Foundational Wellness

Why I Changed the Name of My Substack at 85

Two days ago, I changed the title of my Substack and Medium from “The Anti-Wellness Diet” to “Foundational Wellness.”

Here’s why.

At 85, I actually lived through — and practiced — what I consider the real wellness movement long before wellness became branding, retail theater, and Instagram performance art.

Real wellness came from systems that focused on awareness, movement intelligence, breathing, posture, structure, coordination, and the integration of body and mind.

It came from people and systems like:

• Moshe Feldenkrais / Feldenkrais Method

• F. Matthias Alexander / Alexander Technique

• Ida Rolf / Rolfing / Structural Integration

• Joseph Pilates / The Pilates Method (Contrology)

• Continuum Movement

• Somatics

• BodyMind Centering

• Breathwork

• The Human Potential Movement

• Movement awareness

If this list is unfamiliar to you — or you’ve never experienced any of these systems — then what you probably know is not wellness.

It’s branded wellness.

And branded wellness, to me, became another diversion. Another way to avoid facing the reality that was finally admitted publicly on October 15, 2025, when the American Heart Association and more than 75 major medical and public-health organizations effectively acknowledged that BMI alone is deeply flawed and that waistline and metabolic dysfunction matter far more.

The implication was staggering:

America is not roughly 40% obese.

It’s closer to 70%.

That means roughly 70% of Americans are living in damaged bodies — bodies dealing with some combination of:

• Heart disease risk

• Sleep apnea

• Musculoskeletal problems

• Diabetes

• Fatty liver disease

• Joint degeneration

• Chronic inflammation

• Hormonal dysfunction

And yet we continue to market the word healthy as if buying another wellness accessory somehow fixes any of this.

It doesn’t.

For decades, America followed the wrong formula:

Burn calories.
Beat up the body.
Sweat harder.
Push harder.
Punish yourself more.

That formula gave us obesity, exhaustion, injuries, hip replacements, eating disorders, cortisol overload, and bodies disconnected from themselves.

Back in the 1960s, there was another path available.

We could have emphasized:

• Full-body integration

• Oppositional movement

• Tensegrity instead of compression

• Coordination instead of punishment

• Awareness instead of adrenaline

• Function instead of exhaustion

But that path was harder to brand.

The easier sell was intensity.

Because much of American exercise culture was never really about the body. It was about stimulation, identity, aggression, calories, and performance.

I’ve said for decades:

Exercise in America often has very little to do with the body.
It has to do with sweating.

Then “fitness” started collapsing under the weight of its own failures, so the industry added a softer word:

Wellness.

Now we have “fitness and wellness.”

And suddenly everything is wrapped in calming language, recovery language, nervous-system language, optimization language.

But much of it is still performance culture wearing softer clothing.

Today, wellness has become an entire economy where exhaustion itself is monetized:

• Cold plunges

• Ice baths

• Contrast therapy

• Infrared saunas

• Red light therapy

• Cryotherapy

• Float tanks

• Hyperbaric oxygen

• PEMF mats

• Compression boots

• Fascia release

• Percussion guns

• Recovery lounges

• IV drips

• Electrolyte rituals

• Nervous-system regulation

• Vagus nerve stimulation

• Parasympathetic activation

• Breath optimization

• Sleep optimization

• Circadian alignment

• Mouth taping

• Blue-light blockers

• Grounding mats

Much of this is sold as healing.

Some of it may help people feel better temporarily.

But none of it solves the central issue:

Americans are overfed, hormonally dysregulated, inflamed, compressed, exhausted, and living in bodies carrying massive metabolic stress.

The interesting thing about the Pilates Joe Pilates taught in the 1960s — the Pilates I experienced — is that it combined resistance training with concentration, breathing, coordination, alignment, and full-body awareness.

It affected muscle mass.
It trained focus.
It trained movement intelligence.

It was mind-body work before “mind-body” became a marketing category.

Today, much of what is called “Pilates” has drifted far from that original concept.

Especially large group reformer classes, which often function more like entertainment fitness than intelligent movement education.

People love them.
They socialize.
They take Instagram photos.
They listen to Taylor Swift.
They feel good.

And that’s fine.

But that is not the same thing as the system Joseph Pilates created.

Meanwhile, the fitness industry is quietly panicking over GLP-1 drugs because they expose something the industry never wanted to admit:

The body is hormonal first.

Not caloric first.

The disappearance of “food noise” is teaching millions of people that appetite regulation — not willpower — drives eating behavior.

And instead of treating GLP-1s as some threat to exercise culture, we should recognize the opportunity:

If people finally return to more normal body size, they may actually be able to move intelligently again.

Maybe we can finally stop glorifying punishment and start understanding function.

That’s why I changed the name.

Not because I suddenly believe in “wellness culture.”

But because I want to reclaim the idea of wellness from branding.

To me, foundational wellness means:

• A body that works

• A nervous system that functions

• Intelligent movement

• Hormonal balance

• Breathing well

• Structural support

• Appropriate muscle mass

• Reduced compression

• Reduced inflammation

• Eating less quantity

• And learning how to live inside the body instead of attacking it

This problem is fixable.

We can undo decades of damage.

But only if we stop confusing branding with biology.