Why I Took A Break From My Apple Watch

Back when fitness happened IRL, I bought an Apple watch to help me track the pace of my classes. At this point in my career I have a good sense of how much programming I can fit into 55 minutes, but I’m also a big talker, and it’s important for me to have time benchmarks to fit everything in. I invested in the Apple watch, even though I’m not hugely tech-y because the bluetooth function allowed me to control the speakers from across the room, and I could turn down the music to dive deeper into a cue or crank it up when I wanted you to push harder without running across to the music station every 30 seconds. 

Despite knowing that the whole 10,000 steps thing is bogus, I got REALLY into closing my rings (if you don’t have an Apple watch, you close a ring if you hit your preset goals for standing, exercising and general movement). As a fit pro commuting around NYC pre Covid, I always surpassed my daily goals by a long shot with the act of teaching my classes, but also with all the commuting from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back again- and so I never really stressed about it.

When fitness trackers are dangerous

Enter a global pandemic! Without anywhere to commute to, and without getting to take IRL classes with my fitpro peers, even though I remained pretty active by walking my dog 3x daily and maintaining my personal pilates practice, my daily numbers went significantly down. At first, the watch was a healthy motivator to get me moving, but then I started feeling familiar old anxieties if I didn’t hit my numbers. I’m self aware enough at this point to realize that that was dangerous territory for me. So, I took it off. This gave me multiple levels of anxiety- on top of feeling like my fitness would plummet, I am also not the type to waste $399 on something I won’t use. My mental health, especially in 2020, is of utmost importance, though, so off it came.

My experience using the Whoop band

After purchasing a Whoop band for my partner for his birthday, and hearing his daily recovery and sleep reports each morning (if you have a loved one who does CrossFit, you feel my pain!) I was interested in seeing if I could change my intention from productivity goal setting, to recovery and rest, which felt like a nurturing move as the world copes with these “unprecedented times” in various levels of healthy/non healthy ways. The Whoop band also tracks exertion, but because the there is no screen on the face of the band like the Apple watch, you have to log into the app and intentionally seek that metric out, and even when you get to the home screen of the Whoop app, there’s no calories burned metric. The usage of the term “strain” as a way for me to measure overall exertion rather than succumbing to an old calorie counting trigger made it feel safe. Compared to the Apple watch, that gave me little vibrating notifications all day long, and calories expended right on the home screen, that felt like enough distance to be healthy for me. 

I’ve been wearing the Whoop band since June, and I’ve noticed a significant improvement in my commitment to getting better sleep (that is, until I noticed Grey’s Anatomy is on Netflix- now I’m screwed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). When I open the app, it prompts me to plug in if I’m menstruating, if I’ve had caffeine or alcohol (how much and what time I had them— but doesn’t show calories) and keeps a running record of how those things impact the amount of rest and recovery I get that evening. It’s helped me maintain a sense of peace with my relationship with movement through quarantine, because I haven’t felt pressure to reach a goal.

I’m ready to start wearing my Apple watch again

I’m ready for a few reasons: (like I said, I didn’t spend all that money for it to sit in a drawer, and also I’ve lost all concept of time since March and I know wearing an actual watch helps me regulate my schedule). The biggest reason, though, is that we left Brooklyn when our lease ended in June, and are temporarily living upstate. While it’s incredible to have all this space and nature around, which you think would inspire me to walk more, everything is so spread apart we have to drive everywhere. Apart from my daily pilates or stretching, I was starting to feel like I needed assistance getting more daily movement in because, as I love to preach to my clients- your workout is just 30-60 min of your day, the real change for muscular imbalances or body awareness happens the other 23 hours of the day.  Another big reason, is that with this space, we’ve taken to hiking on weekends and running on trails. Competitive spirit that I am, I love to know what altitude I’ve reached on a hike or how my run time is improving (spoiler, it’s still SLOW). 

I’ve developed enough of a connection to my body that I know when something isn’t helping me, when to take a break, and when/if it can be useful and healthy for me in the future + exactly how to reframe my approach so that it’s safe for me. I think fitness trackers are harmful for a lot of people if all those reasons aren’t true for you, if you’re out of tune with your body and you can’t tell when you know better than the tech, if you allow it to make you feel stressed or pressure…those things take the joy out of movement and are antithetical to my exercise philosophy. BUT, BIG, BIG, BUT, if you ARE connected enough to trust your own inner authority and use them as a tool, not the God of Wellness, they can be really helpful in your quest to keep your body feeling good. I do NOT feel great when I don’t move from my makeshift desk all day long even if I am in the blog writing ZONE. So, a little buzz every hour reminding me to breathe and stand is a win- if I don’t feel like it’s productive for me anymore, I’ll take it off again. 

Conclusion

To sum it all up, fitness trackers, much like fitness itself, isn’t inherently bad, in fact, they are just one type of well-being tools available to help us feel like our best selves. When we approach fitness trackers with rigidity, obsession, without listening to our actual physiological cues, they can become dangerous. When we engage in fitness out of self loathing or compulsion, it’s also no longer serving our health in a holistic way, because our mental health is going right out the door. I feel like I get different things from the Apple watch than I do from the Whoop band. The Apple watch helps motivate me on days I’m feeling the weight of the pandemic to get in some more endorphins to help me deal- and the Whoop reminds me to hone my intuitive skills in regards to nurturing my body.

 If you can maintain a healthy relationship with a tracker, I’d say go for the Apple watch purely because it’s actually a watch and I can control my music if I’m teaching or running. If your main goal is to learn how your daily activities impact your physical capabilities aka develop your bodily and sensory awareness, the Whoop is your best friend. If you are just a body nerd who wants both at different times, treat yourself to both. 

Only you know what you can handle and what will be beneficial, and you owe it to yourself to be really honest. If you’re recovering from an eating disorder, I’d spend a little more time getting in tune with your body before you slap on a fitness tracker, because it’s so easy to slip into a disordered relationship with it. If you’re not sure- take this NEDA screener to see if your eating and exercise habits aren’t healthy for you. 

You can check out the Whoop band here and get your first month free—this is an affiliate link, but I purchased the band for myself and wrote this reflection genuinely to help you gauge if it would really be a good fit for you. 

Looking for body neutral fitness to practice that doesn’t trigger negative self talk and actually helps strengthen and mobilize your body in a way that will make you feel all over more powerful, stronger, and just, dare I say, better? My online studio and app with over 100+ classes, Helen Phelan Studio , is free for the first 10 days.

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