Apple Watch Achievements

I'm slowly working on Apple Watch Achievements—the badges the Apple Watch gives you for fitness related goals.

This week I got badges for
• 100 days of meeting my move goal. (I've had my watch for four months, so this is meeting the move goal of burning a preset number of active calories. It was set at 520 when I first got the watch.)

• Perfect month all activities.
I met all of my goals every day for the month of March.

Walk goal
• Stand and walk around for a few minutes every hour for 12 hours. (By far the easiest goal to achieve, but possibly the most annoying. The watch gives you reminders to stand if you're napping or have had a really productive hour at work. So I get up and walk around for 2-3 minutes and it still doesn't give me the hour. However, randomly changing clothes is usually enough movement to get me the goal for the hour.)

• Exercise for 30 minutes.
It tracks your movement with the heart rate monitor. It usually counts walking to my car as exercise. It will count a brisk walk as exercise. If you're doing yoga or something sedentary, put the watch in exercise mode to get these minutes. I can usually make this goal. On my off days, I'll have to do like 15 minutes on the exercise bike to get this goal.

• Move goal
The move goal is where you burn a pre-set amount of active calories. Most days I burn about 538 active calories, but on my off days I can't burn this many calories. So, I started setting my move goal to 250 calories. So I can make my move goal every day. And my goal is really to double it every day. It took me a few months to figure this out.

The Apple Watch is really stingy with active calories. It tells me I burn 76 calories for running an 8 minute mile on trails. I get 300 active calories for most one-hour exercise classes (that advertise 500 plus) and way less for something like pilates.

The move goals is the hardest Apple Watch goal to meet. I've found that if you turn workout mode on a select a workout—it does burn more calories than not having it one (since it samples your heart rate more often) but it wears the battery down faster too.

The only way I got this goal was to lower my goal so that I still met it even on recovery days. I still burn around 2,000 calories every day.

Set a new record for calories burned. 
This one took me FOUR MONTHS TO GET. During that first 10 days I had the watch, I was super active. (And it was still figuring me out the watch, so it wasn't calibrated to me yet.) So I burned 778 calories during the first 10 days. It was a normal day. I went on a 4 mile run. Didn't do much else. I burned 361 calories for that run. I've been on that run many times since. I burn 238 calories for it now. So it's hard to set a record when it gives me 35 % fewer calories for the same workout. Do I need to workout for two hours? (It gives me about 280 calories for 90 minutes of intense gymnastics.) It tracks this based on heart rate and your weight. I'm a very muscly 133. I've been 133 and a whole pant size bigger and flabbier. There is a difference between those bodies. Do they both burn calories the same?

I finally got it Thursday. I did a noon yoga class, which burned 181 calories and then a 30-minute outside run (268) so that was 449 calories. And I must have walked around a lot, because I burned 808 for the day.

Goals
I still need to quadruple my daily move goal. (So burn 1,000 active calories). I really just want to set my move goal to 100 and then quadruple it that way. #cheating. I don't know how I'd burn 1,000 calories. Some days I can walk to all my meetings, go on a four mile run, walk the dog and still barely get in 500 active calories for the day.

Someone the other day asked me if I liked my Apple Watch.
Honestly, sometimes I hate it.
• The move notifications are really annoying.
• I hate getting notifications on my watch. I turned off calendar reminders. I have to remember to put my watch on airplane mode during a fitness class, because there's nothing worse than getting a text from your boss in the middle of an interval. Or a nothing text from a friend buzzing on my wrist when I'm napping.  I'm probably weird in this regard. I don't like most of the smart features. I have enough chaos in my life. I need less notifications.
• The watch is cool. I like the feature where you can ping your phone. I like always having a running watch on. I still think I might like a non-smart fitness watch with heart rate monitor.

Taking a sick day

Haven't blogged at all this week because I've been sick.

I've had a fever over 100 for four days. I think this is the sickest I've been since college. Ugh.

(And I am utterly worthless when running a fever. I do not think straight. Or do logical things.)

And here's the deal: DO NOT WORKOUT WHEN YOU ARE SICK.

