Olivia Scholes, 28, of Vancouver, British Columbia, has polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS.
Olivia Scholes has polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, and has dietary restrictions because of it. After seeing TikTok videos of others using ChatGPT for meal planning, she used the chatbot to make a meal plan and grocery list tailored to her condition.
She is among the estimated 1 in 10 women globally who are diagnosed with this hormonal condition, which can cause multiple ovarian cysts, infertility, weight gain, and other issues.
After being diagnosed with PCOS about 10 years ago, Scholes managed her condition in part by trying to consume — or abstain from — certain foods and drinks. But at times, transferring her knowledge from her brain to her plate proved complicated and time-consuming.
“Just because I know that information doesn’t mean that I’m planning my meals with that information all the time,” Scholes said.
Scholes was scrolling through TikTok when she saw a video explaining how ChatGPT was used to build a detailed nutrition and workout plan. That video inspired Scholes to see if the chatbot, an artificial intelligence program trained to give a detailed response to a prompt, could give her meal options tailored to PCOS.
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Weight and insulin management can help reduce the impact of PCOS. Because many people with PCOS experience insulin resistance, controlling insulin levels through diet is one of the best steps people can take to help manage the condition.
She started by asking ChatGPT if it knew what foods were best for people with PCOS and insulin resistance, and the chatbot provided a list of foods that met the criteria. Scholes followed up by asking if the system could provide a two-week meal plan that catered to PCOS and insulin resistance, consisting of three meals a day, two snacks a day, and desserts without artificial sweeteners. Within seconds, Scholes had a list of foods, which she then asked ChatGPT to turn into a grocery list.
“For me, the big help that ChatGPT was, was not only did it take the information that I already knew; it put that information in, like, a tangible space for me,” said Scholes.
ChatGPT — developed by the company OpenAI — launched publicly in November and reached 100 million active users in January, making it the fastest-growing consumer app in history.
ChatGPT is trained on a large body of text from a variety of sources, such as Wikipedia, books, news articles, and scientific journals. The advanced AI chatbot allows users to enter a text prompt and receive an intelligently generated output that allows for back-and-forth conversations. Other chatbots, such as Google’s Bard and Bing AI chat, also from Microsoft, are similar to ChatGPT and can plan meals.
Some health and wellness professionals say ChatGPT’s ability to have conversations can be useful for generating meal plans and ideas for people who have specific health goals and dietary needs.
Scholes shared her experience using ChatGPT in a TikTok video. That video now has more than 1.3 million views and a comment section flooded with questions about her experience.
In February, Jamie Askey of Lufkin, Texas, made a TikTok video explaining how to use ChatGPT to generate free meal plans and grocery lists that meet goals for calories and macronutrients, which are the nutrients the body needs in large amounts, like fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. She’s made lots of videos since the beginning of 2021 giving health advice, from easy meal-prep recipes to tips for how to stop binge-eating. And as someone who helps people create meals that contain nutrient-dense foods without cutting out foods people enjoy eating, she was excited about how ChatGPT could potentially ease the process of meal planning.
Unlike with Google and other search engines, users do not have to search topics one at a time. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to follow an instruction in a prompt, provide a detailed response, and answer follow-up questions.
ChatGPT users have boasted about the program’s capabilities and are enthused by the idea it could simplify everyday tasks. But the chatbot is not without flaws. One hitch: ChatGPT’s training data cuts off in 2021, meaning some information it provides may be outdated. For meal planning and nutrition, the program not being able to pull the latest health and wellness guidelines can be particularly troublesome for people with certain health conditions.
The model can also generate incorrect information, providing wrong answers or misunderstanding what the user is asking. When Scholes asked the chatbot for two weeks’ worth of meals, the chatbot stopped at day eight.
Some users have also expressed concerns about glitches and bias within the technology that can negatively affect the types of responses it generates. In December 2022, Steven T. Piantadosi, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, posted a Twitter thread highlighting biases.
Scholes wonders if existing biases against certain types of people could affect her results.
“If ChatGPT is built on any sort of fatphobic stuff, me looking for stuff that is geared towards women who are fat and deal with issues of fatness and PCOS and stuff, what kind of biases are built into that system already?”
For anyone considering using ChatGPT to help generate a meal plan to reach fitness and health goals, Askey said to double-check the program’s work. “AI, it’s not a person,” she said. “So, you always want to double-check.”
What’s behind the newest anti-diet diet
What’s behind the newest anti-diet diet
Intuitive eating is the latest anti-diet diet craze, purporting to shift the wellness focus off weight loss and onto forming healthy relationships between the body, mind, and food. Instead of labeling food as good or bad and trying to ignore hunger pangs, its simple philosophy is to eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re not. The key is staying in tune with your body so you know when you feel full and step away. Rather than forbidding certain foods, intuitive eaters accept that one snack or meal likely won’t upend your health; what matters is sticking to mindful eating habits consistently over time.
