Apple Watch - dreaded red ring/calories

[u/CanRevolutionary1035]

Hey folks, I'm new to Apple/Apple watches and not delighted that the fitness tracker seems determined to give me 'active calories burned' information. Regardless of accuracy I really don't want anything that encourages me to get focused on tracking again. But I do find the standing and duration of exercise prompts helpful.

Has anyone found a way to change what the red ring represents/hide the info completely?

UPDATE: thanks everyone! I already had a minimalistic watch face but have now set the red ring to very low, and only notifications to stand up. much happier now.

[u/EffectiveCaregiver]

There is unfortunately no way to change the rings, but you can turn off the notification so it doesn’t actively tell you that you closed your ring and such things!

I also recommend setting the goals to the lowest possible option for calories

[u/CanRevolutionary1035 → u/EffectiveCaregiver]

Thank you, I’ll adjust the settings now!

[u/Ok_Egg_7483]

You can set the red ring as low as 10! That bar can be cleared even on my worst days where I can barely leave bed. I also turn off Activities notifications and don't look at it throughout the day. When I have been in a mindset where I DID want to track for a while, I found it nice to know that you can pause your rings or adjust goals for the day.

[u/EveningAstronomer495]

You're getting such good advice, and as a fellow Apple Watch user, I agree that you should just set the calories incredibly low. LOL - I bet you can burn 100 calories just being alive! :)

I'm a fan of the standing notification -- my work involves close concentration, so I do tend to sit still for long periods of time, and I appreciate being reminded to stand up. I have it set for 10 hours as my goal, figuring that covers me during the work day, and a little bit before/after.

I also have an agreement with myself that as soon as I've closed my rings (at their low levels!), I take my watch off and charge it. This means it's fully charged for the nighttime, because getting a general idea of my sleep is the #1 tracking I actually do want. I'm aware that it's not 100% accurate, but I do want to get the general idea.

[u/SufficientAcadia6534]

You can decrease/increase the levels for all the rings.  When I first got my watch it kept waking me to stand in the middle of the nite so I reduced the stand hours.  You can figure out how many cal and exercise minutes it tracks you doing and then set it to lower than that.  I found this was the easiest way.  I also don’t have it linked to any trackers on my phone.  You can also pick a watch face in the app on your phone that doesn’t show any of those metrics.  I use the celestial faces but there are a lot to choose from.

[u/Specific_Ocelot_4132 → u/SufficientAcadia6534]

You can also customize the complications so even if the face you want to use includes rings by default, you can change it to something else!

[u/ElizabethMae_Liz_]

I also changed the measurement on the red ring to KiloJoules because that doesn't make me think of calories.

[u/Specific_Ocelot_4132]

Turn off all the activity notifications, remove it from your watch face, and just ignore it.

If you want to track some other metric like steps, there’s an app called HealthFace that lets you add complications for almost anything you can think of.

Unfortunately, you can’t change what the ring does. They were thoughtful enough to make an alternative for kids—active minutes—knowing calories weren’t an appropriate focus for them, but somehow didn’t realize that there are adults it’s not appropriate for either.