The Summer I Stopped Optimizing Myself
I took off my Oura ring and remembered what it feels like to be fully alive.
For two years, the first thing I did every morning was check my Oura ring stats. I’d lie in the dark reading my sleep stages like scripture. My HRV and Readiness scores told me how I should be feeling—if the numbers were good, it was permission to feel good. And if they weren’t, I’d spiral into additional stress because (according to my ring) I was apparently already stressed.
I’d do my multi-step skincare routine, work out according to my cycle, white-knuckle my way through the first part of the morning without coffee because Andrew Huberman said it spikes your cortisol. By all standards, my wellness routine was locked in. And I felt... fine (though frequently tired).
But here’s what I didn’t feel: Free. Alive. At home in my body.
And if I’m being fully honest, I’d also been quietly fighting my own cravings for years. Restricting what I ate in the name of health. (Let’s be real: also in the name of fitting into a certain size of jeans.) The reason I skipped the bread basket wasn’t because I didn’t want it. It was because I thought I shouldn’t have it. There’s a difference, and somewhere along the way, I’d lost the plot.
I was devouring self-help books and wellness podcasts because I knew deep down that something needed to change. I just didn’t know yet what that was.
Last summer, we were at our favorite beach in Malibu on a day that was overcast and a little chilly—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 wading in, while I settled onto my towel in a sweatshirt with my book, perfectly content to stay there.
“Mom, come in!!”
I kept reading, but my mind was half-distracted with that nagging sense that I was missing the moment. So finally, I stripped off my sweatshirt, goosebumps already forming, and ran straight into the waves before I could think twice. The cold shocked me to the core. I dove straight under a wave, then spent the next twenty minutes jumping, diving, and shivering right along with my family.
When we couldn’t take it anymore, we ran back up the sand and wrapped ourselves in towels. I felt exhilarated and absolutely ravenous. Not in a depleted way, but in a fully alive, metabolism-stoked, my-body-just-did-something-hard way. It was a high that lasted all afternoon, and I flagged it so I’d remember: I need more of this in my life.
That moment started something. I began to realize that what I’d been calling wellness was actually a system for controlling my body—tracking it to fit inside a framework, rather than fully living in it and trusting it. Our bodies weren’t created as problems to be optimized, but holy temples with a deep inner wisdom.
So I started learning to trust my body instead of managing it. I stopped dragging myself to early workouts if it meant sacrificing sleep. I stopped skipping the bread basket when the bread was really good. I stopped tracking all my health metrics. And slowly, over this past year, something came back online. My hunger signals got clearer: I knew if I was craving avocado and salmon, or needed a big glass of water, or a bowl of ice cream. Then I ate the thing and moved on.
It’s that feeling of aliveness. Waking up excited to get out of bed, feeling fully present with the people in front of me. Jumping into the ocean because I want to, not because it’s in the protocol. It’s the feeling of your interior world and your actual life finally running on the same frequency.
Below, I’m sharing exactly what that looks like in practice for me this summer.
Less-But-Better Skincare
For years, my skincare shelf looked like a small apothecary. A rotating cast of products—some sent by brands, some I’d bought after being fully convinced by an Instagram ad that this would be the serum that finally changed everything. I was spending more time on my skin than ever, and the results weren’t exactly transformative.
This year, my goal became fewer products, better ingredients, everything does more than one job. I wanted a routine I’d stay really consistent with, which for me only happens when it’s somewhat simple. I stick to a small handful of brands whose formulations I trust, and my skin is the best it’s been in years.
MORNING
I start with this gorgeous cleanser, then the Resurfacing Compound, followed by the Super Hydrator—together, these check the boxes on retinol and antioxidants without requiring a ten-step process. Some days I’ll mix in a few tanning drops before moisturizer (I always wear less makeup when I have a glow.) Then my ride-or-die eye cream, which I started taking seriously after my derm told me that deeply hydrating the area makes a lot of fine lines magically disappear.
NIGHT
I do a double cleanse with this luscious cleansing balm to melt off the day—the scent alone makes this feel like a ritual rather than a task. Then back to the Osea cleanser to fully detox pores. From there, the Resurfacing Compound followed by the Super Hydrator, just like morning. I finish by slathering this luxurious balm all the way down my neck and chest—a step I never skip. I genuinely wake up with fewer fine lines when I’ve sealed in all that moisture.
BODY
In summer especially, I like to give a little extra TLC to my body, and I really slow down and enjoy the process. I swear by this body brush to quickly exfoliate and get the lymph moving—it’s the perfect size and covers a lot of ground fast. Then slather on this body oil made from green tea, hemp seed, and sandalwood oils while my skin is still damp. Five minutes that feel like an at-home spa treatment.
The mindset shift: My skincare routine is working on top of a foundation that has more to do with sleep, protein, stress, and turning my skincare into a ritual that I look forward to. The products matter, but it’s downstream of everything else. We know this intuitively, but it’s easy to forget, probably because a new serum is easier to buy than an extra hour of sleep. That’s what the rest of this post is really about, and it’s the part that really changed things.
Below: the food philosophy that ended years of restriction, and the unexpected thing that happened to my cravings when I stopped fighting them. The supplement stack I actually take consistently after years of expensive shelves full of things I didn’t. The movement shift that made me stop treating exercise like a debt. And the thing I now believe is underneath all of it — the reason you can do everything “right” and still feel off.
If that last sentence landed, keep reading.
Food: finding my way back to pleasure
For years, I ate according to rules and systems I’d borrowed from other people. I read every nutrition book I could get my hands on, obsessed over which way of eating was actually right. (Plant-based or protein-forward? Intermittent fasting or never skipping breakfast?) The longer I followed external frameworks, the less I actually knew what made me feel good.
What I’ve landed on this season feels stripped back and genuinely delicious. And it’s worth noting that reconnecting with my love of food and not fighting my cravings actually didn’t mean sacrificing the healthy, fit body I wanted. If anything, it went the other way.
