Track your exercise regime and achieve your fitness goals by opting for one of these wearable gadgets. Added advantage: they look good, too!
With growing awareness about health issues and the importance of exercise being better understood, the market has been flooded with fitness accessories and wearable gadgets to monitor your daily exercise routine. These gadgets not only monitor the amount of workout done, but also keep a track of calories consumed and burnt and the quality of sleep among other things.
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Measuring your every step or every morsel you eat is not always a good idea, as it can demotivate you if the results are not upto your expectations, but knowing how you are performing and how much you are burning, can help you tweek your lifestyle to a healthier one. Here is a list of some wearable gadgets that will help you stay in good health and motivate you to live a healthier life:
WITHINGS PULSE
Unlike all others products, Pulse does not come in a band form. It is small rubber block that can be just dropped in your pocket, your handbag, a backpack or simply use the clip to clip it on your clothes.
It includes a pedometer, altimeter, sleep tracker and a heart rate sensor. The display is a touch screen, which can be pressed to switch between different readings, and you can go down the history of the last 10 days by just sliding across it. It connects over the Bluetooth with your Phone and transmits the data to the cloud, so that you can view it over the web page.
As compared to the other products, it has a great feel, does not need to be attached to your body at all times and gives around two weeks of battery life after a 60-minute charge. But on the flip side, it does not provide any active feedback or motivation to do better.
US$98 onward. Can be ordered off their website www.withings.com/pulse or any other leading online store and they deliver internationally
FITBIT
Fitbit is a great device to motivate you to do more. It essentially monitors the number of steps you walk in a day and measures it against the goals that you set up for yourself.
Wear the device day and night and it will monitor your every step, how you have slept, how many times you woke up during the night and how is your exercise measuring up as compared to that of your friends. It requires some manual work on daily basis, wherein, you can feed in the number of glasses of water consumed and the food eaten. The Fitbit will keep a record of the calories consumed and burnt on a daily basis and also inform you once you have reached your desired weight or exercise goals. It syncs wirelessly to your computer or your smart phone and maintains all the data in the numeric as well as graphic format.
Fitbit is available in the form of a clip-on which can be clipped to your clothes or a bracelet which is available in various colours. Downside being that the bracelet colours can clash with your clothes and it is not possible to buy a bracelet of every colour and the clip-on gets lost very easily if it falls down without you realising it.
Starts @ $59.95 onward. Can be ordered off their website www.fitbit.com or any other leading online store. They deliver internationally
JAWBONE UP24
Jawbone is an aesthetically beautiful bracelet, which tracks your movement via the built-in accelerometre. It tracks your exercise, monitors the sleep and eating patterns and even keeps record of your moods and delivers insights that keep you moving towards your desired goals. You can compare your progress with that of your friends and get motivated to do better.
As compared to the Fitbit, it is more flexible thus more comfortable to wear and even measures the effort level of a variety of different workouts and gives credits and estimated calorie burn for non-step activities.
US$149.99 onward. Available at www.jawbone.com/up and most of the leading online stores and in the leading malls abroad
NIKE+ FUELBAND:
Nike Fuelband has a built-in display which can show you the number of steps walked, calories burnt etc on the band itself. It uses a proprietary system of awarding NikeFuel points against the number of steps walked and the amount of calories consumed / burned. You can keep track of the intensity of your workouts in real time and even receive hourly reminders that give you an extra push to achieve a higher workout goal.
The bracelet has an ambient light sensor that detects the environmental light and adjusts accordingly and the oval shape makes it a good fit for the wrists and it is the only device to use the M7 Co-Processor in iPhone 5s for more accurate results but it has to be connected over a USB in order for it to download data to your mobile device. It also does not take into account activities like swimming, which means that some of your athletic pursuits might go untracked.
US$149 onward. Available at www.store.nike.com/us/en_us/pw/fuelband/90w, Nike Stores and most of the leading online stores
GARMIN VIVOFIT:
Vivofit has been called a ‘Truly fitness focused tracker’. It learns your activity levels and assigns personalised daily goals.
The built-in display tells you the number of steps walked, distance travelled, calories burnt and monitors sleep. The biggest advantage is that it has a built-in heart rate monitor to measure your heartbeat during your active hours. It is water resistant, a perfect companion for measuring your water based activity.
US$129.99 onward. Can be ordered off their website www.garmin.com/vivo/ They deliver internationally