The health and wellness space has never been noisier. Every day brings new studies, conflicting expert opinions, and Instagram influencers promising revolutionary results from their latest protocol. While access to information can be empowering, it often becomes paralysing.
The real challenge isn't finding health advice, it's learning how to filter through the noise and trust what actually works for your body.
The trap of constantly chasing new ideas
One of the easiest ways to stall your progress is by constantly jumping ship to the next diet, or health hack you hear about. The truth is, your body needs consistency and time to adapt before you can tell if something is working. If you're always switching, you never give yourself the chance to see results.
This constant switching creates optimisation paralysis. You become so focused on finding the perfect protocol that you never actually implement anything consistently. Meanwhile, someone else is getting real results from a simple, boring routine they've followed for months.
The solution is to design your own plan and commit to a specific timeframe for seeing results. Give yourself at least a month of focused execution before making any adjustments. This prevents knee-jerk reactions to every new piece of information while still allowing room for course correction when something genuinely isn't working.
Why outsourcing decision making to influencers doesn't work
It's tempting to do whatever the latest influencer recommends, but blindly following them means you're outsourcing your health to someone else's experience and body.
What works for them may not work for you, or at least how you do things will be slightly different since you don’t live in Costa Rica! Advice online can be useful as inspiration, but it should never replace your own thinking. The key is learning how to filter information and apply it to your unique situation instead of copying someone else's routine.
Following conflicting health approaches simultaneously will only create confusion. You can't bounce between vegan, carnivore, lion diet, or Ray Peat protocols and expect clarity. Instead, curate your information sources carefully. The internet will never stop producing new and conflicting nutrition information. Instead of trying to keep up with it all, you need a personal filter.
Ask yourself these questions before jumping on the latest trend or seeing new conflating information:
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Does this apply to my current goals?
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Do I resonate with this or is it just click bait?
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Is it relevant to my body right now?
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Have I given enough time to what I'm already doing?
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Does this actually help me right now with an information gap or does it just confuse me further?
This filter helps you stay grounded and prevents you from getting overwhelmed. With a filter like this, you can use information as inspiration, but let real life feedback be your guide.
The best tool at your disposal...
The best tool you have at your disposal is your body, it gives you constant feedback if you're willing to pay attention. Energy levels, digestion, mood, sleep, skin health, these are real-time data points far more valuable than another health podcast episode. Ignoring these signals while forcing yourself into someone else's personal protocol means you'll end up wasting time and effort on things that don't actually serve you. Real progress starts when you use your body's responses as your compass.
The problem is that most people have lost touch with these internal signals. We've become so accustomed to external validation and expert opinions that we've forgotten how to listen to our own bodies. Start paying attention to how you feel after meals, how your energy changes throughout the day, how you perform in workouts, the quality of your sleep and the health of your skin. These are some of the most reliable signs.
If a program or way of eating promises fat loss but leaves you feeling terrible, that's a red flag worth listening to. Yes, there can be adjustment periods when starting something new, but these shouldn't drag on for weeks. Your body is telling you something important, don't ignore it in favour of pushing through based on someone else's success story.
Less is more when it comes to supplements
Loading up on 15 or 20 supplements at once might feel like you’re covering all your bases, but in reality, it often places more stress on the body than support. Not only can different supplements compete for absorption (especially if taken all at once), but it also makes it difficult to know what’s actually helping you.
Our bodies were never designed to thrive on pills and powders. For thousands of years, humans nourished themselves through whole foods, organ meats, bone broths, raw dairy, fresh seasonal produce, foods that deliver nutrients in their most bioavailable and synergistic form. No capsule can replicate that.
When it comes to supplementation, simplicity and intention are key. Start by focusing on real, nutrient-rich foods first. Then, if you know through blood work or clear signs of deficiency that your body is lacking in something specific, that’s when targeted supplementation can be truly helpful.
So many people see a quick improvement from a supplement, only for it to taper off, and then feel trapped, afraid to stop taking it. But when you build your foundation on whole foods, you’re working with the body’s natural design, creating nourishment that is sustainable, not just situational.
Health isn't about finding the perfect protocol, it's about developing the wisdom to understand why you live and eat the way you do, to know what works for your body and the discipline to stick with it consistently.
This means becoming comfortable with uncertainty, trusting your own experience over external opinions, and focusing on foundations rather than optimisation hacks. The irony is, people will spend hundreds on biohacking tools while ignoring the basics that would actually move the needle.
And if you need a reminder of what some of those basics are: Here are 8 habits so solid, you’ll stop overthinking health.
(But of course, remember, these are starting points. Let these ideas become your own, and your body’s wisdom will guide the rest.)
