Rethinking Wellness with Christy Harrison

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy answers an audience question about the “adrenal body type” and unpacks the weight stigma, ageism, and pseudoscience embedded in this twist on the dubious diagnosis of “adrenal fatigue.”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!Get full show notes and references here.Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode!Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comParent coach Oona Hanson joins us to discuss how going to a physical therapist for back pain led her down a wellness-culture rabbit hole, why dietary restrictions to “fight inflammation” just ended up harming her relationship with food and her body, how she got the dubious diagnosis of “adrenal fatigue,” and more. Behind the paywall, we get into how she helped her child heal from an eating disorder (and how that process changed the course of her career), how parents can help their kids navigate pressures from diet and wellness culture, why smart and science-minded people can still fall for wellness misinformation, her experience with perimenopause and wellness culture, and more.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Oona Hanson is a nationally recognized parent coach who supports families navigating diet culture and eating disorders. She is passionate about helping parents raise kids who have a healthy relationship with food and their body. A regular contributor to CNN, Oona has been featured widely, including on Good Morning America, The Washington Post, USA Today, US News & World Report, People, and Parents Magazine. Oona holds a Master's Degree in Educational Psychology and a Master's Degree in English. She writes the Parenting Without Diet Culture newsletter and will publish her first book in 2026 with Cambridge University Press. She is a mother of two and lives in Los Angeles. Find her at oonahanson.substack.com.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy discusses vitamin D for blood-sugar control and preventing diabetes (part of our series on commonly used supplements). If you spend a lot of time in online wellness spaces, you've probably heard a lot about how supplementing with vitamin D can supposedly regulate blood sugar and prevent diabetes. Even some mainstream diabetes organizations promote this idea, based on a small number of studies that seem to show a benefit. But what does the overall body of evidence say? Is this another case where the hype outpaces the science?This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a free preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!Get full show notes and references here.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comPhilosopher and medical ethics professor Arianne Shavisi joins us to discuss why alternative medicine isn't the answer to a patriarchal healthcare system—and why in many ways it's even worse. We get into the common misconception that alternative medicine is feminist, how alternative medicine differs from scientific medicine, the role of values in people's attraction to alternative medicine, and more. Behind the paywall, we discuss why true patient autonomy and informed consent are impossible in alternative medicine, her thoughts on how to improve scientific medicine so that people aren't drawn to worse alternatives, how she responds to claims that criticizing alternative medicine means discounting “non-Western” cultural knowledge, and more. Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Arianne Shahvisi is a Kurdish-British writer and academic philosopher. She studied astrophysics and then philosophy at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and now teaches applied philosophy at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, where her research focusses on gender, race, migration, and health. She writes regularly for the London Review of Books, and her essays have also appeared in the Guardian, the Independent, and the Economist. Her first book, Arguing for a Better World: How Philosophy Can Help Us Fight for Social Justice, was published by Penguin in 2023.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy discusses how to tell whether your symptoms are related to perimenopause or something else, what perimenopause has in common with dubious diagnoses (even though it's a real condition), and what the best available evidence says about hormone therapy, weight gain, and more.This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a free preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!Get full show notes and references here.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comAuthor and activist Amanda Martinez Beck joins us to discuss her experience of taking Ozempic for diabetes while also working to accept her body and break down anti-fat bias in society. She shares her history of dieting and disordered eating, how chronic conditions including diabetes as well as fibromyalgia and post-Covid syndrome have impacted her relationship with food and her body, why she started taking Ozempic in the first place, how diet culture is a new form of religion, and how her actual religious faith has influenced her eating-disorder recovery. Behind the paywall, we get into the tricky landscape of Ozempic and eating disorders, how Ozempic has fallen short of what the ads and influencers promise, her take on all the GLP-1 hype, and more. Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Amanda Martinez Beck is a fat activist, educator, and the author of More of You: The Fat Girl's Field Guide to the Modern World. She runs the Instagram account @your_body_is_good, where she combines her love of hand lettering with her vision of fat liberation. Amanda lives with her husband and four kids in northeast Texas, and she writes a weekly Substack called The Fat Dispatch. If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comIn this bonus episode, Christy shares some personal thoughts on how anxiety impacts the gut, and how to handle digestive distress that's triggered by stress without getting pulled down wellness-culture rabbit holes—particularly if you have a history of disordered eating. The full version of this episode (with 9 tips for coping) is for paid subscribers. Listen to a free preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.  

