Golden Chiropractic

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Wearable Tech for Total Health

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It’s easy to stop paying attention to your fitness.

Life events tend to impact on our time. Our physical activity and our diets often get shoved aside. Long commutes, a new child, sedentary jobs mean less mountain biking and beach running.

These life events often lead to weight gain. Significant weight gain has potential long term health consequences. Heart disease, degenerative joint disease, and diabetes are among them.
 
Dr. Dustin experienced this when he focused on his education. Becoming the best possible chiropractor has a side effect of being more sedentary.
 
One day he looked down, saw some fat that wasn’t there before, and decided to make a change.
 
Since Dr. Dustin’s goal is to lose 50 pounds, and he wants to do it sensibly, he expects to lose this weight in 35 weeks.
 
An average safe amount of weight to lose is 1-2 pounds a week. This allows for the body to adapt to caloric demands and make appropriate diet changes. To lose 1-2 pounds a week, Dr. Dustin needs to have a caloric deficit of 500-1000 calories a day. He also needs an easy way to measure his calories and activity. 

Wearable tech can help keep you motivated to prioritize your health.

Dr. Dustin uses wearable technology to track his fitness. His favorite tracking features are heart rate and calorie burning.

“One of the features that I really like about my fitness watch is the tracking of my resting heart rate. When you sleep, your heart rate slows down.

“As my heart becomes stronger, and my blood flow improves to my muscles, my heart rate decreases. Using my fitness watch, I was able to track my resting heart rate improvement. From 75 beats per minute to 63 beats per minute over the last 4 weeks.

“Another feature I really like is tracking calories burned during the day. As my activity goes up, it is easy to overeat because of the increased demand for calories by my body.

“Keeping track of my calories burned helps me to plan my meals better. For example, on Saturday 1/26/19 I burned 2945 calories as tracked by my Fitbit. My diet for the day consisted of 1896 calories, meaning I had a deficit of 1049 calories for the day. I met my goal of 1000 fewer calories.”

Wearable tech helps you meet your goals, stay active, and understand how you’re feeling.

I had a patient tell me yesterday that his company provided FitBits for everyone at the beginning of the year. He’s loving it so much that he started a walking group at his office. They go out twice a day and walk for 15 minutes around the building.

I recently asked my Facebook community how they were using wearable technology. Here’s what they said—

  • Managing injuries. “Steps: if I see more steps than normal, I can preemptively ice my knees to get ahead of the swelling.  
  • Understanding fatigue. “Sleep: just kinda one of those, ‘oohhhhhh, THAT’S why I was extra tired’ things.”
  • Keeping their exercise commitments. “For steps, I aim for 12,000. I found that I hit 10,000 too often so wanted to up the goal. On days I don’t work, I almost always gets hit my goal because my 3 young kiddos. On days at work, I have to consciously do something to get more activity.”
  • Monitoring their progress. “Steps and running activity. I track miles/distance and pace.”

What’s your health goal?

Check out these three fitness tracker manufacturers, and get started improving your health. Use the data to keep you going, and watch your health improve.

Apple Watch

Fitbit

Garmin

 

 

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