Living healthy sometimes feels like the easiest task in the world, and at other times it feels confusing.

Breakfast is one of the topics where it is easy to be misled by various opinions online. The advice is endless, often contradictory, but usually expressed with 100% confidence. The more you learn, the harder it is to know what is “correct”.

I don’t recall breakfast ever being analysed in detail in childhood. Most kids consumed Nesquik or Chocapic, and the only debated topic was whether or not the milk should be warmed up.

I think it’s good we’re talking about it now, but I wish we could simplify it.

The first issue is whether breakfast really is important or simply something to skip because of all the claims around fasting and autophagy. I may write about this another time. Today, I have kind of unintentionally placed myself on one side of this debate already.

The issue of morning decision-making

This thought has been playing on my mind for a few weeks now. Why not just make life simple, identify a healthy and reasonably optimal meal, and go on auto-pilot mode every morning?

Apart from the risk of boredom, I quite like the idea.

Time in the morning is very precious. Removing clutter and any unnecessary tasks helps to create space for things that matter. Without a good plan and with limited time, it’s much harder to make good decisions. Entering your kitchen with only 6 minutes to spare means probably going for the easiest and fastest option available. Quick toast, pastry, granola, crumpets with butter, ultra-processed protein bar?

I think having a clear idea of breakfast options can resolve the problem of mindless and rushed decisions.

And if there was a way to simplify it further, then why not?

Why waste time worrying about breakfast options?

I would absolutely hate to find out one day that the food I chose as my one and only breakfast was bad for me, or simply a waste of time. Putting some effort in now, so the next few years of my life can be a bit healthier, sounds like a decent idea.

I am aware there is no guarantee. I’m not looking for perfection either. A reasonable and informed choice is good enough.

Nutritional trends change every few years. It’s possible that in 2040 we’ll be laughing about our current choices. My friend and I have a rolling joke that one day a new study may come out suggesting harmful effects of avocados, which currently are probably a symbol of healthy living.

It has already happened, to some degree, with coconut oil, margarine, fruit juices, smoothies, granola, low-fat yoghurts, rice cakes, veggie crisps, protein bars, diet drinks, honey, dried fruit, and I could keep going. So… no choice is completely safe!

The below is my personal reflection, but as always, let’s not forget how unique we are, and how differently we respond to different foods.

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Breakfast options and preferences

I personally find that anything sugary or carbohydrate-heavy is probably the worst thing for me. It doesn’t feel like real food, and it sets me up for a sugar crash later in the day. I am more likely to crave a snack and generally feel more dysregulated.

For this reason, I am ready to cross out cereals, granola, instant oats, pastries, crumpets, and bread.

But I also think the activities I engage with require fuel. I work with highly emotional content in therapy with my clients, and I exercise quite heavily. My brain and body both need steady energy. So, for me, completely avoiding carbs in the morning does not feel like the right answer. I just need to avoid the crash.

I probably should aim for higher-protein, maybe combined with a slower-release carbohydrate option or something that slows down its absorption. I think rolled oats mixed with other ingredients sounds like a good candidate.

I’ve tested many options, including morning salads, gut-friendly beans, and ambitious shakshukas. But despite good intentions, I generally find myself cycling through two or three easy meals: either oats with protein yoghurt, berries, nuts and seeds, or an egg-based meal, sometimes with added avocado or other greens.

Over time, I started naturally gravitating towards the former.

Optimised overnight oats

If I prepare my oats in the morning, I cook them. That’s why I prefer the overnight version. It saves time. I usually mix them with a good portion of high-protein unflavoured yoghurt, such as Skyr or Greek yoghurt. I add some water too, otherwise it can turn into cement. Then I experiment with different ingredients: flaxseed, chia seeds, various nuts and seeds, blueberries or cherries, and even a sprinkle of cinnamon on top.

When I think of a good start to the day, this is where my mind goes. It gives me energy and clarity, and it doesn’t get in the way of my productivity.

It’s easy to make and it seems to cover most of what I want from breakfast:

• High protein? Tick.

• Carbs? Tick.

• Slower-release energy? Tick.

• Fibre? Tick.

• Vitamins? Tick.

• Antioxidants? Tick.

• Healthy fats? Tick.

• Gut-friendly? Tick.

Have I found my guilt-free, no-faff, all-in-one meal?

Possibly.

Is it perfect?

Unlikely.

Am I okay with that?

I think so.

What if oats are bad for you?

I’ve previously read suggestions that oats cause inflammation. Luckily, the 2021 meta-analysis (a summarised analysis of many studies), did not support this idea.

And with oats being one of many ingredients in this meal, I am not too concerned. But I am ready to be wrong and adjust where needed.

Benefits of eating the same meal daily

The main benefit of eating the same meal daily is simplicity.

It takes me less than 5 minutes to prepare in the evening and it’s ready for me in the morning when time is limited.

Shopping is easy. All I need is a big bag of rolled oats, cinnamon, and natural high-protein yoghurt (e.g. skyr). I regularly top up my freezer with frozen berries and my cupboard with a variety of nuts and seeds. All the ingredients usually have long expiry dates, meaning I’m not wasting much food either.

The meal keeps me full until lunch. I don’t snack or crave food. If I have a busy day at work, I find it gives me a good spread of energy, with no crashes. My concentration is not affected, allowing me to focus on my clients or other activities.

It agrees with my body. No bloating, no discomfort.

It helps with exercise. It supports my muscle recovery and helps with fuelling my late morning workouts.

It tastes good.

I don’t get bored of it. And if I do, I can be flexible. I can modify the ingredients: different berries, fruit, nuts, seeds, and so on.

I don’t need to worry about nutrition. I can leave decision-making for more important tasks.

Should I eat the same breakfast every day?

I’m not planning to eat the same breakfast daily for the rest of my life. This is not a New Year’s resolution or an attempt at making my life more rigid. It’s kind of the opposite. Whenever I feel more creative, I have more time, I am away, or I simply crave change, I can eat something different. No issue here.

If I was forced to choose one breakfast for life, it would probably be the above. I can’t imagine eating a bacon sandwich, sausages, or other heavy meals as my daily default option. Even egg-based options are something I go off easily. Eating scrambled egg two days in a row often results in my body telling me, “No more please.”

And I think forcing myself to eat something nutritious that I don’t enjoy would probably be the worst outcome of this conversation. It wouldn’t work anyway. I am trying to make my life simpler, but not at the cost of enjoyment.

What are you trying to make easier?

So, can you eat the same meal every day?

Of course you can. And if your choice is reasonably nutritious, there are probably many benefits to keeping things simple.

You can also start every morning by baking a cake if that’s your thing. I’m not into the idea of telling people what to do.

If you’re weighing your options and trying to achieve some form of healthy breakfast minimalism, here are some ideas for you.

Try to opt in for something nutritious.

I’d also ideally like to make sure you get a decent portion of protein.

Make sure it’s a meal you enjoy.

Aim for something that agrees with your body.

But most importantly, do what you can to be consistent with the kind of person you want to be.

What are your life goals?

If you love cooking and experimenting in the kitchen, amazing. Embrace it. Allowing your creative side in the morning would probably set you up nicely for the day.

If you prefer fasting and have noticed benefits from skipping breakfast? Great. Keep going. Don’t make yourself more sluggish if you have a no-breakfast routine that works for you.

I think consistency is important. I’m not talking about regularity, although that matters too. I mean being consistent with your goals. Optimising health is an important goal, but so are others. Minimising wasted time. Minimising wasted food. Recovering from workouts. Cognitive performance. Enjoyment of different foods and activities. They can all influence your decisions about how to approach breakfast.

I am aware some people’s philosophy is to simply enjoy life and not overthink health decisions. I think that’s reasonable, and I have no problem with that. If a sugar-coated cinnamon bun with a caramel latte for breakfast goes well with your current perspective and life goals, please don’t be influenced by my perspective.

But if you’re aiming to make some small health changes and you are unsatisfied with your current decisions, it’s worth pausing and asking yourself:

What’s the easiest way I could simplify my morning choices?

Putting some effort in now could change how your mornings feel, potentially for the rest of your life.

Thank you for reaching the end of this article.
I’m glad you’re here :)

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When I was a tennis player, we regularly ran to prepare for long tournament matches.

I remember one of those runs quite well.

I was about 12. The group consisted mainly of older and more experienced players. Some were preparing for junior national championships. I was one of the youngest. We ran through the local fields just outside Warsaw, led by our general conditioning coach, one of the kindest people I know.

My life was very busy then. Fitting these workouts between school and tennis practice meant a very tight schedule. I often arrived home from school with only 8 minutes to spare. My parents’ challenge was to feed me a nutritious dinner in this time.

On that day, time was short. My dad prepared a full plate of his signature dish: sliced, fried potatoes. In full Polish fashion I topped it up with a glass of kefir, a fermented milk drink.

You can probably guess where this story is going.

I was in the middle of a field, running with a group of over twenty players. They were keen to keep a good pace. But the only thing I was keen on was finding a toilet. And no toilet was in sight.

I came up with a plan. I quietly ran towards our coach to explain: “I have some pain in my abs. Maybe I pulled something. You can all keep going, and I will slowly make my way back.”

This backfired. What my coach did next was one of the hardest acts of kindness I’ve ever received.

He stopped the whole group for me. He mentioned something about team mindset and announced a 5-minute break for everyone. Instead of a silent escape, I had over twenty pairs of keen eyes staring at me. Lads and lasses, all ready to offer support, but also very keen to keep going.

My “injury” suddenly got better very quickly. We restarted the run and I reassured everyone that I was fine.

Thirty seconds later, I turned around and sprinted away to the local forest without a goodbye.

It is a funny story now. I think about it whenever I think about kindness. My coach was trying to help me, but his kindness made my problem much worse.

When kindness goes the wrong way

I really like analysing examples where good intentions have gone wrong. They show the gap between what the helper was trying to do and what the other person actually needed. A few examples come to mind.

Holding the door

A person holding the door for you when you’re still 20 metres away is doing it to be kind. But now, instead of having a relaxing morning, you have no choice but to perform a little jog. The person meant well, but their kindness has turned into your social obligation and an unintended cardio session.

A drink conundrum

It’s a sunny day. You’re enjoying exploring a local town with your friend. You sit down to take a break, and your friend surprises you with a refreshing beer. They look very pleased. The only problem is, you have proudly managed to take a break from alcohol for 3 months. Do you disappoint your friend, ruin their smile, and then awkwardly watch them consume two beers while you wait for them to finish? Or do you accept the drink and quietly break a promise you made to yourself?

