The Type A+ Podcast Episode 34 - Health Month - Why I Stopped Tracking For Wellness
Episode Description:
In last week's episode, we talked about the ways that being a Type A+ person may affect your health. This week, Beth is sharing a little bit about her personal health journey as she answers the question "Are wellness trackers healthy for Type A people?"
A warning that this episode includes discussions of weight loss, including specific numbers, calorie counting and eating disorders. If this topic is going to be challenging for you, please feel free to skip this episode. If you do decide to listen, please take care while listening.
Note: This episode is based on my personal experience along with research. I am not a medical professional, and It is not intended to serve as medical advice nor is it meant to diagnose or treat any disease.
Links mentioned in the episode:
Podcast:
The Type A Plus Podcast Instagram
Host:
Beth Lawrence & Company Instagram
Beth will be back each week, delivering bite-sized tips (15-minute episodes or less) on how to optimize your life and work.
Episode Transcript can be found below:
Welcome to the Type A+ podcast with me, Beth Lawrence.
I'm a certified meeting professional, an award-winning event planner, and a classic over-prepared overachiever.
In each episode, I'll deliver bite-sized tips on organizing your business and life, even during your most hectic times.
So, let's get started.
Before we get started on today's episode, I want to make sure to tell you that today, I'll be sharing a little bit of my personal story, which includes mention of weight, calorie counting, and general mention of eating disorders. If this topic will be harmful to you, please feel free to skip to the next episode, and please take care if you do decide to listen.
Today, we're going to be talking about wellness trackers for Type A people, and ultimately, why this Type A person decided to give up tracking altogether.
As humans, we like trackers because it makes us feel like we have more control over what's happening in our bodies. We like to be able to find solutions, and the way to do that is by locating the problem.
Trackers for sleep, heart rate, activity, and even things like skin temperature are supposed to help us establish a pattern so that we can detect irregularities. This information used to be given in regular doctor's visits, where it's able to be analyzed by a physician and discussed with the patient as a piece of an overall picture of health.
As Type A people, though, we can fixate on the data and finding a solution for a problem that we're misidentifying in the first place.
Leela R. Magavi, a psychiatrist and regional medical director for Mindpath Health, points out that “Trackers do not know an individual’s life story and are unable to assess physical or mental wellness,” said Magavi, who lives in Newport Beach, Calif.
She warned that they can generalize recommendations that could lead to negative consequences, such as overexertion or injuries.
I have always been driven to be the best version of myself. Always looking for problems that I can solve in my quest to be the best. That goes for every role that I have held, from student, to dance team captain, to employee, to manager to business owner, and even more personal pieces of my identity.
This can be a great thing, in that I don't usually need a lot of external motivation to set and achieve goals. But, there are definitely drawbacks to wanting this sense of control or striving for perfection, especially when it comes to our health. If we're constantly using external data, largely without context, to inform how we are performing, it means we're becoming more and more out of touch with our body's natural rhythm.
On the very dark side of fitness tracking for Type A people, studies show that those with anxiety and a history of disordered eating have a particularly difficult time, even with casual use of tracking apps.
As someone who has struggled with eating disorders for most of my life, any type of tracking, goals, or measurement around weight loss can lead to increasingly unhealthy behavior. In fact, my eating disorder started with tracking.
I was 13 years old, sitting in the doctor's office after going to lunch at Burger King with my mom and sister. After taking my weight, the doctor came into the room and told me that I needed to lose 'at least' 30lbs.
As I sipped my large Diet Coke, the pit in my stomach grew larger. It was like the doctor gave me an assignment, and I had to take it and run as far as I could with it. "Challenge accepted," I thought.
This was the 90s/00s, and diet culture was rampant. From Weight Watchers, to the Atkins Diet, Slim-Fast and everything in between, it was not an easy time to be a teenage girl.
The same night, I started counting my points on Weight Watchers. Fueled by my desire to be the best at everything I did, while I was allowed 18-23 points per day, I made sure I had no more than 18 maximum. Quickly, this became weighing myself multiple times a day, 'gum is my snack' and 'I ate a big lunch,' which became over 60lbs of weight loss.
After a final stomach bug, I was close to 100lbs. Thankfully, with the help of my family, I pulled out of it right before college...or so I thought. It wasn't until the pandemic that I realized that counting, restricting, or setting goals when it comes to anything involving my body is dangerous for me.