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comReturning guest Amelia Hruby—who is now our very own podcast producer, as well as a podcaster in her own right with a PhD in philosophy—co-hosts this special episode for the 2-year anniversary of Rethinking Wellness. We discuss how Amelia's thinking about astrology and tarot has shifted since her first appearance on the pod, why the spirituality-to-QAnon/MAGA pipeline is still going strong, how editing this podcast has changed her relationship with science and medicine, and more. Behind the paywall, Christy shares more about the origins of this podcast in a way she hasn't before, including why she shifted her focus to wellness culture and how researching the harms of social media changed the tenor of her work. She also discusses some of her favorite things about this new platform, why she thinks it's so important to do science communication without a side of fat-shaming, what she's dreaming up for the future of Rethinking Wellness, whether there might be another book in the works, and more.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Amelia Hruby is a writer, educator and podcaster with a PhD in philosophy from DePaul University. Over the past decade, she's been a university professor, a community organizer, and a radio DJ. Now, she is the founder and executive producer of Softer Sounds, a feminist podcast studio that supports women and nonbinary small business owners in creating purposeful, powerful podcasts. Since leaving social media in April 2021, she's also launched Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. On the show she interviews business leaders and former influencers, and shares stories, strategies and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comDietitian and diabetes educator Janice Dada joins us to discuss why there's so much stigma and blame on people with diabetes, the wellness-culture belief that people can “reverse diabetes” by restricting foods and taking a bunch of supplements, why people don't “give themselves diabetes” by eating too much sugar, the myth that people with diabetes can't eat sugar or carbs, her new book on intuitive eating for diabetes, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into the myths about diabetes and body size, the harms of trying to lose weight with diabetes, issues with the “prediabetes” label, the GLP-1 craze, and how to practice intuitive eating with diabetes.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Janice Dada is a weight-inclusive registered dietitian with a private practice in Newport Beach, CA. She is a certified intuitive eating counselor, certified diabetes care and education specialist (CDCES), and certified eating disorders specialist (CEDS). She is passionate about simplifying and destigmatizing the nutrition- and weight-based discourse around diabetes. Intuitive Eating for Diabetes: The No Shame, No Blame, Non-Diet Approach to Managing Your Blood Sugar is her first book.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy answers an audience question about the health effects of taking vitamin D supplements.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!Get full show notes and references here.Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode!Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. 

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comRegistered dietitian and INTUITIVE EATING co-author Elyse Resch returns to help dispel myths about intuitive eating, including that it means only listening to instinct and not the rational brain, that it's incompatible with eating-disorder recovery, that it's impossible in an environment rife with “ultraprocessed” foods, and more. She also shares her definition of gentle nutrition, plus some behind-the-scenes looks at the latest books in the IE series and her new intuitive eating app in development.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDS-C, Fiaedp, FADA, FAND, is a nutrition therapist in private practice with 43 years of experience, specializing in eating disorders, Intuitive Eating, and Health at Every Size. She is the co-author of Intuitive Eating, now in its 4th edition, The Intuitive Eating Workbook and The Intuitive Eating Card Deck: 50 Bite-Sized Ways to Make Peace with Food (Bookshop affiliate links). Elyse is also the author of The Intuitive Eating Workbook for Teens and The Intuitive Eating Journal: Your Guided Journey for Nourishing a Healthy Relationship with Food, and a chapter contributor to The Handbook of Positive Body Image and Embodiment as well as a chapter contributor to Weight and Wisdom: Reflections on Decades of Working for Body Liberation. She has published journal articles, print articles, and blog posts.Elyse does regular speaking engagements, podcast interviews, and extensive media interviews. Her work has been profiled on ABC, NPR, CNN, KABC, NBC, KTTV, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, KFI Radio, USA Today, and the Huffington Post, among others. Elyse is nationally known for her work in helping patients break free from diet culture through the Intuitive Eating process. Her philosophy embraces the goal of reconnecting with one's internal wisdom about eating and developing body liberation, with the belief that all bodies deserve dignity and respect.  She is a social justice advocate, a member of the Healer's Circle of Project Heal—Help to Eat, Accept, and Live, and consults with and trains health professionals. Elyse is also a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist and Consultant, on the Advisory Board of Within Health, a Fellow of the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals, and a Fellow of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Learn more about her work at elyseresch.com.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comIn this solo episode, Christy shares an essay about what her daughter's experience with the flu taught her about intuitive eating and the importance of certain nutrients. The piece is also out today in written form on Substack.This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a free preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!Get full show notes and references here.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comNutritionist Abbie Attwood joins us to discuss how dealing with multiple autoimmune chronic illnesses led her down a path of dubious diagnoses and disordered eating, and how she ultimately found healing. In the free version, we get into how disordered eating can trigger and aggravate chronic conditions, why she believed she had “adrenal fatigue” and “leaky gut,” the role of obsession and OCD in orthorexia, and more. Behind the paywall, we talk about why it's so easy to have your identity get wrapped up in disordered eating and chronic illness, how wellness culture preys on grief over physical limitations, the importance of self-compassion and how Abbie and Christy practice it, the prevalence of heightened sensitivity in IBS and other chronic conditions, how wellness-culture rabbit holes can lead to worsening symptoms, and the process of coming back to conventional medicine after a foray into the alt-med world.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Abbie Attwood (she/her) is an anti-diet, weight-inclusive provider with a masters in clinical nutrition. She is the owner of Abbie Attwood Wellness, providing both individual and group virtual nutrition therapy and body image coaching. She is also the host of the Full Plate Podcast and writes the accompanying newsletter.Abbie has lived experience with an eating disorder, which happened at the intersection of competitive running, OCD, and several chronic illnesses — all of which have made her especially passionate about working with those who don't always see themselves in the traditional picture of disordered eating.She works with clients around the globe, supporting them in healing from disordered eating, chronic dieting, body shame, and compulsive exercising to move into a kind and respectful relationship with their body. Abbie's approach centers on self-compassion, social justice, and body liberation.She splits time between Maine and the Bay Area with her husband and their two quirky rescue pups. She's a lover of breakfast, books, the ocean, and all the ice cream. Learn more about her work at abbieattwoodwellness.com.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy answers an audience question about the health effects of taking vitamin D supplements. This will be the first in a multi-part series; today, we're tackling claims about vitamin D for fertility, pregnancy, and PCOS.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!Get full show notes and references here.Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode!Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. 

