I’ve done it. I trained for a fitness test with my super fancy watch. It can track, watch, maintain, observe, and highlight every single thing with and within my body 24/7. Everything, you guys. With this watch and after years of research, I have become “optimal” (as my watch calls it). I am an optimal woman/human/person/racoon or whatever you want to call me. I glance at my watch first thing in the morning. But even when my eyes are still closed my watch wakes me up to tell me that:
Your Body fat percentage, optimal! Good morning!
I hide under the blankets one more time and try to ignore the watch but it is synched with my phone which rings to tell me that:
Your Body fat percentage, optimal. Triglycerides, optimal. Dietary fiber, weekly activity levels, resting heart rate, 365-day meditation app on, all optimal. Get up! Start your day in “Downward-Facing-Dog”!
I get up, slightly annoyed but at least now I can spend the next one hundred years staying optimal until I die. At least that!
Thank you, watch (and phone).
With this optimal health, I could go for a long hike on a moonlit mountain trail, watching my step counter the entire way. Even before I have to drive to work! Oh, my watch just reminded me to eat my daily dosage of supplements (15 each for breakfast, lunch, and dinner). Done!
I step out in my garden to feel the still chilly morning sun warm my face and rush back inside to use my sun lamp (the phone suggested I buy this one), to stimulate Vitamin D production without skin damage. Hello, skin cancer!
So I sit motionless on the floor of my empty minimalistic room (the watch suggested throwing everything away in Marie-Kondo-style so I can finally breathe, have more space, and focus on the things that really matter), enjoying the perfect harmony between my Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids.
My phone suggests a new job – something creative, fun, and meaningful. The challenge of a lifetime. My own bookstore! I deleted the suggestion because it lacked the optimal combination of ten thousand daily steps, standing, adequate income, and zero stress that I enjoy so much at my current job.
My watch just alerted me that my heart rate went up. Must have been the thought of going to work after all. Let’s get up and have breakfast, my brain tells me. There is still some leftover cake in the fridge. My watch instantly reminds me that I have not eaten cake in 423 days which is a good thing to keep my blood sugar low and predicts that I will live at least 120 optimal, diabetes but cake-free years.
The other day, my son made muffins and I licked the frosting and told him how good it was because emotional connection optimizes mental health. But I secretly spit it out since frosting’s nutrient profile is suboptimal.
I don’t buy or eat anything that contains artificial sugar anymore. Like zero. Like nothing at all. My son asks me to buy chocolate I scream, “NO, it is not healthy. My watch tells me NOT to eat it!” My son wants to be Charly and live in the Chocolate Factory at this point. Okay, well, his choice. Off he goes. The Ompa Loompa’s can raise him. All the better, as it frees up my time and income for optimizing my health. Without a child, I could downsize and spend the extra money on daily out-of-pocket blood or urine tests or for personal training sessions with fitness guru Mat Fraser and his GOWOD app to optimize my health.
I used to get blood work at my yearly physical, and the results were always healthy. But then I would wonder if my LDL cholesterol from last month was still optimal, and my next doctor’s appointment was months away. And I couldn’t schedule a new one until after I finished the anniversary dinner or my son’s Taekwondo competition or whatever.
But now, every morning after the forty-five-minute self-administered blood draws and uploads on my watch and phone, I look at my biomarkers exactly in the optimal range and feel warm inside, which is either happiness or my supercharged mitochondria. Regardless, according to the latest research, they are biologically indistinguishable.
I feel sad for the suboptimal. Yesterday I saw a poor girl in the grocery store pointing to a loaf of fresh French bread, saying, “Mommy! Mommy! Let’s buy this, it looks so yummy and smells so good!” I shook my head at the thought of the processed white flour and nonexistent fiber but tons of carbs. I choose the optimal bread by scanning the aisle for the brownest, gnarliest, chia-and-all seeds in the world-covered loaf I would find.
It is morning. I rise from my custom-built cedar-wood bed in my bedroom, with its blackout curtains and climate control set to three degrees Celsius and 38 percent humidity, to optimize my 9.3 hours of deep REM sleep. The prospect of another perfectly optimal day has my mitochondria quivering in anticipation. Ah, what’s this? I didn’t know my smartwatch and phone analyzed sleep. Sleep score of 93. Pretty good. But not optimal. I stagger out of my house but quickly get over the shock. I prepare myself for optimizing as long as it takes while checking my watch again for my blood oxygen level and didn’t notice a garbage truck approaching, and it is going pretty faaaaast………..