I looked back on the food journals, the My Fitness Pal's, the macro counting, fad diets and everything in the 20 years in between that doctor's office and present day and realized that every iteration of tracking my progress when it came to my health, wellness or weight led to starvation.
I'm not alone in this. An article in Verdict UK points out that perfectionism and control, calorie counting, and strict exercise regimes are common behaviors for those with eating disorders.
Furthermore, wearable technology provides direct and constant access to a stream of personal data that could exacerbate these tendencies. Those suffering from eating disorders may weaponize fitness trackers to fuel their disordered behaviours.
This was true for me, but it wasn't just my eating habits that were affected, it was the lack of joy I felt from simple activities.
If you've listened to my intro episode, you'll know that I used to work full-time for a health food startup, prior to starting my business. One of the reasons I took the job was, at the time, my various specific behaviors around food and my general interest in what I called 'health and wellness.' We're rewinding a few years here, nearly 8 years at this point. One of the partners we worked with ran a citywide fitness competition that used a tracking device to create the 'leaderboard.' Participants could track their activity using a predetermined device, called MyZone. It was old school, rubber band that fit around your chest and tracked your heart rate, and therefore calories burned, during workouts.
I wore it for a few years, until I found a new, extremely fun fitness class/workout that I started to attend multiple times per week. At first, I made sure to track each workout and calories burned. After a few months, though, I noticed that the classes where I forgot to affix my tracker, or the tracking app didn't work, I felt a sense of apathy. "Why did I even do this class? I can't tell how many calories I burned, do I even know if the workout is worth it?" What's more, if I set a goal for number of miles run per week, for example, and I woke up not feeling well, my desire to 'perform' would outweigh my body's cues that it's time to take a breather.
Another example is my love of running. After a few traumatic experiences in high school gym class, I had sworn off running for the entirety of my life. That is, until I was in my early 20s and decided to sign up for a 5K race. I started using an app that tracked my miles and speed, hoping to make the best possible time for my first race. After the 5K, naturally my instinct was to pursue a new milestone.
So, I signed up for a 5 mile race. At the time, even though I typically run ~20-25 miles a week in pursuit of an actual race, I would not publicly identify as a 'runner.' Why? Because I stopped to walk midway through my 3 to 5-mile route. Runners don't walk, they run, I'd tell myself. If I walk during this race, I've lost. During my training, I logged every single workout using the Couch to 10K app and plan.
God forbid I go out for a run, wifi dropped and my app wasn't hooked up correctly or my workout didn't log, I'd spiral wondering how far I actually ran, whether I had achieved my goals for the day. It was truly unhealthy. Cut to the finish line of said 5-mile race. 38 degrees, 8:00am on a cold March Saturday morning. I didn't walk the entire time, beat my goal for a personal best.
But guess what? My body shut down for the entire rest of the day. I didn't listen to my body and stop when it needed me to, and it repaid me. I was sick for days.
Leela R. Magavi, a psychiatrist and regional medical director for Mindpath Health, points out in a Washington Post article that “Trackers do not know an individual’s life story and are unable to assess physical or mental wellness,” said Magavi, who lives in Newport Beach, Calif.
She warned that they can generalize recommendations that could lead to overexertion for an individual, resulting in injuries.
And, a 2018 study found that features of compulsive eating and exercise habits were elevated in those using monitoring tools. Notably, people with anxiety also reported elevated levels of stress when looking at their heart rates on a tracker.
There is a notable mindset shift from a general interest in fitness improvement, to fitness becoming an absolute, subsequently leading to a rising sense of guilt or anxiety among users if the data is not optimal.
Even seemingly small things, like not identifying as a runner when I clearly was one, or equating the success of a fitness class with the calories burned, are little ways to zap my joy and really took a toll on my mental health long-term.
Next month is Mental Health month, and it's important to consider the affects of wearable tech on all aspects of our mental and physical health. If you are someone who loves your trackers, by all means, I do not want to take that away from you! I am simply sharing my experience so that, if it does resonate, you can decide whether you want to reconsider your relationship to this type of data.
If you are someone who has to track certain metrics for your specific health reasons, of course continue to do so.
Thank you so much for listening and for your support, I have always received an outpouring of support anytime I tell my story and it makes me feel incredibly grateful and less alone. If you're struggling with body image, disordered eating or any aspect of mental or physical health, I feel for you.
The Type A+ Podcast is written and produced by me, Beth Lawrence.
Our music is composed by Dan “Dilemma” Thomas.
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