Stop Optimizing Everything and Simplify Your Approach to Wellness
Written by Josh Grimm, Fitness and Mindfulness Coach
Josh Grimm is an industry-leading fitness and mindfulness coach. He is the founder of FITNUT, based in New York City, offering in-person and online coaching, global wellness retreats, podcasts, and seminars.
We have more information about health and fitness than at any other point in history, yet somehow many people feel more confused about their wellness than ever. We track our sleep, steps, heart rate, calories, macros, recovery scores, glucose, stress, supplements, hydration, workouts, and sometimes even the temperature of the room we sleep in. We are constantly being introduced to a new protocol, a better supplement stack, a smarter wearable, or a training method promising to finally unlock the results we have been chasing. Somewhere along the way, wellness stopped being something we practiced and became something we constantly analyzed.
I work in fitness and wellness, so I understand the appeal of optimization. I like information. I believe in being intentional about how we train, eat, recover, and take care of ourselves. There is tremendous value in understanding your body and using the tools available to improve your health. But I have also started to recognize something in myself and in the people I coach: there comes a point when trying to optimize everything actually makes it harder to stay consistent with anything.
The fundamentals of wellness have not suddenly stopped working. Our attention has simply been pulled away from them.
Wellness becomes another source of stress
There is a strange contradiction happening in wellness. Many of the tools designed to help us feel healthier can eventually make us feel like we are constantly falling short.
Your watch tells you that you did not sleep well enough. Your recovery score tells you that your body is not ready. Your nutrition app tells you that your macros were slightly off. Social media tells you that you should be taking a supplement you had never heard of two weeks ago. Someone else tells you that you are training at the wrong time of day, eating carbohydrates at the wrong time, recovering incorrectly, or missing some critical protocol.
Suddenly, taking care of yourself begins to feel like another full-time job. There is a difference between awareness and obsession.
You can know that you slept poorly without allowing a wearable to convince you that the entire day is lost. You can understand your nutrition without weighing every ingredient. You can track your workouts without believing every session has to produce a personal record. You can pay attention to recovery by creating habits.
The goal of wellness should ultimately be to help you live better, not to make you spend every waking hour thinking about the opportunities in your day.
The basics are still the basics
After years of coaching, I keep returning to the same conclusion: most people do not need more information. They need stronger execution of the basics.
Move your body consistently. Strength train. Walk. Eat mostly nutrient-dense foods. Get enough protein. Drink water. Sleep. Manage your stress. Give your body time to recover. Build relationships that support you. Create routines you can maintain.
If something is complicated, customized, tracked, measured, and optimized, we assume it must be more effective. But the most sophisticated program in the world is useless if you cannot maintain it. A simple program performed consistently will almost always take you further than a perfect program you abandon after three weeks.
This connects directly to something I talk about often with my clients: systems. Your health should not require you to reinvent your life every Monday morning. A strong wellness system reduces the number of decisions you have to make. You know when you train, you have a general structure for how you eat, and you know what helps you recover. Instead of constantly asking, “What should I do next?” you have a foundation you can return to.
Stop changing the program
One of the most common patterns I see in fitness is constant program hopping. Someone begins a strength program, but two weeks later, they see a new workout online and start questioning what they are doing. Then they hear about a different training split. Then a friend starts another program and gets results. Soon, they have changed their workouts four times without giving any of them enough time to work.
The same thing happens with nutrition. Low carb becomes fasting. Fasting becomes macro tracking. Macro tracking becomes intuitive eating. Then a new supplement enters the picture. The individual is constantly doing something, yet rarely stays with anything long enough to understand whether it actually works for them.
There is tremendous value in repetition. Your body does not need to be constantly surprised. It needs consistency over a long enough period of time to adapt.
Your wearable does not know you better than you do
Wearables can provide useful information about movement, sleep, heart rate, recovery, and other patterns. One of the skills I want my clients to develop is the ability to understand how they actually feel. Are you tired? Are you hungry? Are you sore? Are you stressed? Do you feel strong today? Does your body need movement or recovery?
We should be using technology to strengthen our awareness, not letting it dictate our days.
Supplements should supplement
The supplement industry may be one of the clearest examples of how complicated wellness has become. There is seemingly a powder, capsule, drink, or gummy for everything. Some supplements can certainly have a legitimate place within an individual’s nutrition and health, but the word itself tells us what their role should be: supplemental.
A supplement should not replace the daily intake your lifestyle requires. If your sleep is inconsistent, your nutrition lacks structure, you barely move, your stress is unmanaged, and your workouts happen sporadically, adding another supplement is unlikely to solve the larger problem. Before asking what else you can add, ask whether you are consistently doing what already matters.
Build a minimum effective wellness system
If your current approach to health feels overwhelming, I would encourage you to pare it down. Ask yourself what your minimum wellness system looks like, not what it would look like in a version of your life where you have unlimited time, energy, and motivation. What are the few practices that make you feel strong, grounded, and healthy?
For many people, the answer may be surprisingly simple: strength training several times each week, walking every day, eating enough protein, staying hydrated, maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, and creating some space to mentally decompress. Once your foundation is strong, additional tools can become useful.
Build a wellness system you can actually sustain
If you are tired of starting over, constantly changing programs, or feeling overwhelmed by everything you think you should be doing, simplify the process. A strong fitness and wellness plan should give your life structure without taking it over. Working with a coach can help you identify what actually matters for your goals, remove what does not, and build a training and wellness system you can maintain long enough to see meaningful results.
Josh Grimm, Fitness and Mindfulness Coach
Josh Grimm offers a unique combination of fitness and mindfulness coaching through his brand, FITNUT, which he started in 2014 after spending time in Southeast Asia and then returning home to New York City. His holistic approach curates physical and mental fitness training through one-on-one coaching, an online multi-use platform, podcasts, seminars, and global wellness retreats, bringing together a community that wants to live their ideal mindset through optimal physical and mental health.
