By Leila Molitor.

I saw a girl on Bedford Avenue yesterday who looked like she was vibrating. Not the spiritual kind, just the kind where your muscles are literally eating themselves because you’ve done fourteen thousand steps before noon and your only fuel was a cold brew and a single, lonely dried mango slice. We do this thing in this city where we treat movement like a religion but nutrition like an inconvenience. We’ll walk forty blocks because the weather is finally not disgusting or because we’re too cheap for an Uber, and we’ll check our rings and our watches with this smug little glow. We tell ourselves we’re “active.” We’re basically athletes. We’re in peak physical condition because we hiked up the stairs at the 59th Street station when the escalator died again.

But then you look at what we’re actually putting in the tank and it’s a disaster. It’s always a $17 salad that’s basically ninety percent water and three chickpeas that are fighting for their lives. Or it's just more liquids. Why are we so obsessed with drinking our calories? We’ll do the steps, we’ll do the "low impact" cardio of just existing in a vertical city, and then we wonder why we’re exhausted at 3:00 PM. It’s because you’re a structural integrity nightmare. You’re building a skyscraper out of balsa wood and wondering why the wind knocks you over. We’ve been sold this idea that "light" is the same thing as "healthy," so we just keep moving and keep shrinking the actual substance of our meals until we’re just ghosts in expensive sneakers.

The fallout is that weird, hollow feeling where your legs are heavy but your head is floating. You’ve done the work, supposedly. You hit the number. The little green circle closed on your wrist and gave you a hit of dopamine. But you’re irritable and your hair feels like straw and you’re one minor subway delay away from a total emotional collapse. It’s a specific kind of New York frailty. We’re the fittest malnourished people on the planet. We pretend it’s about "wellness" and "cleansing," but really, we’re just too busy or too caffeinated to sit down and eat a piece of chicken. It feels more productive to just keep walking.

It’s the classic city lie. If I’m moving, I’m winning. If I’m "light," I’m disciplined. We ignore the fact that our bodies are basically begging for a sandwich because a sandwich feels like a commitment. A sandwich requires you to stop. And stopping is the one thing we aren't allowed to do. So we keep walking. We hit 12,000. We hit 15,000. We’re basically marathoning our way to a breakdown.

And honestly, we’ll probably do it again tomorrow. There’s something deeply pathetic and sort of beautiful about it. We’re all just walking ourselves into the ground, clutching a green juice like a holy relic, hoping the sheer momentum of our lives will make up for the fact that we’re essentially running on fumes and a dream.

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