

When I talk about "rings" or "numbers" in this article, this display is what I mean. For VoiceOver users, the percentage of each goal is spoken aloud, such as "Moving, 50%, exercising, 27%, standing, 75%". These three metrics are displayed as rings on the Watch's screen, and your job is to fill those rings in each day. Apple wants you to do at least thirty minutes of exercise, twelve hours where at least a minute was active, and-by default-350 calories burned per day, though you can raise or lower the calorie burn goal if you want to. Your "move" goal is how many calories you burn, your "exercise" goal is how many minutes you spend with your heart rate above a set threshold, and your "stand" goal is how many hours during which you are active for at least one minute. In case you aren't familiar with how the Apple Watch tracks activity, the system is simple. Check in with real health/wellness pros before listening to me. Basically, I'm not a professional, and I don't intend to sell myself as such here.

Everyone is different, and you know yourself the best. Check with your doctor/trainer before taking any of my suggestions, and don't think that just because something works/doesn't work for me, it'll work/not work for you. That said, please don't consider anything in this post to be medical advice. Both of them have helped me with this post, and given it their okay. My sister has a dietetics degree and takes an intense interest in fitness, and a good friend of mine is a fitness nut studying to be an adaptive physical education teacher. I just wanted to share my experiences, to help others not follow me off the path we should all be on. I don't have all the answers in fact, I'm still in the process of changing my own fitness habits even as I write this. Hopefully, these will serve as warnings and/or reminders, so you don't make the mistakes I did. Here are the fitness-related traps I've found while using the Apple Watch as a health and fitness companion. But at the end of the day, it's still a computer, not a personal trainer, and it can't know or do everything. The Watch has done all that, and done it well. Plus, I wanted a simple way to log and track my workouts so I would have the data and so I could look back at trends. I wanted my movements and exercise to be tracked, I wanted calorie burn estimates, I wanted heart tracking, and I wanted to be reminded to move every so often. I got it for a few reasons, but a major one was fitness. I've had my Apple Watch for about ten months as of the time of this writing.
