Welcome to the Get Fit Guys quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm the Get Fit Guy. And in today's episode, you're going to learn whether or not it really does make sense to quantify your exercise or whether it might actually be damaging for you. Well, unless you

completely eschew technology or live under a rock in the middle of the woods, you're no doubt

familiar with the trendy new obsession with self-quantification and quantified self-movement,

the use of sleep trackers like the bedet, fancy pedometers, and calorie tracking devices like the Apple Watch, the Fitbit, and the jawbone, and devices like the Lumo that even quantifies and adjust your posture, or Spiro, which quantifies your breathing, and nature beat, which quantifies your cardiovascular and

nervous system health. An entire floor of this year's Consumer Electronics Summit, the world's most

popular event devoted to breakthrough new technologies, was devoted to just these type of

wearables. And many people find themselves tied to and studying

these type of devices 24-7 as a job. A perfect example is my recent Ben Greenfield Fitness.com

podcast with the Rainmaker, the man who is single-handedly tested nearly every self-quantification device on the face of the planet.

I'll link to that episode over at quick and dirty tips.com.

Just look up the show notes to this episode, episode number 282.

Well, I've even been caught up myself with this craze,

and I've been using a ring with a built-in computer. It's called an aura to

track and measure a host of parameters like sleep and heart rate, heart rate variability,

activity, body temperature, movement, respiration, and much more. But is this seeming obsession with

self-quantification actually healthy? Should you quantify metrics such as

exercise and sleep? Or are there proven drawbacks? Well, in this episode, you're going to discover

the latest research on this and get a few of my quick and dirty tips to make the right decision

when it comes to quantification. Now, the Journal of Consumer Research recently reported in the article

the hidden cost of personal quantification

on the results of six different experiments that looked into devices

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