COLLEENTIGHE
The alarm was deafening. A coffin-shaped acrylic crawls under the cover, looking for a stop button and immediately finding my Apple Watch. I slammed my device on my wrist before washing my face, brushing my teeth, or checking my phone. If you didn’t start tracking right away, you couldn’t get credit for calories burned or time you stood. This is a core metric tracked by Apple’s signature “ring closing” feature.
At 6:02 am, there were no other problems. The watch was dating me when it fits snugly on my wrist, bounces off the bed, goes to the kitchen, turns on the kettle, returns to the bedroom and puts on Power Yoga, the first workout of the day. I threw away the digital companion while taking a shower, but I put the digital companion back in place before the water stopped dripping from the faucet. Every step was counted, even in my apartment, even in step with it.
Immediately, my partner and I went out the door and got on the train. We jumped a few stations early and walked a mile to the office. By 9am, my watch had warned me that my athletic ring was closed. The ring turned clockwise with a fiery green swirl and celebrated its achievement with this pop-up message.
You’ve passed Julia, the goal of the movement — and the day has just begun!
Millions of Americans pursue perfection by quantifying themselves. According to a 2019 Gallup survey, 19% of Americans (about 62.4 million at the time) used fitness trackers, but in the past 15% used them. 19% of countries say they track fitness through the app. (Gallup said 10 percent are doing both.)
Steps, sleep time, heart rate — this is all the data, all the information that tells you if it’s the same as before, or if your body is changing.
Fitness trackers like my Apple Watch generate data, and each has its own gimmicks. Some have simple indicators such as a pedometer that clips to your waistband, while others provide more subtle insights into someone’s physiology, such as the Oura ring, Garmins, Fitbits, and Apple Watch.
Quantification enthusiasts argue that paying attention to individual health data is the way they achieve a state of nirvana.And these indicators can It will be a powerful tool. For example, if you have a chronic illness such as a migraine, you can track your sleep cycle to find out that you can avoid headaches when you sleep nine and a half hours compared to the usual seven hours.
This is the best scenario. I wasn’t. I was obsessed with quantifying myself. I thought that if I could push my health indicators, that level of optimization would flow into the rest of my life, but I felt it wasn’t enough at the time. I was constantly anxious, and when I changed jobs I was wobbling at the end of another depression episode. It didn’t help that year that some health problems sent me in and out of the hospital, fueling anxiety about my body and well-being. All of that made me feel bad enough. So I wondered if my body was optimal, so would everything else.
Building a healthy relationship with fitness is essential for anyone seeking to improve their overall physical and mental health. But just because it’s important doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Michele Kerlis of Northwestern University, an expert in sport psychology and counseling, said: on mail. “Sometimes people are overly obsessed with metrics, which can exacerbate some of the triggers for developing an unhealthy relationship with fitness.”
That truck. When weight loss was my main goal, I first put on my Apple Watch. I was fascinated by the badges I got to achieve milestones such as notifications prompting me to set exercise goals, reminders to stand, initial strength training and closing the ring. The continuous reminders made me realize how perfectly I was moving my body and made me realize the shortcomings. If my moving ring isn’t closed by 6 pm, the watch gives me nudge.
You can still do it. 165 calories, and you close your moving ring, Julia.
I spent many nights digging into the depths of the iPhone’s Health app and wondered how this data could be used to perfection. What does “perfect” mean? For me, I increased my activity, closed my ring every day, put all my health indicators in the “optimal” zone, and used that version to other areas of life that I thought were missing, mostly my career. By improving, I was able to achieve my ideal body shape. ..Scrolling through health indicators, I wondered if it would improve VO2 max improves my energy, which helps me to be more productive and further my career goals.
At the end of the first month I had a watch, I was fascinated by the outline of the ring closure of that month. I like the seamless look when the ring is closed every day. That meant I won in a row.
Great job to close all three rings yesterday. Please try again today.
That same month, I closed all the rings for 30 days. I wanted the watch to continue.
August Challenge: Julia, you are in the middle of the month. Burn an additional 8,000 calories to win this award.
And I wanted to keep pursuing that level of perfection.
