Virtus 👊 #036: The Death of One-Size-Fits-All: Why Men Are Starving for Something Real

I know this sounds utopian. I know it sounds like I'm advocating for some kind of narcissistic bubble where everything revolves around our individual preferences and quirks.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm losing my mind or if everyone else has just accepted mediocrity as the default setting for their lives.

Here's what's eating at me: we've somehow convinced ourselves that mass-produced solutions designed for the statistical average of millions of men should work for us individually. And when they don't—when the diet fails, when the workout plan fizzles out after three weeks, when the therapy feels like we're checking boxes instead of actually healing—we blame ourselves. We tell ourselves we're not disciplined enough, not committed enough, not enough enough.

But what if the problem isn't us? What if the problem is that we're trying to fit our complex, messy, beautifully unique lives into frameworks designed for people who don't exist?

I had this realization recently when I was standing in my kitchen at 6 AM, looking at yet another meal prep container filled with the same boring chicken and broccoli I'd been forcing down for weeks. This was supposed to be my "sustainable nutrition plan"—some cookie-cutter approach I'd found online that promised to "transform my body in 90 days." The same plan recommended to desk workers in Manhattan and construction workers in Montana, to 25-year-olds with the metabolism of a racehorse and 44-year-olds whose bodies had started staging quiet rebellions (that is me).

And I thought: this is insane.

The Generational Shift Nobody's Talking About

Maybe it's a generational thing. Maybe those of us who came of age in the information era have fundamentally different expectations about how the world should work. We've seen what personalization can do in every other area of our lives—Netflix knows exactly what we want to watch next, Spotify creates playlists that feel like they were made by someone who's lived inside our heads, Amazon predicts what we need before we know we need it.

But when it comes to the stuff that actually matters—our health, our mental state, our growth as human beings—we're still stuck with solutions designed in laboratories and focus groups, tested on "representative samples" that somehow never seem to represent us.

I get pushback on this from friends who think I'm overthinking it. "Just pick a diet and stick to it," they say. "All that personalization stuff is just marketing." And maybe they're right to some extent. Maybe some people really can thrive on generic approaches.

But here's what I suspect: a lot of the men who say they're "fine" with off-the-shelf solutions aren't actually fine. They're just resigned. They've tried enough things that didn't quite work that they've lowered their expectations to match what's available rather than demanding what they actually need.

The Diet Disaster

Take nutrition. Walk into any bookstore and you'll find hundreds of diet books, each claiming to have cracked the code. Keto, paleo, Mediterranean, intermittent fasting—all based on solid principles, all backed by studies, all completely disconnected from the reality of your actual life.

When's the last time a nutritionist asked about your relationship with your parents? About whether you're an introvert who finds meal prep meditative or an extrovert who needs social eating to stay motivated? About your genetic markers that might make you process carbs differently than your neighbor? About your work schedule, your stress patterns, your cultural background that makes certain foods feel like home and others feel like punishment?

These services exist, of course. If you've got the money to work with a functional medicine doctor, a genetic counselor, and a behavioral nutritionist, you can get something approaching personalized care. But for the rest of us, it's "here's what worked for a bunch of people in a study, good luck making it work for your chaotic Tuesday nights and your weird relationship with breakfast."

Fitness: The Psychology Problem

The fitness industry might be even worse. Walk into any gym and you'll see guys grinding through workouts they hate, following programs designed by someone who's never met them, pursuing goals that aren't even theirs.

I'm convinced that fitness is 90% psychology and 10% movement. I don't need someone to teach me how to do a bicep curl—I can watch a YouTube video for that. What I need is someone who understands that I'm fundamentally lazy but can commit hard to well-designed systems. Someone who gets that I don't give a damn about benching 200 pounds but desperately want to feel strong and capable in my everyday life.

I need accountability that doesn't feel like being nagged by my mother. I need check-ins that are more like conversations with a friend who genuinely cares about my progress than reports to a drill sergeant. I need a plan that acknowledges that some weeks I'll be on fire and some weeks I'll be barely hanging on, and that both of those are normal parts of being human.

Instead, we get generic workout plans and motivational Instagram posts about "crushing your goals" and "no excuses." As if the solution to the complexity of human motivation is just to yell louder.

Therapy: Still Stuck in 2005

Don't even get me started on therapy. I love the idea of therapy. I believe in the power of professional mental health support. But I'm tired of walking into offices where I'm handed the same depression inventory that was developed when flip phones were cutting-edge technology.

My last therapist—who was lovely, by the way—gave me a stack of assessments that felt like they were designed for a different species. Questions about social media habits that barely acknowledged that platforms like TikTok exist. Anxiety scales that didn't account for the low-level existential dread that comes from watching the world change at internet speed. Depression markers that seemed to assume I was living in a world where people still had predictable careers and stable communities.

