When has wellness become so conflicted, complicated, and ultimately impossible to follow?
There’s something about the modern wellness culture that is incredibly harmful and confusing. In fact, if you head to Google and ask for the best wellness tips to follow, you’re likely to receive a list of not only different but also contradictory things to implement into your routine.
Of course, it’s easy to bash social media influencers and blame them for creating this confusing environment. Ultimately, influencers have been creating a lot of content to share their “healthy” routines with their followers, and it’s fair to say that not every influencer understands healthy living.
Perhaps, vegan influencer Zhanna Samsonova is the most dramatic example of a social media influencer building a platform around an extremely harmful and unhealthy lifestyle.
But it would be unfair to pretend she was an isolated case. There are plenty of platforms and brands promoting healthy products and routines that may not be as healthy as you think. More importantly, the sheer volume of information makes it practically impossible for anyone to research which option is truly healthy and which isn’t. It’s ironic somehow to think that despite the wellness content surrounding us, we are still unsure how to build a healthy lifestyle.
Information Overload
The Internet has made health information more accessible, but it’s also made it more present, all the time, everywhere, and in different formats.
As a result, we are virtually bombarded with new info each time we browse online. Carbs are evil and should be avoided in order to manage your weight in a healthy manner. On the other hand, many sources emphasize the role of healthy carbs, like whole grains, as part of a blanched nutrition. Besides, carbs are central to fat loss, which means that they actually belong to your wealth management journey.
But the more you research, the more nutrition science and niche blogs start sharing different information. The problem is that you could replace carbs with anything, and the principle would still apply.
New supplement? The Internet is divided.
New diet? It could be both good and bad.
It’s impossible to know what to do.
Wellness as an Identity
At the heart of this all, there are many content creators who turn their healthy lifestyle into their main content.
We’ve heard it from the mouth of British influencer Molly Mae herself: “We all have the same 24 hours.” She was claiming that if people really wanted to achieve their goals, they would make it happen if they put their minds to it.
Except that people do not have the same 24 hours. But if you follow health influencers, you are instantly faced with impossible standards. Waking up at 3 AM to hit the gym, and then baking a gluten-free, sugar-free, fat-free chai seeds brioche with matcha for breakfast before taking the dog for a walk for your first 10k steps of the day? Who’s got time for that? Influencers who build their lives entirely around this. But real people who need to get the kids ready for school before rushing to work for a long day of client meetings don’t have that luxury.
And that is precisely where the problem is. While influencers can make wellness their whole identity, real people don’t have that chance.
Healthy Living is Expensive
Healthy living is connected to consumer culture. Health is marketed through supplements, subscription services, and many other products. Each claim to improve your focus, your digestion, your sleep, your energy, etc.
Are they all useful? If you were to buy into all the health trends, you’d probably encounter serious debt within the first month. Does it mean that no health product or service can help? Absolutely not, but if you want to pick the right one for you, you need to seek clear information on the companies you can trust before purchasing.
Healthy living is only expensive if you don’t know whom to trust.
Simpler Wellness is The Way Forward
It’s no surprise that more and more people are moving away from extreme wellness culture and avoiding all the latest innovations and gadgets. A more balanced approach to health, such as one that prioritizes simple but healthy breakfasts to start the day, along with plenty of sleep at night, can be way more effective.
While this doesn’t mean that you should give up on supplements or habits that work for you, it means that looking after your mind and your body should feel natural. Strict rules that don’t fit in your day-to-day life or that don’t respect the needs of your body are unlikely to work in the long term.
In a world where we all want to stay healthy and fit for as long as possible, it becomes essential to redefine our approach to wellness. The more pressure we create for ourselves with impossible routines and products, the less achievable our health goals become.
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