How My Fitness Tracker Helps With PsA

To help me in my quest to be more active, my husband bought me a fitness tracker. While some women may find this offensive, it was something that I was thrilled to receive. You see, I wanted to go beyond tracking the time I was exercising and wanted to start logging my distance, steps, and more. What I didn’t expect was how keeping track of my activity could help me manage my chronic illnesses.

Seeing the real picture!

I had been walking 1.5 miles every day, but it wasn’t enough. When I began using my fitness tracker, I soon discovered that my daily walk was only racking up a third of the steps I needed in order to reach my goal of 10,000 steps a day. It made me realize that I needed to either increase the length of my daily walk or increase my activity throughout my day.

Get up and go!

My tracker does more than keep me aware of my physical activity; it motivates me to move my body. By setting reminders to get off of my rear end, I have been able to prevent pain in my hips that comes from sitting too long. I have mine set to go off whenever it senses that I have been inactive for an hour and a half. Unless it is time for my daily walk, I just get up and walk around my house for 5 or 10 minutes. The amount of time I walk isn’t as important as the fact that I am moving my body throughout the day.

The full scoop!

Before tracking my steps and distance, I would become discouraged whenever I had a day that my body required bedrest. Being able to see what I have accomplished at the end of the week helps me accept resting when needed. There are many days when I go beyond my goal of 10,000 steps and those extra steps usually make up for a bad day. Even more satisfying is seeing my results for an entire month. This data has helped me get over the fact that I had to remain in bed for a few days in a row last month. I have come to accept that it’s okay if I don’t always hit my daily goal as long as I don’t limit myself to that goal when I am having a good day.

Do you use a fitness tracker? How has it helped you manage PsA?