They don’t yell cliched inspiration at you and won’t ever drag you out of bed to exercise.

In many ways a fitness tracker is the opposite of a personal trainer, although they can deliver similar results.

Beverley Barton became a FitBit fan in her search for a suitable exercise post breast cancer treatment.

She was in her 20s when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and started walking to get fit.

“Then I developed breast cancer in 2009,” said Ms Barton, now 55. “After treatment, the walking didn’t seem to be having the same positive effect.”

Bone loss was a side effect of her cancer medication. It was recommended she incorporate a weight-bearing exercise into her routine, in order to help.

Once again, walking fit the bill.

“[But then] I wondered if I wasn’t walking enough,” Ms Barton said.

“I had no way of judging how much I was doing or how much I should increase it by. I didn’t want to cause other problems by doing too much.”

She tried using a basic pedometer, but its readings didn’t jibe with those of her treadmill.

She was desperate. She then found the FitBit, a wireless activity tracker that noted her steps.

“I just love it,” she said. “I can clip it on under my clothes and no one knows I am wearing it. It matches the result on the treadmill. I feel like I am doing something to help myself, but I am not going overboard. If I overdo things it exacerbates my MS symptoms.”

The device encouraged her to increase her daily efforts, from five miles to ten.

“I feel like I have found my happy spot. I can do ten miles on a weekday and I don’t do as much, or anything, on the weekend. I feel much better for it.”

Every week, she syncs her fitness tracker with her iPad. FitBit sends weekly reports detailing the number of calories she’s burned, how many steps she has taken and how many miles she has travelled.

It also syncs with fitness websites like www.myfitnesspal.com.

Eating

The website allows her to enter what she is eating each week and will tell her if she’s consuming too much or too little for the amount of exercise she is doing.

Some fitness trackers allow you to enter a goal and will then flash, whistle or beep when you reach it.

Being able to see her steps mount up serves as motivation for Ms Barton.

The gadget has also found favour with bank employee Eleanor Connor.

“I like the idea of being able to have my steps counted without much effort,” she said.

“It is encouraging when you see how many steps you have taken. It makes you do a few more if you haven’t reached your goal for the day.”

Experts disagree on how useful fitness trackers actually are.

Indiana University gave basic pedometers to a small group of people for 12 weeks last year.

They found the group was more active with the pedometer than without, and had an average weight loss of about 2.5lbs.

A second study by a US company, Endeavour Partners, found that about a third of people abandon their fitness trackers after about six months.

People who are already fitness nuts however, tend to stick with theirs.

Nives Filice said one of the downsides to her FitBit Flex is that it doesn’t accurately measure other types of workouts.

“It would be nice if it could do weight training and callisthenic work but it doesn’t do that,” she said. “That is one drawback to it.”

Other devices do however.

People wanting to track swimming or running performance might consider the FlyFit, Runtastic Orbit and the Atlas.

A range of fitness trackers are widely available in local stores for about $150.