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comNovelist, editor, and longtime friend of the pod Jonathan Vatner joins us to discuss his experience with a chronic autoimmune digestive condition, his ups and downs with diets and alternative medicine, nuances in the research on probiotics and acupuncture, the mind-body connection and how it's helped in his healing, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into how he came to develop acceptance for his chronic illness, how he's been able to take pleasure in food despite his digestive troubles, his appearance on Christy's first podcast way back in 2014, how his relationship with food has evolved, the new novel he's working on, and how he's rethought wellness after everything he's been through.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Jonathan Vatner is the author of THE BRIDESMAIDS UNION (St. Martin's Press, 2022) and CARNEGIE HILL (Thomas Dunne Books, 2019). His fiction has earned praise from People, Town & Country, The New York Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the managing editor of Hue, the magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology, and teaches fiction writing at New York University and the Hudson Valley Writers Center. Learn more about his work at jonathanvatner.com.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy answers an audience question about whether magnesium is really the panacea it's made out to be—or whether it's just another example of wellness-culture hype.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!Get full show notes and references here.Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode!Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comDietitian and author Jenna Hollenstein joins us to discuss her experience with alcoholism and recovery, the intersection of disordered eating and disordered drinking, the sobriety trend in wellness culture, Dry January, mindful drinking, “food addiction,” and more.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Jenna Hollenstein, MS, RDN, CDN, is an anti-diet dietitian-nutritionist, certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, speaker, meditation teacher, and author of five books, including Eat to Love and Intuitive Eating for Life. She blends Intuitive Eating with mindfulness to help people transform food and body shame into joyful eating and movement.Jenna received a BS in nutrition from Penn State University and an MS in nutrition from Tufts University. She has trained in numerous integrative modalities, including polyvagal theory, somatic self-compassion, trauma-sensitive mindfulness, and embodied social justice.Jenna has spoken at universities, retreat centers, and extensively online for both consumer and clinician audiences. Her work has been featured in the The New York Times, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Yoga Journal, Health, Self, Lion's Roar, Mindful, Vogue, Elle, Glamour, and Women's World. Learn more about her work at jennahollenstein.com.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comWhat if disagreements and differences are a matter of risk perception? Plus: Is weight loss really the only way to be well?The full version of this episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to the first part here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the rest (including the full answer about weight loss and wellness)!Get show notes and references here.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is now available wherever books are sold. Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.  

