Is Our Obsession with Tracking Helpful or Harmful?

Are you tracking your weight/progress/calories/sleep/exercise/whatever-else-there-is-to-track?

We had a feisty conversation about it (always feisty!!), and feel that tracking can be helpful in some situations (e.g. when you are training for a certain goal, when you are recovering from an eating disorder, or when the person tracking is in a good place with food, exercise and their body).

BUT: tracking can distract us from trusting our body, listening to our intuition and reduce our ability to feel what we need/want. Having a device or a spreadsheet tell us how long we slept, or how fast we ran, or how many calories are in a chocolate croissant is information.  BUT,  the information may be:

- inaccurate

- irrelevant

- out of context

or make us feel

- obsessive

- anxious and

- like we've failed.

As intuitive eating and movement coaches we are here to support people in finding their way back to trusting themselves and their bodies, to start listening again to how and what we feel. If a sleep tracker tells you that you had a 'bad night', you may well start the day feeling bad (EVEN if the tracker is wrong, EVEN if you are actually feeling fine). If a calorie tracker app tells you how many calories are in a food, you may not eat it (EVEN if you really fancy it, EVEN if calories are an arbitrary and inaccurate number). If your fitness app tells you that your run was slower today than the last time you ran, you may feel like you are regressing (EVEN if there were very good reasons for running more slowly, EVEN though you did manage to go for a run rather than skip it).

On balance, tracking everything from food to weight to exercise is probably less beneficial than we think. It may give us a snapshot of information, but it can't provide a full picture of the context and nuance of the tracked item. 

We'd love to hear about your experience with tracking things: do you do it? How does it make you feel? Have you found it helpful or triggering? 

Transcript

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Ela Law: Hello, everyone! Welcome back to another episode of the Find Your Strong podcast.

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Ela Law: I have something that's bugging me a little bit, and I wanted to talk, about it today. And the topic is tracking, tracking things. I feel like, at the moment, everyone is tracking everything. Sleep, calories, exercise, distances.

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Ela Law: And, whilst I see some benefit in tracking your progress, just so that you are aware of, you know, how you are moving forward in terms of, say, you know, how much weight you can lift, how far you can swim, how long you can run.

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Ela Law: there is some benefit to that. I feel like we've gone completely to the dark side with it, and…

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Ela Law: in a way, I feel like tracking is kind of the antidote to being intuitive about stuff, so being intuitive about what foods work for you, how much to eat, how much to sleep, how much to exercise, because we're relying so much on this external device that's telling us

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Ela Law: you know, what we've had, how much we should have, and all of that. We are kind of relying on that for information rather than our intuition. So…

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Ela Law: What do you think about that, Christine? Because you're a PT, and you obviously have clients that work with you to maybe build strength, to learn how to run, to do kettlebells, all that kind of stuff, where you probably do track to a certain extent.

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Ela Law: Whereas I don't work with clients on any tracking in terms of calories, or, you know, what have you eaten, and how much have you eaten, that's really not part of the conversation. So I'm a bit, sort of, on the outside, looking in, but observing that it's a massive thing at the moment for lots of people.

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Christine Chessman: Well, it's such a good question, Ella.

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Ela Law: Thank you very much!

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Christine Chessman: I really chaired the line, because…

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Ela Law: Huh.

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Christine Chessman: I'm… I do… I sort of work with a lot of clients that are coming from a eating disorders background, or a disordered eating background, or really negative experiences with movement, so…

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Christine Chessman: initially, I kind of have a very candid conversation with them. I'm like, do you want to use the app to track what weights you're using for specific lifts, or is that just something that you want to happen organically? And,

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Christine Chessman: Some people find that at the beginning, they don't want to track anything, and then as they go on, they actually do want to see how heavy they can lift, and see the progress they're making in certain movements, and…

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Christine Chessman: So I, you know, and the app that I have can track all of that, but I never, never track… obviously, you know that I would never track weight, I never do meal plans, I never do calories, I never ask them what they've had before.

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Christine Chessman: Our sessions, so it's…

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Christine Chessman: I would never track that kind of thing, ever. And I don't think any PT should, personally, but there you go. Unless you have a friggin' MSc in nutrition.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: That is… that is my… my view on that. But in terms of myself, I've a love-hate relationship with trackers, so…

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Christine Chessman: i.e, yeah, I use Strava, which is a running app.

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Christine Chessman: But got quite addicted to that, so that every run that I would record, if my time per mile had dropped.

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Christine Chessman: then I would just spend the whole run trying to increase it for the next mile, which just makes it miserable.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: But it can be quite useful if you're training for a race to make, you know, see how many miles you did. If you want a certain time, then you can check if you're under that time. So, it depends on you. It depends on your relationship with movement.

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Christine Chessman: where you're starting from, and just keeping, you know, just adapting as you go. So there's no fixed… for me, there's no fixed rule in terms of the movement side of things. For the food side of things.

