Wellness Culture Wants Us To Be Perfect. Queer People Know It's Not That Simple

Mainstream wellness loves a set of instructions. Eat clean, train harder, get eight hours’ sleep, meditate more, buy (and try not to forget to take) that £70 “miracle” supplement, and perhaps sign up for a Hyrox competition while you’re at it.

But if you have a takeaway, spend a weekend partying or skip hot yoga for a hookup, you’ve somehow let yourself down. Apparently, looking after your health is now like having a second job, where you feel guilty if you’re not in an ice bath at 4am, doing everything the protocol-led biohackers tell you to do.

As a gay man who spent many years treading water in unconscious shame, I studied a two-dimensional nutrition curriculum that taught me what food could do for the body but also reinforced my belief that health was something I could perfect. I followed diets, tracked my progress and treated discipline as evidence that I was doing well. Whenever I v...