I Resolve to Not Resolve . . . Again

I thought I had this great idea for a new blog post this week, all about how I resolved to make no resolutions. Then I discovered I had already written a post on "un-resolutions" six years ago. Apparently, this is a recurring theme, my new year's resolution to do nothing.

This year, I decided to focus on a specific non-resolution. I resolved NOT to use any more food tracking apps.

Every time I came across a calorie or food tracking app, I would try it, a result of my list-making obsession. Every time I read an article about another app or website, I would try that too. Every time the wellness website at work had a healthy food campaign, I would track for that too.

I ended up with something like five or six different apps tracking exactly the same thing, mostly in the form of calories or points. I didn't care that much about losing weight. I just liked the organizational aspect of it all.

It takes time to track your food. I don't have that much time. It wasn't good for my overall well-being. Tracking my diet was stressing me out.

Not to mention, I totally lied about what I ate. Then I felt guilty, not about what I was eating, but about the fact that I was not accurately recording what I was eating.

For the first time in fourteen years, I resolved to stop tracking my food.

I also stopped tracking my weight, often a component of food journals and tracking apps. My dishonest food tracking strategy never resulted in any weight loss, and, even though weight loss was never a deliberate goal of mine, my self-esteem took a hit when the scale never budged.

An October 2018 article from Health magazine, "Ignoring Before-and-After Posts Made Me Happier," cites a study that links our society's ubiquitous body image-related social media posts to "body dissatisfaction, lower self-esteem, and a worse mood among the women who view them" (Sea Gold 46).

The author contemplates some of the "false messages" she might have sent in her own writing on weight loss such as "Thinner bodies are better and/or healthier" or "You should try to lose weight too" or "If I can do it, so can you" (Sea Gold 46), especially for women with eating disorders or body image issues.

I am not saying you shouldn't track what you eat if it works for you, if it is keeping you healthy. But it was affecting my stress levels to think that much about the food I ate, and I am all about simplifying my life right now. Will I ever keep a food journal again? Who knows?

This I do know: I don't have to track my weight during the week of my period. In fact, I never have to weigh myself again if I don't want to. These last couple of months, it has been freeing to not track everything I eat. Not feeling guilty about my "creative" calorie counting methods is an added bonus.

"And the real 'wins' in life have nothing to do with the shape of your ass"

--Sunny Sea Gold (Health, October 2018 issue, pp. 45-46)

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