10 Things I Learned from My 2-Week Wellness Detox

No phone, no coffee, no chaos - here’s what happened.

About two weeks ago, I told you I was going offline to try something wild: actual rest. Your responses were fierce, supportive, and so full of love, and that’s why I want to bring you along for the full journey.

I’ve been as open as I can be about my health struggles, and about a month ago I made a decision that I need to do something to get myself on a better path to recovery. I was feeling mentally very down and like I wasn’t ever going to get better. If I was going to rest, I needed to really rest. Not just a nap or a break between emails. A full reset. So I shipped myself off to a hotel and used an app to block myself from social media on my phone. I cut out caffeine, sugar, wheat, and dairy. I will admit, I was still on my computer reading the newspaper!!

And before you roll your eyes … yes, I know we’re living in the golden age of wellness influencing, and yes, that world veers straight into the arms of pseudoscience and the far right. That’s why I want to be clear: I’m not sharing this to tell you what to do. I’m sharing what I learned so we can all think more clearly about what rest really means, and how we might actually get there.

I’d love to hear your own experiences in the comments, especially your take on what’s helped you reset. But first, here’s what I learned:

1. Screens have changed my brain for the worst. In school one of my superpowers was deep focus. I am, naturally, whatever the opposite of ADHD is. I like to focus on each project until it’s done then move on to the next. I never procrastinated in school, if a paper was due at midnight I’d get it in at 6pm so I could enjoy my evening. I think the combination of emails and social media has broken that part of my brain. My attention span is shorter than ever before. My focus is terrible. Over the past two weeks I could feel it improving like a muscle that is slowly being retrained.

2. For me, the screens are more addictive than caffeine. I spent the first 7 days on a full cleanse, no dairy no wheat no sugar no caffeine and no social media. On the 7th day I broke and let myself on TikTok (but stayed on my food break)—I ended up with a screen time of 6 hours and 23 minutes and got a migraine. While I had been exhausted without caffeine I hadn’t actually gotten a migraine from the withdrawal.

3. Community is a balm for both the mind and the body. On about day 4 I was feeling incredibly down. After much grappling over whether to break my fast or turn on my phone, I summoned all of my willpower and decided to go find some people to chat to. I was in a hotel so this was easier than in my normal life, and after chatting for a bit I felt entirely better. The chat wasn’t about anything serious, we talked movies and sports, health and even weather, all the hallmarks of small talk. But it actually made me genuinely feel better in a way my phone never does. IRL social connection for the win.

4. There is so much goodness in the world. One of the ways in which the Internet has sort of broken humanity is by bringing us an unending deluge of negativity. I always try to remember that when homo sapiens were developing, it was critical to remember every detail of the one time you were chased by a lion, so that you could make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Those same instincts remain and they have been applied to social media in the worst of ways. When people feel good or neutral about a post, they generally just scroll along, but when they have something negative to say - they want to get it ALL OUT RIGHT AWAY. When I put up my going away Substack, people were so incredibly kind and supportive. There is a world beyond toxic positivity that actually just reflects the goodness of most people. We are all complicated fallible creatures, but when people have the bandwidth and opportunity it is so often the case that they just want what’s best for other people.

5. Quitting coffee isn’t worth it. I’ve quit coffee before in my life, usually because I’ve built myself up to needing too many cups to get through the day and I feel like I need a reset. Perhaps when I was younger it was easier but I will say at 40 I really do love that treat. Maybe I will shift to decaf or a chai latte in the morning, but the ritual matters. The pleasure matters. It cannot be replaced with chamomile tea. Life needs to be worth living and for me that requires a cuppa.

6. Rest actually heals you. Like, physically. One of the things I’ve noticed over the last couple years is that when I get a scratch it takes 4-5 weeks to heal. This makes sense because I had an untreated health ailment (adrenal insufficiency) that limited my body’s ability to create the inflammation necessary to heal stuff. (Also no wonder I couldn’t recover from my two surgeries during this period!) During my cleanse I healed some scratches and a bruise in just a few days.

7. We all need a reboot once in a while. A few years ago, I went hiking in Patagonia and my boss gave me a satellite phone so he could reach me at any time. Looking back, I haven’t really unplugged in 15 years. That constant state of “just in case,” of always bracing for a ping, a call, a crisis, it keeps you locked in fight-or-flight. In the same way you need to reboot your computer every now and again, whether it’s work or family obligations or something else, I think our brains need a bit of a break.

8. Nature is energy. Whenever I lived in a city (most of my adult life) I’ve tried to spend at least 30 minutes per week surrounded by trees and I immediately get a boost of energy. Over the past couple of weeks I have been outside every single day and 30 minutes per week feels like absolutely nothing. I wonder if the same way there are introverts and extroverts (that some people get energy from socializing and others don’t) there might also be people who suck up energy from nature. I know I am one of those people.

9. Fiber fiber fiber. As a child of the Special K diet 90’s, I am deeply attuned to diet trends. It feels like the last decade has been the protein decade, but now we are about to commence the fiber decade. I have been putting fiber and collagen in my morning coffee for the last 6 weeks (when I drink it) and it has helped me avoid a fatigue crash. But more than that, focusing on getting fiber from vegetables and beans has been a really good way for me to have a lower stress mentality towards building a healthy plate. My blood sugar is improving and I also feel better.

10. Sleep is a super power. Every night I have been detoxing my sleep has gotten a little better. It didn’t happen all at once, but I have slowly been falling asleep easier and sleeping longer and more soundly. When I wake up I no longer feel exhausted. I know this is a process, but I think I’m on the right track.

I’ll be sharing more about what I learned from logging off, but for now: I’d love to hear your thoughts. What’s helped you reset lately? What rituals have helped you reconnect to yourself?

Drop them in the comments—I read every one. 💛

And before you go, here are three specific changes I’ve made since the detox that I’m actually sticking with:

1. I use Opal to block my access to social media from 10pm - 7am every day. No more late night scrolling. (2EYY4 is my referral code if you want free 30 days)

2. I signed up for a free introduction to fly fishing class. I used to do a lot of hiking but I have months of physical therapy to do before I’ll get back to that. For now I’m trying to figure out some outside activities I can do, and a free class from Orvis sounded like a good start.

3. I’m adding recipes to my repertoire. Two of my favorite fiber-rich recipes are yellow mung bean dal soup and Ethiopian ful, I’m going to work on making them from scratch!

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