The Dark Side of Fitness Trackers 

-Alison Yee-

There are so many tools in our fitness toolboxes that we can use on our quests to healthier lives.  In this technology driven age, it is only natural that we rely heavily upon some automated tools like smart phones, apps and fitness trackers.  There’s no doubt that these devices have the ability to make certain things about our health & wellness goals more attainable, quantifiable and, at times, more enjoyable.  Keeping track of numerous variables about us are things that fitness trackers, like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch, are designed to do.  It takes the guesswork out of aspects in our workouts and often many features of our lives.  And this all sounds great, right? So what’s the problem? 

There are thousands of articles, blogs and research studies touting the myriad benefits of fitness trackers.  And they’re not wrong.  Fitness trackers are kinda great.  They can monitor your steps, heart rate, sleep patterns, nutrition/diet and water intake all while giving you some personal accountability and motivation. All this tracking, according to some studies, tends to lead to increased activity and productivity levels, more/better sleep, and better overall health & nutrition.  These are all great things! So, again what’s the problem here?

In the 1930’s there was a philosopher named Lewis Mumford.  Throughout his life, Mumford articulated that there was a fine line with technology, as it can be both liberating and oppressive.  He said, “Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.”  And an Apple Watch or Fitbit is just that—a novelty. Yet so many people who wear tracking devices report that they feel naked without it or that their workout “didn’t count” if they weren’t wearing their device.  Still others report that they feel guilty if they didn’t meet their daily goals and others report that they feel controlled by their device.  Alarmingly, this does sound a bit like “surrendering to novelties” that Mumford warned about, doesn’t it? 

Personally as a Fitbit user, I can attest to some of these feelings as well.  One of the biggest obstacles in my health & wellness journey right now is lack of sleep.  My goal is to get over six hours of sleep every night.  I bet you can guess the first thing I do when I wake up?  Yep, check my Fitbit app to look at my sleep cycles.   If it is under my goal, I feel defeated. A strange thing often happens too—even if I woke up feeling relatively rested, I will feel instantly tired the moment my app tells me I was under my goal.  In my case, I let an app dictate my mood and my feelings.  Yet, if you asked me to try not wearing my Fitbit at night I would look at you like you just asked me to give away my first-born child.  If you want me to take off my Fitbit, you’re gonna have to pry it off my cold, dead wrist. So, um, Mumford you may have a point here…

The question is can we observe these things without obsessing over them? Tracking, whether it is your heart rate during a workout or your food for the day, can be a powerful tool.  It’s a tool that I often recommend to my clients in order to meet their goals faster.  Tracking is an amazing way to gain a sense of empowerment and awareness as well. But remember, as Mumford would say, to respect the consequences.  Fitness trackers can have a positive impact in our lives by creating insights for us and letting us interact with those insights in constructive and meaningful ways. Yet, be cautious and remember that these devices are sometimes not as pure and unproblematic as we’d like to believe.  Use your device for a sense of empowerment or education, but do not let it control you. Remember that tracking is a tool, not the end-all-be-all.  

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

-Lindsey Pogson

You need to take care of the basics before you can reach your full potential.

If you’ve been following our blog, you know that we really preach “the basics” – sleep, nutrition, hydration, and stress management. If you don’t get these things in check, your athletic goals will be considerably harder, and maybe even impossible, to reach. In this blog, I’d like to reiterate the importance of the basics, but also give you a broader breakdown of WHY they are so important. This goes way beyond your fitness and weight loss goals – this is about your whole life. We want you to thrive, not just survive, and it all starts with your base.

Yes, I said base, because we’re looking at a pyramid. My fellow undergraduate psychology majors, now’s our time to shine, because we’re talking about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Abraham Maslow was a mid-20th century psychologist, and this pyramid is his best known contribution to the field. In his paper “A Theory of Human Motivation,” he spelled out the steps needed for humans to reach true “self-actualization” – their full potential as a creative individual. Before we can climb to our peak, we need to handle the base and the basics. 

Our physiological and safety needs come first, always. Without enough to eat and drink, enough sleep, and a safe place to live, there is no room to focus on anything (or anyone) else. Once those are met, we get to move on to our psychological needs – loving relationships and success in meeting our goals, be they in our careers, with our families, or in the gym. With all of these levels locked down, we can ascend to our peak. Meeting all of our needs – taking care of ourselves in these essential ways – means we’ve given ourselves the time and space needed to be creative, in whatever way that means to each of us. 

The idea is this: each level of the pyramid must be built before moving to the next level. You’ll never be fully “finished” with any of these levels (you need to focus on meeting your basic physiological needs every single day; you need to put work into your relationships throughout the span of those relationships if you want them to last), but you CANNOT skip levels. 

So what does this all mean?

It’s pretty simple really: you need to attend to your base before you attend to your relationships or your personal goals. 

Does that seem impossible? I can totally relate. There’s some comfort in focusing just on the higher level stuff. But in reality, those things are a privilege afforded only to those who build the necessary base to get there. And the tricky part is that we CAN try to surpass the process and put those relationships and bigger goals first. It works for awhile, but then we hit a wall. We break down and have no base to pull from! 

I’ve hit this point more times than I care to admit, both as someone who tends to try to take care of others before myself and as someone who might be considered a workaholic, both in my career and in training. Just a few weeks ago, I tried convincing a coworker that it would be a great idea for me to train 6-7 days a week. I got shut down immediately, and for good reason.

Training that hard is something that needs to be earned, and I hadn’t earned it.

It’s earned with proper sleep, nutrition, hydration, and stress management, all things I’ve neglected while putting work and training and my relationships ahead of myself. And the worst part? I may have been pouring myself into those bigger things, but I wasn’t really doing them justice, because the reservoir I was pouring from was almost empty. 

How good could I be if I’d attended to those basic needs first? How good could you be?

I’m challenging myself – and every one of you reading this – to take this opportunity to build the base of your Needs pyramid. Understand that while many aspects of your life will seem more important than your sleep and nutrition, if you don’t take care of those first, you’re doing those higher level things a disservice. It’s basic airplane safety logic – you need to put your own air mask on before anyone else around you, no matter how much you love and value them. So for the sake of your bigger goals, protect your bed time, eat the most nutritious food you can find in just the right amounts, and drink some damn water. Then you’re on the vertical path to reaching your true potential.