Children’s enjoyment

A famous 1973 study examined children’s enjoyment of drawing. Some children who already enjoyed drawing became less interested after they were offered rewards for doing it. The adult intentions were good, to encourage them. But the original interest was replaced by a chase for reward and approval. A kind attempt to motivate ended up reducing the thing it was trying to encourage.

Water aid

Finding and collecting water is a serious problem in some parts of the world. Building wells to support local people sounds like one of the kindest gifts. And in many cases, I imagine it is. However, many well-intended projects can create unexpected problems because outsiders misunderstand local customs and social routines. I’ve heard stories where building a local well had some negative consequences because long walks to collect water had also been a place where women exchanged information, socialised, and had some privacy from men. Access to clean water clearly matters. But it is a reminder that even obviously helpful ideas can go wrong when we don’t understand the world we are stepping into.

The cobra effect

There is also the famous “cobra effect” story from colonial India. The British government supposedly tried to reduce the cobra population by offering rewards for dead cobras. According to the story, people started breeding cobras for the reward. The historical details are disputed, but as a metaphor, it shows something useful: when we try to help without understanding the system, we can accidentally create the problem we wanted to solve.

Offering advice

We’ve all been in situations where we have the best intentions offering advice to a loved one. We know the solution. We can see it clearly. All we need is to help the person implement it. But all we hear back is: “Stop telling me what to do.” It can feel confusing. We were only trying to help. But from the other person’s perspective, advice may feel like pressure, criticism, or a sign that we are not really listening.

I can see new examples of this problem almost daily. Last week, I encouraged my friend to try an exercise on a pull-up bar that he probably wasn’t ready to do. He fell and hurt himself. Good intentions. Bad outcome.

Have you got a good example of kindness going badly? Share it in the comments.

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Guessing another person’s needs

The examples above show that sometimes what we call kindness is an awkward attempt to match another person’s needs with our own ideas of what is helpful. We assume kindness is about what we are offering, forgetting about the most important thing: the needs of the person we’re helping.

This problem is everywhere.

Governments create financial incentives to support people on low incomes, but sometimes the benefits are captured by landlords, companies, or people who were already better off.

Parents try to give their children a stress-free life, but sometimes this shrinks their comfort zone and makes them more anxious.

Teachers encourage students with overgenerous grades, but sometimes this leaves them unprepared for university or work.

Grandchildren take over their grandparents’ physical tasks, meaning to be helpful, but sometimes this reduces their sense of independence and removes essential exercise from their day.

I could keep going.

When help becomes too helpful

The example I notice most often comes from my work as a therapist and supervisor.

Many novice therapists can feel pressure to be useful quickly. They may reach for techniques, worksheets, exercises, coping strategies, or advice. I have known therapists who come to work with a suitcase full of worksheets and materials they can share with clients.

Tools can be useful sometimes. But I have seen therapists become so focused on finding the right worksheet that it has become a distraction from offering real help.

Most mental health problems are more complex than they first appear. I often find that the more solutions a therapist offers, the more disappointed and misunderstood the client can feel.

This can happen in practical therapies such as CBT. Other approaches, such as Person-Centred Counselling or Method of Levels Therapy (MOL), move in a different direction. They help the person notice, explore, and understand their problems without advice or suggestions.

Practical support is sometimes needed, but even the best technique can become another version of holding the door open from 20 metres away.

Kindness through their eyes

I love the fact that there is so much kindness around us.

We see it, offer it, and receive it.

But I think a lot of kindness could work better with a small pause.

What does this person actually need?
Can I ask them rather than guess?
Can I offer something that fits their world rather than mine?

Kindness should be an intentional attempt to make someone’s life better by their standards, not ours.

Maybe that is the small experiment to try today with someone close to you. Pause before helping. Get curious and try to understand what the situation feels like from their side.

Then offer something that belongs in their world, not just yours.

Thank you for reaching the end of this article.
I’m glad you’re here :)

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A few months ago I tried doing a dopamine detox.

No coffee.
No loud music whilst exercising.
No YouTube.
No social media.
No podcasts while driving.

By day three, I was already noticing some positive changes. It made me feel good. I started thinking: “Maybe I can make it last a full week? Maybe even a month?”

I like a good challenge. This idea got me excited.

And then I paused.

If I am excited... does that mean my dopamine is high?

What kind of dopamine detox am I doing if I am spiking my dopamine by avoiding dopamine?

This felt like a confusing but interesting thought. So I started exploring it.

I met with my close friend for a coffee. Decaf, obviously. I’m on a detox, right?

We started chatting and it felt like an amazing intellectual exercise. He started challenging some of my ideas about wellness activities, including the current detox. My neurons were firing. By the end of the conversation, I was feeling motivated, inspired and curious.

Then I stopped.

My dopamine must be spiking again. Was I failing at my dopamine detox?

Or was it exactly what was meant to happen?

A few weeks later, I started diving a bit deeper into the theory and research behind dopamine. Once I made sense of it, I started looking at dopamine detox from a completely different angle.

I can’t wait to share it with you!

Sorry. Dopamine spike again…

Is Dopamine Bad?

I won’t bore you with a complex definition of neurotransmitter activity and how the reward system works. There’s a high chance you know some of it already.

Scientists explore ideas such as equilibrium, homeostasis, and allostasis. But I’d like to use simple language, to make this as easy as possible.

Our bodies follow a system.

Your body is always trying to regulate itself. It’s aiming for stability, but with constant adjustment.

For example, when a signal is sent that you’re too warm, you start sweating and craving a cold drink. Once your base temperature is restored, you stop sweating.

The same general principle applies to many internal systems, including the ones involving dopamine.

A common view is that dopamine is “high” when we feel good and “low” when we feel bad. But in reality, dopamine is constantly involved in motivation, learning, and how we respond to cues in the environment.

So when people talk about lowering, resetting, or detoxing from dopamine, the idea gets a bit confusing.

Dopamine itself is not a toxin you can flush out of your body, so technically we can’t detox from it. It’s part of the system, and it always will be. It is part of being alive.

Logically, we shouldn’t be detoxing from something that keeps us going. Imagine trying to detox from appetite, sweating, pain, or even your heartbeat.

All of the above, like dopamine, go up and down, depending on the circumstances.

What Actually Happens During a Dopamine Detox?

We’ve already identified that being excited about a detox is a confusing paradox. But this is just the beginning of the contradictions.

When you stop engaging with all the things that normally capture your attention, your usual reward cues disappear. You may very quickly feel bored. That’s when a signal is sent that “something is wrong”.

The usual cravings for TikTok, coffee, and stimulation don’t go away just because you’ve decided to do better this week. If anything, they may get louder.

Your system is aiming to return to its usual level of stimulation. If the usual methods don’t work, the signal intensifies. Mild cravings turn into something hard to resist.

This feels like a contradiction. We hoped that a process of internal reorganisation of priorities happens quickly so that we become more interested in normal daily activities. But instead, the craving for the unwanted activity got worse.

Reorganisation can definitely happen in the long term though.

But the first effect is often the opposite.

What Happens After Some Time?

If you stick to low stimulation activities for long enough, often a few days to a couple of weeks, simple things can start to feel more enjoyable again.

A walk.
A conversation.
A book.
Cooking without a podcast in the background.

This is exactly what you wanted, right?

But here comes the next problem.

If a normal activity starts to feel rewarding again, what happens when a highly stimulating activity becomes available again?

Talking about baking is much less likely to make you eat a slice of cake than having the cake right in front of you when you’re hungry and depleted.

At that point, the pull is much stronger. You may end up destroying the cake before you have time to question your life choices. The same mechanism occurs here. The signal gets stronger.

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What Happens When the Detox Ends?

Let’s assume your willpower helped you to stick to your plans and you managed to resist. Great! But… unless you’re planning to live like a monk for the rest of your life, your dopamine detox will have to end at some point.

Have you seen the video of Michael Pollan talk about his first coffee after a few months off caffeine? He described it as a “psychedelic” experience.

I’ve previously tried a six months of caffeine detox myself which I concluded with a double espresso at 7am. It was probably one of the most joyful, creative, and productive work days I’ve ever experienced.

Basically, when something rewarding has been removed for a while, returning to it can feel even very powerful.

Is that good or bad? Both.

Ordinary activities can feel more enjoyable again. But highly stimulating activities feel like ticking dopamine bombs.

What once felt normal, like morning coffee whilst scrolling TikTok, can suddenly feel like a much bigger hit.

And because, unfortunately, it’s not possible to avoid all stimulating activities, at some point you will be forced to engage in one.

When Stimulation Comes Back

We’ve all heard of the yo-yo effect when it comes to dieting. My understanding is that something similar can happen here.

If you suddenly engage in 2h of scrolling. You will experience a big spike of stimulation. When that happens, your body and mind don’t just sit there calmly saying, “lovely, thank you very much”. The system responds. Once the rewarding activity ends, you may feel a drop. Less motivation. Less interest. More craving. More restlessness.

There are many versions of this happening to all people, and not just those detoxing,

Artists sometimes feel flat after performing on stage.
Holidaymakers experience holiday blues.
Coffee drinkers experience afternoon crash in energy.
In extreme examples of stimulant drug use, people can experience a comedown for a few days.

Things get problematic here. When your mood, motivation, and energy are low, cravings can return. Your attention gets pulled towards everything you have just taken a break from.

And here we are again, back at the beginning.

So… if you end up listening to your cravings, you’re back on the dopamine trip. If you resist, you may be left with low mood, low motivation, and other unpleasant symptoms. If you continue resisting, you may be pulled elsewhere: snacks, work, cleaning, checking emails, researching productivity systems, or reorganising the spice cupboard at 11pm.

When the system becomes unstable, you end up experiencing higher highs and lower lows.

Is There a Better Way to Approach Dopamine Detox?

Our bodies are very good at adapting to new circumstances. We build tolerance to alcohol, caffeine, and medication. We can also get desensitised to emotional situations, for example using exposure therapy. But we need to have a good idea of what we are trying to desensitise ourselves to, and why.

If a classic dopamine detox can create a yo-yo effect, then maybe we need to take a lesson from the typical solution to the yo-yo effect.

We are aiming for sustainable change.

This will be very boring, but...

We need a clear long-term goal that is consistent with our values.

Avoiding all pleasure leads to a very miserable life. There is definitely value in spending more time in nature, away from technology, and away from stimulation. But is that what you want?

We’ve all heard amazing success stories of people who moved to a different country, escaped the 9-5 life, and now spend most of their time walking barefoot in the forests of South America. But… for you to hear these stories, dopamine must have been involved. Otherwise, why would these people share it on Instagram daily?

