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.