How Travel Can Be an Antidote to Optimization Culture

I’m seconds away from jumping into the Adriatic Sea from the platform of a 55-foot catamaran aptly named Slice of Heaven when one of my friends says she misses her routine Pilates classes. I try to bite my tongue—I don’t want to be rude!—but I can’t help myself. “Look around,” I say, exasperated. “This is your workout.”

I fling my hand toward the pebbly shore where our captain, Tony, has just dropped anchor in an idyllic bay somewhere between Stari Grad and Vis, along Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast. A forested hillside rises above the beach, and there’s not a single other boat in sight. Tony is busy launching the paddle board into the water, while our hostess, Matea, cooks up a surprise Croatian lunch. The cerulean water is so clear I can see all the way to the seafloor, where colorful fish glimmer in the light.

By any measure, this is paradise, which is exactly why I’m baffled. Who could think about Pilates classes when this is right in front of you?

I love traveling with my friends, many of whom live all over the world—in Latin America, Europe, Africa, the US, and beyond—and this is one of the only ways we get to see each other. The Pilates comment doesn’t come out of nowhere, as we’re a group that keeps things balanced: Each trip usually contains equal parts revelry and cultural activities, loads of wine followed by electrolytes for recovery, and enough belly laughs and deep conversations to sustain us until we book the next getaway.

But recently, I’ve noticed a shift: our trips are becoming less of a break from normal life and moreso an extension of it. We spend more time stressing over holding onto the very routines we seek to escape than we do living in the moment. I understand the pressure to not only be healthy, but to look healthy, because it affects me, too. And now, with wearables like Whoop bands and Oura rings telling us how we feel, rather than the old-fashioned way—listening to our bodies to intuitively know how we feel—we can track our wellness progress. Or lack of it.

According to the Global Wellness Institute, the wellness economy reached $6.8 trillion in 2024 and is predicted to soar to $9.8 trillion by 2029, while wellness tourism alone reached $894 billion in 2024 and is on track to surpass $1.4 trillion by 2029. McKinsey’s Future of Wellness research even found that 84% of US consumers consider wellness a top priority in their everyday lives. It’s clear most people want to be well, and now more than ever, they’re refusing to leave their routines at home when they travel.

We’d been talking about this trip for months: an eight-day private catamaran tour with Sail Croatia that I intend to enjoy every minute of. I’m not immune to the pressure to be well and look well—especially when I’ll be in a swimsuit for eight days—so I’ve made the ocean my gym for the week, stand-up paddle boarding and swimming in the Adriatic. I know I’ll eat and drink more and sleep less over the next several days, but I also know I’ll swim and walk more and have memories that will last forever.

I take a deep breath and stretch before diving into the sea. When I surface, Tony throws me the paddle, and one of my friends joins me in my “workout.” We wobble around on the board until we successfully balance our weight, which proves even more interesting when Matea hands us two Aperol Spritzes.

I work up a sweat as I paddle us to the cliff walls, where we down our drinks before taking to the shore, acting like children as we take turns cannonballing into the water and climbing the rocks, looking for shells.

Perhaps I’m doing the same thing as my friend, but I’m more secretive about it—turning moments of this trip into an opportunity to stay fit—but for me, getting outside and into the landscape is what I call balance.

Over the next few days, we sail from Vis to Hvar, then on to Korčula and Mljet. Croatia exceeds all of my expectations. All I can think about is how blissful it feels to split a lavender cheesecake at San Marco restaurant above Hvar’s St. Stephen’s Square, the biggest in Dalmatia; how dizzying it is to climb the wooden ladder to Massimo in Korčula, a 15th-century tower that’s now a bar, where our cocktails arrive by pulley; and how freeing it feels to cycle the wide lanes beneath Mljet’s forested canopy, where the island’s saltwater lakes offer some of the most serene swimming of the trip.

But as we sail on, I start to notice just how intensely our routines follow us. In the galley next to the coffee maker, our collagen powders are in a neat row. We add some to our coffee every morning. All of us brought our favorite brand of electrolytes, the individual packs so many that they have their own shelf. My contribution is a basket holding as many NAD+ liposomal packs and sheet masks as my carry-on suitcase could fit. As I look at it all lined up, I start wondering where my limit is and whether bringing every protocol with me defeats the point of leaving home in the first place.

