Interesting article on fitness trackers to today's NY Times

[lmacmil]

\https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/24/well/move/fitness-watch-tracker-wearable-data.html?searchResultP...

Asks the question, can we have too much (fitness) data?

[Mattyyey]

Yes. We can become obsessed with the data, not realising how much our bodies fluctuates in various ways.

I don't suggest anybody to use a scale everyday. Very simple. Things can alter the weight such as dehydration, Just eaten, time of day etc

Some people like to have the hourly fitness reminders from Fitbit... I don't! I go to the gym and do lots of running and have a manual labour job. When I need to rest in the middle of the day (night shift worker) I need to rest! My body has probably done 19 mi of jogging lifting weights twice as heavy as my body weights etc my body needs time to rest and repair. I don't need the watch telling me that I've been sat down watching my favourite TV show for an hour and a half and I need to get moving 🤣

The accuracy of this data is also slightly questionable. The calories burnt estimations of the Fitbit are quite different to the calories burnt given by a running machine. There's even variations in different smart watches that are both Fitbits! This again leads into the obsessive nature of, did I eat one too many cookies!? 🤣

Don't get me wrong. I like to know when it says I've burnt 5,000 calories in a day so I can make sure I eat a little bit more... But I don't obsess over the exact number. Genetic variations and inaccurate monitoring mean that this number cannot actually be 100% accurate (almost never possible).

Also I sometimes wonder what these companies are using this health data for... Like if it's just to sell me things that's okay, I have the self-control. But what if they're trying to model human activity to the point where they can figure out the limitations of the human body and uses that against us in robotic warfare? 😎😜🤣🤣🤣🤣 Maybe that's why they are doing these 15-minute cities because they know most people can't/wont walk for more than 15 minutes 🤨🙄🤦

Anyway couldn't read the article because it's behind a paywall. 

[lmacmil]

To bypass the paywall try Firefox Windows version on a laptop or go into your browser  and delete  NYTimes cookies.  They used to let you read a few articles per month. Maybe they don't anymore.   The article made some of the same points you did. 

There are only a few pieces of data from the Fitbit that I'm interested in: daily total steps, time of and steps during exercise,  heart rate during exercise. I tried sleep tracking for a while but found  I didn't feel any difference between fair sleep and good sleep so I stopped wearing it to bed.

[Mattyyey]

I agree with the sleep data too, I wore it religiously at first to see how well I was sleeping. What it taught me was to make sure I turned the TV off, or use a timer so it does it itself. Don't drink too much b4 bed as I'll only wake up for a pee several times. Beyond that it wasn't loads of help. Plus being a restless sleeper, I could get 8 hrs and it tell me I barely got 6hrs... So I would just end up looking at the start and end times. Anyway I was usually getting a sleep score or 70 to 90, so the score was moot. With that said I did learn a few things as I said.

I find the heart rate useful for knowing how hard I'm pushing myself, and the resting rate to make sure I'm not having too much coffee. Both are in a good range. I can imagine for others the zones are also quite useful - fat burning, peak etc not really an issue for me though.

As for the step counter, that's how I figured out I was running approximately 19 miles a day. Number of steps X AVG stride length = distance travelled 😎 I get between 28,000 to 36,000 a night (at work 4 days a week).

So the help CAN teach us things we didn't know. Just always take it with a pinch of salt 😉😉

P.s CBA going on pc for bypassing the paywall.