I started my career in health and wellness around 2010, when I worked at Aetna.
At the time, high-deductible health plans and consumer-driven health plans were becoming a major part of the healthcare conversation. I went through intensive training that taught us why shifting more costs to consumers could be a good thing.
The theory was that people would become more informed healthcare consumers once they had greater financial responsibility. They would research their options, compare costs and make smarter decisions.
I drank the Kool-Aid.
Experience has since taught me to see that promise differently. Giving someone a larger share of the cost does not automatically give them the knowledge, time or power to navigate an incredibly complicated healthcare system.
Around the same time, health plans were also talking heavily about wellness.
The logic sounded completely reasonable. A healthier population would have fewer chronic conditions. Fewer chronic conditions would lead to lower healthcare costs. The CDC identifies smoking, poor nutrition, physical inactivity and excessive alcohol use as major risk factors behind many preventable chronic diseases.
The basic instructions seemed simple enough. Drink more water. Eat less. Move your body regularly. Get enough sleep. Manage your stress.
Most people already know these things.
Somewhere along the way, wellness became a list that never stopped growing.
We started tracking calories, steps, macros, sleep scores and heart rate variability. We learned about cortisol, inflammation, blood sugar, hormones and gut health. We added supplements, wearables, infrared saunas, cold plunges, red-light therapy and increasingly elaborate morning routines.
Every practice arrived with its own protocol. Every protocol came with another promise.
Wellness became another arena for achievement.
I responded exactly as the culture had trained me to respond. I kept doing more, searching more and trying harder. I believed the next treatment or piece of information might finally make everything click.
Many of those practices helped me. They also created another question that followed me everywhere: Why did taking care of myself have to feel so difficult?
The pursuit of wellness had become another job. It required constant research, planning, purchasing, measuring and evaluating. Every choice carried the possibility that I was doing something wrong.
Was I drinking enough water?
Was I eating at the right time?
Was I sleeping deeply enough?
Was my workout supporting my hormones?
Was my nervous system regulated?
Was I taking the right supplements?
Even rest became something to optimize.
The wellness industry has created an endless stream of information without giving people a clear way to decide what deserves their attention. Every week brings another expert, method or ingredient that claims to explain why we feel tired, anxious or disconnected from our bodies.
The result is a strange kind of paralysis. We have access to more health information than any generation before us. Many of us still feel completely overwhelmed by the responsibility of figuring out what to do with it.
The structure underneath this should feel familiar. Healthcare consumerism placed more financial responsibility on the individual. Modern wellness culture has placed an enormous amount of physical and emotional responsibility there too.
You are expected to research everything. You are expected to interpret conflicting information. You are expected to afford the right food, products, practitioners and treatments. You are also expected to maintain these practices while working, caring for other people and managing the ordinary demands of life.
Personal behavior has a real influence on health. Our working conditions, income, environment, stress levels and access to care shape our health as well. Any honest conversation about wellness has to make room for all of those realities.
Health should feel integrated into the structure of our lives. It should help us move through the day with greater energy, clarity and connection to ourselves. A wellness practice should earn its place by making life feel more sustainable.
That standard has changed the questions I ask.
Does this practice help me feel better in my body?
Can I maintain it within my actual life?
Does it give me energy?
Does it support the way I want to live?
Those questions have helped me step away from wellness as a performance. They have brought me closer to something simpler and far more useful: learning how to live well.