1. Numerical measures of health are deceptive.

Measuring your health with numbers can be incredibly misleading. It encourages you to focus on one tiny detail, and ignore all the surrounding factors in doing so - when oftentimes, the context and external factors are more important. For example, if you use the number you weigh on the scales to track your health, you’re relying on a highly deceptive method of measuring progress. Most scales don’t reflect any loss or gain of muscle mass, which as you probably know weighs more than fat. So in many instances, when someone gains muscle mass and loses fat, this can actually show as weight gain on the scales - despite the fact it also often represents an improvement in body composition and other measures of good health.

This example goes to show how focusing on a singular number and ignoring everything else can paint a very narrow, often inaccurate, picture of health. This approach encourages you to focus on metrics which aren’t necessarily the most important or sustainable by which to measure your health.

Numbers are also juvenile - most of the time, they’ve just been pulled out of thin air, and our society as a whole has become fixated upon them. For example, the notion of aiming for 10,000 steps per day is actually not a number that is set in stone, yet we’ve all clutched onto it and become obsessed with hitting this number daily. In reality, many studies have recommended a bunch of different daily step count numbers to aim for - each of which has been linked to different health benefits. For example, this study found that walking 3,867 steps daily was enough to reduce the risk of dying, while just 2,337 steps per day reduces your risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases. As you can see, different numbers are linked to different health measures, and so much of the time the targets or goals we’re setting for ourselves are simply plucked out of nowhere and made popular in the media and in health marketing. All of this is, of course, designed to make us feel we’re not doing enough, so we’ll spend more and more money on products and programs to assuage the guilt and fear we feel whenever we don’t hit our random numerical targets.

Similarly, daily calorie targets are another number many people become fixated on, yet they should never be adopted by everyone. Each person’s calorie needs are individual, and abiding by a number specified by a fad diet or marketing trend will likely not support your health or individual goals. For example, for a long time it was taught that 1,200 calories per day would support weight loss. However this is far too few calories to support good health in most people. If you engage in any kind of exercise or movement, experience hormonal changes, live a somewhat active life, have a menstrual cycle - these factors (and many more!) mean you require more than 1,200 calories per day to maintain good health. So, by aiming for these juvenile numbers we’re taught to focus on, often we end up doing more harm than good to our health.

2. Numbers are generalised.

One of the reasons why these numerical targets are so misleading is that they overlook individuality. For example, the calorie targets we’ve just discussed completely ignore different activity levels, body types, health goals and genetics between people. While two people might both eat exactly 1,600 calories every day, this doesn’t at all mean they’ll look the same way as a result. For one person 1,600 calories might be adequate to maintain their body composition and health, while for another it may be far too little and have health consequences instead.

Genetically speaking, no two people are the same. Which means we can’t just pick a number of calories or steps or anything similar that everyone should be aiming for. This completely overlooks your unique needs and circumstances, and in doing so can actually be very harmful for your health. It risks you failing to meet your nutrient and health needs, and unknowingly causing damage to your wellbeing instead.

3. Numbers encourage unhealthy obsession.

For many people, the focus on quantity and numerical measures of health can quickly become an obsession or fixation. The need to hit whatever daily targets you’ve set for yourself becomes all consuming, and can have flow-on effects for your self-worth over time too. If you don’t manage to hit your numbers, you likely feel worse about yourself, as though you’ve failed. When in reality, these numbers do not reflect your value or worth in any way.

These numbers are designed in a way to make you feel you’re never enough, or never doing enough. Think about it… If you’re working towards a weight loss goal and measuring your progress on the scales, consider this: When you step on the scales, do you ever feel content with the number you see staring back at you? If you’ve gained weight, you may feel despair or distress. If you’ve stayed the same, you may wonder what more you need to do to shift the number on the scales, or become frustrated that you haven’t done enough. And if you’ve lost weight, chances are you’ll simply jump to wanting to lose more, never satisfied with your efforts.

The level of obsession that can result from becoming too invested in these quantitative measures over time can have serious consequences for your mental health and wellbeing - and after all, this is a key component of good health just as much as your physical wellbeing is. In becoming obsessive, you’re working towards arbitrary measures of physical health, at the expense of your mental wellbeing. This is one of the more common ways we see disordered eating and eating disorders develop too. These illnesses represent the opposite of good health, risking both physical and mental wellbeing and often taking years to recover from.

