WatchOS 26.1 issues with Fitness / Workout / Health on AppleWatch 7

The exact same thing has happened to me on multiple occasions now. The only way that I've been able to fix it is to unpair and re-pair the watch to the phone. It's super frustrating! There must've been a glitch in the update to 26.1 for the phone/watch or a combo of both.

Side note, I also had issues unpairing my watch, where I removed it from the app but the watch still had all of my data. I had to go to "find my" and remove it from there so it removed it from the cloud...

The whole thing is a huge mess.

If the force restart did not help, unpairing and connecting it again to your iPhone without using the latest backup would be the next step:

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Set up your Apple Watch - Apple Support

You will not lose your Health data, it will sync back from iCloud.

I had same issue on my Ultra 2 and Apple Iphone 14 when switching to 26.1. I unpaired and repaired several times and each time I could only get one workout in before issues started again. Finally, I went to watch settings on watch, then general, then reset, then erase all data. Then I unpaired watch and set it up as a new watch. I did not lose any health data or data in fitness app. I did have to add watch faces and remove apps I don’t want on watch to have it like it was before. Now my watch has performed perfectly. Took me about .5 to 1 hour to complete. Hope this helps

Unparing the watch helped this user, having a similar issue:

Apple Watch activity rings not updating a… - Apple Community

Similar issue after upgrade to iOS26.1, WatchOS 26.1 here. (iPhone 17 Pro, Apple Watch Ultra 3)

Not sure if it's directly affected by 26.1, but the issue happened 5Nov (Wed) just after I upgraded 4Nov (Tue).

Detail as below,

My fitness rings, health data (pulse, sleep, blood oxygen level, steps, wrist temperature...) works correctly on my watch.

All the fitness rings, health data is not sync back to my iPhone health, fitness app.

All the data/notification except related to health is sync without problem between Watch and iPhone.

I guess my issue is much more huge. After contact with Apple Support team from iOS Support App, they still cannot fix it and need to collect my iPhone, Apple Watch diagnostic data.

Below actions not fixing my issue.

1. Turn off and on sync (Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Health), reboot between off and on sync.
2. Unpair and re-pair watch (tried restore from backup and set as a new watch, both no fix my issue)
3. Privacy related to health data and movement turn on and off.

The only fix is to reset my iPhone as a new one, and re-pair my watch.

That mean I will lost all the configurations, just like my phone is stealed and buy a new one. lol

There are a few more iPhone 17 users having issues with the Apple Watch syncing data to the Fitness App/Health App.

You should let Apple know directly about this issue by using the Feedback link, as this is the only way to reach them.

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

Feedback - Watch - Apple

The more users do that, the more likely the issue will be noticed by Apple Techs and hopefully Apple will come up with a solution for those users effected.

In the same time, weight scale and blood pressure monitor from 3rd party brand (Omron) can send health data to my iPhone health app...

Thant means my iPhone refuses the health data from my Apple Watch. Unbelievable...

Thank you for the feedback form link.

I didn't know these form before and I wrote both forms to Apple.

I actually contacted Apple Care team several times from Support App in iPhone already.

I still waiting if there is any feedback from their support team after upload diagnosis data.

Reset phone and watch should be my last solution...