The Madness of Wellness
A return to sanity and my "wellness rules" for summer
In the name of “health and wellness,” girls as young as twelve are practically getting PhDs in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, concocting elaborate, 12-step anti-aging skincare routines. Men with obvious steroid abuse problems are eating raw beef and liver, claiming they got their puffed up bodies “100% natty.” Twenty-one-year-old women are “hydration stacking” and injecting themselves with something demonic called “Baby Botox.” Suburban dads are flipping monster truck tires in the T.J. Maxx parking lot and flailing like worms attempting to do something called a “kipping pull-up.” Your nutty aunt is doing “juice cleanses” and taking pole-dancing classes. Women all over Manhattan—maybe even the beautiful woman reading this right now—are unironically performing hours-long, self-flagellating morning routines like they’re Girlboss Patrick Bateman.
This is not wellness. It’s madness.
Modern wellness culture is broken for a bunch of reasons—it exists largely to sell you things you don’t need, obviously—but it also, almost always, optimizes for the margins. It relies on quacks and charlatans, positions expensive, unnecessary products as somehow absolutely essential to a healthy lifestyle, and constantly undermines your common sense in favor of some bogus trend that no one would do if they couldn’t post about it. To most of us struggling to feel healthy and alive, a Drunk Elephant serum and Vibram toe shoes do next to nothing. Maybe for the self-proclaimed “gurus” who are trying to sell you on this stuff there’s a marginal benefit—there’s certainly a significant financial one—but for most people, like you and me, the impact rounds to zero.
For the sake of the argument, let’s pretend there is a measurable quality we all have called “health.” A fitness influencer or professional athlete is trying to go from 98% health to 99% health. That 1% difference matters to them, so yes, maybe infrared sauna is utterly essential. But most of us plebs are trying to go from like 30% to 75% health. Our form matters when we work out, but if we’re only hitting the gym once every two weeks, it won’t make a meaningful difference beyond injury prevention. You may very well be deficient in vitamin B12, but a supplement will not save you if your diet consists entirely of coffee, cheese, pastries, and alcohol. Rubbing snail mucin on your face won’t do much if you literally do not drink water or sleep (calling myself out here). Intermittent fasting won’t give you an edge if your body already thinks it is starving and hangs onto every calorie you eat because you refuse to consume fat or protein. A twenty-minute mindfulness meditation every month will not negate an hour of screen time first thing in the morning, every morning.
They say it’s insanity to do the same thing over and over and expect different results. But it’s a whole new level of insanity to do a bunch of random, marginal things with zero consistency and expect any result whatsoever.
Most of us need to do the +20% things—like cooking our meals at home and exercising—not the +1% things. But the promise of the silver bullet is so powerful. Even if you add up all the 1% products and routines, you won't get to 75% if you don’t have the fundamentals down.
All of this is so obviously true that it’s arguably something we forget. We all know what “healthy habits” are; we’ve all been told a thousand times, ad nauseam. But just in case we need reminding, the common, baseline, well-worn definition is something like “eat whole foods, try to get some sleep, exercise regularly, prioritize your social and spiritual life, find someone to love, and find purpose in your work.” Annoying, boring, easier said than done. Not as thrilling as watching a five-minute TikTok video where a gorgeous twenty-three year old woman with no actual expertise or formal training tells you that your real problem is your “hormones.” Not as instantly-gratifying as the creatine you impulse-bought on Amazon, or the Tatcha moisturizer at Sephora, or the workout class that feels like a literal human-sacrifice cult (SoulCycle, no offense). Consistently performing a reasonable, achievable health routine does not grab your attention at all. Frankly, it’s all so boring that I almost didn’t write about it.
To make matters worse, the strictest adherents to the Wellness Industrial Complex love to drag you down to their level and shame you for normal things like drinking a glass of orange juice or getting a bit of a tan in the summer. You just can’t win. They undermine your confidence at every turn. More often than not, while these people relish telling you that something is “so bad for you,” they are doing drugs and drinking heavily every weekend, are addicted to pornography, spend 9 hours a day on their phones, wear 100% polyester clothing, suck on a vape, and eat nothing but salads and ultra-high-processed human dog treats from Trader Joe’s. Yeah, I’m going to go ahead and have a glass of orange juice with breakfast even though it has “so much sugar.” It’s a natural food with one ingredient. I think I’ll live.
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
—John Steinbeck, East of Eden
I’m a sucker for this margin game stuff as much as the next girl, but recently, I just decided I’m done with it. Somehow I came to the conclusion that wellness culture isn’t about being well, it’s about being perfect. And after I became a mother last year, I very quickly realized that perfection is not the vibe. I no longer want a silver bullet; I want to feel joyful, energized, and alive. And I certainly don’t want to be bogged down by a “self-care skincare routine” that feels more like a punishment of the flesh. I need to refocus on the fundamentals.
Behold, my 17 “wellness rules” for summer, in no particular order.
How I’m trying to change my wellness-poisoned mind with a new, more balanced approach to work, exercise, and life, my 3-bullet-point summer gym routine, my streamlined and affordable summer skincare routine, what I consider to be the “ultimate summer bedtime routine,” how I care for my soul through prayer, and much more.