Answering all your questions about health trackers - AMA with CEO of Movitalis

Hi everyone!

I am the CEO of Movitalis, an activity tracker focused on longevity. I am here to make noise about my upcoming launch and provide as much value as I can in the process. While building this product I got to learn a lot about activity trackers, important and useless metrics, common mistakes and hidden gems. I've also learnt what the science has to say about these metrics and trackers, so if you have any questions, fire away! 🔥

I'll start with some things I learnt that are interesting and I wish everyone knew:

1. Tracking burnt calories during exercise is very inaccurate. All fitness trackers have a hard time estimating this value and studies show error margins up to 50%. This is because your calorie expenditure depends on things your tracker has no access to (how many calories you ate, how stressed you are, how is your metabolic health etc). Instead it's better to focus on calorie intake, and there are many good trackers such as Carbon Diet Coach 🍲

2. VO2 max is relevant for regular people too, not just athletes. In fact, it is probably more relevant for non-athletes since it is a better marker of health than performance and there is more variance between non-athletes than between athletes. In this study of over 1 million participants, a low VO2 max was linked with a 3-5x increase in overall mortality. This is an amazing finding as VO2 max is something we can increase through regular exercise, especially if done correctly. ❤️

3. Tracking daily steps is really simple but really valuable. There are many studies that show a strong correlation between daily steps and lifespan, but because it's such a simple (and maybe boring) metric we tend to overlook it. 🚶

Bonus: HRV is mostly irrelevant. Even pro athletes barely use this datapoint. Regular people are nowhere near the peak of their performance and most of us should not worry about being in the "optimal place" for training. We should just train and try to be as consistent as possible. 💪

Now if you have any questions, I'd love to know what they are and do my best to share what I've leant.

Thanks!