So before you engage in a dopamine detox, it’s probably worth reflecting on your goals and what you’d like to happen after your challenge is completed. It’s not possible to avoid all stimulating activities. For example, deleting TikTok doesn’t mean you’ll never see short-form engaging videos again. The internet is full of them. Even if you don’t mean to, at some point you may get sucked in. And what will help keep yourself in check if not your goals and values?

It is often recommended you follow the dopamine detox with clear lifestyle changes. This is probably a good idea. For example, after completing the detox, you might delete the TikTok app and never use it again. Instead, you might use a Kindle app to read books.

Before we fully conclude how to best approach a dopamine detox, let’s summarise what we established so far.

What Are the Lessons Here?

We don’t want to remove dopamine, reset the brain, or “balance” a neurotransmitter we don’t fully understand. But the idea of dopamine fasting (instead of dopamine detox) is probably reasonable.

So let’s clarify a few important points.

→ Dopamine is not simply a “feel good” chemical. It is heavily involved in motivation, wanting, learning, and anticipation.

→ You don’t run out of dopamine from too much stimulation.

→ Changes in reward sensitivity don’t magically reverse in a few days.

→ Dopamine detox won’t recalibrate your reward system in a lasting neurological sense just because you avoided pleasure for a weekend.

→ Without a systemic change in your lifestyle, goals, environment, and values, you will probably return to the previous pattern.

→ It can create an unhealthy relationship with pleasurable activities. You get pleasure either way: from engaging or from avoiding. It can become very all-or-nothing.

What Should We Do Instead?

Let’s start by accepting that dopamine-related spikes are perfectly normal parts of human functioning. If they’re here to stay, we need to decide what we would like to be pulled by.

If the given activity is consistent with your identity, values, and vision of the future, the system is happy, and dopamine spikes are helping you achieve your goals.

For example, if you value long-term financial stability, there is nothing wrong with subscribing to a newsletter about passive long-term investing. When it arrives in your inbox, it may trigger interest, anticipation, and motivation. The spike is connected to something meaningful. It helps you learn. It connects to your future goal of a financially secure retirement.

If, however, you are consuming endless content about becoming rich overnight and cryptocurrencies going to the moon, you may be turning away from your actual goal.

Your dopamine system is still involved. But now it is being pulled by the fantasy version of the goal rather than the real one.

This can lead to more dysregulation, more cravings, and potentially impulsive financial decisions that risk your long-term goals.

Let’s try another example.

Imagine you’re spending 2 hours per day watching educational content about productivity.

What’s your goal?

You might need to ask yourself:

→ What’s important about productivity?

→ What’s important about that?

→ What’s important about what’s important about that?

Once you get to the bottom of your conundrum, it becomes easier.

The final answer might be any of the following:

“I want to be someone who changes the world for the better.”
“I want people to like me.”
“I want to impress my parents.”
“I want to increase the output in my business.”

Depending on your answer, you might need to replace the false productivity videos with something that actually brings you closer to your goals.

Once you have made your mind up about what is important to you and how to achieve it, you can use additional tricks. I am usually not the biggest fan of telling people what to do. I’ll briefly mention some ideas, but it’s up to you what you do with it!

One helpful trick is adding friction. Here is some I’ve tried .

• Log out of the app after each use. Re-entering your password can kill the impulse.

• Move the phone charger away from the bedroom. Using your phone at night or in the morning would then require more effort.

• Turn off notifications for most apps.

• Don’t keep your favourite snacks at home.

• Use website blockers with a 1-minute delay.

• Wear trousers without pockets. It forces you to keep your phone in the bag. (I’ve not tried this one yet!)

At the same time, it’s worth reducing friction for your desired activities.

• Have a big water bottle, so keeping hydrated is easy.

• Create a minimalist bedside shelf with only one book on it - the one you’d like to read.

• Or, if you’re looking for desperate measures, sleep in your sports clothes to make the morning run more likely to happen.
  

You can use a short break from stimulation to interrupt a pattern. But interruption is not the same as new learning. You’d need to gradually adapt your approach, making it more sustainable.

The aim is to create a new routine, a new lifestyle, and a change in how you function that won’t rely only on willpower. This takes time. One day, you may look back and realise that the previous activity is totally not on your radar anymore. Things got reorganised over time. And the reorganisation was gradual and peaceful rather than exciting.

Once you do that, ideally you remove the old means of achieving the same goal in an unhealthy way.

→ Unsubscribe from unwanted content
→ Change your YouTube settings.
→ Create a new YouTube account.
→ Remove the app

You might say, “Well, I can just re-subscribe or re-download.” That’s true. But that’s also true during the detox. The point is that you are changing the focus, rather than delaying gratification for later. You are taking more control over your choices.

And when you slip up, it’s okay.

Your mind and body are usually very good at letting you know that something feels off. Guilt, embarrassment, frustration, anger, and even shame can sometimes point towards a conflict between what you’re doing and who you want to be. But they are signals, not punishments.

You don’t want to become a person staring at a wall waiting for enlightenment to arrive. You want to feel joy from doing things that are important to you.

And if you realise that scrolling, drinking, caffeine, overeating, or other dopamine-spiking activities are still genuinely consistent with your long-term goals, then what’s the point of detoxing from them?

Thank you for reaching the end of this article.
I’m glad you’re here :)

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The first time I went to the gym, I could barely walk for a few days. But I went back.

When I was asked to lead the school assembly at 11 years old, my whole body was telling me to hide. But I stayed.

The first time I stepped into cold water my brain shouted at me: “This is irrational.” But I continued.

Each of the above examples are good examples of internal conflict. Our body signals one thing, but we do the opposite. Usually because some underlying value or goal matters more than the short-term discomfort.

Experiencing stress in these situations gave my mind and body a chance to adapt and grow. Gym workouts became more enjoyable and easier to handle, cold became more tolerable, and public speaking became more natural over time.

But what if my mind and body learned the wrong thing from it?

Pain from the gym could mean exercise is dangerous, so never go again. Cold water hurts, so it’s best to stay warm and cosy instead. Public speaking feels uncomfortable, so why risk embarrassment?

Avoiding pain and discomfort makes perfect sense, especially in the short-term.

Staying in Control Now

Your body’s first goal is usually to help you stay in control right now.

It directs your attention and resources towards whatever seems most important in the moment.

One of your goals in life might be to relax in the sun and enjoy yourself. But if you’re being chased by a tiger, your priorities suddenly change. There’s no point enjoying the warmth of the sun or planning your shopping list while trying not to die.

Similarly, during a job interview, your brain is unlikely to focus on your retirement plans or analyse yesterday’s gym workout.

We naturally prioritise what’s directly in front of us. This is often driven by built-in fears and protective responses.

Living organisms constantly try to maintain balance and stability - a process called homeostasis. For example, if you get cold, your body tries to warm you up, until temperature returns to its baseline. The same process occurs at an emotional level.

However, restoring control can lead to very different outcomes. To simplify it, let’s just focus on two options.

Option 1: short-term problem resolution👍🏼 → but… long-term problems. ☹️

Option 2: short-term problem resolution 👍🏼 → and… long-term growth 💪🏼

Despite achieving positive results in front of you, the long-term outcomes can be totally opposite.

Good stress trains us.

Bad stress drains us.

By the end of this article, you should have a better idea of how to optimise stress for long-term growth.

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The Paradox of Short-Term Pain

Imagine explaining the idea of regular gym workouts to someone who has never heard of exercise.

“To improve your health, you’ll repeatedly do activities that hurt your muscles. You’ll be in pain, become sweaty, physically uncomfortable, and out of breath. Stress hormones will increase and your muscles will experience damage. This is good for you.”

It sounds confusing.

But this is exactly why many people avoid stressful activities.

We instinctively avoid discomfort.

Modern life makes this even easier.

• Avoid boredom with scrolling.

• Avoid tiredness with caffeine.

• Avoid hunger with snacks.

• Avoid awkwardness with distraction.

• Avoid effort with comfort

The problem is that avoiding all discomfort can create a much deeper form of conflict underneath. Sometimes discomfort is the price of moving towards the things that matter to us.

Constant attempts at restoring control in the moment is what often gets in the way of our life goals.

Homeostasis Is Cool. But Have You Heard of Hormesis?

The body and mind don’t only aim to restore control in the moment. They also reorganise themselves to handle similar situations better in the future.

Once muscles experience microdamage from training, they repair and grow. The nervous system adapts too. Things that once felt stressful can gradually become manageable, familiar, or even enjoyable.

Hormesis is the idea that manageable amounts of stress can trigger positive adaptations in the body and brain.

All we need to figure out now is: How much stress is “just right”?

Too little stress and we can become deconditioned or stuck. Too much stress and the nervous system can become overwhelmed, pushing us into survival mode. Helpful stress seems to exist somewhere in the middle, where challenge is manageable enough to lead to growth, resilience, and adaptation.

• Too little - no adaptation, stagnation, deconditioning

• Moderate - beneficial adaptation and growth 💪🏼

• Too much - overload, burnout, dysregulation

I’ve experienced this myself the hard way.

A few years ago, there was a period where I pushed my body beyond its limits. I used heavy gym sessions as a break from stressful work, but in reality, both were overloading the same nervous system. I combined intense exercise with caffeine, cold plunges, conferences, new projects, and other forms of stimulation.

All of the above are great and beneficial activities. But only in the right dose, at the right time, and in the right circumstances.

I eventually learned to pay more attention to recovery.

If my body is rested and ready, a difficult workout can feel great. But during more stressful periods, sometimes it’s healthier to slow down.

One of the main signals you’ve pushed your stress too far, is when you notice it gradually leads to worse outcomes. Another signal, is when you notice there is no time to recover before the same system is stressed again. This is true for any domain including physical, emotional, and social.

Psychological Hormesis

Many therapeutic approaches, whether explicitly or not, treat emotional avoidance as part of the problem. It makes sense why. Avoidance usually reduces emotional pain in the moment. But over time, it can weaken your emotional functioning.

Avoiding sadness, for example, can strengthen the belief that sadness itself is dangerous.

Eventually, the emotion becomes stressful.

You become stressed about feeling sad.

We discussed a few examples of going too far with physical stress. But hormesis also applies psychologically. In fact, many forms of therapy rely on it.

Approaches such as gradual exposure therapy or trauma-focused work often involve intentional opening of unpleasant emotions.

That’s why, instead of suppressing emotions, your therapist may help you experience them safely, talk about them, and understand them. You temporarily allow difficult emotions, thoughts, images, or memories into awareness.

The idea is, you experience manageable stress so the same thing stops overwhelming you in the future.

Is This Always True?

As a therapist, I am not the biggest fan of general statements such as “Never avoid emotions” or “Stress is good”.

I believe that avoidance and emotional suppression are perfectly fine emotional tools. I guess what I’d like to happen, is for people to make such choices more consciously, with better awareness of the “full package” of short-term and long-term factors involved in the given decision.

