Welcome back to Rebuilding Trust with Your Body. I am, um, Katie Harvey, your host, and this episode is such an important discussion because we are going to look at when does eating healthy cross the line and become a diet or even disordered eating? Look, there is nothing wrong with wanting to honor your health and to eat in a way that is genuinely healthy, which even just the word healthy has become such a complicated word that I almost hesitate to use it because healthy itself can have such a diety connotation nowadays in the intuitive eating space.

Sometimes I hear people say that sometimes it feels like we don’t care about health and that it’s all about eating pizza and brownies all day long and not feeling guilty about doing that. And while yes, it’s important to be able to eat things like pizza and brownies, it’s also not honoring your body’s health to only eat those foods all day, every day.

On the flip side, it also doesn’t honor your body’s health to only eat chicken breast or salad all day, every day. We’ve got to find the balance and nuance with nutrition and health and to take a look at how we are defining healthy eating to make sure that what you’re aiming for is indeed healthy, both nutritionally and mentally.

And I’m all about taking care of your health. I love that goal for you. And I see how many of you are approaching health in a way that is honestly off base and not actually making you healthier. Today in this episode, we get to fix that. Before we dive into our main topic, though, you know what time it is.

We got some wellness Woo to talk about. Wellness Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims, or just nonsense. Today’s wellness Woo is fluoride in tap water. Putting fluoride in tap water has been a standard practice for almost 100 years now. It has even been hailed as one of the top 10 greatest things to be done for public health in the 20th century. Yet now it has been called into question by the wellness industry. And we’re going to break it down here. So let’s just start with what is fluoride?

Fluoride. Fluoride itself is a mineral that naturally occurs. It shows up in water, soil, and in trace amounts in certain foods that grow in said soil. So like tea, coffee, wine, grapes, raisins, potatoes, spinach. Now, the amounts of fluoride in these foods are not enough for it to give us what we need, and that is why we have been adding it to our water supply.

So how did that all come about? Well, well, back in the early 1900s, when tooth decay was absolutely rampant, to the extent that it was leaving a lot of people toothless, it was causing a lot of suffering with cavities, abscesses, and all sorts of painful dental issues. It was discovered that parts of the United States had fewer issues with dental decay, such as Colorado, where it turns out they have a higher level of naturally occurring fluoride in their water.

So in 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first community in the world to add fluoride to tap water. And the studies that followed showed a significantly lower rate of cavities in school children, which was where they were kind of monitoring this. And because the data was so good, water fluoridation started to spread to other towns and cities. And studies on this that have continued to be done have shown that widespread community water fluoridation prevents cavities. And it saves money both for families and for the healthcare system. Because drinking fluoridated water keeps your teeth strong, and it reduces cavities by about 25% in children and adults. I mean, it’s pretty significant.

This ends up resulting in less mouth pain. If we. If you’ve ever had a bad cavity or an abscess, it’s not a pleasant situation. Fewer fillings, teeth pulled. I mean, have you ever had expensive, expensive dental work done? It is painful on the pocketbook, uh, missed days of work in school that happen because of these types of things. Like, there is a cost to. When we have a lot of dental issues going on. And communities of a thousand or more people, according to the research, they see an average estimated return on investment of $20 for every $1 spent on water fluoridation. And the ROI for community water fluoridation increases as the community size. But even in small communities, money is being saved. And so, you know, there is a lot of actual cost that we can attach to this in addition to the pain and suffering. And so, uh, you know, because we’re doing something at such a big population scale, of course, there has also been research looking at does the addition of fluoride to our tap water create any health risks, any unintended negative consequences?

And so they have studied this, they have looked up one side and down the other to see if there is an increased risk from fluoridating water to things like hip fractures or bone cancer. And all of that has been disproven. There is no link there. More recently, however, the Concerns that have been brought up and that are, um, you know, being kind of hyped up in the media and on social media are related to neurocognitive development in kids. So, like brain development in kids. And this is because there was an epidemiological study published in 2019 where they measured the IQ in children in relation to the mom’s fluoride exposure during pregnancy. And this article got a lot of press. You might have seen it. And of course people are concerned. I mean, when you talk about neurocognitive problems in our children, of course everybody wants what’s best for these poor babies and these poor children. Right. However, subsequent studies have not been able to replicate this data. And there have been a lot of things about the design of this epidemiological study that were called into questions.

