RECLAIM YOUR WELLNESS 🌿 Is Your Wellness Helping You… or Hurting You?
Here's something a lot of women are quietly feeling right now, friend: somewhere along the way, wellness stopped feeling like support… + started feeling like pressure. Another thing to track. Another thing to optimize. Another thing to "do right" — + inevitably fail at. This week is the follow-up to last week's Best Self Choices conversation, bc both things can be true at the same time. Wellness habits CAN deeply support your life — and wellness culture can quietly become heavy, performative, + exhausting. So at what point did caring for ourselves become one more thing to fail at? This episode is all about one swap: trading the weighted vest you've been dragging around for something that holds you up instead. Grab the RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER Workbook + Companion Guide + do this work right alongside me all season. You are NOT too late to join. 🌿
In this post we'll chat thru…
✻ Why wellness culture has so many women feeling like projects to optimize instead of people to support
✻ The weighted vest metaphor — how every "should" adds another weight until we start to sink
✻ The life jacket reframe — what it looks like when wellness holds you up instead of dragging you down
✻ The one question that changes everything: what would genuinely support me today?
✻ Why your summer won't be linear — and how to reconnect a little kinder each time you drift
LET'S DIVE IN. 🖤
Hello hello friends and welcome back to The SELF CARE Sisterhood Podcast and our RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER series ☀️
Over the last few weeks we’ve talked about:
reclaiming your WHY,
reclaiming your ENERGY,
and last week we talked about reclaiming your WELLNESS through simple supportive habits — or what I call BEST SELF CHOICES.
And today I want to talk about something I think a LOT of women are quietly feeling right now:
What happens when wellness itself starts feeling heavy?
Because I think somewhere along the way, many of us stopped using wellness as support…
and started using it as another way to measure ourselves.
Another thing to optimize.
Another thing to track.
Another thing to “do right.”
Another thing to fail at.
And ya’ll…women have SO many rules now 😂
Drink this much water.
Walk this many steps.
Lift weights this many times.
Get enough protein.
Get enough sleep.
Take your supplements.
Reduce stress.
Protect your nervous system.
Get morning sunlight.
Limit blue light.
Take magnesium.
Stretch.
Journal.
Meditate.
Get outside.
Track your habits.
Read more books.
Get less screen time.
Be more present.
Like OH MY GOSH 😂 Are you as stressed out about taking care of yourself as I am after listing all of that? And that’s not even a fraction of the messages we hear every day.
At what point did taking care of ourselves become another thing to fail at?
When I talk about RECLAIMING YOUR WELLNESS… this is not the kind of wellness I mean.
And I really wanted to make this episode a follow-up to last week’s conversation because I think both things can be true at the same time:
Wellness habits CAN deeply support your life AND wellness culture can also quietly become heavy, performative, obsessive, and exhausting.
That’s why last week’s episode matters first.
Because I do believe movement matters.
Hydration matters.
Rest matters.
Mental hygiene matters.
Getting outside matters.
Nourishing yourself matters.
Those things genuinely support us.
But somewhere along the way, many women stopped viewing wellness as support and started experiencing it as pressure.
Real self-care was never supposed to feel like another chore sitting on your to-do list.
Another checklist.
Another performance.
Another thing you’re trying to do perfectly.
I don’t think wellness was ever supposed to feel that heavy.
THE WEIGHT OF MODERN WELLNESS
I think the internet and wellness influencer culture has slowly started making women feel like projects.
Like there is always another thing to optimize.
Another habit to fix.
Another routine to perfect.
Another version of ourselves we should be trying to become.
And it’s such a fine line, ya’ll. I dance it all the time. Bc I don’t think habits are bad. I don’t think goals are bad. I don’t think wanting to feel good in your body or your life is bad.
You guys know I care deeply about wellness.
I’m literally in my own wellness reset right now. I’m prioritizing movement. Protein. Water. Mental health. Rest. Consistency.
But lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the ENERGY behind all of it. Like what it actually costs us mentally to keep all of those plates spinning at once.
Because there’s a difference between taking care of yourself and constantly trying to correct yourself.
And I think a lot of women are exhausted because even wellness — the one thing that should help us feel our best — feels like pressure.
Like if we aren’t doing all of the things all of the time, we’re somehow failing.
I’ve had seasons where every choice felt loaded. Where I was overthinking every meal. Every workout. Every routine. Every morning. Every missed habit.
And honestly? That’s not freeing and confidence building. That’s anxiety and perfectionism.
WHAT WELLNESS / SELF-CARE SHOULD REALLY FEEL LIKE
And that's where an image from church this week has stayed with me.
My pastor was talking about all the expectations women carry and she used the example of a weighted vest.
This was in the context of our walk in faith and how heavy we’ve made it, but the same applies for our wellness, too. We just keep adding the weight.
More water goals.
More supplements.
More routines.
More workouts.
More tracking.
More expectations.
More pressure.
More rules.
And with every new “should,” the proverbial vest we’re wearing gets heavier.
One more thing to manage correctly.
One more thing to keep up with.
One more thing to fail at.
