I Broke Up with My Apple Watch

On Learning to Trust Yourself More Than Your Data

I remember when the Apple Watch came out. I was so excited. It felt like a natural evolution from the clunky pedometer I used in the 90s and my early aughts FitBit. I found my watch to be revolutionary. I could monitor more things about my body than I ever imagined.

My deep and abiding relationship with my Apple Watch began right before COVID. I was going through menopause and had developed Achilles tendonitis in both ankles. I wore a boot on my right foot and a splint on my left foot at night. My podiatrist kept telling me to stop walking, but being a busy mom, business owner, and board member, I felt like I just couldn’t get off my feet. My concession was limiting my steps to 7,500 per day. It is safe to say that while my constant step monitoring didn’t cause my tendonitis, it absolutely undermined my recovery.

Well, COVID and the March 2020 shutdown abruptly changed that. My business seemed to double overnight. I spent my days at our dining room table on Zoom with my feet propped up on the chair across from me. There was very little walking, and my ankles were slowly improving. By the end of 2020, my Achilles tendonitis was gone, and I had gained about 25 pounds. This was in addition to the 20 or so pounds I had gained during peri-menopause.

Fortunately, my neighbor was a fitness coach. Trainer Jeff, my Apple Watch, and I became an exercise trifecta. Jeff and I worked out via Zoom, and I shared my Apple Watch data with him so he could keep track of my workouts and progress on the days I trained without him. It is important to add that with the exception of this window in time, I have always been a prolific exerciser. I asked my mom if I could join the Elaine Powers gym when I was sixteen. Being the committed Weight Watchers lecturer that she was, she quickly agreed. I was lifting weights in my college gym in my 20s. There were few periods of time in my life when I didn’t belong to a gym. And when I didn’t, I was very committed to my 5:30 am runs. My dog, Sadie, and I would hit the streets of San Francisco every morning.

Getting back to 2020, I committed to working out with Jeff in December of that year, and we are still working together. He says I am one of the most committed clients he has ever had. The result has been that I have lost about 10 pounds each year.

I lost weight working with a trainer who developed varied, progressively more challenging workouts that were doable for me. I was disciplined, I dropped my COVID diet of booze and French fries, and cooked healthy meals. Most importantly, I found a great doctor, and she started testing everything to assess my overall health. We had scheduled routine blood tests, not yearly but quarterly. We monitored my blood pressure, and I had my heart scanned. My biggest sign of progress wasn’t my weight; it was my test results.

Trainer Jeff was always interested in my results. His positive reinforcement helped me stay the course. Together, this team helped me lose weight, gain muscle, and get my blood pressure under control.

And with us every step of the way was my Apple Watch. There were things about it that annoyed me:

• The mileage on my watch never synced with the treadmill’s mileage. My watch said my distance was shorter.

• What was the difference between active and total calories burned in a workout anyway?

• My watch nagged me when I was sick. Sure, I could have paused my rings, but I was sick.

My Apple Watch was always comparing me to a more robust version of myself, and I dutifully followed along. I was under constant surveillance, and I willingly shared my health data with a company that didn’t use that data to support a balanced approach to my health.

I realized this and kept dutifully using my Apple Watch anyway. As strong-minded as I was, I was completely hooked on diet culture. It started when I was young. My family always talked about weight.

I know I am not unique; diet culture stalks all of us. And even though five years later, I was much healthier, highly self-motivated, and had created a team and structure that helped me balance my health, my Apple Watch had become the arbiter of success. I truly felt like if I didn’t log a workout, it didn’t count.

Somewhere in my consciousness, I knew that my Apple Watch wasn’t designed to support the natural ebbs and flows of my body as it moved through the seasons of my life. But I couldn’t give it up.

Early in 2025, I knew that my relationship with my watch wasn’t healthy.

• I would check my steps and move goals before bed, and if I was short, I would walk around my bedroom until I reached the goal.

