Why your fitness tracker could be making your anxiety worse.
Imagine seeing 8,000 steps on your fitness tracker at the end of the day. A commendable feat. Yet, you feel like a failure and ignore your body’s call for rest so that you can finish your daily, albeit arbitrary, goal of 10,000 steps. Sound familiar?
Whether it’s an Apple watch or the newest Fitbit, fitness trackers have risen in popularity due to their ability to quantify your body’s fitness level. Trackers today offer a wide range of data that help people achieve their fitness goals. Heart rate, step count, and sleep monitoring are some of the most popular features. But let's reflect, does observing your heart rate every few minutes add to your wellbeing? Or is it doing the opposite and causing anxiety over minor fluctuations?
Reassurance and dopamine hits
Fitness trackers do provide benefits for some people. They provide encouragement and motivation to complete your workout with reward systems, such as closing the rings on your Apple watch.
We all know how addicting small dopamine hits are for the brain. People look to fitness trackers for reassurance, if the results are good. The flip side is how constant reminders from a device can make an individual anxious over not meeting their goals. Or worse, it leads to people pushing themselves too hard in order to achieve a perfect 10,000 steps.
Anxiety and OCD
Anxiety, perfectionism and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) all result in a need to have control over things. When you throw a fitness tracker into the mix, an individual may feel anxious if they do not complete their goals. This is to the point that they cannot carry on with their daily routine. Anxiety from the use of fitness trackers can arise in anyone.
Fitbits can be fun to play with at first. But you soon discovered that wanting to hit your daily step goals are making you feel uneasy. The constant dings and buzzes of a tracker trigger can cause anxiety and OCD-like behavior and before you know it you have slipped into the habit of checking your tracker multiple times a day to see if you are hitting those step goals.
Despite being aware that there is more to fitness and health than steps, fitness trackers can become a source of anxiety rather than something that could aid health goals. This anxiety is the reason why people end up developing perfectionism through the use of fitness trackers. Step counts and quality of sleep seem to be the biggest triggers.
People have come to associate a reading on their fitness tracker of a bad night's sleep with anticipation of a bad, anxiety-filled day in general. Expecting anxiety to occur is a surefire way to manifest it into existence, even if it never would have happened otherwise. So the ultimate question is: where do we draw the line? The line is drawn when a device meant to improve your life starts to hinder it.
What works for you
Fitness trackers are based on studies that tell us how many steps or how many hours of sleep are ideal for the average human. This is why trackers are not a one-size-fits-all because you need to figure out what works best for you and your lifestyle.
The fact is that everyone has a different baseline level of health. What works for one person may not for another, and this is true in every facet of life. A new parent who spends weeks or months in a sleep-deprived state is highly unlikely to be in a position whereby they can maintain recommended levels of exercise. Yet, fitness trackers will continue to send notifications, reminding individuals to move. This can create a state of mind where the user feels they are not doing enough, when in fact they don’t have the capacity to.
Finding a healthy relationship with your fitness tracker
At the end of the day, fitness trackers are helpful when used right and when a person has the capacity to develop a healthy relationship with their tracker. But once anxiety starts to creep in, regular use of the tracker should be reconsidered and discontinued if it starts to hinder your everyday life. Fitness trackers should also not be depended upon to make decisions for you and your body, because a device cannot pick up on context.
How to make fitness trackers less anxiety producing
No one is denying that fitness trackers and smartwatches can be helpful tools for building healthy habits. However, if you’re not careful, they can also become a major source of anxiety but they do not have to be and you can take control of your anxiety. Here are some easy steps I’ve learned over the years to ensure they are working for you and not the other way around.
Set small easy goals
Changing anything about your life requires a massive amount of energy. The bigger the change, the more energy you need to overcome the comfy inertia of your existing habits. Multiply that by 1,000 if you’re trying to build an exercise routine for the first time as an adult. This is why it’s often helpful to start small. Write down whatever you think is small, and then go even smaller.
For instance, a popular goal is to walk 10,000 steps every day. Despite not having much scientific backing, the 10,000-step goal is so ingrained in our psyche that many fitness trackers use it as the default during setup. But unless you’re already close to walking that every day (aka, 9,000 to 9,500 steps), it’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to meet that goal consistently.
10,000 steps is around 4.5 to 5 miles. At a usual walking speed, we’re talking anywhere from 70–80 minutes a day. Most busy adults can’t suddenly go from walking 20 minutes a day to over an hour daily and maintain that momentum. By setting big goals that widely differ from your current habits, you’re setting yourself up for anxiety and failure.
Ignore default or automatic goal settings
The better move is to ignore any default or automatic goal settings on a smartwatch or fitness tracker. Some devices are less ambitious in their suggestions, but even the smartest gadget doesn’t know your life. You should always be the one to set your goals, and it’s helpful to set initial goals that are only a smidge harder than what you’re currently doing.
