Apple Watch Helped Me Be More Active

Before the pandemic, I was a regular at the gym going a minimum of 3 days a week for more than half of my life. 

When the Apple Watch came out, my first thought was "meh I don't need this to motivate me" but what I found was how little I moved on the days that I didn't go the to gym and that, in my opinion, is worth having a watch that keep track of your movements.

The Apple Watch, for those that don't know, can keep track of exercises via something they call "Rings". There are three rings of different colors:

• Blue - The Blue Ring is the easiest to close as you simply need to get up, for at least 1 min, every hours in order to progress.
• Green - The Green Ring keeps tracks of your cardio progress during a 24h period.
• Red - The Red Ring is keeping track of the calories you've burn during a 24h period.

The Green (Cardio) and Red (Calories) are not really precise and you sometime have to fight the device in order to close those rings but how precise the device is doesn't matter as much as whether or not it provides enough of a motivation to move.

Once you start closing out those rings, and start earning trophies, it becomes increasingly difficult not to close them. Sure, you can skip that cardio workout for one day but that means you will loose your progress towards this next, shiny, fictional trophy. I know it sounds crazy but on some days the thought of loosing that next trophy was enough of the slap in the face I needed to get on that exercise bike.

A few more days and I'll also have a trophy for having closed the Blue and Red rings once for the last 365 days and I don't really feel like stopping. Here's to another 365 days!