When it comes to setting up a fitness goal, planning is a crucial aspect of success. Not only do you need to put together an overall plan, but you also need to track progress each day and also keep motivation levels high. These are the exact roles that an activity tracker can play. So, if you are looking to buy a smartwatch, it’s best to buy one with an activity tracker

With an activity tracker in your smartwatch, you can get important insights on key metrics that make for a healthy lifestyle. Here is how your fitness, weight-loss, or training plan can get an added impetus with an activity tracker.

Counting your Daily Steps

One of the important aspects of health and fitness is to do with being physically active. 10,000 steps a day is something that we all aspire for. A good way to get started on your physical journey, however, is to monitor the average number of steps you take each day and set a goal of improving the average by an additional 1000 steps daily. An activity tracker can come in handy on this journey. When you are alerted that you have to walk those remaining steps, you will possibly take the stairs instead of the elevator or park your car two blocks away and walk to your office.

Workout Tracking

When it comes to a workout regime, a one-size-fits-all strategy certainly does not work. For some, the idea of exercise may be hitting the gym, while for others it could well be running, cycling or swimming. The advantage of the activity tracker in your smartwatch is that it offers multi-sports tracking and presents real-time detailed body stats. It is therefore easy to get information such as the time elapsed, distance travelled, heart rate, calories burnt and more, as you take those laps in the pool. All you need to do is to pick from the workout options and you are good to go.

In fact, when you are beginning a workout, you also get an alert to ask if you want to begin tracking. Similarly, the tracker will automatically also detect when your workout ends, should you forget to stop tracking. 

Count Calories

A weight loss routine particularly benefits from keeping track of your calories. Count on the best activity tracker watch to keep you updated on the calories burnt as a result of your physical regimen. Pro tip- Refrain from indulging your sweet tooth as a habit, if you see the tracker indicating that you have burnt some extra calories!

Train More Effectively

When you are chasing a fitness goal, you sure do not want to leave anything to chance. You wouldn’t, therefore, want to sweat it out in the gym without being sure that you will get optimal results. What that requires you to do is to exert yourself at a level intense enough to reap maximum benefits. In other words, you need to be within your target heart rate zone while exercising. An activity tracker can alert you to these statistics ensuring thereby that you are training effectively. 

Long-Term Trends 

It is one thing to monitor your daily stats and quite another to view the long-term trends to see how you are performing against your past performance. The app connected to your activity tracker will convert your daily metrics into long-term trends and present it in a manner that is user-friendly and actionable.

Study Sleep Patterns

There is mounting evidence to suggest that a good night’s sleep boosts productivity and overall well-being. Yet with all the stressors of modern life, sleep is something we seem to be losing. A wearable can go a long way in tracking your sleep patterns. If you find that you aren’t getting enough sleep, you have actionable data at your disposal. For example, the sleep data can help you arrive at a correlation between your workout and the ability to get deep sleep. The amount of screen time that you have spent particularly before bedtime, maybe another clue for not clocking in the recommended hours of sleep! Additionally, the best activity trackers work with a smartphone app. The app can effectively track both your activity and sleep over time to help you form healthy habits. 

Stay Active

With most of us battling sedentary lifestyles, a major advantage of an activity tracker in your smartwatch is that it can nudge you to stay active. Alerts to inform you that you have been inactive for a while can be just that motivation you need to walk up to the co- worker’s cubicle instead of dropping an email.

Accountability

Above everything else what the activity tracker offers is accountability. It is all very well to have a desire to lose weight or to improve your general fitness. It is quite another thing to follow through on your plan every single day. That is one of the advantages an activity tracker brings. It ensures you remain accountable to your goals. Whether it is giving you a friendly nudge or showing you your own averages for you to better them, it ensures that you keep going.

Here’s to you staying on top of your fitness goals. A journey that will benefit from having an activity tracker in tow!