A response to criticism
And the goal of Alfred
Last week Alfred and I came under scrutiny from a journalist, and while some of the criticism is understandable, it was also uninformed.
I totally get some people find tracking calories triggering, so I thought I'd take a second to clear things up.
(For those of you who are new here, Alfred is a service that helps people track their calories in 1 minute per day.)
One of our users was sharing everything he ate on Twitter to show people that you can still enjoy your food and lose weight, if you track what you eat.
No weighing of food, or counting macros. Just be mindful when eating, which is what happens when you track what you eat.
Having my self-esteem impacted by my weight was something I struggled with for years, and looking back, it's because I was stuck in the all-or-nothing dieting cycle. I'd just eat whatever until I felt fat, and then try to lose the weight quickly by only eating salad and exercising heaps.
That was me. And it sucked.
Nutrition is a complex topic and more than just total calories. But I've found that by looking at diet in this simple way has helped me lose weight and make some sense of it.
And now it’s helped me escape that cycle, I'm trying to help others escape it too and why I keep pushing forward with Alfred.
So anyway, the journalist got very angry saying calories are triggering, which I get, but I believe that calorie tracking doesn't cause eating disorders. But it can be a tool that amplifies them.
And like any tool, people will use it in ways it wasn’t designed, which is why we took the following steps when designing Alfred to prevent people from causing themselves harm:
1. It won't work for people below 50kgs (and we’ll increase this to 60).
2. The rate of weight loss is fixed to a sustainable rate and crash dieting is strongly discouraged, as the goal of Alfred is to help people have more energy (not lose weight) and we have people using it to make sure they eat enough.
I really feel for people with eating disorders and I think it’s societal pressure to be thin that causes them, not tracking what they eat, because tracking can help a ton of people as it did for me.
Do I want my girls to count every last calorie and stress about how much energy they’re eating?
Hell no.
But do I want them to enjoy their food and learn how to fuel themselves properly?
Yes.
I hope they never need to track what they eat like I do, and my wife and I put a lot of effort into teaching them good eating habits.
But for some reason, I just forget what I'm eating and fall back into bad habits when I stop tracking. Hopefully one day I won’t need to, but first, I’ll need to figure out why.
Thanks for reading as I felt what happened was a good opportunity to clear up what we’re trying to achieve with Alfred.
Also, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to get out of my writing in 2023, as the school holidays are still making it difficult to think clearly and plan.
Hopefully I’ll have more to share in the coming weeks about the direction of my writing, as I want to up my focus on it and help more people who are struggling like I did, whether it be diet or mental health.
Plus I’m keen to write about Rugby more as there’s finally a lot of positive things to talk about. Now to find the time…
There will always be haters unfortunately and perhaps the Journo was triggered and that's why they wrote about it being triggering. I've not used Alfred but I've read about it and it definitely promotes improving eating habits as opposed to the many diets out there which cut out food groups, label foods as good and bad and just outright shame people for eating.
One of the biggest contributors to mental health when it comes to dieting is shame and the labelling of foods as good and bad. To quote my sister who is a dietician "there is no good and bad food, there is every day food and sometimes food".
Often it's not even what we eat, it's how much we are eating. Common comments when people are on diets is they can't believe how much they're eating (because you bulk your meals up with salad and veggies).
Coming from the sport of weightlifting, it's not healthy and athletes go to pretty drastic measure to cut weight for competition. Body builders don't compete super regularly during the year either because that requires them to go on very strict boring diets for at least 3 months prior which is not sustainable.
I am really sorry to hear of the journalist getting so angry - totally inappropriate, a journalist is meant to question and challenge objectively. If they are so emotionally involved in the subject they should not be reporting on it. I am disappointed that a journalist would jump to conclusions through their own lens rather than actually seek to understand, not very professional I am sorry to say.
You have gone to great lengths to make Alfred about healthy eating. I am one of those Alfred users who use Alfred to make sure I eat enough and get enough protein. I totally understand the limitations you are putting around Alfred users to ensure that it is used wisely and that the goals of Alfred are not misunderstood. Even the fact that you have to work so hard to do that makes me sad as we should all be adults able to make our own decisions about how we manage our health and, as someone said below, just scroll on by if something does not appeal to us.
Keep the faith Ben, I feel there are more people supporting you and can be helped by what you are doing than the naysayers.