How Much Is Too Much?

Note: mild discussions of food/exercise obsessions

I think I was twelve when it first happened. “Don’t you know that bagels have the same nutritional value as a cheeseburger?”, a friend asked. I don’t remember what I said, but I still remember the question - it was the first in a lifetime of seemingly innocent questions that really aren’t that innocent.

Don’t you know that plain water is better for you? That eating out is bad? That you should be waking up at 5AM?

By the time I left college, I was eating brown rice instead of white, spinach wraps instead of bread, and had convinced myself that balsamic vinegar was just as tasty as ranch for salad dressing… but it was also more than that. I would beat myself up for going out with my friends on the weekends or for skipping a run when my schedule had me at my wit’s end; I would cry over bad workouts or races and would lose sleep at night just thinking about the training I needed to do the next day.

Every piece of my life was up for dissection to see if I was “good enough” or “doing enough”.

This is the reason that I have a visceral negative reaction to self-improvement today. The obsession over the minutiae of your own life - seeking a thing that can give you just 1% improvement - doesn’t seem healthy. I know the feeling that there is always something that you should be doing better, and the mental weight that those thoughts can take up. It’s not fun - it’s exhausting.

Skipping a friend’s birthday because you’re afraid that losing an hour of sleep is going to have a negative impact on your running? Is that healthy? What about forcing yourself out of bed to get your run in before work even though you slept terribly? Or running even though just the thought of training is like a physical weight on your shoulders? Where does it end?

And more importantly, what is it for?

Is that extra hour of sleep really worth the disappointment that you’ve caused your friend for missing their birthday? That early run worth the risk of injury from lack of recovery? Pushing through training worth the mental stress that makes racing impossible?

Or is it just “working hard” for the sake of it?

In our improvement obsession, it feels like we’ve lost track of the plot. For most of us, this is supposed to be fun - a hobby that has the added benefit of health. And yet, we sacrifice our mental health and risk our physical health for the reward of running a specified distance just a little bit faster. We’re not Olympians and even if that’s our goal, what good will it do us to get there tired and burnt out? How many young runners have made it to the top, only to come crashing down from sacrificing health for speed?

I don’t have a definitive answer for when and where self-improvement goes too far. No single action is the problem, but it’s the obsession over constant and consistent progress even as our actual health and wellness starts to crumble under the weight of it all.

I think that the best that I can do is a piece of advice: some things are worth sacrificing your improvement for.

Stay up late talking to your dad over a beer even though you’ll be tired tomorrow. Go out dancing with your friend on their birthday even though you have a workout the next day. Sleep in and avoid the rain only because one more hard thing in your life might make you cry. You deserve it. Improvement can wait a day or two.