The Dangerous Allure of the Quantified Self
Numbers can inform and motivate us. They can also sabotage our bodies and brains.
You can put a number on just about anything health-related these days: not just blood pressure and heart rate but also steps and movement, hours of sleep, time spent in front of a screen, and, yes, calories and weight. (Let’s just state upfront that measurements like weight and BMI are actually poor predictors of health, and tracking them is of questionable utility and unquestionable potential danger for some.)
In an ideal world, these markers of health would just be stats: a simple way to figure out where we stand and to track progress toward wellness goals. But in the real world, our brains love to categorize numbers as “good” or “bad” and to conclude that the value of those numbers says something about our own worth; we also see measurements as something we can control, which is a powerful promise when we’re feeling out of control.
These sinister forces — self-judgment and control — can sometimes team up to trigger us into a cascade of guilt, self-loathing, and, as shitty human luck would have it, unhealthy behavior. That might take the form of disordered eating and exercise, reaching for unhelpful or even dangerous drugs and supplements, or simply playing the classic, oh-so-toxic…
