How do Fitness Trackers Work?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
892 words · ~4 min read
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the hardest part of sticking to a diet and exercise plan is keeping track of
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your daily activities and calorie burn who am I kidding the hardest part is
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obviously staying away from those industrial siiz boxes of donuts at
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crispy K cream or Tim Hortons for our Canadian viewers but even so keeping an
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eye on your workout goals and nutrition can be quite challenging which is why
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companies have tried to capitalize on the growing wearable Market by selling
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fitness trackers that you can take anywhere and wear on your wrist these
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are very versatile multi-purpose devices that do everything from keep track of
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what you're doing cardio telling you how much fat you've burned off compared to
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last night's Big Mac and even warn you to get the heck out of the sun if you're
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exercising outside for too long so you don't end up looking like a lobster so
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how does something that size do this much stuff well inside your average
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fitness tracker you'll find tons of components some of which are standard
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fair in smartphones such as accelerometers that allow the tracker to
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tell how many steps you're taking and a GPS to track distances
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but unlike your smartphone some fitness trackers especially nicer ones have more
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advanced motion sensors that are not only more accurate but can use
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positional data to determine exactly what exercise you're doing that way it
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can remember exactly which one you've done and track your workouts
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automatically but what about heart rate tracking this is important to different
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people that want to get their heart beating at a certain rate for
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conditioning or weight loss some trackers use light to figure out how
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hard your heart is working they shine light at your skin that's powerful
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enough to light up your capillaries those are the little blood vessels close
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to the skin surface and figure out how much blood is Flowing based on how much
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light is reflected back higher end models even measure your Skin's
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electrical impedance which fluctuates based on how fast your heart beats this
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is the same Tech used in those heart rate monitors on gym treadmills as well
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as those electronic fat percentage meters that tell you how bad you should
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feel about about yourself additional sensors measure everything from
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perspiration levels to wrist movements in order to track sleep patterns and
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give recommendations as to how you can improve your sleep habits so you have
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enough energy to actually drag yourself to the gym the next day as well as
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special ultraviolet sensors that only track UV light so your tracker won't
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scream a sunburn warning at you just because you've been sitting inside a
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bright room but as cool as all of this sounds one key feature of many current
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fitness trackers still has some room for improvement calorie tracking real
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calorimeters that can give you a precise measurement of how many calories you've
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burned are extremely expensive so wearable trackers use user input data
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like age weight sex along with the data from motion and temperature sensors to
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spit out an estimate although these estimates can still give you a good idea
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of your actual calorie burn they along with many other Fitness tracker metrics
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that we have discussed especially stuff like step Counting should be taken with
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a grain of salt especially as they can vary quite a bit between different
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models the good news though is that in a recent study it was suggested that
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fitness trackers tend to underestimate how many calories you've burned so if
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you're trying to burn as much as possible maybe don't feel too bad about
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that extra McDouble you ate in the parking lot when you thought no one was
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looking speaking of keeping your body fresh and fit fresh books isn't for your
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body it's it's it's for your accounting but anyways its mission is to make
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Freelancers less stressed and more organized through their easyto use tool
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for crafting and sending professional invoices in seconds freshbooks also
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helps you track your hours so when it comes to creating that fresh invoice you
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know exactly what you did when you did it and who you did it for you can even
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accept deposits through their platform so you get paid for the work you do on
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your schedule and they have a tool to manage your expense reports their mobile
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app lets you take a picture of your receipts and it pretty much handles all
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the rest of it getting started on freshbooks is extremely simple even if
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you're not a numbers person and freshbooks says especially if you're not
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a numbers person you can try freshbooks for free for 30 days by going to
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freshbooks.com tequ and entering Techquickie in the
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how did you hear about a section thanks for watching guys like it if you liked
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it dislike it if you disliked it check out our other channels like lineus Tech
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future things for us to cover let us know in the the comments down below I'll see you next time