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comAnti-diet personal stylist Dacy Gillespie joins us to discuss diet and wellness culture, her bad experience with functional medicine (and what attracted her to it in the first place), how she's dealing with her chronic symptoms now, and why she doesn't think clothes should be “flattering.” Behind the paywall, we get into how to shop for clothes after your body changes, how to start discovering your authentic personal style beyond diet culture's ideals, the advice that revolutionized Christy's approach to fashion, the parallels between intuitive eating and fashion, and more.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. As a weight-inclusive, anti-diet personal stylist, Dacy Gillespie helps her clients reject fashion rules and ideal standards of beauty imposed by the patriarchy, white supremacism, and capitalism so that they can uncover their authentic style. Through their work building a functional wardrobe, Dacy's clients make a mindset shift from thinking they need to wear what's flattering to unapologetically taking up space in the world. After a lifetime of jobs in high-stress careers that didn't suit her highly sensitive, introverted personality, Dacy started mindful closet in 2013 in an attempt to create a more emotionally sustainable lifestyle. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Real Simple, New York Magazine's The Strategist, and Lifehacker, and she is a frequent podcast guest. Dacy lives with her husband and two children in St. Louis, Missouri.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy answers an audience question about how to talk to people who swear by certain alternative-medicine treatments—especially when they push them on you.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!Get full show notes and references here.Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode!Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy shares answers she gave to a journalist writing a piece about Casey Means, a functional-medicine doctor, diet-book author, and wellness entrepreneur who has become a key advisor to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.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!Get full show notes and references here.Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode!Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comDisordered-eating dietitian Katherine Metzelaar joins us to discuss her history with diet and wellness culture, how she developed orthorexia, how praise and compliments from others affected her behaviors, and the role of the internet in her relationship with food. Behind the paywall, we get into how orthorexia led her to become anti-vaccine and believe in conspiracy theories, how naturopathic doctors missed and compounded her problems, how she found her way to recovery from orthorexia and conspiracism, the sense of identity that comes along with perceived food sensitivities, and lots more.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Katherine Metzelaar, MSN, RDN, is a relational nutrition therapist, registered dietitian, and certified intuitive eating counselor committed to revolutionizing how people connect to food and their bodies. As the founder and owner of Bravespace Nutrition, she helps individuals break free from the fear of food, uncovering the joy and pleasure it can bring to their lives. Katherine guides her clients in reclaiming their relationship with food, free from the restrictive rules of diet and wellness culture, teaching them how to nourish their bodies without the pressure of perfectionism. She also leads "You're Not Broken: A Women's Body Image Group That Will Transform The Way You See And Experience Your Body," where she fosters a supportive environment for women to heal their relationship with their bodies.  Katherine specializes in disordered eating, eating disorders, and body image challenges.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy answers an audience question about whether artificial food colorings and other additives really have any impact on ADHD.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!Get full show notes and references here.Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode!Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comPsychotherapist Asher Pandjiris joins us to discuss their experience with chronic illness and “autoimmune diets,” why they were attracted to naturopaths and other alternative-medicine providers, the role of values in people's attraction to wellness culture, cultural healing traditions vs. cultural appropriation, their approach to working with orthorexia, and lots more. Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first part is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Asher Pandjiris is a psychotherapist, Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy Provider, Disordered Eating Consultant and Co-Director of The Kintsugi Therapist Collective. They come to their work as a scholar of critical, psychoanalytic, and mindfulness-based theories. Asher has 14 years of experience working with issues related to trauma and its impact on the body and has published on the topics of intergenerational trauma transmission, the treatment of eating disorders, the wellness industrial complex, gender dysphoria, and clinician burnout. Find them at asherpandjiris.com and kintsugitherapistcollective.com. If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comFormer anti-vaccine “crunchy mom” and current public-health nurse Lydia Greene joins us to discuss why she was susceptible to anti-vax messaging despite having a science background, how and why she developed orthorexia, how a chronic digestive disorder made her susceptible to “leaky gut” rhetoric, how her orthorexia affected her parenting, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into why she came to rethink her anti-vax stance, how she started to question wellness culture and heal from orthorexia, how her anti-vax views masked her son's autism diagnosis, how she's dealing with her digestive disorder now, and why she decided to become a public-health nurse and co-found Back to the Vax, a group devoted to vaccine advocacy.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Lydia Greene is a married mother of three. She spent over a decade as an anti-vax crunchy mother when the pandemic made her reconsider her views. Her family is now fully vaccinated, and she recently graduated nursing school and has now become a vocal vaccine advocate. Learn more about her work at backtothevax.com.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comIn this solo episode, Christy discusses the evidence on sugar and health—specifically what the science really says about the links between sugar and the risk of various chronic diseases, as well as the inherent limitations of the data. Plus, in honor of Halloween this week, she shares some thoughts (and some data) on princess culture and girls' body image, and why she's starting to let go of some of her angst about her daughter's current princess obsession.This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a free preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!Get full show notes and references here.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comCognitive psychologist Gordon Pennycook explains the psychological reasons we fall for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and general bullshit (a technical term!). We discuss why people with an analytical cognitive style tend to be more skeptical of alternative medicine and health misinformation, some of the pitfalls of intuitive thinking (and why intuitive eating may actually be more of an analytical or deliberative process), why being skeptical of out-there wellness practices is actually a sign of open-mindedness, why even very smart people can fall for wellness misinformation, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into the difficulty of trusting experts in matters of health and wellness, the importance of thinking critically about science, the attention economy and how it contributes to incentivizing misinformation, how conspiracy theories have touched Gordon's life, his surprising findings about what it takes for people to drop conspiracist beliefs, and the best ways to stop the spread of misinformation.