We know that looking after our mental and physical health is important, but can we take this too far?
Recently there’s been a growing focus on health optimisation anxiety, where we worry excessively if we are doing the right things, in the right order, to maximise our health and wellness. We then might notice ourselves becoming self-critical and irritable when life inevitably happens and our usual habits are interrupted.
Optimisation offers us the (false) promise of a sense of control and agency if we follow the rules and do things ‘perfectly’. It makes sense then that people with a history of anxiety, perfectionism and disordered eating are particularly suspectable to health optimisation anxiety (and I also suspect there may be a cross over with health optimisation and neurodivergence). At its worse this can spiral into orthorexia, where we have a rigid obsession with healthy eating. If you have history in the areas above, I’d encourage you to keep checking in if you’ve crossed the line from caring about your health to becoming fixated on protocols to an unhealthy extent.
My personal experience
As someone whose career is in the sector of health and wellness and who loves plans, learning, and trying new things; achieving balance around health optimisation has been difficult at times.
Whilst I’ve experienced benefits from education around health and experimenting with new protocols, I’ve also experienced becoming stressed and preoccupied with perfection in this area.
Here are some things I’ve learnt (and am learning) about managing health optimisation anxiety and the joy of letting go:
Perfection is a myth
Look, just because it sucks, doesn’t mean it’s not true. Perfection is impossible and trying to achieve it will just make you stressed out and miserable. Is your morning routine/diet/supplement stack/fitness level “good enough”? If not, how will you know when it is? Are there specific health markers you are looking to achieve? If you’re not where you want to be, how can you be compassionate with yourself and pace things sustainably as you make changes?
Similarly, when do you know enough?
Recently, when listening to health and wellness podcasts, I realised I’d reached a point where I basically knew what they were going to say (essentially, some variation on: eat nutritious foods, minimise ultra processed foods, move regularly – with a balance of cardio, strength, mobility and high-intensity work, use light to reinforce circadian rhythms, balance hormones, minimise stress, and connect with other humans). Listening to arguments about the health benefits and risks of almonds just added noise and stress, which took me away from actually doing the things I needed to do.
Be mindful of how you treat yourself when things don’t go to plan
A helpful area to keep an eye on is how you react when you’re not able to follow your usual schedule or meet your goals. If your reaction crosses from mild disappointment to anxiety and self-criticism, then it might be a sign that you’re holding the reigns of health optimisation too tightly. Following the 80/20 guidelines might be helpful here, where you aim to do the ‘right things’ 80% of the time and leave yourself 20% of the time for pizza with friends and a late night at the Phoebe Bridgers gig.
Focus on the big rocks
Trying to do everything, every day is very stressful (and take this one from someone who knows!). Having an idea of what my non-negotiables are vs what it’s nice to do if I have time, has been helpful in avoiding the ‘trying to do everything and feeling stressed about it’ trap. Some days are glorious and you’ve got the time, energy and sunshine to do all the things. These days seem to be few and far between, sadly, so you also need a bare bones plan of non-negotiables, or ‘big rocks’ for the times when things are busy, your mental health is in the gutter, or you’re fighting off a cold (or even worse, all three!).
What can you let go of
On the flip side of identifying your big rocks, are there some interventions that aren’t working for you? Or that you hate with the very core of your being (and the health benefits from them are not outweighing the positives)? As long as it’s not a medical necessity, it’s ok to try something, get benefits from it and then move on. It’s also ok to try something, find it’s helpful in one season of your life and then not in another. Experience the life-changing benefits of giving up on things that aren’t working.
Take care with gadgets
You don’t have to throw away your wearable, but it can be another area where it’s useful to check in. Is the way you’re using it is helpful or adding to your sense of anxiety? Do you listen more to what your watch says about your sleep score and HRV than your own interoception and feeling of yourself and how you’re doing? I now deliberately check in with how I feel in myself before I check my stats (another part of trying not to outsource my thinking to tech/AI). Again, if you notice feeling anxiety about how living your life might impact your score, it might be time to start re-evaluating your relationship to your wellness technology.
Community, social connection and meaning are consistently under-rated
The importance and value of community, social connection and meaning are frequently over- looked in longevity circles, partially because they are harder to monetise, but also because they can be more challenging problems to solve. But loneliness and social isolation can be as damaging for our health as smoking. An unhealthy focus on health optimisation has the potential to isolate us even further, particularly if we consistently prioritise meeting our health goals over seeing our friends. Unless your friends are enabling particularly unhealthy behaviours, then this logic is likely to be inverted. Which brings me to…
What are we optimising for?
I kept this one until the end because I think it’s the most important! When you think about your wellness protocol, it’s important to keep checking in with why you’re doing all this in the first place (or as GMB say ‘keep the goal the goal’). What will you be doing with the extra years, energy or health it (hopefully) brings you?
Is it spending quality time with your family, making or enjoying art, helping others or your community? Does your wellness routine allow you the time to do these things? If not, it’s definitely time to reassess. This doesn’t mean you have to throw it all out, start partying until 4am and never exercise. Approaching things with a spirit of balance can help us make sure we’re not chasing the wrong things and that we don’t end up with the perfect wellness protocol at the expense of our life. If you’d like to explore your health optimisation anxiety further, then therapy can be helpful. Get in touch to book a free 20-minute initial meeting to see if we’d be a good fit to work together.
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