How to Optimise Stress for Growth?

Not all stress builds resilience. Some stress simply overwhelms the system. The body will always try to adapt, but adaptation does not always mean growth.

Alcohol, for example, acts as a stressor and toxin. Over time, the body adapts, meaning tolerance can increase. But that doesn’t mean alcohol is improving wellbeing (see my article about alcohol HERE)

Sleep deprivation is another example. Missing sleep stresses the body and brain. You might temporarily adapt through adrenaline and increased nervous system activation, but chronic sleep deprivation is strongly linked to negative physical and psychological outcomes.

There are many other examples:
pollution, abuse, chronic loneliness, smoking, ultra-processed food, repeated concussions, long-term uncontrollable stress.

There is no point exposing yourself to harmful things unnecessarily. Instead, we should engage in challenges that allow the body and mind not only to recover, but sometimes to grow beyond their previous baseline.

So it’s about choosing the right activities, in optimal quantities, and in the right context.

Sunlight exposure may have hormetic effects in moderation. But excessive exposure increases risk and damage.

Fasting for 14-16 hours may be adaptive for some people, but could result in underfueling for others. Starvation is never good.

Exercise can be one of the best things you do for your health. But intense exercise while already depleted can become another source of overload or burnout.

→ Context matters.

→ Recovery matters.

→ Dose matters.

We’ve all heard the phrase: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

Sometimes it’s true. Sometimes it really is not.

Stress may become useful when the body and mind can still maintain some degree of stability and control. Beyond that point, stress can stop being adaptive and start becoming destabilising.

Growth doesn’t come from avoiding all discomfort.

It also doesn’t come from overwhelming yourself.

Learning to find the optimal middle ground is probably the best way to optimise for physical, emotional, social, and professional growth.

Thank you for reaching the end of this article.
I’m glad you’re here :)

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I was always impressed by people swimming in ice cold water. When I was a kid I first learned about it on the Polish news. My TV back then only had about five channels.

The news reporter was half-smiling when describing a story of an annual winter gathering of cold water enthusiasts.

The footage showed a group of people wearing speedos, warming up on a snow-covered beach. Then happily running towards the sea.

It’s minus 12 degrees [Celsius] today - commented one of them in the post-swim interview - perfect day for a swim.

In Poland they call them “morsy”, meaning walruses.

Walruses as animals are perfectly adapted to cold water as they thrive in the freezing waters of the Arctic. So the name makes total sense.

They showed similar footage every year. Back then, I just treated it as an interesting anecdote.

I would have never thought I’d become one of these crazy cold water enthusiasts 25 years later.

The first cold bath

It started in 2020. I was listening to a podcast about benefits of cold water exposure. Very quickly, I was sold. I was also going through some health problems at the time, looking for alternative health methods.

I turned the knob of my bathtub to the coldest setting. It was winter so tap water felt ice cold. I felt nervous and excited.

It was hard to get in, but I did it.

I fully immersed myself, maybe only my head and knees sticking out, and set a timer.

I noticed a wave of sensations going through my whole body. I couldn’t tell if it was pain, fear, or excitement; or a combination of all of them.

All I know is that staying in required a lot of willpower.

What happened next confused me.

After drying myself I started to feel very itchy. I learned later that this is caused by a rapid rush of blood back to the skin as it warms up.

Apart from needing a couple of hours to fully warm up again, I haven’t experienced any other negative effects. But.. I felt really good.

Within just a few minutes of leaving the bath I started to feel very calm. My mind was sharp. I felt focused and ready to tackle my to-do list.

It felt as if someone changed how my brain regulates dopamine. Now I know that’s more or less what happens. Cold water is one of the most powerful natural ways to increase circulating dopamine levels. And this increase lasts a few hours.

That’s also where I made my first mistake.

When it went wrong

I assumed more cold water meant more benefits. It didn’t.

After my first cold bath experience, I repeated it daily. Every morning. Gradually increasing the time spent in the bath.

After a few days I noticed an itchy but painful sensation in my feet. All my toes were red. It turns out I’d developed chilblains.

The answer was to take a 3 week break from cold water. Lesson learned.

Cold water can be an amazing tool. But… the dose is important. This taught me something important: less is often more.

More coffee doesn’t always mean better focus. More work doesn’t always mean more money. And more exercise doesn’t always mean more muscle.

The same way, more cold water doesn’t always mean more health benefits.

Over the last few years I experimented with different forms of cold water exposure, from home baths and wild water swimming in lakes and the sea, to specialist centres for contrast therapy where cold water and sauna are combined.

Some experiences were incredible. Some were questionable.

If you visited Whitby or Scarborough on a cold, autumnal day and saw a half-naked guy running into the sea - it was possibly me.

I’ve learned a lot in the process.

I do have some more nuanced reflections about cold water, which I will share in later articles. For example, does cold water spike cortisol and stress or does it reduce cortisol and stress?

But for now let’s focus on some basics. I’ve listed over 30 learned lessons, but realised nobody is going to read these. So I’ve condensed them into the 5 most important ones. Here are the top five lessons to get you started.

Safety first
Cold water is generally safe for healthy people, but it’s still important to use common sense. If you have underlying health conditions, especially heart problems, speak to a doctor first. Going too cold too quickly, staying in too long, or immersing your head can lead to a cold shock response, gasp reflex, hypothermia, and even drowning. But the steps below should help you approach your first cold bath safely.

What I learned

1. Breathe calmly

When you enter cold water your first instinct is to gasp for air. There’s nothing wrong with listening to your body and taking a breath when it’s needed. But in this case it’s not always a good idea.

I know you’ve seen Wim Hof’s hyperventilation videos and might want to be the resilience warrior, but… That’s too much for your first time, and might be too much for any time. Completely different mechanisms are targeted here.

Breathe through your nose. Exhale. Then enter the cold water.

After immersing yourself, allow “normal” nasal breathing to happen naturally.

2. Too cold, too long or too much

We are aiming to optimise the benefits of cold water, not push your body to its limits.

I’d say the best rule to follow is:

The colder the water, the shorter the bath.

For your first attempt a short 1 min bath in cold tap water is perfect. Cold shower is also fine.

As you get more experienced, your body will adapt, things will get easier, and then you can experiment with ice or specialised cold plunge centres.

What temperature are we aiming for?

Studies suggest some health benefits can occur at both ranges, from 20-30 seconds in 2-4 degree water [Celsius] to 5 minutes in 20 degree water [Celsius].

If your water is very cold, usually you don’t want to stay longer than 2-3 minutes. Anything beyond that just increases the risk of negative effects. Staying too long pushes your body towards hypothermia.

3. Immerse your whole body up to the neck.

I’ve seen people perform a cold plunge in which their chest, shoulders, both hands and feet are hanging in the air above water level. This instinctively feels like a good idea because you’re able to stay in cold water longer. But effectively, it also means it’s only your bum that’s being cooled down.

Protecting your toes and fingers is probably important with longer cold sessions in the sea or lake. But in a controlled environment, I prefer to opt in for a shorter session while allowing for a full effect.

I usually immerse my full body up to the neck, so only my head sticks out.

The neck and hands contain temperature receptors and other sensors that send important signals to the body. Specialised blood vessels and nerves help the brain sense and regulate the environment. They are part of the feedback loop.

Brown fat activation may also be stimulated when both your upper back and neck are exposed to cold water.

The reason you feel the cold so intensely in your feet and palms is partly because specialised blood vessels, called arteriovenous anastomoses, constrict to prevent heat loss.

Did you know your feet have about 200,000 nerve endings?

Research in this area is still limited, but considering the complexity of the human body and how well different organs and processes work together, I prefer a shorter, full-body immersion. This way, I know the whole body is involved.

4. Be consistent with your goals

Before you jump into cold water, it’s worth clarifying to yourself what your goal is. You’ve heard it’s good for you, but what’s your aim?

Depending on your goal, the variables will be different.

Factors such as time, duration, temperature, frequency, full body vs partial immersion, with sauna vs alone, etc.

You can start with a simple short session to see what happens. But if you are hoping for a very specific benefit, modifying your approach can drastically improve the outcomes.

Are you aiming to improve your focus? Or maybe build resilience and expand your comfort zone? Maybe it’s all about improving your immune system, cold tolerance, sleep, or muscle recovery after a heavy workout? Or perhaps it’s about socialising with people who share similar interests and feeling more connected to nature?

Some of these goals can conflict with each other.

For example, cold water straight after strength training may impact muscle growth. Cold plunge too late in the day might affect your sleep. Expanding your comfort zone also won’t work very well if your first cold plunge traumatises you so much that you never go back.

5. Be smart and selective

When I originally started I set up a daily time and duration for the cold bath and stuck to it regardless. Sometimes it was perfect for me. On other days it was pushing me too much.

When I was too busy, rushed, run down, sleep deprived, tired, or in other ways vulnerable, cold water was becoming problematic.

Why?

Cold water immersion creates a strong stimulus for your sympathetic nervous system activation. It’s the stress response, also known as “fight or flight” response - heartbeat, breathing, sweating. This also goes with neurological changes in dopamine, adrenaline, and cortisol.

This article is too short to go into a detailed exploration of these reactions. Next week’s article will explore exactly this topic - the optimal dose of stress for growth. Subscribe to receive it straight to your inbox.

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But for the sake of this issue, let’s try to simplify it.

I am assuming you’re not thinking of having cold baths to make your life more stressful.

Stress itself is not the enemy. At least not in the right dose.

Stress can be good for us.

Some stress is necessary for adaptation, resilience, and recovery. It can trigger changes that support better functioning, both short-term and long-term.

But there is a hard limit on this.

The limit is driven by your body’s set point for homeostasis.

For example, once your brain is satisfied that sufficient physiological reaction has been produced to handle the given stressor, the loop sends feedback to turn it off.

Then, your body’s parasympathetic nervous system response gets triggered to allow for recovery. Also known as “rest and digest”.

Over time, this can help the system become more efficient at resetting after stress. There are some theories suggesting that spiking your cortisol to a reasonable level in the morning means having a calmer and more relaxed afternoon, exactly because of the feedback loop.

But this takes us to a very important point. If your body is already emotionally pushed, sleep deprived, or in other ways depleted, it’s possible your cortisol levels are already high. Sometimes too high to recover before it’s spiked again.

Chronic stress means your body gets stuck constantly perceiving “threats”.

Over time, it can become desensitised to cortisol. The system responsible for “turning off” the stress response becomes less efficient.

Your body stays in a high-alert state for longer.

Activities such as gentle sauna sessions, meditation, yoga, breathwork, walking, or socialising could potentially be a much better choice than cold plunge.

