When Did Wellness Become So Much Work?
Somewhere between sleep scores, protein targets and morning sunlight, looking after ourselves started to feel suspiciously like another job.
Wellness used to be relatively straightforward.
Eat reasonably well. Exercise sometimes. Drink water. Try to get enough sleep.
Now, a perfectly ordinary Tuesday can apparently require 10,000 steps, 120 grams of protein, eight hours of sleep, electrolytes, supplements, a skincare routine, strength training, morning sunlight and enough water to necessitate knowing the location of every bathroom within a five-mile radius.
None of these things are necessarily bad advice.
It's the sheer amount of them that's becoming exhausting.
We started tracking everything
Modern wellness loves data.
Our watches know how many steps we've taken. Rings analyse how well we've slept. Apps count calories, macros, menstrual cycles, water intake and workouts.
Even rest has metrics.
You can wake up feeling perfectly fine, check your sleep score and discover that apparently you had a terrible night.
There's something useful about understanding our bodies better. But there's also something slightly absurd about needing technology to tell us whether we're tired.
The line between being informed about your health and constantly monitoring it has become increasingly difficult to see.
Every month brings another thing we're apparently doing wrong
Then there's the wellness trend cycle.
One minute we're supposed to wake up at 5am. Then sleep becomes the ultimate status symbol.
HIIT is essential until everyone needs to lower their cortisol.
Coffee is good for you, then terrible on an empty stomach, then acceptable again as long as you've waited an oddly specific amount of time after waking up.
Add cold plunges, magnesium, creatine, gut health, glucose spikes, red-light therapy, lymphatic drainage and whatever TikTok has diagnosed us with this week.
Keeping up requires commitment.
And, increasingly, money.
Feeling good has become expensive
Wellness has also become an aesthetic.
The £150 activewear set. The Pilates membership. The wearable. The supplements lined up neatly beside the blender. The green powder. The recovery treatment.
Looking healthy and looking like someone who prioritises wellness aren't necessarily the same thing.
You don't need a matching workout set to go for a walk.
You definitely don't need a £40 water bottle to drink water.
Yet wellness is now an enormous consumer category, and we're constantly being sold products that promise to make something fundamentally ordinary — taking care of ourselves — more effective.
Maybe we're overcomplicating it
The strange thing is that underneath all the optimisation, most of the basics haven't changed much.
Move regularly. Eat nutritious food most of the time. Sleep enough. Spend time outside. Maintain relationships. Drink water. Don't spend every waking hour stressed.
Not particularly revolutionary.
And perhaps that's why a quieter reaction to extreme wellness culture feels inevitable.
People aren't suddenly going to stop caring about their health. If anything, we're probably more interested in it than ever.
But there is a difference between caring for yourself and constantly trying to improve yourself.
Sometimes you can go for a walk without tracking it.
Sometimes a workout can simply be enjoyable.
Sometimes you can eat dinner without calculating how much protein is on the plate.
And sometimes you can wake up feeling rested without asking your ring for a second opinion.
Maybe wellness was never supposed to take up quite this much of our lives.