Is the Absorption Gap Secretly Draining You?
Why Healing Doesn’t Happen Until You Feel Safe Inside Your Own Body
I had mastered the routine.
Up before sunrise.
Clean, timed meals.
Eight hours of training a week.
A supplement stack that could stock a small apothecary.
Breathwork. Sauna sessions. Blue light blockers.
The kind of disciplined, optimized schedule you'd expect from someone hosting the #1 alternative health podcast.
From the outside, it looked like I was winning.
But inside? Something was unraveling.
Not all at once. Not in a dramatic collapse.
But in that slow, confusing way where nothing feels quite right… and nothing seems to fix it.
I felt flat. Foggy. Frustrated.
My weight crept up. My cholesterol spiked. My energy flatlined.
And the harder I pushed to fix it, the worse it got.
I kept doubling down on what had always worked: optimize more. Add more. Do more.
But something deeper was wrong.
Something I couldn’t name—until one night, at 35,000 feet, it hit me.
I was on a flight, rewatching The Martian.
There’s a scene—maybe you remember it.
Matt Damon’s character, Mark Watney, is stranded on Mars, trying to grow food in a place never meant to support life. He creates water from rocket fuel. Mixes in fertilizer. Begins to moisten the dry Martian soil.
Technically, everything should work. But as he kneels down, you can feel the tension: will this lifeless dust receive what it’s being given?
That moment stuck with me—not because it was dramatic, but because it was familiar.
I was doing something eerily similar.
Back home, I was pouring nutrients, effort, and discipline into my body—clean eating, optimized workouts, precision sleep, a shelf full of supplements.
But nothing was changing.
I was burning fuel… in a system that wasn’t responding.
That scene reminded me of something I hadn’t had the language for yet:
Healing doesn’t begin with inputs.
It begins with absorption.
And what I would later realize is that I was living inside a silent breakdown—one I now call:
The Absorption Gap.
And if you’ve ever felt like you’re doing everything right and still not feeling well…
You might be in it too.
In the rest of this post, I’ll share:
The four invisible filters that silently block absorption
The moment I finally realized I was doing everything “right”—but still breaking down
The counterintuitive shifts I made that actually worked
A practical workbook to help you identify your blocked pathway
And the one question that rewired my approach to healing:
“What is my system truly ready to receive?”
Because healing doesn’t begin with more effort.
It begins with a better question.
Click below to unlock the full story, tools, and framework for transformation.
Just like Martian soil, my system looked fine from the outside. But it couldn’t absorb the water I was pouring in.
And that’s when it hit me:
Healing doesn’t begin with more effort.
It begins with a braver question:
“Is my system ready to receive?”
That one question cracked everything open.
Because it forced me to stop optimizing—and start listening.
The Healing Shift
We’re taught to think healing is about inputs:
More supplements. More routines. More discipline.
But healing doesn’t happen because of what you give.
It happens because of what your system can receive.
And when you’re stuck in the Absorption Gap, effort leaks out before it lands.
Why? Because there are filters—often invisible—that determine whether your input becomes fuel or friction.
There are four of them:
Biological – Your gut, hormones, circadian rhythm, and nutritional patterns
Neurological – Your stress response, nervous system cues, and sense of safety
Cognitive – Your mental bandwidth, capacity to integrate, and overwhelm
Emotional – Your relationship with vulnerability, truth, and suppressed pain
Each of these filters plays a critical role in absorption.
When one is blocked, things get sluggish. When all four are blocked? Everything stalls.
For me? Every one of them was off.
Let me walk you through how each filter showed up in my own life—because you might see yourself in one (or more) of them too.
1. Biological: I Was Fueling a Rhythm I Didn’t Have
I was eating what looked like a perfect diet.
But it didn’t match my body.
I was intermittent fasting in a way that wrecked my blood sugar.
Training early, when cortisol was already peaking.
Overstimulating my gut with constant “healthy” inputs it couldn’t break down.
It wasn’t about quality.
It was about timing.
It was about rhythm.
Your biology doesn’t follow your checklist. It follows your circadian cues.
Once I shifted my workouts to late morning or afternoon and stopped fighting my hunger cues, things started to change.
2. Neurological: I Was Always On Alert
Even when I “rested,” I wasn’t relaxed.
I’d meditate… but to check the box.
I’d walk… while catching up on podcasts.
I’d breathe… while mentally writing tomorrow’s to-do list.
The message I was sending my nervous system was:
You are not safe to rest.
And the nervous system doesn’t care about your intentions.
It only listens to your cues.
So I started doing less.
Walking without AirPods.
Pausing before journaling.
Starting my day with a single question:
Is my body ready to begin?
3. Cognitive: I Was Overinformed and Underintegrated
I love learning. Books, podcasts, studies, Substacks.
But I realized I had become a sponge with no wring-out.
Insight was piling up.
But wisdom wasn’t forming.
I was full. But nothing was absorbing.
So I made one change:
I replaced input with output.
After listening to a great episode, I’d sit in silence for five minutes.
Or I’d write one sentence about what it meant to me.
Not what I learned—but what it opened.
That one practice turned noise into signal.
4. Emotional: I Was Performing Wellness
This one was hardest to admit.
I host the #1 alternative health podcast.
I’m supposed to have this figured out.
So I smiled through the fatigue.
Pushed through the brain fog.
Kept producing, showing up, “optimizing.”
But inside? I was stuck.
Until one day, I said to a friend:
“I don’t think I’m okay.”
I didn’t need a fix. I needed space.
And that one moment of honesty…
opened the floodgates for healing.
Because healing can’t be performed.
It has to be felt.
Practical Invitations (Not Prescriptions)
So how do you know where to start?
Start where you feel most blocked.
Ask yourself:
“Where am I full—but not receiving?”
Then try one of these invitations:
Biological: Move a meal. Shift your workout. Track your energy, not your output.
Neurological: Begin your day with calm, not urgency. Walk without a podcast. Pause before productivity.
Cognitive: Pick one insight. Reflect before you move on. Write a single sentence.
Emotional: Share how you really feel—with someone safe. Drop the performance. Let your humanity breathe.
You don’t need to fix it all today.
You just need to open one pathway.
The One Question That Changed Everything
If you’re doing everything right but nothing’s working…
You’re not broken.
You might just be in the Absorption Gap.
And the shift begins with this question:
“What is my system ready to receive?”
Not what looks good on paper.
Not what the experts told you.
Not what worked for someone else.
Just… what you’re ready for now.
That one question rewired my entire approach to healing.
And it might just open something for you, too.
Up Next: You Can’t Think Your Way to Wellness
In the next Passion Struck episode 649, I sit down with Wolfgang Linden to explore a powerful truth:
Healing isn’t just about what you know—
It’s about what you feel.
We’ll explore how unprocessed emotion blocks our progress—and why emotional honesty might be the missing link in your well-being.
Don’t miss it.
And until then—
Be gentle with yourself.
You’re not behind.
You’re just absorbing.
Listen to the full episode ad-free below