Health and Fitness Guide
The emergence of the wearable sector has seen technology merge with the health and fitness industry. Wearables can now monitor heart rate, step counts and much more, however users may not know what these stats mean and how they indicate whether their health is great or both. Hopefully the below will help to determine the context of the stats that your wearable may feedback on.
Exercise or Active Minutes
Healthy adults are recommended to participate in at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise or 75 minutes of high intensive exercise. This is the minimum amount, the higher the participation rate in exercise will give you greater health benefits.
It has also been recommended that you do strength exercises for all muscle groups at least twice a week. Strength exercises often involve doing a single set of exercises using a weight or resistance level heavy enough to tire your muscles after 20 repetitions.
Steps
Most wearables count the number of steps you take daily. It’s been recommended by many health associations that an average active individual would need to do a minimum 10,000 steps to remain active and healthy.
Calories
The amount of energy consumed in an item of food and drink is measured in calories as well as energy burnt via exercise or normal function.
The average male needs around 2,500kcal a day to maintain healthy body weight and an average woman needs 2,000kcal a day.
Maintaining your calorie intake and output is important to maintaining body weight. If you are trying to lose weight then you want to increase your calorie output through exercise and decrease your calorie intake slightly. To increase body weight you would need to increase your calorie intake and decrease your calorie output.
To gain muscle requires a balanced input and output control of calories as well as controlling your nutrients via your diet.
Macronutrients and Micronutrients
When speaking to a dietitian you may hear ‘macronutrients’ and ‘micronutrients’ when speaking about diet and controlling nutrients.
Macronutrients are the nutrients that we need a large quantity of to provide us energy through fat, protein and carbohydrates. Fats provide insulation as well as slow burning energy for long-duration exercises. Protein enables growth and repair of cellular, bone and muscles from injury of impact from exercise.
Micronutrients can be found in macronutrients. For example through fats get a source of iron, calcium and vitamin D. Through carbohydrates you will get a wide range of vitamins, minerals, fibre and magnesium. Fats will provide you with vitamins A, D, E and K.
Heart Rate (BPM)
Heart rate is the measure of your heart beating to pump blood around the body. The unit of measure is beats per minute (BPM) which measures the number of times the heart beats a minute. The average resting heart rate is between 80-90 BPM. The maximum heart rate indicates how hard your heart can beat during strenuous exercise.
Blood Pressure
Blood pressure is measured by two numbers, for example, 120/80mmHg. The first number measures the force at which your heart pumps blood around your body. The second number is the resistance to the blood flow in the blood vessels. Everyone’s blood pressure will be different however having a high blood pressure can increase your risk of a number of serious health conditions such as heart disease, heart attacks and strokes.