#41 Forever Young
Longevity and Health Propaganda, part II.
Hiiii from Paris. This is the first of four biweekly summer letters. A slower pace that gives me space to share more personal reflections. Don't worry, this isn't turning into a diary. Instead, think of it as a more intimate lens on why I care about certain subjects and how I choose to cover them from a business perspective. xoxo Esther 💋
This is a follow-up to one of my most-discussed posts. In case you missed it:
Content warning: I’ll cover body image, disordered eating, and drugs. If that’s not something you wish to read, skip to the Dealsheet.
I was supposed to die in 2079, aged 90. But! New data has entered the chat. I’m now 28, not 35. Are we all familiar with the concept of biological age, as opposed to chronological age? But let’s start at the beginning.
For years, my body was my startup. I iterated, I optimised, I beta tested. Until it broke. But I didn’t always operate in founder mode.
I. Baby Steps
Let’s set the scene: France, early ‘90s. If you weren’t there, you’d think we had it better than everyone, thanks to books like Bringing up Bébé. I did in fact have fresh fruits and vegetables on my plate, and protein was essential at every meal. But let’s not erase the deep fatphobic sentiment of the era:
For people: Nutella was strictly verboten in the house “because it made kids fat” (direct quote)
Ingredients, too, of course: yoghurt and even butter boasted a reduced fat content. Oil? The enemy.
Working out was never a priority. Below-average grades in P.E. were acceptable, in a way that they never were for any other academic subject. Even in a post-Cindy Crawford fitness VHS era, the ideal body type was that of Vanessa Paradis or Carla Bruni. Laetitia Casta was talked about as if she were on the chubbier side, a fact that astonishes me to this day.
Being tall and thin was in. It seemed synonymous with being healthy until my growth spurt and lack of appetite sparked eating disorder accusations.
Looking back, I wasn’t embodying myself. The outer shell was just a casing for my big, creative, academic mind.
II. Work in Progress
Being set free, yet still unaware of what well-being looked like, was a pretty dark time. Hanging out with bands and DJs, my nightly diet consisted of free beers, Mojitos, and early experiments with coke and molly. Luckily, I realised at 18 that coke made everyone an unbearable asshole. Even I found myself unbearable on it, which fortunately saved me from enjoying it a little too much.
If I had anxiety-insomnia as a teen, as a young adult, I didn’t sleep due to a lack of time. It wasn’t unusual for me to attend a concert and do my art school assignments in the middle of the night.
Even a young body has limits. Mine showed up in a blood test. Elevated triglycerides, likely amplified by the contraceptive pill I was on at the time. I switched pills and cut out all added sugars from my diet. I even had the common sense to eliminate the biggest culprit, alcohol, for the better part of a year.
Of course, I started leaving parties at a sensible time and accidentally lost weight.
A couple of years later, I was finally aware I could shed the weight that had crept back on, thanks to the nearly-nightly pides I ate living in Istanbul. I turned to what was available at the time: the Dukan diet. The protein-only phase made me sick. I haven’t been on a restrictive diet since.
Instead, I went in the complete opposite direction: veganism. Being vegan in Paris in 2011 wasn’t for the faint of heart: you could have your pick between a green salad, meaning lettuce + vinaigrette, and fries sans mayo. The Everything Vegan Cookbook and a few nutrition principles saved me. For the first time, I felt good instead of neutral, and that’s when the optimisation journey started.
At the same time, I signed up for a cheap gym and didn’t miss a class of this then-mysterious practice: Pilates. That was also a first: moving by choice and not because I was being forced to. The faint ab lines were gratifying, too.
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Any health expert will agree that holistic wellbeing lies on 5 pillars:
Nutrition
Physical Activity
Sleep
Mental & Emotional Health
Recovery & Environment
I’ve changed my mind about all of them at some point. What stayed the same is that I was usually an early adopter:
Diet: veganism turned into pescetarianism, then back to an omnivore diet last year. If what you eat is part of the equation, how you eat matters too and I started intermittent fasting in 2017 before finding out it sucks for women. I went all in on the Ayurvedic diet. I started my day with a bulletproof coffee at one point. Today’s protein craze? Been there, done the whole 110g/day, and I’ve stopped counting macros a few weeks ago.
