TRACKING VARIABLES

By Brandon Pieterse

MyFitnessPal, Fitbit, Polar, Sleeprate… the list of apps and devices that help us track our everyday activities goes on.

We use MyFitnessPal to track our food throughout the day, adding each and everything we eat and drink so that we know exactly how many calories we have eaten on a certain day, and how many grams of each of our macros we have consumed.

We use Fitbit to track our steps and physical activity throughout the day; telling us how many calories we have burnt, how far we have walked and ran etc.

Polar is used to track the intensity of our activity and monitor our heart rate throughout the day; telling us our resting heart rate, maximum heart rate and even average heart rate throughout the day.

Sleeprate meanwhile helps us monitor our sleep; tracking our heart rate throughout the night, telling us how much light, deep and REM sleep we get each night, the quality of our sleep and also the duration of our sleep.

Why do we track all of these things? Is it necessary? Are we obsessed? These are just some of the questions that get asked all the time. The answer is very simple: the more information we have, the better we are able to understand why our body reacts the way it does. Should we feel overly tired, exhausted, weak or suspect something isn’t right, we are able to go back, look at the previous couple of days data and find out what is causing this, understand why we feel the way we do and correct it. It gives us a better understanding of the sleep we get, our calories in vs calories out, daily activity, fitness levels etc.

When we are looking to progress, build  a bit more muscle, improve our endurance, lose weight, or whatever it might be, the more information and data we have, the better off we will be. Track as much as possible because it provides us with a much better understanding of our body and the physical data it gives us will help us to best optimize our training, nutrition and recovery.