Wow! That’s so impressive, congrats! I’m much less consistent but I’m on an almost 300 day streak of filling my rings. I found it tough to maintain my activity level once I started a full time job working from home (around January 2022, where there are lots of 0’s lol). What kinds of workouts do you do? Any chance you live in Canada?

Me neither but it’s cool being able to look back at these trends. It would be much more difficult (maybe impossible?) to do so without this kind of device

Ya just the default loess via geom_smooth in ggplot. I'd like to take some time to model it more intentionally, but I wanted to start by seeing what trends emerged without imposing any restrictions.

Good observation! I actually wore my watch everyday -- that extended period of 0 minutes of exercise corresponds to January 2021 (ish), which is when I started a full-time work-from-home job. Prior to that I was working part time in a lab, which required leaving my apartment (and I often walked to or from work). I also had a bit more free time/flexibility to work out prior to starting the new position. I found a better balance starting in the summer of 2021 and then left my job in the summer of 2022, hence the major increase in activity over the last few months.

Good question. The threshold that the Apple Watch uses for exercise is probably slightly lower than gold-standard measurement techniques, but I am very active nonetheless. It helps that I am a single woman in my 20s, no kids and I quit my full time job in the spring/summer to focus on my PhD, so my schedule is really flexible. I also walk a lot and I walk really fast (so it is all registered as exercise), plus I bike 30-45 minutes most days, I started rowing this summer and just took up rock climbing. I use physical activity as a way to connect with others, I participate in a lot of "challenges" and movement is absolutely essential for my mental health so I prioritize it as much as possible. Most people don't have the kind of spare time/flexibility that I have, though, so that needs to be acknowledged.

Thanks for asking and sorry if it is unclear -- I tried to make the titles as descriptive as possible but I appreciate the feedback. The Apple Watch measures minutes of "exercise", which it defines as activity at or above the pace of a brisk walk. This should provide a rough estimate of daily minutes of "moderate-to-vigorous physical activity", which is what is referenced in most physical activity guidelines. Each dot represents the minutes of exercise that my Apple Watch recorded on a given date.

Notably, I have not taken into account daily wear time in this figure (e.g., it is possible that changes in daily exercise are related to changes in wear time, where fewer minutes of exercise are recorded because the watch is worn for less time). I have always worn my Apple Watch consistently so this shouldn't be an issue with my data, but something to consider with wearable data in general.

I generated this figure using data collected by my Apple Watch. These data can be exported as XML files from within the Health app (Health > click the user icon in the top right corner, scroll to the bottom and select "Export All Health Data"). However, my data was extracted using an app we created for a research study looking at changes in physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic (consider participating if you live in Canada and have an Apple Watch!) The visualization was created in R (RStudio).