A few months back, Bing AI didn’t know what a villanelle was, and could not write one for me. Even when I told it the form, it only produced quatrains.

I tried again today, and I’m not going to lie — it did remarkably well despite its challenging selection of rhyming sounds. Some parts don’t make much sense, and sometimes poetry is like that.

I get literally no credit, because all I requested was “write a villanelle” and then asked it how I should cite the villanelle. Here’s what it came up with:

Villanelle

The sun sets on the horizon’s edge,
A golden orb that sinks from sight,
And leaves behind a crimson pledge.

The sky is painted shades of red,
As darkness creeps into the night,
The sun sets on the horizon’s edge.

The stars come out, a twinkling hedge,
That sparkles in the moon’s pale light,
And leaves behind a crimson pledge.

The world is hushed, a silent dredge,
As nature sleeps till morning’s light,
The sun sets on the horizon’s edge.

The night is long, a solemn wedge,
That separates the day from night,
And leaves behind a crimson pledge.

The dawn arrives, a new world’s sedge,
A promise of a day so bright,
The sun sets on the horizon’s edge,
And leaves behind a crimson pledge.

Source: Bing. “A Villanelle.” Microsoft Bing Chatbot, 24 Nov. 2023, https://www.bing.com/.

Are any other form poets out there starting to feel nervous? I want to tell you that this is not as good as the villanelles I’ve written…but who am I to judge that? Maybe this is what people want to read?

1. They find you where you’re most vulnerable

Chances are, you’ve seen the ad while scrolling past some fitspirational content on social media. Suddenly there’s an image of someone who looks more like you, and it’s clear they’ve been miserable for a long time, but now they’re taking charge and changing their life.

The fitness app marketers will probably also hit you up with a special offer that’s only available to you right now. Because that’s when you were feeling like you should be a little bit less like yourself, and more like the content in your feed.

2. They make you acutely aware of what’s “wrong” with your body

I wrote it like that because you may have some health concerns, and those concerns are valid, and you should be talking to health professionals about such things. Those aren’t the “wrongs” these apps are going to pick up, though; generally speaking, they’re going to tell you that you need to be skinnier. Personally, I call bullshit on that. If you are actively seeking ways to improve your health over the long term, there are much better goals to shoot for, such as building better cardiovascular fitness, looking after your mental health, improving your sleep quality, or getting more fruit and vegetables into your diet. Some of the apps will even mention these things, but mostly they’ll want you to get skinnier.

Many fitness apps will do this without regard for your fitness goals or your current body composition. They might even do this even if you choose specifically tell the app that you don’t want to lose weight, which is what happened to me again tonight, which prompted me to finally write this story. Yep, I ignored all the weight loss prompts, said I wanted to run faster, entered my current weight, and entered the exact same number in the target weight box, and still Joggo told me how much weight I should lose. (It was like my Asana Rebel experience all over again.) Now, I used to teach university level mathematics, and I’m reasonably confident that m-m=0 for all values of m, but somehow the app thought there was a difference in there and it was a few kilograms I needed to lose.

Now there’s a gaslighting element in here that really doesn’t sit well with me. I just said I don’t want to lose weight; why is this app telling me I do want to lose weight? Cue creepy ex-boyfriend voice: “I know you better than anyone. I know you better than you know yourself.” Erm, no, thank you.

But there’s more to it than that. By reinforcing that you’ve got work to do, they’re reminding you that you need the app. You’re not enough. You need to fix yourself. (Please believe me, you don’t.)

3. They take the credit for your hard work and blame you for poor results

There’s pretty strong evidence that weight loss generally leads to weight gain in the long term. (Also, weight cycling is really bad for your health.) So if you listen to the app’s encouragement to lose weight, there’s a good chance you’ll “succeed” in the short term and then regain weight in the long term.

Public health messaging has probably already convinced you that body weight is totally within your control and that, if you’re not skinny, you’re failing as a human. (It’s not, and you’re not.) So, when you get the same message from your “fitness app”, you’re probably primed and ready to blame yourself. It’s the same thing diet companies like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers have been doing for years. They take credit for unsustainable weight loss and, despite research that shows the most likely long-term outcome is weight regain, they blame that part on you…and lure you back.

