turning off notifications

Did you already try restarting the app, or rebooting the phone?

Yes those were my first actions including rebooting the watch.  

Which notifications exactly are you getting on your watch? Are you sure they come from the phone, and are not just plain alerts of the watch self?

I am getting "A device wants to connect" which takes me to GC when I click on it - this is on the phone not the watch which I have been using for the past 3 years with GCM.  So this is a new headache concurrent with reinstalling GCM.  I finally got them not going to the watch.

OK, I got a bit confused, because in the initial thread you wrote "am pulling my hair out becuse the app keeps trying to send notifications to my watch". So if I understand well now, you solved the initial problem of getting notifications to the watch, but get the "a device wants to connect" on your phone instead. Does the BT connection between the watch and the phone still work? Can you still sync? Perhaps you disabled too much of the permissions. Normally, disabling the push/email/app notifications would stop them.

Yes I am still synching. I had to disable not only in GC but on my phone settings.  The one that may have FINALLY done it is going to my notifications settings on my phone and turning off Garmin Connect there. 96 minutes ago and no notifications.  Just disabling everything from within the app did not resolve the problem.  At least I will be able to find this the next time I have to uninstall and reinstall the app.  FWIW I have to reboot my phone frequently for the app because VO2 max hangs up (not related but FWIW)

Not sure whether you really do not want to get any notifications from Garmin Connect to your phone's notification bar, because some of them are rather useful, but if you just want to suppress the connectivity notifications, you can do it by disabling them selectively. Just go again in Android Settings » Notifications, let them enabled, and enter the details by tapping the name, scroll down to Device Connectivity, and disable it.

Seriously.  I went back in and enabled notifications just for the app - on both the phone and GCM.  It sent out a notification.  Disabled EVERYTHING in the app and got one. Had to go back to android and block Garmin Connect and, yes, I can stilll sync. Same as before. Having my phone pinging at me every 20-30 mnutes for something I don't want is too much and yes it is from connect because the icon shows up .I guess I just won't know what I am missing - fortunately every day when I shower I connect the device and it connects with GC online which is probably all I need.  I just like the GCM dashboard

If you disabled notifications from GC to the watch, then the pinging of your watch is most likely just an alert about a lost or regained Bluetooth connection, when you move more than some 10m from your watch, or come back into the proximity. Could it be that case, or are you really getting notifications from the phone about something specific? If so, then what exactly?

As for the BT lost and regained connection notifications, there are two ways how to suppress them on the watch - either you activate the "Do not disturb" mode (the Moon icon in the principal menu), or you stop the BT connection (either on the phone, or on the watch) for the time you do not need it.

This is not happening on my watch it is all on my phone. If I suppress BT then data does not go over to GCM.  I am done. I just disabled it all and can sync