Your Wellness Routine Might Be Making You Feel Worse
Somewhere along the way, wellness got very... cold.
Iced water all day long.
Giant smoothies packed with frozen fruit.
Cold brew.
Raw salads the size of your head.
Protein bars eaten in the car.
Intermittent fasting.
A supplement drawer requiring its own postal code.
Intense workouts.
Cold plunges.
And perhaps a green powder to make sure we've sufficiently covered all our bases.
We're doing so much in the name of feeling well. And yet, so many women I see are telling me the same things:
I'm bloated all the time.
My face is puffy.
I'm exhausted after I eat.
I can't lose weight.
I'm constipated.
My digestion is unpredictable.
I'm freezing.
I'm craving sugar constantly.
I'm doing everything right... why don't I feel good?
And sometimes I look at their routines and think: Your body might not need another wellness habit. It might need you to stop making it work so damn hard. Because if your Chinese grandma were watching all of this? She'd probably take away your smoothie, put socks on your feet, hand you a bowl of something warm and ask why on earth you went to bed at midnight. And honestly? Grandma is onto something.
Modern Wellness Loves Extremes
Chinese Medicine generally doesn't. This is one of the things I love most about it. TCM isn't particularly impressed by extremes. It isn't asking: What's the healthiest food on earth It's asking: What's appropriate for this person, in this body, during this season, at this moment?
That distinction changes everything. Because something can be objectively nutritious and still not be the best choice for you right now. A raw kale salad contains plenty of nutrients. But if you finish it looking six months pregnant, freezing cold and desperately wanting a nap, Chinese Medicine isn't going to congratulate you for eating the kale. We're going to ask: Did you actually digest it?
The Problem With "Healthy"
Modern wellness has become very good at categorizing things.
Healthy. Unhealthy.
Clean. Toxic.
Inflammatory. Anti-inflammatory.
Good. Bad.
Chinese Medicine is far less interested in those absolutes. A food can be beautiful medicine for one person and completely inappropriate for another.
Watermelon on a blisteringly hot July afternoon? Wonderful.
Watermelon every morning in January for the woman who's freezing, exhausted and having loose stools? We might have questions.
Ginger for someone cold, sluggish and bloated? Lovely.
Endless ginger shots for someone already running hot, experiencing reflux and waking drenched in sweat? Maybe not.
Context matters. Constitution matters. Season matters. Dose matters. Your symptoms matter. That's the medicine.
Your Spleen Would Like a Word
If you've read anything else I've written, you knew she was coming. My girl. The Spleen.
In Chinese Medicine, the Spleen and Stomach sit at the centre of our digestive system. Their job is to take the food and fluids we consume and transform them into usable nourishment—Qi and Blood that can then support everything else. Energy. Muscle. Clear thinking. Healthy skin. Regular menstruation. Recovery. Vitality.
The Spleen is essentially your body's kitchen. And according to TCM theory, that kitchen likes warmth and consistency. Now imagine turning the stove on every morning... and dumping a bucket of ice over it. Hello, 7 a.m. smoothie. Your body can absolutely digest cold food. This isn't me claiming your stomach physically stops working because you drank iced water. It's a traditional energetic framework. But clinically, when someone already presents with what we'd call Spleen Qi deficiency or Dampness—bloating, heaviness, loose/sticky stools, puffiness, fatigue after meals, poor appetite, brain fog—I often find they do beautifully when we simply stop asking digestion to work quite so hard.
What Is Dampness?
This is one of those wonderfully strange Chinese Medicine terms that makes perfect sense once you understand it. When the body's transformation and movement of fluids isn't happening efficiently, TCM describes an accumulation called Dampness. Think of the difference between fertile soil and a swamp. Earth needs moisture. But when there's too much water and not enough movement? Everything becomes boggy. In the body, Dampness can look like:
Bloating.
Puffiness.
Water retention.
A heavy feeling in the limbs.
Brain fog.
Sticky stools.
Loose stools.
Mucus.
Congestion.
Oily skin.
A thick tongue coating.
Feeling sluggish after meals.
Weight that feels strangely "watery."
And this is where modern wellness can become somewhat ironic. Because the woman experiencing all of those symptoms may decide she needs to become healthier. So she starts having... A giant frozen smoothie for breakfast. Raw salad for lunch. Gallons of cold water. Protein bars between meetings. Very little cooked food. And perhaps not enough actual food at all.
From a TCM perspective, she's trying to drain the swamp... while it's still raining.
The Iced Water Situation
Let's address the controversial one. No, one iced latte isn't going to destroy your Spleen Qi. I promise. I drink cold things sometimes too. We're not building another category of foods to fear. The question is: What's your baseline? If you're warm, energetic, digesting beautifully and having regular bowel movements, your body may tolerate cold foods wonderfully. If you're chronically cold, bloated, exhausted, puffy and running to the bathroom after meals? I'd experiment. For two weeks, try:
Room-temperature water.
Warm tea.
Cooked breakfasts.
Mostly cooked vegetables.
Soups.
Stews.
Warm grain bowls.
Then see how you feel. Your body gets a vote.
