I Think We've Made Health Stressful

Read time: 4 minutes

Something scary as f*ck happened to me this morning!

I was on my usual morning walk with Bella. She had just done her business on the ground. I picked it up (with a poop bag, of course). The lead dropped out of my hand. She took two steps forward and was off the curb and onto a very busy road. Without even looking, I ran straight after her, lifted her by her scruff with one hand, and jumped back off the road.

I'd say this all happened in less than 2-3 seconds!

When I looked back onto the road, there was a taxi stopped maybe 10 feet from where we were and a bus behind it. Thankfully, they stopped in time 🙏🏻

The reason I'm telling you this story?

1. I wanted to hook you in so you'd keep reading the rest of this newsletter, plus I wanted to get it out of my system ha.
2. I didn't think twice about jumping into the road and grabbing her. My instincts took over, and I was just a passenger.

Oh, and talking of natural instincts, that's something that is getting lost on far too many people these days when it comes to their health and fitness.

And that's exactly where this week's newsletter is going.

I hope you appreciate how expertly I weaved that story into my introduction 😂

Right, let's get stuck into it...

Here's something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

Wellness used to be simple.

Sleep

Eat well

Get outside

Move your body

Manage your stress

Don't drink too much

Spend time with people you love

That was it. That was the whole game, and it was bloody glorious in all it's simplicty.

Somewhere in the last five years, it stopped being that.

Now wellness is a bloody 47-point optimisation problem.

You've got to track your HRV, monitor your glucose, wear a ring, or strap, or a watch, or both if you're like me, check your biological age, optimise your peptide stack, cold plunge in the morning, red light therapy in the evening, get your VO2 max tested, eat 30 different plants per week, hit your zone-2 minutes, time your protein intake, time your caffeine intake, time your sunlight exposure.

Jesus christ almighty, I'm tired just writing it! 😂

And looking around, I'm not the only one.

The exhaustion is everywhere

I've been coaching for over a decade, and in the last year or two, I've noticed something shift in a big way.

Clients are coming to me not because they want to be healthier, but because they want permission to do less.

They're not unfit. They're not lazy. They're not under-informed.

They're fecking overwhelmed! And I don't blame them one single bit.

They've got three different apps tracking three different metrics.

They've got a supplement shelf that looks like a pharmacy.

They've got a workout split designed by someone on Instagram, a nutrition plan from a podcast, and a sleep protocol from a Stanford neuroscientist.

And they're still not happy or seeing the results they crave so badly.

And do you know why?

Because somewhere along the way, health stopped being a state and became another job in a long list of jobs they've already got.

Business owner. Career person. Parent. Husband. Wife. Partner. Uncle. Aunt. Grandparent. Friend. Mentor. Investor. Dog parent. Soccer mom. Girl dad.

Then throw in things such as GLP-1, peptides, TRT, countless new supplements, and more extreme diets,

And can you really blame anyone for losing their sh*t these days when it comes to their health?

Hell no!

The backlash is starting

The Global Wellness Summit, one of the biggest industry forecasters in the space, named "The Over-Optimisation Backlash" as one of the defining trends of 2026 (1).

Their framing was sharp:

The promise of wellness was that it would make us feel good.

Instead, for a lot of people, it's made them feel like they're failing every day.

You wake up with an 44% recovery score, and it ruins your morning.

You hit 9,000 steps instead of 10,000 and feel guilty.

You miss one workout and the whole week feels like a write-off.

You eat a slice of birthday cake and immediately calculate when you can fast to "earn it back."

That's not health. That's a low-grade eating disorder dressed up in tight leggings 😂

What I think actually happened

The wellness industry sells you problems. It has to. That's the business model.

If you feel good, you don't buy anything.

So every new device, app, supplement, and protocol needs to invent a new thing for you to be worried about.

A new metric to fall short on.

A new optimisation you haven't tried yet.

