Being healthy is hard. It requires making difficult decisions constantly. Instead of eating that easy to pour sugary cereal, take time to prepare a healthy breakfast. Instead of lounging on the couch watching TV, get up and exercise. Drink water instead of tasty soda. Go to bed at a reasonable time when all you want to do is watch bing a few more hours of The Office.
There are so many obstacles to becoming healthy, it’s no surprise obesity is such a problem. Luckily, the world of tech ” especially the IoT ” can help ease you into becoming healthier and create important habits to living a better life.
Eating Clean and Better Portion Control
A person‘s diet is a key part of becoming healthier. If you exercise a ton, but still rarely eat healthily, losing weight or meeting your health goals becomes an uphill battle.
So, if you are trying to lose weight, become more fit, or just keep your current body shape, eating right is essential. Different IoT tools can help you to eat cleaner and have better portion control.
If eating smart is essential for you, there are tools like the HAPIfork app that tracks your eating habits, how many bites you took, and encourages you to eat slower. Other tools can make sure you cook the right amount of food, while apps on your phone can track your calorie intake.
Even the simplest of tools, a calorie counter app, can do wonders for keeping you honest with your eating. You start by describing your current weight and body type and then how much weight you want to lose. Then, the app tells you how many calories you can intake, and if you report it to the app, it can keep you on track. Connecting other tools like smart utensils can help monitor how you eat and guide you to eating better.
Drinking Water the Smart Way
Making sure you consume enough water every day is key to being healthy, especially if you are exercising. Water helps prevent snacking, makes you feel better, and keeps you regular.
Smart water bottles and pitchers can help track how much water you’ve consumed and even send notifications to your phone reminding you to drink. Then, at the end of the day or week, you can get reports on how much water you drank, how much more you need to drink, and even when you are drinking.
If having a technology connected water bottles seems a bit much, you can get apps on your phone to track your water consumption too. It will require logging in information, like how much water you took in, but you can still get reminders to drink if that’s a problem for you.
Fitbits, Smart Clothes, Exercise Machines, and More
When it comes to exercising, there is no end of IoT devices to help out. Depending on what you want to accomplish in your workout, there is a device for you.
Want to track how far you run, how many calories you’ve burned, your heart rate, and even have something on you to help keep you motivated? Fitbits and smartwatches can accomplish that for you. Then, after you’re done, you can get a report on how well your workout went. That can include how many calories it predicts you burned, average heart rate, and just in general how good your workout was. Then it can track your progress over time because everybody loves to watch themselves improve.
As IoT devices become more popular, you’ll also see more gyms incorporate smart exercise machines, or you can include them in your home gym. This can give you even more data on your workout, and guide you on improving. This can be useful for people looking to get the perfect workout for them and looking for the best way to maximise their time at the gym.
Then, there are smart clothes. The average person probably doesn’t need smart workout clothes, but somebody is looking to compete in a sport seriously should look at them. Professional athletes use smart clothes and devices, allowing their coaches to analyse their performance and identify problems they might have. You can do the same, just get smart clothes designed for your chosen sport. Smart shoes can help you improve in any running sport, smart gloves can improve grip for sports like baseball or weightlifting, and smart clothes can track things like how much you sweat and better track your heart rate.
Better Sleep with IoT
Sleep is an often overlooked aspect of a healthy life. When people don’t get enough sleep consistently, they gain weight, have more stress, are more likely to die in a car accident, are at a higher risk for heart disease, and more.
Many IoT devices can help you get longer and better sleep. The first comes from the friendly FitBit, which can track how much you sleep throughout the night. If you wear it throughout the night, it can measure how much sleep you get and how restful it really was. Instead of just counting the hours from when you turned off the light and when the alarm went off, you can get a more accurate idea of how effective your sleeping was. From that sleep data, you can try out different solutions to help improve your sleep, including getting a new mattress, different pre-bed routines, and changing when you go to bed.
If getting a good night’s sleep is incredibly important, or you’re struggling to find out why you wake up tired every morning, there are smart beds out there. You can purchase an entire bed to track your movements or a pad that sits below the covers. These monitor your sleeping patterns and report back when you get the most sleep and what positions help you fall asleep.
Use IoT Along with Experts
The IoT can do a lot for helping improve your health, but you have to work with it. Wearing a Fitbit isn’t going to make you healthier magically, you have to work out. IoT devices can do a lot to track your results and guide you on improving, but take things with a grain of salt. The devices are not perfect and can give you skewed results.
If you are really serious about getting healthy, consider meeting an expert in the field you struggle with. A personal trainer can show you the best exercises for getting fit, a nutritionist can show you a good diet, and a sleep expert can be a huge help in getting your seven to nine hours of sleep. IoT devices can help track your progress, but they don’t replace a trained professional.