The Smoothie That Contains 19 Ingredients
I love protein. I love berries. I love fiber. I love nutritious food. But somewhere along the way, smoothies became an opportunity to put every healthy thing we own into one blender. Frozen berries. Banana. Spinach. Protein. Chia. Flax. Collagen. Greens powder. Nut butter. Maca. Creatine. Mushrooms. Seeds. And possibly the hopes and dreams of your entire household. Then we drink 700 mL of it in six minutes while answering emails. And wonder why we're bloated.
Your digestive system doesn't need a more sophisticated recipe. It needs less happening at once.
Your Chinese Grandma Would Make You Breakfast
Not tell you to fast until noon because someone on a podcast said it would optimize autophagy. There are legitimate reasons someone may choose a particular eating window. But fasting is not automatically healthier simply because it's fasting. If you wake ravenously hungry, feel shaky by 10 a.m., live on caffeine until noon and then inhale lunch because you're starving... Your body may be asking for breakfast.
Chinese Medicine loves rhythm. Your digestive system knowing: Oh, lovely. Food arrives around this time. A warm breakfast can be ridiculously simple:
Eggs and sourdough.
Oatmeal with stewed fruit.
Cream of rice with protein.
Rice and eggs.
Leftovers.
You do not have to earn breakfast.
She'd Probably Tell You to Eat More, Too
This might be the least marketable wellness advice imaginable. But some women aren't exhausted because they're missing the correct adaptogen. They're exhausted because they're doing:
12,000 steps.
Five workouts.
A full-time job.
Children.
Housework.
Social obligations.
And consuming the caloric equivalent of a reasonably substantial brunch.
Your body requires resources. Qi has to come from somewhere. Blood has to come from somewhere. Muscle doesn't build itself. Hormones aren't produced out of good intentions. Your hair, skin and nails aren't essential survival organs, which means when resources are limited, the body has priorities. Sometimes vitality requires addition rather than subtraction. More nourishment. More protein. More carbohydrates. More minerals. More sleep. More rest. More actual meals.
She'd Tell You to Sit Down While You Eat
This may be my favorite wellness intervention because it costs exactly zero dollars. Stop eating over the sink. Stop eating while driving. Stop answering emails between bites. Stop inhaling lunch in seven minutes while scrolling Instagram.
Sit.
Look at your food.
Take a breath.
Chew.
Taste it.
Your digestive system and nervous system are not strangers to one another. We have modern physiological language for this too: stress and autonomic state influence gastrointestinal function. TCM simply recognized a long time ago that how you eat matters alongside what you eat.
She'd Ask When You Last Pooped
And she would not be embarrassed about it. Neither am I. You can have the world's most elaborate morning wellness routine, but if you're having two bowel movements a week and constantly bloated... Can we please start there?
Regular bowel movements aren't glamorous. Neither is adequate fiber. Or walking after dinner. Or drinking enough fluid. Or eating regular meals. But this is the stuff health is built on.
She'd Tell You to Stop Walking Around Barefoot
I can hear the collective eye roll from here. And yes, I'm still going to say it. Chinese Medicine places enormous importance on keeping the body appropriately warm—particularly when someone's constitution already tends toward Cold. If your feet are permanently freezing, your digestion struggles, your periods are painful and you spend Canadian winters wandering around your house barefoot... Put the socks on.
This is not a scientific claim that bare feet cause disease. It's a simple application of TCM's broader philosophy: Stop asking a cold body to constantly compensate for more cold. Socks are cute.
She'd Put Something Warm on Your Belly
A hot water bottle. A heating pad. Moxa, when appropriate. Warm hands. There is something deeply instinctive about warmth.
In Chinese Medicine, warmth is particularly valuable when we're dealing with Cold or deficiency patterns. That doesn't mean everyone should heat everything. If you have signs of significant Heat, that's a different conversation. Again: The person matters.
But for my chronically cold, depleted, bloated girlies? Warmth is medicine.
She'd Tell You to Stop Going to Bed So Late
This is the one nobody wants because you can't order it online. Sleep. Boring, magnificent sleep. You cannot supplement your way out of chronically inadequate recovery. Your 14-step morning routine becomes somewhat irrelevant if you're scrolling until 1 a.m. every night and waking at 6. Chinese Medicine cares deeply about living according to cycles of Yin and Yang.
Day is Yang. Movement. Activity. Doing.
Night is Yin. Rest. Repair. Stillness. Receiving.
If you're trying to turn nighttime into another productive day, eventually something has to give. Vitality requires Yin too.
She Tell You Not to Cold Plunge Just Because Everyone Else Is Doing It
I know. I'm coming for everyone's favourite wellness trend now. Cold exposure is not inherently bad. Some people love it. There is research into various physiological effects of cold-water immersion. But Chinese Medicine would never say: Everyone should do this because it's healthy. It would ask: Who are you? Are you hot? Cold? Strong? Depleted? Recovering? Menstruating heavily? Sleeping poorly? Training intensely? What season is it? What are we trying to accomplish?
The person who's robust, warm and thriving is not the same person as the woman who's exhausted, freezing, under-eating and losing her hair. A stressor is only useful when you have the resources to adapt to it. That's a principle I wish modern wellness talked about more.
