Health goals won't save us
On the wide mismatch between what we think will make us happy and healthy and what actually does.
Quick announcement: Next Sunday- April 27 at 1:00pm PT will be our Matriarchal Blessing zoom discussion. We will be discussing Mikki Kendall’s Hood Feminism for paid subscribers. And this time we will be joined by the community as well :) If you would like to join us- please do! The registration link is below the pay wall at the bottom of this article. See you next Sunday!
If you were to say, “I’ve been good this week.” Or “I was bad today.” What images do those sentences conjure for you?
If you are feeling down on any given day- what reasons do you reach for first? What solutions would you reach for?
I came across a TikTok this week that asked, “Girls, what are some non-therapy things you started doing that changed your mental health?”
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A whopping 77,475 comments have responded to the prompt.
I did not read all of them, but I did scroll through the comments for 16 minutes.
There were lots of good suggestions- lots about diet, exercise, spending habits and thought management.
But since I had freshly read through the 85 year Harvard study about what actually makes us happy (more on this in a minute), I was on the lookout for anything about community, friendships, or forging connections.
I was surprised by what I found. Or rather what I didn’t find.
Out of the thousands of comments I read, guess how many mentioned gathering with other humans at all?
Three!
Only 3!
One said spending time with family, one said making plans, another said getting together with friends every week.
In 1938, Harvard researchers wanted the answer to the question- what is the most important contributor to human happiness? They interviewed hundreds of participants from all around the world and followed up with them every two years- recording their incomes, health records, relationship statuses, air quality and dozens of other metrics.
85 years later and the same study is still on-going. They have concluded that the #1 most important indicator in predicting someone’s life long health and happiness—more important than diet, fitness, air quality or wealth—is the strength of their relationships.
Strong relationships don’t just make you happier than diet and exercise- strong relationships make you HEALTHIER and extend your life more than diet and exercise do.
Crazy right?
As someone who used to teach marriage courses for the Gottman Institute, I’m quite familiar with this study as John Gottman is very fond of quoting it. “Working briefly on your marriage every day will do more for your health and longevity than working out.”
Even if our ultimate goal IS health, strong relationships are still the best way to accomplish that.
The World Happiness Report came out last month. These are the things they found most correlated to happiness of countries which they have listed as their chapter titles in their report:
Caring and Sharing.
Sharing meals with others.
Living with others.
Connecting with others.
Supporting others.
Trusting others.
Giving to others.
Every single one mentions other people. And yet what do we reach for when we’re sad?
Here’s another TikTok trend I’ve seen replicated dozens of times:
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It’s a funny self-interaction skit that goes like this:
“Why do I feel so sad today?” "Have you eaten?" "No." "Have you drank any water?" "No." "Have you done any work?" "No." "Have you done any hobbies?" "Laid in bed..." "I don't know what the issue is."
Here’s another one in that same format that starts out “I’m feeling really down these days and I don’t know why.” “Well did you exercise today?”
These are silly little sketches, but also such spot on depictions of what conclusions we draw when we are down… I’m sad because I didn’t exercise, eat right, drink enough water, or work enough.
According to Statistica, the three most common New Years Resolutions of 2025 were
save money
eat healthier
exercise more and
lose weight.
These things are good things, but when they are the ONLY things we reach for to improve the human condition? They are lacking.
When it comes to healthy habits and forging community- this is not an either/or scenario, it’s a both/and. We can have healthy goals and build community. But when community enters the equation only 3/1000ths of the time, the both/and isn’t happening.
Hence, the need to talk about it.
There is an incredible mismatch between what we reach for to be happy and what has been shown to make us the most happy.
Strong connection with others is the #1 predictor of happiness, but again and again and again, we reach for self-optimization instead.
Improving ourselves is great, but not when it’s the only thing we reach for to find fulfillment.
There is a big, fat, wide, gaping hole called “community” that we SHOULD be reaching for when we’re sad, down, low, but instead we beat ourselves up that we aren’t more self-actualized.
I’ve fallen for this more times than I can count. Just like those TikToks, when I’m feeling sad or lonely, my first instinct is to reach for self-optimization to solve the problem. I just need to exercise, eat better, gratitude journal, work harder, get more sleep, meditate, make art.
If I could just accomplish that perfect body, perfect house, perfect job, perfect schedule, then I’d be happy.
A big fat hole in our model for human fulfillment
This is Abraham Maslow’s model of our hierarchy of needs. Written in 1943, but still used widely today as an assessment tool in education, health care, social work and kitschy Substacks, this model has been a north star for human fulfillment for the past 80 years.
And sitting atop the throne, what is the crowning jewel we are all working towards? SELF actualization. *Note the lack of the word “community” anywhere on the spectrum of human needs, even in the “love and belonging” section.
After publishing his work, Abraham Maslow wanted to observe other cultures to ensure his theories on human needs were universal, so he went to live with the Blackfoot tribe in Montana and Canada.
Only, the Blackfoot tribe did not prove his theories correct. Instead of striving for self-actualization as an end goal, for the Blackfoot, that was the starting line. Researcher Ryan Head said this of Maslow’s visit:
“[Maslow] estimated that “80–90% of the Blackfoot tribe had a quality of self-esteem that was only found in 5–10% of his own population.”
Wow. Why was this?
Was it because the Blackfoot people had mastered their macros? Did they lift heavy weights and get their 10,000 steps? Did they cut out sugar and carbs, master their protein intake and achieve their dream bodies??????
Weirdly Maslow did not mention the nutrition or exercise habits of the Blackfoot while commenting on their happiness. Except to say that they all had “full bellies.” Here's what he did say:
“...he did not see the quest for dominance in Blackfoot society. Instead, he discovered astounding levels of cooperation, minimal inequality, restorative justice, full bellies, and high levels of life satisfaction.