4. And they keep charging those subscription fees

Now the app producer has established that their “fitness app” was “fixing” you, but that you can’t be trusted to do it on your own, they might offer you a special promo to keep the money flowing. But even if they didn’t, you’re probably ready to double down on your efforts and keep paying that weekly or monthly subscription.

Why does this bother me so much?

That’s a fair question. I’ve got a whole lot of thin privilege, and no lived experience of weight stigma, so it’d be easy to conclude that I’m just an outraged keyboard warrior. Hell, maybe I am. But I still find this sort of business model and marketing campaign repugnant.

I’m studying towards a career in health. Health means different things to different people, but it should never mean harm — and that’s what these fitness apps do. (And so does diet culture more generally.)

What’s up next?

I don’t need to seek out diet culture to expose it because it’s all pervasive. But what I hope to do is share some of my experiences with fitness apps and their harmful marketing practices, and open your eyes to what they’re doing.

I will be singling out some of these “fitness apps”, but not because they’ve done anything especially vindictive; only because they’re the ones who most recently invested in a campaign to make me worry about my body shape and size.

First up: Joggo

Diet Culture Review: Joggo

What is Joggo?

The first thing to note is that, depending on where you go to read about Joggo, you might get a different impression of its goals. Early reviews of Joggo suggest it was always intended as a weight loss app, while its recent marketing pitches it as a fitness app. On both Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, it’s called Joggo - Run Tracker & Coach. But on Apple, it also gets a subtitle: “Weight loss running plans”. (See figure 1.)

The Google Play blurb was updated on 29 June 2023, and seems to pitch it as a running app while simultaneously assuming that having a fitness goal means you have a weight loss goal:

Joggo is a running app for beginners and pros alike — great for both outdoor and treadmill training. With a personalized running program, custom meal plan, and a convenient running tracker, you can reach your fitness and weight loss goals in a way that works for you.

I stumbled across Joggo through an advertisement in my Instagram feed, which was probably an algorithmic response to having looked at a different but equally fatphobic fitness app a few days earlier. (Yes, I still click through sometimes because I live in hope of one day finding an app that is genuinely about fitness, not weight.) I was hoping it was like a couch-to-5km style app that could be tailored to a bunch of different starting points (i.e., not quite the couch) and targets (fun run distances).

Getting started

I joined on the mobile app, but thought I would try the web version as well, to see if it was any different (and because it’ll be easier to grab screenshots here). To start, you click “Take our quiz” on the home screen (see figure 1a) and answer 14 questions.

The first one (figure 2) stumped me, and not because I’m questioning my identity right now:

First, there’s the obvious point: they’ve given me only two options to choose from. I’m guessing they’re asking about my biological sex here, but I’d like these “experts” to recognise that still doesn’t fit into two neat categories, which is probably why some other apps have included an “other” category. I’m not feeling excited about the prospect of this app being fat friendly, given it’s already excluding anyone who doesn’t fit a neat gender binary.

But also, why is Man/Woman a type of program I’m choosing? On a list of things I’d consider when writing a basic, introductory running program, this is not right up the top. It’s something you might consider if an athlete is targeting a record or a podium finish, or if a menstruating athlete wants to synchronise their training with their cycle, or if you want to manage their micronutrient intake carefully, but this is all the nuanced stuff that I’d expect down the track in a tailor-made program…not the first screen.

In case you’re wondering if they did somehow incorporate this fancy information…no. I went back and entered exactly the same details, but selected the “Man” program type instead of “Woman”, and I got EXACTLY the same results.

Goal-setting

It went on to ask whether I had been running recently, and then asked me for my main goal: to lose weight, improve mental health, run a distance, improve pace, or stay fit? (See figure 3.)

I chose to “improve pace”, because this is the sort of performance-focused goal that my trusted coaches would tie in with important elements such as adequately fuelling my body and getting plenty of recovery between sessions; that is, not seeking weight loss.