Physical Activity: I ran my way up to a half marathon, discovered Reformer Pilates, refined my left hook in boxing classes, and sweated out excesses in hot yoga. You best believe I took full advantage of the then-unlimited ClassPass plan. I hired a personal trainer. Until I couldn’t — more on that below.
3, 4, 5. You get the gist.
III. The Crash: dissociation & reconciliation
All that came to a stop in 2020. In a rare stroke of bad luck and a bike accident, I managed to fracture, sprain and dislocate the centre of my foot, where all the tiny bones (actual scientific terminology) and a crucial joint are concentrated. A timeline:
July 2020: 1 pm crash, midnight surgery. I wake up with my right leg in a cast to a surgeon who assures me that even though I’ll hear wondrous recovery stories of people who weren’t meant to walk again and ran a marathon mere months later, that won’t be my case. Lifelong consequences are in store for me.
October 2020: 3 months of being horizontal and losing my sanity later, the 4 screws are surgically removed. I’ll spare you the failed anaesthesia story.
December 2020: After learning how to walk, I’m in pain again. Diagnosis: My convalescence was so long that I lost all my cartilage. Having arthritis at 31 is probably the most isolating experience of my life. If I thought I was health-conscious before, managing chronic inflammation was a daily battle: a Hydra of inner and outer triggers. Alcohol, sugar, too little sleep, stiff shoes, too much exercise, too little exercise (yes, both), uneven terrain, walking downstairs, cold weather, rain, stress.
January 2023: Multiple rounds of non-surgical procedures later, I went in for another surgery. The best way I can describe arthrodesis is that by adding a metal plate and screws to the side of an articulation, you trick your body into thinking it’s a fracture and it fuses the bones. My bionic foot is excellent for walking and makes me feel very special, but I’ve forever given up on lateral mobility.
Feeling satisfied with simply functioning after being so vocal about my experiments and my wins doesn’t come naturally. And yet, no one who’s experienced that kind of low can understand that being operative is its own kind of progress.
IV. Body image
I’ve mentioned weight fluctuations throughout. I used to be the last one to notice changes in myself, which makes sense with being unaware of how I existed in my own body.
Given the era I grew up in, I consider myself lucky in one aspect: I attended art school from the age of 18. At a time when our frontal lobe wasn’t yet developed, we’d have nude drawing classes. Our professor cast a wide range of characters for us to observe. Fat, skin on bones, muscular, old, young, we drew them all. In retrospect, I’m thankful that I spent time contemplating bodies I wouldn’t have seen naked in magazines, in mainstream movies, in real life… or in porn.
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Someone close to me has been grappling with an eating disorder, and my psychotherapist was confounded as to how I had escaped seemingly unscathed. Far from anecdotal, I believe that those formative art school years spared me.
By the time Instagram imposed its glossy rules in the early 2010s—no days off, always camera-ready!—I had already internalised a kind of body neutrality.
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I rapidly dropped weight during my 2020 convalescence, due to a lack of appetite from painkillers and a slowed-down metabolism, as well as an inability and unwillingness to drink, thanks to daily blood thinner injections. My muscle mass had melted down to nothing. Family members, friends, my then-boyfriend, everyone complimented me on it. What a sad story, she’s skinny, gorgeous, and people notice. And all it cost was her will to live. I’m vain. But I’d choose functionality over aesthetics every time now.