The trend follows the growing appetite for health plans that eschew goal weights in favor of overall wellness. But separating truly intuitive eating out from other dieting platforms that tout the concept while pushing restrictive food plans can be wildly complicated for the average person looking to get healthier in 2022.
To explore the science behind the newest anti-diet diet, Almond Cow used scientific studies and news articles to explore Americans' changing relationship with diet culture and the multiple facets of healthiness people can consider instead.
Nearly half of all American adults reported putting on extra weight during COVID-19, with the American Psychological Association reporting that a full 42% of those who gained weight averaged a 29-pound increase between March 2020 and February 2021. Diet companies and weight-loss subscription services responded with fine-tuned marketing campaigns designed to attract fresh segments of the population, selling an anti-diet lifestyle over a sense of restriction. The play worked: Mobile weight-loss company Noom, for example, riding high on a promise of weight loss without restrictive eating, grew its annual revenue from $237 million to $400 million in 2020 and was on track to exceed $600 million in revenue in 2021.
But when it comes to health and weight, continuing research is demonstrating that dieting doesn’t offer long-term weight loss and can even be harmful to people’s physical and mental well-being. Some of today's most popular diet programs feed into the intuitive eating concept in which a person theoretically eats when they're hungry and stops when they're full. Espousing body positivity and wellness, Found, WW, Noom, and others capitalize on a cultural hunger for more inclusivity and representation across all demographics, ages, genders, and sizes. Yet as many as 95% of people who diet gain the weight back regardless of which method they follow.
So what gives?
Medical experts point to lifestyle as being the most important element of sustained, healthy weight loss. The CDC emphasizes long-term changes over fast-track diets that are designed to drop the most pounds in the shortest amount of time. More Americans are paying attention to all areas of their health, including how much sleep they get a night, their mental health, their hydration, and their stress levels: things that have long been overlooked. Many people are also looking at truly intuitive eating, which studies have shown to have positive outcomes both mentally and physically.
Keep reading to learn more about the actual science behind the anti-diet diet, from the flaws in BMI to healthy habits that matter as much as food intake.
Content warning: This article mentions eating disorders and restrictive dieting.
BMI and weight aren’t always strong health indicators
Despite being proven to be deeply flawed, body mass index is a health metric often used as a way to indicate whether someone is overweight.
In fact, the person that invented BMI, Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, wasn’t even a physician—he was a Belgian astronomer and mathematician. To offer the government an easy solution for calculating obesity, Quetelet created an overly simplistic method: a person’s weight divided by their height squared. As a result, BMI can cause taller people to believe they are more overweight than they are and shorter people to believe they are smaller. Some scientists believe that a waist-to-height ratio is far more accurate in determining obesity.
Traditional diets often produce short-term results
In many cases, diets are simply ineffective when it comes to losing weight. In fact, diets can actually have the opposite effect by slowing the metabolism down on top of causing more hunger. On top of that, diets can do more harm than good.
Research shows that dieting can have a negative impact on hormones and memory. Instead, scientists are finding intuitive eating to be a far healthier and more effective approach.
Intuitive eating can promote better relationship with food
Unfortunately, restrictive dieting has harmed many people’s views on food, negatively impacted their health, and even caused eating disorders.
Studies on intuitive eating, however, are showing that this method helps people form healthier relationships with food. In one study, subjects showed improvements when it came to blood pressure, glucose regulation, and inflammation. Other studies showed that intuitive eating also led to a more positive outlook when it came to food among women and better control over blood sugar among adolescents with Type-1 diabetes.
Health and wellness have become more intertwined
When it comes to discussions around health these days, the focus isn’t necessarily on going to the gym regularly and restrictive dieting. The definition of health has broadened to include more than just weight.
Instead, things, like getting enough sleep, staying hydrated, managing stress, and working through mental health issues, are starting to take center stage. This may be because traditional measures and approaches to health are found to be limiting and, in some cases, harmful. In many ways, health and wellness are linked together as it can be difficult for individuals to focus on managing their weight if they haven’t been getting enough sleep or their stress levels are high.
Habits beyond food play an important role in overall health
A person’s habits can play one of the biggest roles in improving health. However, changing habits and forming new ones can be challenging. This can be true, especially for building habits. Some people don’t like physical activity or don’t have time to work out, while others might not like healthy foods or have the money to afford them. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases outlines contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance as the four stages of forming a habit. It can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to form a habit.
This story originally appeared on Almond Cow and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
