Last night my dinner was a single strip of leftover chicken katsu, consumed cold, while I stood in the glow of the open fridge. And for dessert: a bowl of fuchsia fruit-flavored cereal called Cheetah Chomps, which I ate in bed. I have the health habits of a can’t-be-bothered college kid, but my Instagram feed tells a different story.
I follow Jessamyn Stanley for all the body-positive yoga my heart can handle. I watch Kayla Itsines foam-roll her thighs on a loop. I’m rapt whenever I see tarot cards and crystals in my feed (what does the new moon mean for my emotional state and menstrual cycle?). But I almost never put any of it into practice. As a health editor and writer, I should believe “wellness is life,” as they say. Instead I lurk around the periphery, watching, following, rarely participating.
I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. Wellness is a $3.7 trillion industry and growing, according to Global Wellness Institute data from 2015 (the most recent available). Clearly, plenty of people are buying in, and that includes me. This spring, for example, I signed up for ClassPass and gleefully swiped around the app to see innumerable exercise possibilities stretching out before me. Then I never used a single credit. (See also the two bottles of essential oils I purchased for I’m not sure what reason, which hang out in my shower.)
Data suggests many of you are the same: The numbers of people saving “easy” and “low-key” workouts on Pinterest are up 155 and 83 percent, respectively, since last year. And Google searches for Bikram yoga (the hot kind) peaked in January 2012 and have been on the decline ever since, while searches for Yin yoga (which is essentially instructor-facilitated lying down) hit an all-time high in January 2018 and have kept rising. Meanwhile, Itsines has 9.6 million Instagram followers, more than the populations of Houston, Los Angeles, and Chicago combined. Don’t tell me there isn’t at least a Delaware-sized faction who are there only to check out her cute gym clothes. Plenty of us are here for the inspo but not so much for the work.
Recently my health voyeurism—uh, my job—took me to a breakfast with actress Kate Walsh, where she explained that one in three Americans her age don’t get enough protein. While I related to her saying, “Sometimes dinner is truffle fries and mayo,” I didn’t alter my diet. Still, I’ll happily lose an hour looking at ways to layer flax and chia in Weck jars, even though I can’t say I’ve ever attempted to eat such a thing. (Have you? Be honest.)
It’s like I get a contact high from being wellness adjacent but can’t quite tolerate the real thing. I often say (to no one in particular) that I really have been meaning to work out—I’m just so busy. This week I was invited to try The Class by Taryn Toomey, which I’ve heard is a transcendental cardio experience, with Chanel skin care in the bathrooms. Before committing, I asked Toomey how to get over my block. “You always have a choice,” she told me via email. “If you would like to procrastinate in your own self-development and self-realization, you have a choice to do that. Sometimes it feels like tough love, but you have to use motivation and just do it…. Just begin.” And she’s right. I guess I could look at a class list to start. But first I think I’ll grab a yoga mat and see how lying down works out.
Laura Norkin is a health editor and journalist in Brooklyn.
This story appeared in the August 2018 issue of Glamour. Illustration by Dennis Eriksson.
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