The Numbers That Try to Tell Us How to Eat and Move
Psychology Today | 10.06.2026 04:16
At 44, I’m old enough to remember a time before numbers were everywhere. I remember when no one knew how many calories there were in anything they ate, or what their resting heart rate was, or how many paces they’d done today, or how long they spent in REM sleep last night. The everyday human activities—eating, walking, sleeping, shopping—have remained, but they’ve been superimposed by a layer of arithmetic. It’s happened gradually, this insertion into our lives of numbers that we’re meant to live by: kilocalories, grams of macros, heart-rate zones, heart-rate variability, steps, elevation gains, litres, hours of direct sun exposure…
