Walk in winter and count steps

- ykÃkýe {qð{uLx xÙuf fhðkLkk nðu yLkuf M{kxo hMíkk Au, yu{ktÚke yuf Mknu÷k WÃkkÞLke ðkík fheyu

After a long wait, winter finally seems to be setting in. Can you leave the warmth of the quilt and go for a walk these days ? Whether the answer is yes or no , if you understand the importance of regular walking, then today's article is for you!

Thus, our lives are becoming more and more sedentary due to smartphones , but on the other hand, these same smartphones can also encourage us to be more physically active.

If you are a fitness fanatic, there are many different fitness app options that can be added to your smartphone or work with a smartwatch or fitness band. An app encourages us to walk regularly and tracks the details of how many steps we walk , how far we walk , how many calories we burn and so on. So an app helps us to keep track of our daily diet. An app reminds us to drink water at intervals we set.

Many of these apps also fulfill the need for social media and allow us to share our fitness activities with our friends.

Of course, many fitness apps are also like to-do lists that help you keep track of daily tasks. It has so many features that keeping track of the work becomes a big task in itself. Similarly , if a fitness app doesn't have a lot of features, it might happen that instead of actually being physically active with the app, we will be busy checking the various features of the app and doing social sharing with it - sitting on the sofa!

Apart from the fitness apps of different big and small companies, smartphone companies such as Apple , Samsung , LG , Google etc. also provide their own health apps.

Here we get a close introduction to Google's fitness app ' Google Fit ' because it can be easily used in any company's phone.

If you are really motivated to walk regularly during winter days, this app will definitely give you an extra edge!

Mk{Syu rVxLkuMk zuxkLkwt MkkËwt, Mkh¤ xÙu®føk

Install the Google Fit app ( Google Fit: Activity Tracking, Google LLC) on your smartphone and open it, then you will be asked to sign-in with your Google account. You can tell the app your gender , date of birth , weight and height if you want . Of course none of this is mandatory. After giving these details and reaching the home screen of the app, we see two light blue and light green circles with our Google profile image.

Understand the interface of the app

On opening the app , the two circles that appear at the top , the blue circle represents our ' steps ' and the green circle represents ' heart points ' . As we walk during the day , the color of the circle gets darker and the number of heart points and steps in between increases.

As there is debate over the exact figure of how many steps a day should be taken for a healthy life , this app gives more importance to heart points , according to the World Health Organisation's salutation. We can set a goal of how many steps we want to walk daily according to our ability and interest.

Accordingly , below both circles are found our daily goals. Then you can see how close or how many days we have exceeded the daily goal out of the previous seven days.

Below that, we see how many points we have earned during a given week , out of the 150 points recommended by the World Health Organization throughout the week. Below that you will see a chart of how many heart points you have earned daily during the last seven days.

Obviously this chart will start showing details after starting to use the Fit app!

Other settings of the app

At the bottom of the home screen of the app, there are four tabs namely Home , Journal , Browse and Profile.

Home: As seen above , our daily activity details can be seen on the home screen.

Journal: Our previous activities can be seen in the journal tab. Fit app automatically counts our steps while we walk but apart from that we have to manually record various physical activities. All this can be done in the journal tab.

Browse: Here we see the details that we have given to the app itself and various analysis of the data that the app itself collects according to our movements. If you're an advanced user of fitness apps, there's a lot of detail to be found here , but the analysis of just walking data can also ' run ' the job !

Profile: In profile tab we can see our details. Specifically here we can set daily targets of Move Minutes and Heart Points.

By going to the settings of the app, we can set the units for height in centimeters , kilograms for weight , kilometers for distance, etc. And other apps can be set to connect with Google Fit or not , how to manage our data , track activity automatically or not, etc. You can take a lot of work from this app if you want.

Why is this app different ?

For some time, Google has tried to make its app more useful by collaborating with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Heart Association (AHA).

We all know the importance of physical activity for health but it is also important to measure the intensity of such activity. Accordingly, in Google Fit app, our activity is now measured in two ways namely Move Minutes and Heart Points. Most fitness apps keep track of how many steps we walk or how long we work out, but Move Minutes and Heart Points can be helpful to see how much activity is good for our health.

After installing the Fit app in the phone and recording the basic details, we don't have to do anything. Just open the Fit app at some times during the day and see how active we have been today! For that, the progress of Move Minutes and Heart Points can be seen based on your activity that day in the circle given above on the home screen of the app.

So far, after reading these words repeatedly, if you want to know what both of them really are, you can get that information by clicking on the information's eye icon on the upper right side of the screen.

So start walking and tracking it everyday , wish you happy walking!

yuÃk ík{khkt Ãkøk÷kt økýíke LkÚke?

Thus, Fit app keeps counting our steps with the help of various sensors in our phone like accelerometer , significant motion sensor and GPS based location tracking etc. The algorithm of this app is so smart that if we are going somewhere on a cycle , bike or car instead of walking, the app ' understands ' that we are not walking and does not count the steps at that time.

The Fit app can keep track of our steps without an internet connection. Also , even when we don't keep this app open, it keeps doing its job of counting our steps. This is the reason why the fit consumes more battery of our phone. However, this app does not cause any problem in phones with good battery capacity. Also we can employ other measures to save battery.

But , the system of our phone is gradually becoming so smart that if various apps in it have a significant impact on the battery, it limits its usage. Because of this or by making a mistake in the battery optimization settings itself , even though your phone has Google Fit , it may not count your steps.

As a workaround , look for ' optimization ' options in the phone's settings , battery section . Each phone has a different name for this system , but we just need to make sure that Fit's step tracking isn't turned off to save battery.

zuR÷e økkuÕMk fuðk hk¾e þfkÞ?

This is clearly a matter of doctor's advice! But the ultimate goal of most physical activity is to keep our hearts beating healthily. Physical activity keeps both our heart and brain healthy. In the Fit app we get heart points for every minute spent doing moderate to vigorous physical activity.

For example, if we do brisk walking i.e. walk relatively fast and take more than a few steps every minute, the Fit app gives us one heart point. If we do more vigorous physical activity such as jogging or joining an aerobics dance class, we get two heart points for every minute of such vigorous activity.

According to the Fit app, the World Health Organization recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week. According to Fit App, if you can get at least 150 heart points per week, you are considered to have followed these recommendations.

If you want to take care of your health by being physically active on a regular basis, this usage of Google Fit is enough for you. But you can connect other fitness apps with Google Fit if you want. A number of life insurance and mediclaim companies are now launching their own fitness apps.

Insurance companies have also started offering some compensation in premium if policyholders install such an app and connect it with Google Fit and regularly walk as per the criteria set by the company. Using our data to our advantage!