When Joggo asked me, “How far do you think you could run right now?” I chose the furthest option: 26 miles / 42km or more. (I did this a few weeks ago.) It went on to ask me preferred days and times for running and, appropriately, suggested allowing more rest between sessions “to prevent injury” when I chose back-to-back days.

It also asked about existing health conditions, so it could modify my program, and options included running-related injuries and diabetes. (I selected diabetes in one run through the quiz, and it didn’t seem to change my results at all, so I guess you only see those details once you pay the big bucks.) And it asked about my mood…but disregarded that too.

How about a meal plan?

Joggo also offered me a meal plan (figure 4), which makes sense because they’re not really interested in helping me run faster (my goal) but would like me to lose weight (their goal).

Spoiler alert: I went back and tried declining their meal plan in another run through the quiz, but it didn’t make any difference in the overall results — Joggo still felt compelled to suggest a daily caloric intake to either optimise or maximise my weight loss.

So I opted in to the meal plan, and Joggo went on to ask about specific foods I’d like to exclude from my diet before checking in with what diet I’d like to follow: low-fat, Mediterranean, vegan, diabetes, gluten-free, lacto vegetarian, ovo vegetarian, lacto-ovo vegetarian, pescetarian, GERD or none. I’m curious about the choices here because of their obvious overlap with the food exclusions already recorded. I’m also reasonably confident diabetes and GERD (or GORD for those who speak English rather than American) are not diets but medical conditions, which we were also asked about. Anyway, this is just illogical design rather than fatphobia, so I’ll move along.

And who are you again?

Finally, I entered the rest of my demographics: age, height and current weight. And then my target weight. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice in figure 5 that I entered the exact same weight for both, consistent with my goal being to improve my running pace rather than lose weight.

Now I’m not sure why Joggo even asked me about my weight, given that I hadn’t mentioned weight loss as a goal, but that’s what it does, because that’s Joggo’s goal.

In case you were wondering what happens if you tell Joggo you want to increase your weight, here it is in figure 6:

You may have noticed that I’ve inserted a very, very low current weight. It’s actually the lowest weight that Joggo will accept in the form — entering 39kg throws an error.

I’m hoping we all know that BMI is a terrible metric and irrelevant as a health indicator, but it’s still used in a lot of settings, including clinical guidelines. So it’s worth noting that a 172 cm tall individual weighing 40 kg has a BMI of just 13.5, which is incredibly low. Under Queensland Health guidelines, if this person presented with no other health conditions, they would be considered for psychiatric admission to an inpatient unit for treatment of an eating disorder. They would get a full medical assessment to check they don’t have other symptoms that would warrant a medical admission. (I have real concerns with the diagnostic criteria for anorexia including a specification of body weight, but that’s a totally separate topic.)

And yet Joggo not only suggested weight loss, but suggested weight gain — the precise goal of medical or psychiatric intervention in the clinical guidelines — was an invalid goal.

Are you ready to see results?

“First, give us your email address.”

I dutifully responded, largely because I was curious about what spam I might receive.

The next screen showed results and they were rather underwhelming, largely because they didn’t seem to address my inputs at all. I even went back and tried answering questions differently, but the vast majority of the results remained unchanged.

First, there’s that meaningless graph on the right in figure 6. It actually shows me going from where I am now to where I should be in November if I follow Joggo’s program. Interestingly, this is not a chart showing my improvement in pace, which was my goal. It shows distance, and the line curves upwards before tapering to flat again…but the numbers get smaller. First, this is a very strange way to communicate a distance change. Second, I can tell you now that if I went out and ran 21 km, I would manage a faster pace than I would over 42 km, so Joggo isn’t really promising much here.

But wait, there’s more!

Remember how I said in my intro post that these apps want to make you feel bad about your body? Check out the language and imagery used here. The same image was shown whether I chose the Man or Woman running plan (figure 2) and despite setting a pace goal (figure 3) with no weight loss (figure 5). It’s just a standard element of the response page, not tailored at all.