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Christine Chessman: Well, it's tricky. So, obviously, eating disorders are all about meal plans and checks, so for me, I would never track food or calories, because that's highly triggering for me.

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Ela Law: Mmm.

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Christine Chessman: For myself.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: And I think you're absolutely right. We've… we don't know how to eat anymore ourselves, do we? It's all, like, have I had enough compared to that person, or should I be eating less so that I burned… you know, it's… we don't actually… it's all about, oh, I better check if this is… we don't ever check our body.

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Ela Law: That's right, yeah.

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Christine Chessman: are we hungry? Maybe we need food. And it is this thing of, you know, I came back after boot camp, and I was hungry, and I'd already had breakfast, and it was, like, quarter to 10, and I was like, but I'm hungry, so I'm just gonna have something else.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: You know, if you had a little tracker, you'd be like, nope.

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Christine Chessman: Not lied.

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Ela Law: That's it, yeah, exactly.

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Christine Chessman: How do you feel about, sort of, factors in terms of movement?

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Ela Law: Yeah, I think the movement is the one where I make allowances, so generally, I think I completely agree with you. I think calorie tracking is…

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Ela Law: at the best, nonsensical, and at the worst, harmful. And I know that, you know, if someone is going through an eating disorder, or is sort of struggling with disordered eating.

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Ela Law: that can be quite detrimental to recovery, because you are focusing so much on, you know, what you are allowing yourself to eat, based on calories. If you have to have a meal plan

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Ela Law: From a dietitian, and you have to follow that so that you, regain your weight.

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Ela Law: There is a certain amount of tracking involved in that,

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Ela Law: But I think it's necessary for a certain amount of time, and then I think it's a really good idea to move away from that, and really look at the intuitive eating side of things, and start to reconnect to your body to understand, you know, what is my hunger signal, what is my fullness signal, what is my satisfaction?

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Ela Law: from eating certain foods. So, I think we… as soon as possible, I would…

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Ela Law: probably suggest to move away from that when it comes to food and calories. But…

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Christine Chessman: It's an interesting one, because I think some people, after recovery need it for a lot longer, because it is that…

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Christine Chessman: They're unsure of what on earth aiding normally is.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: Or how… because you can kind of suppress all those, or the eating disorder itself suppresses that, those signals that your body is… is hungry or full and all of that, so it's… you can get really mixed signals from your own body.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: So, some people who are in recovery find it really helpful to stick on that mean plan, and it is sort of… the gradual moving away from the mean plan can be, like, that phased approach, rather than… Yeah.

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Ela Law: Absolutely. All at once. Absolutely. Yeah, I 100% agree. That's what I mean. As soon as you can, and you feel like, actually, I don't need that sort of…

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Ela Law: I'm thinking of tracking, in that sense, more of a… of the negative thing, where you have an app that tracks calories, and

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Ela Law: counts them and tells you, oh, you've already had 1,200, so you can't eat anymore. And we've talked about that, you know, that's what a toddler should be eating, but, you know, it's that kind of tracking that I am concerned about, not necessarily a meal plan that you follow to recover.

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Ela Law: And in terms of exercise, so I… I'm just gonna be up front, I don't track anything. And I have this thing where…

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Ela Law: Well, well, is it? But I just… like, with exercise, I would quite like to…

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Ela Law: know whether I'm making progress, for example, you know, doing strength training, but I kind of know, because if I know that last week, I was just about pushing a 5 kilo dumbbell, and felt like that was taxing, or that was, you know, that was hard, hard work.

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Ela Law: And then, 2 weeks later, I can do 6 or 7 kilos. I will know that, because…

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Ela Law: I will just register that. I don't need an up to tell me, oh, you can lift higher weights now.

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Ela Law: So, do you see what I mean? I don't feel like, for me, it's necessary to track anything. Tracking my sleep would be completely pointless, because I know when I wake up whether I slept well or not, and I know how, you know, how rested I feel, and even if I think, oh, I had a really good night's sleep, I may not feel rested. So, an app telling me, you had a great night's sleep, and me feeling shit the next day.

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Ela Law: doesn't… it doesn't… it doesn't work for me at all. But I get your point, you know, if someone is training for something, for a race, or for, whatever competition.

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Ela Law: Then it might be helpful to track something.

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Christine Chessman: And, you know, I think, and this is the thing, it depends on you, it depends on you as an individual, anybody listening, is I, you know, when I've done marathons in the past, there's… there was a couple of the marathons I won at a certain time.

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Ela Law: Mmm.

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Christine Chessman: And I don't think there's anything wrong with training for a certain time. If it's within your capability, and you can build flexibility into your plan, and you feel okay with that.

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Christine Chessman: So it might be that that's too much for you, and that actually feels punishing, and that doesn't feel okay for you, so leave it alone. Don't do that.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: But I think… oh, on the subject of marathons, please don't listen to Jill Wicks.

