It fosters guilt, shame, and an unhealthy obsession with food and exercise (often referred to as orthorexia).
Transition from exercising for weight loss to moving for joy and functionality . Activities like yoga, hiking, or dancing can celebrate what your body can do rather than how it looks.
This is the bootcamp approach. If you aren't sore, you didn't work hard enough. If you rest, you are lazy. This mentality ignores the reality of chronic illness, disability, neurodivergence, and simply being tired. It turns movement into punishment.
The most radical act in a world obsessed with optimization is to simply be a human being. Human bodies change. They swell, they shrink, they scar, they wrinkle, they fail, they heal. None of these states are failures.
Let’s look at the standard wellness narrative. It is riddled with landmines for the vulnerable.