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Gordon Pennycook is a Himan Brown Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. He obtained his PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Waterloo in 2016 and held a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale University. His expertise is human reasoning and decision-making, and he has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, including in journals such as Nature and Science. He has published research on the spread of fake news and misinformation, as well as the first ever paper on the psychology of bullshit.Gordon has received several awards, such as the Governor General's Gold Medal, Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network “Researcher of the Year,” and early career awards from the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science, the Psychonomic Society, and the Association for Psychological Science. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in 2020.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comNew York Times bestselling cookbook author Julia Turshen joins us to discuss intuitive cooking and how it relates to intuitive eating, how diet-culture recovery has influenced her approach to cooking and recipe writing, learning to accept that not every meal is going to be stellar (and why that's a powerful antidote to social-media diet culture), her new book, What Goes with What, and more. Behind the paywall, we discuss how we've both gotten to a place where work isn't our whole life, some behind-the-scenes looks at book publishing and book deals, Julia's experience of powerlifting and how it's changed her relationship with her body, how she navigates the diet and wellness culture in powerlifting, and both of our thoughts on the extreme protein consumption pushed by strength coaches and “protein girlies.”Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Julia Turshen is a New York Times bestselling cookbook author. Her latest book, Simply Julia, is an IACP award-winning national bestseller. Julia has written for multiple publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Vogue. She is the founder of Equity At The Table (EATT), an inclusive digital directory of women/non-binary individuals in food, and the host and producer of the IACP-nominated podcast Keep Calm and Cook On, which the New York Times has called “an antidote to diet culture.” Epicurious has named Julia one of the ‘100 Greatest Home Cooks of All Time.' She sits on the Kitchen Cabinet Advisory Board for the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and is a member of God's Love We Deliver's Culinary Council. She writes a weekly newsletter, teaches live cooking classes every Sunday afternoon, and is a competitive powerlifter. Julia lives in the Hudson Valley with her spouse Grace and their many pets. Her next book, WHAT GOES WITH WHAT, will be out on October 15th.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comRegistered dietitian and author Shana Minei Spence joins us to discuss how a career in fashion affected her relationship with food and her body, her experience with a holistic provider who recommended elimination diets, how values and social norms influenced her use of alternative medicine, her disordered motivations for becoming a dietitian, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into how she recovered from her eating disorder, why she takes an anti-diet approach to nutrition, her experience working in the public-health field, cultural appropriation in wellness, and where she stands on wellness culture and alternative medicine now.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Shana is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist based in Brooklyn, New York. She currently works in public health for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, doing community nutrition lessons, and also owns her own company, The Nutrition Tea ®. She describes herself as an "all foods fit" dietitian. and creates a platform for open discussion on nutrition and wellness topics that are inclusive, non-diet, and weight-neutral, all with an intersectionality of social justice. She also writes frequently for publications such as Self, Shape, Outside, and Well + Good Magazines. Her debut book came out in August 2024, titled Live Nourished: Make Peace with Food, Banish Body Shame, and Reclaim Joy (Bookshop affiliate link). Speaking engagements include Peloton, NEDA, Eating Recovery Center, The Rose Retreats, Food Fluence, Eat Well Global, and NBC. She can be seen in media such as NPR, Shape Magazine, GQ, SELF Magazine, Women's Health Magazine, Outside Magazine, ABC Good Morning America, and Healthline.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comIn this solo episode, Christy discusses how evidence-based mind-body practices like yoga and meditation can be essential for balancing overactive minds, helping us shift out of our intellects and into different modes of being—but they can also act as a gateway into the more out-there parts of wellness culture, where we get exposed to ideas and protocols that are lacking evidence and riddled with pseudoscience.This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a free preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!Get full show notes and references here.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comRegistered dietitian Kat Garcia-Benson joins us to discuss the multilevel marketing (MLM) industry and its connection to diet and wellness culture, her experience of getting recruited to an MLM as a new dietitian, how she eventually got out, why she shifted to an anti-diet approach in her work, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into how MLMs affect people's relationships with food and their bodies, how to make peace with food after an MLM, what to do if you know someone who's involved with a wellness MLM, what makes people vulnerable to recruitment, how the MLM experience affected her sense of self, and how she's found healing.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Kat is a registered dietitian nutritionist and board-certified sports dietitian with a unique background in Multi-level Marketing (MLM), now dedicated to helping individuals break free from nutrition MLMs and the constraints of diet culture and nutrition misinformation. Specializing in digestive health and sports nutrition, she creates empowering content designed to cultivate a healthy relationship with food and body.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