I’m definitely showing the privilege of my thinness, general health and fitness, and awareness of diet culture when I look at this and think, ha! Why would I want to lose girth off any of those areas?! I’d actually wish this reaction for everyone, because this part of Joggo’s strategy is foul and toxic. It’s suggesting that the body on the left is wrong, and the body on the right is better. What if

• you look more like the body on the left and you’re happy with how you look and feel?
• you already look like the body on the right?
• your body dysmorphia keeps telling you that you’re too fat, even though you’re already of very low body weight?
• you’re much fatter than either of these bodies?

How might you feel about this messaging then? And I don’t want to head down a rabbit hole here, but I definitely wondered how a trans man might feel looking at this, or an amputee, or someone who has lost a lot of weight during a medical illness and treatment, or someone with any of the other millions of different but equally valid human experiences from that depicted here.

Also, don’t miss the subtle dig at mood in the text on the right of figure 7. Joggo knows my mood needs to improve, regardless of how I described it, and the way to do that is by being leaner.

Diets, diets, diets

The next component of the results page suggested calorie restriction (figure 8), even when I had declined a meal plan and entered a weight target equal to my current weight.

You might be wondering how these numbers stack up. I asked the Mayo Clinic, because they have pretty good health information for the general public. As someone who is very active, I should be getting 2400 kCal of energy through my daily food intake (figure 9), to fuel my training and keep my weight relatively stable. (I also used an Australian Government Calculator and got a slightly higher figure at 11,700 kJ or around 2800 kCal.) If I were totally sedentary, I’d still need around 1700 kCal for basic function — to keep my heart pumping blood, gastrointestinal tract digesting, kidneys filtering, brain thinking, and so on. But Joggo wants me to get by on significantly less than that (figure 8).

When I entered a very low current weight at 40 kg, Joggo was kind enough to point out my very low BMI on the results page, and mentioned not once, but twice, that

Your target weight would put your BMI (Body mass index) blow 18.5, which is considered unhealthy. Please consult your doctor before starting any diets.

However, Joggo still made daily calorie recommendations for optimal and maximum weight loss (see figure 10), and these are lower than the Mayo Clinic calculator recommended for even inactive individuals.

Remember how I didn’t ask for a meal plan (or weight loss)? Joggo wanted to remind me I can lose fat with their meal plan (figure 11).

In case you had any lingering doubt that Joggo is 100% a weight loss app, here’s the head coach making a promise to you, taken straight from that results page (figure 12):

It discusses…weight loss! And helpfully suggests that other plans don’t work because they’re hard to follow, while Joggo is here to help you improve your habits.

We believe in a balanced way to lose weight and keep the weight off. We know that most of the diets or weight loss programs that you have tried in the past don’t work — they are just too hard to follow. I wish for people to build healthier, more confident bodies through science-backed methods with custom programs based on data.

It’s really difficult to reach your goals. That’s why our nutritionists and personal coaches work around the clock to prepare the most effective plans you love. We want to make sure that it becomes a part of your life. We don’t change habits — we help you improve them.

Try it out, and we guarantee you will be satisfied.

At any rate, Chris seems quite confident, and this almost feels like a promise that users will “lose weight and keep the weight off” (regardless of whether they actually just wanted to run faster. Alas, if you check out their General Terms and Conditions, they’re making no such guarantee (figure 13):

12.5. Due to the nature of Services and/or Goods that the Company provides and as the Company cannot control the Client’s adherence to the provided use instructions, the Company provides no warranty as to any results or outcomes coming from using Services and/or Goods.

It turns out Joggo is just another brand telling us it’s our fault if we don’t lose weight. But they’re basing that on research, they claim. When you look at the reference list (figure 14), some of the research dates back to 1972. There’s a lot of BMI content in there, which should be a red flag, as well as an article that claims other energy requirement calculators are wrong and one that describes a study of “obese patients” with hypertension (high blood pressure)…which wouldn’t seem relevant in this case, especially seeing as I didn’t report hypertension.

At this point, I hope you’ve realised that Joggo is just another toxic weight loss app.

