I see two fundamental problems with our modern approach to health: we focus too narrowly on the physical, and we view health in isolation from the broader context of our lives.
We tend to reduce health to what we eat, how much we exercise, how well we sleep, and which supplements we take. These things matter, but so do our relationships, work, emotional well-being, environment, hobbies, and sense of purpose. We also tend to evaluate individual behaviors without considering the circumstances in which they occur. We ask whether a particular food is healthy or a behavior is beneficial without considering our intentions, our relationship with it, or how it affects other aspects of our lives.
Context Matters
The circumstances, intention, quality, quantity, frequency, and our relationship with a behavior all influence its impact. A holistic approach means looking beyond individual choices to consider the whole person and how the different pieces of life fit together.
Let's start with food, because it's easy to digest ;)
Are cheeseburgers healthy? It depends. A homemade cheeseburger made with quality ingredients can be a nourishing meal, while a fast-food version may offer less nutritional value. But even the ingredients don't tell the whole story. Can you enjoy a cheeseburger without guilt, or have you developed such rigid rules around eating that certain foods create anxiety? Do you feel satisfied after eating, or frequently eat beyond comfortable fullness?
And what about eating three cheeseburgers in one sitting? Quantity matters, but so does context. Are you exceptionally hungry after a physically demanding day? Are you eating past fullness because you don't feel satiated, or is this part of a recurring pattern that leaves you uncomfortable? These questions don't erase nutritional differences between foods. They illustrate why labeling an individual food as healthy or unhealthy is an incomplete way to think about nutrition.
Exercise can support cardiovascular health, strength, mood, and metabolic function. But consider two people going for a run. One runs because they love being outside, enjoy challenging themselves, and finish feeling energized. The other runs out of guilt, forces themselves through exhaustion, or believes they need to burn off what they've eaten. The activity looks identical, but the experience and its broader implications are different.
Discipline isn't inherently unhealthy, and not every workout needs to feel effortless. Sometimes we do challenging things because we value the longer-term benefits. But when does consistency become rigidity? When does a commitment to exercise start coming at the expense of recovery, relationships, or other things that matter? The answer depends on your circumstances, your relationship with exercise, and how it fits into the bigger picture of your life.
Health Is More Than Physical Health
If we define health solely by physical measures and behaviors, we miss a fundamental part of the picture: health is also shaped by how we experience our lives. Our relationships, work, emotional well-being, hobbies, sense of purpose, and opportunities for joy and connection all contribute to our overall well-being. These aren't simply bonuses added to a physically healthy life. They're part of what makes a life healthy in the first place.
Think about what you're ultimately trying to achieve when you make decisions about your health. You presumably want the energy to do things you enjoy, build meaningful relationships, pursue interests that excite you, and engage with the world around you. Physical health supports those goals, but it isn't the whole objective. You can eat perfectly, exercise consistently, and follow an impeccable sleep routine while feeling lonely, unfulfilled, or disconnected from the people and activities that give your life meaning.
This doesn't mean feeling happy makes every behavior healthy, or that physical health is unimportant. It means that a behavior that improves one physical marker while consistently undermining your emotional well-being or quality of life deserves a closer look. An experience that offers little measurable physical benefit may still make a meaningful contribution to your health.
Everything Is Connected
Our choices don't happen in isolation. Imagine waking up at 5 a.m. to exercise before work. If you went to bed at midnight, that routine might leave you chronically short on sleep. But if you consistently get enough rest, love exercising outdoors before the city gets busy, and find that the routine improves your mood, the same habit may benefit you in several ways. The behavior hasn't changed; the context has.
Our choices can reinforce one another positively, too. Spending time with friends might get you outside, moving, and laughing without thinking of it as exercise. A hobby might introduce you to a new community and give you something to look forward to. Adequate rest might leave you with the energy to cook a nourishing meal and be more present with the people you love.
The reverse is also true. Working late might advance your career but leave less time for sleep, friendships, and hobbies. An intense training schedule might improve performance while limiting recovery or crowding out other activities that matter to you. None of these choices is inherently wrong. What matters is how the trade-offs accumulate and whether the overall arrangement supports the life you want to live.
How do you evaluate those trade-offs? As an economist, I have two concepts that help explain why doing more of something beneficial doesn't always mean making a better choice.
Your Health Has an Opportunity Cost
In economics, opportunity cost is the value of the next-best alternative you give up when you make a choice. Because resources are limited, choosing one thing means giving up the opportunity to do something else with those same resources. Time and energy work the same way. An hour spent exercising is an hour you can't simultaneously spend sleeping, seeing a friend, working on a creative project, or simply doing nothing.
That doesn't mean exercise is a bad investment. It means its value should be considered alongside what that hour could otherwise contribute to your life. If you're consistently sacrificing sleep to fit in a workout, weigh the benefits of exercise against the benefits of adequate rest. If you're working late every evening, consider the professional gains alongside the relationships and downtime you're giving up.
A decision shouldn't be evaluated only by what it gives you, but also by what it costs you. Those costs aren't always obvious or easily measured. An activity with little measurable physical benefit might be an excellent use of your time because of the joy, meaning, or fulfillment it brings. Pursuing one dimension of health at the expense of every other dimension isn't necessarily a good investment.
More Isn't Always Better: The Law of Diminishing Returns
The econ nerd in me has another principle to share: the law of diminishing returns. As we continue adding more of something, the additional benefit we receive from each extra unit may eventually become smaller.
