Earlier today, I received a notification that I have been looking forward to for a long time.

I’ve now owned and worn an Apple Watch for exactly one thousand days, and I cannot emphasize enough how much this little gizmo has changed my life in this time. I’ve lost over 20 kilos of weight, put on a lot of muscle, and am stronger and fitter than I have ever been—yet!

Why Apple Watch

Coming out of lockdown, I wasn’t feeling the greatest. I hadn’t ever been a particularly fit or active person, and being at home for almost two years hadn’t helped with that. I knew I needed a change, and had already started a little home workout regiment, going on more walks, and eating better. Being the nerd I am, an Apple Watch just seemed like the perfect thing that could give me some impetus to keep going.

And it worked, for the most part. I was able to increase my workouts and also started seeing small but real results fairly quickly, all with just the daily target of closing my rings every day.

The rings, though, are not perfect. I started running into many issues where my and the Fitness app’s ideas for how my goals and rest should be structured didn’t always line up. I’d often end up working out through bad personal days or on days when I’d much rather rest, and I still don’t know how I feel about that. That tension eventually led me to make my own fitness tracking app, Peak, to get more control over my goals, both short and long term.

This year I’ve also started going to the gym again after a few years away. I don’t think there’s many people out there unfamiliar with the cycle of joining a gym, paying for an annual membership, and then only showing up for a few months, if not weeks or even days. I’ve been down that path a few times in the past before, but between the watch, Peak, and also just the additional training I’ve done which has put me in a much better place to get started, I’m happy that this time I haven’t dropped out, and now, 8 months in, going to the gym every single morning is now just part of my daily routine.

I’ve seen huge benefits already from adding weight training to my exercise routine, and in the process I’ve also started work on another app to help both beginners and experienced lifters. I can’t wait to share more about it later this year!

The Numbers

One of the nice things about working on fitness apps is that I have access to a large corpus of HealthKit code that can comb through my health data and pull out various interesting bits of insight. I modified some of that code to go through all of the data that my Apple Watch has recorded over the years, and put together some highlights:

• All rings closed on 1000/1000 days
• 3334 Workouts
• 49 days, 16 hours, and 32 minutes spent working out
• 4,37,468 kcal burned in workouts
• 8,04,469 kcal burned overall
• 71,797 exercise minutes
• 43,36,033 steps walked
• 3,176.68 kilometres walked
• 1,399 floors climbed
• 21.2 kg lost
• -11bpm change in resting heart rate
• +16.2 change in VO₂ max

Wrapping Up

To be clear, I don’t want to suggest that just having a watch will suddenly bring about change you’ve always wanted to make. It takes a modicum of willpower to get started, and then some to keep showing up every day.

But if you, like me, have a mind that can be motivated by little trinkets, fancy animations, and making a number go up every day, I think the Apple Watch can be very helpful in making that start.