Taking Tech Stock

Relying on fitness technology can make your training better, but it can also make it worse.

- Thomas DeLauer

The days of trusting your own judgment and your own process when it comes to dieting are beginning to come to an end. Personally, I sit at the tail end of an era where we’d rely on only the mirror and our willpower to dictate where we go with our training. Nowadays, there is so much in the way of technology that does this for us, it’s beginning to take some of the “mad scientist” guesswork out of building our bodies. I am here to submit this question: “Is the advent of fitness technology impacting our training in positive or negative ways?”

Allowing For Accountability

With products like MyFitnessPal, Lose It!, and a multitude of other training and diet apps, the ability to chronicle your food intake and training is right in front of us at all times. The advent of such technology allows for just about everyone to become their own diet expert and to truly hold themselves accountable. In the grand scheme of things, this is great!

But with such readily available access to technology, it can begin to do the job for you a little too well. For the person who would ordinarily need to become very in touch with themselves to find success, technology can stand in the way of learning how foods react with their bodies, or how a certain food may impact their physique and even their mind. Eating and logging simply becomes part of the daily data input and can get muddied along with other countless metrics and mental spreadsheets. In a sense, it takes the true understanding of what they are eating out of the equation.