48. Is Wellness Becoming Another Full-Time Job?

Wellness can quietly turn into a stressful checklist, especially when social media pushes perfection and constant optimization. I break down why the science supports simpler, more flexible habits so health fits into real life instead of taking it over.

• why wellness can start to feel exhausting by morning 
• how social media, biohacking, and productivity culture raise the pressure 
• decision fatigue and why too many “healthy” choices backfire 
• the paradox of optimization and how perfectionism fuels avoidance 
• how rigidity around food can resemble orthorexia-like patterns 
• what Canadian guidelines actually ask for on movement, sleep, and nutrition 
• why consistency beats novelty for long-term results 
• building a good enough wellness philosophy with 80/20 thinking 
• self-compassion as a tool for getting back on track 
• remembering wellness includes relationships, experiences, and connection 

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Transcript

Welcome And The Big Question

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello, I'm Alita, and welcome to Vita with Alita, the podcast where we explore evidence-based health, fitness, and wellness without the fads or fear. My goal is to help you build sustainable habits, better understand your body, and make informed decisions that support your long-term well-being. If you enjoy the show, be sure to follow wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a new episode. Now let's get into today's conversation. Today's episode is one I want to explore because sometimes it feels this way a little bit in my life when I'm not intentionally thinking about what I'm doing, and then suddenly it just feels a little bit overwhelming. And the question I'm addressing today is wellness becoming another full-time job. By the end of this episode, I hope you can appreciate sort of the just core message, which is wellness should make life feel a little bit richer and not just busier. In trying to optimize every single aspect of our health, many of us have an unintentionally turned self-care into just another source of stress. And honestly, that's the last thing that we want. So let's let's get into it. Let's start with a few prompting questions. Have you ever felt, have you ever felt like being healthy is, I don't know, exhausting? You wake up immediately, and then you're like, well, did I sleep enough? Did I drink enough water? Should I meditate? Cold shower, journal, walk, stretch, sunlight, hit my protein target, feel some grass, track my steps, close my rings, take my supplements. And it's like 8 a.m. And wellness already feels like work. I don't think we're suffering from a lack of wellness advice, actually. I think we're drowning in it. And that's probably part of the problem. And it could be very hard to tease out like what's truly important and what's not. So how did we get here?

How Optimization Culture Took Over

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Like most things, social media, information gets propagated so easily. So it's just one more thing that we just have so much access to, and this whole rise of optimization culture or like biohacking. And then, of course, we can't talk about wellness without the infamous morning routine videos, even just productivity culture. So not now, not only are you productive at work or in your side hustle or something related to, let's say, like money or business, but it's becoming like even your health, even your health routine has to be productive and optimized. And everyone is selling you the perfect routine, the perfect morning 10-step, I don't know what that's gonna get you started and guaranteeing that because of that you'll, I don't know, work better, be better, all of those things. Behavioral scientists have long recognized that humans struggle with decision fatigue. So the more decisions we make throughout the day, the harder subsequent decisions become. And this is a concept explored by researchers like Roy Boemeister. Health shouldn't require hundreds of daily decisions. That's actually doing the opposite effect of what we wanted to do. You know, we want health to be supporting our lives and not acting like a burden. So now, let's let's ask, when did self-care become this other thing that we could fail at? So you when you miss a workout or when you break some sort of streak, when you eat a dessert, you skip your morning meditation if that's something that you do, you miss taking some supplement. So instead of feeling restored, we feel guilty. And that's not what wellness was supposed to be. Now, for example, I talked about breaking a streak. In other episodes, I've also talked about how using some sort of visual aid like a calendar or app to track your progress can actually be motivating sometimes. So there is always a nuance to everything. I am all for having some sort of streak if it helps you and it's something that you look forward to doing that you want to complete your streak. But if you miss a day, I hope it's not the end of the world for you because it's not supposed to be. And this is when we are steering away from a health that supports our lives to a health to a routine or wellness that controls it. So

The Paradox Of Chasing Perfect

SPEAKER_00 5:09

this is where I think I would like to now kind of discuss something known as the paradox of optimization. So, of course, within wellness culture and kind of the what we are seeing online today, there's this idea that we are trying to optimize every single thing: better sleep, better diet, better productivity, better recovery. And ironically, honestly, perfectionism often creates avoidance. So, researchers or research, I should say, by Brene Brown, which this is the person who was popularizing shame and perfectionism, alongside psychological literature showing perfectionism is associated with stress, procrastination, and actually reduced well-being. So, us trying to perfect and optimize and do everything we can to be, I don't know, on paper, this absolute machine can create this sense of like procrastination and anxiety. And it's like you actually just procrastinate doing what actually matters to you and to your health. And honestly, thinking about it, this actually kind of makes sense when think of like a large task that you had to do that you knew was super important, but sometimes you just couldn't get yourself to do it. It was just so overwhelming that it you it kind of fed the procrastination. I don't know about you, but this has happened to me multiple times where I'm just like, oh my god, like I know I have to do this and I'm stressed about it not being completed, but I'm just I'm just gonna do the all these other things instead. And you feel like you replace it by doing other things. For me, it's like cleaning, reorganizing my space. It feels productive, but like it's not getting the task that I need to done. So when we're in this mindset of like not mindset, when we are placed or exposed to this environment of like all of these things that you have to do to be considered healthy, or if not, then are you really taking care of your well-being and all of that stuff? It can be overwhelming, and you end up just procrastinating and making it worse for yourself, especially feeding into this all or nothing mindset. Like, if I don't do every step of this routine, then uh that's it. If I don't do everything, then that's it. I hope you appreciate by now that something that has come up over and over again is balance. You're never going to be at 100% every single day without burning yourself out, without feeling like something's missing, without all of these other negative things that come with that. You need to take it as I would be consistent and do something small every day. If I am able to do the 10-step routine one morning, fantastic. Then that's an amazing morning for me. But what are the basics that I have to do just to get out of the door so that I can do what matters most? What matters to me, what's a priority to me right now.