Putting in extra hours at work might help you advance your career, develop new skills, or accomplish something meaningful. But eventually, another hour at your desk may contribute less than the previous one, particularly if it comes at the expense of other things that matter to you. Investing in relationships can deepen connection, but saying yes to every social invitation doesn't necessarily make those relationships stronger.
The same applies to the pursuit of health. Learning about nutrition, understanding your body, and developing supportive habits can be valuable. But there may come a point when another hour of research, another wellness practice, or another attempt to optimize your routine adds very little to your life.
This doesn't mean additional effort is always counterproductive. More work, deeper relationships, or a more structured approach can produce meaningful gains. The question is whether the next increment of effort still provides enough benefit to justify its cost.
We live in a culture that encourages us to believe more is always better: more productivity, more achievement, more self-improvement, more wellness practices. But a fulfilling life isn't a competition to accumulate the greatest number of accomplishments or healthy behaviors. Sometimes the most valuable choice is to do something differently rather than do more.
How Do You Know What's Healthy for YOU?
By now, you might be thinking that evaluating every decision in the context of your entire life sounds exhausting. Are you supposed to conduct a cost-benefit analysis every time you decide what to eat, whether to exercise, or how to spend an evening? Absolutely not. These economic concepts are tools for understanding our choices, not instructions to turn everyday life into an endless calculation.
Part of the problem is that modern life encourages us to look outside ourselves for answers. We're taught to follow rules, meet expectations, push through discomfort, and measure our progress against external standards. We ignore hunger because it's not time to eat, override exhaustion because there's more work to do, or force ourselves through a workout because our fitness tracker says we haven't done enough. In the process, we can lose touch with the signals that help us understand what we need.
Reconnecting with your body gives you a different starting point. When you're more attuned to your hunger and fullness, your energy, your need for rest, and how different experiences make you feel, you have more information to work with. You can begin to recognize the difference between feeling energized by a challenge and pushing yourself beyond what serves you, or between genuinely enjoying an activity and doing it out of obligation.
This doesn't mean every internal cue should dictate your decisions. Sometimes you need to do something challenging even when you don't feel like it, and sometimes what feels good in the moment isn't what serves you in the long run. Reconnecting with your body isn't about always choosing what's easiest. It's about developing the awareness to understand what you're experiencing, recognize what you need, and make more intentional choices.
As that awareness grows, you don't need to consciously weigh every variable in every decision. You become better able to recognize patterns, notice when something feels out of balance, and adjust accordingly.
When the Healthiest Choice Isn't the Obvious One
Sometimes, a choice that looks less healthy on paper makes the most sense in context. These examples illustrate what it means to consider the whole person rather than judging a behavior in isolation.
Sometimes, the healthiest thing you can do is eat the cupcake. If you constantly deny yourself foods you've labeled unhealthy, restriction can become a source of stress, guilt, and preoccupation with food. You might spend more time fighting the craving than you would simply allowing yourself to enjoy one. In that context, eating the cupcake may be a healthier choice than perpetuating a cycle of restriction and guilt. The nutritional value of the cupcake matters, but so does your relationship with food.
Sometimes, the healthiest thing you can do is nothing at all. You could spend Sunday meal prepping, exercising, catching up on errands, and getting ahead on work. But if you're exhausted from a demanding week, the most beneficial choice might be to abandon your to-do list and relax. Rest doesn't have to be earned through productivity, and time spent doing nothing isn't necessarily time wasted.
Sometimes, connection is worth disrupting your routine. You have a nutritious dinner prepared at home, but a friend invites you to try a restaurant you've been wanting to visit. You could stick to your meal plan, or you could enjoy a good meal and meaningful time with someone you care about. The same applies when an old friend is in town for one night and staying up late means you get a few extra hours together. In either case, sticking to your meal plan or sleep schedule isn't automatically the healthier choice. The enjoyment and connection you gain may be worth the trade-off.
Sometimes, the healthiest choice is saying no to something good. An exciting project, another work opportunity, or a social commitment might sound worthwhile in isolation. But if your schedule is already full, accepting it could mean sacrificing time, energy, or attention you need elsewhere. Turning it down doesn't mean the opportunity wasn't valuable. It means recognizing that even good things have costs, and you can't say yes to everything without giving something else up.
These examples aren't arguments for ignoring nutritional needs, abandoning healthy habits, or treating every indulgence as beneficial. They're reminders that the same behavior can have different implications depending on the circumstances, the pattern over time, and what you're gaining or giving up. Health isn't about following every rule perfectly. It's about understanding what supports your well-being in the context of your life.
Conclusion
There is no universal formula for a healthy life because there is no universal context in which we live. The same behavior can serve one person well and work against another. What supports you in one season of life may not be what you need in the next.
The goal isn't to accumulate the greatest number of healthy behaviors or optimize every aspect of your existence. It's to make choices that support your health in the context of your actual life: caring for your physical body while making room for relationships, meaningful work, curiosity, rest, pleasure, and the experiences that make life worth living.
So the next time you find yourself asking, "Is this healthy?" consider a more useful question: Is this healthy for me, in this context, at this point in my life?
You don't need a perfect answer every time. You need the awareness to recognize that the answer depends on more than the behavior itself—and the connection to your own body to help you figure out what that means for you.
Because context matters :)
