Three months ago, I decided I needed to upgrade to Version 2.0 of myself. With the power of science and vitamins. If you spend any amount of time on Instagram at 1am eating Cheese and Onion Doritos out of the bag (which, let’s be honest, we all do), you’ve probably seen these: dewy, glowing people claiming to have transformed their lives thanks to some magical stack of supplements.
I bought them all.
My journey into vitamin-based Internet wellness culture began – where else? – with Instagram.
It began with one tiny multivitamin. “One little pill every morning,” I told myself. “You probably don’t eat enough nutritious food to get everything your body needs from diet alone.
Coffee, Tesco Value Meal Deals, and apples don’t exactly…well…stack up.”
(It’s science!) OK, so next I needed something for stress. And hair.
And collagen. Bone strength. Energy.
“Healthy” skin. Omega-THINGS. Before I knew it, I’d clicked “buy now” on enough vitamins to stock Whole Foods.
“A stack!” cried Jen, my coworker who looks like she ran a marathon this morning but still woke up ahead of me – the latest addition to my Holistic Heath circle of trust. “That’s what everyone who knows what they’re doing does. Keeps your nutrients balanced and synergistic!”
“Nooooo,” I moaned into my Tesco Meal Deal sandwich.
“Please let me keep them in alphabetical order.”
“I could show you the spreadsheet I have on my computer.”
She went on to describe her vitamin regimen – which included everything from B complex to zinc – while I scrolled Amazon, filling my virtual cart. Did I feel ridiculous? Of course not!
A low-quality meal deal sandwich from Tesco doesn’t CHANGE YOUR LIFE, BUT IT MIGHT AS WELL®! This was the real deal. Better eating habits.
Regular exercise. Drinking less wine. Oh wait…
“Well why not?” my flatmate Dave asked when the package arrived and my postman emitted a sound halfway between a harrumph and a trumpet fanfare.
“What’re you, dying?”
“No! I’m peak Fitness!” I said, proudly arranging my new bottles into rows on my countertop like a mini pharmacy. Dave eyed the collection doubtfully.
“Alright, well, don’t blame me when you feel like death.”
Hours later, after digging through my bags and setting up numerous Amazon Prime subscriptions, I sat on my kitchen floor and admired my handiwork. Naturally, the first thing I did was TAKE PILLS. “Look at how many pills I have to take,” I told Dave.
He inspected my supplies. “Er…this one says it’s for women over 50. Buddy.”
“Rudiments,” I said, waving my hand vaguely at the offending bottle.
“Never mind that. These have GREAT reviews, and it’s on sale!”
Starting a new supplement regimen is always fun. You have to set the pills out the night before LIKE A REAL ADULT who lives in suburban excellence.
Some of them go together (“Take with meals”), some of them don’t (“Do not take with any fat-soluble vitamins”). It’s a fun puzzle. My initial routine consisted of:
* A multivitamin the size of my ego
* B-complex (hellooooo energy!)
* Vitamin D (hellooooo UK skies!) * Magnesium for sleepy-times
* Fish oil because “brain”
* Vitamin C “for immune support” aka because I’m scared of pirates
* Iron because once I felt tired in 2019 so I’m def low on iron
* Greens Powder that cost more than my car and smells like the thing under your mower blades
I laid out my supplements with meticulous care and read each instruction twice before scooping them into my palm. It was 9: 30am and I had all the free time in the world.
Today was DAY ONE of The New Me. Breakfast of champs: washed down with a kale smoothie that cost more than my dinner. First I swallowed the easy ones.
Groups of five at a time, making a game out of how many disgusting pills I could cram into my mouth before GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKING CHOKING ON THEM. Then the giant horse pill. Down the hatch.
Greens powder last. Stirred exactly 33 seconds, poured into the glass of water, and down the Old PROBABLY NOT GOING TO DO MUCH FOR YOU THOUGH OH WELL ME went the rest. “And now,” I told Dave, holding up my fancy schmancy Vitamin Water™ like a trophy, “I am officially an adult.”
“Congrats,” he said flatly, scrolling Twitter on his phone.
“You smell like turmeric.”
Turmeric wasn’t even part of my stack! To be fair, Dave wasn’t wrong about anything I was putting in my body at this point. It smelled and tasted like a swamp that someone paid a person to try to sell as a health supplement.
“It’s supposed to be good for me,” I told myself, pinching my nose and chugging. “Models drink this. CEOs drink this.
People who actually have their shit together drink this.”
When I finished my drink, I sat on the floor in a satisfied pile and waited for my body to transform into a well-oiled wellness machine. Because THAT happened the first time you try something. Hours passed.
I felt…fine? Like normal, but also maybe a little bit more health-conscious? I had envisioned glowing skin and boundless energy and a PERFECT MEAL PREP SNACK (prepared by Craig from the cafeteria), but I wasn’t going to get greedy.
