Lack of exercise can lead to dangerous sedentary lifestyle induced disorders which ultimately
cause death! Scary much? Makes you get out of your bed and run on a treadmill? How easy
the solution sounds, some stretching and running will probably save us from becoming victims
of disorders! But reality is different, what go unnoticed in vigorous fitness training sessions are
the tiny reminders of right food, right amount of water and all these at the right time. To catch
up to these needs, we have the increasingly attractive and recently popular phone applications
and smart watches, promising to be a guide towards better lifestyle habits.
What is Fitness?
The ability to carry out daily tasks with vigour and alertness, without fatigue is defined as
physical fitness, Fitness involves almost everything from getting up early and stretching to
performing any kind of physical activity throughout the day. Every human body needs, to
some extent, a fitness regime which is either done diligently or unknowingly. Historically,
the primitive man's lifestyle, agricultural revolution, ancient civilisations, periods of
Renaissance and those of wars and struggles throughout the world portrayed fitness in
the forms of hunting, farming, military training, etc., associating physical fitness with
advancements of mankind.
But in recent days societies have become too occupied with wealth, prosperity and
self-entertainment, dropping their levels with respect to fitness. Further, advanced
technology has decreased the levels of physical fitness drastically, but the same
technology has come to aid the
fitness regimes of individuals. The question that demands answer is how
effective can that prove to be?
What do Apps do?
Mom wake me up at 5, I need to go for jogging! - shifted to setting up an alarm on the
mobile phone with a hope to get up, if not at 5, surely at 5:15 or 5:30! Looking at a
pastry and wondering how many calories it will add up to the body and stupidly
asking the shop owner how many calories it contains, shifted to making a note
of calories consumed every hour of the day. Exercising every morning might have
allowed one to lose weight but could not define heart, which got even
better with an app displaying the heart rate out loud for every movement made in the day.
Be it checking the calories one consumed, the route one chose to shed those calories
or setting up regular intervals of reminders to drink water, applications have sneaked
into our lifestyles well. They have made us independent and yet dependent. What we
are yet to figure out is - Is it our obsession with technology or our need to rely on these
health apps and bands for fitness? Because as long as fitness is concerned, it never
faltered in the era when there was no technological dominance in lifestyle habits. So
what changed? What made us trust our technology more than our judgment?
Smart Watch - a tag along for every move!
Technology took a huge leap in making wearable devices, like smart watches and
smart bands, promising tools for healthier and active life. They look attractive, are
easy to use, work with precision and answer
questions like how many steps one takes in a day, calories burned, miles one runs
or swims, time spent sleeping, pulse rate, etc. To add to these, one extra possibility
is to keep the data or donate it for medical research and clinical trials to contribute
and participate in studies for improving public health.
Smart Watches have become better and better ever since they attracted people.
However, in some scenarios these wearable devices overshadowed the purpose of
health and fitness, by connecting people more with the virtual world, allowing lesser
and lesser time for fitness regimes.
Smart devices will not exercise for you!
Using a smart watch only increases and enhances the connectivity and reach to news,
mails, social media, etc. Months of doing this will diminish the enthusiasm of even
walking to some place or basking in the sun! Meanwhile coming to the health related
factors, when an app displays health parameters (heart rate, steps walked, calories
burned, sleep cycles, etc.) it is of no use unless the device owner changes the approach
to become better.
No doubt smart watches and apps are a better, costly but better, option for monitoring health.
But all the reminders are futile until something is done about it. And doing something does
not come along with purchasing a smart watch, but comes with knowing our own body right.
Who doesn't need an app or a smartwatch?
One who brisk walks everyday for 30 mins
One who wakes up early in the morning
One who focuses on right breakfast
One who drinks a lot of water throughout the day
One who finds little reasons to stay happy
One who always, no matter what, makes health a priority
With the recent attraction and attention technology has garnered, it is tad bit expensive to give
health a thought. Even a smartwatch alarming your calorie intake won't suffice, if you don't control
your food habits.
