Fitness Trackers: An Outsource for Mindfulness?

Ryan and I had a brief discussion about fitness trackers (i.e. FitBits) this evening. Since the weather is supposed to get nicer sometime this year, and nicer weather means we go cycling on the C&O Canal, he was interested in finding out if any of the models can track cycling movements. A very short search revealed that, no, none of the mainstream models track cycling movements but we can log the activity manually. So, we might start there.

On the drive home I started thinking about this new wave of fitness trackers. They track heart rate, sleep amount (and quality, apparently...), number of steps taken, number of calories burned, cardiac activity, some will even track your idle moments and give you a buzz when it is time to get off your duff and go for a walk. 

But can we not be our own fitness trackers? Instead of paying $99 or more, could we not instead pay attention? 

Meditation helps us re-learn how to pay attention to the breath. We can learn what a stressed breath feels like and what a relaxed breath feels like. In turn, we can learn what our body is telling us when we are experiencing those different breaths. 

As we practice paying attention, we will start to recognize when we are tired and we will go to bed. Our bodies will know when we've had enough sleep and we will wake up. We will be able to tell the difference between a good night's sleep and a restless night's sleep. 

We will start to pay attention to our bodies and know when we are hungry, when we are full, when certain foods agree with us and when certain foods do not. I am baffled by friends, colleagues, and family members whom I have heard say, "I sometimes forget to eat." How in the world does that happen? 

I think the fitness trackers of the world have tremendous possibility to engage us in becoming more aware of our bodies, of our natural cycles, of what works for us and what does not. But it is going to take some extra, non-machine-prompted effort on our parts to make the connection between the data being generated by the band around our wrists and the data being generated within our own bodies.