The research on this is lacking and I don’t think it’s a definitive answer, but that’s how I see it currently.

There is a lot of contradicting information out there. Some research suggests that levels of cortisol are lower after cold exposure. And that regular exposure can lead to a lower cortisol baseline in the long-term. This is very likely true for many people. But remember, most studies use “averages” and “trends” and don’t capture unique responses.

Every nervous system responds differently. It’s important to listen to yourself, your own bodily signals, and gradually get to know your body better.

Final words

I fell in love with cold water over 6 years ago. It has become a part of my life and I regularly crave cold water. I know it’s good for me.

But I’ve learned to take it easy. Over the last couple of years I’ve been going to a local contrast therapy centre. Instead of pushing my body to its limits, I enjoy the gentle benefits of both cold plunge and sauna, using more of one or the other depending on my goals on the given day.

Cold water often makes you feel incredible for a few hours afterwards. Calm, focused, energised. I often sleep like a baby after a contrast therapy session.

Sometimes there’s a crash later in the day Sometimes there isn’t.

But it’s important to say that most of the long-term benefits won’t be visible at first.

You’ll reflect a few months later and realise you function much better, don’t get ill, and handle stress better.

These days, I’m less interested in pushing myself to extremes. I’m more interested in understanding what actually helps me function well.

That lesson applies to far more than just cold water.

Thank you for reaching the end of this article.
I’m glad you’re here :)

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First, destroy sleep

If I wanted to ruin my mental health, I would start by taking away something fundamental for human wellbeing.

Sleep.

Good quality sleep is the foundation for psychological functioning. Perfect place to start.

I would consume a lot of caffeine in the afternoon and follow it with the biggest meal of the day in the evening. The aim is to make my sleep lighter, more fragmented, and less restorative. Before going to bed, I’d watch a film, ideally something triggering, so that my nervous system gets activated. Bright light from the big screen, an alcoholic drink, and ultra-processed snacks could go with it as an added bonus.

I’d make sure I’m not using curtains. Blackout curtains must be avoided at all costs. They block light, but any light from the outside can make sleep lighter or wake me earlier than I need. Perfect.

I would ensure all windows and the bedroom door are closed. This helps reduce air circulation. Less fresh air, worse air quality, and a warmer room than is needed for good sleep. Exactly what we want.

I would roll into my bed and scroll on my phone, ideally aiming to process as much information as possible. I’d choose an app that gives me a new little piece of information or reward every few seconds. This helps to ensure I feel overwhelmed, brain fogged, and depleted.

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It’s time to go to sleep. Let’s leave my phone on the side, fully turned on, so any notifications wake me up throughout the night. Possibly put the TV on in the background, so there’s constant noise interfering with my sleep too.

As I’m drifting off, I would worry about the consequences of my bad sleep. I would analyse how many hours I’ve got left and think about how bad I will feel tomorrow.

Start the day scattered

I should wake up nicely sleep deprived, making it a good start for a dysregulated day.

The morning plan is easy. I must make sure I avoid any possible healthy activity. No exercise, no healthy breakfast, no hydration. Ideally, start by reaching for my phone and scrolling in bed. This helps to make sure I feel scattered before the day has even started.

Dysregulation in other areas is also important. After a longer scrolling session, I’d drag myself to the kitchen to make a coffee. Ideally with sugar and on an empty stomach. Sugar will help dysregulate my energy, especially if I follow it with a carb-heavy or sugar-heavy breakfast. I’d go for something like cereal, flapjack, pastry, jam on toast, or a fruit juice. Let’s make sure I get the biggest sugar spike possible, so that I can crash later.

Avoid sunlight, movement, and food

Now the day has started, I must make sure I don’t go outside. Morning sunlight has too many benefits.

Ideally, stay in one static position, preferably one straining your neck. Hunched back and head-forward posture is perfect for this. Let’s sit this way for a good few hours. Absolutely no exercise, no movement, no stretching, no breathwork, no hydration - they are too good for us.

Procrastinate and multitask. Be reactive

Let’s start staring at my to-do list. This helps feel more anxious and overwhelmed. At this point, it’s good to remind myself how important these tasks are and then totally ignore them. Any form of procrastination would work well here.

To make sure I don’t prioritise long-term goals, I would start by opening my emails. I wouldn’t action any, just flag them for later. So that I know I have a lot to do, but I am failing.

Before getting anything done, let’s make sure the to-do list is visible, the email app is open, the phone is visible on my desk, and all notifications on both devices are switched on. Feeling scattered is the aim. Any noise or notification should grab my attention. We’re aiming for a loss of control.

Let’s start multitasking.

Start working on something very important but get distracted at every opportunity. Be reactive. Check every notification and engage in useless tasks. Reorganising phone home screen icons or checking recent bank transactions are great examples.

Lose sight of your goals and priorities

I would respond to some emails that are not important. Ones that prioritise other people’s needs. If my colleague asks me about something they could easily find on Google, I would make sure I write a great detailed response, better than Google. This way, I waste a lot of time and start feeling like other people’s needs are more important than mine.

This would be a good moment to start targeting self-esteem. When we’re failing at something, it is the best time to ruminate, criticise ourselves, and dwell on how bad our life is. I’d do this until I max out on feeling down and anxious.

I nearly forgot about another important factor.

Emotional suppression.

It plays a role in many mental health difficulties.

Avoid emotions

Let’s avoid emotions as much as possible.

Once I feel anything unpleasant, I would just push it to the back of my head. Every time I feel a little sad, embarrassed, or guilty, I should simply find the first thing in front of me that would block it. Plenty of options here, but I would probably choose between mindless scrolling of funny videos, playing a game, or snacking on sugary food.

The aim is a short-term relief and total ignorance of long-term goals.

Isolate Yourself. Push people away

It is crucial I also avoid any possible real-life interactions with people. No phone calls, no video calls, and definitely not leaving the house.

If, for any reason, I am forced to talk to someone, I would make sure I am masking. It would be important that I put a front on, pretending I am having a great day. This way, I would limit any social support available.

When a difficult topic is raised, I would simply agree with them. Expressing my opinion and standing up for my values would be too good for me. It’s better to feel demoralised.

When talking to other people, I would avoid asking them any questions, to make sure the conversation is one-sided. Sticking to small talk and avoiding curious or engaging topics would mean my social image gets a bit worse over time. Ideally, I should push people away, so gradually my social support network gets smaller. The goal is total social isolation.

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It would be important to also take my family for granted. They are family, so there’s no point checking on them, spending time with them, or showing interest in their life. To make it slightly worse, I could also blame them for it, why not? This will definitely create some conflict, including internal conflict.

Ignore body signals. Stack short-term rewards

My back or neck will start hurting from being in one position. I would ignore these signals.

By this point, I should be feeling agitated, sore, down, and depleted. A decent crash in energy is starting. This is the point where I should avoid any healthy food so my body doesn’t get any fuel. Just wait for the sugar cravings and then destroy a bar of chocolate or a tube of ice cream in one go.

Having some tasty food offers a nice spike in pleasure. This is the perfect moment to stack as many short-term rewards as possible: snacks, alcohol, energy drinks, games, fantasy football, gambling, dating apps, online shopping, checking investments, browsing memes. Options are endless.

Use social media excessively

I’d make sure I upload a story or picture to all social media sites, ideally one that shows a completely different lifestyle than the one I currently have. Make people jealous and aim for a lot of likes and comments. I want people praising me for the amazing things I do, when in reality I am feeling crap. This will definitely make me feel slightly fraudulent and ashamed of myself.

Make sure you use multiple social media sites at once. Then engage in compulsive checking of them in a never ending circle.

We’ve reached a big crash. Mood is very low, no motivation, no energy, anxiety through the roof, negative thoughts taking over.

Take zero ownership. Blame the world

This would be a good moment to start blaming other people. I would make sure I don’t take any ownership of anything. Complain to my manager about the work systems, message my friends complaining how busy I am, and ruminate on how much easier life was for the previous generation.

Blaming external factors and feeling sorry for myself will provide a temporary distraction and guarantee that nothing at all changes in your life. Now you can blame the environment and the system around you whilst staying emotionally unwell. Being stuck in a chronic conflict with yourself is at the core of mental health problems.

Apply the “screw it” mindset

By now, it feels like the day is ruined. It would be great to use this as an excuse and say something like, “Screw it, it’s ruined anyway, I will start good habits from tomorrow.”

This helps to make sure you never start good habits. You can simply say the same thing tomorrow. But for the rest of the day today, you have a good excuse to engage in as many unhealthy activities as you can. Making the false promise that this is the last time allows you to max out on unhealthy activities causing mental health destruction.

Once the day is officially complete, it would be important that you check your work emails after hours, simply to keep track of your accumulating work. It also helps to track any consequences of today’s failures, keeping a consistent stream of anxiety spikes.

Try to fix everything at once, push your limits

Once I reach rock bottom, I would watch YouTube videos about mental health. The best ones would be things like “How to fix depression in 1 minute”. Ideally, I’d watch at least 50 of them, so by the end I don’t remember anything and have no idea what to do.

Once I bump into a video of a motivational speech, I’d totally go with my gut instinct. I feel something positive, so I might as well follow it.

It’s time to sort my life out. Let’s go to the gym!

I am hungry, but there is no time to waste. This will be the perfect time to go. My body is under-fuelled, my energy is low, and my nervous system is absolutely depleted. It’s time to do a workout and totally ignore any body signals. Ideally, aim for heavy weights or a high-intensity session, or even better - try to tackle my personal records. Don’t do any warm-up.

Between the sets, I’d make sure to scroll on my phone. Wear headphones to avoid any social interaction, but quietly stare at other people’s physique. Comparing myself to those who look better than me is perfect here. Ignore those who look worse and never compare yourself to people who never came to the gym; only focus on those who look like machines.

If I notice any signals such as pain, discomfort, or my hands shaking, I’d just push through it. We’re aiming for total depletion. Once I can barely walk, the job is done.

Skip the shower. It helps to avoid any uncomfortable social situations in the changing room. We want to shrink comfort zone. Skipping the shower also means I stay uncomfortable in my body for longer. Perfect.

As I’m leaving the gym, a person smiles at me. This is risky! I felt something positive. The best option here is to lower my gaze, pretend I haven’t noticed, and leave the gym as soon as possible. Ideally, tell myself they were probably laughing at me.

Overindulge on unhealthy food

On my way home, I’d just follow my instincts. I’m starving. Stop by a kebab shop or another fast-food option. I’m hungry and my body is shouting at me to get some fuel. This time, I will listen.

