Wellmania and the Scary Work of Taking Care of Yourself

<Spoilers ahead for Wellmania>

I thought I'd binge Wellmania on Mental Health Awareness Month as a little personal wellness retreat.

There is no health without mental health. WHO defines health as: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Mental health and physical health are actually linked in some way – the way we feel is a result of the mixture of chemicals in our brain which is affected by our physical activities and nutrition, or lack of it.

Netflix series Wellmania, is loosely based on a book “Wellmania: Extreme Misadventures in the Search for Wellness” by Brigid Delaney, where she documents her own experience participating in wellness trends and health retreats – the most extreme one embarking on a 101-day fast.

In Wellmania, our protagonist, Liv Healy, is portrayed by Celeste Barber—arguably the best choice to play a regular career woman who doesn’t give much thought to her health, as she is also known for #celestechallengeaccepted, a trend hilariously parodying perfect celebrity photos, and how they would look like when a regular person recreates them.
Liv is a talented New York-based food and lifestyle journalist described as a human tornado, living fast and on the road to dying young as the saying goes.

For years, Liv has pushed down unprocessed trauma and thrown herself into work and an unhealthy lifestyle, but after a health scare that puts her career in jeopardy, she tries various methods to reclaim her wellbeing.

Eventually, Liv has an explosive confrontation with her mother, Lorraine, about her lifestyle.
Lorraine: I was trying to delay you for a couple of days at the most. Get you to slow down, rest a little.
Liv: I don’t need to rest.
Lorraine: Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch your child destroy themselves?.... When you arrived, I saw it. What your lifestyle was doing to your body.

Liv forces herself to catch a flight to her place of work after a fainting spell and ends up in a hospital, to her family’s chagrin.

Lorraine: For once, can you please take your health seriously? Listen to yourself, you’re not well.
Liv: I’m fine.
Dalbert: You’re not fine.

For most of us, our daily grind consists of more than a third of it working (a lot more for those who perennially work overtime), a couple of hours commuting (for those who don’t work from home), and less than a third of the day sleeping. Most of us are so deep into our daily routine we don’t give much time or thought to our health. For some of us, unfortunately, until it’s too late.

With all the demands on ourselves, we feel like we don’t have the luxury to at least be kind to ourselves.
But, the world isn’t always kind... So this should also mean we don’t have the luxury of being unkind to ourselves.
But what is kindness to ourselves, really?

Part of it is being truthful. If your doctor has warned you to watch your cholesterol and blood pressure numbers because they’re on the high side, kindness to yourself doesn’t mean you give in to every craving for junk food, it means caring enough about your health by dragging your body to the park or the stairs once in a while for a walk.

Self-care is not limited to pampering yourself with massages and a day at the spa, though enjoyment is definitely part of it. Self-care is also looking out for your body’s future well-being.

But regardless if you have a loved one bearing down on you to make some adjustments to your lifestyle, your wellbeing is something you owe to yourself.