If you are not yet subscribed to my Substackthis is where I get a little more personal: I write from the heart about self-care, motherhood, wellness, and everything in between. My community loved this post, so I wanted to share an excerpt with you here.
For two years, the first thing I did every morning was check the stats on my Oura ring. I would lie in the dark reading my sleep stages like the scriptures. My HRV and Readiness scores told me how I should feel: if the numbers were good, it was permission to feel good. And if they weren’t, I would be thrown into additional stress because (according to my ring) I was apparently already stressed.
I would do my skincare routine in stages, work out according to my cycle, work my way through the first part of the morning without coffee because Andrew Huberman said it increases your cortisol. In every way, my wellness routine was on lock. And I felt… good (although often tired).
But here’s what I didn’t feel: Free. Alive. At home in my body.
And if I’m completely honest, I’ve also been quietly battling my own urges for years. Restricting what I ate in the name of health. (Let’s be real: also in the name of fitting into a certain jean size.) The reason I skipped the bread basket wasn’t because I didn’t want it. It was because I thought I I shouldn’t have it. There is a difference, and somewhere along the way I had lost the plot.
I devoured self-help books and wellness podcasts because I knew deep down that something had to change. I just didn’t know what it was yet.
Last summer, we were at our favorite beach in Malibu on a cloudy, somewhat chilly day—the kind of day where you negotiate with yourself about whether it really counts as a beach day if you don’t get in the water. Adam and the kids were already coming in, while I settled on my towel in a sweatshirt with my book, perfectly content to stay there.
“Mom, come in!!”
I continued reading, but my mind was half-distracted by this nagging feeling that I was missing the moment. So finally, I took off my sweatshirt, goosebumps already forming, and ran straight into the waves before I could think twice. The cold shocked me deeply. I dove directly under a wave, then spent the next twenty minutes jumping, diving, and shivering with my family. For two years, I started almost every morning by looking at my Oura stats and waiting for them to tell me how I felt. Before I even got out of bed, I checked on my sleep, recovery, and stress levels. A good score reassured me. A disappointment could color the whole day before it had actually begun.
From there, I followed a carefully calibrated routine: skincare, supplements, strategically timed coffee, and workouts chosen based on what my body was supposed to do. I’ve consumed enough wellness content to know exactly what I should eat, when I should exercise, and how I could improve almost every part of myself.
By most standards, I was doing everything right.
But I didn’t feel energized or deeply connected to my life. Most of all, I felt like I was constantly managing myself.
The same mindset has spilled over into food. I had learned to ignore certain urges, to pass on the things I sincerely wanted, and to call that discipline. It looked healthy on the outside, but underneath was a growing inability to trust my own body without first consulting a ruler, measure, or expert.
This afternoon highlighted something: Maybe wellness wasn’t supposed to be about controlling every variable. Maybe it was meant to help us participate more fully in our lives.
Since then, I have experienced a slower lifestyle. Not slow living as another aesthetic or set of rules, but as a practice of mindfulness: sleeping when I need to sleep, moving in a way that feels energizing, eating what truly satisfies me, and asking myself how many inputs I actually need. I’m still interested in taking care of myself, but less interested in turning that care into another self-improvement project.
For me, a unplugged summer doesn’t mean ditching technology entirely. This means creating enough space to hear my own thoughts again and return to simplicity. summer rituals that make me feel present: a coffee outside, a swim without checking the time, a lingering dinner, a nighttime walk without my phone.
As summer draws to a close, I’m thinking about what it means to savor a season without putting pressure on myself to maximize it. Less optimizing. No longer noticed. More moments that allow me to feel present, connected and fully alive.
In the full article, I share:
- The Wellness Rules I Stopped Following and What Changed When I Did
- What Happened When I Stopped Restricting Food and Trusted My Cravings
- The Simplest Skincare Routine That Gave Me Better Results
- How I Made Movement Energizing Instead of Obligatory
- Supplements I’m Actually Taking and Which I’ve Stopped Buying
Unlock the full message on Substack — and benefit from the summer rituals that help me trade constant optimization for a life that feels more fully lived.
The position I broke away from those wellness rules and instead learned to trust my body appeared first on Camille Styles.
