Apple’s stock metrics for distance, size and weight are well known to vary from region to region. They are decided upon and essentially anchored in the system settings the moment you start your iPhone or Watch for the first time and select your region. For the Western world, it largely boils down to the Imperial system cultivated in the US or UK versus the Metric system used in Australia or large parts of Europe. Granted this is old news, however it is more noteworthy that our iPhones and Watches also come out the box thinking differently about the process of burning body weight.
Depending on your region, your devices’ Activity and Health apps are programmed to measure daily and weekly Move goals, but also Workouts in either Calories (CAL) or Kilojoules (KJ). Considering this is often times a personal preference based on how you count your nutritional intake, the following tutorial will remind you of a speedy way to adjust this key setting right from your wrist.
Going from CAL to KJ
The best part of being able to swap Calories for Kilojoules or vice versa is this: you don’t have to dig deep into your Apple Watch app or Activity app settings and despair over the apparent omission on Apple’s end. The steps it takes can be executed 100% on your wrist and will unanimously change the settings on Watch and Phone alike. While they are simple on review, they are admittedly pretty counterintuitive all the same.
Let’s base this tutorial on the premise that your devices are tracking your exercise in Calories, i.e. your Workouts in the Workout tab of your Activity app would look something like this:
It accordingly means your Apple Watch’s red Activity ring displays CAL and counts CAL as soon as a Workout is started. You get the gist. To change this,
1) On your Apple Watch, open your Workout app.
2) Select any activity other than those prefaced by the word Quick. Quick will skip past the stage we are aiming for. In the example below, I have tapped Other Squash.
3) The following interface presents you with three cards in this example (this can be four cards, find out more below). Swipe right to the red card asking for your Workout goal in Calories.
4) Here’s the kicker: do not hit start or fiddle with the +/- but simply press firmly on the screen.
5) Select your preferred unit of measurement.
6) As soon as you have switched this, it will have a knock-on effect for all your devices and interfaces inside relevant apps. You can return to your Watch face without starting the Workout.
The Workout tab seen at the beginning of this tutorial will now look like this:
And you’re done! Another tidbit is that you can flip the measurements in the same manner for Miles and Kilometres. If you select a Workout like Outdoor Run and swipe to the fourth, blue card, you can press firmly and, in the same fashion, change how you would like your iPhone and Apple Watch to track your distance travelled.
If you want to find out a little more about the science behind KJ and CAL, Health24 provides a short and sweet explanation of the two.
Try it out, you don’t have to play the hand you’re dealt by Apple when it comes to exercise.