For a while, this was useful, and it got people paying attention to things that matter.

Sleep, recovery, blood sugar, muscle mass, movement habits, etc.

But somewhere it crossed a line.

What used to be empowerment became surveillance.

What used to be motivation became anxiety.

What used to be a tool became a tyrant.

The Whoopl, which I absolutely love and still do to this day, went from giving you information to dictating your day.

The Oura went from showing you sleep patterns to making you scared of going to your bed 😂

The glucose monitor went from a useful diagnostic to a reason to feel bad about a piece of white bread.

None of these tools are bad on their own, but somewhere we lost the damn plot, and it isn't slowing down any time soon.

What I'm actually doing now

Let me be clear about something.

I'm not anti-data. Far from it.

I track. I measure. I pay attention to my sleep, my training, my recovery, my nutrition.

I think data is one of the most powerful tools we have when it comes to our health, and I genuinely believe everyone can benefit from it.

But there's an important part that most people miss.

➡ Data is supposed to inform you, NOT run you.

The point of tracking your sleep isn't to wake up and let an 62% recovery score dictate your mood.

It's to notice patterns over time, that you sleep worse when you drink, that your HRV drops when you're stressed, that your energy is better when you train in the morning.

That's useful. That's empowering.

What's not useful is handing your autonomy over to a device and letting it tell you how to feel.

That's not optimisation. That's outsourcing, and downright strange when you think about it from a biological perspective.

I want as much data as possible, but I want to be the one making the decisions.

Not the ring. Not the app. Not the algorithm.

People were extraordinarily healthy long before any of this existed.

Forty years ago, no one had a glucose monitor, a sleep tracker, or a recovery score.

They moved their bodies, ate real food, slept enough, spent time with people they loved, and managed their stress.

And many of them lived longer, leaner, sharper lives than the average tracked, scored, supplemented person today.

If they could do it without the tech, you can too.

The tech is a bonus. Not a requirement.

So please use the data, just make sure that it doesn't use you.

Ain't that cheesy 😂

What you might want to consider

If any of this is striking a chord with you, my advice is simple.

Get clear on what actually moves the needle for you.

For most people, it's the same handful of things.

Training consistently.

Eating real food with enough protein and fibre.

Sleeping properly.

Moving throughout the day.

Spending time with people who matter.

Managing your stress.

That's the foundation. That's been the foundation for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Track those things if it helps you. Use the data to understand your patterns, spot the trends, and make better decisions.

That's what it's there for, but you also need to check in with yourself.

If your recovery score is starting to dictate your mood, that's a problem.

If you're afraid to go to bed because of what your ring might say in the morning, that's a real problem.

If you're skipping social occasions because they might cost you points on an app, that's a problem.

The data is meant to serve you, but the moment you start serving the data, the relationship has flipped, and you're being controlled by an app.

Like, don't get me wrong, it will happen eventually as I believe AI will take over in the near future and take us as their slaves 😂 But that's not for a while... I hope 👀

Move. Eat. Sleep. Connect. Rest.

That's still most of the game.

Everything else is there to support those things, not replace them

Right, that's us for this week.

I hope the message you've taken away from this is that tech is great, but at the end of the day, we are organic beings, and we weren't created to be hooked up to tech 24/7; we also need some autonomy.

Ok, that's me until next week.

Have a healthy and blessed one.

Catch you next time,

Mark ✌️

Quote for the day

I really like this one on gratitude. How we perceive things makes the world of difference. You can either decide to see the bad in things or the good, with the latter leading to a much more fulfilling and happier life.

Mark Gray

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Reference:
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1. Global Wellness Summit. (2026). "The Future of Wellness 2026 Trends: The Over-Optimization Backlash." Retrieved from https://www.globalwellnesssummit.com/2026trends/​

Disclaimer: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any guidance related to training, nutrition, supplementation, or lifestyle is general in nature and not a substitute for personalised medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your health routine.