V. Performance, Competition, and the Invisible Olympics
While I was on my own fitness journey (pre-crash), the wellness world was expanding by becoming:
seemingly more efficient: with advanced gear, performance fabrics, and hi-tech sneakers. Progress is tracked with increasingly expensive tech: Whoop bands, Apple Watches and Oura rings. Gym franchises opened everywhere: CrossFit, Barry’s Bootcamp, SoulCycle, Lagree. Creatine, electrolytes, protein powder: it’s no longer enough to do the workout; you must optimise for an athlete’s body.
more performative: boasting about one’s achievements is no longer a social faux pas. Sharing a personal best on Strava, posting one’s marathon-training journey, or even visible sweat and a six-pack on a gym selfie. Everything is content. You’re not just getting healthy, you’re proving it.
The longevity industry is booming. Even after trying to take a step back from the wellness Olympics, I research and cover the subject through my work. Founders around me reel me back into the race to become the healthiest I can possibly be.
I went for my first cold plunge with a view of the Eiffel Tower.
I’ve been sent ‘ancestral nutrition’ (ground meat + organs) patties. They taste great, and unsurprisingly, they make me feel better mentally and physically than a McDonald’s burger would.
The founders of Lucis (Y Combinator 2025) offered me a beta-tester spot in their longevity programme based on blood tests. This is where the biological age I mentioned at the beginning comes from. The age thing feels more anecdotal, while the preventive health aspect and detailed protocol seem to yield more long-term results.
People don’t just want to live well. They want to outlive.
VI. What now?
I’ve tasted obsessive tracking. I’ve endured forced idleness. I recommend taking external recs with a grain of Maldon sea salt. I finally know what feeling good is like.
I’d be lying if I said I don’t prefer seeing lean arms in candid pictures of me. I sometimes compare myself to friends who treat themselves to a Vogue menthol instead of dinner. But I know I operate at my highest level when I go for a walk that feels grounding, instead of chasing step counts. When I eat beautiful, high-frequency food instead of controlling protein, carb and fat intakes. I’ve crafted a movement plan that works for me instead of falling prey to the latest workout craze, body trends and matching sets. Isn’t that the actual secret of blue zones?
I haven’t solved health. I’ll keep covering the big business of wellness while minding my own business. Maybe that’s the new frontier. Not longevity, but livability.
📈 Bullish news
The Leisure Travel Market Will Be Worth $15 T by 2040 (Bloomberg) versus $5 T in 2024.
Against the odds, Gen Z is breaking into the housing market (CNN). Gen Z now accounts for 1 in 4 first-time home loans, outpacing Millennials and Gen X at the same age.
Born into crisis, Gen Z is saving for retirement like no other generation (The Guardian)
Goop plans to open 20-30 new stores in the coming years (Glossy). In March, Paltrow told Fortune that Goop Beauty sales increased by 34% in 2024, while G. Label sales grew 42% year over year.
Substack in Talks to Raise Financing (newcomer). The platform is generating about $45 million in ARR. Meanwhile, Yale is teaching a course for Substack writers.
LVMH Acquires French Media Group Bey Médias (WWD). The French luxury group is also the owner of Paris Match, Le Parisien and Les Echos.
Skims wants to create ‘the Apple store of apparel’ (BOF). The Skims x Roberto Cavalli campaign was lensed by Nadia Lee Cohen, who I’m bullish on.
Rick Owens is Opening an OnlyFans Account for His Feet (WWD). If you follow me on Insta, you know I never post toes. Not for free!!
📉 Bearish news
CFO risk appetite is down, but still higher than it was last year (Axios).
Student loan delinquencies have hit a record high, with 31% of federal borrowers, about 5.8M people, now over 90 days past due (Bloomberg).
140-year-old Canned Goods Giant, Del Monte Foods, Files for Bankruptcy (NYT).
Bumble jumps 25% as dating company plans to axe 30% of workforce (CNBC). Good news for shareholders (the move should save the company $40M annually), bad news for the viability of dating apps.
Fully loaded with lots of pieces of information, as well as touching! Will reading Oblique Forecasting be the best way living a hundred years moving forward? What a gem anyway. Congrats