Is It Accountability?

 I realize I overthink things and often to the detriment of the original curiosity, but throughout my attempts to find a lifestyle that is healthiest for me, I’ve had to stop and ask many times: is this really healthy?

I’ve questioned ideas of ‘body positivity’ that are now weaponized as ‘non-diets’ or ‘lifestyle changes’; anything to avoid the ‘negative’ connotations of weight loss. Except programs like Noom are wielding this vocabulary of a ‘psychological’ approach to behavioral change to mask that their measures of success are exactly the same. You still track food and water, you still step on a scale, you still restrict your calories. Pardon my French, but that’s… a fucking diet.

I’m not going to say that all of the programs are insidious and heinous as I’m sure they can be helpful to some, but… they absolutely reek of the possibility of danger for those desperate and prone to eating disorders, body dysmorphia and classic depression. They still ask you how fast you want to lose weight and give you far too few calorie limits if you actually calculate what your body should be getting. After losing 5-10 pounds, you should always recalculate because your unique caloric needs involve more factors than these programs bother to consider.

I tried Noom. Although I skipped out on the group and coach options because I don’t want cheerleaders or clichés spit at me. I was always fucking hungry but good job! In the first three months, I lost 5 pounds then I couldn’t budge. I was exercising daily, well beyond a minimum but I was still always tired and sore and hungry.

I remembered that for past attempts, more working out and more stress on your body means you need to feed your damn body. I noticed that my FitBit did a better job of accounting for how many calories I needed and used so all this red/yellow/green food bullshit that Noom tried to pass as innovative was moot.

With FitBit, another 10 lbs were lost but again, plateau. By that point, I was certain I was facing the hormones of a 40 year old woman so I didn’t stay frustrated, just kept doing what felt healthy and didn’t make me miserable.

I’d tried intermittent fasting years before and hated it— the 16:8 method that always seems to be so popular. I liked the reprieve from counting calories while fasting but it always seemed to create this misery that made it hard to sleep and made me ravenous when it was time to eat. However, I’d done 24 hour and even 3 day fasting in the past with more success and wanted to try again.

At first… well, it was misery. It came with hunger, diarrhea, headaches, dizziness. I didn’t lose weight after either. However, I noticed with these longer fasts that I really loved going a day or three without calorie counting and even if I ate all I wanted, by the end of the week, my calorie intake was consistently in a safe but generous weight loss margin. I started consistently losing one pound or two every week and I was feeling stronger, sleeping better, getting nicer skin and hair, managing my moods better. I was scared at first, because most programs tend to punish you for fasting as if it’s an eating disorder, but it’s actually improving my mental state far more than medications or other methods I’ve tried. It was more powerful than meditation in cleansing myself of racing negative thoughts.

Calorie restrictions made me paranoid, more accepting of the daily misery of choosing foods that never quite fulfilled me but gave me those weight loss numbers: good job! But a good job doesn’t make you feel like a failure. It doesn’t make you obsess on choice and numbers and balance your self-acceptance on it. The problem with this ‘mindfulness’ and ‘lifestyle change’ dialogue is that you dread that this is your life now when it’s not getting easier and you’re not really feeling better.

One of the most valuable concepts I ran across was something that was only briefly touched upon by Tony Horton in the P90X series. Although he also learned the hard way that there is definitely such a thing as working out too much, I wondered why he never found a way to push this valuable concept more, but then, when you’re BeachBody’s bitch, it’s all about selling workouts, subscriptions and that Shakeology garbage, so I’m sure he might’ve ramped it up more if they could’ve packaged and sold it…

Intuitive eating. It’s introduced as the eventual goal beyond the lists of healthy foods you should be aiming to fuel your body with. Horton tells us that the lists are never meant to bind or restrict but to guide us into comfort with healthy foods and then trust what you’ve learned. That once you’ve tracked and weighed and found some favorite recipes… you know better so cut the cord and trust your knowledge.

Because it’s so damned scarce and influencers can’t package it to sell something with it, it only ever blips in the waters of health and fitness circles. But aiming for intuitive eating, where healthy eating and indulgences aren’t boring punishments or ‘cheats’, is truly a huge factor in a truly healthy lifestyle. It’s not really a change but an adjustment that won’t punish you or drive you crying towards craving binges.

I know how to be accountable but these programs need you to depend on them to ‘do it right’. I’m going to keep tracking my fasts and water intake but until the end of the year, I’m cutting the cord on all diet and exercise tracking and just doing what I already know works. If only because I feel like the dependence on these ‘helpful’ programs is only meant to be temporary and can easily become disordered. Too often, people quit out of frustration or quit when they reach their goal and bam, before they know it, right back to everything unhealthy because these ‘lifestyle changes’ that motivated them to reach their goals were never established as maintainable in the long term at all. 

If you’re saying that you only need to be this strict until you reach this goal, re-evaluate why you need it at all. Instead, start looking for the baseline of diet and exercise that is actually improving all aspects of your life. Get at least your minimum requirements but absolutely push when you’re feeling terrific. Have a healthy relationship with food, with your appetite, with your tastes and preferences. Don’t do someone else’s diets and exercises. Find what works for you. 

Another problem with these programs is their calculators that promise to perfectly tailor your needs when you plug in these only vaguely personal statistics. Statistics that do not consider your genetics or personal health factors like mental illness or deficiencies or hormones. Use sites like SmartBMI or really accurate BMR calculations to determine how many calories are really safe for healthy weight loss. And remember that rapid weight loss can cause issues like painful and loose skin and deficiencies and bad chemical imbalances.

I keep talking about this because in my search to find the best way to do things, no one ever told you how to stop relying on those helpful things and trust yourself and enjoy life along the way. While ‘fake it until you make it’ is also a good short term goal, a healthy life is about adapting to a series of short term husks not chaining yourself to a long term goal that makes you inflexible and miserable.

Quitting social media for a while taught me this. Start small. Dependency can often excuse itself as freedom, even when you’re completely miserable. Tell yourself you’ll try this for a week. If it feels better, try another. Don’t quite quit if it’s not the best option. Adjust and try again. I still dip onto social media when I have a distinct use for it but I don’t depend on it for a sense of well-being. Diet and exercise need to be adjusted in bits too. You can’t hate them but tell yourself it’s worth it. You can’t achieve or maintain a sense of well-being built on lying to yourself.

If you want accountability, make sure questioning if it’s really working is part of your weekly evaluation. You may find a niche that you actually enjoy and not want to change, but evaluate it weekly anyway. Because misery can hide in complacency, give yourself a chance to change your mind and make small adjustments.

Accountability is a system of checking in with yourself. There isn’t an app for that. Intuition is your tool to grow and nurture. Don’t discount it on any journey to realize your potential.