The first month of the new year is huffing and puffing to its finish line. You’re pretty much in the same situation – out of breath as you try to stay committed to the resolution you made.
Every year, most people make a resolution to lose weight, get fit and generally live a healthier life. Whereas in the past, we used to rely on a training buddy or our own resolve to wake up for our early morning run, nowadays we have a fitness friend who is never late to a training session and who can push us hard: technology.
In the past few months, the wearables market has enjoyed massive growth. In the third quarter of last year, the total shipment volume totalled 21 million units, up almost 200 per cent from the same quarter in 2014. This rapid growth is set to continue and by 2018, it is estimated that this market will be worth more than €11 billion. According to Verizon Wireless News Centre, the global market for wearables will increase to an estimated 170 million devices by 2017.
There are hundreds of wearable devices on the market. The most basic models track how many steps you walk. More advanced wearables can monitor your heart rate, sleep patterns, skin temperature, amount of calories burnt and performance in various sports.
Wearables have changed the way we approach dieting and fitness. But in reality, are they actually making us healthier?
Before answering that question, let’s consider what wearables have added to our fitness regime. First of all, wearables provide us with valuable data, which is key to knowing how we are performing and how near we are to our goals. The fancier models also tabulate data such as blood oxygen level, body weight and mass, perspiration and heart rate. Until a few years ago, such data was only available to our doctor – nowadays, it’s on screen at the tap of a button.
Wearables also give us plenty of motivation – they wake us up, remind us of how well, or not, we are doing, and plan our daily fitness tasks.
While a beeping alarm is good enough for some people, for others, seeing a blank screen is not enough to get them up and walking, jogging and running
Yet data on its own is not enough. As for motivation, while a beeping alarm is good enough for some people, for others, seeing a blank screen is not enough to get them up and walking, jogging and running. In fact, last year, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Mitesh Patel, found that strapping a wearable to your wrist does not necessarily make you fitter. Patel’s research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows that while wearables make us feel as if we’re fitter, on their own, they don’t really fuel a change in our behaviour.
Moreover, it all depends on how we define fitness. The wearable we received as a present last Christmas is great at telling us how many calories we unfriended on our daily walk. However, walking on its own isn’t tantamount to a healthier lifestyle – to be fitter, we need to take a holistic approach which includes what we eat, our work-life balance, and how hard we punish our body during the weekend.
There are two key elements to making our fitness regime last longer than the end of January.
The first is motivation. True, a wearable will emit a beep of protest if we miss our daily exercise. But that might not be enough to get us out of bed. What we need to do is turn fitness into a habit. Forming a good habit is not easy. According to a study by the University College London, it can take us as long as 66 days to form a new habit. Moreover, to do that, we need the right level of motivation.
We all have a competitive nature and this plays an important role in motivating us. Joining a gym or a wellness programme at work engages us with other people, who become our competitors, and gives us a social incentive.
Peer support is also important. Training with a friend or with your partner will drive us and make us accountable – we can’t simply hit the snooze button on our training buddy and if we miss a training session, we have to answer for it.
The second key element is making realistic goals and gradually improving on them. A healthy dose of ambition is good, but aiming to run a long-distance marathon every two days is just unrealistic. You’ll realise that after your first attempt and then you’ll just abandon your regime. Instead, start small but think big – a 10-minute walk in your first week, a 20-minute walk in your second week, and so on, gradually improving your times and breathing.
Moreover, write down your goals and keep tabs on your performance. When goals are in your head, it’s easy to just dismiss them or simply forget them. But when you keep a fitness log, it’s not easy to ignore an empty space.
Wearables help you get fitter and measure your performance. However, you need to pair them with goals and motivation.