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Ela Law: Oh my god!

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Christine Chessman: I mean, why… I mean, duty of care, come on, man. This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, I got so angry.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: I got so angry. So, basically, Joe Wicks has had a podcast where he said, oh, I think we worry too much about eating during a marathon, or drinking water. I had no water, or any food, and I was fine. It's like…

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Christine Chessman: This is, like, you could literally die. If it's a hot day, and you're not consuming fluids, and it's your first marathon, and you're dehydrated, it is very serious.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: very serious.

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Ela Law: Yeah. But, I mean, this is the problem with people who have big platforms, have lots of people follow them and listen to them, coming out with these really harmful things is ridiculous.

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Christine Chessman: And, you know, I understand he did great things during COVID, and I'm sure he's a very nice person, but there's been too many times that he has been spreading misinformation on a huge platform, so I really have to call him out on that. It's just dangerous, it's dangerous.

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Ela Law: Yeah, I'm glad you did.

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Christine Chessman: So yeah, the first time I ran a marathon, my brother was ringing me the night before my brother, who is a doctor, saying, you could die if you're thirsty.

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Ela Law: drink.

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Christine Chessman: So I was panicking the whole time to speak.

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Christine Chessman: That was the other extreme. But, but you gotta be careful.

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Ela Law: careful with that as well, because people die of, like, literally drowning themselves with water and hydrating too much.

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Christine Chessman: Well, I don't know anybody who's run a marathon that has been overhydrated at the.

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Ela Law: I know someone died, like, a couple of years ago. Yeah, they were… they had drunk too much.

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Ela Law: But, like, literally liters and liters and liters, they died of heart failure because of that.

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Christine Chessman: What?

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Ela Law: That is an actual thing.

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Ela Law: But, you know, we're always talking about extremes. Joe Wicks is telling, oh, you don't need to drink anything, and then other people are drinking, like, 8 liters of water and drown themselves, so there is a middle ground… Yeah. That no one seems to be hanging out in anymore. I don't know, it's all extreme, isn't it?

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Christine Chessman: So, that's… yeah, but please don't get worried.

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Ela Law: Who knows?

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Christine Chessman: Honestly, if you just drink a normal amount, and it's, you know, don't worry, don't worry.

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Christine Chessman: If you're planning on a marathon, please don't worry, we'll do an episode on how to fuel.

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Ela Law: We should probably do one. Maybe we can interview someone who just ran one. And if you are running the London Marathon, is it next weekend? This coming weekend?

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Ela Law: Better you than me. Thank you very much, and good luck.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah, and it is… I think what my brother was saying is, if you're feeling thirsty, drink. Yeah. Because that means you're already slightly dehydrated, so it was more…

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Christine Chessman: Try not to get dehydrated. Yes.

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Ela Law: Definitely.

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Ela Law: Oh yeah, because you were saying about when you train for something like the marathon.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah, and I think this is the thing about intuitive movement, intuitive eating, I think people have… people. Some people have the…

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Christine Chessman: idea that it means, oh, you just don't worry about anything, you don't have any goals, you don't, you know, you just eat what you want, and I think it is…

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Christine Chessman: I would push against that and say it is okay, it's absolutely okay to have goals, and for some people, it really helps them sustain movement by having goals that they set for themselves.

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Ela Law: Sure.

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Christine Chessman: But I would say now, as an intuitive mover, I hold goals lightly.

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Ela Law: Huh.

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Christine Chessman: So, they are subject to change, and I realize that my life means Sometimes things have to change.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: You know, but I still want to have big goals. I still dream big.

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Ela Law: Yeah!

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Christine Chessman: in terms of movement and what I want to accomplish, and I think that's okay.

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Ela Law: And does tracking help you with that, or would you kind of get to it anyway without having some app or some sort of tracker telling you, oh, you've improved?

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Christine Chessman: Well, you know what?

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Ela Law: My goal, you won't you know when you got there?

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Christine Chessman: Well, I, for example, I have a bent press goal, and a bent press is kind of.

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Ela Law: Oh yeah, see that on Instagram, and I'm like, how does she do that.

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Christine Chessman: It's a heavy, so I kind of… I'm about… I can do a 20K, I can press a 20K on one arm, but not on the other arm.

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Ela Law: Right.

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Christine Chessman: But I want to do it on both sides confidently by the time I'm… and I started at 6K, so it's…

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Christine Chessman: building it up slowly, and I…

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Christine Chessman: So I have an idea, but I haven't been tracking through and out. I've just been kind of doing that myself.

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Ela Law: That's what I'm saying, because you know, oh, today I'm gonna try the 8 and see how that goes. Because you know then that you're making progress without an ad telling you you're making progress.

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Christine Chessman: Exactly, and I had a previous trainer who did Excel spreadsheets, and I put in the weights that I use, and I find that actually really helpful, because I could see my progress.

