The Optimization Treadmill

Supplements, morning routines, and chasing the perfect self

GRWM

I woke up today with a thousand voices in my head. The first voice was nice, it said “Good morning :)”. I said good morning back. The next nine hundred ninety nine were slightly more demanding. Don’t scroll, open the blinds, make your bed, take your probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, go for a walk, stretch, intermittent fast, eat a high protein breakfast, drink a lemon water, stretch, meditate, journal, go to therapy, be grateful, be productive, be useful.

Every day I scroll socials and see tens of beautiful, even-toned influencers walk through their perfectly curated morning routines. Each of them seemingly nailing the delicate balance between green juice, pilates, and skin care steps that alternate between stripping and nourishing their skin barrier. Through years of trial and error,¹ these folks have seemingly figured it out, the special sauce that keeps them hot and healthy.

So much content now directly and indirectly sells cure-alls for every problem and insecurity. Are you a little depressed? Silly sad you, haven’t you ever heard about the gut-brain axis? Take probiotics for a few months and see if you don’t feel better. A little achy in the morning? You know 500mg of turmeric supports joint health, right? Fatigued? Why don’t you try some beef liver supplements, nature’s energy cheat code.

This type of advertising is wildly effective. I myself have tried all the products listed above. Are they working? It’s hard to tell, as nearly all of them come with the convenient caveat that you need to use them consistently for months to notice any meaningful changes. And in the short term, things will probably get worse as your body adjusts.

I am firmly on the optimization treadmill, on a lifelong run chasing some hypothetical “best version” of myself, a version that knows how to make brick chicken and carrot cake at home instead of an impressive but ultimately useless encyclopedic knowledge of career character actors and song lyrics.

I don’t think this mindset is uncommon for someone in their late twenties. I see some people my age who have seemingly found a complete version of themselves; a self with a clear career path, a partner, a pet, maybe even a highly elaborate and cost-prohibitive morning routine. I’m not sure what I’m chasing exactly; some version of myself that comes with no disclaimers or baggage, a version that’s worthy of financial success, a version that’s worthy of being happy and healthy.

I used to wake up at 7:45 after scrolling vine until 2:00, rip a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and head straight to school, making the fifteen minute drive in eight minutes as I always did. Gatorade and Oreo’s at lunch. Chapatis with cinnamon and sugar when I got home. The peak of health and wellness was my mom’s yellow daal she used to make when I was sick. It’s not like I was the happiest kid,² but I didn’t have the same voices telling me to be better all the time. I miss the feeling of being unoptimized.

This path towards optimization feels deterministic in hindsight. Of course years of sitting downstream of the American food system will wreak havoc on one’s gut barrier, of course everything from candles to detergent disrupts one’s endocrine system, of course wearing APC Petit New Standard’s for 90 days straight will cause fertility (and smell) issues,³ of course years of social media use and abuse will fry both dopamine receptors and one’s self-image—the algorithms themselves are optimized to make one want an always intangible concept of more.

Furthermore, our culture’s traditional “solutions” for the ills of modern life have, in my experience, pushed me further down the optimization rabbit hole. In 2018, after a year and a half of severe stomach problems and fits of dizziness, I made appointments with top GI docs and neurologists in NYC and LA. Finally, I thought, some relief is on the way.

These appointments played out in a way I’m sure many readers will find familiar—long wait times and extended intake with some assistant followed by an incredibly brief and unsatisfactory drop-by from the doctor. The GI doctor suggested I start taking an antacid when my stomach flared up. Brother, do you think I have not been housing Tums at a historic rate the last year? And the renowned neurologist subscribed the famous combination of water and exercise.

And they probably weren’t wrong! My issues may not have required legit medical intervention, and I appreciate them not going to town with some modern version of a lobotomy. But how frustrating it was to not have any of my concerns addressed, and to leave the hospital with less information than I came in with. Moments like this shifted me fully into the very dangerous “fuck-it-I’ll-do-it-myself” mode, and started a cycle of self-diagnosing and medicating.