Eventually Maslow realized the gaping hole in his theory: community. (Two of my other favorite topics of human thriving also made the list: lack of dominance and equality) Twenty-three years after he published his hierarchy of needs he wrote:
“…self-actualization is not enough. Personal salvation and what is good for the person alone cannot be really understood in isolation. The good of other people must be invoked as well as the good for oneself. It is quite clear that purely inter-psychic individualist psychology without reference to other people and social conditions is not adequate." - Abraham Maslow
Unfortunately, this writing was never published (largely because of racism) and we’ve been left with self-actualization as the ultimate goal instead of community-actualization.
But man, how different would the Western world be if for hundreds of years we dreamed of community fulfillment instead of self fulfillment?
Who actually benefits when we obsess over self-optimization?
Billionaires.
So very many corporations and industries have a vested interest in us 1. Remaining isolated and 2. Blaming ourselves for all of our problems.
This keeps us on the merry-go-round of shame and consumption-as-solution-to-shame corporations benefit from so much.
The weight loss industry is a $305 billion dollar industry. They very much want us blaming ourselves for our unhappiness, filled with insecurity.
Netflix doesn’t want us going out with people and talking to them, they want us binge watching. Amazon doesn’t want us going out in public going to other stores, they want us at home, buying everything from our phone.
Facebook and other social media companies don’t want us to get our social interactions in real life, they want us to rely on them to get our social interactions.
Dating apps don’t want us to meet people without them. Uber doesn’t want us calling our friend to pick us up from the airport. Target doesn’t want us borrowing clothes or physical items from our friends- they want us to buy everything we need from them.
There are trillions of dollars with a vested interest in keeping us from forging community and relying on each other. Capitalism feeds on loneliness and insecurity. It tells us the solution to our problems isn’t community, it’s consumption.
We must stay on our toes not to fall for it.
Tight-knit communities and mutual aid would shake the foundations of our isolated, individualistic, capitalistic society.
But to get there, we have to catch ourselves when we think self-optimization will solve all of our problems. (ie “I’ll make friends once I lose 30 pounds.” “I’d be happy if I could just figure out how to be more productive.”)
We’ve been sold a lie that climbing ladders of social hierarchy- wealth, perfect body, perfect home, perfect schedule- are what brings happiness. But we don’t need a perfect schedule or perfect body more than we need community.
Who gets left at the bottom when diet becomes a moral issue?
I asked chatgpt the question I posed to start this article:
If you were to hear an American say “I’ve been good this week.” Or “I was bad today” what would you assume they were referring to?
Here was its answer:
“If I heard an American say ‘I’ve been good this week’ or ‘I was bad today,’ I’d assume they’re talking about food choices or diet—like they stuck to healthy eating, avoided junk food, or resisted temptation. It’s a super common shorthand for behavior around eating, especially in diet culture.
Depending on context, it could also relate to exercise routines, spending habits, or even productivity—but food is the most likely interpretation, especially with that moral framing of ‘good’ and ‘bad.’”
We’ve made being “healthy” a moral issue where we are “good” when we are health conscious and “bad” when we are not. But that is a hop, skip and a jump to “good” people are healthy people and “bad” people are fat and lazy.
Like so many other things in this world, the morality of weight and “clean” eating and exercise hits those on the bottom rungs of the privilege ladder the hardest.
It’s frustrating to witness how many mothers get more riled up over red dye 40 and soda than over inequality or any other social justice issue.
Especially since rallying against unhealthy food usually winds up hurting low income families more than it helps them.
The soda tax is the perfect example of this. Thousands of mothers fought for a tax on soda to stop “poisoning the children.”
But this tax hit the low income mothers needing something cheap and shelf-stable that won’t go bad or moldy, especially in areas with lead-tainted water like Flint, Michigan and Chicago.
Mikki Kendall talks about this in her book Hood Feminism (hey! That’s this month’s book club book!):
"Soda taxes hit people with the fewest options the hardest… Low income parents already struggling with food insecurity and neighborhood violence are now being told that their children's health problems (symbolized by their weight) are their fault for having only hard choices available."
“Why is it that we are more inclined to create programs to combat obesity than ones that meaningfully address hunger?”
"Politicians use fat-phobia and make obesity a scapegoat to deflect away from the policies that have adversely affected the health of low-income communities."
“Policies that serve as 'food police' tend to raise stigma rather than help families and individuals who need better access to food.” - Mikki Kendall
Hyper focusing on diet and exercise keeps our focus stuck on self-surveillance, guilt and individualism—a perfect distraction from our deeper human needs: relationships, care and community.
This constant attention on what we ate, how much we exercised, whether we were “good” or “bad” with our bodies- this all takes enormous emotional and cognitive energy. It zaps all our bandwidth so we have little left for the things that actually would bring joy and fulfillment- building deep friendships, caring for others, creating shared rituals or spaces, organizing for collective good, resting, playing and dreaming.
Then when we DO get around others, we’re so preoccupied with insecurity that we can’t actually glean the benefits community provides.
Double whammy.
Obsession with diet and self-optimization isolates us, keeping us inward-focused and disconnected.
Billionaires benefit when we’re lonely, insecure and convinced we are the problem. Diet and wellness industries—worth billions— are fueled by that insecurity. If we were fully at home in our bodies, connected to others and aware of our collective power, these systems would collapse.
We live in a world that has convinced us to treat our bodies as problems to be solved, instead of instruments of connection. And in doing so, it has robbed us of the very things that would nourish us: intimacy, community and collective joy.
Come chat with us next Sunday, Apr 27 at 1:00pm PT where we will discuss Hood Feminism together!
The registration link is below this pay wall. Update your subscription to register and join the discussion. Hope to see you there!