Rethinking Wellness

Psychiatrist and REAL SELF-CARE author Pooja Lakshmin joins us to discuss her experiences with faux self-care and toxic wellness culture, her definition of real self-care and how it can fit into your life, the importance of setting boundaries (and what that actually looks like), how to tell if you need self-care or professional help, and more. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin MD is a psychiatrist and author, th...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com Q&A: A critical look at diet advice for period pain and endometriosis. Check out the transcript for links to all referenced studies.  The full version of this episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to the first question here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the rest! Christy's new book, The W...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com In this bonus episode, registered dietitian Jonah Soolman returns to discuss the role of acceptance in navigating chronic health conditions, whether eating-disorder recovery can ever be compatible with alternative medicine, what to look for in a healthcare provider given the problems with the alternative-...

Registered dietitian Jonah Soolman joins us to discuss his time working in an alternative medicine clinic run by integrative doctors. He shares some of the shady practices he saw his bosses engaging in, why food-sensitivity testing and other alt-med tests are often misleading, the dangers of trying alternative or integrative medicine if you’re in recovery from an eating disorder, the devastating s...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com Q&A: how to know whether a particular test is legit. Plus, in a bonus answer for paid subscribers, Christy discusses what to say to a doctor who’s recommending a diet for ME/CFS or other poorly understood illnesses. Listen to the first question here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full ep...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com In this bonus episode, anti-diet Pilates instructor Helen Phelan-Guillemot returns to discuss workout selfies, the way people respond on social media to images of her body, Christy’s own experience navigating other people's opinions on social media, the lack of regulation in the fitness industry and why i...

Anti-diet Pilates instructor Helen Phelan-Guillemot joins us to discuss her history as a dancer and how that affected her relationship with food and her body, how she moved from disordered eating into wellness obsession, how she’s come to hate toxic fitness culture while still loving physical activity, how to know when you need to take a break from fitness, why we don’t need to constantly self-opt...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com Q&A: The next time you come across a wellness influencer saying sensational things, try this. Plus, in a bonus answer for paid subscribers, Christy discusses whether seed oils are as bad for you as some sources claim.  Listen to the first question here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com In this bonus episode, Ling Ling Huang returns to discuss how wellness culture affected her creativity and work as a professional violinist, how she’s changing her relationship with social media, how algorithms led her to questionable wellness products out of a desire to help a loved one, her upcoming TV...

Author and violinist Ling Ling Huang joins us to discuss her new novel, Natural Beauty, and the fraught nature of that term; how working in the clean-beauty and wellness space affected her eating-disorder recovery and her mental health; why she invested so much in wellness culture at a time in her life when she could barely afford food; the fetishization and appropriation of Asian cultures in well...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com In this bonus episode, illustrator and author Eliza Wheeler returns to discuss how to support a loved one with chronic illness, navigating her own symptoms alongside a partner who also has chronic conditions, and more. Hear more from Eliza in episode 15 at rethinkingwellness.substack.com . Eliza Wheeler i...

Illustrator and author Eliza Wheeler joins us to discuss the intersection of chronic illness and disordered eating. She shares the unexplained symptoms that led her to try more than a dozen different “wellness” diets, her winding path to an eventual diagnosis of Lyme disease under stringent CDC criteria, why the functional-medicine approach didn’t work for her, how starting to heal her relationshi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com In this bonus episode, Christy answers audience questions about how to navigate a friendship with a naturopath while trying to reject diet and wellness culture , how to avoid getting sucked into wellness culture's anti-aging advice , dealing with pre-wedding body image struggles, and more. This episode is...

Writer and ex–wellness influencer Lee Tilghman joins us to discuss how she got into wellness influencing in the first place (and the role of her eating disorder in that process), how it affected her mental well-being to be so wrapped up in wellness for work, what it’s been like to leave influencing, her upcoming book about influencer culture, tips for shifting your relationship with social media,...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com In this bonus episode, Christy answers audience questions about how to be involved in the food and farming world without falling prey to diet and wellness culture, whether mindful eating is a dieting behavior, how to know if you’re not eating enough, and more. (This episode is a recording of the July Q&A...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com In this bonus episode, Christy answers audience questions about whether diet drugs can really quiet “food noise,” and whether it means anything for your eating-disorder recovery if you don’t want sweet foods. This episode is for paid subscribers. To hear the full episode, sign up for a paid subscription h...

Dr. Dan Wilson of Debunk the Funk joins us to discuss how he went from believing in conspiracy theories about “hidden” cancer cures to becoming a scientist, what led him to rethink his conspiracy beliefs, the crossover between the anti-vax industry and crunchy wellness spaces, how to think critically about common wellness conspiracy theories, and more. Dan Wilson, Ph. D. Is a molecular biologist w...

Author and journalist Rennie Dyball joins us to discuss why she's reconsidered the rave review of a gut-health diet book she wrote for a major media outlet years ago, why journalists don't often ask critical questions of wellness "experts," why most wellness-diet testimonials you see online are probably wrong, the intersection of wellness culture and breastfeeding, her new book, B Is for Bellies ,...

Author and rhetoric professor Colleen Derkatch joins us to discuss why wellness sells (and her new book by that name), how wellness culture promises an alternative to the biomedical/pharmaceutical model but fails to deliver, why it’s important to acknowledge that certain aspects of wellness culture are helpful to people even as we critique its harms, and more. Colleen Derkatch is Associate Profess...

Cookbook author Julia Turshen joins us to discuss her history with an eating disorder and how orthorexic thinking showed up in her work, how a loved one’s boundary on diet talk helped her realize her relationship with food was problematic, how letting go of diet and wellness rules changed her cooking, how social media is like diet culture and how she’s taken a big step back from it, and more. Juli...

Journalist and medical doctor Seema Yasmin joins us to discuss why misinformation and conspiracy theories about health and wellness are so alluring; how to recognize and fight back against false claims; the difference between misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation; holding the two truths that science is one of the best tools we have for finding facts and science hasn’t always gotten it...

Author and podcaster Mary Jelkovsky joins us to discuss her history as a fitness influencer starting at age 16, and how it triggered and exacerbated her eating disorder; how social media algorithms drive us toward extreme diet and wellness content; why and how Christy took a huge step back from social media, and why Mary is contemplating doing the same; career moves for influencers after influenci...

Author and journalist Virginia Sole-Smith joins us to discuss the allure of wellness approaches for those with chronic pain and illness, her experience navigating endometriosis and migraines in diet and wellness culture, the difficulty of describing pain, the notes of orthorexia and fatphobia that show up in otherwise helpful kid-feeding philosophies, her book Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Die...

Katie Dalebout guest-hosts the show to interview Christy about her new book, The Wellness Trap ! Christy shares why she wanted to write a book about wellness, the potential harms of integrative and functional medicine (and why we’re understandably attracted to these approaches), the connections between wellness culture and diet culture, the legacy of the “hysteria” diagnosis and why women are stil...

Nutritionist and author Laura Thomas joins us to discuss what it’s like for kids living in the long shadow of “clean eating,” the “almond mom” trend on TikTok, the "wellness to woo pipeline," how parents and caregivers can let go of wellness-culture beliefs about food for themselves and their kids, and more. Laura Thomas is an anti-diet Registered Nutritionist. Her clinical work focuses on support...