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Ela Law: Mmm.

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Christine Chessman: I go in and out of that, so I don't always need it, but sometimes I need it to feel, okay, I'm accomplishing something, I'm moving forward.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: So, I think it all comes back to, and this is what I think

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Christine Chessman: with movement, I think it really comes back to your relationship with movement, where you are in that.

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Christine Chessman: If you've just come out of a difficult relationship with movement or eating.

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Ela Law: Mmm.

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Christine Chessman: It's maybe not the time to have a tracker, it's maybe the time to kind of let your body decide what works, or, you know, look around, but, you know, find…

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Christine Chessman: A rhythm with movement before you go there.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: You know, because I think it's small steps, bite-sized steps at that stage.

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Christine Chessman: But, but I think if you feel really comfortable with your body, with movement, with food, I think you do you, but keep a little eye on yourself.

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Christine Chessman: So if you're starting waking, you know, you need to track every single thing you do, I think that is a problem.

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Ela Law: Yeah, that's a red flag, isn't it? Because then you're losing touch with yourself and what your body actually needs. I think one thing that I just thought of, and I think might also be, regardless of whether you are fine with tracking or whether it might be triggering for you to track, is to…

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Ela Law: To look at it with a bit of flexibility, because if you're tracking, you should probably look at the general trend.

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Ela Law: Because if you… if you work out 4 times a week, every single day you might be in a different situation. You might have different, like, levels of sleep, and energy, and hormonal kind of fluctuations, or…

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Christine Chessman: Oh, yes, yes.

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Ela Law: Whatever is going on. So if you track and you…

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Ela Law: you notice that, oh, maybe on day 3, you didn't lift as hard, or you didn't run as fast, or you couldn't stay on the road as long as you usually do. That doesn't mean you are regressing, it just means that something's going on. So I think that's another thing, when you track, you have to be a little bit, sort of, looking at the bigger picture, rather than day-to-day.

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Christine Chessman: This… very good point to bring up. So, many of my clients, especially starting off, their goals are more energy, feel less stiff in my joints.

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Ela Law: Right.

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Christine Chessman: get out of bed easier, get up off the floor easier, and that… those are goals which can be over months and months and months, you know, it's not a, oh, this week versus last week. And even with people that want to move up in weights.

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Christine Chessman: I do not look one week to the next, because they will be messaging me going, I've got my period this week, I feel like crap, or I'm just coming off an illness, or I'm away for the week. So it is more of a kind of long-term…

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Christine Chessman: You know, maybe they've got a 5-month goal or a 3-month goal, so we have a look at the end of that 3 months, and it might have gone like that a bit. But, you know, you might have that little, tiny…

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Christine Chessman: Lift up, you know, and it's not realistic.

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Christine Chessman: To set a goal, were you…

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Christine Chessman: The progress is like that. Absolutely not realistic.

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Ela Law: It's never linear, is it? Nothing is ever lin Yeah, it's all messy.

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Christine Chessman: No.

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Ela Law: Up and down, and…

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Christine Chessman: this is what I hate frigging 12-week programs to full body strength, or 12-week, you know, full transformations, you're gonna be strong. No, you're not gonna be strong in 12 weeks, you'll be stronger, and you will probably feel better in many ways, but you cannot say, you'll be here.

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Ela Law: Yep.

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Christine Chessman: Do you know what I mean?

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Ela Law: Absolutely, yeah. This is not something that you can predict.

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Ela Law: And that's why I think, you know, tracking… that's where tracking has a purpose in the sense of you are seeing over long term whether you are progressing at something. If indeed that is what you want to do, you might just be fine poodling along, and just…

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Christine Chessman: be fine.

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Ela Law: What do you think?

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Christine Chessman: listening to your body.

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Ela Law: It's not working.

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Christine Chessman: better than it did.

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Ela Law: success.

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Christine Chessman: ago.

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Ela Law: Exactly.

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Christine Chessman: That's a bit…

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Ela Law: that's subjective, isn't it? It's not something you can necessarily measure. Have you got more energy? You don't measure that on an app. You just feel it. And I think that's where…

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Ela Law: you know, you can possibly step away. If that is your goal, you can probably step away from all of this tracking and just sort of feel, well, how over the last, say, 2-3 months has my energy changed? You know, you can track it in a sort of reflective way, rather than in a, I have to write down every single day how I feel. So yeah, I think I'm more comfortable with that sort of tracking.

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Ela Law: Where you're looking at the bigger picture, you don't use an app for it. You're listening to your own body rather than

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Ela Law: A device that's telling you, Whether you made progress or not.

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Christine Chessman: And I think the caveat is, I do work with progressive overload, because I want…

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Christine Chessman: the people that work with me, I want them to feel strong in their bodies, especially as we age. So it is something that, you know, we work to RPE, which is Rate of Perceived Exertion, so we'll say any given week.

