Are Fitness Trackers Doing Us More Harm Than Good?

Fitness trackers and wearable tech promise to help us stay on top of our health—tracking our steps, monitoring our sleep, measuring our heart rate. It all sounds helpful, even empowering and of course can be essential for health issues. But what if, instead of improving our well-being, these devices are actually pulling us further away from it? Let’s have a look.

Are We Outsourcing Our Own Body Awareness?

Our bodies are constantly giving us signals—hunger cues, thirst reminders, energy shifts, muscle tension, gut feelings. We already have an internal system designed to tell us what we need. But when we start relying on a device to confirm if we slept “well enough” or if we moved “enough,” we slowly override our ability to listen to those natural cues, hang up our instinct and retire our autonomy.

Rather than tuning in, we start second-guessing. Maybe you woke up feeling well-rested, but your sleep tracker says your quality of sleep was “poor.” Suddenly, you’re questioning your own experience. Maybe you were feeling good about your movement that day, but your step count didn’t hit the arbitrary goal set by an app—so now it feels like not enough.

The Hidden Stress of Constant Tracking

Ironically, while these devices are meant to improve our health, the constant tracking of every bodily fluctuation can actually spike our stress response. It feeds our fight flight response of scanning the horizon (device) for danger. Instead of fostering well-being, it can lead to anxiety, hyper-fixation, and even nervous system dysregulation.

When we become obsessed with hitting the right numbers—steps, calories, sleep scores—we keep our nervous system in a constant state of evaluation. We start to micromanage our bodies as if they are problems to be solved rather than living, breathing systems that thrive on trust and balance.

Slowing Down Is the Point

Modern life already demands so much from us. There is an obsession with productivity—habit-stacking, efficiency, squeezing more into every single day. It’s a mindset that often leans into patriarchal ideals of achievement, of proving our worth through output, through doing more, being more productive and maximising every second. And now, wearable tech brings that mentality into our personal well-being. It turns something as simple as sleeping or walking into another thing to optimize, another metric to improve, another habit to stack.

But what if the real luxury isn’t doing more—it’s doing less? What if the real marker of well-being isn’t a perfect sleep score but waking up slowly, stretching in bed, sipping a cup of tea? What if instead of trying to maximize every moment, we allowed ourselves to experience them fully?

A slow start to the day. An unhurried walk with no destination. Noticing birdsong. A movement practice that isn’t about burning calories but about feeling good and tuning in naturally, building organic instincts. These are the things that nourish us. These are the things that trackers can’t measure.

Rebuilding Natural Awareness

What if, instead of outsourcing our awareness to technology, we focused on reconnecting with our own internal signals? It can’t be a coincidence that we have more tech, more systems, more devices, more ways to measure – and a marked increase in stress…

Practices like yoga, breathwork and somatic exercises help rebuild the ability to sense what our bodies need—without relying on external validation. Learning to listen again means we move when we feel like moving, rest when we feel like resting, and eat when we’re truly hungry, rather than when a device tells us it’s time.

Letting Go of Micromanagement

Once we stop micromanaging every piece of data, we create space for something more valuable—actual body awareness. Instead of overanalyzing our health, we start living in a way that aligns with how we feel rather than how we score. Micromanaging is also a noted stress survival response.

True well-being isn’t about perfect numbers or a score. It’s about trust, balance, and the ability to simply be in your body—without needing an app to tell you how you’re doing. Could winning look and feel different?