Though this graded assignment might not be the sole cause of disordered eating on its own, it could unknowingly be the tipping point for a teenager who has an unsteady body image to begin with. I am lucky to have grown up in a household where I was taught that food was fuel and that when your body is hungry, the best thing to do is to listen to it. This assignment, as well as many other of the calorie tracking ones, could be transformed to be more beneficial for teenagers instead of causing them to feel like they can only eat low calorie foods,” the student said. When you are asked to record everything you have eaten it becomes triggering for many and causes lots of food guilt. “I find this assignment to contradict a lot of the knowledge that we had already learned, like to not make massive changes in our diets right away because they would not be sustainable in the long run. An anonymous senior in the class shared her concerns. However, the point of me sharing those stories was to illustrate how although I live a perfectly normal, even healthy lifestyle, being asked to count my calories for a graded assignment infiltrated my head with unnecessary anxiety over every item of food I consumed.
In the end, my customary calorie intake ended up being essentially perfect for my goal each day. I briefly considered eating a healthier dinner at home and missing out on the team bonding, before deciding to simply enter a different dinner into my app, a white lie in my assignment. My first thought was how bad it would look in my food journal to have fast food.
The next day, I had a field hockey team dinner where they were serving Chick-fil-a. How was I supposed to make it through practice and dinner without going over the limit? I stressed about my food the rest of the day before I realized my mistake. By 12 p.m., the chronometer app said I had already consumed more than half of my calories for the day. On the first day of the assignment, I unknowingly entered the serving sizes wrong from my breakfast and lunch, putting down almost double of what I actually ate. At the top of the screen, the app displays a “calories consumed” and “calories remaining” section.
After you input a food, its calorie amount and nutrition info is added to your daily journal. The app asks you to input your weight and an exercise estimate, before giving you a calorie goal for each day.
#Cronometer online food download
Due to the sequence of unintended consequences that can result from the encouragement of calorie-tracking behaviors, I strongly believe these assignments should be removed from the Honors Nutrition curriculum.Īround the third week of school our class was given the assignment to download the app Chronometer and track everything we ate for three days. However, within the first month of the school year, I realized how dangerous mixing eating habits and graded assignments can be at this vulnerable age. TW: This article discusses calorie tracking and disordered eating.Īs a senior with a strong interest in health and fitness, I was excited to take Honors Nutrition as an elective this year. The app Chronometer is used by nutrition students to track their daily calorie intake.
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