So this study that brought about all of this big reaction from the general public, it wasn’t a good study and not good data to begin with. And it has now created a lot of unfounded fear that has not been proven in any way. Some additional concerns that can happen with fluoride is, um, dental and skeletal fluorosis, which is a staining of the teeth and a weakening of the bones that happens when fluoride is consumed in excess. This will not and does not happen at the levels that are found in drinking water. There are also some claims that have been made around thyroid disease and kidney problems, but these have not been proven.

I read an interview with Dr. Charlotte Lewis, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She’s also a professor at the University of Washington, um, School of Medicine. And she said that removing fluoride from the water supply will cause a lot of vulnerable populations to suffer. It is not a good thing for us to be compl. Contemplating. And she also said that, um, there’s been some studies on what happens when fluoride is discontinued from tap water. Calgary, uh, in Canada, discontinued their fluoridation program in 2011. And over a relatively short period of time, they saw dramatic increases in cavities in kids. And the number of kids who are requiring IV antibiotics or are needing operative dental care under general anesthesia increased quickly with the removal of fluoride from water.

And so there is a negative effect then that comes from removing the fluoride from the water that is hypothetically causing these problems that have not been proven. But we do have proven negative effects of taking out of the water on the backside of that. So this discussion around taking fluoride out of water, it is founded on wellness woo. Fluoride in our tap water is not only not harmful, it’s a good thing. It is objectively a good thing, a positive thing. And it is not something that we should be worrying about or avoiding avoiding.

So there you have it. That is enough of that. If you have an example of wellness woo that you want to share, send it my way at, uh, rebuilding trust with your body at ah, Gmail or feel free to DM me. I love hearing your ideas.

Now let’s move on to today’s main topic, the wellness trap that nobody talks about. When healthy eating turns into dieting. What if I told you that your healthy eating might just be another diet in disguise? What if your pursuit of wellness is actually hurting your relationship with food and your body more than it’s helping it?

Because this often is the case that the attempt, uh, at doing something positive for your health can actually backfire. And part of the problem is the, the way that the cultural narrative has shifted around this because our society and diet culture at large has caught wind of the reality that dieting does not work. And the general public is starting to understand that dieting does not work. So what they have done is they have shifted their messaging and they’ve shifted their language to something that sounds more wholesome and more noble and more scientific and more helpful and healthier. And that’s where we get language like clean eating and wellness. And wellness culture is just another branch of diet culture. It feels different though, because of the aesthetic around it, but it often functions the same and backfires the same. And part of the appeal of wellness and healthy eating and clean eating is it gives us this illusion of control.

That the idea that if we just control our food, if we control what we’re putting into our body, if we control our exercise, then we can control the size, the shape, the appearance of our body, we can control our health, we can control how we feel. And sure, we can impact these things.

And there are things that we can do to positively support ourselves and our health and our well being and how we feel, but we’re not entirely in control of it. And I think it’s really important that we acknowledge that, even though it’s an uncomfortable truth, because at the core, that is so often what it is that we’re grasping for here is this sense of control.

And oftentimes when we think that we’re just being healthy, uh, we don’t necessarily question whether the behaviors might actually be harmful or frankly disordered. I mean, think. Think about all of the topics that you have heard me cover in the Wellness Woo segment of this podcast. Everything from cleanses to drinking apple cider vinegar to food sensitivity testing. All of the things that you’ve heard that you should do in the name of wellness, but aren’t scientifically valid. And a lot of times as I’m covering these topics, I’m debunking it and saying, okay, not only is this not a valid thing to do for your wellness, there are a lot of times where I’m also bringing up concerns about the harms and the dangers and the risks of these things. And, uh, the wellness industry is not good about helping people understand that side of it, the risks that they are taking in the possible harm that can occur.

