5 Reasons to Use a Fitness Tracker

Here are 5 reasons to use a fitness tracker to help you achieve your health and fitness goals.

Fitness trackers are everywhere these days. Odds are, you know a few people with one always posting their step count or sleep patterns. A new one seems to come out every day offering more style, more tracking features, more, moreness. Here you are wondering why in the world everyone is obsessed and “Should I be using one too?” Here are 5 Reasons to Use a Fitness Tracker if you are on the fence.

5 Reasons to Use a Fitness Tracker

1. Health monitoring– Many fitness trackers come with the ability to track your sleep cycles and heart rate. This will give you an idea of your health and alert you when you are coming down with something. One lady even discovered she was pregnant because of her heart rate being high for no determinable reason.

2. Motivation– Setting goals and seeing yourself achieve them is a great. Most fitness trackers come with apps you can use to set your goals and track your progress. By setting small attainable yet challenging goals you can keep yourself excited and motivated to keep going. Some fitness trackers have little notifications built in to give you a boost. They remind you to get up and moving and tell you when you hit your goal for the day. That small reward can be really exciting.

3. Accountability– When you use a fitness tracker and corresponding apps to share your progress with friends and family, you find yourself sticking too it longer or being held accountable to your loved ones when you do not work as hard as usual.

4. Earn rewards– May fitness tracking apps connect to sites and programs that help you earn rewards for your activity. Long before the fitness tracker craze, I had one that gave you codes for every 30 minutes of activity it counted a day. Those codes could be turned in for gift cards and other fun stuff. You can gain rewards now with your Walgreens balance rewards or fun sites like achievemint.com that give you points for your hard work to cash out for rewards.

5. Reminders- Forming healthy habits can be hard but your fitness tracker will help remind you that you have goals and every step counts to making healthy changes, literally. High end trackers can be set to give you a reminder to do something with a little buzz or beep.

While a fitness tracker may not be the magic pill you need to get into shape it can make a great tool for encouraging you to keep going even when a day on the couch sounds a whole lot more fun than a nice long walk.