In this solo episode, Christy shares the first in what has become a multi-part series about why bright, analytical minds are often susceptible to wellness woo.Get full show notes and references here.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comPsychiatrist, author, and science communicator Jonathan Stea joins us to discuss why there's such a huge market for pseudoscientific mental-health practices, the truth about diets for mental health, how to recognize misinformation and develop science literacy, and lots more. Behind the paywall, we get into TikTok therapists, what the science really says about supplements for mental health, the origins and harms of the anti-psychiatry movement, true vs. commodified mental health, genuinely evidence-based ways to improve mental health, and how our values relate to our health choices. Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Dr. Jonathan N. Stea is a full-time practicing clinical psychologist and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Calgary. He's a two-time winner of the University of Calgary's Award for Excellence in Clinical Supervision and co-editor of the book Investigating Clinical Psychology: Pseudoscience, Fringe Science, and Controversies. Dr. Stea has published extensively, with regular contributions to Scientific American and Psychology Today, among other outlets, and has appeared on numerous mainstream television and radio shows, as well as podcasts. He was the 2022 recipient of the John G. Paterson Award from the Psychologists' Association of Alberta, an annual award presented for the exceptional contribution to portraying psychological knowledge to the public. His new book, MIND THE SCIENCE: SAVING YOUR MENTAL HEALTH FROM THE WELLNESS INDUSTRY, aims to educate and embolden those who wish to make informed decisions about their mental health, to improve science and mental health literacy, and to pull back the curtain on the devastating consequences of allowing pseudoscience promoters to target the vulnerable within our society. It's a must-have for readers of popular science who are curious to understand what mental health really means, or who have been touched by mental illness in some way. It provides readers with a science-backed takedown of pseudoscience, as well as an understanding of its evolution, seduction, and solution. In part, this involves exposing the mental health misinformation that pervades healthcare, pop culture, social media, and the wellness industry. Connect with him on X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.Order Dr. Stea's MIND THE SCIENCE: SAVING YOUR MENTAL HEALTH FROM THE WELLNESS INDUSTRY here: JonathanStea.comDr. Stea's free newsletter: https://jonathanstea.substack.com/p/its-time-to-mind-the-science-whenIf you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

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 supporting parents and families to end intergenerational dieting and body shame, and work towards a greater sense of embodiment and ease in their relationship with food. She supports families of children experiencing a wide range of feeding and eating challenges, such as concerns with weight, very selective eating, food preoccupation, and other feeding and eating differences. Laura also runs the newsletter, podcast, and community Can I Have Another Snack? on Substack, where she is exploring bodies, appetite, and identity with a focus on parenting. She is the author of two books: Just Eat It and How To Just Eat It.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox each week (with a full transcript) at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Pre-order Christy's upcoming book, The Wellness Trap, for its April 25 release, and get access to an exclusive webinar discussing the book by submitting your proof of purchase at christyharrison.com/bookbonus.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comMedical doctor and pharmaceutical-policy researcher Joel Lexchin joins us to discuss the impact of industry sponsorship on medical research, why merely disclosing these financial conflicts of interest is not enough (and may not be accurate or complete), some of the surprising tactics drug- and device-makers use to get more favorable study results and conclusions, and lots more. Behind the paywall, we discuss how to think critically about industry-sponsored research without getting sucked into conspiracy theories and becoming vulnerable to the wellness industry, the role of pharmaceutical companies in creating the craze for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, and the disturbing truth about many patient-advocacy groups. Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Joel Lexchin received his MD from the University of Toronto in 1977. He is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Health Policy and Management at York University in Toronto, Canada, where he taught health policy until 2016. In addition, he worked in the emergency department at the University Health Network in Toronto for over 34 years. He has published two books since 2016: Private Profits vs Public Policy: The Pharmaceutical Industry and the Canadian State (University of Toronto Press, 2016) and Doctors in Denial: Why Big Pharma and the Canadian Medical Profession Are Too Close for Comfort (Lorimer, 2017). He is a member of the Foundation Board of Health Action International and the board of Canadian Doctors for Medicare. He is a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and is among the top 2 percent of the world's most highly cited researchers.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

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 right; and more. Plus, Christy shares an excerpt from the audiobook of The Wellness Trap about wellness mis- and disinformation and how they've come to proliferate online.Dr. Seema Yasmin is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, Pulitzer prize finalist, director of the Stanford Health Communication Initiative and professor of crisis communication at UCLA. Yasmin served as a disease detective in the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and a science correspondent for major newspaper and broadcast outlets. She is the author of five books, including What the Fact?! Her reporting appears in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, WIRED, Scientific American, and other outlets. She received her medical degree from the University of Cambridge and trained in journalism at the University of Toronto.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox each week (with a full transcript) at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy answers an audience question about whether alcohol is really unsafe at any dose, and shares some ways to explore your relationship with drinking.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!Get full show notes and references here.Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode!Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comPsychologist and body-image researcher Charlotte Markey joins us to discuss myths and misinformation about body image, how chronic illness and pain affect perceptions of our bodies, the body positivity vs. body neutrality debate, the potential body-image harms of social media (and how to mitigate them), how the discourse about GLP-1 weight-loss drugs is influencing people's body image, and more.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Charlotte Markey, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology and chair of the Health Sciences Department at Rutgers University (Camden). Dr. Markey received her doctorate in psychology from the University of California (Riverside) and began conducting research on eating behavior and body image over 25 years ago. She has published over 100 book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals. The Body Image Book for Girls: Love Yourself and Grow Up Fearless was published in 2020 to enthusiastic reviews and was a recommended book by A Mighty Girl. It was followed up with Being You: The Body Image Book for Boys (2022), the only book about body image for boys. Body Positive: Understanding and Improving Body Image in Science and Practice (co-edited with Drs. Elizabeth Daniels and Meghan Gillen; Cambridge University Press; 2018) offers a scholarly approach to improving body image. Her newest book is Adultish: The Body Image Book for Life (2024).Dr. Markey writes for U.S. News and World Report, Psychology Today, and a variety of other publications. Her research has garnered widespread media attention, and she has been featured in and interviewed by publications including The New York Times, The Economist, The Today Show, ABC News, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, ScienceDaily, and NBC News.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