When Healthy Habits Get Rigid

SPEAKER_00 8:21

I would like to explore a little bit what happens when, for example, healthy habits can become very rigid. And I've used or I explained this term previously, orthorexia. Now it's not an official DSM diagnosis, but researchers increasingly recognize this unhealthy fixation on eating perfectly. And although I've talked about this concept before, I like it in this context because it really shows what happens when on the surface you're you know, you're eating perfectly, quote unquote. You're paying attention to the ingredients, like these are things that technically should be done, if not should, like if you want to be paying attention to these things, like and improve your health, these are things that can help, you know, making sure you're aware of what you're eating, making sure that you are eating from every kind of group and eating in a way that supports your body. But orthorexia takes it a little bit too far, and this is what happens when things become rigid, when we become hard on ourselves, when we focus on this perfectionist idea. And Stephen Bratman's original description and subsequent reviews of orthorexia research kind of show what I'm trying to kind of say here. Most people who care about nutrition don't have orthorexia. I'm not saying if you care about what you eat, you have orthorexia right away. But the idea that this sort of anxiety around food and this very rigid mindset around it can rise when we are focusing on perfection and like oh I am I am being healthy, like wellness. Oh, I don't eat this because it has like this one ingredient and I never eat it, I never touch it, even if I'm like going out to a restaurant, or I'll bring my own food to a restaurant because I don't trust the ingredients that they're putting, like something that's being taken a little bit too far when it no longer becomes enjoyable for you. Instead, it's causing some sort of stress or anxiety.

What Guidelines Actually Ask For

SPEAKER_00 10:38

So, what does the evidence actually say? Well, if we look at physical activity guidelines, I know in Canada it's like about just a minimum of 150 minutes of some sort of physical activity, and this is just like basic bare minimum. Sleep recommendations, we all have heard of seven to nine hours of sleep, nutrition, eat a colorful plate from every type of food, but prioritize your protein and your fruits and your veg. Stress management. We all know about cortisol levels and how they shouldn't be elevated. And let's just notice something here that none of these guidelines actually demand perfection or like an exact quantity. I'm gonna use the food pyramid, or it's not even a pyramid anymore, the food plate in Canada as an example. It used to be you had to have, I don't know, three to four servings of dairy and seven to eight servings of fruit, and it seemed very quantitative. Now it has moved away from that and it's a plate, and they kind of divided the plate and they show you that most of it is some source of like fiber, fruit, veg. There's some carbs on the plate, but you have to also make sure you have some sort of lean protein on the plate, something like that, or even if it's a vegetable protein, or I should say like a vegan protein, then we can see it's a little bit of a more balanced approach, which is something that I appreciate and something that I would encourage all of us to kind of implement in our own lives. If anything, these guidelines sort of encourage consistency, and the recommendations are surprisingly achievable compared with what social media often portrays. A little caveat here, especially when it comes to the physical activity guidelines, this is just like a bare a basic minimum for maintaining health. So maintaining health. This is not talking about improving health or things that we've talked about, for example, improving your VO2 for cardio or getting stronger if you're building muscle in the gym. These are just basic minimums to maintain your health, and I think it's a good starting point if you are someone who is just looking to maintain health or you have very restricted time or you have a lot of responsibilities on your plate. These guidelines are a good place to start. And again, they're called guidelines, not hard rules, and that's the mindset that we should be adopting in our own lives. Something to take away is that this the scientific kind of evidence behind healthy living is actually a lot more forgiving than what the internet portrays. The internet portrays that if you're not doing all of these things, you're not truly healthy. When I don't think that's the case.

The Quiet Power Of Consistency

SPEAKER_00 14:01

What do their habits look like? Like when you guys go out, when you when you talk to them, when they are talking about themselves, about what they do, notice what do you what do you see? What's like an underlying common theme? The underlying common theme, I think if you ask anyone, if you went up to somebody at the gym that you thought maybe looked good, or that you thought they are honestly at a place that I want to be at. I think the underlying thing is about consistency. No matter what life throws at you, you always come back. You come back to the base, to the basics. They're not reinventing the wheel, their workouts probably look the same every workout, and they're just tracking and increasing the weight. They're probably getting their daily step count as much as possible. And if not, they're doing something. They get up every few hours if they're sitting at a desk all day, or something. You'll see that there's this underlying theme of like it's integrated in everything, it's consistent, but it's not overwhelming. It's just part of who they are, it's just part of what they do, and no matter what happens, they know they can they can stick to it.

