
Here’s what I learned after a month in the trenches of knowledge and some discussions with experts.
What I use: Apple Watch Series ($299. 99)
The main feature I use my new Apple Watch for is tracking my workouts. I teach cycling lessons, so I have a clever reason to wonder how effective my categories are, since other people pay to come. Aside from that, I also need to know, realistically, how much I accomplish when I spend an hour on the elliptical machine, half-moving my feet while enjoying my fourteenth rep of Gossip Girl.
This has been by far my maximum favorable follow-up effort, because even though we know that knowledge of calorie burning can be a bit sketchy, it still helps me visualize (very roughly) how much energy I’ve expended and when I’m at my peak. I do my peak productivity when I play out the mundane facets of my life, so I “finalize my rings,” i. e. , achieve my activity, training, and fitness goals for the day and see it reflected in a small badge on my watch. It motivates me a lot. It doesn’t matter if I burn 400 calories on the desk bike, as my watch says, because without the possibility of not finishing my rings to push myself on a night when I’m feeling tired, I might not do it at all.
Teddy Savage, national head coach at Planet Fitness, agrees that wearables or workout tracking apps “add excellent value to any fitness journey. “He says that in addition to tracking things like your heart rate or calories burned, using them can be non-public. Accountability and support allow you to track progress and celebrate milestones, as well as set manageable goals that keep you connected to your “why. “That’s true for me. After about a week of tracking my workouts and daily activity, I’ve found that I can do more without issue, so I increase my daily movement and workout goals, which makes the rings harder to close.
However, there are some drawbacks. As Savage puts it: “Sometimes over-analysis can lead you to run in quicksand because you start chasing the numbers rather than the tangible benefits you can ‘feel,’ which are the most prominent reasons to move your body. Charting a path through tracking your progress can be a smart thing to do, as long as you don’t get lost focusing too much on the numbers and not enough on your mojo. Again, I’m guilty: when I gamify my activity, I participate in it to receive praise. to finalize the rings and receive little “compliments” from my applications. To do those things, yes, I have to do a healthy activity, but that’s not my purpose when I do it. Healthy things are a means to an end, and finishing makes my numbers go up, up, up.
What I use: MyFitnessPal (free, with in-app purchases)
In the past, I’ve recommended MyFitnessPal because of how simple it is to track how many calories (or, if you pay for the upgraded version, various macros and nutrients) you consume in a day. I first downloaded it on 2012. La first time I embarked on a “fitness trip”, however, in hindsight, I was nearsighted on a “weight loss journey” and didn’t care as much about my overall fitness as my overall fitness about my overall appearance. I’ve been diligent with my food intake to the point that I don’t vividly forget a friend who got mad at me for recording my intake of a single cookie, and that deserves to be sufficient evidence of the two main disorders with this kind of Knowledge Tracking: First of all, it only works if you record both one and both pieces you consume, But second, it’s easy to get carried away and start a deeply bad relationship with food.
Laura Silver, a Brooklyn-based nutritionist who works with others in this category of moments, says that while studies show that tracking can lead to greater eating behavior and greater responsibility, it’s not ideal. for much more. At the very least, it’s almost highly unlikely to determine whether the foods you’re logging actually match the nutrients on the app. Consider all the other sizes, cuts, and preparation styles of the humble poultry breast. Even if you weigh yours and take into account what you cooked it in, you can’t be sure that the calories and nutrients it was actually fed are reflected in the amount the app claims you ate. At worst, you may start to obsess, which you don’t. It doesn’t leave much room for a healthy relationship with food or understanding how its structure works. As Silver points out, if you allocate 2,000 calories per day on the app, you’re incorrectly assuming that your body “resets” at midnight, requiring an additional 2,000 calories between midnight and midnight. If you’re constantly fighting a cold, that can affect how much you actually need, and it’s not as linear as the 24-hour application cycle makes it seem. When you restrict too much, he adds, your body begins to adapt, learns to take advantage of those fewer calories, and your weight loss stops. If you have become “obsessive” with your tracking, you may research inconsistently.
In the end, he clarifies that “we are not machines. ” Bodies are not as easy to describe in numbers and absolutes as the programs would have us believe. I’d throw rocks out of a glass space if I told you. It’s best to avoid food tracking altogether with an app, but at least think about why you need to do it before you start. If you need to take accurate notes on when you are in the habit of consuming certain types and amounts of food, choose more foods. and visualize your habits, those apps are smart, science-based tools. For anything else, talking to an expert, whether it’s a nutritionist like Silver or a teacher like Savage, to discover your body’s unique desires and how to consciously track your nutrition can help (or hinder) your personal goals. Silver, for example, is a proponent of intuitive eating, not obsessive following.