Let’s order a double or triple portion and consume it as fast as possible. It would be good to scroll on my phone at the same time, maybe checking my work emails again. No time for mindful eating. Make sure it’s as ultra-processed as possible, use a lot of sauce, and consume it with a bottle of ‘full-fat’ coke. Don’t forget to buy a dessert, maybe a large milkshake, and then down it in one go.

Get the '“wrong” help

Once I reach home, I should feel absolutely destroyed.
Bloated, sore, down, anxious, confused.

These feelings are unbearable, so let’s try to get some help. I would start a conversation with ChatGPT. The best option here is to give it absolutely no context. Just say something like, “I feel crap. What to do?”

This way, you’ll get the most generic advice possible. Then be very selective when reading these ideas. You want to ignore anything you don’t like and only focus on the things you prefer. If, for any reason, you don’t like any of its suggestions, just say it, until ChatGPT pleases you and tells you exactly what you want to hear. It might take 3-4 prompts, but you’ll get there.

This helps to finish the whole routine by confirming your own beliefs and staying stuck.

Now it’s time for some more alcohol, caffeine, scrolling, avoidance, games, and…

Okay.

Enough.

Pause. Reflect.

Let’s pause here.

I am feeling too creative and starting to feel guilty! I was hoping for this article to be short, but I have too many ideas coming to my mind.

Being unhealthy is so easy. So many options!

This article is a little provocative. My apologies if at times I’ve pushed the paradox too far. Of course, mental health is not only about lifestyle and habits. Biology, stress, trauma, relationships, illness, money, work, support, and many other factors matter too. But our daily patterns still count. They accumulate.

I find that sometimes flipping a topic on its head really helps to gain a new perspective.

Identifying what behaviours direct you to the opposite goal means identifying what takes you away from your goal.

I think it can be refreshing. It helps to wake up.

If you’re aiming to have better mental health, but you’re regularly engaging in activities from the above recipe for a mental health disaster, then you’ve got something to reflect on. I do too. We all do.

Many things affect your mental health.

Each one does it separately, but they all accumulate. Most of these behaviours look small in isolation. That is exactly why they are easy to ignore

Changing everything in one go is probably not a good idea. But...

Why not select your top three priorities, and make them your focus for the next week?

I’ve combined all of the discussed factors below into one long list.

Read through it.
Pick three.
Try modifying them for a week.
Notice what changes.

Let me know how it goes

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• Afternoon caffeine

• Heavy meals late in the evening

• Watching activating content before bed

• Using screens late at night

• Sleeping in a bright room

• Sleeping in a warm, stuffy room

• Scrolling in bed

• Leaving notifications on overnight

• Leaving the TV on in the background

• Worrying yourself to sleep

• Counting your sleep hours

• Starting the day with phone in your hand

• No morning sunlight

• Poor hydration

• Sugary breakfast

• Alcohol

• Relying on caffeine and sugar for energy

• Sitting still for hours

• Avoiding exercise or movement

• Poor posture

• Ignoring body signals

• Avoiding going outside

• Staring at a to-do list without acting

• Starting work from opening emails

• Tidying or flagging tasks instead of doing them

• Keeping notifications switched on

• Keeping your phone visible while working

• Multitasking

• Reacting to every notification

• Procrastinating with small pointless tasks

• Prioritising other people’s needs over your own

• Ruminating, self-criticism, catastrophising

• Suppressing emotions

• Doom scrolling

• Comfort eating

• Avoiding phone calls

• Avoiding real-life interactions

• Pretending to be okay, masking how you feel

• Avoiding vulnerability

• Agreeing with people. Not standing up for your values

• Keeping conversations superficial

• Not asking people questions

• Pushing people away

• Neglecting family and close relationships

• Not taking responsibility or ownership

• Eating quickly and mindlessly

• Scrolling while eating

• Checking work emails after hours

• Choosing quick pleasure over long-term goals

• Stacking short-term rewards

• Compulsive checking or online activity

• Playing games to avoid reality

• Posting online for validation

• Chasing likes and comments

• Presenting a false version of your life online

• Consuming endless self-help content

• Searching for quick fixes

• Taking impulsive actions to get better

• Asking ChatGPT vague questions and expecting useful answers

• Being selective with your reading. Ignoring advice, you don’t like

• Seeking reassurance instead of change

• Exercising when depleted

• Skipping warm-up before a workout

• Ignoring pain or exhaustion

• Comparing your body to others

• Avoiding small positive social moments or opportunities

• Taking the “all or nothing approach”. Saying “the day is ruined, I’ll start tomorrow”

• Trying to change everything at once

• Repeating yesterday’s mistakes today, and today’s mistakes tomorrow.

There is something very special about coffee.
And probably only coffee drinkers can relate.

Everyone has their own reasons for consuming it. Some rely on it to manage sleep deprivation, some simply enjoy the ritual, others seek additional mental stimulation.

I am probably in the latter group. I’ve always found caffeine helps me with concentration. I also enjoy the ritual and believe there is much more to it than popping a magic caffeine pill.

As I am writing these words, I am sat in a cosy café near Leeds docks, sipping my flat white with perfect milk foam art on top. It’s become my weekly journalling and reflection time. The presence of coffee just makes it more special.

It has crossed my mind, that this coffee might not be guilt-free. It’s my second coffee of the day. What are the chances the quality of my sleep will be affected?

It’s only 12 o’clock. You might think it’s a little dramatic to worry about it. And you’re probably right. To be honest, I’m not worried, but simply can’t stop myself from seeing the difference between these thoughts and what science supposedly tells us.

Let’s make sense of this problem from both a scientific and anecdotal point of view.

Hopefully, by the end of this article, you (and I), will have a clearer answer to this dilemma.

What does caffeine actually do?

Once you consume your cup of coffee, it takes about 10-20 minutes to start feeling the first effects. You’ll reach a peak at 30-60 minutes with a boost in energy, mental clarity, and motivation.

Caffeine blocks adenosine, the brain chemical responsible for making you feel sleepy. It also affects things like dopamine and adrenaline. This naturally leads to alertness and focus, but also some side effects like jitteriness and anxiety depending on the dose and context.

How long does the stimulation last?

But where does this additional physical or mental energy come from? What resources are being used? I haven’t consumed any additional calories or provided my body with fuel it can burn.

The truth is that caffeine doesn’t create energy. It just hides tiredness. In other words, we could say you’re borrowing energy from the future. You’re enjoying a couple hours boost at the cost of a crash later in the day.

Your brain doesn’t stop producing adenosine. Caffeine is blocking it, but adenosine is quietly building up in the background. Once caffeine starts to wear off, all the accumulated adenosine starts binding again. That’s the crash.

So in simple words, coffee blocks your tiredness signal. It builds up. Then it all comes through at once.

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Does the energy crash mean better sleep?

If caffeine borrows energy from the future, then in theory you will be more tired in the evening. It sounds like a perfect scenario. You enjoy the benefits of caffeine to improve your productivity and then drift off into a better sleep later that day.

I wish that was true. Unfortunately, it’s kind of the opposite. Caffeine activates your nervous system. What people experience as feeling “wired” is a result of sympathetic nervous system activation - the same response that’s triggered when you’re in danger. Adrenaline raises, blood pressure goes up, and your heart beats faster. It’s, of course, a much milder version of it.

If you’ve ever gone too far with those lovely espressos, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

This nervous system activation stays as long as caffeine is in your system. And unfortunately, caffeine stays in the body for much longer than we think.

The coffee I consumed today will still be in my system tomorrow.

Really?

Well, yes.

On average, it takes 5–7 hours for your body to metabolise half of the caffeine consumed. Then another 5–7 hours to process half of the remaining half, and so on.

My flat white containing approximately 150 mg of caffeine will be combined with the remaining caffeine from my morning coffee. It’s probably easier to show this visually. Let’s assume a caffeine half-life of 6 hours, meaning it takes 6 hours to remove half of the caffeine consumed.

Approximately 15 mg of caffeine will still be present in my body tomorrow at midday, assuming I skip my morning coffee (which I probably won’t). Apparently, it will take over 2 days to reach levels close to zero.

What does this mean for my sleep?

If you’ve had a busy day, you will probably fall asleep regardless. I am also likely going to fall asleep tonight. I have an eventful afternoon planned, providing therapy to a couple more client followed by a long padel match in the late afternoon.

However, if we trust science, we would need to assume that the quality of my sleep will be affected. Sleep is such a complex process, involving different phases and mechanisms of recovery.

We often assume that falling asleep and staying asleep means good sleep. But… Good sleep means restful sleep. Caffeine results in much lighter sleep. It tends to reduce total time spent in deep sleep. It can also negatively impact REM sleep, reduce blood flow to certain parts of the brain, lead to physiological changes such as increases in cortisol, increase the tendency towards worry or negative images, increase urine production, and raise body temperature. Combining these factor with many others I haven’t listed means sleep that is much less restful.

It takes longer to fall asleep, it is harder to stay asleep, and you are less likely to wake up in the morning feeling restored. Meaning you will need more coffee tomorrow.

Should we trust science on this?

It’s very possible you’re reading this and thinking this is all a little excessive. And I totally agree. Science is one story, but your experience is another.

My coffee cup is empty, and unless I order another one, I will need to release my seat for another caffeine enthusiast. But let’s conclude this reflection from a completely different perspective.

What if you could enjoy your coffee and simply accept the full picture of pros and cons?

Every single day we make choices. Some are bad. Some are good. But most are debatable. They depend on the context.

One of my favourite ways of thinking about choices is by contrasting them with my personal goals. If this cup of coffee was truly getting in the way of my life goals, it would be important to rethink it. Decaf coffee also exists.

But what if the goals caffeine helps me achieve are more important than the ones it gets in the way of?

If we take a simple assumption that the quality of my sleep will be 10–20% lower, is that okay for my overall wellbeing this week?

Is there a chance the wellbeing boost I get from today’s caffeine-related activities is greater?

I’ve benefited from helpful reflection space and writing, enjoyable mental stimulation, a sense of productivity, fulfilled curiosity, and even social goals, as I know these reflections will be shared with others. There are even more important things - consistency with my own vision of who I am, what I do, and the role I want to play. And even my deeper thoughts about the more philosophical question of how much life is about the balance between enjoying it and optimising health. There is a lot to it.

I’ve had my first coffee over 15 years ago. I’ve learned to understand how it affects my body and how far I can go with it. There have been times I definitely used too much of it, but also times I took a few months off caffeine with various positive effects.

Whatever perception I had of this flat white today was fully consistent with my vision of the day, the week, and my life in general. It is completely guilt-free. Ordering one more coffee would probably mean a different story and more significant internal conflict. It’s also very possible I will feel differently next week, when my priorities, health, and context are different.

Maybe instead of assuming coffee is bad for sleep, we should check in with our goals and decide whether it’s worth it today.

