I live in Los Angeles, which means I can no longer simply wake up and have a body.
I must optimize it.
Before I have my coffee, my Oura Ring would like to discuss my sleep quality and has opinions on how many steps I took yesterday. Then, while drinking my morning protein shake, a woman with magnificent skin on Reels explains that I’ve been drinking water incorrectly.
By 8 a.m., I have already failed at wellness.
Welcome to Los Angeles, where taking care of yourself has quietly become a full-time job.
We strength train. Pilates. Cold plunge. Sauna. Red light. Track protein. Take creatine. Drink electrolytes. Monitor our sleep. Manage our cortisol. Discuss inflammation with strangers.
We have supplements to help us sleep and other supplements to help us recover from sleeping inadequately.
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Some people now wear continuous glucose monitors despite not having diabetes because apparently it is no longer enough to eat lunch. We must also receive a performance review from lunch.
Don’t worry, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by all this wellness, there’s probably a supplement for that.
California has always been unusually susceptible to the promise that we might become better humans if we just eat, move, breathe or spend correctly.
We enthusiastically offer wellness tourism and the promise of an Erewhon smoothie that will give you skin like Hailey Bieber’s. Los Angeles also takes aging, previously considered a fairly standard consequence of remaining alive, and turns longevity into an industry involving diagnostics, supplements, biotech and enough data to make your annual physical feel like a biology final at USC.
Now we’ve entered a fascinating new phase.
Wellness isn’t merely something we do.
It’s where we hang out.
Los Angeles has run clubs followed by yoga and sound baths. Wellness socials combine workouts with recovery treatments and mingling. There are sober brunches, breathwork circles and cold-plunge parties where apparently you can meet new people while watching them shiver in a tub of freezing water.
I recently received an Instagram invitation to a singles meetup in a sauna.
A sauna.
Dating in Los Angeles is apparently no longer difficult enough. Now I am expected to meet a potential romantic partner while sweating profusely in a small wooden room.
We have somehow reinvented the bar, except everyone has visible abdominal muscles and the cocktail is electrolytes.
Jealous? This particular strain of California has begun escaping containment. Los Angeles-born wellness gatherings –– involving matcha, fitness and alcohol-free socializing –– have expanded to other cities, inspiring one reporter to recently document the “Santa Monification” of New York.
You’re welcome, America.
Soon you’ll all be discussing your nervous systems before noon.
The weird thing is, I can’t even mock this culture from a safe distance, because I am part of the problem.
I lift weights. I do Pilates. I use a red-light mask. There are enough supplements on my kitchen counter to make me look like I’m conducting a small clinical trial.
I know my sleep score.
Nobody should know their sleep score.
So I have begun experimenting with a radical new wellness practice: enjoying myself.
I started incorporating Dr Pepper Cherry Zero into my life. I eat Nerds gummy clusters in the evening. Sometimes I consume things without first determining their protein content or potential impact on my cortisol.
An extraordinary thing happened.
I did not explode.
Well, not literally, at least.
My wellness tracker may have some concerns, but my body remained intact. My life continued, and I began to wonder whether the most rebellious thing a person can do in Los Angeles is occasionally consume something that has absolutely no prospect of improving them.
There are real benefits buried inside all this madness. Strength training is good for us. Sleep and managing our stress matter. Drinking less alcohol is hardly civilization’s worst development.
Social wellness may be filling a genuine need: people are lonely, and running with other humans is probably healthier than spending another evening staring into a phone.
The problem isn’t wellness.
It’s the moment wellness becomes another arena in which we can fail.
If I need to lift heavy things, meditate, hit my protein goal, get 10,000 steps, regulate my nervous system, optimize my gut microbiome, cold plunge, take my supplements and somehow obtain nine hours of restorative sleep, I am going to need wellness to start providing dental insurance.
Self-care was supposed to make life feel better.
It was not supposed to become life.
So I’m proposing a radical new California wellness trend.
Do something because you enjoy it.
Take a walk without tracking it.
Eat lunch without asking what it did to your glucose.
Go to dinner with friends and don’t discuss cortisol.
Sleep without requesting a quarterly report from your wrist.
Drink the Dr Pepper.
Eat the gummy clusters.
If somebody invites you to a singles meetup in a sauna?
Go.
You might meet someone interesting.
Then take them out for a basket of hot fries and a cocktail.
Mary Kay Holmes is a writer covering LA culture, relationships and the increasingly absurd business of being a person.
The post How LA puts the crazy in today’s top wellness crazes appeared first on New York Post.