I'm not anti-science. I'm not suggesting we throw out decades of psychological research. But research from before the pandemic? Before we all spent three years indoors, before our entire social fabric got rewired, before we learned that everything we thought was permanent could change overnight?

That research feels about as relevant as a map of a city that's been completely rebuilt.

The Everything Problem

This isn't just about health and fitness. It's about everything. Career counseling that's still based on the assumption that you'll work for the same company for 30 years. Relationship advice that doesn't account for how dating apps have fundamentally changed human connection. Financial planning that assumes economic stability that doesn't exist anymore.

I want shoes made for my feet, not feet that are close enough to mine that they'll probably work. I want career advice from someone who understands my specific combination of skills, values, neuroses, and market realities. I want spiritual guidance—if that's even a thing—that acknowledges my particular brand of existential confusion rather than offering platitudes that might work for someone, somewhere.

The AI Revolution We're Not Having

Here's what drives me crazy: we have the technology to make this happen. AI can already analyze thousands of data points about us and make incredibly sophisticated recommendations about what to watch, what to buy, who to date. But when it comes to the stuff that actually shapes our lives, we're still stuck with solutions designed for the mythical "average man."

Imagine walking into a clinic where they do comprehensive blood work, genetic testing, psychological profiling, lifestyle analysis, and cultural assessment, then create a completely personalized approach to your health. Not just diet and exercise, but sleep optimization, stress management, supplement protocols, even social connection strategies—all designed specifically for you and your… weirness.

Imagine fitness programming that starts with understanding your personality type, your schedule, your injuries, your goals, your fears, your motivations, then creates something that feels less like forcing yourself through someone else's workout and more like discovering what your body actually wants to do.

Imagine therapy that begins with understanding who you are now, not who people like you were in studies from 15 years ago. Therapy that adapts in real-time to how you're actually responding, that incorporates new research as it emerges, that treats you like the unique, complex human being you are rather than a collection of symptoms to be managed.

The Economics Argument

I know what you're thinking: this sounds expensive. This sounds like luxury healthcare for people who can afford to optimize everything about their lives while the rest of us make do with whatever's available.

But I think we're looking at this backwards. Mass production was a solution to a different problem—how to make things affordable when customization was expensive and difficult. But we're entering an era where mass production might be the expensive option.

Think about it: how much money do you spend on diets that don't work, gym memberships you don't use, therapy that doesn't help, supplements you don't need, clothes that don't fit right, career advice that doesn't apply to your situation? How much time do you waste trying to force generic solutions to work for your specific problems?

What if hyper-personalized support cost the same as a doctor's visit because AI was doing most of the heavy lifting? What if the real inefficiency was trying to make one-size-fits-all solutions work for people they were never designed for?

Living Someone Else's Reality

I know this sounds utopian. I know it sounds like I'm advocating for some kind of narcissistic bubble where everything revolves around our individual preferences and quirks.

But here's the thing: we're already living in someone else's carefully constructed reality. The food industry has spent billions of dollars figuring out exactly which combination of salt, fat, and sugar will keep us coming back for more. The pharmaceutical industry has convinced us that the solution to every emotional problem comes in a bottle. The fitness industry has created an entire economy around making us feel inadequate so we'll keep buying products that promise to fix us.

We're already living in a hyper-personalized world—it's just that it's been personalized to serve someone else's interests, not ours.

What We're Really Asking For

At the end of the day, what I'm talking about isn't really about customization or technology or even optimization. It's about dignity.

It's about the dignity of being seen as an individual human being rather than a data point in someone else's business model. It's about the dignity of having your actual problems addressed rather than being sold solutions to problems you don't have. It's about the dignity of getting help that starts with who you actually are rather than who someone thinks you should be.

Maybe that's asking too much. Maybe the economics really don't work. Maybe there's something I'm missing about why things are the way they are.

But I don't think so. I think we're on the verge of a massive shift in how we think about solutions to human problems. I think the men who figure out how to demand—and create—truly functional, personalized support for themselves are going to have a massive advantage over those who keep trying to force themselves into boxes that were never designed for them.

The question isn't whether this kind of personalization is possible. The question is whether we're going to keep accepting less than what we actually need, or whether we're going to start demanding something better.

---

ABOUT MENQUILIBRIUM

We're not life coaches or gurus. Just men walking beside other men on the path to better.

This isn't about fixing you. You're not broken. (I’m obsessing about this).

It's about finding strength in honesty and growth in connection.

What you'll find here:

• Real talk, no sugar-coating

• Tools that work, not quick fixes

• Brothers who get it

Know someone who needs this? Send it their way.

🤜🤛

We rise by lifting others.

Like the sunrise, change happens gradually. We're building a platform where men can find their balance, together. Your support today helps lay the foundation for tomorrow.

Early supporters will receive Founder status when our app launches in late 2025.