Stress monitoring and the Body Battery<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWhat are less specific to the Garmin Forerunner 45 are things like 24\/7 activity tracking and step counts. If the tracker detects you haven’t moved in a while – hard morning banging out spreadsheets, maybe? – it will prompt you with an alert to get up and walk around, as much for your mental health as your physical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, neatly, you don’t necessarily have to tell the tracker what kind of activity you’re doing – it can automatically differentiate between walking, running, swimming and cycling, and can log the time you spend doing each of these activities, so you have a record of your effort while making… erm… minimal effort to overtly record it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you have such gruesome things as intensity minute targets, you can set your daily goals and the Garmin will prompt you to up the intensity right now if you want to meet those goals. While it’s less inherently personal trainer than some of the more expensive fitness trackers, it can bring the drill sergeant when you want it to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stress tracking is a new development for the Forerunner 45 – it’s been proven that stress has as much of an impact on overall fitness levels as sleep, diet, and exercise, so it was inevitable that eventually it would be folded into our model of healthy living, and therefore activity monitoring. Using heart monitoring as a guide to stress (and using a baseline assumption of regular heart health), it monitors perceived stress levels throughout any given day<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to this, the Forerunner 45 adds in a feature called “Body Battery tracking.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yeah – we didn’t know, either. Body Battery tracking is essentially a combination of statistics that chart how much energy you have at various points throughout the day. Before breakfast, after breakfast, mid-morning, after lunch, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It charts how your energy levels fluctuate, largely in relation to other data on food, exercise, sleep, and so on, to establish a generalized – we should stress Generalized and underline it a couple of times – picture of how your “Body Battery” drains and recharges throughout the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n