Jolenta Greenberg and Kristen Meinzer open by critically examining wellness culture's often unrealistic, unsustainable standards, drawing on their own extensive experience testing numerous wellness trends and practices for their podcast.

Why this critical examination matters:

• Much popular wellness content promotes standards that prove genuinely unsustainable or even counterproductive for many people's actual circumstances and needs
• The authors' extensive firsthand testing of numerous specific wellness trends provides grounded, experience-based critique rather than purely theoretical criticism
• This opening establishes the book's distinctive skeptical, humor-inflected approach to wellness culture, distinguishing it from more uncritical wellness advocacy

This opening establishes the book's foundational skeptical stance toward unrealistic wellness culture standards, grounded in the authors' own extensive firsthand testing experience.