Don't go to the gym and get your germs all over the equipment and breathe on your class mates. It's just a bad idea.

I've done easy runs with a mild head cold before (solo) but that's the extent of it.

This week, I was tired Tuesday so didn't work out. And the fever started Wednesday so I just stayed home and whined. And took my temperature every hour. (101.4).  I did try to get some exercise in. I have a stationary bike at home—so I tried that—super low speed to get some calorie burn in and meet my Apple Watch goals for two days but it really was really a bad idea. I was already burning up inside from the fever. I didn't need to get even hotter.

I think I was most upset that this illness made me break my Apple Watch move streak. And because I couldn't work out, now I can't get my perfect month badge :(

The Apple Watch is SOOOO ANNOYING when you are sick.

1. It gives you TIME TO STAND reminders every hour.
Seriously, it needs an option for I'M SICK today. Because you can't get more than an hour's worth of sleep for this thing chiming at you.
It does have a mute for the day option. And I could take it off. But I'm running a fever and therefore not thinking straight.

2. It reminds you that you haven't met your goals for the day. You've only exercised for a minute. You've only walked a mile.

Really, I should just take the watch off. But I didn't think of that until my fever went down. (I did this Sunday and it was glorious!)

I went to the doctor Saturday morning. My doctor was a former U.S. Rep known for saying unintelligent things. He was nice enough.

We did a strep test. Not strep. Then blood work.

And that went badly.

My head started to feel funny and I felt like I was going to puke. I was still holding tissue on my arm to clot the bleed and looked at the nurse and told her I didn't feel good.

They went into emergency mode. Told me to lay back, put a cool compress on my head, told me to do something with my arm.

I was trying so hard not to puke. And then my leg started to shake. I was so light headed through all of this. It was a horrible combination of my head, nerves and stomach. It was really scary.

That happened ONCE before in college when I was super sick. I get blood work done once or twice a year and like to think I'm tough. Not this time. I hadn't eaten that morning. They didn't ask. I was too sick to realize this before hand.

I laid there for a while. I sat up to get something out of my bag and got REALLY dizzy. That was a bad idea. I laid there for a while longer  and eventually, it passed. I ate a granola bar when my stomach calmed down.

The doctor gave my a prescription for some cough beads and I picked up some stronger decongestants than I'd been using. After the cough beads made my cough worse, I switched to a different medicine and am hoping for the best.

Hopefully, I can workout again soon. I've dropped about two pounds since I've been sick and have had zero appetite (and felt bad when I ate more than a few bites of food.)  I'm ready to be healthy again.

Apple Watch review

I've had my Apple Watch for almost a month now. I'm still figuring out how to use it, but hope I have the hang of things.

Bottom line: Love it. Don't know how I lived without it.

I've had fancy running watches since high school and I do like wearing a watch. This one's great.

What I love

1) The watch is super light. It's lighter than any running watch I've had and I can forget I have it on.

2) Driving directions on your wrist. If you look up directions on your phone, it will pair with your watch and show directions on your wrist. So there's no need to look down at your phone. It also buzzes your wrist when it's time to turn. I like this better than the bossy Turn Now voice on my iPhone.

3) Find my iPhone ping.
I am constantly misplacing my iPhone. I leave it on the couch and the dog sits on it. I leave it upstairs when I go to do the dishes. The watch will ping the phone (the phone will make a horrible noise so you can locate it.) This is a God send for me! (And might prevent the pets from sitting on it in the future.)

4) The fitness tracker. I'm obsessed. This is a good and bad thing.
I check it way too much. I get sad when I don't meet my calorie goal for the day. (I need my off days.)

Activity rings on my watch. Blue is for hours stood (12 is the goal. You just have to stand up and walk around some.) Green is for activity. It likes you to workout for 30 minutes a day. The most difficult one is the red active calories. My goal is 500, which can be challenging when it gives me low calorie counts. I burn about 2000 calories a day, but not all of them are active. This is why I'm walking laps around the house at 10 p.m. trying to make my goal AFTER barre class and walking the dog. 