It makes sense to seek evacuation through fitness. According to scientific research, exercise helps relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety, improve cardiovascular health, and relieve pain associated with certain chronic illnesses such as rheumatoid arthritis. One study found that even weekend exercisers had significant health improvements in people who exercised for long periods of time only on weekends rather than on most days of the week.
Of course, fitness trackers help people get out there and feel motivated to sweat. “Behavioral changes can be associated with some fun aspects of a fitness tracker. When you reach a milestone, for example, recording a certain number of miles or exercising for a specific period of time. For example, a congratulatory email, “Kerulis said.
Rewarded for completing a task To do It feels good especially when it’s made into a game. These devices are goals, rewards, challenges to overcome, constant feedback with hourly alerts to encourage the wearer to move, and social components that allow users to compare and compete with others for their metrics. Use the. This can all be pretty fun.
But sometimes it can be dangerous. A 2019 study examining people’s daily interactions with activity trackers surveyed 210 wearers to determine how fitness trackers affected physical activity motivations. .. Researchers have found that normal wearers are less motivated if they do not use the tracker. In addition, as a result of considering the wearer’s personality and affinity for technology, participants who are exercising only to achieve their goals are more dependent than those who are exercising enjoying the activity. It turned out to be expensive. And fitness trackers are incredibly integrated into the lives of many Americans.
“Device makers have never been so closely and parasitically involved in the formation of everyday life,” said a 2018 study examining how fitness behavior evolved with tracking techniques. Researchers Dorthe Brogård Kristensen and Minna Ruckenstein write. “”[N]Not only can you encourage people to measure themselves, but you can also feed back those measurements so that you can explain what you have measured to yourself. ”
The results of both studies symbolize Kerlis’s concern about quantifying himself.
“If people focus too much on the metrics rather than the fitness process, they can reduce their awareness of how the body feels. This is a very important clue in exercise,” she said. Told.
Phil Reed, a professor of psychology at Swansea University, is relentless, especially if you are a perfectionist who does not believe you are physically, mentally, or where you should be in your career. I agree that tracking can be harmful. “You will be vulnerable to doing something that alleviates that perfectionist’s anxiety,” said Reed, who also wrote “Digital World, Real World” for today in psychology. ..
Increasing perfectionism among young people makes it easy for those who suffer from it to fall into anxiety-driven behavior. In some cases, like me, data can be an extension of how someone understands themselves and increase the need to get the results they are looking for. And if the accuracy varies by metric or device and the data is not within the optimal range, it can lead to more negative self-speaking and guilt.
When analyzing a previous relationship with fitness to write this work, the price of what Celeste Headlee, the author of “Doing Nothing: How to Get Out of Overwork, Overwork, and Underwork”, called “Artificial Goals” I thought about. She interviewed her. By missing a fitness benchmark, I quickly thought I was lazy or unmotivated. This inevitably associated exercise with shame, no matter how much you like the sensation of physical activity. As health and wellness situations become more and more digital, it’s hard to imagine that these costs won’t increase unless people understand how to use fitness devices in a way that doesn’t cause obsession.
All my interviews and surveys suggest that fitness data needs to be interpreted individually. It is useless to compare yourself to other people who are different from you. However, Kerlis added that we must also consider that our bodies change daily. Also, questions about indicators are best handled by a doctor who understands your health history, or a fitness professional who understands that every body is unique.
When a pandemic occurred, I was forced to agree with that reality. The blockade did not exercise enough to close all the rings. I have found that my relationship with fitness and tracking is very unhealthy. Realizing this, I had to rethink how I would use this technology in the future. We needed to build a system for sound engagement. I set aside device-less days to free up space from regular reminders and block as many notifications as possible. I left my watch at home for a long walk every Sunday. But most importantly, we investigated why we first felt we needed to immerse ourselves in the data. I was running a little faster and chasing the pride associated with lifting healthier — a milestone that I believed would be perfect.
“Usually there’s something behind the behavior these devices are trying to measure, and the more attention you pay to the measurement, the less you lose track of the really important question of why,” Reed said. I am. “If you don’t deal with it, you will never be happy.”
