~6 minute read
I’d had a restless night. Up a couple of times, but my go-back-to-Sleep strategies kicked in and I drifted off again. I woke up feeling like that was actually a win. Then I checked my tracking ring. Low sleep score. Recovery warning. Basically a one-star review of a night I had felt good about.
And just like that, the win disappeared.
This isn’t a post about how tracking is bad. I actually like data. I find it interesting. I’m about to try my tracking ring again for the third time because I’m curious about my activity patterns and I genuinely enjoy some of what it shows me. But I’ve also ditched it twice now, and both times it was because the information stopped helping and started hovering. If you’ve had a similar back-and-forth relationship with your tracker, your app, or your watch, this one’s for you.
Let’s start with what’s actually useful about it.
Tracking can reveal patterns you wouldn’t see on your own. Maybe you notice you sleep better on days you move more. Maybe you realize your energy crashes when you skip protein at lunch. Maybe you discover you’re more active than you thought, which is its own kind of encouragement.
And sometimes, tracking is just plain motivating. Seeing your numbers climb, closing your rings, watching a streak build. That little hit of satisfaction when you’ve moved more than you expected to? That’s real, and it works. A large-scale analysis published in The Lancet Digital Health reviewed nearly 400 studies involving 164,000 people and found that people who wore activity trackers walked about 40 extra minutes per day and averaged 1,800 more steps than those who didn’t track. For a lot of people, having that visual reminder of consistency is the thing that keeps them going on the days they’d rather not.
There’s also a genuinely important medical side. Smartwatches and fitness trackers have flagged irregular heart rhythms that led to life-saving diagnoses. They’ve detected dangerously low heart rates, alerted wearers to signs of blood clots, and picked up atrial fibrillation that might have gone unnoticed for months. Some devices can detect falls and notify emergency contacts. Others can signal that your body is fighting something before you even feel sick. These are real, meaningful capabilities.
When tracking is working for you, it feels like a flashlight. It helps you see things more clearly so you can make adjustments that actually stick. It’s informative. It’s neutral. It doesn’t come with a side of guilt.
That’s the version of tracking that serves you.
Here’s where it gets tricky, because the shift is subtle.
Tracking turns when the data stops being information and starts being a verdict. When you check your steps at 8 PM and feel like a failure instead of a person who had a full, real day. When you eat something without logging it and the guilt isn’t about the food, it’s about the gap in the app. When you had your workout clothes on and were ready to go, but your device told you to take a rest day, so you did, even though a lighter workout would have felt great.
That last one is mine. I was standing in my gym clothes, genuinely wanting to move, and my ring said no. So I listened. But should I have? Could I have just gone for a walk? Done some stretching? When a device designed to support my activity started discouraging it, I knew something had shifted.
That’s not awareness anymore. That’s outsourcing your instincts.
Here’s something worth knowing: your body doesn’t distinguish between sources of Stress. Cortisol, your stress hormone, responds to pressure whether it’s coming from a work deadline, a fight with your partner, or a notification on your wrist telling you you’re behind on your goals.
Chronically elevated cortisol is linked to Anxiety, sleep disruption, and even Depression. Researchers have consistently found that ongoing psychological stress triggers the body’s stress response system in ways that can genuinely affect your health over time. So if your health tracker is regularly making you feel anxious, guilty, or not enough, it’s not a neutral tool anymore. It’s actively working against the thing it’s supposed to support.
A 2019 study from the University of Copenhagen found that many people rely on fitness tracker data the way they’d rely on medical advice, which can spark unnecessary fear and anxiety about their health. And more recent research has linked fitness Technology use with increased feelings of guilt, body dissatisfaction, and even obsessive Exercise behaviours in some users.
This doesn’t mean trackers are bad. It means they’re not universally good, and your relationship with yours deserves the same honesty you’d give any other relationship in your life.
While we’re being honest about numbers, let’s talk about the big one.
The “10,000 steps a day” target didn’t come from a doctor or a clinical study. It came from a 1960s Japanese marketing campaign. A company called Yamasa released a pedometer around the time of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and named it the Manpo-kei, which translates to “10,000 steps meter.” The number was catchy, memorable, and the Japanese character for 10,000 even looks a bit like a person walking. It was brilliant marketing. And somehow, decades later, it became the gold standard for fitness trackers worldwide.
Now, here’s the important part: researchers have studied step counts extensively since then, and the news is actually really encouraging.
A 2023 meta-analysis published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology looked at data from nearly 227,000 people across 17 studies in six countries. The findings? Meaningful health benefits start well below 10,000 steps. As few as 4,000 steps a day were linked to a significant reduction in the risk of death from any cause. For cardiovascular health specifically, the benefits kicked in even lower, around 2,300 steps a day.
Every additional 1,000 steps per day was associated with a 15% reduced risk of Dying from any cause. Every additional 500 steps was linked to a 7% reduction in cardiovascular mortality. And the benefits kept increasing all the way up to 20,000 steps. More is better, but less is far from nothing.
So your 4,000-step Tuesday isn’t a failure. It’s literally where the science says the benefits begin.
There’s no universal answer here, because this is personal. But these questions might help you figure out where you stand.
Does checking your data make you feel informed or judged? Do you trust your own body’s signals, or do you override them based on what the app says? If you forgot your tracker at home, would you still enjoy your workout, or would it feel like it didn’t count? After a low-number day, do you shrug it off or spiral?
If your tracker adds to your life, keep using it. If it’s quietly chipping away at how you feel about yourself, it might be time for a break. And if you’re somewhere in between, welcome to the club. I’ve been going back and forth with mine for years. That’s allowed too.
Here’s my challenge for this week: take one walk that doesn’t count.
No watch. No step goal. No pace tracking. Just you, outside, moving at whatever speed feels right. Your body doesn’t know whether the walk was tracked. It just knows you moved. It just knows your shoulders dropped a little. It just knows you got some air.
Sometimes the best measure of a good day isn’t a number on a screen. It’s just how you feel at the end of it.
You’re allowed to track when it serves you and stop when it doesn’t. You’re allowed to take a week off from the app just to see how it feels. You’re allowed to try the ring, ditch the ring, and try it again. You’re allowed to celebrate a 4,000-step day and mean it.
The tools are supposed to work for you. Not the other way around.
And if someone tries to tell you that you need to optimise, track, and measure every part of your health to be doing it right? Remind yourself: I saw something online the other day that said “I’m getting more pressure to increase my protein intake as an adult woman than I ever did to do drugs as a teenager.” The bar for what counts as “enough” keeps moving. You’re allowed to stop chasing it.
Here’s to putting the watch down once in a while.
Steph
