About 8 months ago, I strapped my Apple Watch back on my wrist, resolved to add an extra layer of commitment to my fitness journey.

I’d already been committed to fitness for years. I’ve oscillated between 3-4 workout weeks to 6-7, depending on my goals, for at least 5 years. I say this because I want to distinguish that I’d already habitually been an active human being for a while. The Apple Watch wasn’t an attempt at jump starting a physical journey (which one could argue is a healthy tool for such an endeavor), but rather a means of committing to a stricter one.

I’d love to admit that my sole motivation for increased physical activity was mental clarity and wellness, but it would be misleading to say my motivations were anything but vanity. My stream of consciousness was sadly simple: “get shredded” and “bikini ready”. I earnestly try to transcend the body pressures social media creates, but I too lose the battle sometimes. Social media has an insidious way of planting seeds of self-doubts and fallacies that grow subtly with time.

Those seeds eventually manifested into a need for a more refined figure, which translated to ramping up the physical activity, which was already more than enough by most measures. My heart of hearts knew this didn’t align well with my values of body positivity. It didn’t align with the simple, but profound reasons I learned to love exercise in the first place: to temper anxiety and boost my mood. Yet, in the trenches of insecurity, I duped myself with straightforward rationale: Exercise = good. More of it = better.

“I’m doing this to be more healthy” said the girl who checked out as perfectly healthy already. I had to tell myself such a lie because I was too embarrassed to admit the insecurity motivating it all. So out I set on a journey to add more activity and less rest into an already chaotically busy life.

Sweet, sweet rest, I’m sorry we steamroll over you in this hurry culture we perpetuate (more on this in another blog).

Rule number one: rest was not on the agenda. The entire goal of wearing a watch was to serve as a reminder to move my body that much more, to add activity during otherwise still moments. To go on extra beach walks if I hadn’t quite completed my ‘calorie goal’ for the day. My goal was quite literally to eliminate rest from the equation. Adios, sweet friend.

So it began: ring completions, digital awards for arbitrary goals like closing your rings for 17 days in a row or burning your highest amount of calories EVER in a single day. Hmm, I kind of like this. I feel powerful, strong and fit. I feel accomplished. It’s a game. It’s an addiction. It’s inherently designed to be an addiction. But it’s ok because it’s a healthy addiction, right?

An exercise watch is a harrowing invention for a perfectionist. As I wrote about previously, I’ve come a long way with quitting my perfectionist tendencies, but they still run deep in my blood, and inventions like this target people like me. Closing my workout rings became an obsession. Plain and simple.

It’s both terrifying and fascinating how quickly something can transform from validity of a task complete to vested validity of ones own self. Every ring needed to close, every day. Those damn circles became a tangible avenue to poor my self worth and identity. The day was a fail if I didn’t close my rings. In fact, I rarely let that happen, because I’d work intentionally to make sure a digital Fourth of July fireworks parade was exploding on my wrist at the end of each day. On days I realized I didn’t stand for the 12 hours required to meet the stand ring — because God forbid I work a computer job that coincidentally takes 12 hours of my day — I’d find myself running around my room aimlessly doing high knees or an extra 100 crunches until the ring would close.

Like any vanity metric (pun absolutely intended), this outlet brought a sense of satisfaction for but a fleeting moment. After a couple months of closing the rings, I realized I could.. nay SHOULD… be doing more. Burning more calories, doing more workouts in a day. Would you look at that: there’s a setting for that!

The endless game continued until I finally stopped wearing my watch.

While I would love to say that I stopped wearing it after an epiphanic moment of magic met with rage where I threw it on the floor, stomped it to shreds and broke free of the fixation… I actually went on a month long ski trip and forgot the bring the charger.

Sometimes life has a serendipitous way of bringing you exactly what you need. No watch meant that slowly my days weren’t scheduled around exercise. When exercise stopped consuming my life, more time opened back up for other hobbies (like writing) and physical activity started feeling fun again instead of chore-like. Rest naturally came back into the equation (I ❤ rest days). No calorie goals. No minimum minutes required. Exercise for the sake of health, not obligation. Peace.

My body looks better than ever because I’m treating it with respect again. I listen to my body. If I’m tired, I rest. If I feel like walking and only walking, then walk I shall (no more forced workout classes).

I workout a lot, still, but I reward myself merely for doing it not for doing a specific quantity of it. Sometimes I do hiit, sometimes I walk, sometimes I use weights, sometimes I do yoga, sometimes I just stretch. I don’t have any care in the world for how many calories I burnt, and I’ll never even know because my wrist is naked, and that watch’s battery is dead as I happily let it collect dust somewhere far, far out of my mind.