Sanders (2017, p.21-22) suggests “potentially subversive body projects by counterposing them to conventional self-improvement projects” as follows:
instead of an emphasis to use “self-knowledge through numbers” to “discover an authentic self has always already existed,” Sanders suggests users “treat digital self-tracking devices not as means of self-discovery but as tools for inventing oneself as something new and not yet imagined”
instead of “body projects” that “define progress, success, and satisfaction in terms of the exterior form of the body” - “ counter-normative and more liberating digital body project would perhaps be purposefully goal-unoriented”
instead of “game design elements” which in practice “do not make self-tracking endeavors truly fun, playful, or pleasurable” - “focus on the quality of one’s interior experience during exercise, thereby adopting a counter-normative way of experiencing the body and evaluating how one feels"
Sanders, R. (2017). Self-tracking in the digital era: Biopower, patriarchy, and the new biometric body projects. Body & Society, 23(1), 36-63.