5) Viewing picture messages on my wrist something out of the Jetsons. It's pretty cool.

I currently don't have email set up on my watch. I don't need any more notifications. That would make me too anxious.

It has calendar notifications, which can be helpful, for example when I have a barre class and need to get out the door.

It has a stop watch and a timer (that pair with your phone. So if you set the timer on your phone, it will beep in both places when done.)

The watch also has silent mode (so no texts while you're in pilates) and a Do Not Disturb. (Which is great since silent mode is broken on my iPhone. My otter box won't let me flip that switch.)

Fun: You can send touches or doodles to friends with Apple Watches. Two of my friends got Apple Watches for Christmas and sent me doodles. That was really fun.

You can use the watch to take a picture like a selfie stick. 

Downside to the watch.
1) It can be hard to select the right button or press start on a workout. The screen is tiny and I constantly hit the wrong app. I struggled to press start on a treadmill workout the other day. I had to stop the treadmill. Ugh.

2) I didn't set it exactly right on the charger one night and it didn't charge. Oops. Make sure it chirps that it's charging. It does charge in about an hour so that's not bad. (This has only happened once.)

3) It can be overwhelming when your friends blow up your phone. That said, there's a silent mode on the watch. I think it still buzzes. I wanted to take a nap but kept getting texts one day (friends only text when I nap) so I ended up taking the watch off. (Before I figured out the Do Not Disturb.)

What I don't love.

The calorie count on the watch is not very accurate. It cheats me out of a minimum of 100 calories per workout. Even with the heart rate monitor telling the watch I'm working hard. It counts active and total calories—but I still don't think it's anywhere close to right. It seems to only count arm swinging as calories, so if I'm doing pilates or barre and keeping my arm still and moving anything else, the calorie count is low.

For running, the distance is off. I did calibrate the watch, but it's still not accurate—even if I put the phone on my leg (and usually my iPhone step counter is pretty accurate.) I ran 2 miles at the track the watch said 2.17 (which is almost another lap.)

• If I'm on the fancy treadmill at the gym (that knows my age, height and weight), it's calorie count doesn't match the watch's calorie count—even when I have my iPhone on me. (Watch said I ran 2.97 miles, treadmill said 3.5 miles.)

71 calories versus 151 calories and the bike
isn't even counting the arm weights I did.

• Same for exercise bike. The indoor cycle workout function—even with both watch and machine measuring my heart rate—don't get close to the same calorie count. (For a 27 minute bike-ride, the watch said 100 calories, the bike said 218.)

• There's a definite lag in the information. It will say zero calories burned and then 5 all at once. It's not real time.

• I read the the heart rate monitoring is the best out there. Except when I run my heart rate gets higher than those online charts say is feasible. The heart rate sensor does not match the gym equipment sensors on the fanciest treadmills. And I feel fine when I run, so I'm guessing the heart rate monitor has issues, like maybe the watch is too loose or I'm moving my arms too much.  I'd really like to compare the watch to another heart rate monitor. But how reliable can a wrist monitor be?

Also, Lululemon makes a long sleeve shirt with a hole for a smartwatch. This doesn't work for the Apple Watch and it messes with the watch's wrist sensors so I constantly have to unlock the watch.

Bottom line
I'm hoping that with the next update or version of the watch, they incorporate more workouts—like barre, pilates, yoga etc. So those will be more accurate. I'm also hoping to be able to edit a workout—for example when a distance is off, or I forget to stop the workout, I can go in and edit it. But for a first generation product, I'm stoked.

My friends only text me when I'm napping or working out. I absolutely hate it when I get a text while running. Because I feel like I need to look at it, but I need to run and not stop. I've started setting my watch to Do Not Disturb while I exercise (of of course the first time I do this I take a barre class and my boss is blowing up my phone and I'm an hour late responding to something. It was Saturday morning. An hour response will have to do.)

I really do like my Apple Watch. But I've been really annoyed with texts on my watch lately. (I'd rather get them on my phone.) So maybe I should have gotten a fitness tracker instead.