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 influencing; why “just try not to think about it" is sometimes the most helpful advice in the face of wellness culture's constant push for self-optimization in every area of life; and more.After recovering from a lifelong battle with food and body obsession, Mary Jelkovsky started her Instagram @maryscupofteaa to inspire people to accept their bodies and learn to love themselves unconditionally. Now Mary is the author of the bestselling book The Gift of Self-Love as well as the journal 100 Days of Self-Love. Over the past five years, she's been leading worldwide self-love retreats and her message has been highlighted in TEDx, Teen Vogue, Shape, and Health Magazine. She is also the host of the Mary's Cup of Tea Podcast: the Self-Love Podcast for Women, which has more than 1 million downloads. By openly sharing her personal journey to self-acceptance, Mary has helped inspire millions to accept their bodies and love themselves unconditionally. When Mary's not writing, podcasting, or hosting retreats, she is spending time with her little sister Ilana, who is her biggest inspiration.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox each week (with a full transcript) at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy answers audience questions about IgG tests for food sensitivity, glyphosate in food, recent headlines about chemicals in baby wipes and tampons, and whether you really need to avoid dairy for acne.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!Get full show notes and references here.Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode!Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comFamily doctor and science communicator Brad McKay joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about alternative medicine, chronic fatigue, Peter Attia, wellness IV drips, how placebos can actually cause harm, and more. Behind the paywall, we talk about the weight-inclusive approach, my book ANTI-DIET, our differing views on GLP-1 drugs, pharmaceutical-industry influence and the need for healthy skepticism, and more.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Dr Brad McKay MBBS, FRACGP, MPH (he/him) is an experienced family doctor and dedicated health and science communicator. His commitment to evidence-based medicine, critical thinking, and combating misinformation inspired him to create his book, Fake Medicine: Exposing the wellness crazes, cons, and quacks costing us our health. Learn more about his work at drbradmckay.com.au.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comIn this bonus episode, we discuss the experience of getting a new diagnosis, and the insatiable curiosity, vulnerability to misinformation, and identity shifts that often go along with it. This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a free preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!Get full show notes and references here.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

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.Julia Turshen is a New York Times bestselling cookbook author. Her latest book, Simply Julia, is a national bestseller. She has written for multiple publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, and more. She is the founder of Equity At The Table (EATT), an inclusive digital directory of women/non-binary individuals in food, and the host and producer of the podcast Keep Calm and Cook On. She sits on the Kitchen Cabinet Advisory Board for the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and is a member of God's Love We Deliver's Culinary Council. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her spouse Grace and their pets. She teaches live cooking classes every Sunday afternoon. Find her online at juliaturshen.com.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! You can also sign up to get the podcast in your inbox (with a full transcript), plus biweekly Q&As about wellness culture, at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comScience and parenting journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer joins us to discuss the real risks of social media and smartphones for kids (and all of us), what the popular book THE ANXIOUS GENERATION gets wrong about the science on teens and technology, the similarities in the discourse about tech and “ultraprocessed” food, diet culture in the parenting space, how to raise kids to have a healthy relationship with technology and smartphones, and more.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Melinda Wenner Moyer is a science, health and parenting journalist and is a regular contributor — and former columnist — at The New York Times. She writes the parenting Substack Is My Kid the Asshole?, which has more than 24,000 subscribers from 159 countries. Her first book, How To Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes, has been published in 13 languages and won a gold medal in the 2022 Living Now Book Awards. Her second book, Hello Cruel World: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times, will be published in the summer of 2025. Melinda was the recipient of the 2022 Excellence in Science Journalism award from The Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2019 Bricker Award for Science Writing in Medicine, and her work was featured in the 2020 Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. She has taught science journalism at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She has a master's degree in Science, Health & Environmental Reporting from NYU and a background in cell and molecular biology. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her husband, two children, and her dog.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

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 Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of English at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the author of Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine (University of Chicago Press) and Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press). Her Twitter handle is @ColleenDerkatch.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Get the podcast in your inbox, plus biweekly Q&As about wellness culture and lots of cool bonus content, by signing up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comJenn Romolini, author of AMBITION MONSTER, joins us to discuss how ambition and overwork affected her well-being, why workaholism is often a response to trauma, why she developed an eating disorder as a teenager (and the specific personality trait that helped her recover), what it was like to have her mom get into New Age philosophies, how she's found healing from trauma and work addiction, and more.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Jennifer Romolini is a former editor and high-level media and tech executive, the author of the memoir Ambition Monster, and the co-host of Everything Is Fine, a weekly podcast for women over 40. Romolini is also the creator and host of 2023's critically acclaimed documentary podcast Stiffed, with Crooked Media. Her first book, Weird In a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, was published in 2017. Find her on Substack.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy answers an audience question about the food rules she stopped following—and shares four food-related principles she tries to practice.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!Get full show notes and references here.Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode!Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. 