The Treadmill

How I see it is I used to manage my health and wellness at a very doable 3.5 MPH/12.5 incline setting.⁴ My maintenance here was a healthy mix of sugary cereals, home-cooked meals, and like five hours of walking on the mountainous golf courses of Utah. The occasional stretch, the frequent call to a friend. And I’m well aware that my 17-year old body was silently accumulating debt that my 28-year old self would later pay for, but it was a different mindset too.

Back then if I was tired I’d say, “Damn, I had a full day of running around being an absolute mindless dipshit. Of course I’m tired.” Now if I’m tired, despite managing the much more draining and depleting elements of adult life, I’ll say, “I’m fatigued. Maybe I should type ‘fatigue reddit’ into my browser and see what n=1 studies are out there for solving fatigue.” And boom, in a couple days some lightly researched supplement will be added into my routine, another couple MPH on the treadmill. The optimization treadmill stacks supplements, habits, and routines until suddenly, you are sprinting at full tilt to keep up.

Skincare is one domain where the optimization treadmill operates at full tilt. Under the (self-imposed) pressure to chase the white whale of glass skin, I have tried a few techniques: slugging,⁵ a full skincare overhaul courtesy of the chatbot residents at Curology, and multiple years of experimenting with retinol, the supposed holy grail anti-aging skin technology.

Of course, these products all require extended trial and error to see if they actually work for you. Retinol in particular is notorious for making things worse before they get better; but while I easily reached the “purge” phase of the process, I never actually saw benefits. For the immediate future, I’m sticking to drugstore cleanser, Vaseline, and prayer. Maybe the oil in my skin actually has a great reason to be there!

The journey of self-improvement is littered with snake oil remedies marketed as solutions that only create more problems. A couple months ago I wrote about the growing IG-pharma complex and how deceptive advertising practices and easy access to prescription medication through tele-health offer quick fixes and cause lifelong ailments.

This pattern isn’t limited to prescription meds like Viagara and anti-depressants, but also the murky waters of the supplement market. Supplements like 5HTP are marketed as mood enhancers and stress reducers, but come with many of the risks of anti-depressants like spiking serotonin at the expense of dopamine, and according to research, actually spiking cortisol levels. Similarly, long-term ashwagandha use has been linked to feeling emotionally flat and numb.

Not that any of these should be a cure-all, that’s not how the human body works. But supplementation can create negative cycles quite quickly. Okay, I have joint pain so I’ll supplement tumeric, but at high doses this can deplete iron levels, so now I’m taking iron tablets but those upset my stomach, so now I’m on a new probiotic, but it takes 3-4 months to see any results from that, and so on and so on.

The U.S. supplement market is currently worth around 51 billion dollars and shows no signs of slowing down. Seemingly every other week I see some new fad being pushed by influencers and the powers paying them. Last year it was sea moss or some other nonsense, this year it’s something called Colostrum powder. I have absolutely no idea what this is, but it’s all over my feed and is promising to “strengthen [my] skin, lung, and gut barriers, rebuild [my] microbiome, and activate cellular health and performance to revive whole body health.” Pretty compelling pitch.

Conveniently, this market is protected by a couple truths. That the human body is wildly complex and a single supplement or change can neither have effects fully attributed to its usage nor be ruled out as the sole cause. And that, in the short term, the placebo effect is as strong as any neurological process. Any real effects from these treatments take significant time and commitment, and often compound with other lifestyle changes. The more things you stack, the more pressure there is to live optimally from the perspective of diet, drinking, exercise, sleep, etc, to actually get any benefits.

Having a Cup of Tea

I, against my will, recently watched a podcaster in their 40s describe their hyper-optimized morning routine. Among the countless supplements and protocols, there was one part that sounded nice to me: having a cup of tea. When they mentioned tea I thought great, finally some common ground. Having tea really connects us all. But then the guy started to describe his process of having a cup of tea.

First, he very reasonably describes the optimal temperature for brewing green, white, and black tea. I have no issue with this, achieving the best flavor possible by controlling water temp is an honorable goal. He also describes the time needed for the tea to release flavonoids like catechins that are supposedly beneficial to the vascular system, and something called theophylline that helps relax the heart. On the surface, this kind of thinking isn’t problematic. It’s great when the things you enjoy have positive externalities like (presumed) health benefits.