The follow-up

I hope you didn’t think the process was over. They failed to convert this time, so they emailed me. But you’ll have to wait until my next instalment to get all that gossip.

Lines lengthen, deepen — 
I see they are beautiful,
the spaces within

We grow older, yet wisdom
continues to evade us

Let the creases mark
places warmed by sunlit smiles
and starlit secrets

When light fades, let this spark grow — 
within, without, beyond time.

ekphrastic was originally published in A Cornered Gurl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

sleep eludes me still
deeper darkness stirs silent
screams from dying dreams

I know how to swim. I don’t — 
I sink. Feels like I’m drowning

just another night
endlessly restless, twitching
trapped in dreamless dark

down was originally published in A Cornered Gurl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

you
here
everywhere
sun moon stars and vast
empty spaces between, so cool

held
stares
exposure
flesh in anarchy
fever pulse, skin flush—no! play cool

salt
kiss
staccato
punctured dreams sinking
abandoned to onyx deep, cool

cool was originally published in A Cornered Gurl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I dance
door to door, seeking
any chance and

when you knock
I answer, trepidation
and sweat and this pounding beat and

loud and clear
I say yes, dreading
opportunity even as I seize it and

I dare
participate, hoping
and wanting and willing myself

to standard

bold was originally published in A Cornered Gurl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

scars worn fine, wooden
crumble of passing decades
dilapidation

Dewi –

I think I will start
working my way, slow and sure
through the alphabet

…plus zero tolerance to anyone with a medical condition

The Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) announced last year that they would be extending their medical and anti-doping policy to all races in the UTMB World Series 2022. Their goal is “protecting athletes from the dangers of self-medicating”, according to the medical director, Dr Patrick Basset.

I have been concerned about this since I saw and shared the below announcement on Facebook in September — not about the banning of painkillers so much as the banning of many drugs considered acceptable for therapeutic use exemptions under the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and considered necessary by the doctors who prescribe them.

If you follow me on Facebook, you may recall I posted concerns about implications for those with asthma. I sought others’ feedback because I didn’t have time to look into it myself. My friends were quick to mention several autoimmune and thyroid conditions that could be impacted, and antidepressants and iron infusions also ended up on their banned list, along with the beta-2 agonists that are probably best known for their use as asthma relieving drugs.

According to the rules document, the QUARTZ Event Program that will apply at UTMB World Series events is intended to “protect participants’ health and to contribute to a truly clean sport.”

I think Annabel Hepworth better described it as “textbook mission creep”.

In many cases, the drugs are not banned at all times, but for a certain window before races. In some cases, this at least seems well-intentioned: if you require an iron transfusion for anaemia — a condition that’s far more likely to affect women than men — perhaps a trail ultramarathon is not the best thing for your health right now. But is it necessarily worse for your health than opting to skip the infusion, taking supplements instead, and going ahead with the race? Who decided that? Who chose the arbitrary 60-day window on this? Who does this protect?

Another concerning example is the runner with a history of asthma that’s well controlled with inhaled corticosteroids: for seven days before your race and during your race, you must give up those drugs and just hope your asthma doesn’t flare up, because you also can’t take your reliever during the race.

As far as QUARTZ Program director Dr Pierre Sallet is concerned, athletes with medical conditions should not receive an exemption for therapeutic use because “if the athlete has an illness, he or she should stay at home until healthy.” Dr Sallet is a physiologist and at this point I’d question his understanding of pathology, because “healthy” is a complex idea and many health conditions will never go away but are more than adequately controlled with ongoing medication.

This has brought back for me a widely published quote from Jason Shortis, an elite long-course racer who was diagnosed with asthma mid-career: “I thought it was normal to feel short of breath but since being on the puffer I can’t believe how much air is out there.” The WADA specifically provides therapeutic use exemptions where indicated, so that athletes who live with medical conditions can participate safely and achieve their potential.

The QUARTZ Program is not about making the sport clean or healthy. It makes athletes choose between their health and their sport, and tells us that elite sport is only for those without medical conditions.