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Christine Chessman: work at an 8 out of 10 for this, you know, these exercises, so that.

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Christine Chessman: they are, you know, doing sets where they are… the last couple of reps are properly challenging, whatever weight that might be on that day, so that they're challenging their muscles, and so that they'll then grow muscle. Right. So, but you… that might not be your goal.

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Christine Chessman: So you might not… I mean…

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Ela Law: Even if it is, as you said, on any given week, that might change, right? So, on one week, someone might be, doing that with an 8 kilo dumbbell.

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Ela Law: And then the next week, it might only be 6 kilos, and fewer reps.

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Christine Chessman: Absolutely, 100%. Like, today, I can press a lot more than I pressed today in my workout, because I was feeling tired.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: So, an ear out of town for me today was less weight than it was last week, but it's still absolutely valuable to do that session.

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Ela Law: And how did that make you feel at the beginning?

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Christine Chessman: and you're.

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Ela Law: Yeah. So you… were you…

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Christine Chessman: Good!

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Ela Law: Because you knew… I'm tired today, and you could get… give your.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah, and I knew that I was still working out and maintaining my strength. Right. You know, and also sort of that self-efficacy. I want to work… I want to do strength three times a week, so I was…

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Christine Chessman: doing my… one of my sessions, but today I didn't feel like I had it in me to do the heavyweights, so I just didn't do the heavyweights.

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Ela Law: Right.

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Christine Chessman: And it is… it takes time.

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Christine Chessman: to get there, Ella. If you've come from a background of punishing workouts, all about weight loss, all about body composition, it's really hard to get to that point where you're like, oh, I'm just gonna listen to my body and…

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: And do what Finn said.

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Christine Chessman: good for me. It's really hard.

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Ela Law: I bet it is, and I think… I love that for you, that you are in a place where that is just, you know, you're listening to your body, and your body wasn't up for the really heavy weights today, and I think…

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Ela Law: again, you know, if you're not in that place, you could perceive that as, oh, I've taken a step back, or I've failed at this.

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Christine Chessman: No, no, no, no, no, it's absolutely… those workouts, they're actually.

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Ela Law: failure, is it? It's like you are actually doing it.

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Ela Law: Just a slightly lower weight.

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Christine Chessman: And actually, deload weeks are really important if you want to build strength.

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Ela Law: All right.

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Christine Chessman: weeks where you actually just give your body a bit of a break, and then go back to kind of progressing again.

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Ela Law: But…

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Christine Chessman: Do you know what I mean? It is…

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Christine Chessman: Yeah, it's… it's a hard… it's a really hard thing to do if you've come from… it depends where you've come from, where you're starting from.

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Ela Law: Hmm.

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Christine Chessman: I think you've got to take it really… you've got to talk to yourself, ask yourself what you need in terms of movement.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: You know, and what your goals are, what your why, what… why you want to move, why… if you've got a goal, why do you want to do that?

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Christine Chessman: Do you know what I mean? And then you can kind of work with somebody if you're fortunate enough to have a trainer. You can work with somebody to kind of go over that and keep adapting. So this is not a goal that you set and that's it. You know, revisit, because life changes, so keep revisiting and just keep…

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Christine Chessman: moving with it, you know? But in terms of… in terms of food and calories.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: Let's talk about that, because we've got the…

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Christine Chessman: continuous glucose monitors now, which I see everywhere.

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Ela Law: Right.

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Christine Chessman: And not everybody has got diabetes that's wearing these.

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Christine Chessman: And I know a lot of people that track their steps, you know, they… and they have to get the 10,000 steps in every day.

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Ela Law: Yep.

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Ela Law: Yep.

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Christine Chessman: And it's…

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Christine Chessman: there's been times where I'm recording my run on Strava, which is the running out, and I purposely go… I purposely do 2.98 miles.

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Christine Chessman: And don't go to 3.

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Ela Law: Just…

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Christine Chessman: Because I'm like, because I get annoyed by the whole tracking thing, you've got to do this amount, you've got to do… so I… and people are like, no, you've got to get to three, and I'm like, nope. Nope.

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Ela Law: I'm a rebel!

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Christine Chessman: I'm a rebel.

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Christine Chessman: or cold.

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Ela Law: I love that, yeah.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Ela Law: Yeah, I think… I mean, the steps is… that is just an arbitrary number anyway, that's a marketing thing, so there's no scientific evidence for 10,000 steps at all, so anyone who's listening to this who feels compelled

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Ela Law: To do 10,000 steps a day, don't bother, don't worry about it. Move your body as and how it feels good for you, don't think about the 10,000 as a number that you need to achieve, which can be quite hard if you work.

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Ela Law: And you're sitting at a desk, doing 10,000 steps is quite… it's quite a lot, so… yeah, don't…

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Christine Chessman: Do you find there is, then, value in these watches? I friggin' hate an Apple Watch. Sorry, I don't mean to mention brands. There are other brands available.

