Stop Trying to Achieve”Optimal Health”& Try This Instead for your Thyroid Hormones.

We put a poll up on Instagram with two options. We asked our followers to pick the phrase they felt most connected to.

“I’m trying to optimize my health.”

Or:

“I’m just trying to have more days when I feel better.”

More than 80% picked the second one. Not close. Not a split. A landslide.

We’ve been thinking about it ever since, because we don’t think that’s a small preference. We think it’s a completely different way of living in your body, and we think most of the health and wellness world is using the wrong language.

TL;DR

• Most people don’t actually want to “optimize.” They want more good days than bad ones. That’s a different goal, and it’s a more realistic one.
• “Optimizing” is a moving target. There’s always a new marker, supplement, or protocol to chase, which means you never get to feel like you’ve arrived.
• Your body has hormonal rhythms, stress loads, gut health, and seasons that affect how you feel. Expecting to be “optimal” every day isn’t realistic, and it isn’t your fault when you’re not.
• Progress is often invisible because you’re measuring against a version of yourself who never has a bad day. That version doesn’t exist.
• In functional nutrition, we care less about hitting a perfect number and more about finding the root cause behind your bad days, so you have fewer of them.
• A better choice, repeated consistently, beats a perfect choice you can only pull off occasionally.

The Problem With “Optimizing”

Here’s what bothers us about optimizing. (And yes, we’re guilty of using this language too.)

Why the Target Keeps Moving

It’s a target that moves. Every time you get near it, someone tells you about a new marker to track, a new supplement, a new window you should be eating in. Because the target keeps moving, you never get to arrive. You just get to keep trying, which means every day becomes a small referendum on whether you did enough.

You didn’t sleep eight hours.
You didn’t hit your protein.
You skipped the walk.
You had the bread.

The Story You Start Telling Yourself

And somehow the conclusion is never “I’m a person with a life.” The conclusion is always “I’m not doing enough.” You become the victim and the villain in your own story.

We’re not anti-optimization. If that word lights you up, run with it. But we’ve watched too many smart, exhausted women use it as a stick to hit themselves with, and we’re not interested in handing anyone a stick.

Your Body Isn’t a Machine You Can Tune to Perfection

You live in a human body. Bodies have hormonal rhythms, inflammatory responses, stress loads, and seasons. Gut health, blood sugar stability, and hormone balancing all shift week to week, sometimes day to day, based on factors that are only partly in your control.

When internal and external factors are affecting your body in ways you can’t fully control, expecting to be “optimal” at all times just isn’t realistic. Bodies have weeks where everything clicks and weeks where you’re moving like a slow-paced sloth for reasons that aren’t entirely your fault.

Feeling optimal all the time would be lovely. It’s also not the deal we signed up for when we got issued bodies.

But more days where you feel pretty good, and fewer days where you feel actively terrible? That’s not a consolation prize. That is genuinely, measurably, life-changingly different.

A Client Who Didn’t Notice Her Own Progress

The Spreadsheet

We had a client a while back who came to us with a spreadsheet. Color-coded. Sleep scores, ring data, every supplement she’d tried and for how long. She’d done the elimination diets. She’d done the protocols. And she opened our first call by apologizing, because she felt like she should have figured this out herself by now.

Six Weeks Later

About six weeks in, we asked how things were going. She said, “fine, but I still have bad days.” So we asked how many. She thought about it and said maybe one or two a week.

When she’d started with us, it was five days a week. Most days were bad. Now, most days were good.

She had gone from two decent days a week to five and hadn’t registered it as progress, because she was measuring against an imaginary version of herself who never had a bad day at all. That version doesn’t exist.

But the five good days were absolutely real, and she’d been living inside them without noticing.

Taking “Enough” Back

We’ve been sitting with the word “enough” for a while now.

Somewhere along the way, “enough” became an insult. A settling word. A shrug. A derogatory way of defining ourselves and the action we’re actively taking to get closer to our goals.

We’d like it back, please, because “enough” can actually be one of the most generous words in the language when you position it differently. Positioning matters because it affects the story we’re telling ourselves about ourselves. And the story we tell ourselves is what we eventually live out in real life.