Building A Good Enough Philosophy

SPEAKER_00 15:15

So now let's shift gears a little bit. Let's build a good enough wellness philosophy. And this good enough wellness philosophy I bring up because good enough is what it is. It's good enough and it's it should allow you to keep showing up every single day. So this good enough philosophy actually encourages flexible habits. The 80-20 thinking, where if you are consistent and on top of it 80% of the time, you have a 20% leeway. Take this with everything. With sleep, if 80% of the time you're reaching your sleep goal, it's okay if a day or two, a few like a week even is a little bit off. In the grand scheme of a year, it's not gonna matter much with your food. If 80% of the time you're eating nutritious food that is supporting you and hitting a specific goal for you, if let's say you are someone who tracks their macros, 20% of the time it's okay if you're out enjoying with family, with friends at an event, at whatever it is. This sort of good enough wellness also encourages self-compassion. You have to be kinder to yourself. It has been shown that people who practice self-compassion are often more, not less, likely to sustain healthy behaviors after setbacks because they respond with curiosity rather than harsh self-criticism. If you're always harsh on yourself, you're going to just dig a deeper hole and be less likely to come back because you're gonna think, well, why was the point anyway? I already messed up, whatever, whatever. I'm done with it. Practicing self-compassion in every single aspect is maybe one of the best things that you can do for yourself. In wellness, outside of wellness, whatever it is, but in the context of leading a healthier and sustainable life, self-compassion is truly it's truly a big tool. Something that can be easily, not easily, sometimes it takes practice and intentionally doing it, but it's something that can be done, and I think something that will really sustain the healthier life that we are all hoping to live.

Ordinary Wellness And Real Life

SPEAKER_00 17:39

So maybe wellness isn't another job to manage. Maybe it's simply the way we care for ourselves while we're busy living our lives. Now the healthiest life probably won't look perfect on Instagram. It'll just look ordinary. Meals shared with people that you love, going on walks because it just feels so good, and sleep because your body needs it. Exercise because it helps you live, not because you have to earn your worth or earn the meal later, or you want to change the way everything about yourself. And honestly, I hope that that's enough. I think it's enough. And I don't want to undermine the fact that it could be difficult to completely shift mindset or to completely separate or remove ourselves from what we see online. When you see something over and over and over again, it really impacts the way you think and how you see certain things. And I'm just here to encourage you to take a step back and to remember that everything you see is not always real. And ordinary life is gonna happen. There will be amazing weeks where you hit every workout, every protein goal, every everything. But there will be weeks where you don't. But just take a look. Okay, what happened that week that I didn't? Oh, did I have so much work that I had to do? That's amazing. Some people are dying to work. Okay, great. Did I not because I was on vacation enjoying my time? That's amazing. You got to experience a new place, a new culture, new foods. Great. Some people have never been on an airplane before or even traveled outside of their town. Just take a look at what you're experiencing and remember that health and well-being and wellness and all of that wonderful stuff doesn't just revolve around sleep, eat, train. That's it, repeat. It includes relationships, family, friends, experiences, culture, connection. Anything new, a new experience where you're staying up past your bedtime and eating random foods that are deep fried and I don't know what. It includes all of those things. You cannot just be a robot all the time. Because we are not. And it will catch up to you and you will feel it, and it's gonna seep into every aspect of your life. Okay, I went on a little bit of a tangent there, but I hope you can appreciate that I don't want wellness to be a full-time job.

Practical Help And Letting It Be Simple

SPEAKER_00 20:16

And I love wellness, okay. I am the person with the aura ring, the fitness tracker, the person sometimes counting macros. If I'm like, let's say trying to lean out before something. That's all me. Someone who has been working out for it's gonna be like nine years now. But that's what it is. The reason I'm able to say, oh yeah, I've been consistent for the past nine years is because I've had months where I was focusing on something else. I've had times where I just was not doing all the things that I told myself I was gonna do. I've had times where yeah, I was like the complete opposite of what you might think of a healthy person. But hey, it's all part of life, and now you can always come back to it and say, okay, I'm better off or I'm ready and let's go. So just take it easy. We don't want it to be overwhelming. Talk to someone who has experience, your healthcare provider, a personal trainer at the gym, a friend that you has the habits that you're looking to implement in your life. Just see what they do, what they suggest, what do they think. Look at people who have busy lives and are still able to lead some sort of some sort of I don't want to say healthy life, but that are able to implement habits that support their health. Talk to them, see what they do, how are they able to do it? And a lot of the time that you'll find is it's not as perfect as you think. They either get help or they just make it happen, you know, something in the living room. If it's a workout there, that's what it is. And that's just how you gotta do it. First, you have to decide that your health is a priority, and then everything else will fall through. Okay, enough mumbling jumbling for this

Final Takeaway And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 22:12

episode. I hope you enjoyed. Take care, and I'll see you on the next one. Bye bye.