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Ela Law: There are other brands available.

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Christine Chessman: I'm not sure about the watches, but I'm sure there are other brands available. But people… I'll have clients in a session, and they're like, oh, I've just got an email, or I've just got… I'm like, hello?

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Ela Law: I haven't got one, I've never got one, I never want to have one. I don't… I think this is all… this is a personality thing. I don't like being told what to do as a general rule. And having a device telling me, oh, your heart rate is at X, or you should do another 2,000 steps, I'm like, fuck off, no, I'm doing… right?

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Christine Chessman: It was like having… so lots of parents, when I had my first… when I had Erin, lots of parents got those heart rate monitors for underneath their children's best.

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Christine Chessman: And it kicked going off at random times, you know, kept getting triggered by, like, cats running under the bed or something. Honestly, that… I refuse to have one, because I'm, like, I'm already terrified. I can't… I can't possibly have, like, you know, in the middle of the night, because to me, that would just make everything worse.

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Ela Law: Absolutely. God.

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Christine Chessman: And if you are at a sedentary job.

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Christine Chessman: And you're working really hard, and you've got to go home and do all the things for the family. Is it good to have something that says.

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Christine Chessman: you need to move more today. Look at your watch, you haven't moved enough today. Is that a… Look, if it helps…

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Ela Law: If it helps you to remember, because life gets in the way, and you know that you'll feel better for having moved, and you just need that reminder, I don't have a problem with… and I think for someone with ADHD, it's really helpful to have that reminder. I've got a friend who has an alarm for everything. Like, literally, take that tablet, get off the seat. I know my husband has a timer.

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Ela Law: Where he, it tells him to just stand up and stretch, because otherwise he could just sit at his desk and not get up.

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Ela Law: So yes, there is… there is value in that.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Ela Law: If you struggle to remember, and you know it's gonna make you feel Better if you do it.

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Ela Law: But other than that, I have no time for Fitbits and watches, and I don't… it's just… to me, it feels like someone is telling you what to do, and it's taking you further away from you actually knowing what you need.

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Christine Chessman: And so this all comes back to that interoceptive awareness and that tuning into your body, doesn't it?

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: And that's what we've lost.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: You know, through dieting, through chronic dieting.

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Christine Chessman: You know, through social media telling us what to eat, what to wear, what to… how to exercise, and how to…

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Christine Chessman: We don't really trust ourselves anymore, do we?

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Ela Law: just gonna say, trust is the big word here, isn't it? There's no trust. The only thing we trust is a device, an external source that tells us what to do and how to do it.

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Christine Chessman: And you know what? I listened to a podcast the other day, and people… and it was sort of saying, after an eating disorder, people think you've got to learn to trust your body again, but it's the other way around. Your body has to learn to trust you.

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Ela Law: Mmm.

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Christine Chessman: So that's why you need to feed it regularly, so it's going, thank you, I'm getting regular food in, so I'm going to switch everything back on and turn on everything. You know, at the minute, our bodies, we are so, you know, we're… oh, we're hungry, let's have a coffee, or let's push it down, let's ignore it, let's… so our bodies are not trusting

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Christine Chessman: we've got to do that work to kind of build up trust with our bodies again, if you know what I mean.

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Ela Law: Yeah, yeah, I think it goes both ways, doesn't it? And it's not a sort of a one-way street.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah, of course, yeah.

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Ela Law: It's a bit of both, yeah, absolutely. I just… I think it is about trust, ultimately, that we don't trust ourselves to… to know.

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Ela Law: And, you know, there's so many people out there that are very confident in sharing their opinion of what is the right thing to do. I don't know, there's a new episode of the Maintenance Phase podcast.

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Ela Law: Which will probably…

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Christine Chessman: our body.

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Ela Law: hilarious, because…

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Christine Chessman: order.

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Ela Law: Our body's buddy, on it. You know, he does another podcast with a friend,

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Ela Law: about books, so this has got Peter Shamshiri on it, and, it's hilarious. It's so funny. It's about Tim Ferriss.

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Christine Chessman: And the 4R body, that's what I was saying, yeah, I've listened to it, yeah.

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Ela Law: Honestly, the shit that man…

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Ela Law: presents in his… in his book to… this is… this is how you do this, this, and this, and you have to follow all of my strategies, and… I mean, it's ridiculous. And if you… if you do that, if you follow those things.

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Ela Law: you are not trusting yourself. You're literally listening to someone who's using the very popular N equals 1, so the participant in the study is just one person, based on himself, and you're not actually understanding your own body at all. You're just listening.

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Christine Chessman: It's the snack oil, it is the bulletproof coffee, it is the…

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Ela Law: fraud.

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Christine Chessman: You know, it's… what about listening to your body? And that takes time, so I'm not just saying that's an easy thing to do, it's a very hard thing to do.

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Ela Law: It's definitely work, isn't it?