But then things take a turn for the diabolical. The man proceeds to explain how he puts a healthy glob of Kerrygold Irish Butter directly into his Sencha tea before drinking. This is an extension of the biohacking trend pioneered by brands like Bulletproof Coffee—adding butter to coffee or tea supposedly increasing antioxidant absorption, lowers cortisol levels, and controls cravings.

I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, but this behavior is borderline indefensible. Hyper-optimizing having a cup of tea for health benefits is antithetical to what having a cup of tea is really all about—slowing down and enjoying a moment of connection with yourself. My morning tea is sacred to me, and might be the only thing in my life that I’m not trying to make better or optimize. I stare out my kitchen window at the top of the church across the street, a view that used to be unobstructed but now is blocked partially by the hideous grey and brown of a new apartment building,⁶ and I contemplate the unstoppable march of time and my own mortality. This relaxes me!

The things you enjoy have positive externalities you can’t quantify. Sure, my morning cup of tea might release catechins and theophylline and whatever other beneficial nonsense. But that’s not the point! The cup of tea itself is the benefit. Taking the first sip of ginger-lemon and honey while listening to my preferred whiny music of the week is the biggest flex of my day. Orienting life around these intangible positive externalities versus optimized productivity hacks or perceived health benefits makes me more content, less stressed, and actually makes me want to do the shit that’s good for me.

Now every time I see a poor soul on the subway or in the office sipping a Soylent, Huel, or whatever other godless meal replacement on the market,⁷ I can feel our culture marching closer towards a sort of optimization singularity. In this universe, we all wake up at the same time with our circadian rhythms perfectly in sync, take our ten to twelve pills needed to offset the imbalances inflicted by modern life, drink our prescribed smoothies and gruel for meals, and attend the same targeted workout classes to maximize our ability to sit and click-clack at the office all day.

This culture is creating a generation of theoretically optimized but ultimately inflexible people. When I was younger and had no concept of dietary supplements or a skincare routine, I traveled stress-free. Off a diet of lamb vindaloo, 3 AM doner kabob, and vodka Red Bulls, I hardly ever had so much of a headache. Now, I travel with a certified pharmacy of supplements and remedies. I blame my breakouts on everything from the Airbnb having unnatural endocrine disrupting detergent to the lack of a Instagram-approved water filter in the shower. I can’t wait to go home and “reset,” strip my skin of its natural moisture, squeeze out my blackheads, and get back to my beloved products and routines.

In a world where it feels like we have control over so little,⁸ hyper-optimization, self care, and self improvement all fill a void of agency. There is power in controlling what you can control, whether that’s something as simple as making your bed in the morning or as elaborate as a twelve-step skincare routine. But what we are optimizing for might be backwards. Sure, I want to be the healthiest, hottest, most productive version of myself every day. But I also want to optimize for benefits outside of external positive affirmation from my place of work or potential love interests.⁹

Obviously being physically healthy has huge benefits, but it’s equally important to nourish the soul. So along with maximizing my career prospects and health, I want to also maximize time chatting deep shit with the homies, walks in the park, FaceTimes with family, and cups of tea that are a little too hot to hold by the well but can be gripped with two fingers by the handle and hit at the perfect temperature.

Real agency is a cup of tea.

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I want to talk to you!

Email me at clinicallyhandsome@substack.com with any thoughts or suggestions.

1. Brand deals

2. Being 16 is ANGSTY

3. Shout out raw denim culture, to everyone still freezing their denim or swimming in the Pacific to get those sick #fades, we salute you

4. Hot girls know

5. Covering your face in Vaseline before bedtime. I actually swear by this

6. Studios starting at 4k for a spot right next to the highway. Wild!

7. Replacing a meal is crazy, meals are the reward

8. This is true! I control nothing but myself, tbh the inverse sounds like too much responsibility

9. Any woman between 25 and 32 who commutes on the L with a New Yorker tote