‘Alpha-Male Morning Routines’: Hours better spent asleep? – dailyuw.com

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Updated: May 13, 2025 @ 9:38 am

Editor’s Note: “Healthy Habit or Consumerist Cult?” is a column discussing influencer-ridden online trends in health and wellness, particularly those geared towards college-aged women. In this edition, columnist Claire Farber investigates an average “Alpha-Male Morning Routine,” and evaluates whether or not its components are sensible, accessible, and, well, anything worth caring about.
In a world where a wellness influencer was just appointed surgeon general — the highest ranking position in our nation regarding the promotion of health and wellness — who’s to say these aren’t the people to be looking toward for advice?
Of course, many already do, especially through the form of easily accessible, short-form wellness content. Wellness content is extremely popular, and always has been: hence why I’m writing this column in the first place.
Many look to influencers with a naive aspiration, hoping to solve their insecurities or problems with a single purchase. Think, for example, of the countless containers of Bloom nutrition greens rotting in the pantries of those who realized it does nothing and tastes awful.
Alternatively, consuming this content can result in a full-fledged determination for self-betterment, with many shaping their entire lives around what is recommended to them online by a wellness influencer.
Morning routines are undoubtedly one of the most popular forms of wellness content: they’re accessible, always topical, and oftentimes just a good time to watch and compare against your own. I’m guilty of it myself: RCLBeauty101’s morning routine YouTube videos shaped my late elementary school career.
A decade later, the conversation around a morning routine looks very different from RCL’s liquid liner and egg-in-a-hole breakfast. Each influencer’s morning seems like they’re spending hours trying to out wellness the rest of us.
Who is the most dedicated to spirituality and meditation? Who has the best array of supplements? Who wakes up the earliest, and therefore gets the biggest worm?
Basically, who has the most alpha morning routine?
To solve this mystery and create my own ultimate alpha morning routine, I conducted some virtual field research. By that, I mean I scrolled my friend Marina’s TikTok for an hour, under the search “alpha male morning routine.”
I then compiled a Google Sheet, where I recorded the most frequently conducted actions by these influencers, and combined the commonalities into my own ultimate morning routine.
When I looked at my final results, I immediately knew I had created a Google Sheet of absolute nonsense.
The Ultimate Alpha Male Morning:
Wake up, immediately get up.
Cold plunge.
Grounding (standing barefoot in the grass, connecting with nature).
Light cardio or yoga.
Skincare.
Meditation.
Journaling.
Dubious concoction (sometimes lemon water, sometimes chlorophyll).
Supplements.
Gym.
The compilation of so many arguably beneficial activities stared back at me and looked like nothing more than a complete waste of time.
A little digging confirmed my gut, as always, was completely right at spotting male-designed idiocy.
Stacy Sims, an exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist, goes into depth about the harm cold plunges cause on the female body, despite their constant, gender-inclusive advertisement in these routines.
Sims explains that after entering an ice bath, the female body experiences a stress response significantly higher than the male body would, causing it to enter a shutdown phase and not conduct the metabolic changes it does for men — the primary advertised benefit of the plunge.
If aiming for a similar metabolic response to a male in an ice bath, females should enter water no lower than 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit).
Cold plunges became a familiar face during my TikTok doomscroll: however, many other examples left me concerned for the welfare of the female body, such as an influencer beginning her day by throwing back a multi-ounce shot of olive oil.
Influencer morning routines weren’t just hours of nothing — many of them included inherently harmful components, particularly to women. And worst of all, they started the torture incomprehensibly early in the day.
Calculating the average wake-up time of 50 TikToks resulted in an average wake-up time of 5:02 a.m. The root of these morning routines’ inaccessibility lies in the early start, which feels more like a point of pride than a genuine desire to watch the sunrise.
College students desperately need more sleep than they get, and I refuse to believe any of us go to bed early enough to justify a 5:02 a.m. alarm. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that adults should get seven to nine hours each night, with females being recommended to get even more shut-eye than males.
The ultimate alpha male morning routine is more than unrealistic for the female body. It is objectively inaccessible as a college student, regardless of gender.
Who has the time to dilly-dally for two hours before they even consider getting ready to hit the gym? Nothing is wrong with journaling, taking supplements, or virtually anything on the list. However, slowly meandering through them when you could instead be sleeping, and improving cognitive function, feels like trying to engage in a healthy lifestyle that just isn’t real.
In the second edition of my column, I have already thrown in my “not a chance” towel. If you’re more dedicated to conducting experiential research than me, feel free to save my routine and try it yourself, down to the 5:02 a.m. wakeup or the grounding exercises.
However, unless you’re a man with a trust fund and far too much free time, I expect to see your towel join mine soon.
Reach columnist Claire Farber at opinion@dailyuw.com. X: @clairefarbs. Bluesky: @clairefarber.bsky.social
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