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Christine Chessman: It's Stephanie Michelle, so she was a guest on the podcast, and she talked about how you might need more food than that person.

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Christine Chessman: you might naturally have a bigger appetite, and just need to eat more. And we're always looking at each other going, oh, I better not eat, you know, I'm eating more than her, why? Your body is not that body. Your body is completely unique in all its processes, and health history, and…

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Christine Chessman: Metabolism and everything else, and it is… You know, unrestriction leads to…

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Christine Chessman: weight gain and binging, and it's that binge-restrict cycle, so if you're feeling out of control with food, it generally…

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Christine Chessman: you know, it generally means that you're restricting in some way, whether that's mental restriction or actual physical restriction with food. But it is… I think we all compare ourselves constantly, don't we? Totally. And this what I eat in a day, shut up!

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Ela Law: I know, I know.

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Christine Chessman: You know, and it's… and I liked your little post, what, you know…

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Christine Chessman: You were doing, oh, what I eat in a day, and I'm like, if Ella tells me what she eats, I'm gonna

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Christine Chessman: And you were like, none of your business.

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Ela Law: Yeah, yeah, I… just… it really isn't… it is absolutely irrelevant what anybody eats.

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Ela Law: in comparison to what you eat, it's just irrelevant. It doesn't make any sense to compare yourself to anybody else, but… but that's what we've been told, right? We're being given all this information from all these people who confidently spout shit, so…

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Ela Law: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, ultimately, it's all on the same kind of…

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Ela Law: theme of tracking. You're tracking what someone else is eating and taking that information and using that for yourself. You're tracking what the device is telling you. You are listening to external messages and not yourself. And that's just to sort of bring it back to,

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Ela Law: my kind of attitude to tracking, that's where I see the issue. I don't see the issue in… if you have a very healthy relationship with your body and food, and you just want to track your progress, because maybe you haven't got the brain space to actually start thinking about it, and you just want to write it down, fine. But if it… if it means that you're obsessing over it, if it means you wake up, it tells you that you didn't sleep well and your day as shit, or

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Ela Law: If you feel like a failure because you lifted heavier last week and you can't really do it this week, or whatever it is.

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Ela Law: then I would say step away from it.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Ela Law: And start really going into and feeling into your body, and then maybe in the future, you want to pick it up again when you're in a better, sort of more intuitive and trusting space, but… Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: And can I also just say there is no such thing as intuitive fasting?

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Ela Law: Oh my god!

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Christine Chessman: That is not a thing.

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Ela Law: You Gwimists?

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Christine Chessman: She did not, didn't she

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Christine Chessman: I guess. It's like a book on intuitive fasting. No, if your body's hungry, it's… it's telling you to eat.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: It's not telling you to wait for another 14 hours. But, and yeah, and I think…

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Christine Chessman: I think if you look at babies, so obviously I can't totally generalise, but babies tend to sort of stop when they're full. They're hungry, they want the food, and then, actually, that's enough and I'll stop.

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Ela Law: Yep.

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Christine Chessman: And that gets slapped out of us quite quickly, doesn't it?

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Christine Chessman: Because we get told, no, no, you're eating too much, you need to, you know, oh, girls shouldn't eat that much, or oh, you should, you know, oh, oh, you're, you're… you know, any, anything that you've been told as a child which has stuck with you, that maybe you're… you eat too much, or…

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: You're a bit… bit too greedy in inverted commas, or…

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Ela Law: President.

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Christine Chessman: You know, you're big for your age, or you're hefty, or any of these comments that get stuck, and then slowly we start, kind of, really thinking about how much we're eating, rather than just…

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Christine Chessman: Yeah. You know, we think about the food, and we think… we compare it to other… rather than actually going, I'm hungry, let's eat something.

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Ela Law: That's it.

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Ela Law: Yeah, yeah, but this is exactly what I say to my parents when I do baby-led weaning classes, or,

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Ela Law: when people ask me about portion sizes, it's exactly that. I mean, when they start weaning, you prepare the food based on a portion size that someone told you is the right portion size, and then you make sure your baby eats that, and if you have a compliant baby, they will finish it, even if they're full after half of the bowl. And, you know, if they're hungrier than that bowl, you're like, no, no, no, you've had enough.

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Ela Law: That's when it starts to go wrong, because we are not trusting our babies to eat the amount that feels good for them. That's when it all goes.

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Christine Chessman: That's interesting, so it really can start that early.

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Ela Law: Oh, God, yeah.

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Ela Law: 100%. Yeah, I mean, parents are obsessed with portion sizes. I've got a very close friend, who has a daughter who never ate the recommended portion sizes, because she just wasn't as hungry. She is thriving, she's a healthy

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Ela Law: girl, but she's petite. She doesn't have a massive appetite, but she's absolutely fine and healthy and everything. Portion sizes really do not apply to some kids

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Ela Law: And they are, again, like the 10,000 steps, they're arbitrary. Someone decided, on average, this is roughly… it's just like the 2,000 calories per day. That is just an average population guide. That doesn't mean that you need 2,000 calories a day. That doesn't mean that that person next door needs 2 calories.