As more and more directors of iconic trail races proudly announced they’d joined the UTMB World Series, I grew concerned about whether these QUARTZ Event Program rules would apply. (Note that some race websites still refer to the old Ultra-Trail World Tour or UTWT.)

The Western States Endurance Run (WSER) was first on my mind, as it is a race with a long history and a very Californian race vibe — it’s friendly and welcoming and has made an effort to help people into the sport. It’s one of the first races to have an explicit policy for transgender inclusion. Preventing participation by athletes requiring medication seemed out of character.

The website still refers to the UTWT so I am not sure how up-to-date it is, but I was impressed that they seem to be enforcing the QUARTZ Event Program rules only for athletes entering through six reserved UTWT spots:

Runners who gain entry into WSER through UTWT must agree to participate in the QUARTZ Event Program, a health and anti-doping program managed and administered by Athletes For Transparency Association (AFT). WSER has no affiliation with, or control over, the Quartz Event Program, other than agreeing to require its UTWT entrants to participate.

So it seems like everyone else can just enter and respect the WADA regulations, the way it’s always been. Interestingly, the WSER version of the rules document also omits the first sentence about how the program protects health and contributes to clean sport. I like to image they’ve done this to acknowledge that banning life-saving drugs really doesn’t protect anyone.

I also checked out Ultra-Trail Australia (UTA), because it’s my “local” race in the UTMB series. The information wasn’t so easy to find: I went to the Entry Overview page and scrolled down to Race Rules. The UTA 50, 22 and 11 race rules documents make no reference to QUARTZ, only to WADA and the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA).

However, the UTA 100 rules state:

2. Performance enhancing drugs are prohibited in accordance with The World Anti-Doping Code and the QUARTZ Event Program. Refer to the list of prohibited substances and methods under the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority.

Note also that the link from the UTA 100 rules document points to a 2019 version of the QUARTZ Event Program, which focuses on glucocorticoids, whereas the main Entry Overview page link points to the 2021 version, which adds specific references to iron infusions, other infusions, gas inhalations, beta-2 agonists, painkillers, thyroid hormones and drugs in the WADA monitoring program.

The way I read this, the QUARTZ Event Program rules apply to all participants in the UTA 100.

I’m not the first person who has written about this and I really, really hope I’m not the last. Here is a fantastic twitter thread on the subject, written back in September by ultramarathon coach Jason Koop, and I’d encourage you to click through and read it:

Jason Koop on Twitter: "A not-so-short thread 🧵 on @UTMBMontBlanc recent health policy initiative. You can find the press release on the health policy here- https://t.co/Lrei42zJOrbuckle in folks, it's time for a ride...1/n / Twitter"

A not-so-short thread 🧵 on @UTMBMontBlanc recent health policy initiative. You can find the press release on the health policy here- https://t.co/Lrei42zJOrbuckle in folks, it's time for a ride...1/n

Zero tolerance to doping is an excellent goal in sport, and it’s why WADA and ASADA exist. It’s also very different from zero tolerance to prescribed medication use in sport, which means zero tolerance to athletes with otherwise well-managed medical conditions and zero tolerance to informed medical opinion.

If you’re an athlete with a medical condition who has signed up for a UTMB World Series race unaware of the “health” program in place, you might want to consider how you feel about this information.

And if you’re an athlete who cares about discrimination against people with medical conditions, you might want to consider this also.

Zero tolerance to doping in trail ultramarathon was originally published in Adventure Anytime Anywhere on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Like cheap tea brewing in a fragile cup,
they let you steep
then wrung you out, releasing bitter words
you could not keep.
And as they spilled and stained, they scalded, scarred.
The pain runs deep.
I listen; there is nothing I can do
to help. I sweep
shards and fragments, wipe away all trace
and watch you weep.
A burden shared is doubled, never halved.
I do not sleep.
Each day I strain and struggle and each night
I work to break what’s wrong and fix what’s right.

This cavatina is a seed poem for the Time to Rhyme collaboration on Chalkboard. To continue the rhyme chain, choose rhyming words from this piece as a base for your poem. Learn more

Tannins was originally published in Chalkboard on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.