Here’s what keeps surfacing for us. When all of your attention is pointed at what you’re working toward, you can spend years missing what you already have. The whole logic of optimizing and biohacking is “once I’ve done enough, then XYZ.” So you keep your eyes fixed on that horizon. Meanwhile, XYZ may be sitting right in front of you, and you walk past it every day because you’ve trained yourself to think about how hard it’ll be to jump and reach a 20-foot ceiling, missing the ladder sitting right there.

We’re not saying throw out your goals. Have them. Chase them. But there is a kind of gratitude that only shows up when you stop and take inventory of what’s actually here, and we personally think that gratitude can change you more than protocols do.

What you were able to do today is enough. One meal. One walk around the block. One breakfast that actually had protein in it. That is not the bare minimum. That is the thing that compounds.

Better, Not Perfect

Something we find helpful in our own functional nutrition practice: we focus on making better choices, because the best choice isn’t always an option.

Some days there is no perfect meal available. There’s what’s in the fridge, or what’s on the menu, or what you have the energy to make at 8pm after a day that took everything. The best choice isn’t on the table. A better one usually is.

One meal at a time. One day at a time. That’s not lowering the bar. That’s putting the bar somewhere your hands can actually reach it, which is the only place a bar has ever been useful.

What This Looks Like in Practice

• We stop asking “is this perfect” and start asking “is this better than last month.”
• We look for the specific root cause behind why you feel bad, whether that’s blood sugar swings, gut health, or hormone imbalances, instead of assuming you just need more discipline.
• We build a floor under you, so the hard days are less hard, instead of chasing a ceiling.
• We count the good days, out loud, because you have almost certainly stopped noticing them.

That last one matters more than it sounds like it does.

A Question for You

Not your best day. We want to know about your pretty good day. What does it look like when you feel decent? What are you able to do? What stops nagging at you?

We’re also curious: does shifting the focus to “feeling good more days” instead of “optimizing” feel like relief? Or does it make you roll your eyes a little?

Frequently Asked Questions

What does “optimizing your health” actually mean, and why can it backfire?

Optimizing usually means chasing a perfect number, whether that’s a lab marker, a sleep score, or a macro target. The problem is that the target keeps moving. There’s always a new metric to track or protocol to try, so you never get to feel like you’ve arrived. For a lot of people, this turns into a daily referendum on whether they did enough, which adds stress rather than relieving it.Is it bad to want to optimize my health?

Not at all. If that language motivates you and doesn’t leave you feeling like you’re constantly falling short, there’s nothing wrong with it. The issue isn’t the goal itself. It’s when the pursuit of “optimal” becomes a stick you use to beat yourself up over normal, human fluctuation.Why do I feel good some days and terrible on others, even when I’m doing “everything right”?

Your body isn’t a machine you can tune once and expect consistent output from every day. Hormonal rhythms, blood sugar stability, gut health, stress load, and sleep all shift, sometimes for reasons outside your control. In functional nutrition, we look for the specific root cause behind the bad days, whether that’s a hormone imbalance, gut issue, or blood sugar swing, rather than assuming it’s a discipline problem.How do I actually track progress if I’m not chasing a perfect number?

Track the ratio of good days to bad days instead of chasing perfection. A lot of our clients don’t realize how far they’ve come because they’re comparing themselves to a version of themselves who never has an off day. That version doesn’t exist. Going from two good days a week to five is real, measurable progress, even if it’s not “optimal.”What is the 2:1 program, and how does it help with this?

Our 2:1 program pairs you with two practitioners so you get more support while you work through sustainable, realistic strategies rooted in functional nutrition. Instead of chasing an unreachable ceiling, we help you build a floor, so your hard days get less hard and your good days start to outnumber the bad ones. Learn more about the 2:1 program here.

If you’ve been quietly collecting more bad days than good ones lately, that’s usually a sign there’s something specific going on, and a lot of times it can be improved through diet and lifestyle adjustments rooted in functional nutrition. That’s the whole point of our 2:1 program. Two practitioners, one person, holding your hand while you implement sustainable strategies for realistic, attainable goals.

Nicole & Emily, Chews Food Wisely

EMAIL:
hello@chewsfoodwisely.com

VIRTUAL APPOINTMENTS ONLY
Business Mailing Address:
2525 Robinhood Street
Houston, Texas 77005