While fitness watches can be very helpful within your fitness journey, it does not come without its faults. It’s easy to become obsessed with the numbers, compare your workouts with others, and become more in love with closing your rings than doing purposeful exercise you enjoy. It can really create an unhealthy relationship with your watch, also resulting in an unhealthy relationship with exercise.

On the bright side, when used mindfully, it can be a great tool to collect data and encourage more purposeful movement if you’ve been struggling with accountability.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my Apple Watch and it has been an amazing tool to use I’ve used on and off over the last 6 years of my journey; but it’s important to also remember that no tool is queen - it takes a combination of tools to thorough outline progress and success within any fitness journey.

If you love your Apple Watch (or Fitbit, or whatever other fitness watch you’re loving right now) as much as I do, here are some often forgotten reminders that are helpful in maintaining a healthy relationship with your watch.

Set A Realistic Move Goal

Pick a move goal that is challenging but achievable. It’s important to consider your lifestyle:

Are you a nurse who is always on their feet at the hospital? Or are you working from home, usually sitting at a desk?
Do you live in a single-floor bungalow or a high-rise condo where you mostly take the elevator? Or do you live in a 3-story home or on the 5th floor of an apartment building and take stairs often?
Do you usually drive to work? Or are you commuting through transit - encouraging you to walk and stand more?
When you get home, do you spend most of your time sitting on the couch watching Netflix with the family? Or are you usually up and moving while you’re home?
Do you have a pet that you walk daily? Or are you pet-less and don’t really enjoy daily walks?
Are you the kind of person who parks in the first 3 rows at the grocery store? Or do you like to park at the back of the parking lot and walk?

These are just a few factors to consider when setting your Move Goal. Finding the perfect move goal for you takes some experimenting, but if you can reach your move goal every day with ease (little to no work), consider increasing your move goal. If you rarely ever hit your move goal or have to put yourself on overdrive to hit it each day, your move goal may be too high. If you can hit it most of the time by simply living your day-to-day life and an extra push from purposeful exercise, you may have found your sweet spot!

Don’t Compare Your Move Goal To Others

I’ve seen multiple posts in fitness forums where womxn ask others “What do you have your move goal set to?”

And the numbers definitely range - simply because everyone lives different lifestyles and require different move goals. Just because you and your friend are on a weight-loss journey together DOES NOT mean that your move goals will be similar. Purposeful exercise aside, while you work as a bank clerk and sit at a desk most of the way, they may work as a teacher and are always on their feet. Or while you drive to work and spend your ride sitting, they may take public transit and spend most of their commute standing on a bus.

Just because your fitness goals are the same and you go to the same group fitness class does not mean your move goals will be the same.

Collect Data, Not Judgement

It’s easy to look at your move ring throughout the day and yourself. You may feel AMAZING when you close all of your rings, but you may equally feel shitty if you didn’t. Stop using your watch like this. Instead, use it to collect data and explore what factors play a role in this collected data.

For example: Notice you close your rings on the weekends, but not on the week days? Why? Could it be because on the weekends you are out and about, unlike on the week days where you’re at a desk all day? Could it be because you have more time to workout on the weekends and tend to sleep-in before work? This data is painting a story of your lifestyle - which in turn will help you shift your lifestyle to better align with your goals.

Watch Data Isn’t Always Accurate

When it says you burned 235 calories during your workout, it doesn’t mean exactly 235 calories. Its usually an estimation based on the exercise type you chose and the average calories burned per minute based on your heartrate and the exercise selected on the watch. A lot of the time, fitness watches, like the Apple Watch, do not consider your weight, TEF (thermogenic effect of food), or other biological factors.

That being said, take the data with a grain of salt. It’s useful for identifying trends and seeing data change over time; but it is not useful when being used at face value.

Your Monthly Challenges Are There To Encourage You To Move More; But Not Completing Them Does Not Make You A Failure.

I love the Monthly Challenges. Every month, I try my hardest to push myself and complete the challenge, but sometimes life happens. You may have a busy work month and forget to stand as often; or you may get an injury and have to take a month off from working out. They are there to challenge you and encourage you to move your body more, but failing to complete them doesn’t devalue your journey.

Focus On The Quality Of Your Workout Over The Quantity Of Time Spent Closing Your Exercise Ring

As exciting as it is to see the little mini achievement on your watch when you workout for 30-minutes a day; the quality of your workout should matter more. You can have a really poor quality workout that lasts 1-hour and you can also have a kickass workout that only takes 15-minutes. The exercise ring measures time, not quality.

Instead of focusing on how long you workout, consider other factors like how intense was your workout, do your muscles feel worked, and have you gotten stronger?

Competitions Are Fun & Games - And That’s How They Should Stay… Or Else You May Ruin Relationships.

Are you super competitive? Then you probably loved hearing about the competition feature on the Apple Watch where you could compete with friends to win a badge. While this definitely creates friendly motivation, it can turn sour real quickly if someone gets too competitive.

At the end of the day, health is a journey of You against Yourself - constantly trying to get better! As I mentioned before, different people (even with the same goals) have different lifestyles and genetics. Competitions should stay as a fun game; not a way to “do better” than someone else.

Take Breaks From Your Watch

While using an Apple Watch is a great way to track data, it can quickly take away from your ability to intuitively sense progress on your own. For the longest time, I’d focus on my rings more than my purposeful action. I’d workout hard to close my move and exercise rings; then spend the rest of the day sitting in a desk chair. I really wasn’t “healthier” by doing this.

Now, I take week-long breaks from my Watch, and during those weeks, I really try to identify key indicators of feel-good movement. When the watch is taken away, you really have to rely on truly understanding yourself, the way your body moves, and the way your body feels through movement.