Drink 8.4 ounces of water to start your day. Drink another 58.8 ounces throughout the day. Do not drink any more or any less. If you do, force yourself to regurgitate, measure its volume, and replenish only the correct amount.
Ingest exactly 2000 calories. Ingest only fatty fish, nuts, vegetables, fruits, and eggs. If you fail to comply, pump your stomach and start over.
Vigorously exercise for 60 minutes. Do not take breaks. Do not stop. If your weak body passes out, get help, catch your breath, and then finish the remaining minutes of exercise.
Sleep exactly 9 hours. If you are having trouble falling asleep it is acceptable to use a tranquilizer. If you are having trouble waking up, sleep on an off-balance chair and create a complex rig to tip you over at the right time.
Repeat the following day.
Artist Statement
My score was inspired by the modern idea of a perfect “healthy” lifestyle. I sought to subvert the idea of not only an exact, unmoving, empirically proven standard for “health” by rigidly sticking to commonly accepted, ideal recommendations to the point that it’s obviously ridiculous. Obviously, nobody measures their water intake in ounces and calorie labels are inherently unspecific and variable– by focusing on complete precision it’s obvious that one would have to go to extreme ends to even fulfill the score. For many people it would even be reactively dangerous to attempt it: people with nut allergies, diabetes, or low blood pressure, for example.
Moreover, I think a lot of these recommendations also fail to acknowledge ethnic and cultural differences. They’re often researched by, on, and commanded forward by white people; framing these as universal matrixes uphold a euro-centric white supremacist worldview. Additionally, a lot of these health recommendations both not cisgendered and differently abled people– the idea of an average “healthy” weight, BMI, height, etc. (especially when divided by sex) marginalizes a lot of people for it would simply be impossible to maintain said standards.
In the language of the writing itself I chose an authoritarian, overbearing tone– I find that the social pressure to maintain these healthy lifestyle is often presented in a way that shames and attacks people that can’t or don’t want to follow it. Following authoritarian tactics, the score barks orders and then disproportionately punishes the failure to follow them. My own experiences with authoritarianism has also taught me that incredibly often totalitarian governments will also maintain ironically inefficient, nationalist or sectionalist policies– I tried to mimic this with the chair rig suggestion.