Maybe you feel this right now. That somewhere along the way your self-care and wellness stopped feeling supportive and started feeling heavy.
Like a weighted vest you’re dragging through everyday life.
And the thing is — weighted vests are designed to make movement harder.
Heavier.
More exhausting.
More strenuous.
And that’s a good thing. But I think a lot of women are walking around carrying wellness that way. And it can easily shift from a good thing into another measurement to stack ourselves against.
Constantly trying to prove we’re doing enough.
Fix enough.
Optimize enough.
Improve enough.
You guys:
I don’t think TAKING CARE OF OURSELVES was ever supposed to fit like a weighted vest.
Instead, I wanna give you a different piece of imagery. Imagine caring for yourself fitting — and FEELING — more like a life jacket. Think about it:
A life jacket supports you.
It helps hold you up.
It helps you breathe.
It helps you stay afloat when life feels heavy.
A weighted vest adds pressure.
A life jacket adds support.
IDK about you, but I want my wellness to feel like a life jacket.
Less pressure. More support.
Less “fixing myself.” More caring for myself.
Less punishment. More partnership.
Less all-or-nothing. More consistency.
Less guilt. More grace.
WHAT WELLNESS ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
And I think this is where we have to redefine what wellness is actually supposed to DO for us.
Because real self-care should support your life.
Not make your life feel smaller.
Not make you obsess over yourself constantly.
Not make you feel guilty every time you rest, enjoy something, or fall off routine for a few days.
Real wellness should help you LIVE your life better.
That’s it.
And honestly, this is why I keep coming back to the idea of BEST SELF CHOICES over and over again.
Because it shifts the question from “What’s the perfect thing to do?” to “What would genuinely support me right now?”
Sometimes that’s:
drinking water.
Going for a walk.
Eating protein.
Going to bed earlier.
And sometimes it’s:
taking a nap.
Getting off your phone.
Reading by the pool.
Laughing with your friends.
Watching a movie on the couch.
Letting yourself rest after a demanding week.
Because wellness is not just about becoming physically healthier.
It’s about creating a life that actually feels sustainable to live inside of.
We’ve become really good at building wellness routines that LOOK impressive but don’t actually feel supportive. And this matters. Because if your version of self-care constantly leaves you feeling behind, guilty, exhausted, or like you’re never doing enough it may be time to put down some of the weight you’ve been carrying.
That being said, I want you to know that even with the best intentions, you ARE going to get pulled off track sometimes. That’s human ya’ll. Things throw us off course.
Stressful seasons
Travel
Busy weeks
Moments when our spirits or moods are low
Hormone shifts
The goal is not to never drift or fall off. The goal is becoming better at noticing WHEN you drift and knowing how to gently reconnect to yourself again instead of spiraling into shame or giving up completely.
That’s the shift.
Awareness.
Adjustments.
Realignment.
Over and over again.
And honestly? I think that’s what sustainable wellness actually looks like. Continuing to come back to yourself. Again and again.
And inside the RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER workbook, I actually included some of the most common pitfalls that quietly sabotage our wellness journeys — things like perfectionism, all of nothing thinking, unrealistic expectations — along with practical ways to shift out of those patterns and reconnect to what actually supports you.
Because this work is not about earning worthiness through wellness.
It’s about building support systems that help you feel more grounded, healthy, connected, and alive in your actual life.
Friends, I hope today gave you permission to exhale a little.
To take care of yourself in ways that actually feel supportive.
To stop treating yourself like a constant renovation project.
To stop carrying wellness like a weighted vest you’re dragging through everyday life.
And instead… learn to let it support you more like a life jacket.
Because I really believe that’s what wellness should do.
Help hold you up.
Help you feel steadier.
Help you reconnect to yourself and your life again.
So if you take anything from today’s episode, let it be this:
You probably do not need more rules right now.
You probably need more support.
More awareness.
More grace.
More consistency.
More honesty about what’s actually working for YOU in this season.
And maybe the most important thing to remember is this:
You are going to drift sometimes.
You’re going to have off weeks.
Stressful seasons.
Moments where you disconnect from the habits and routines that help you feel your best.
That’s normal.
The goal isn’t perfection.
The goal is learning how to notice when you’ve drifted and reconnect a little faster and a little kinder each time.
That’s the work.
And honestly? That’s really what this first month of our RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER series has been about. Setting the tone.
Building awareness.
Reconnecting to yourself.
Paying attention to what matters.
Creating a foundation we can keep building on together all summer long.
Next week, I want to slow down a little and do something I personally do at the end of every month: a reflect + prep conversation as we gear up for a fresh month ahead.
We’re gonna talk:
what’s working,
what’s not,
where we’ve drifted,
what we’re learning,
and how to recalibrate without shame and move into July with more intention.
As always, if this episode resonated with you, I would LOVE if you shared it with a friend or posted it to your stories and tagged me so I can see what’s speaking to you in this season.
And if you want to walk through this work alongside me all summer long, don’t forget you can still grab the 🌞 RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER workbook at inspirebeautybritt.com/reclaim.
I love you guys so much.
And I’ll see you next week on The SELF CARE Sisterhood Podcast
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