How one fitness tracker quietly turned healthy habits into another daily obligation
Almost six years ago, during Covid days, I purchased a Fitbit. I was active on Instagram (a silent witness more than a participant) and that is where I was fed the information that I needed to get 10,000 steps a day. And as a very greedy consumer of all thing’s fitness, I said ok, noted, will do. I went ahead and ordered what would prove to be my albatross. My ball and chain. The thing that would determine whether I was worthy of sleep or rest.
Before I purchased my Fitbit, I never once thought about how many steps I was taking in a day. Not once. Not even as a “I wonder how many steps I took today” kind of scenario. I bet you didn’t either. Why would we? Who cared? I certainly didn’t. I cared about if I ran or worked out that day. If I moved and ate well, if I felt good. But not once did the number of steps I took that day cross my mind.
After I got my Fitbit, well, that is a whole other story. Immediately, I installed the app, synced my watch to the app and set about filling in the information. I don’t remember when the obsession with my step count started, but rest assured, it did. I went from being active and fit to being preoccupied with my steps and my sleep and my resting heart rate. It was, in retrospect, borderline OCD behaviour. I wouldn’t go to bed if I hadn’t hit my 10,000 steps that day. I would pace my apartment until my little wrist celebration went off, letting me know I had succeeded yet again. And then midnight would hit, and it would start all over again. If I was a little sleepy during the day, I would check to see how I slept the night before. “Oh, see, I only got 5 hours of sleep last night, that makes sense,” I would say to no one.
At some point in the last six years, I learned that the 10,000-step goal actually came from a marketing campaign decades ago, not from some magic health threshold. I read it and moved on. Who cares? I sure didn’t. I had to hit 10,000 steps, that was still the magic number, and no one was going to tell me differently. I was positive that walking 10,000 steps a day was life-changing, that my health and my body were intrinsically better because I was hitting my step count each day. How could it not be – everyone on Instagram and TikTok was telling me this every day. It didn’t matter how much weight someone lost or how fit or thin someone was; one of the things they all had in common was that they all got 10,000 steps in a day. The other thing they had in common? They changed the way they ate. But that’s for another post!
When movement became something to measure
Once upon a time, most of the accounts I followed on Instagram (this was before TikTok hit North America) were fitspo accounts. The most common were other people who were also following the BBG method, like I was. If you were there, you remember – IYKYK. It was madness, and I think on that, we can all agree. To this day, if a workout contains burpees, I move on. If I never do another burpee for the rest of my life, I’ll be happy. The workouts were tedious, boring, repetitive, and the diet suggestions were more than restrictive; they were problematic. And we paid for this! Eventually, we moved on, thankfully, and the accounts changed, in content and direction, and new brands were built. But the one thing they all basically adopted was the 10,000 steps a day. And honestly, after BBG but still during the Covid-era, it was kind of refreshing to see simple walking with Chloe Ting on YouTube. I was immediately interested, and that’s when I got my first and only Fitbit and my new obsession began.
Fast forward maybe a year, and the birth of SkinnyTok arrived. It was all over my FYP, and I hate to admit it, but I followed a couple of them. They varied in their tone and their delivery, but the one thing they all had in common was … you guessed it! They all swore by getting in at least 10,000 steps a day. And again, so did I, because why not? It was easy and it “worked”. But did it really?
When my Fitbit finally stopped working
A couple of months ago, I noticed that my Fitbit’s charge wasn’t holding like it used to. I figured I’ve had it for six years, so really, that’s pretty good. I started looking online for a replacement, and I couldn’t find what I currently had. Like you, I’ve seen that everyone seems to have the Oura ring, so I checked it out. This is what I found: a) it’s big, and it’s ugly (a Lugnut around your finger!); b) it’s expensive; c) you need a subscription for it to work to its full potential, and d) I’ve heard it’s not great at tracking steps. I just couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger – I resigned myself to charging my Fitbit daily and just sticking with that. Then, a couple of weeks ago, it happened. Something I had seen notifications about for a while but didn’t really pay attention to. Something about Fitbit linking with Google. Yes, one day I went to check my sleep score, and my Fitbit app was gone – just gone. I scrolled through the pages on my phone, figuring it had moved somewhere, but no, it was gone. I messed around with it for a few minutes and then just left it. The step counter was still working and the heart rate monitor, but that was it. Everything else was gone. Whether it disappeared because of the Google migration or something else, I never found out.
After work that day, my sister and I went for a walk and on our way back, she mentioned how back in the day, no one tracked their steps, and we were all fine. We were happy and healthy and looked and felt fine, all without knowing how many steps we had taken that day. And that’s when I decided I was going to break the obsessive cycle I was on and take my Fitbit off my wrist. It was so freeing to take it off. It took me a few days to stop going to look at how many steps I was at, but before I knew it, that stopped. I treated myself to a really pretty new watch – when you’re wearing a Fitbit, that’s your watch. And yes, they too are ugly, just like the Oura ring.
What changed when I stopped tracking everything
Looking back, I don’t think the Fitbit made me healthier. It made me more aware of numbers. Somewhere along the way, I stopped trusting my own body and started trusting whatever appeared on my wrist. Movement became less about how I felt and more about whether I had earned a celebration from my watch.
Anyway, since then, I’ve been walking and moving and feeling great, all while not being beholden to a watch and worrying about getting in my 10,000 steps a day. We used to do this. And I’m doing it again.
The strange thing about my Fitbit experience is that the goal itself was never the problem. Walking is still something I enjoy. The problem was how quickly a simple habit became another thing to monitor, measure, and maintain. It turns out this can happen with many of the wellness practices we bring into our lives.
Maybe one day I’ll wear another fitness tracker, maybe I won’t. For now, I’m happy going back to something I never thought I’d miss: moving because it feels good, not because I’m chasing a number. It turns out I never needed a watch to tell me I’d had a good day.
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