After 20 years in the wellness industry, I can brag about two things I’ve never done: I’ve never descended into severely disordered eating and I’ve never suffered through an exercise overuse injury.
Crazy thing to brag about, right? The question is: why is that remarkable? You would think that riding this wellness bandwagon would make me healthier. But it's actually an accomplishment that I haven’t careened over a dieting edge or veered into self destruction. Can I get a t-shirt that says “I Survived the Diet-Fitness Industrial Complex”? Should we make stickers and form a club?
First, I want to be very clear: I do not blame anyone who has struggled with disordered eating or overuse injuries. I have so much respect for folks who followed the diet rules, realized how toxic it was, and blazed a road to recovery. I’ve coached hundreds of students through chronic pain from running, hypermobility from overdoing yoga, and tweaked backs from Crossfit. Of course, injuries are bound to happen but I’ve seen too many folks take exercise too far and end up with chronic conditions. When is enough of a good thing enough?
That’s the magic word: enough. Commercial messaging constantly tells us that we aren’t skinny enough, pretty enough, or young enough. Wellness marketing arrives with triumphant calls for self improvement: Not feeling good enough? There’s a diet, there’s a workout, there’s an over-priced facial cream. (There are even new, dubiously tested diet pills! Hmm… I wonder how this will turn out.) But if we keep buying into not being enough, let's check the receipts… we end up not being enough.
Here’s the tricky part and why I feel like an outlier: feeling good enough is the means, not the end. I could have spent my entire adult life believing that there is something inherently wrong with me, trying to fit the norm with every new diet trend and workout fad. But intuitively, I did something much more radical: I trusted myself from the get-go.
Immersed in the marketing cacophony, contentment is our most important resistance training. Contentment does not mean apathy or resignation, it's actually a lens. It helps us see all the “not-enoughness” and shaming for what it is: more toxic BS. We can exercise contentment and get a good workout. We can care about healthy eating and reject diet culture. We can push ourselves without punishing ourselves.
So, back to this very strange brag (insert hair swoosh). After 2 decades in wellness, I’m still exercising consistently and enthusiastically. I’m still eating lots of veggies, protein, blah, blah, blah. Also, I’m getting older. I’m still kinda chubby and rocking a similar body to my mother and both grandmothers. Every day, I hear that there’s something wrong with me and for $19.95 I could be fixed. The hardest workout I’ve ever done is taking a hard pass on those deals. I use the tools of wellness not because I’m a problem to be fixed but because I have a lineage to celebrate. Who wants to join the “I Survived the Diet-Fitness Industrial Complex” club?
