The Dark Side to "Healthy"?

By Cora Gennerman on October 5, 2015
Calorie Counting. We’re all guilty.
Whether you gained the infamous “freshman fifteen” or tried loosing weight at one point or another, I’m sure you’ve read the nutrition facts on the food you’ve consumed. This is not a bad thing, in fact, technology makes calorie counting pretty easy. Thus entering The Dark Side to “Healthy”. There are so many calorie apps in the smartphone store that make us believe the key to losing weight is to consume less than you burn. 
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As helpful as calorie counting apps may be, I’m here to talk about the dark side. The side that gets overlooked. The side that turns healthy people into people with eating disorders.

During my college years, I definitely gained weight.  Beer and pizza do a surprising number on the metabolism. It is very hard to control things in your life, especially in college, but one thing that you can always control is how much you eat. After the Fitbit tracker was released, my friends and I all got them and committed ourselves to a healthier lifestyle. We started tracking our steps and calories. At the end of the week we would compare them to each other and  it eventually became a game of who could walk the most and consume the least.

Without knowing it we had all exposed ourselves to eating disorders and became slaves to our devices. There are many good things about the Fitbit, but the worst thing is the calorie counting.

The thing about calories is that each calorie is different. 200 calories in broccoli is drastically different than 200 calories in a latte. Your body doesn’t know what to do with all the extra sugar in a latte, so a lot of it all gets stored as fat and the calories can’t be broken down. In broccoli, your body will use every nutrient. This poses a problem for the counting apps, because you can’t quantify and compare the nutrients is a society that has modified every food to contain grotesque amounts of sugar.

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As school ended and summer started, my friends and I moved away from each other. They became busy and forgot about their trackers, while I religiously tracked every item I ate. There were often times where I would eat less than 1,000 calories per day and I would be rewarded by my app for staying “under budget”. It would not be uncommon for me to replace a healthy item for junk food because it was less calories. If I ever went over my calorie budget or didn’t get my steps in, I would cry or compensate the next day by consuming even less calories.

I continued to do this for a very long period of time and I found myself with little to no energy, with not much change in my weight. I was a little discouraged, but after a few months went by, the weight started dropping like crazy. I later found out this happened because I was coming out of the “starvation mode” that I had put my body into. School started up again and my friends were very surprised at how much weight I lost. They were happy for me because for all they knew, the Fitbit had worked.

My boyfriend  on the other hand, became concerned after he noticed a change in my attitude and behavior. I was oftentimes crabby and wouldn’t eat dinner with him like we had the previous year. We started fighting a lot over food. He would pry about how much I had eaten in a day and I would become very defensive saying it was none of his business.

Even though I was getting closer to my ideal weight goal, I was not happy. I constantly thought about food and what my next meal was going to be. I thought about what I could “eat around” on my plate in order to give myself a bigger calorie deficit at the end of the week and I felt guilty about the smallest things, like eating an extra banana. Overall, it was just exhausting and my grades reflected that.

It took a lot of soul searching to realize and admit that I had a problem. I got rid of my trackers and apps and never looked back. It took a while to be able to eat a meal without thinking about the calories, but I feel now I am back to normal. I don’t think about calories as much and I find myself to actually be healthier.

I think that calorie trackers and apps are a good idea, but there needs to be a better system for counting calories. Many people are falling into a dangerous eating disorder without realizing, and it needs to change. We need the population to be better educated on the different types of calories and how to lose weight in a healthy way.

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