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I think I largely agree with his reflection(s): easily obtainable metrics to track physical fitness / health often do more harm than good. But I can't help but
by sewercake 8y ago
I think I largely agree with his reflection(s): easily obtainable metrics to track physical fitness / health often do more harm than good.
But I can't help but think that partial quantification of the self could still be extremely useful, it's just that virtually all diet/fitness applications are focused on calorie counting and weight-loss. They should be focused on increasing bodily awareness. How long does it take for food to pass through? How often do you poop? What are those poops like? When you eat X, how do you feel an hour later, two hours later, three hours later?
If you begin tracking _these_ kinds of metrics, then you could become aware of how different foods, sleep patterns, etc, affect your mood, and subjective energy levels.
This kind of self knowledge -- whose discovery could be aided by some good UX, is fantastic. The only kinds of health applications that seem to take this moderately serious are period tracking apps.
- Ensorceled 8y agoI recommend “the plan” by Lyn-Genet Recitas, because it takes a systematic approach to figuring out what foods have bad effects on you personally. I found, for instance, potatoes give me minor gastrointestinal distress and eggs make my girlfriend slightly depressed.
- lookACamel 8y ago>eggs make my girlfriend slightly depressed. Possibly due to the choline content.
- Bartweiss 8y agoWait, choline as a cause of feeling depressed? This one is totally news to me, can you point me to any more info?
- Bartweiss 8y agoA while back, I started tracking some basic notes about my behavior and wellbeing. Mostly I just covered very basic notes on how I'd slept, what/when I'd eaten, what else I'd consumed (i.e. caffeine, theanine, vitamin D, alcohol), and whether/how I'd exercised - plus how I felt at the time. The results were really interesting, and having that subjective value matched with objective context was great for predicting "how will I feel if I do X, Y, and Z today?" I'm sure I was still losing important data by not seeing multi-day effects, gut biome status, or a million other things. But the predictive power was fairly high, and I'm convinced it was better than nothing. I stopped eventually though - because as you say, the tools available are just too clunky for tracking anything other than diet and exercise.