Instead of focusing on the numbers and metrics we’ve been led to believe are reflective of good health, it’s far more effective and important to consider quality measures of health. This paints a much more accurate measure of your health, considering both physical and mental wellbeing with a focus on longevity and sustainability - which is essential to factor in when assessing how you can improve and support your health.

Quality Metrics of Good Health

So what quality metrics can you use to assess your health, and to improve your health in the long-term?

Consider the following indicators of health.

1. How do you feel after eating?

To assess whether your diet is supporting your health, take a moment to pause after each meal. How do you feel when you eat more, or less? How do different foods leave you feeling? When do you feel most energised? Do any foods in particular leave you feeling lethargic or tired? Do you feel more satisfied when you eat away from distractions, such as screens and devices?

Pay attention to the kinds of foods that leave you feeling nourished, satisfied and energised. While you don’t need to eat to the point where you feel overfull and ill, it’s important to pay attention to your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues, and to honour these without judgement. If you’re still hungry after you’ve let a meal digest, allow yourself to eat something more. If you notice you’re often feeling sick and unwell after eating, consider reducing your serving sizes or having smaller, more regular meals throughout the day in place of three larger ones. If you’re constantly bloated, try eating more slowly and mindfully, or switching up the types of foods you’re eating regularly - for example, you might need a little less fibre, or you may not tolerate certain foods like legumes as well as others.

Taking time to check in with your body after eating and scan how you’re feeling, and considering what you can learn from your physical and mental cues is really important if you’re wanting to enhance your health. Your body is always trying to communicate with you - but you do need to be willing to listen and learn from it in order to benefit from its messages!

2. What types of exercise leave you feeling your best?

When do you feel most fit, strong, energised? What workout styles do you enjoy the most? What are your goals when it comes to fitness - and what styles of movement can best help you achieve these? Is your fitness routine sustainable? Does it allow room for rest and recovery? Are you regularly getting injured or feeling burnt out from your routine?

Consider all these questions when determining the most effective workout style for you. Everyone’s body is unique, and thrives on different movement styles and workout routines. While some people will be able to workout five times per week and feel fantastic, for others sticking to two or three weekly sessions is optimal for their energy levels, hormone balance and so on. Your health goals and focuses should come into play whenever you’re figuring out what movement is best for you right now - and remember, more is not always more! It’s really important to ensure you’re allowing for enough recovery between your sessions to support optimal performance when you are in the gym.

As with food, it’s also essential to learn to check in with yourself and your body each time you exercise. Reflect on how you feel post-session, whether you enjoyed your workout, whether it felt good in your body, whether you’re energised or drained, whether you experienced any niggling injuries or pains, whether the type of workout you completed is aligned with your health goals and could be sustainable over time. All of these factors help you assess the quality of your fitness routine, as well as considering how it affects your mental health too. It’s important to find a workout style you love doing, and which leaves you feeling great afterwards, in order to develop a sustainable regime that leaves you nurturing your health rather than risking injury, burnout or fatigue.

You can still measure progress in your sessions without being fixated on numbers too. For example, pay attention to when your sessions begin to feel easier and less taxing. This is a good indicator that you’re becoming fitter and stronger. From there, you can assess whether it’s time to make your workouts more challenging. You can also consider progressions in exercises as a good measure of where you’re at - for example, progressing from doing pushups on your knees, to being able to do them on your toes. Increasing the difficulty or complexity of movements is a great way to experience that feeling of accomplishment and progress, without needing to fixate on the numbers.

The more rest and recovery you’re able to program into your weeks, the more attention you pay to your body and its experience of each session, and the more you work alongside your capabilities and goals, the better quality your fitness routine will be. And it’s the quality of your workouts that achieves results, not the quantity!

3. How’s the quality of your sleep?

As you likely know, sleep plays such a crucial role in so many of your body’s processes, and it’s critical for good health. But instead of focusing on the quantity of sleep you’re getting, it’s actually more important to consider the quality once again!

Fixating on the quantity of sleep can make it more difficult to fall asleep in the first place. Can you relate to the feeling of knowing you’re going to be getting less sleep than you’d like, so you lie awake tossing and turning over the minutes and hours of precious time you’re wasting or missing out on? 