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comJessica Steier of The Unbiased Science Podcast joins us to discuss the need for empathy and bridge-building in science communication, why she's critical of restrictive diets and other wellness trends while holding space for their proponents to evolve (and why she's faced backlash for that), tribalism in the science community, our differing views on weight and why she's open to learning about the weight-inclusive approach, and more.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Dr. Jessica Steier is an empathetic, passionate, and quirky public health scientist with expertise in chronic and infectious disease prevention. She hosts The Unbiased Science Podcast, which is devoted to objective, critical appraisal of available evidence on science and health-related topics relevant to listeners' daily lives.Dr. Steier has expertise in public health policy, research and evaluation design, biostatistics, and advanced analytics.  She believes strongly in scientific education and health literacy, and the translation of research for the general public in a way that maximizes people's ability to make informed and evidence-based decisions.The goal of The Unbiased Science Podcast is to dispel misinformation and misconceptions across an array of science and public health topics (e.g., vaccines, GMOs, fad diets, supplements). With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the podcast initially dedicated most episodes to distilling the latest research about the ongoing pandemic in real time as the evidence unfolded. But the podcast has evolved over time and now tackles a variety of issues. Learn more about the podcast at unbiasedscipod.com.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support Rethinking Wellness by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comChristy answers an audience question about going autoimmune diets and celiac disease, and there's a bonus one for paid subscribers about going gluten-free for an autoimmune thyroid condition.Become a paid subscriber to hear the whole thing!Get full show notes and references here.Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comEating-disorders psychologist Alexis Conason joins us to discuss her background in “obesity” research, how she came to question the conventional weight paradigm and move to a weight-neutral approach, the industry influence behind the American Medical Association's decision to classify obesity as a disease in 2013, the mental-health effects of bariatric surgery, how to talk about pharmaceutical-industry influence in ways that don't give rise to conspiracy theories or make it seem like we're impugning the entire medical establishment, and more. Then, in the paywalled portion of the interview, we discuss how social media makes it hard to have nuanced conversations about these issues, the discourse around GLP-1 drugs, and the trouble with the research underlying weight-loss recommendations.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. ALEXIS CONASON, PSY.D., CEDS-S, is a clinical psychologist and certified eating disorder specialist-supervisor in private practice in New York City. Her group practice, Conason Psychological Services, specializes in the treatment of binge eating disorder, disordered eating, body image concerns, and psychological issues related to bariatric weight loss surgery. She is the founder of The Anti-Diet Plan, a weight-inclusive online mindful eating program designed to help people stop dieting, eat more attuned with their body, and live more peaceful and pleasurable lives. She is the author of The Diet Free Revolution: 10 Steps to Free Yourself from the Diet Cycle with Mindful Eating and Radical Self-Acceptance (June 2021, North Atlantic Books), available wherever books are sold. Dr. Conason is a fierce advocate for helping people recognize and question the societal norms that encourage feeling not good enough about themselves so they can stop fixating on shrinking their bodies and reclaim the space that they deserve in the world. You can find her on social media @theantidietplan.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comScience communicator Jonathan Jarry joins us to discuss his history of turning to alternative cures for chronic pain, how he came to be skeptical of the wellness industry, the problems with science journalism, why you probably don't have a leaky gut (despite what many influencers and wellness practitioners claim), the critical article about “leaky gut syndrome” that resulted in death threats, and lots more.Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Jonathan Jarry is a science communicator with McGill University's Office for Science and Society (OSS), dedicated to separating sense from nonsense on the scientific stage. He has a Master's degree in molecular biology and he brings his experience in cancer research, human genetics, rehabilitation research, and forensic biology to the work he does for the public. With cardiologist Dr. Christopher Labos, he co-hosts the award-winning medical podcast The Body of Evidence, which aims to contextualize findings in the realm of health research and answer the public's most pressing questions about the biomedical sciences while also being funny and entertaining. He talks about science most Fridays on CTV Montreal News and is regularly interviewed in both English- and French-language media. Learn more about his work at jonathanjarry.com. If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.