Less Than Zero: Guys, We're Getting Wellness Wrong 🙅🏻‍♀️

Still judgy after all these years.

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2 min read

OVER OPTIMIZATION

I’m bored of wellness.

Back in January, I wrote about the emerging backlash against the over-optimization of wellness. Well, now I’m living it. I’m nothing if not on trend…💅

Not as in, being healthy, but as in, capital-W WELLNESS. The performance of it, the constant unveiling of something “new” that looks suspiciously like something we were told to fear/worship five years ago. It goes like this:

Track your sleep. Stop tracking your sleep.
Cold plunge. Actually, that’s dysregulating.
Take magnesium. Nope, not that kind.

I’ve been in this biz for over 20 years (since middle school, obvi 👀). I helped build one of the pioneering categories of the wellness industry before we even referred to “the wellness industry.” I’ve created the experiences, advised the brands, read the studies, tested the gadgets.

And it’s starting to feel like a lot more agitation than transformation.

Every week there’s a new angle on sleep, hormones, brain health, longevity…you’ve already stopped reading, I know I did. 😵‍💫 And the information isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s just the TONE. You know the tone.

“If you just adjusted one more thing, you’d feel better.”
”If you just bought one more device, you’d sleep deeper.”
”If you just hacked one more pathway, you’d calm down.”

Which, even under the guise of “gentle wellness,” still kinda functions like a thinly veiled threat:

“You’re not DOING it right.”

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY

And maybe that’s what’s really been bugging me.

It’s not just the amount of information coming at us. It’s that being healthy increasingly feels like yet another arena for achievement and low key one-upmanship. We’re tracking HRV like we’re watching Knicks game 5, obsessing over sleep scores, chasing black-market peptides, and talking about recovery with the same fervor that we once used discussing The Sopranos on Monday mornings.

We are applying elite-athlete mentality to regular-ass life.

I think we’re good, bro

To be clear: I still care deeply about sleep, strength, metabolic health, etc. But the cultural obsession of it all feels exhausting.

I guess my question is: if your pursuit of health is making you feel constantly behind, constantly pressured, constantly like you’re somehow not enough… then WTF is the point?

I’m not bored of health, but I’m a little over the performance.

Or maybe I’m just overdue for a vacation ;) Or maybe some of this has gotten really weird, and two things can both be true.

🙋🏻‍♀️ Show of hands: does anyone else feel more informed than ever about health, and more overwhelmed than ever by wellness?

Ok, I’m going offline to do something wildly suboptimal. Happy weekend, all! 🫶🏻