health "optimization" is ruining young men

cold plunges and protein powder are making guys my age weak

When fitness influencer Ashton Hall posted his five-hour morning routine this past March, the internet did its job. The video quickly went viral, prompting a wave of spoofs from online creators who mocked the excessive, obsessive nature of Hall’s regimen. The response was welcome. His routine did deserved attention—the negative kind.

Though extreme, Hall’s video captures a growing social contagion among guys my age (mid-twenties): in the name of “optimization,” we’re becoming increasingly consumed with ourselves. And it’s leaving us weak—and less healthy.

I believe firmly that young men should care about their health. I love and live by a dialed-in routine. I avoid seed oils. I lift weights. I tape my mouth at night. I take my health seriously, and think more men should.

But what I’ve been witnessing, both online and in real life, isn’t just next-level wellness. It’s a movement training young men to believe that the highest aim in life is to care for ourselves. To optimize our health at all costs. To wake up at 4:00 a.m.—not to work a pre-dawn shift or soothe a crying baby—but to do a mobility flow in Vuori sweatpants and journal about yourself before leg day and a sauna session.

Here demarcates the line between pursuing health and being consumed by it. And when this obsession takes over, the very life those habits were meant to enrich begins to lose its meaning. Because central to the definition of being a man—a good one, anyway—is service, sacrifice and a deep care for others. The very opposite of what today’s fitness influencer culture is promoting.

I’m not mad at the fitness influencers. They’re just meeting the demand. I’m disappointed in the fathers of my generation, who lacked the courage to mold boys into good men. To teach them to the spot the vacuousness of egotistical “health.”

One thing health is not is self-seeking. There’s plenty of research highlighting the benefits of selfless thinking. Altruism, it turns out, is good for your heart (both physical 🫀 and emotional ❤️). It lowers blood pressure, reduces stress, and supports a healthy reward response in the brain. And then there are the vast and well-documented health consequences of selfishness and isolationism.

It’s also worth pointing out that body dysmorphia among young men is on the rise. More and more guys are becoming obsessively critical of their own bodies, frustrated they don’t have the chiseled definition of the fitness influencers they follow online—most of whom, I’d wager, are built by Steroids & Co. It’s a rigged comparison game.

But more than physical or mental health, I worry about the social, emotional, and spiritual strength of men my age. It’s painfully clear to me we’re deep into phase three of that cycle:

1. Hard times create strong men.

2. Strong men create good times.

3. Good times create weak men.

4. And weak men create hard times.

Young American men today face remarkably little real hardship. We’re not storming the beaches of Normandy or tracking down Osama bin Laden. We’re debating the timing of our next cut and which nicotine pouch pairs best with a Celsius. (For the record, Running On Butter strongly opposes nicotine pouches and Celsius.)

I wish there were another remedy besides war to wake men up. I don’t think there is, but it’s worth a shot? Maybe if we looked back with humility, if we learned to see comfort as a test rather than a prize, we might just interrupt the cycle? (Call me Mr. World Peace.)

On July 14, 1861, a young Rhode Island lawyer and Union officer named Sullivan Ballou wrote a letter to his wife, Sarah. A letter I believe every American man should read. It captures what so many men today lack. (And if you don’t have the attention span to read it, congratulations. You’re exactly who needs to be reading it.)

My Very Dear Wife:

Indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days, perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write a few lines, that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine, O God be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battle-field for any country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American civilization now leans upon the triumph of government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution, and I am willing, perfectly willing to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt...

I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death, and I, suspicious that Death is creeping behind me with his fatal dart, am communing with God, my country and thee...

Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables, that nothing but Omnipotence can break; and yet, my love of country comes over me like a strong wind, and bears me irresistibly on with all those chains, to the battlefield. The memories of all the blissful moments I have spent with you come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to God and you, that I have enjoyed them so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up, and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our boys grow up to honorable manhood around us...

As for my little boys, they will grow as I have done, and never know a father's love and care. Little Willie is too young to remember me long, and my blue-eyed Edgar will keep my frolics with him among the dimmest memories of his childhood. Sarah, I have unlimited confidence in your maternal care, and your development of their characters. Tell my two mothers, I call God's blessing upon them. O Sarah, I wait for you there! Come to me, and lead thither my children.

- Sullivan

Ballou died a week later in battle, leaving Sarah widowed at 24 with their two young sons—blue-eyed Edgar and Little Willie.

By any objective measure, Sullivan was a hero. A rock-solid 11/10 on the manliness scale. And yet, his ultimate sacrifice—for his country, for us? That would register as a 1/10 on today’s health optimization scale.

Obviously, health and character aren’t mutually exclusive. But Ballou—and every great man in history—reminds us that the greatest strength doesn’t come from obsessing over ourselves. It comes from thinking about and caring for and investing in others.

That’s the kind of legacy worth optimizing for.