How to Use Fitness Trackers Without Losing Touch with Yourself

While our ancestors relied on their senses to assess how they were doing, increasingly, we rely on gadgets.

Today, if you’re curious enough, you can measure your heart rate, your step count, your exercise intensity, and your sleep quality—sometimes all on one sleek device.

In the best cases, these devices offer a bridge between what you subjectively feel and what you can objectively measure.

This is generally a really cool and amazing thing.

Our subjective feelings and assessments matter, but they’re not always the most reliable. Us humans just aren’t particularly skilled at quantifying our experiences and behaviors with cold precision.

Take, for example, a colleague of mine. He believed he was eating within a narrow caloric window, but after careful tracking, he learned that he was putting away a bonus 500 Calories a day—in barbecue sauce.

That said, some of us are better than others.

Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter, was reported to have been able to call out his 100 metre time within a tenth of a second of the stopwatch readout.[1]

That’s outlier performance, to be clear, but it still makes you wonder: how good are you at assessing yourself?

How good are you at assessing yourself?

And, how can you improve your accuracy through the wise use of technology—like fitness trackers—to help you make better decisions about your health?

In the following article, we’ll tackle the above, plus we’ll address:

• How accurate are data trackers in the first place?
• When is tracking helpful? (And when is it not?)
• Can you train yourself to more accurately assess things by feel?

First, how accurate are data trackers anyway?

Not all data is created equal. Some brands produce better products than others. This is not just hardware but also the quality of their software and datasets.

Beyond that, not all things are equally easy to quantity.

For example, heart rate and step-count data are generally reliable,[2] but many other types of outputs—from calories burned to movement velocity—have substantial margins for error.

Next, when is tracking actually helpful?

The good: Tracking devices offer us more data about our behaviors and bodies than ever before.

The bad: Tracking devices offer us more data about our behaviors and bodies than ever before.

“What’s really remarkable,” says Samantha Kleinberg, a computer scientist who studies decision-making, “is that even a tiny amount of surplus information has a big negative effect on our decision-making.”[3]

Today, it’s surprisingly easy to have too much information.

Consider the analysis paralysis you feel after scanning hundreds of reviews from the various taco places in your neighborhood. (All you wanted was a decent taco, but now you don’t know which one to pick!)

Finding just enough information to make good decisions is an art form—especially in the world of health and fitness, where it seems like everyone is trying to outdo each other when it comes to providing more science, more customization, and more complexity.

Sign #1: Tracking is decreasing your stress and validating your method(s).

When Zak’s coach raved about the benefits of zone 2 cardio, it sounded logical. But when the rubber on his running shoes hit the road, Zak second-guessed everything. Zak prided himself on his ability to grind, and simply didn’t trust that something that easy could also be effective.

Yet, the data didn’t lie. As the weeks went by, Zak watched his resting heart rate drop—along with his recovery time from hard runs. With that reassurance, Zak began to relax about the process—and his resting heart rate dropped…success[9]

Three ways to use fitness trackers to calibrate your self-assessment

1. Check in with yourself before you check the data.

Can you imagine asking someone how their vacation was and then waiting for them to look at their photos to be able to answer? That’s what it’s like when you rely purely on external data about your own experience.

2. Develop mental shortcuts that can occasionally stand in for objective measures.

The coaches I work with regularly ask people to estimate the boundaries of their strength (such as how many reps they can do at a given weight until failure).

3. Keep developing your ability to dial into your senses.

Trackers have components like accelerometers, GPS, and gyroscopes to sense data about speed, distance, and more.

But humans are no slouches either.

We have…

• Mechanoreceptors that respond to pressure, vibration, and joint angle changes
• A vestibular system that monitors balance and angle changes
• Proprioceptors that clock the speed and rate of length-change of muscle spindles
• Thermoreceptors that register warming or cooling
• Chemoreceptors that detect chemical changes, such as scent or taste, as well as changes in the bloodstream
• Nociceptors—the body’s alarm system—that sense threat and send signals of potential harm or distress

And that’s only a partial list.

You have access to an incredibly rich network of sensory information—something that technology cannot begin to touch.

To continue honing your ability to this rich network of sensory information, regularly check in with what and how you’re feeling.

References

Click here to view the information sources referenced in this article.

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