While you do want to aim for around 7-9 hours of sleep, it’s more beneficial to ensure whatever hours you are getting are of the best possible quality. To improve your quality of sleep, consider:

• Going to bed around the same time each night. This helps your brain recognise when it’s time to wind down, preparing you for a better night’s sleep.

• Implement a bedtime routine, again to signal to your brain it’s time to prepare to rest.

• Swap your pre-bed screen time for reading a few pages of a book. Try to put your phone away at least an hour before sleeping - it may be annoying to hear this again, but it truly does help!

• Avoid caffeine in the afternoon, and reduce your intake of alcohol. Even if you’re one of those people who are truly convinced these beverages don’t make it more difficult for you to get to sleep, the evidence shows that they absolutely do impair the quality of sleep you get throughout the night.

You can assess the quality of your sleep by considering how rested and refreshed you feel each morning. While you’ll probably always feel groggy in those first few minutes of waking, after this you should be able to check in with your body to determine whether you had a good night’s sleep or not. And if not, consider implementing some of the above tips!

4. Consider your quality of life…

Your health is about far more than the food you eat and the exercise you do. It’s about who you surround yourself with, and what kind of environment you live your life in.

Ask yourself about the quality of the relationships in your life. Do the people around you lift you up, make you feel fulfilled after you spend time with them, make you feel loved and accepted? If not, it’s time to reconsider the quality of the people and relationships in your life! They contribute so much to your health and wellbeing.

Similarly, consider your environment - both physical, and virtual. Do you find yourself feeling inspired and motivated by the people you follow on social media? Or do you notice you compare yourself, feel down about yourself and your achievements, and sink into feelings of despair and hopelessness after spending time online? If so, it’s time for a cleanout of your following list - and perhaps the introduction of some positive boundaries around the time you spend online, and how you spend it!

Your physical environment also contributes significantly to your health. Do you live and spend time in places you feel safe and comfortable? If not, what could you do to change this? How could you create more security, peacefulness, and foster a sense of belonging?

As with your food and exercise, it’s important to check in with yourself regularly as to how you feel about the ways you spend your time. Are they contributing to your quality of life, or compromising it? What changes could you make to invest in your health, and improve the quality of relationships and environments you surround yourself with?

5. What about the quality of your mental health and wellbeing?

Mental health is often neglected when you focus on quantitative metrics of health. After all, it’s pretty difficult to measure your mental health using numbers… When you transition to focusing on the quality of your health, this allows room to consider your mental wellbeing too - which should always be given just as much attention as your physical health.

Assessing your mental wellbeing can be tricky, and in some cases overwhelming. If possible, enlist the help of a mental health professional or even your doctor. If you’re able to regularly speak to an unbiased third party like a psychologist for perspective and support on any challenges you navigate in your daily life, and to help you gauge where your mental health is at, this is a worthwhile investment.

If not, learning to notice and identify your emotions and to process them without judgement is a good place to begin. But more than that, once you begin to recognise your emotions, go a step further and ask what’s causing you to feel the way that you do? What can you learn from how you’re feeling? Are there changes you could make to enhance your mental wellbeing moving forward?

Of course there will be times where you feel low or down, and other times where you feel happier and more optimistic. This is all part of the rollercoaster of life. But noticing patterns, identifying what emotions come up for you most often, and discovering what leaves you feeling your brightest can really support the quality of your mental health. As mentioned, surrounding yourself with people and things that fulfil you and lift you up is incredibly important, as is giving yourself grace and rest when it comes to your food and fitness. Don’t expect yourself to be perfect - perfect often isn’t actually as healthy as we’re made to believe! Health is all about balance, self-compassion, and considering the quality of all elements of your life in order to determine whether you’re actually in good health.

As you can see, good health doesn’t just look like eating a perfectly “clean” diet and smashing your body at the gym daily. Health is more than numbers on a scale, or step counts, or calorie targets. Holistic good health is measured by quality - the quality of your relationships with others, your relationship with your body and your ability to listen to the messages it sends you, your sleep, your environments, your mental wellbeing. All of these things are just as important as your food and exercise when it comes to optimising your health. Don’t get caught up in the numbers. Focus on what’s actually important - the quality measures - and use these to elevate your physical and mental health to new heights.