Hello there! Today I’m going to be talking to you about why your smartwatch may be lying to you. Now, let me explain.

As you know, there is a huge trend these days to wear smartwatches and fitness trackers so that you can calculate your steps and how many calories burned, and a lot of people are relying on this information to get and stay healthy. But you might want to take all this information with a grain of salt, and here’s why. 

The information on these trackers has been proven to be highly inaccurate.

I read a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine where they compared seven different wrist-worn fitness trackers, and they found that the most accurate estimate of your energy expenditure was off by 27%.

So none of the devices out of the seven they tested were within an acceptable error range. Let’s talk about why that is because we are using our smartwatches to dictate what types and intensity of exercises we’re doing because of the number of calories burned that it says we are achieving. And the way that they calculate your calories burned is based on these algorithms that factor in things like heart rate, your age, your weight, and your activity level. But the problem is people have all different body types, and there’s a huge difference between muscle versus fat composition, and we also have all different fitness levels. And with different bodies, you’re going to respond differently to different exercises and other activities. Also, we all have different resting and maximum heart rates, and the algorithm is based on general population data. So it only accounts for some of these individual differences.

The accuracy varies depending on what activity you’re doing. 

So let’s say, for instance, walking or sitting. They found that they’re way more accurate for these types of lower intensity okay exercises. But then, when you get to the higher intensity exercises like spinning and running, they’re highly overestimating the number of calories burned. So when you’re doing a workout and you’re seeing that you burn 500, 600, 700 calories by the end, that is a very high overestimate of how many calories you actually burned. So, sorry, I know that’s not what you want to hear, but that’s okay. I’m going to get to the good part here in just a minute. 

When you’re doing a high intensity exercise, it shows that you’re burning a lot of calories. And doing something lower intensity, like strength training, shows a much lower calorie burn. 

I see so many women thinking, okay, it’s calories in, calories out. It’s as simple as that. My watch tells me that the high intensity cardio burns more calories. Therefore, this is a superior exercise. And minute by minute, you’re going to burn more calories during a cardio workout versus a weightlifting strength training session because your heart rate doesn’t get as high during strength training. So during the exercise, yes, you’re burning more calories. However, here’s the, here’s the kicker. When you do strength training, you continue to burn calories for hours and hours afterwards, even up to two days after your workout. And that’s because strength training breaks down the muscle fibers, which sounds like a bad thing, but it’s a good thing.

You just get these little micro tears in your muscles, and those have to rebuild themselves. That’s why you always take a day off between strength training the same muscle groups because you need to give it a day to repair itself. And when the muscle sees that it’s going to have to endure heavier weights or, you know, a more difficult strenuous activity, your body’s so smart. It says, okay if this is what’s coming, I need to build myself up to be stronger for next time. So that muscle rebuilds itself, and that’s why you get muscle growth. And when your muscle is rebuilding itself, guess what? It’s burning calories, okay?

The more strength training you do, the more muscle mass you’ll have on your body. 

And muscle burns, more calories than fat even when you’re at rest. So even when you’re watching tv, even when you’re sleeping, if you have more muscle mass, you are going to be burning more calories.

And that’s what the term resting metabolic rate means. It’s the rate at which your body uses calories for energy, a k a metabolism. So lifting weights absolutely 100% boosts your metabolism. So that’s the awesome thing, and that is why I don’t want you to pay so much attention to your fitness tracker smartwatch because you can get the misconception that cardio is going to help you burn fat more than strength training, which is simply not true. And I want to say one side note, because when I say muscle mass and building muscle, a lot of women in their heads are thinking, okay, that means I’m going to look bulked up. That means I’m going to, you know, look too, you know, too muscular, or you know, whatever. No, absolutely not. That is what gives you those lean looking, toned arms, legs, and midsection, and you are not going to be building big muscles unless you specifically try to do that.

And what I mean by that is you would have to spend hours and hours at the gym. Bodybuilders spend two hours or more a day building up those muscles and lifting heavy, heavy weights. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about strength training, resistance training. So that can be lifting lighter weights that can be using body weight. So there’s a lot of ways to go about this that are in no way body building. This is just to give you that lean, toned body that you’ve always wanted. So let me make it clear. I am not saying not to do cardio. You do need to have cardiovascular activities built into your schedule because it’s so important for your overall health, cardiovascular system, heart, lungs, and blood circulation. So you do need to be getting those walks in.

You do need to be getting some kind of dance or Zumba or walking or swimming or bike riding on a regular basis. But if you are only doing those activities, they are not helping you burn fat or increase your metabolism nearly at the rate that strength training is. 

So in closing, no, you don’t need to throw out the fitness tracker because they have many great benefits. They remind you to stay active.

They can help keep you motivated, and they can give you insight into how hard you’re working. And I love tracking your progress because that helps you stay motivated. Because You look back and see how far you’ve come, and it tells you, you know, how many days out of the week or month you exercised. So it’s a great thing. I encourage you to wear them. I just don’t want you to take the information about calories burned as your live and die, because there’s so much more to that, and it’s only sometimes giving you that full picture.