If We Know So Much About Health, Why Aren’t We “Healthier”?

We live in a time when health information is more available than ever. Podcasts, influencers, and wearable tech offer constant streams of advice on how to eat, move, sleep, and “optimize.” Wellness routines are shared like status symbols. There’s no shortage of guidance.

And yet, many people feel worse, not better. Eating disorders are on the rise. According to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), 30 million people in the U.S. will experience an eating disorder in their lifetime. Clinicians and researchers have also noted an increase in severity of eating disorder presentations since 2020.

As a therapist specializing in eating disorders and disordered eating, I work with individuals who feel that they should know what they’re “supposed to do” but they feel stuck physically, mentally, and emotionally. This disconnect isn’t a personal failure. It’s a sign that the way we talk about health is deeply flawed.

Even as awareness of “health” has become more mainstream, we’re seeing a rise in chronic stress and burnout, increasing rates of disordered eating, body image distress, and compulsive exercise. We live in this wellness culture that often promotes rigid rules, guilt, and shame, masked as “discipline.” There are also deepening inequities in access to food, time, movement, rest, and care.

So why isn’t all this health content leading to healthier lives? It’s because we’re living in a contradictory culture that bombards us with health advice in a system that actively undermines well-being. Work culture glorifies productivity, often at the expense of sleep, movement, and meals. Social media creates impossible body ideals  and promotes them as “wellness.” Mental health is often ignored from conversations about physical health. Many of us live with structural barriers from food insecurity to poverty that make even basic self-care feel out of reach.

Much of what we praise as “healthy” in our culture is indistinguishable from disordered behavior. We are struggling in a society where eating disorders continue to climb. In college students, the risk of having an eating disorder rose from 15% to 28% between 2013–2021.

In my practice, I see these worrying statistics play out in seemingly innocuous ways. A college student cuts out entire food groups and skips meals to “reduce inflammation.” A busy professional pushes through injuries and exhaustion because their fitness app tells them they’re behind. A high school teen labels every food as either “clean” or “toxic,” and feels anxious when eating out. These behaviors are often reinforced, even admired but they reflect a fear-based, all-or-nothing mindset that leaves people more disconnected from their bodies, not less.

As a clinician, I believe health isn’t a set of metrics, it’s a relationship with your body, your mind, food, movement, rest, and the world around you – I believe true health is flexible. It makes room for what your body is craving, which sometimes may mean pizza, other times it may mean an apple and other times it may mean ice cream. It recognizes that a walk around the block can be as meaningful as a HIIT class, and that rest is as productive as movement. It honors hunger, satisfaction, and pleasure as valid health cues, not weaknesses to be overridden. It means making sure we eat meals and snacks regularly to fuel ourselves daily for our lives.

And it doesn’t confuse thinness with wellness.

If we want to see real improvements in health – physical and mental – we need to shift the conversation. That means moving away from weight-centric models and toward behavioral, compassionate, inclusive care. We need to integrate mental and physical health in meaningful ways and create environments where rest, food access, and support are not privileges, but rights. We need to teach people to listen to their bodies, not to override them.

You can follow all the trackers, apps, and podcasts and still be disconnected from your body’s wisdom. Health isn’t about control, it’s about connection and healing begins when we stop striving for perfection and start building a more trusting, respectful relationship with our bodies and with ourselves.