2025-W45 — Building a Wellness Website Without Becoming a “Wellness Guy”

Wellness by Michael Tomasini

What happened this week

This week wasn’t about a race, a trip, or a perfect routine. It was about building the foundation.

I spent a lot of time working on my website and populating it with my data—pulling in information from my Fitbit account, my Strava account, and my fasting logs. The goal was simple: if I’m going to build Wellness by Michael Tomasini publicly, I want it anchored in evidence, not hype.

At the same time, I felt the tradeoff immediately. The website took significant time, and I didn’t have as much time with my family as I would have wanted. That’s not a detail I want to hide. It’s part of the reality of building something new.

The travel + wellness thread

One thing became very clear while I was importing and organizing the data: “Wellness” doesn’t mean much if it only works when life is calm and predictable.

I’m building this brand around a lifestyle that includes international travel, a demanding schedule, and real-world constraints. That means the system has to be simple enough to survive busy weeks—and honest enough to include the messy parts, like time pressure and imperfect balance.

Calling my shot

This week also included a major commitment: I signed up for the Chicago Marathon and planned to race it with my friend Zach.

The target is ambitious and specific:

• run a World Marathon Major,
• do it fasted,
• finish in under 3:30.

That single commitment shaped the direction of everything else. It turned the website from “a project” into “a platform,” because now there’s a clear experiment I’m publicly accountable to.

What I learned

Building a brand isn’t hard because of technology. It’s hard because of focus.

This week reminded me that I need two things at the same time:

1. proof that what I’m doing is real (data, tracking, consistency), and
2. a way to keep the project human-sized so it doesn’t steal from the people I’m doing it for.

I don’t want to build a shiny website that quietly costs the things I value most. So I’m treating this as a constraint going forward: progress is only “progress” if it’s sustainable.

Next week’s tiny focus

Pick one boundary that protects family time during build phases—something simple, like a hard stop time, or a no-laptop window in the evening.