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Christine Chessman: We have to be careful around that, because you do need more calories than you think you need.

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Ela Law: more than you need, absolutely, but not that number. So if someone is obsessed with that particular number…

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Christine Chessman: You might need 2,500.

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Ela Law: You might need 3,500, depending on what you do and what you're going through. You might need less, but very unlikely do you need less. So, it's one of those things that, you know, we can become obsessed about. And if you're just using that 2,000 number, if you then have a calorie tracker app.

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Ela Law: and you're obsessed with that, getting to that number, you will track all of your food, and you will say, oh, no, I can't eat that, because that would get me over the 2,000.

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Ela Law: So it's all arbitrary numbers that don't actually make any sense and haven't gone.

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Christine Chessman: And, you know, even as somebody in well into recovery, calories can… if you're… if you go out to dinner.

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Ela Law: Oh, yeah.

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Christine Chessman: You get a menu.

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Ela Law: Yep.

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Christine Chessman: I'm gonna look at, oh, that's 1,500, that's 700, I'll probably go with that one. If I didn't see the freaking calories, I would choose what I wanted to eat.

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Ela Law: Exactly, yeah.

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Christine Chessman: And, you know, it is hard… of course I choose the one that I want, but it is harder, even this far into recovery, if the calories are right there in front of you.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: than actually going, this is what I would like to eat.

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Ela Law: I saw that in a restaurant the other day, where it said at the bottom, if you want a menu without calories, ask your waiting staff, and I thought, no, no, no.

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Ela Law: It could be the other way around, if at all.

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Christine Chessman: Then, opt out. It should be an opt-out.

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Ela Law: Exactly, absolutely.

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Ela Law: get the one without, and if you really need to know, you need to ask for it, you need to go that extra mile.

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Christine Chessman: So I'm, you know…

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Ela Law: I don't think that it should… they should be there at all, but, you know…

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Christine Chessman: Still having.

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Ela Law: Sailed.

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Christine Chessman: having a child with, an eating disorder, I have asked many restaurants for menus without calories, and

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Christine Chessman: Very few actually have them.

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Ela Law: That's really sad.

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Christine Chessman: You should… the fact that you have to ask others, yourself, your child, your… whoever you're caring for, it others them.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: You know what I mean? It's… it's just not…

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah, so I totally agree with you if that could be an opt… opt-out thing, rather than an opt-in.

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Ela Law: in.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah. But, so how are we going to finish? How are we going to sum it up, Ella?

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Ela Law: Well, I just feel like I've already nutshelled it a couple of times.

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Christine Chessman: So good at the nutshells!

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Ela Law: Yeah, so my nutshell is that

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Ela Law: If you can avoid it, if you want to build a relationship with your body, get more in tune with what your body needs.

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Ela Law: Maybe just try out to do exercise and eat and sleep without tracking it. Maybe if you are really into the tracking, maybe just try it for a week and see how that goes, and how you feel, and whether it actually gets you more in tune with your body. So, yeah, in a nutshell, I would say

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Ela Law: on the whole, tracking is probably more negative than positive in my books. I completely understand that some people find it helpful, so I'm not saying don't ever do it, but I think be really wary of where it gets you, in terms of your relationship with food and your body. How about you?

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Christine Chessman: And I took… that was a great nutshell, and I'm just gonna…

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Ela Law: Beautiful.

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Christine Chessman: annoying and say, I don't think we mentioned the scale.

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Ela Law: Oh.

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Christine Chessman: The scale is not something I'd recommend to anybody, personally. If you have come from a chronic dieting, disordered eating, eating disorder background, if at all possible, do not… do not weigh yourself, simply because you can get very attached to that number, and it can make you feel a certain way.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: Right, and it sort of mars that ability to listen to your body.

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Ela Law: Totally.

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Christine Chessman: And it is something which I've been much happier since I threw the scale away. Yeah. So I just do not weigh myself, and if I'm at the doctor and they have to weigh me, I, first of all, go no, and then if it is a drug that needs to weigh it per, you know, I will be blind weighed, because I just don't…

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Christine Chessman: need that.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: number. I don't need the number.

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Ela Law: No. I can't believe we only just mentioned weight.

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Christine Chessman: No. It's scary.

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Ela Law: It's a massive truck, isn't it? The scales?

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Christine Chessman: I know we got there in the end, though. We did. So, thank you for listening, and let us know if you agree, disagree, or…

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Christine Chessman: have any opinions at all, I'd love to know.

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Ela Law: Yeah, that would be really interesting to hear.

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Christine Chessman: And we will be back next week with another scintillating topic. And until then, have a lovely week!

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Ela Law: Bye!