Eating disorders
I fear upsetting people
I’m torn talking more about Alfred publicly because I fear upsetting people with eating disorders.
On one hand, tracking what I eat helps me eat better and feel good about myself, as I use to hate what I saw in the mirror. Plus I rarely enjoyed my food and would feel guilty having a treat prior to tracking.
But none of that’s the case now and I think food tracking is bloody awesome.
Note: Food tracking = Mindful eating or “Non-obsessive calorie counting”
But on the other hand, I worry about upsetting people who could be triggered by me saying how I’ve done a loose form of calorie counting for 8 years and believe it’s great.
I’m shocked at how common eating disorders are and have read too many articles about people becoming obsessed with counting every last calorie and starving themselves, and to add to that is the last thing I want to happen with Alfred.
So with that in mind, I want to share what we’ve done to prevent Alfred from causing any harm because if done right, I think food tracking can help anyone whose self-esteem is being impacted by their eating, just like mine was.
Ethical Design
Before the pandemic, I was convinced I was going to have to build Alfred myself and started a computing degree at ANU to learn how.
In one of the first lectures, we learned about Ethical Design and how whenever you create a new tool, people will always use it in ways you never intended.
Just think how the inventor or anyone who designed a hammer would have felt after hearing Lucas Delaney murdered his sister Gabriella with one.
And while Alfred is designed to make losing weight sustainably easy, I do worry people will try using it in unhealthy ways, as the most common request I get is “how can I set it to lose weight faster?”
If you are trying to “shred for stereo”, then I’m afraid Alfred isn’t the right tool for you, as we only want people to use it who are keen to lose weight sustainably, and forever.
So to stop people from misusing Alfred and prevent those who don’t need to lose weight from using it, we made the following design decisions:
It won’t work for people who weigh less than 50kgs.
The most weight users can initially set is to lose 7.5% of their body weight, as science says the average person only needs to lose about 5% to feel much better (point 13 is the best lol).
Users can’t choose how quickly they lose weight as we’ve fixed it to a sustainable rate.
We don’t show the calories on the home page.
We have a minimum amount of food users need to eat each day to help them refuel and prevent losing weight too quickly (the main cause of weight being put back on).
And now that I think about it, we’ll increase the minimum weight an Alfred user can be to 60kgs because anyone who weighs less than that should not be trying to lose weight.
Also, one of our nutrition students Anastasia is going to start digging thru our data to see if there are any other unhealthy ways Alfred has been used, as she feels very passionate about helping people with eating disorders.
Anyways, thanks for reading this far. Not sure if I’m being over dramatic and worrying about nothing, but keen to hear what you think.
Cheers.
I reckon you've 'nailed it!' with the hammer analogy, mate.
Your intentions are right, you know this works, your providing a great tool for people to use how they wish to use it. I think to a degree people need to be responsible for themselves in regards to triggers. People know you talk about Alfred and Mental Health. I do the same. No one is forcing anyone to do anything, and while we never ever want to even accidentally cause anyone any harm, we believe in what we are doing and believe it is a good thing. I think by outlining the measures you've put in place to prevent people from misusing the app you've made your intentions perfectly clear.
There's far more dangerous content out there for people with eating disorders to stumble across, mate. You're doing a good thing, for a lot of people. You can't afford to let your fear of potentially triggering someone slow your momentum when you're helping so many more people. You don't even know for sure that you have ever triggered anybody. But you do know for sure that you have helped people. Focus on them!
Ben you and Alfred are positive influences in the "dieting" culture. I love how much thought you've put into it. People can take dieting too far and I think social media and media in general have a lot to answer for. As a consumer I see the fitness marketing being targeted to women to lose weight and for men to bulk up as opposed to being fit, healthy and the best versions of ourselves. Like most things in life, people want to do whatever is going to get them the quickest result. This isn't just for weight loss, but for athletic goals, business goals, family goals. We become so focused on getting to the end result that we fast forward through the process of getting there, not realising that the process is the most important part and where we actually grow the most.