Best Pedometer Types for Your Healthy Life

The health and fitness trend is growing at an exponential rate. Gymnasiums are seeing higher rates of repeat visit members than ever before, sporting equipment such as trainers and running outfits are bestsellers on major online retail websites like Amazon, and healthy food alternatives are being given more shelf space in supermarkets. If you are thinking about shedding some pounds or toning up, you might be wondering where to start. Joining the millions of others who go regularly to the gym might seem like a good idea, but it can be daunting, especially if you haven’t been before. The good news is that there is a much simpler and cheaper way to improve your health and fitness – walking.

Harvard University recommend taking 10,000 steps a day, five days a week to really get yourself into shape. This translates to roughly five miles or a strenuous thirty minute exercise routine every weekday. You might think that this sounds too much, – especially if you haven’t exercised a lot before, but the simple truth is that the average person in the United States already takes about 5,000 steps their daily lives. So with some tweaking – like walking to the shops or around a park for twenty minutes – you will find that it is actually quite easy to double that number.

If you can mangage to hit 10,000 steps a day, you can burn up to 3500 calories per week, which equates to a pound of fat. Losing weight this way means it is safe and controlled, avoiding the potential health complications that can go hand in hand with fad diets and gruelling exercise regimes. As you get fitter, you can start to increase this level to higher step amounts with relative ease.

So you might be considering walking as a great solution to start yourself on the path of health and fitness. You might also think that it might be better just to work out how far you walked on a given day and create a rough total from there. Not only is this difficult and time consuming, research has shown that people often overestimate their levels of activity and calorie expenditure by as much as 50%. Doing this means that you might not be as far down the path to fitness and health that you think you are. Instead, the best and cheapest solution to help you keep track of all those steps is a pedometer (step counter). These portable electronic devices are designed purely to count and record each step that you take through built-in sensors that can detect movement in the hips or hands. Good pedomotres are surprisingly accurate and have no age restrictions for use (unlike some other sporting equipment), so they can even be used by both kids and the elderly.

There are a large number of different pedometers and step counters available, some which can be kept in the pocket, worn on the wrist, or worn around the neck. There are also many different features that go beyond simple calculation of steps taken, meaning that you will have plenty of choice when it comes to making your purchase. Here we are going to look at the different types of pedometer and what features they encorporate.

One of the easiest ways and most cost effective ways to get a step counter is on a smartphone. Market leaders such as iPhone and Android have their own app stores, where a simple search will bring up thousands of different dedicated pedometer apps, where you can select either the one with the highest reviews. Fitness apps tend to be very well designed and usually have streamlined menus and easy to read data that can be stored for long periods of time, meaning that it will be very simple to keep track of your progress once you get started. However, do keep in mind that if you download a pedometer onto your phone, you will need to have it with you and powered on at all times, otherwise you’ll be missing out on recording those crucial steps.

Another, new type of pedometer is encorporated into the increasingly popular exercise band. Companies such as FitBit and Jawbone have created lightweight and comfortable werable bands that fit easily on the wrist and connect to your smartphone to deposit data via the combined app. The benefit of an exercise band over a phone app is that they include more than just a pedometer (such as sleep quality checker, and heart rate monitor), and don’t require you to have your phone on you at all times. However, they can be quite expensive, with some models coming in at well over $100 – so depending on affordability, it might be more beneficial to start with something simpler and graduate to an exercise band once you have got into your walking routine properly.

Basic step counters on the other hand are relatively inexpensive (between $15-30 depending on model), whilst often having great features. Many have multi-axis sensors, meaning that they will work regardless of what position they are placed in. In addition, they will likely have internal memory – so can store the data that you record for long periods of time, meaning you don’t have to worry about losing it. As technology has evolved, pedometers have become far less intrusive than they used to be, with some being less than an inch thick and so easy to store in the pocket. When looking, it is a good idea to search for models that have the capability of being clipped onto the clothes or worn around the neck as well, so that you have more freedom of options when you start doing your walking.

Whatever type of pedometer step counter you decide to go for, be it a typical portable electornic one, an app on yoyr phone, or a wearable wristband, it is a superb (and also very addictive) way to start being more mindful about your daily activity, leading to a greater sense of wellbeing, fitness and health.