• Even when I was tired, I’d push myself to burn at least 350 calories in each weight-training session.

• I would tag on an extra, unnecessary walk or run if my watch had assigned me a specific number to reach the monthly goal it set for me.

This list could go on.

I needed to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t controlling my exertion. Neither my trainer nor my doctor was asking me to do more. It was the toxic mix of diet and exercise culture, with something that was monitoring my success or failure at it. If a study said I needed 150 minutes of exercise each week, I would slice and dice my workouts — did weight training count toward those minutes? Was my heart rate high enough? Did I do enough HIIT and balance my Zone 2 workouts?

As I write this, I know it sounds crazy, but the truth is the obsession started long before the watch did.

In the summer of 2025, my mother died after a long illness that required much of my care and attention. My daughter left for college. I was in the midst of a major life shift, and my Apple Watch didn’t care. It kept reminding me that I wasn’t doing enough.

But I had done enough, more than enough. Still, I wore the watch because it was integrated into other areas of my life. I never missed a call from my daughter, and I kept up with all of the “breaking news.”

At the beginning of this year, things slowed down, and I found myself wondering: when did my Apple Watch stop being supportive and become something I used to relentlessly compare myself to myself? To be fair, all the prompts to stand, reminders to work out, and step goals coordinated with all the health advice streamed at us like a fire hose.

On March 19, I realized I had had enough.

I had been invited to a women’s retreat in Stinson Beach. It wasn’t a self-care, improve-yourself type of retreat. It felt like summer camp. There was some play, lots of downtime, and plenty of connection with myself and the other women who attended. On the 19th, we were asked to spend 90 minutes in silence. I headed straight to the pool. I wanted to spend time wading in the water. I didn’t plan to swim. I just wanted to wade. As is my habit, as soon as I got in the water, I turned to my watch to record the workout. At some point, I was ready to get out. I was looking forward to lying in the sun to dry off.

I looked at my watch and saw that I had been swimming for 23 minutes. My first thought was: I can’t stop at an uneven number. I need to decide whether to swim for 25 or 30 minutes. Though I was also thinking that if I stayed longer, I would not have as much time in the sun as I wanted.

Then I asked myself: Why does it matter if I spend two or seven more minutes in the pool? It wasn’t a workout. I wasn’t moving fast enough to worry about my caloric burn. My addiction to my Apple Watch was leaching away the joy and ease I felt in that moment. I stood in the pool and looked up at the sky. I was so small in comparison to the expanse. I only had so many more days on this earth, what was seven minutes? It was time to take off my watch.

So I did.

Living without my watch caused a few moments of friction, but that friction doesn’t even remotely compare to the freedom I have in my exercise and the control I have over my body and my attention. I was paying attention to how I feel during my workouts, not what I was earning. I stopped comparing my routine to the latest health science. I started monitoring my health, not my workouts.

• I trust my discipline.

• I trust what my body says it needs.

• I trust the relationship I have with my doctor and trainer.

• I trust that I am making great use of my time.

• I trust the rhythms and systems I have created to have a healthy, fully functioning life.

I keep learning day after day that I can trust myself with my body.

In our work at Leverage to Lead, one of the first things we support our clients with is their intrapersonal dynamic, how they value and relate to themselves. While my Apple Watch was a helpful tool as I worked to improve my health, it became a weapon that kept me entrenched in diet culture rather than rooted in my value.

I kept my watch just in case. I told myself I may not be ready to give it up entirely. But the longer I’ve been without it, the clearer it becomes — my life, my mind, and my body are better off without it. I trust that now too.

-Jennifer

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If this resonates with you, the intrapersonal work, the relationship with yourself that makes everything else possible, is exactly what we build in our ANCHOR program.

ANCHOR: Human-Centered Practices starts on June 11, 2026, and is now open for enrollment. It’s a program for people who want to develop the self-awareness, relational skills, and inner steadiness to show up differently at work, in leadership, and in life.

Learn more and enroll here.