Tracking Your Fitness & Health

I hand on heart believe that the best way to achieve your goals is to track your steps. We all have our goals and know what we want to achieve, but how exactly do we get there? It's easy to spend an hour in the gym, with 20 minutes of that on our phones! Or if you're like me think you've eaten clean all day...but ate a half tub of peanut butter and biscuits in between meals.

I envy the people who are so disciplined they can do exactly what they planned and no variations. But me I need to track everything, otherwise I convince myself I was better than I really was.

If you're like me and struggle to stay focused, plans and tracking your progress is great! If you want to make changes to your life and get in shape, tracking your progress can be motivational too. This doesn't mean just stepping on the scale every morning and freaking out, which happens me a lot, so no judgments here. But tracking how much you lifted/ran/swam, using tape to measure your shape instead of focusing on the weight etc.

This can be so much more sustainable, and way more enjoyable than short term diets. Here are some things I love to use and some tips and information too.

How to Track Your Fitness

Programs

Getting a fitness program is a great place to start. It gives you a baseline and something to follow as well, so you don't have excuses to not do it! These are great because most gyms in Ireland include them in a membership, I know where I work in Kingfisher our trainers access your fitness every 6-8 weeks if requested and update programs to keep our members motivated.

I've gotten a few programs of my friends at work and found myself so much more motivated for the few weeks I was given to complete it. Each program is designed to see the change you are looking for so it's perfect!

Personal Training

I've gotten personal training for a couple months of my friend and I loved it, it was such a good way to stay on track. I lost nearly 8% body fat, as this is what we measured and not weight, over 5 months. As this can be more expensive it's not necessary to achieve your goals but I did find it so helpful.

I also only got one session a week for motivation, most people usually go for 2-3 but I just wanted an extra push is all, which can be equally beneficial. My trainer was amazing, we had progress checks once a month as well, which can help you stay on track.

Fitness Tracking Apps

Where would we be without our phones. MyFitnessPal is possible my favourite app. So useful, I track my workouts, my activity and my diet through it. You set goals and the app tells you based on your daily guide how likely you are to reach your goals.

The app allows for you to upload both cardio and weight based workouts, however the weights aren't counted for calorie loss on the app. It is good if you regularly attend classes like spinning etc. as this will give you an idea of the calories you burned. Most of the food is able to be scanned through bar codes, so you can upload your meals easily, you can also create recipes for future reference too.

Tracking Watches

Fitbits and Apple watches are making tracking even easier now. Measuring steps, heart rate, calories, activity levels and even monitoring sleep patterns. There is seriously no excuse anymore to not look after our health. These can be expensive but they are so worth it. And I have to say even the cheaper amazon versions aren't all that bad, you can still set goals to hit your steps everyday, which will encourage you to be more active.

Which is the Best Tracker?

1. Garmin Vívosmart 4

2. Samsung Galaxy Watch

3. Huawei Watch 2

4. Fitbit Versa

5. Apple Watch Series 1

So I've done a bit of research into the area and it seems Garmin are consistently coming out on top. At a price of roughly €120 it's actually a bargain in it's market too. This watch offers so much information on your daily activity.

garmin vivosmart 4 - available on amazon

As with all of the above, you are recommended that you keep it on at all times; so as to get accurate results. Then it allows for you to monitor your step count, how many floors you've climbed, heart rate, and number of minutes active. This makes me nervous, but they are water proof so you can measure swimming activity too.  Most of these watches also come with apps to monitor on your phone, like Garmin Connect or Fitbit etc.

How Do Fitness Trackers Cost?

The good thing about fitness trackers becoming so popular is that prices vary, obviously depending on quality. If you have a low budget though it doesn't mean you can't track your health. Amazon have cheap versions for about €10. I probably don't have to explain that the quality isn't even half as good, but if you're on a budget somethings better than nothing right? you can just compare to your yesterday on your app.

A good quality tracker will range from €120-€150. The Garmin Vivosmart 4 surprisingly comes in at one of the cheapest prices, so well worth a look at.

How Accurate are Fitness Trackers?

People are constantly questioning the accuracy of fitness trackers, similar to any new fad in the market. People are quick to shout about how incorrect they are. To be fair for something relatively new to the market I think any accuracy is better than none.

Also I tested mine out for myself. I was bored working one day and counted my steps, comparing this to my tracker. Every 100 steps I checked again and it was only maybe 1 or 2 off, and I purchased my one cheap it's not a big name brand so I can only imagine those are more accurate. I want to get one myself to compare. I counted my own steps and compared my figure to the number on the watch. While there was some variation in their overall accuracy, most were reasonably accurate.

Tracking Your Diet

Once again I tend to use MyFitnessPal to track my diet. This is simple because I can monitor my carbs, fats, sugar etc. individually to see if I have eaten too much of something or even if I'm lacking in an area too. I tend not to focus on the calorie intake too much and look more into the macro side of things. I'm not into diets much I just try to eat clean but I will explain some popular ones here though.

What is a Keto Diet?

The ketogenic diet is basically a low-carb, high-fat diet. I don't follow diets but I find I generally eat this way Monday-Friday, not exactly on purpose but because I love high fat foods, and can often forget about carbs, I'm working on fixing this more lately.

When I researched it, a lot of information suggests Ketogenic diets benefit against diabetes, cancer, epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease, but I believe a doctor or nutritionist should encourage diets for such things, personally.

There are four variations of this diet you can follow:

1. Standard ketogenic diet (SKD): This requires a low-carb intake with normal amounts of protein and high-fats. Macros would look similar to 75% fat/ 20% protein/ 5% carbs. Personally I could not live off 5% carbs to me that is crazy.

2. Cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD): This would be more periodical. With times of low-carb intake, for example 5 low days with 2 high days.

3. Targeted ketogenic diet (TKD): This suggests that you to eat carbs after workouts.

4. High-protein ketogenic diet: This is similar to the first, but has a much higher protein intake. The macros may look like 60% fat, 35% protein and 5% carbs.

Are Ketogenic Diets Safe?

I believe diets are more unnecessary than unsafe, if you monitor what you eat, and eat clean most of the time you will see results. I think these diets just add to much pressure to your daily routine. Eat what you want in moderation as long as you hit all your daily needs for your goals why would you need anything else?

Hope this was some sort of benefit.

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