AbundantlyMari

Every filter is easy to describe and harder to apply to your own drawer.

I built AbundantlyMari around three questions — Evidence, Experience, Economics — and then spent a year discovering how often I wanted to make an exception for something I liked. So this is the accounting. Not a recommendation list, and deliberately not a shopping guide. A worked example of the method, using the only life I have full data on.

What earned a place

Strength training, twice a week. Evidence: strong and unglamorous. WHO guidance recommends muscle-strengthening activity involving the major muscle groups on two or more days a week. Experience: it survives travel, deadlines and bad weeks in reduced form, which is the real test. Economics: the equipment cost less than three months of the things it replaced. Nothing else I do clears all three this cleanly.

A fixed wake time. Free, deeply boring, and the single change that moved the most downstream. CDC guidance recommends a regular sleep schedule, including a consistent wake time, alongside getting enough sleep. My own experience is not proof, but it agreed with the research, which is the most you can ask of an n of one.

One tracked metric instead of four. I kept the measurement that occasionally changes a decision and stopped collecting the three that only changed my mood. The dashboard got duller. My judgment got better.

A standing conversation with someone who knows the unedited version of me. No product category, no subscription, no measurable output. The public-health evidence increasingly treats social connection as consequential to health and longevity, and the honest reason I keep it is that the weeks with it are visibly different from the weeks without.

What did not

Two supplements I could not give a job to. When I wrote down in one sentence what each was for, I could not finish the sentence for either. That is not proof they do nothing. It is proof I had no way to tell, which is a different problem and the more expensive one.

A device that produced data I never acted on. It was accurate, well made and interesting. It also never once changed a decision. Interesting is not the same as useful, and I paid monthly for the confusion.

A morning practice that only worked on perfect mornings. Anything requiring an ideal week is not a practice. It is a reward for a week that was already going well.

What is still undecided

Several things sit in a category I refuse to resolve prematurely: promising mechanism, thin human data, no meaningful safety concern, real cost. I am running them as time-boxed experiments with a success criterion written down before I start and a date on which I stop. If I cannot name what would make me quit, I am not testing anything. I am shopping with extra steps.

I will report those honestly, including the ones that fail. Especially the ones that fail — a publication that only reports its successes is an advertisement with better typography.

The rule underneath all of it

Nothing gets a permanent place. Everything is on review, including the things I have recommended and the things I currently believe. A place on the list is not tenure, and popularity is not a qualification.

The question was never what else could I add. It was what has earned the right to stay.

A better question

Take one thing you do or buy for your health and give it a job in a single sentence. If the sentence finishes easily, keep it and stop deliberating. If it does not, you have not found a flaw in yourself. You have found the next useful question.

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Sources & further reading

• World Health Organization: Physical activity
• CDC: Sleep and heart health
• U.S. Surgeon General: Social connection

Related reading: Wellness Is a Strategy Problem · The Longevity Hierarchy · How AbundantlyMari reviews wellness products

This article describes personal decisions and is educational rather than prescriptive. Personal experience is not evidence, and none of this is a substitute for individualized care from a qualified healthcare professional. See the editorial and wellness disclaimer.