How much is enough?
Hey friend,
Two writers I follow (Michael Easter and Mark Manson) landed on the same idea last week from different directions. I think it's worth passing along.
Here's the shape of it. Health sits on an inverted-U curve. Too little, and your body pays. Too much, and your life does.
The first half isn't in question. Going from 3,000 steps a day to 8,000 is tied to roughly half the risk of dying early. Going from no cardio to 150 minutes a week is one of the best things you can do for yourself.
But the curve bends. Past 12,000 steps, the benefits diminish. Past 300 minutes of cardio, you're mostly mental.
Food works the same way. Michael Easter quoted a nutritionist who says if your diet is 80% solid, the other 20% left for what he calls "junky goodness" costs you nothing. It might even keep you eating well longer.
There's a point where the next rep stops giving and starts taking. More and more people are living past this point.
Longevity startups pulled in $8.49 billion last year, up 220%. Bloodwork comes back clean. Training is dialed. And a missed workout or botched meal ruins the day.
Easter wrote about a doctor with millions of followers who melted down on camera because he traveled and missed one of his four daily protein doses. Stressed as all hell that he'd forgotten to eat some beef jerky at 3 p.m.
When a small slip in your routine wrecks your day, the routine isn't serving you anymore. You're serving it.
The bill comes due in two places.
The first is stress. It's one of the real drivers of heart disease, so the optimizing meant to protect you turns into its own threat.
And the second is isolation. A study of half a million people found that regular time with others does about as much for how long you live as exercise.
The longest study on happiness ever run, 85 years at Harvard, keeps landing on the same finding: the people who stay connected live longer and happier.
A therapist Easter talked to gives his clients one question to sort it out.
Do I have it, or does it have me?
The other writer, Mark Manson, made the same point without a single data point. He told a story about a man named Kurt.
Kurt's wife told him to buy a hundred envelopes online so he'd never have to leave the house for one. He went out anyway.
On the walk he met people, saw a few "great-looking babies," gave the fire truck a thumbs up.
He didn't need the envelope. He needed the walk.
Optimization culture sells you on the idea that you're a machine to be tuned. But you're not. You're a human.
And the best parts of being human are the experiences no tracker can reward. The second (or fifth) cup of coffee. The dinner that turns into the whole night. The drink with a friend. The longer, scenic way home. The hike that earns the view.
Health for itself was never the goal. The goal is a capable body that lets you go live with as few limitations as possible. Chase it past the point it serves you, and it starts costing you the very thing it was for.
Do enough to be ready for your life. Then go live it.
Until next time,
Peter Tangel