Has a fitness tracker / smartwatch changed your life?

[Seainasive]

I’ve been thinking of getting a smartwatch, Fitbit or ring for a while now but the good ones seem to be quite pricey. Are they worth it for someone like me who is not a fitness fanatic, but could definitely do with being more active?

A few months ago I was looking to get a smart watch or ring and, like you OP, I'm not a fitness fanatic.

I spent a bit of time researching them but in the end gave up without buying anything. I didn't want anything too expensive or that required a subscription and the cheaper ones all seemed to have problems with unreliability or inaccuracies.

I hope you get some advice and suggestions on this thread OP and I will follow it with interest.

als wondering if the sleep data is useful or just creates anxiety? What do you actually do if the tracker tells you that you had a bad night?

I have an Apple Watch and I use it mainly to track my steps. It forces me to be more active.

I think the sleep thing is a waste of time. You know if you’ve had a bad night sleep or not, not sure why anyone needs a watch to tell them that.

I have a basic Fitbit and I really love it. I'm not currently wearing it because I'm a week postpartum, but I found it valuable.

It was most valuable when I was trying to conceive and lose weight. I used it to track steps and heart rate during exercise classes. Now, I know there's lots of inaccuracies etc with steps, but I was on a 200 day streak of over 10000 steps so I knew that was my basic activity sorted.

Heart rate etc was good, because it helped me to see that yoga classes etc were good for mind and stretching, but not for improving my level of fitness.

This might be second nature for some people,but it held me accountable to me and I felt this process helped. Also used it to track sleep (was useful to see patterns in poor sleep) and weight loss, although I had a different app for calorie counting.

The Fitbit app is no more though, it's now joint with Google, so in the next month or so I'll see how that goes!

I have a Garmin forerunner (not that pricey) and yes, I find it really useful. I have cancer and other chronic illnesses. It has definitely helped me increase my walking and other exercise. I also had a spell when I felt unwell and noticed my heart rate was higher than normal for several days. I had developed adrenal insufficiency due to my cancer treatment (which can be life threatening).

I eventually got quite ill, but the heart rate was the first sign and it lead me to instigating some investigations that eventually led to me getting diagnosed. So it picked up on something I was subjectively feeling even before we knew how ill I was. When I started on medication, you can see in my HR data, that it returns to normal, which is really cool!

I would say I also find the sleep data really interesting. It doesn’t create anxiety. BUT the average person doesn’t understand what normal sleep patterns are meant to look like, so it’s worth researching them. We are meant to have a period of deep sleep shortly after going to bed, followed by a pattern of waking several times a night, light sleep and REM sleep till morning. Too many people look at that and think, my sleep is shit because I don’t get much deep sleep and I wake 5 times a night. But this is normal sleep!

It’s exactly what your body is designed to do. An hour or two of deep restorative sleep and then another few hours of light sleep with waking because back in the day, someone had to wake during the night to tend the fire and check everything was safe and well. Our sleep patterns still reflect this evolutionary norm.

I've got a Xiaomi MiBand. About £40, small, battery lasts ages, does all the standard tracking without gimics. I've been really happy with it..I'm on my 3rd now, as the screen has failed on the first two after a couple of years, but the second one was still under warranty so I got my new one as a free replacement. Wouldn't be without it.

I have an Apple watch. The sleep tracking pretty much tells me what I already know, if I went to bed too late, for too short a time or if I was disturbed in the night and woke up a lot. It just makes me think, yep, I should probably get a decent nights sleep tonight, if it tells me my sleep score was low!

The main use for me is step and activity tracking. I’m actively trying to increase my daily movement, so I use the step count and the Move/Exercise/Stand targets to keep a track of that.

I find the heart rate data to be interesting, and you can see that the more exercise I do and the more consistently I do it, my resting heart rate reduces alongside that. The most effective exercise for that is running rather than long walks, which is useful to know.

Yes but prioritise battery life. I have a Garmin which i love and only need to charge it every 7 - 10 days. My dhs apple watch last way way less, think charging every day or so. I could not be bothered with that and if that was the case the device would be more hassle than help.

I have an Apple Watch (used to have a Fitbit). DH also has one. Last year it said he was showing signs of hypertension, he went to the GP and his blood pressure was through the roof. No other signs at all. I have also had periods of my heart racing for no reason and the Dr I saw at the hospital said to track it on my watch, BPM, duration etc. I was 197 bpm on a bus one day…my ecg looks fine though.

It is quite accurate about sleep vitals as well as when I had pneumonia then Covid it shows that my heart rate and breathing were higher than normal whilst sleeping.

I charge my Apple Watch each morning whilst I shower. It takes about 30 minutes to fully charge so it’s not a pain.

I got a fitbit a few years ago and I love it, I don't really exercise much but I love seeing my steps counted and it encourages me to move. Its also very handy for checking the time when I wake during the night. I just have a basic one but its brilliant.

My fitbit goes about 8-10 days without charging

I got a £40 Sekonda one from Argos it’s been great

I have one which I really enjoy wearing. It does help with increasing my activity levels, but I'm pretty fitness-minded anyway.
I can see the potential for anxiety, particularly over the sleep function as sleep patterns can be difficult to change sometimes especially for menopausal women. I think it can also be quite self-absorbing - I can potentially spend a large amount of time poring over my stats and scratching my chin!
However, overall I think they're good pieces of kit, provided you keep the information they give in perspective.

The gadget will not change your life, but it could help you to change your life if you are determined to use it well.

You don't need a huge outlay on a smart watch though. The really expensive smart watches have their own independent GPS and processing power but a semi-smart gadget that piggy-backs on your phone's GPS and processing power does 99% of the same job way cheaper. A Samsung Fit3 is about £60 new but I got what I thought was going to be an excellent-condition second hand one for £30 from www.backmarket.co.uk and what they sent was Brand New In Box (and that wasn't just a fluke I ordered a second one for my partner and that was also BNIB) - it's not quite as snazzy as my old garmin watch which eventually died but the minor things I am missing are not very important - eg I can't leave my phone at home when I go for a run and still listen to my music from my watch. I can live with that. The Fit3 standard strap isn't very comfortable but there's a thousand alternative straps for sale from multiple retailers for £1-£4 snd they are very easy to swap over.

I had a Fitbit Charge 6 for a bit and in the end it was ruling my life with the step counts and if my resting heartrate went up I was getting worried about it.

I just use my running watch to track runs and walks now and I suspect my step count is down a bit but at least I am not walking round and round just before I got to bed to get my steps over the magic 10,000!

You ignore anything the tracker says that isn't useful to you.

Rings supposedly have terrible battery life. Like... 2 days?
I least trust the sleep data on my Garmin (vivosmart).
Body battery is also silly, apparently I'm an exhausted zombie (says BB).

What I like about it is heart rate, duration of activities, kcal totals, Fitness age.

It's also useful if you know it will help you put more activity into your life.

You can get basic ones, 2nd hand, Fitbit, for < £50, if you just want to try it out.

Love my fitbit. Find it really useful to track steps without being obsessive. Heart rate interesting. I run regularly and find it helpful to to watch |'m not pushing too hard on easy runs. A garmin probably better for my running but the fitbit has been enough for me. And like watching the improvements to HRV and lowering heart rate through regular breathwork training. Find regular weekly and monthly patterns helpful but also the reminder to move if I've been sitting too long and need to get up and do some squats!

Thanks so much for your responses. I think l’ll try a Fitbit charge 6 to see how I get on with it first. I’m not ready to fork out £££ on an Apple Watch just yet.