If you really want to be a person who gets in 10,000 steps daily, a smarter move would be to first wear a tracker for a week and see what your natural step count is. Even if that number is far off from 10,000, only add 300–500 steps. When you can hit that number consistently for a week or two, add another 300–500 steps. Repeat that until you get to 10,000. Thus, instead of feeling discouraged when you inevitably mess up, you’ll have racked up enough wins to make quitting less likely if you have a bad day or two. In the end, you’ll likely find your sweet-spot step goal, which may or may not be 10,000 steps- rather what feels best for your body!
Tell your smartwatch or fitness tracker’s default goals to get lost. Start with goals that require the least amount of effort and build from there.
Deprioritize streaks and challenges
Streaks and challenges are feedback tools that are meant to help you on days when your motivation is low or even nonexistent. But if you’re a competitive person, you run the risk of getting in too deep. Unlike with other types of habits, when you exercise, you run the risk of injury and even the healthiest people get sick. In the long run, taking one or two days off your streak and thereby preventing injury, or taking the time you need to recover from an illness, is more likely to keep you on track than getting sidelined for weeks or even months because you hurt yourself.
Ask yourself three things.
Am I feeling good physically but need extra motivation today?
Am I rearranging or deprioritizing other important areas of my life to maintain this streak?
Will maintaining this streak put me at a higher risk of sickness or injury?
If you answer yes to the first, then go for it, especially if you’re at the beginning of building a new exercise routine. But if you answer yes to the last two questions, it’s worth reminding yourself what your big-picture goal is.
If you find yourself getting too obsessed with streaks, there’s an easy way to reset. Rearrange the layout of your smartwatch or tracker’s widgets, watch faces, or companion app layout to deemphasize streaks and badges. In apps, try to hide them completely if possible.
Life happens. You’ll inevitably break a streak because you forget a charger or there’s a family emergency. If you embrace that, it’ll be easier to see streaks as merely a feedback tool that tells you if a particular goal is at the appropriate level or needs an adjustment.
Refocus when injured, ill, or going through difficult times
In life, chances are you’ll eventually get sick or injured. Everyone also goes through hard times that can’t be dealt with through willpower alone. During those moments, you will lose progress or may have to put goals on hold. It may feel discouraging and hard so go easy on yourself. This is a good time to explore other health-tracking features.
If you’re ill or severely injured, focus on sleep tracking instead. Several smartwatches and fitness trackers allow you to set sleep goals. Getting plenty of sleep will help you recover faster. If you’ve got the Oura Ring, you can also enable the Recovery Mode, which disables activity goals in favor of rest and sleep quality. Hydration-tracking widgets are a good way to make sure you’re getting enough fluids as well.
If you’re going through a difficult time, set a minimally viable goal. Maybe you were working out for an hour a day but can now only muster enough strength to go on a five-minute walk. Set that as your goal instead. You’ll be safeguarding a little time for yourself and your movement every day. When it comes time to get back into it, you won’t have to start from scratch because you’ve maintained the habit. If your wearable has mindfulness features, try enabling breathing reminders. Taking a break to “breathe” might feel silly at first, but it’s a way to periodically distract yourself from catastrophizing or dwelling on things you can’t change.
Review and Reflect
These tips might feel obvious, but toxic habits are easier to spot in others than in your own behaviors. Every month, I review whether my current wearable use aligns with what I’m trying to achieve. Sometimes I’ll do it more frequently if I catch myself falling down a familiar slippery slope. You can choose to review as often as you like.
When it’s time to review, Ask yourself the following:
- If I forgot my smartwatch or tracker, would I feel upset at “not getting credit”?
If the answer is yes, deliberately take a day where you don’t wear any sort of tracker. That usually helps recalibrate from an obsessive mindset to a more observational one.
- Am I achieving my daily goals more than 90 percent of the time?
If the answer is yes, it’s time to review the big-picture goal and determine the next step. Maybe it’s making the goal more challenging, or maybe it’s moving on to another goal entirely. On the other hand, if the answer is no, it’s a sign that something is up and you can readjust your goals to better fit the circumstances.
-How many times am I checking my wrist per day, and why?
This is a good way to check that you’re not falling into an obsessive habit loop. It can also help you review whether you’re spending the right amount of time on your device.
-Are there any notifications or features that trigger anxiety?
If there are, you can readjust what notifications you receive or disable features that have a negative effect on your mental health. Make a note to review at a later date and time how it felt to disable those features — and whether you feel the need to turn it back on in a modified way or if you’re happier without it.
These questions are just a place to start. Everyone is different, so feel free to make up your own review criteria. At the end of the day, the most important thing is that tracking anything is a way to measure your progress or figure out a baseline. That’s it. There’s no moral judgment to missing a day, falling short, or failing to progress. All that means is you need to readjust to something that’s challenging but achievable.
Hey, I’m Maddie!
I’m a therapist here at Minnesota Attachment Collective. I love working with clients to help them navigate their physical health in ways that also support their mental health. I specialize in working with young adults and teens, body image and eating disorders, chronic health conditions, as well as grief and trauma. If you live in Minnesota and are looking for a therapist, learn more about me here as well as all of our services here!