In May, my boyfriend gifted me an Apple Watch as an early birthday present. At the time, the spring semester had started to settle down and although finals were well on their way, I had more daylight hours to go outside and touch some grass. In April, I had set forth a goal to walk at least 10,000 steps everyday. I am proud to say that I was able to keep that streak for five months (for reference, September hit me like a bus and I am currently failing to maintain that streak, so I think it will end soon).
During that time, I have been consistently using my watch to not only track my steps but also my active calories and heart rate. On average, I can walk 10,000 steps in approximately 4 miles. I average a mile in 20 minutes via brisk walking. My heart rate spans 100-160 beats per minute (bpm) depending on the terrain, my speed, and breathing patterns, amongst other variables. For the most part, these numbers have been consistent because the watch bases its information off of a person's basal metabolic rate and heart rate. It categorizes exercise as any "activity at or above a brisk walk."
When my sophomore year concluded in early May, I returned home and began hitting the gym with my buff boyfriend. He warned me against using my watch to track my workouts since it wouldn't be accurate. His warning makes sense considering the watch will categorize any physical activity as an approximation based off of what it considers to be exercise: anything at or above my stats of a brisk walk. Still, I was surprised to see that in just one hour of hitting back day (composed of 5 sets of 5-6 pullups, 3 sets of seated cable rows, and some brief core workouts), I could burn approximately 250 active calories, roughly the same amount I'd burn walking 3-4 miles at my usual brisk pace.
This assignment is in regards to performing desk research on a health company (or product) that others, like myself, have experienced some doubts and questions over. I decided to turn to Reddit, to conduct some brief research on other users' experiences with the Apple Watch. In many of these discussion threads, users shared their curiosity as to whether the active calories burned during their relatively brief strength training sessions were representative of what their body was truly doing. One user states: "During a half marathon I’ll burn approximately 1300kcals. Maybe 100+- based on elevation changes (hills). That’s just under 2 hours of high zone 4 cardio. One hour of weight training and apple estimates I burn 480ish kcal?! Not a snowballs chance in hell that lifting iron is 74% as efficient as straight running." (https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/lql6e6/how_accurate_is_the_active_calories_under/) We see echoed sentiments across the Reddit threads and it all comes down to a similar inquiry: Are we burning what Apple claims we're burning?
Apple's mission, especially in regards to the Apple Watch, is to help users optimize their health through features like heart rate monitoring, fitness tracking, and wellness applications. In essence, the watch is an extension of the user and becomes a fitness partner. For the start of my investigation, I began by mapping out, very briefly, the evolution of the user and product cycle below, courtesy of FigJam's flow chart template:
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