I’m still fairly new to writing here. Comments, reflections, disagreements, or personal experiences are very welcome.

Do you notice afternoon coffee affecting your sleep? Or are you one of those people who can drink a double espresso before bed with no issues? Feel free to leave a comment.

Something is bothering you.

You can’t stop thinking about it. You feel so conflicted that your whole nervous system seems to be on high alert. Or perhaps something is bothering you, but you don’t even know exactly what the problem is.

You book a therapy session, ready to tackle it. You choose a therapist with good qualifications.

Then the disappointment arrives.

They make you complete a set of questionnaires. Then they ask about alcohol, medication, drugs, childhood, and many other things, but not a single question about the thing that is bothering you most. At the end, they give you a worksheet to complete. You leave feeling demoralised, lost, and dismissed.

Experiences like this are more common than they should be.

Method of Levels therapy (MOL) offers a different starting point. It helps you focus on the problem that is most alive in your mind right now, while also making space for what may sit underneath it.

No worksheets.

No homework.

No pressure to learn a set of techniques.

So what actually happens during a Method of Levels therapy session?

MOL therapy is driven by your attention. The itchy thought, the intrusive image, the conflicting ideas, the intense emotion. Whatever is currently bothering you, that is where you will start.

It sounds almost too simple. You come to therapy with a problem, and the therapist helps you explore that problem. But there is a lot more going on under the surface, which I will get to.

Every session of MOL therapy starts in a very similar way. The therapist will open with something like:

What is bothering you at the moment?

Or simply:

What would you like to talk about today?

Then your job is to start exploring the problem from whatever angle feels right. Images, thoughts, feelings, memories, half-formed ideas, it is all valid. If you don’t know what your problem is, that is okay too. Your therapist will help you find a starting point.

You do not need to arrive prepared with a detailed analysis. All you need is a vague sense of what is bothering you, and willingness to talk about it.

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What happens in MOL once you start talking?

After the opening question, the direction of the session is guided by your attention. Not your therapist’s agenda. Yours.

Our minds naturally jump between thoughts, feelings, and ideas. That is fine. The therapist is trained to understand how human awareness works, what role attention plays in psychological difficulty, and how to help the process of change.

The underlying theory behind MOL is solid, with roots going back to the 1960s, and the clinical evidence has been building steadily.

As you explore the problem, your therapist will be with you. Listening, staying curious, asking questions. Every question is designed to help you understand your problem better and to gently move things forward.

They will not interrupt you to share their opinion.

They will not offer advice or express deep sympathy for your story.

Those things can feel supportive in the moment, but they can also pull you out of the flow. When you are in the middle of exploring something important, the last thing you need is someone redirecting you.

Sometimes the therapist will simply nod. Sometimes they will ask a small question to help you go further. But sometimes they will interrupt you mid-sentence. Not to stop your flow, but to catch something important before it disappears.

What is your MOL therapist actually doing?

On the surface it can look like a very simple job. Sit, listen, ask the occasional question. But internally, the therapist is doing something quite specific.

While staying curious about the problem, they are watching for your background thoughts.

What does that mean?

As you talk, your mind is doing two things at once. There is the story you are telling out loud, and then there is a background layer of other thoughts, images, and feelings. These background thoughts rarely make it into the conversation. They might be things you feel embarrassed about, things that are painful, or things you have not quite put into words yet.

In everyday life, we tend to keep these hidden. If a friend asks you why you smiled while talking about something serious, most of the time you would brush it off or change the subject.

But in MOL, these are exactly the thoughts worth exploring.

The therapist is watching your body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and any shifts in how you speak. They are not analysing you. They are simply paying close attention, ready to catch the moments when a background thought surfaces.

Then they ask about it. Directly.

“What made you pause just then?”

“What crossed your mind when you corrected yourself?”

“What made you apologise just now?”

These questions might feel random at first. But there is nothing random about why they are asked. They help you explore your problem from angles you would never have reached on your own.

Has a therapist ever asked you something that completely shifted how you saw your own problem? I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment!

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Why is it called Method of Levels?

When you first start talking, you are at the surface of the problem. But as the session develops, you move between different levels of understanding. Some questions will take you deeper, towards the bigger picture, your long-term goals, your values, and what kind of person you want to be. Other questions will bring you closer to the surface, towards the raw sensations, fleeting images, emotions in the body.

The therapist is helping you move through these levels, keeping your awareness on the areas most likely to create real change.

How does change actually happen?

Can simply talking be enough to resolve something that has been bothering you for years?

Yes.

And here is why.

If self-help techniques were the answer, you would probably have found something useful already. Books, podcasts, YouTube, ChatGPT, or advice from friends. You have likely tried some of it. Answers to any practical questions are available within a few clicks. What happens in MOL is different.

The research behind MOL is based on a theory called Perceptual Control Theory (PCT).

I know it sounds scary, but stay with me.

In simple terms, it suggests that as humans we are constantly trying to control what we perceive - not the world itself, but our perception of it.

Sometimes consciously, and sometimes automatically. This happens at many different levels. For example we sweat to cool down when feeling too hot, we adjust body posture when we’re in pain, we speak differently when our social image is at risk, we leave jobs when we realise they are getting in the way of our values.

When something looks different to how we want it to be, we try to change it. Simple as that.

Where it gets more interesting is when those attempts at making a change stop working. The gap between how things are and how we want them to be stays open, and that is when emotions and sensations tend to intensify.

Psychological distress often arises when we are stuck in a conflict between two important goals or values that feel incompatible.

Wanting to be successful at work but also wanting to be present for your family.

Wanting to be honest but not wanting to hurt someone you love.

These conflicts, when they stay unresolved, tend to generate the kind of persistent, exhausting symptoms that bring people to therapy in the first place.

The MOL therapist is helping you bring those conflicts into awareness and explore them at a deeper level. Not to solve them for you, but to help your mind find its own way through.

The process of change, according to the science, is not linear. It is often unpredictable. You have probably experienced this yourself. You spend weeks cringing over something embarrassing you said. Then one day you realise you have completely moved on. You don’t know exactly when it happened. Something shifted, and the problem just stopped bothering you.

That shift in perception is what MOL is aiming for.

When can you expect to feel better?

Sometimes change happens quite quickly within the session itself. You reach a new perspective and the session ends on that thought. You leave needing some time to sit with it.

Other times, not much seems to happen during the session. But then you turn up for your next appointment and something has shifted. Your perspective is different. The problem looks smaller, or less tangled. This is because a lot of the change happens in the background, between sessions, as your mind continues to process and reorganise.

The problem does not get resolved because your therapist figures out what is wrong with you. It tends to resolve in a much more natural way. You reach a conclusion yourself. Your priorities quietly update. Gradually, things feel more in control.

How many sessions of MOL therapy do you need?

It is common to feel better just after one session. Sometimes you need a few sessions. In some cases, a long-term therapy with additional time between the sessions for life events or changes is what you need.

But don’t worry. You are never trapped into a rigid therapy programme.

In MOL, you are in control of the frequency and duration of your therapy. There is no set number of sessions. You decide when to come back and when to stop. Some people attend weekly. Others come once a month. Some take a break and return when they need to.

Research shows that giving people control over the process of therapy produces better results.

A final thought

If your previous experiences of therapy have left you feeling like a passive recipient of someone else’s plan for your mental health, MOL might feel very refreshing.

You are in the driving seat.

The therapist is there to help you explore, not to direct you somewhere they have already decided you need to go.

The problems that bring people to therapy are always unique. Your therapist doesn't know the full complexity of what matters to you, and they are not pretending to. But they do know how to help you find it yourself.

That, in a nutshell, is Method of Levels.

Whether you’re a client planning to attend an MOL therapy session soon, or you’re a therapist hoping to learn about it, I would love to hear from you.

If you have questions about MOL or want to share your own experience, share them in the comments below.

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A couple of years ago my neighbour was turning 80. I knocked on his door, ready to say happy birthday over the doorstep.

Before I could blink, I was already sat on his sofa with a glass of red wine in my hand, my girlfriend by my side, and my neighbour and his wife smiling from the sofa opposite.

The room had that old-school, slightly simplistic décor that somehow made the whole thing feel even better. Usually when he offers me wine, I say no. I’m often on my way to work, about to drive, or planning a gym session. But this time was different. I was ready to enjoy myself.

He lifted the bottle, smiled, and said, “I have been drinking wine for over 60 years, and this one is my favourite.”

I looked at his wife. She smiled too and said, “He loves his jammy red.”

Watching the two of them in their 80s, full of energy and warmth, I did have the thought: maybe wine really has done something for them.

That is exactly why headlines about wine being healthy are so attractive. Many people love it. And those who do often live quite good lives.

The new study from Italy sounds promising at first. Large sample size. Over 22,000 participants. Thirty-six blood biomarkers. Multiple authors. A detailed analysis.

And then the exciting bit, the conclusions: men drinking a moderate amount of wine appeared “biologically younger” than abstainers. If you take their model literally, the magic number was around 172 mL of wine per day, which is approximately a standard medium glass of wine. That meant the difference of 0.34 to 0.39 years, depending on the analysis. In other words, about 4 to 5 months younger on paper, or, if we’re being a bit silly with the maths, around 0.7% younger.

If you enjoy wine, it sounds like a double win. You can drink it every day and call it healthy. You can easily imagine people treating that as a little longevity hack. One avocado a day, one apple a day, and one glass of wine to keep yourself 0.7% younger on paper.

Not so fast.

Before you start treating your wine rack like a health intervention, let’s take a step back.

Before trusting the headline, it’s worth asking a few boring but important questions. Does the study really support the conclusion people are taking from it? How much can it actually tell us? Are there any obvious reasons to be cautious about the conclusion?

One obvious question is whether there is any conflict of interest. On that point, the answer seems reassuring enough: the paper doesn’t declare wine-industry funding, and the corrected funding statement points to the Italian Ministry of Health, with no conflicts of interest declared by the authors.

So the real issue here is unlikely to be some dramatic conspiracy. It is something more ordinary.

Correlation Can Make Us Do Very Silly Things

Correlation does not equal causation. If you have ever read anything about statistics, you’ve probably heard that sentence before. It’s repeated so often that it can start to sound boring.

So let’s make it less boring.

Would you make life changes if you saw any of the below headlines?

If correlation meant causation, we’d have to make very silly changes. Ban cold drinks, blame firefighters for fire deaths, totally prohibit umbrellas, and intentionally wear bigger shoes.

The reason these correlations don’t work is that the relationship between two things can often be explained in another way. Children who are learning to read have smaller feet, so naturally those with bigger shoe sizes, i.e. adults, tend to read better. Cold drinks and drowning deaths are both driven by hot weather. Umbrellas and slipping accidents are both driven by rain. Firefighters don’t kill people - they try to save them. The more people need saving, the more firefighters arrive to help.

