During a recent livestream someone asked me what some of the most common problems are that I encounter with those trying to get well. One of my main answers was trying to get people to stop using numbers and measuring apps/devices to track calories, macros, and other measurable data when it comes to food. Very commonly the people who come to me for help have vast charts, data, or even more than one device for measuring such things as macro intake (meaning protein, fats, and carbs), calories, or tracking what foods they consume and how much of each. Never once have I encountered someone who is healthy who measures their nutrient intake.

The reason this is correlated with health is that those who measure, monitor, and chart their nutrient intake fundamentally regard food as a necessary evil—something they must have to survive but also a source of what we see as major problems to personal satisfaction and fulfillment, such as sexual attraction, weight gain, and energy levels. But food is the very thing our bodies are made of, and practically with this mindset we are also treating our bodies as a necessary evil, which makes sense for those struggling with such conceptions of food and issues of self-worth, desiring to be desired, seen as healthy, and avoid those sources of emotional stress which thus result from painful experiences of rejection.

Trying to control nutrient intake is in fact trying to control life, which though we can act wisely is something we in reality can never actually do, and so people who obsess over numbers and data are simply transferring our frustration with life into activities which help us feel more in control. It is why these behaviors are so often difficult to resolve in those with these problems, because it’s not actually about calories or macro intake but fear, loss, and heartache, the desire to belong and the need to be loved and included amongst other human beings, to achieve a sense of self worth we believe comes from having a desirable body.

Such an orientation toward life and the physical body in turn stimulates the expression of excessive stress hormones, as our mind fears rejection, disease, and death and mortality. These stress hormones like adrenaline, cortisol, and the torporific hormones serotonin and melatonin slow the metabolic rate and impair cellular regeneration, ironically hastening aging and promoting metabolic disease. It’s no coincidence that people who are happy live longer than those who are not—but that happiness does not come from willpower or a shift in attitude, but because they are not burdened with the psychological scars of trauma and abuse which results in such self-preservationist orientations toward personal survival. Overcoming such impairments to wellness can be achieved in part simply through action, stopping these self-defeating behaviors and ending obsession over calories, macros, and nutrients altogether. Delete your tracking apps, throw away your Fitbit, apple watch, the bathroom scale. Stop worrying about your clothing sizes. Conceptions of personal worth do not come from how others treat you, and while it is understandably upsetting when a partner, friends, family, or even strangers remark about our weight or reject us for such problems it is our psychological conditioning to even give a fuck about their opinion which causes us that suffering, not in fact our weight or caloric intake, and in reality our body is as much interested in our wellbeing and survival as our mind and ego. Your body cares about you, but you don’t care about it, starving it, abusing it, hating it. No wonder you have such a difficult time.

When you measure and limit your food and nutrient intake you also measure and limit your wellness. Food should be treated with the same kind of love, joy, and respect you should treat your body. Stop treating it like a necessary evil and turn it into a source of joy and happiness. This will not only reduce the expression of stress hormones which contribute to weight gain and poor health, but will also facilitate an increase in the nutrients required to help the body get well, which it absolutely cannot without. If this is difficult to do, watching some great shows on food can help to inspire and educate you to the purpose of food and eating, such as Cooked with Michael Pollan which is on Netflix, or the Great British Baking Show or Chef’s Table. The problems we try to address with such obsessive behaviors are in reality caused by environmental stresses such as sunlight deficiency, pathogenic infection, and interpersonal conflict. To resolve your problems both physical and psychological they key is knowledge about how our body and psychology work, which is accomplished in both of my works, Fuck Portion Control addressing the sources and solutions to poor metabolic health and diet, and The Perfect Child addressing psychological trauma and emotional stress. Educate yourself and you will not only find it easier to be well and look great, but also indulgent and joyful, getting to both literally and metaphorically have your cake and eat it too.