Against Health Slop
Orthorexia writ large
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Orthorexia-is a pattern of disordered eating characterized by an unhealthy, obsessive fixation on eating only foods perceived as “healthy,” “pure,” or “clean,” to the point that it harms physical health, mental health, or social functioning. It focuses on the quality and perceived purity of food rather than on weight loss or the quantity of food.
Orthorexia can be extended to overall health practices, with a growing obsession on purity that takes over all aspects of life. This obsession takes on a pseudoreligious, moral dynamic.
In that context, I read this article recently on X, by Will Manidis (a fantastic thinker/writer)
The article, titled “On Grindslop”, is a missive on the psuedoreligious culture in tech world and beyond of of how “hardcore” one can be in their work, and how this culture of esteeming suffering is endlessly circular and performative.
I saw obvious crossover with the health and fitness world. On the heels of Bryan Johnson has come an increasingly manical focus on measuring, data-fying, scoring, optimizing, tracking every aspect of existence, from wake time to steps to heart rate to HRV to training minutia to protocols to sleep to hormones to preventative testing, and everything in between.
Add in a fearmongering over ingredients, toxins, detoxng, perfume, EMFs, plastics, polyester…and you can keep purity spiraling until you arrive at a “return to nature” enlightenment in which the only decision is to live in a forest, interact with no technology, and wear natural garments while growing/hunting your own.
Only in a savage state could we possible be healthy.
Or vice versa, only by turning every waking minute our lives and bodily function into data can we hope to transend this moral coil and meat suit, and overcome death itself.
Both of these paths are, bluntly, fucking nuts.
To be clear, I am of the belief that the care of the body has a moral dimension, and the body is not separable from the Mind. The Mindbody are one.
I believe we should honor ourselves by taking care of our Mindbody, and being strong.
That said, the Cult of Data and the Cult of Return to nature are both fun house mirrors reflecting one another.
They have the same attitude of righteousness. The same attempt at moral superiority.
One sees salvation in shedding modernity. Mankind is fallen, we ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge and it gave us iPhones and EMFs. Pray to G-D for foregiveness and get naked “proverbially” on the tradlife homestead.
Or, find your salvation in transhuman. God is dead, or maybe not real, or maybe we can beat him by overcoming death itself and becoming immortal. Reddit Atheists cyborg squared.
What is being attempted by all this is the oldest human project: to escape sin and death by being good enough.
The zealots within this realm, the carnivore raw-milk forest-dweller and the Blueprint disciple are both, at root, terrified of dying.
They have responded to this fear by constructing elaborate moral systems that promise, if followed perfectly, to keep them safe from death and from evil.
The systems, extracted from books, podcasts, and slop clips, function as a simulcra of worship.
Health orthorexia is grindslop for the body.
Again, I must emphasize…
I am not telling you measurement is bad. I take bloodwork. I check my hormones. I follow progressive overload in my training. I have used peptides for a decade and experiment with lots of things.
I’d like to live a long time.
I also get diet coke from mcdonalds, enjoy cigars and spirits with my friends, and harbor no illusions that I will look 30 when Im 60, achieve immortality, or “reverse age”. I dont turn my wifi router off at night. I sleep amazing.
I live in the country. I “ground” all the time. I also wear polyester workout pants, because frankly the cotton alternatives suck and I just dont fucking care.
The major in minutia is both tedious and pointless. My life has love, family, and purpose. I dont need a wearable to tell me when to wake up and fall asleep and whether Im recovered enough to train hard on any given day.
Someone is going to read this and their reaction will be some version of me being a Heretic and fraud because Im dont adhere to their side of the orthorexic religiousity
Thats fine. I am okay with that.
For everyone else who hasnt been driven into psychosis, I am telling all of you
The purpose of being healthy is a well lived life that you ENJOY.
I believe a great deal of this sentiment and phenomenon stems from the reality that the religious instinct is innate in humanity.
And a man without a religion will invent one. This is what I see happening across both extremes of the health world right now. The guys wanting to grasp at immortality and the guys optimizing for ancestral purity are playing the same fallacious game.
Health is a means. It has never been an end.
So use the tools. Find your own balance. I encourage everyone to be sovereign in their health choices and their lives.
Dont go crazy please. Be a little crazy time to time, keep it fun. When you start stressing over something that was supposed to make you healthy or make life easier, you’ve likely gone too far.
Train hard. Eat real food. Sleep enough. Use the tools that serve you.
Drop the ones that do not.
Build something.
Love your wife.
Raise your kids.
Do the work that means something to you.
Live Well.
Banger
"The religious instinct is innate in humanity. And a man without a religion will invent one."
Love that. Ironically, one way out of the purity spiral trap you're describing is to join a healthy religion. It can give you the perspective you wouldn't otherwise have to see the value in taking care of yourself, while also providing the tools to squarely address the fact that one day you will die.