Day 2 was uneventful. The only side effect I noticed was that my pee was the color of a highlighter that had been chewed by a preschooler. Fun Fact: I text my nurse friend a screenshot of my pee.
Her response? “LOL that’s just fancy pee. You’re literally flushing half those vitamins down the toilet.”
Humans cannot process most water-soluble vitamins at the extremely high doses these “natural” supplements provide.
They just dump straight out of your body. Fun fact! The bright yellow comes from that.
Sorry nobody mentioned that part. By DAY 3, the elation of loading up on chemical nutrients had worn off, and I was left with my baseline level of depressive sadness. Only now my pee hurt the eyes.
Not ONE human interaction had changed because I was “optimizing” my nutrient intake. Not ONE of my problems had been solved by swallowing vitamin-infused horse pills. This holistic health journey wasn’t easy, but I was willing to push through for the glowing skin.
The second box came in a few days later. Dave eyed it suspiciously as it appeared on our kitchen counter. “You’re gonna have glowing pee now,” he said.
I already kinda did? Week two was much the same as week one, only with more supplements. Twelve instead of ten.
Twenty-seven mornings later, my routine resembled a complex science experiment more than a legitimate health practice. Take half with food. Don’t take that one with calcium.
NEVER TAKE THE RED AND BLUE PILLS TOGETHER OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE. Dave and I took to referring to my bathroom as The Chernobyl Tourist Attraction. My social life had now officially become „the pee situation”.
Friends would text me asking how my recovery was coming along. Enthusiastically! Texts me pictures of their poop to compare!
Remind me to stop taking so many damn supplements someday, won’t you? Nothing changed, though. I still woke up every day exhausted and stressed and worried about wasting my money on supplements that might as well be candycoats for all the effect they seemed to be having on me.
Then, one Monday, it happened. I was in a meeting with my boss and a group of coworkers when I felt the rumble. Of gas.
Prepared for weeks by all that fish oil and extra iron. I pride myself on having a strong front – I didn’t cry when Snapchat bought my business. I didn’t implode when my startup failed.
I’ve even learned to SEE PEOPLE POOP without so much as batting an eye. But nothing could’ve prepared me for “work poop”. Let’s just say that I now keep a spare shirt at my desk, and friends and family tease me about “bowel issues” to this day.
Week four. 47 pills a day. TWO powders that MUST BE STIRRED FOREVER or else.
I’ve spent so much time in the bathroom during the past month that I should’ve repainted it by now. Instead, my poo is keeping the entire EECS department illuminated during these dark times. I am seriously wondering if it’s too late for me…
…and then I receive a call from Mom.
“How are you doing, sweetie?” she coos. The struggle isn’t real until your mom asks you if you’re eating actual food. “What?” I yell, downing the last of my spinach-based chalk powder.
“I’m great! Busy with work. Been taking these fun vitamins!”
There’s a pause.
“Are you eating real food?”
My mom hasn’t seen me since…I moved in, which was also before I started swallowingEmergency Contact BROCHURES full of vitamins. “Of course I am!” I yell, glaring at my breakfast of supplements. “…Wait.
Carbs.”
My mother sighs from thousands of miles away. “I swear, when I was your age, we didn’t have supplements. We just ate vegetables.
Get outside once in a while, too!”
Ugh, rebels. I started taking supplements because I wanted to upgrade myself, and doing actual things like “eating vegetables” was too hard. My mom was right.
It didn’t have to be this complicated. Plus, I was spending upwards of $100/week on powders that would’ve made Jordan Skinnypants blush. That’s a Wkend IN BARCELONA I’m literally pooping out onto the toilet every single day.
Enough was enough. I decided to talk to a professional about my regimen. The nutritionist I went to see actually laughed when I showed her my shopping list.
“I love that you want to take care of yourself,” she said. “But you’re duplicating nutrients, taking more than your body can absorb, and combining vitamins that negatively interact with each other.”
“But doctors are expensive and literally smell kale in my kitchen right now.”
She recommended I stop taking everything except for a basic multivitamin and Vitamin D (again, northern skies!) and focus on eating a balanced diet.
If I wanted to take more supplements, we could do some blood work to identify holes in my “nutrient stacking” and address those specifically. “It’s fine to take a multivitamin,” she said. “But you can get most of what you need from food.
Seriously.”
She was right. I’d built myself such an elaborate supplement schedule that I neglected the simple fact that vitamins are called vitamins for a reason: THEY’RE SUPPLEMENTARY. I started paring down my pills immediately.
The glow-in-the-dark pee faded after a week. My bank account thanked me. And get this: As I improved my diet, I actually started feeling healthier than ever before.
These days I take a multivitamin and Vitamin D during the winter months.
That’s it. And you know what?
I feel great. Oh, and PS: check the FINE PRINT. Buried in the liner notes of my beloved B complex vitamins was this gem:
“May cause bright yellow urine.”
They TOTALLY SHOULD’VE MADE THAT BOLDER ON THE BOTTLE.
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