Jumping from one health trend to the next and not seeing results?

The start of a new year brings with it pressure to make resolutions to improve ourselves in some shape or form. Wellness influencers flood our social media feeds with the latest trends and advice, with the expectation that we need to spend money to achieve wellness.

Toronto Metropolitan University’s Colleen Derkatch, a professor of rhetoric in the Department of English and author of the new book, Why Wellness Sells (external link) , tells us to take the pressure off, and offers advice for those who seek to live well without the fads.

In her book, Derkatch calls into question how wellness trends and natural health products tie self-care to consumerism, while exploring wellness solutions that better serve people.

TorontoMet Today interviewed Derkatch about wellness trends and how best to approach January resolutions:

What is so powerful about the idea that we need to commit to a “new” or “better” version of ourselves at the start of a new year, and how can that be unhealthy to some degree?

Life can get quite busy, stressful, and sometimes even overwhelming for university students, faculty and staff, so I think it’s only natural to want to clean the slate and begin fresh at the start of a new calendar year. Additionally, January follows a month of social, cultural and religious celebrations as well as the shortest days of the year, so many people use this time to transition from holiday and hibernation mode back to regular life. 

New year’s resolutions are attractive because they help people envision ways of enhancing or improving their lives, but those resolutions are often based on unrealistic expectations and external pressures that can set us up for failure at the outset.

Can we ever reach a state of complete wellness?

I would say that wellness is an aspirational state rather than a reality, despite what marketers and gurus suggest. 

First, wellness is tricky to define: although it is generally understood to refer to an overall state of well-being or balance among different domains of health (e.g., physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual), my research shows that even the same person will understand wellness differently depending on context and circumstance, often without perceiving the slippage between meanings.

Second, and more important, there is always more we can do to support or enhance our wellness, so wellness is a destination we can never actually reach. For example, even if I feel generally okay, I could always have more energy or sleep better or be more productive. If nothing else, I will always be aging. A fundamental feature of wellness in contemporary culture is that it has no ceiling.

What is wellness culture symptomatic of?

In Why Wellness Sells, I examine wellness culture across a broad range of sources, products and contexts, and I consistently found across all those materials that public interest in wellness serves primarily as a proxy for higher-level concerns that people have about health, health care, and everyday life that have not been sufficiently addressed by policymakers, practitioners or public commentators. 

I found that people seek out wellness products and services for various reasons, often simultaneously: to prevent or alleviate illness, to assume responsibility for their own health, to mitigate bodily and environmental contamination, to carve out space for rest and repair, to optimize their minds and bodies, and to perform cultural scripts of what it means to be well. In each of these cases, wellness marketing and products offer individuals ways of fixing collective problems—problems that would better be addressed by, for example, better health care, social supports, working conditions and regulations.

Who benefits most from the wellness industry?

Wellness is a staggeringly massive industry and it primarily serves those who participate in it, from manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, and clinics to marketers, practitioners, coaches, and influencers.

At the same time, however, we can’t discount the fact that people who use wellness products and services do find significant value in them. Although there is little evidence that interventions such as cleanses, supplements, and vitamin infusions accomplish what people seek them for, people nevertheless often report feeling better after using them. This may be due to placebo or expectation effects, which other researchers have examined, but what I’ve done is try to understand the reasons that drive interest in wellness in the first place. When we understand those reasons, we can begin to address larger, systemic problems that are not being addressed.

For example, a key reason people find value in doing cleanses is that they are concerned about toxins in their bodies, in their food, and in the environment. In addition to investigating whether or not cleanses work, focusing on the reasons why people use them allows us to think further about whether and how we regulate potentially harmful substances that surround us.

Similarly, a main reason people seek vitamin infusions and other supplements is because they feel exhausted and unproductive so it’s worthwhile to examine why so many people feel so tired all the time. This could lead to rethinking workplace culture to reduce overwork and stress and to address sedentary lifestyles through environmental and urban design.

Ultimately, the wellness industry would not be worth billions of dollars if people were not interested in wellness so understanding why people value it can help point to systemic solutions for big problems rather than individual quick fixes.

Derkatch also offers tips for busy students, faculty and staff: 

Probably the most important thing to remember is that the new year offers us a chance to think about what really matters to us. While conversations about new year’s resolutions tend to focus on unrealistic, arbitrary and potentially harmful goals, at the heart of many of those conversations is the far more human goal of prioritizing renewal and repair. 

We do not need to join an expensive gym or go on a diet or even change our lives dramatically to do that. Even just recognizing the impulse behind making a new year’s resolution can help us find a little more rest or ease in our lives. 

Other steps we can take include making time for family and friends, exercise and sleep, as well as building up care networks around us. All of us at TMU are busy and have many competing priorities, but no one can do everything, all the time.

Related articles:

• New book by TMU researcher explores why people buy into wellness culture
• TMU students vote “yes” to make well-being services more accessible and equitable