I’ve Written Over 100 Health and Wellness Articles and This is the One Thing You Should Know
It’s probably not what you think it is.
As a Freelance Writer, I’ve penned articles in the Health and Wellness space - off and on - for the last 10 years. I’ve covered topics from Mindful Social Media to Yoga, Nutrition, and Metabolic Health (and many more, but you get the point). That means reading thousands of other health and wellness articles for research and sorting through scientific (and some not-so-scientific) studies that are often cited in such online posts.
As I’m writing this, I got an email from a popular wellness magazine with their latest headlines: This is How Much Walking You Need to Do to Reduce Chronic Inflammation, The Oura Ring is On Sale (are we writing actual articles as ads now?), The Benefits of Bone Broth, and Is It Good or Bad to Exercise Before Bed?
But I’ve already read 25,497 articles telling me exactly how many steps I should be taking each day - based on my height and weight and age and what I had for breakfast three days ago.
Then there was the article I read last week about too much walking causing inflammation in my knees after a certain age. Every influencer swears by bone broth. Except those who swear it’s bad for you. And everyone has an opinion about when the best time to workout is (5am is the best but also, so is the afternoon and 6:38pm).
And in case you were wondering, they offer an Oura ring on the “affordable end of the scale” at $350. For only a few hundred bucks, you can track even more data to obsess over and guarantee you’ll never truly understand what exactly you should be doing to be healthy (and don’t get me started on how many different definitions there even are of “healthy”).
So after all the reading, writing, and research, what is the one thing you should know?
You should know this: there is no silver bullet.
There is no one way of being that will magically make you a perfectly healthy, happy, glowing human being. There is no perfect morning routine or exact number of steps or one single cure-all for whatever is ailing you today, tomorrow, and for all eternity.
I can hear your grumbling. “Wow, Amy, that’s a real downer. We came here to find the magical one thing you found in all your reporting that we should be doing now.”
Full disclosure: I intentionally made the title a bit click-baity. I know what you’re looking for because I’ve spent a large part of my adult life looking for it, too. We all just want to know exactly how to be healthy.
These days we have access to so much information, too much maybe. Between the online articles and social media influencers, it can be overwhelming. It can be hard to cut through the noise and figure out what we’re supposed to have for dinner this evening that won’t cause inflammation or ruin our sleep or give us wrinkles.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater though.
It’s easy enough to throw your hands up and say F*&%$ it - and immediately drive to Taco Bell for that Chalupa Supreme you’ve been craving. (Actually, those are really good and you should go get one.)
The truth is, there is a lot of good information out there that can help you make informed decisions about your health and - let me say this loudly - YOU SHOULD BASE YOUR DECISIONS ON FACTS and maybe not just on what that popular TikTok’er said yesterday.
But at the end of the day, it is your health, and you are the expert on you.
Maybe 5am workouts don’t work out for you (see what I did there?) because you have little kids who don’t let you sleep at night. Or maybe you just don’t like 5am as a general rule. So pick a time that is less lame and fit it in when you can. Because even I know that you should take a break from Netflix every four or five hours to move your body.
It’s quite possible that you can’t imagine a life without bacon even though it’s been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen, so you have yourself a nice little BLT sando every third Thursday of the month because happiness is important to your health, too.
Look, there is no shortage of articles offering tips and tricks and the quickest way to this and that - we’ve established that. But don’t ever think that just because someone is sharing information using their authoritative voice (like the one my husband uses with pets and sometimes our kids when he really wants them to know he’s serious), that it means you have to take it as the voice of god telling you what your next move should be.
Information - in its purest form - has no moral compass. It simply exists for you to consider. Use your critical thinking skills. Place it in the context of your life and see what it looks like. How does it fit? How does it feel? Does it help you get you closer to where you want to be?
You are allowed to say, “That doesn’t work for me right now,” without it being a judgement on someone else. What works for one person might not work for another. And that’s okay.
It’s also more than okay to live in the grey. When my mom had open heart surgery, I went down quite a rabbit hole trying to prevent myself from ending up on the operating table. (And because it’s what I do, I wrote about it here.) My fear drove me to be quite rigid with myself, despite knowing stress was a huge culprit. I was determined to go fully vegan. After all, there were hundreds of stories about people cleaning up their heart health by going plant based (my own brother being one of them).
I couldn’t really keep up with that though, partly because I hated having to make multiple options at every meal time. But instead of dismissing it altogether, I now eat primarily plant based and include meat and dairy products in small moderation (every now and then in bigger moderation, like going to Five Guys for a double patty burger last Friday night).
That might seem confusing for people who want to put a label on it and figure out exactly what I’m doing. But this middle ground works for me and it’s not about what anyone else thinks.
Health and wellness is not one-size-fits-all. Wade through all the chatter, take what works for you, and feel free to ditch the rest. I won’t judge you for spending $350 on Taco Bell instead of a new Oura ring (I also wouldn’t judge you for splurging on the $500 Rose Gold Oura ring, cause she cute). You do you, boo.
Related reading: I wrote this essay - The Question That Taught Me To Love My Body - on Huffpost almost 9 years ago and it’s still true today.