Most of us take some steps to look our best selves, especially if we are going out in public. Usually those are limited to how we dress and some minimal efforts at grooming. But as with so many things, there are those who take this to an extreme, leading to a phenomenon known as ‘looksmaxxing’, one of the recent trends that have had the suffix ‘maxxing’ added to it to give the cachet of sounding cool and hip.

Perhaps the most viral example of maxxing is looksmaxxing, a cultural phenomenon that originated in the incel (a.k.a. involuntary celibate) community, encouraging boys and young men to take intense, often dangerous, measures to enhance their physical appearance. That includes undergoing intrusive surgeries, using steroids to bulk up, or using a hammer to smash your facial bones in hopes of accentuating one’s jawline. Looksmaxxing promises one sole goal: that by being exceedingly and unattainably hot, men can achieve the utmost confidence, social clout and sexual success.

The article goes on to describe other forms of maxxing, all involving taking some ordinary activity to the extreme, including food, with things like protein and fiber being targeted for maxxing.

On TikTok and Instagram, the protein hysteria reached a fever pitch. Influencers showed off their high-protein diets filled with protein powders, eggs, egg whites, cottage cheese, poultry and red meat. Some also pushed for eating more high-protein snacks, ranging from meat sticks and cold cuts to homemade chicken chips made from seasoned, ground meat. Everyone was hellbent on maxing out on the macro.
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That’s all to say that our food was never intended to be maxxed. Certain nutrients and so-called superfoods were never meant to be heavily prioritized at the expense of other beneficial ingredients. Regardless of how severe the spectrum is, maxxing implies that more is always better. It’s in the name. But that’s not what healthy eating is all about. Per the World Health Organization, a healthy diet is made up of four basic principles: adequacy, balance, moderation and diversity. Maxxing, for the most part, fails to satisfy three of those principles — adequacy, balance and diversity.

It also raises the question of how much food maxxing is necessary in the future to undo the damage of previous maxxing trends. First, it’s protein. Then, fiber, which many U.S. adults aren’t eating enough of already. What’s next? Carb-maxxing to compensate for the lack of carbohydrates in our diets? Or perhaps, raw greens-maxxing?

As the age-old adage goes, “too much of a good thing is a bad thing.” It feels especially pertinent in a new era of maxx eating.

It seems to me that people are disregarding the health of their future selves by emphasizing short-term gains and ignoring the possibility of serious long-term damage to their bodies. We will not know the real consequences of such actions until these people age and by then it may be too late to repair any damage. We can place some of the blame on so-called influencers who boast that they have become successful by doing all these things and selling products that they claim they used to achieve that look, whether that is true or not.