She'd Probably Take Half Your Supplements Away
This one may get me in trouble. I love herbs. I love supplements when they're useful. I literally have an apothecary. But I don't think wellness should require swallowing seventeen capsules before breakfast.
Supplements are tools. They're not the foundation. And more isn't inherently better. I'd rather see someone consistently: Eating nourishing meals. Sleeping. Moving. Pooping. Getting outside. Managing stress. Maintaining relationships. Building muscle. Enjoying her food...and taking three things that genuinely serve her than doing none of that particularly well while maintaining a supplement schedule worthy of an Olympic event.
She'd Feed You Soup Before She Sold You a Detox
Chinese Medicine isn't obsessed with cleansing the body every three months. Your body already has sophisticated systems responsible for processing and eliminating waste. From a TCM perspective, we're often much more interested in supporting function than repeatedly stripping things away. This is especially important if you're already depleted. If you're tired, cold, underweight, postpartum, recovering from illness, menstruating heavily or chronically stressed, another cleanse may not be what your body is begging for. It needs rebuilding. Broth. Rice. Eggs. Meat. Root vegetables. Cooked greens. Herbs appropriate to your pattern. Sleep.
You don't always heal by removing. You heal by replenishing.
She'd Make You Go Outside
Not because your smartwatch says you need another 2,417 steps. Because humans belong outside. Morning light. Fresh air. Walking. Seasons. Weather. Trees. Sunshine. Community.
Chinese Medicine developed through observing nature. Our bodies weren't considered separate from the environment around us. And I think we've lost some of that.
We spend all day indoors, stare at screens, order supplements made from plants we've never seen growing and then wonder why we don't feel particularly grounded.
Go outside.
And She'd Probably Tell You to Stop Worrying So Much
This one is especially appropriate for my Spleen girlies. In TCM, excessive thinking, worrying and rumination are associated with the Spleen. And isn't modern wellness incredibly good at giving us more things to worry about?
Seed oils.
Blue light.
Cortisol.
Glucose spikes.
Toxins.
Microplastics.
Mold.
EMFs.
Oxalates.
Lectins.
Whether our morning coffee is destroying our hormones.
Whether our banana has too much sugar.
There are legitimate conversations buried within many of these topics. But if your pursuit of health has made you afraid of living, something has gone wrong. Your body doesn't need you monitoring it every second. Sometimes health looks like eating dinner with your friends and forgetting you're a person who thinks about health. That counts too.
So... What Would Your Chinese Grandma Actually Have You Do?
If you came to me saying: "I'm bloated, puffy, exhausted and overwhelmed by wellness. Where do I start?"
I'd make your experiment almost laughably simple. For the next two weeks:
Eat breakfast.
Preferably something warm and protein-rich.
Eat mostly cooked meals.
Especially if you're bloated and cold.
Drink your water Warm or room temperature.
You don't have to ban ice forever. We're experimenting.
Sit down for your meals.
No laptop. No car. No standing over the counter.
Eat enough protein and fibre.
We can marry TCM with modern nutrition beautifully.
Walk after dinner.
Ten minutes counts.
Keep your feet and belly warm.
Especially as we move into fall.
Go to bed earlier.
Even thirty minutes.
Take fewer things.
Use the herbs and supplements that actually have a reason for being there.
Stop treating food like the enemy.
Notice what you digest well rather than endlessly adding foods to a forbidden list.
And then? Pay attention.
How is your bloating?
Your bowel movements?
Your energy?
Your cravings?
Your puffiness?
Your sleep?
Your brain fog?
You don't need a wearable to tell you everything. Your body has been giving you data all along.
The Most TCM Thing You Can Do Is Stop Chasing "Perfect"
This is probably the part I love most about Chinese Medicine. There is no perfect morning routine. No universally perfect diet. No supplement stack every woman needs. No ideal amount of raw food. No single exercise everyone should do. Chinese Medicine is relational.
You + your constitution + your environment + your season + your current state. And all of those things change.
The breakfast that feels wonderful in July may not be what your body wants in January. The training volume you thrive on when you're well-rested may be too much during an intensely stressful month. The herb that helped you six months ago may not fit your current pattern.
Health isn't a protocol you finally perfect and follow forever. It's a relationship you keep learning.
Wellness Should Feel More Like Living
The older I get—and the longer I practice Chinese Medicine—the less interested I am in making health complicated. I want strong digestion. Muscle on my body. Energy to work. A clear mind. Good sleep. Regular bowels. Healthy skin. Food I genuinely enjoy. People around my table. Long walks. Sunshine. Herbs growing and drying around my house. And enough resilience that when life inevitably becomes chaotic, my entire body doesn't fall apart. That's vitality to me.
Having enough Qi to actually enjoy being alive.
So if your current "wellness" routine has you bloated, freezing, exhausted, afraid of food and wondering which supplement you're still missing... You don't need another hack. You need breakfast. You need soup. You need sleep. You need warm socks and a walk after dinner. You need to stop treating your body like a problem you're constantly trying to solve.
Your Chinese grandma would probably tell you to sit down, eat while it's hot and stop worrying so much. And honestly? She’s right.