As for me, after a few more months of committed MFP entries, I think I’m going to cancel this one. This week, I felt the need to save a single Ferrero-Rocher candy after eating it, which momentarily interrupted the laughter of my holiday festivities. The goal of knowledge tracking is for you; Cutting back on a 72-calorie chocolate fudge might be one way to conserve most of my nutrients, but it’s not a way to stay satisfied, so it’s not really a path to true wellness.
What to use: iHealth Nexus Smart Scale ($39. 99)
My relationship with this device is contentious. On the day I unboxed it, I jumped on it, eager to glean insight into not only my weight, but BMI, body fat percentage, bodily water percentage, muscle mass, and bone mass—plus have that information immediately entered into my Apple Health and various other tracking apps, with which the scale syncs easily. I reminded myself that BMIs are a poor measure of health overall and that research has shown that for all the hype, these things aren’t always very accurate when measuring body composition. Nevertheless, I was demoralized by my results across all seven measurements. To be clear, the data I got on the first night put me in a funk, which is not really conducive to betterment. Silver cautions against calorie tracking apps because it’s easy to stop using them when the first burst of determination wears off or you start feeling bad about something. The same can be said for the smart scale. After I stopped moping, I vowed to show the scale who’s boss and work hard for better results on future readings. That sort of thinking is unsustainable; it’s much better to have measured, long-term goals that are in favor of your own betterment, not the besting of a machine or the achievement of hitting a certain number.
Over the weeks I’ve been using it, I’ve stopped paying attention to the frame composition stats, aware that they’re probably garbage and just some other number to hang on to. This definitely reduces the usefulness of the device to the maximum, but not all of it. I’m also starting to resist the temptation to weigh myself constantly, knowing that weight fluctuates throughout the day depending on several factors. Now I do it once in the morning, and that’s where the only real advantage of a smart scale comes in: in addition to sharing my knowledge with the apps I’ve given permission for, it creates a little graph that allows me to monitor my weight replace. over time. I’m a visual person, so I really like it. Day after day, there are few replacements, but over the course of a week or month, the decline or bullish reversal of a line is more significant. Rather, the smart scale reminds me that replacing and adapting in healthier ways are long-term events consisting of small habit adjustments. It took me weeks to find this kind of motivation after my disastrous first night with the machine, so if you need to start tracking your weight (or other measurements) this way, keep that in mind.
Here’s also what Savage says: “Smart scales allow you to combine all the pieces of the puzzle to get a clearer view of the big picture when it comes to weight management. “
After 4 weeks of being attached to my devices and routines, the following has happened:
I paid more attention to the nutrition of my food.
I a little bit of weight.
I’m more consistent with trips to the gym or rides in the Peloton.
I made a mistake by walking more and taking less bus.
I also felt a bit caught up in the numbers game and had to remind myself to relax.
I recommend data tracking if you’re looking to visualize your habits and behaviors, then make meaningful change based on your new insights, but not if you’re someone who can easily get wrapped up in minutiae, obsessions, or the quick dopamine hit of reaching a daily goal with no concern for longer-term progress. Frankly, these things make it too easy to get carried away if you’re not careful. I’m sticking with my watch and my scale (though ignoring a vast chunk of what the scale claims to reveal about me), but probably uninstalling MyFitnessPal. If you plan to incorporate any tracking software or hardware of your own, consider keeping a journal with it, too, and tracking how you feel after a workout, after dinner, and after using the devices. Keep data of your data! And if you’re feeling negative about any of it, reassess and consider offloading whatever isn’t making you feel good. Gaining more awareness about your body and habits is cool, but feeling like you have to write down everything you consume or get to the gym on a day when you just have no time is not.
“Fitness is all about making the experience personalized and enjoyable,” says Savage. “The more you can find out about yourself, the more you can create the most beneficial and holistic fitness routine for both your physical and mental health. When adding wearables and fitness apps into your routine and monitoring the data, its important to remind yourself that the numbers should only be seen as the breadcrumbs that lead you to the next step along your fitness journey and should never turn into the end-all-be-all of your efforts or successes.”
Lindsey Ellefson is the Features Editor at Lifehacker. Lately she covers studios and productivity hacks, such as home and virtual cleaning, and supervises freelancers in the sex and dating space. Prior to Lifehacker, he spent most of his career covering media and politics for outlets such as Us Weekly. In recent years, his independent paintings have focused on drug use and the overdose crisis, with articles appearing in Vanity Fair, WIRED, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, and more. Her story for BuzzFeed News won the 2022 American Journalism Online Award for Best Debunking of Fake News.
In addition to her journalism, Lindsey is a student at the NYU School of Global Public Health, where she is working toward her Master of Public Health and conducting research on media bias in reporting on substance use with the Opioid Policy Institute’s Reporting on Addiction initiative. She is also a Schwinn-certified spin class teacher. She won a 2023 Dunkin’ Donuts contest that earned her a year of free coffee. Lindsey lives in New York, NY.