As soon as I notice it, I can’t unnotice it. Comments that would have usually blown over my head—or that I would have made myself—start stacking up like our supplements in the galley. Over lunch on the bow, someone mentions she’d kill for her protein smoothie instead of the fresh seafood pasta that Matea just made us. While strolling the limestone streets of Korčula, someone announces she’s in desperate need of a collagen sheet mask. On Mljet, while walking back from the lakes with our wet hair dripping down our backs, someone asks whether anyone has a hair mask, because the sea salt is wrecking hers and ruining her extensions.

Tracking technology isn’t inherently bad. In many cases, it’s helpful—but counting every minute of exercise or every calorie does give me pause. My friends are some of the sharpest, smartest, and most intuitive women I know, and we are all being sold the same promise—the same lie—that I am: That we no longer can gauge if we are well on our own, and that with the right protocol we can somehow outsmart aging, exhaustion, and the general chaos of being human. This is a seductive proposition, even for me.

I’m healthy; I’ve built an entire career writing about wellness and hospitality in all its forms. I die for a week at a medical spa in the mountains. I have an Oura ring I check religiously. I try to hit 10,000 steps a day. I have an unlimited membership to a Pilates studio. I take peptides, creatine, magnesium—the works; I do all of this because I want to feel my best. But when a trip full of paddle boarding, cycling, and hiking somehow isn’t enough—when the sea itself gets reframed as an interruption to a protocol—even I have to call it.

This is where I realize I need to draw the line. For me, setting out on a trip has always been about discovery and connection. It’s a given that I’ll have unexpected moments of chaos while navigating an unfamiliar place, often in a language I don’t know, which makes it exhilarating. I find it kind of hilarious to sit down at a restaurant and order a meal and have it arrive nothing like I expected, and the most tremendous of honors to be invited into a home and eat a meal with strangers who quickly become friends. It’s this sense of spontaneity, of surrender, that makes travel worth it for me. Not whether or not these meals hit my macros.

That’s why, when we stop in Ston, known for its oysters and the Great Wall of Europe, and one of my friends comments that she’s finally getting her steps in as we climb the stone stairs and rattles off her Oura ring stats, I pretend not to hear. I’ve already made up my mind; I’ll no longer make my trip about this.

Instead, I choose to marvel at the ancient salt pans glittering below us and the farms scattered across Mali Ston Bay. I take even more joy in savoring freshly shucked oysters at the bayside Bota Šare restaurant.

On our last day of the trip, we arrive in Dubrovnik just before sunset. We go to one of the best restaurants in town, Gradska Kavana Arsenal, overlooking the Old Port, and for one night, it’s like all of our guards fall. We laugh uncontrollably as we enjoy rounds of champagne, two types of tartare, and a thick piece of chocolate cake. Back on the boat, we do what happens at the end of every trip. We stay up for hours in an attempt to squeeze out the last of our time together, all while lamenting that none of us want the trip to end. It’s been one of the most refreshing trips of my life, and I finally know why.

Aside from Croatia being downright gorgeous, the private catamaran experience felt freeing for a particular reason: It was the opposite of what so many hotels are becoming. It was inherently wellness-oriented without anyone handing us a biohacking menu; healthy meals were prepared for us daily without a detox protocol attached; and without a single workout class included. It was all salt water and sunshine, no supplement or gym equipment required.

When I finally tuck myself into bed, I do the exact thing most wellness protocols would tell me not to do: I look at my phone. Immediately, I’m served a video from an influencer who has just completed our same itinerary through Croatia, sailing from Split to Dubrovnik.

What catches my attention isn’t her videos of the Dalmatian Coast, but her morning routine. It’s a montage of her waking up at 6 a.m., peeling off her mouth tape and collagen sheet mask, removing a weighted décolletage wrinkle pad, then launching into what seems like a 100-step beauty routine full of serums and LED masks. I don’t judge her for this. If anything, it makes me question if I’m doing enough.

I look through my own photos. Mine tell a different story: an impromptu dance party in Vis with a group of younger French men, grinning from ear to ear at a seaside tavern in Mljet, squid-ink risotto staining my entire smile. A selfie of the girls taken in Korčula during the hour I’d usually meditate but have one of the deepest conversations of our trip instead.

For some travelers, the influencer’s version of the trip isn’t so much a dream as it is a necessity to keep up with ever-evolving beauty standards. Even if I’m leaving the catamaran a little under-rested, sunburned, and salt-crusted—I’d choose our version of the trip every single time.