Health Is Not That Hard – Behavior Change Is
An essay in the New York Times this summer tackled the boom in the health & wellness industry, and it’s obsession with time-consuming “protocols” and expensive “supplements” that imply that health is a luxury. It’s not!
Research has long shown that health and longevity comes down to five fundamental lifestyle behaviors: exercising regularly, eating a nutritious diet, eschewing cigarettes, limiting alcohol consumption and nurturing meaningful relationships.
This stuff is simple, somewhat boring and harder to make money off of than trendy supplements, complex-sounding theories and new gadgets — but it’s what actually works.
There is soooooo much money, time, and ridiculousness surrounding health & wellness in the United States when every single thing that leads to a long, healthy life is free or cheap.
- Exercise regularly – I try to remind myself that when in doubt, walk. Just walk.
- Eat a nutritious diet – I’ve slowly learned that “nutrition” is not numbers – it’s just normal, unprocessed, unpackaged, food that my great-grandparents would recognize. When in doubt, eat more beans from a crockpot, fresh spinach, and whole fruit. These are also usually the cheapest stuff in the grocery store.
- Eschew cigarettes – Yeah, just don’t.
- Limit alcohol – Yeah, it doesn’t take a calculator. This should be very obvious. If you are interested in hangover pills, it’s gone too much.
- Nurture meaningful relationships – Online doesn’t count. Again, it’s free.
The opinion piece had an amazing summary of what The Internet in 2024 classifies as health –
The other day, someone at my gym approached me and lamented that he could spend nearly every waking hour of his life executing the countless viral health and longevity recommendations popularized by internet influencers and podcast hosts, and he’d still feel that he is falling behind.
He was alluding to a complicated and often contradictory menu of “biohacks” (shortcuts for improving our biology, all of which lack scientific rigor) and “protocols” (highly specific regimens for exercise, sleep and nutrition). In this era’s search for eternal youth, there are supplements, green powders, cold plunges, the supposed benefits of low-angle morning sunlight, continuous glucose monitors for non-diabetics, box breathing, the proposed benefits of rapamycin (a drug originally used in organ transplants being adapted for longevity), and countless restrictive diets that range from avoiding seed oils to becoming aware of the “hidden dangers” in fruits and vegetables to shunning nearly everything but meat.
While obsessions with health and longevity have long dogged humanity, this latest version is intensified by an ecosystem in which influencers and podcasters profit from our attention and quest for health by getting sponsorships from supplement companies, sleep trackers and other pseudoscientific wellness products. In 2016 the global supplement market amounted to $135 billion. Today it’s ballooned to $250 billion. That figure is projected to hit nearly $310 billion within the next four years.
That said…health is not hard…but behavior change is.
And we’re still not sure what goes into behavior change. It’s not a willpower or self-control issue. It seems to be more of a choosing our status role models and manipulating what our brains truly want.