The same shift in perspective can be applied to the wine study.

The finding was linked to wine specifically, not alcohol intake overall. That makes it look as though there is something uniquely beneficial about wine. But can you think of reasons why someone who drinks small amounts of wine might appear healthier in a study than someone who doesn’t drink?

Why moderate wine drinkers may look healthier

So what might characterise people who drink only one glass of wine?

They sound a bit like people who say things like “just a small glass with dinner” and actually mean it. They can probably also leave half a packet of biscuits in the cupboard and forget about it. That alone makes them a suspiciously unusual group. More seriously, they may differ from other groups in all sorts of ways that the study cannot fully capture.

It may simply be that people who drink small amounts of wine differ in other important ways as well. They may be more likely to drink with meals, drink slowly, socialise differently, value rituals, or live lives that are healthier in all sorts of small ways.

And then there is the comparison group: the abstainers.

Why are they abstaining?

Again, I’m speculating here. Some may avoid alcohol because they are already unwell, because of medication, because of mental health problems, or because of religion, culture, or personal preference. Others may have reasons a study cannot easily capture.

The point is that “non-drinkers” are not necessarily a clean, healthy baseline.

For a correlational study to allow for a strong conclusion, we’d need to eliminate, or in study terms, control for, all the other important factors that might explain the difference. The study did try. It considered around 20 factors, including age, sex, diet, education, BMI, physical activity, smoking, and some health conditions. That is not nothing.

But it’s still not enough.

Because there are many things they did not, and realistically could not, fully control for: wealth, access to healthcare, reasons for abstinence, drinking history, sleep, stress, mental health, social functioning, medication, occupation, and the wider context in which people drink.

The study simply couldn’t adjust for the full context of people’s lives.

What if the “winning” group in the study - the group that may already differ in resources, habits, or social context - had chosen not to drink wine at all? Would they suddenly become less healthy purely because the wine disappeared? Or might they still have looked relatively healthy anyway?

At this point you may be fed up with my scepticism. Fair enough. Before I change the tone and try to be more optimistic, let me give you one more reason why this headline still isn’t very convincing.

The resveratrol explanation falls apart quickly

The authors suggest that wine drinkers are healthier because of compounds such as polyphenols. Wine isn’t just alcohol. It also contains plant compounds that people like to romanticise. Resveratrol is the compound getting most of the attention here.

A glass of red wine contains only a tiny amount of resveratrol - around 0.4 mg in 150 mL, although estimates vary. Human resveratrol studies have used doses in the tens or hundreds of milligrams per day, and even then the evidence is mixed. There is currently no conclusive clinical evidence for broad health benefits of resveratrol in humans. See this 2024 systematic review: LINK

So if red wine is healthy because of resveratrol, this is where the explanation becomes less convincing. A normal glass of wine simply does not deliver enough of it to make a meaningful health difference. What it does deliver, more meaningfully, is alcohol.

Quick maths suggests that to get into the kind of range used in human resveratrol trials, you would need somewhere between tens and hundreds of glasses of wine per day, depending on the estimate used. That is obviously not a plausible health strategy.

So where does that leave us?

Probably somewhere a bit less dramatic than the headlines.

After reading all of this, you might be less likely to believe that alcohol is good for you. That seems sensible. But does that mean you should never enjoy a glass of wine?

Not necessarily.

Wine, ritual, and why people still enjoy it

I’m not planning to make a health argument for alcohol. I don’t think alcohol is necessary for a good life. But I do think it is often tied to moments that are meaningful, social, warm, funny, and memorable.

That evening with my neighbour was a good example. We sat there drinking wine, laughing, and listening to his stories from the past. I remember quietly chuckling to myself as a few memories of him crossed my mind, especially the one of him showing me a set of air push-ups on his crutches a few weeks after knee surgery.

The wine tasted great. Knowing that more than 60 years of wine drinking had led him to call this bottle his favourite made it feel very special. I left that evening regretting that I had not looked properly at the label.

It took some time, but eventually I found the name of the wine. To my surprise, it was sold in most shops, inexpensive, and easy to get. I bought a few bottles and placed them on my wine rack for a special occasion, or maybe as a gift for someone who likes wine.

A few weeks later I opened one with dinner, expecting to recreate the magic.

It tasted good.

But it was missing the surroundings, company, and ritual.

That, I think, is the point.

A glass of wine can be enjoyable because it often comes with people, rituals, memories, meals, atmosphere, and the story attached to it.

The study’s headlines are a bit misleading, but if a glass of red wine here and there is your special thing, I don’t think you need to panic either. Life is not lived by stripping away every imperfect thing. Some things are enjoyable because they sit in that human space between health, risk, ritual, pleasure, and meaning.

If abstinence is your thing, or you are perfectly happy swapping wine for a cup of herbal tea, great. Keep going that way.

But if a glass of jammy red now and then is one of your small pleasures, that is fine too. It’s not all about optimisation. Life is also there to be enjoyed.

Just maybe do not pretend you are doing it for longevity.

Study discussed: Esposito, S. et al. (2026). Moderate wine consumption, defined by the Mediterranean Diet, is associated with delayed biological aging in men from the Moli-sani Study. International Journal of Public Health, 71. LINK

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A couple of weeks ago I took a few days off work. I wanted to let my mind and body rest, spend time with family, and enjoy local cafés and restaurants. But I also visited a dentist, got a blood test done, picked up a prescription, caught up on some reading, listened to a new audiobook, and completed a few other tasks. I also found myself spending more time on my phone - scrolling, browsing, and filling the gaps with mindless activity.

What started as a break and recovery became a surprisingly busy few days. I remember saying to one of my family members, “It was a great time, but I’m so tired. I’m back at work tomorrow, so I should be able to rest soon.” It sounds ridiculous at first - needing rest from a holiday, and looking forward to work as recovery. But I don’t think it’s that unusual.

I was recently visiting a friend who’d been having a lovely half-term with her children. But when she summed up the last few days, she said something similar: “I’m so tired, but it’s okay, I’m going back to work in a couple of days. I can’t wait for the peace and quiet.”

The more I think about this paradox, the more interesting it becomes.

Was I tired because I was too busy on my holiday, or was I simply tired of change? Is it possible that making a conscious choice to rest and avoid stimulation, is sometimes more tiring than just letting myself go? We often think of rest as the opposite of work. But in reality, what tires us out isn’t always work itself. Sometimes it’s change, decision-making, social intensity, unpredictability, or the loss of routine.

In my case, the holiday wasn’t tiring because it was negative. It was mostly filled with positive experiences and quite a lot of unfilled time. But it also involved a sudden change in routine - different activities, different people, different meal times, different sleep patterns, different decisions, different expectations. Even enjoyable change still asks something of the nervous system. It creates mental load and can affect the internal body clock. The body loses track of when to be hungry, when to be sleepy, and when to be energetic. Mind and body may simply be working much harder to keep up.

Usual daily routine is often very predictable. Even if it isn’t always filled with the most exciting activities, it can still feel safe. Work can be demanding, but it’s structured. It’s scheduled. You know where you’re meant to be and what you’re meant to be doing. There’s relief in that. Knowing what’s going to happen next gives us a sense of control.

Being in a new environment isn’t always like that. It might not create obvious anxiety or discomfort, but uncertainty is still usually more taxing than certainty. So even a good trip, a good holiday, or a good few days off can leave a person surprisingly mentally tired.

Another factor to consider is stimulation. Daily routine usually involves a certain level of stimulation depending on the person and the nature of their work. In my case, seeing clients who are struggling with mental health difficulties involves emotional engagement, attention, decision-making, and other forms of mental stimulation. Replacing that with a relaxing walk, a catch-up with a friend, or time with family may sound restful, but it doesn’t always meet the same need for structure, pace, or engagement my mind is used to.

That raises a bigger question: what is rest and what is work? What is activity and what is recovery? Are some activities only for recovery purposes and others purely productive? Or is it possible that many activities play both roles depending on the person, the circumstances, and the context?

Work can be tiring, but it can also be extremely rewarding. It can drain your energy, but it can also build it. It can exhaust you, but it can also give you structure, momentum, meaning, and a sense of direction. Similarly, taking a break can challenge you, but it can also help you recover. The same activity may feel restorative in one situation and draining in another.

The kind of activity that counts as rest probably depends partly on what’s being counted as work. A person working physically may need less physical activity in order to recover. A job requiring a lot of mental stimulation may call for quieter, more mindful activities that reduce mental load. But this is much harder to achieve than it sounds.

A person who’s used to being physically active may start feeling agitated after a few hours of resting, almost itching to do something. Choosing another physical activity might mean their muscles and joints don’t get the break they need to recover. Someone whose work is mentally stimulating may struggle to allow quiet time because boredom starts to emerge within minutes. Choosing silence or lower stimulation often takes effort. Reaching for a phone takes almost none. It gives the brain instant access to the very thing the person may need a break from. Putting it down is much harder, because the unfilled space itself feels uncomfortable.

What we call rest isn’t always especially restorative. We often “treat ourselves” with short-term relief - watching Netflix, scrolling, browsing, snacking, drinking, lying down. But are these things always restful? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Sometimes they help. Sometimes they leave us more tired, more scattered, or less restored than before.

And if not those things, then what? The usual healthy advice often sounds sensible enough - go for a walk, do some breathwork, spend time in the garden, read, stretch. But in many cases these healthier ways of resting can also start to feel like another task on the to-do list. Once rest becomes another thing to do properly, optimise, or get right, it can stop feeling like rest at all.

Human beings are complex. The more I learn about how we function, the more subjective these ideas seem. Each person has their own internal hierarchy of needs and goals. What feels enjoyable and peaceful for one person can feel tiring and frustrating for another. There probably isn’t a universal answer to how best to rest.

What does seem true for many of us is that the ways we often rest aren’t always ideal. At the same time, I’m not convinced there’s a clean line between the right and wrong way to do it. Sometimes short-term relief may be exactly what’s needed. Other times, the healthier option may genuinely restore us more. And sometimes the thing that feels tiring in the moment may still be the kind of rest we needed.

I don’t think I’ve found a full answer to this conundrum. But a few things do seem clear. Rest is more subjective than we often assume. It isn’t simply the absence of work. Sometimes it requires effort. Sometimes it feels uncomfortable. Sometimes it can even feel strangely tiring. But tiredness doesn’t necessarily mean the rest wasn’t restful.

Thanks for stopping by. This is the first longer piece I’ve shared here. If you’d like to read more reflections like this, you’re very welcome to subscribe below.

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