What Counts as Health and Who Gets to Decide?

Most tracking systems tell you what is “normal.” Ten thousand steps. Eight hours of sleep. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9. Blood sugar below 100 mg/dL. But who decided these numbers? And who do they actually serve?

We rarely ask where our health metrics come from. Many are built on research that centered a narrow demographic — male, white, neurotypical, Western-bodied individuals — and then generalized those findings to everyone else.

That is not science; it is erasure.

The Myth of the Universal Baseline

Health is often treated as a formula.

X amount of exercise equals healthy.

Y range of weight equals ideal.

Z blood markers equal optimal.

But these baselines ignore:

• Hormonal cycles
• Neurodivergent rhythms
• Disability and chronic illness variability
• Cultural definitions of well-being
• Structural inequities that shape rest, food, and care

When a health app says your sleep score is low but does not know you are postpartum, in pain, or working nights, it is not giving feedback; it is reinforcing a model that was never built for you.

Metrics Are Not Neutral

Every health metric is a product of design.

Steps are easy to track; so they became the goal.

BMI is easy to calculate; so it became the standard.

Glucose and HRV are measurable; so they became proxies for wellness.

Convenient does not mean complete.

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Data Sovereignty Means Redefining Health on Your Terms

To own your data, you must define what matters.

Is calm your goal, or clarity?

Is strength measured in reps, or in resilience?

Does rest mean stillness, or creative freedom?

Sovereignty means:

• Choosing metrics that align with your values
• Interpreting patterns through your lived experience
• Rejecting systems that label difference as disorder

Toward a More Human Model of Health

A sovereign, inclusive model of health might:

• Let users co-define their own optimal range
• Treat mood, pain, and energy as valid data
• Adapt to hormonal, cultural, and neurodivergent variation
• Ask not “Did you hit the target?” but “What helped you feel well?”

Health is not a static score; it is not a universal checklist. You do not need to chase someone else’s definition of thriving.

You get to decide what wellness means. You get to choose which signals matter. You get to be the author — not just the subject — of your health story.

That is where sovereignty begins.