And I have had numerous clients that come to mind when I think about people who have fallen into the wellness trap. And there is one that I am thinking of in particular right now, and this is someone who thought that they were just trying to be healthier and who was an athlete all throughout their teenage years and into early adulthood, who started having some stomach issues and began cutting out food groups because of a food sensitivity test that she purchased online. And initially she started feeling better and she felt like she was doing what was positive for her body and for her health. But then every time her stomach would feel weird, she would end up cutting out whatever she’d recently eaten. And before long, she was afraid to eat anything except this very narrow range of what felt like her safe and healthy food. And she became more and more stressed, obsessed, and, uh, socially withdrawn over time too, because it’s hard to do anything social when you can’t eat any of the food that’s available there. We socialize a lot around food, and when those foods don’t fit your criteria, sometimes it feels easier to just avoid the event or the gathering or the get together or the restaurant or whatever it is to avoid it all entirely.

This client swore to me on day one that I met her that she could not tolerate gluten, dairy, red meat, or sugar. And lo and behold, it took some time. But as we worked on improving her eating and healing her gut through getting adequate nutrition going through her system, it turned out that she could indeed tolerate all of these foods. And that was a lot for her to have to reckon with and to challenge these beliefs that she had developed around what her body could and couldn’t handle digestively and to realize, oh, actually my body can handle this, and to have to retrain her nervous system to not be afraid of these foods.

There’s another client I’m thinking of as I’m talking here who comes to mind who was avoiding a lot of foods in the name of health. And in addition to the foods she was avoiding, she was also spending hundreds of dollars every month on supplements. The vast majority of them she did not need. They weren’t doing anything for her. And I remember her in tears one year before Thanksgiving. This was early in our work together. It was Thanksgiving time, and she was in tears because she was feeling so stressed out about having to go to her family gathering and come face to face with these foods that she felt like she couldn’t or shouldn’t have.

And this is what can happen when this whole wellness thing goes too far. So how do we know when healthy eating has gone too far or when it crosses the line into diet culture or disordered eating? Let’s break it down. There are many sneaky ways that diet culture hides in wellness.

Uh, the first one is food rules in disguise. So diets used to be really obvious. You know, it was counting, uh, calories or counting your points, cutting out carbs, lists of foods that you can and can’t eat, uh, tracking macros. You know, it’s. It’s kind of easy to spot fad dieting type of behavior, but now it’s all been rebranded. It’s all about lifestyle choices and people declaring things like, I don’t eat processed food, or I only eat organic, or I avoid sugar for my gut health. And this might sound different because it’s like, it’s not restrictive of like, I’m avoiding calories. It’s more of that subtle good food, bad food. And it’s creating ultimately a similar restrictive mindset. And that ends up having the same impact on us mentally and physically as dieting does, because it’s still rooted in restriction and deprivation that works against your biology, against your psychology. And when you’re fighting against your body in this way, your body is going to see that as a threat and it’s going to rebel against it.

The next way that diet culture hides within wellness is the moralization of food and this wellness hierarchy. So not only do we already have these ideas that are burned into our brains about good foods and bad foods based on the different types of dieting we’ve done and these different eras that we’ve lived through.

You know, it always used to be that fat was bad. And so I know a lot of people who still have remnants of that that they feel like they should be avoiding high fat foods. Um, and we’ve also. We’re in an era right now where carbs are very villainized and so we feel like we should stay away from carbs. So we’ve already got this baseline good food, bad food thing going on and, but now we’ve got these added pressures being added into the mix, these new ways of thinking of good and bad foods. You know, clean eating versus toxic is a word that gets thrown around a lot in the wellness industry.

I see a lot of these videos on social media of people standing in grocery stores holding up these foods, telling you about how toxic all these ingredients are in it. Uh, the, uh, the whole conversation around whole food versus processed food, plant based eating, um, inflammatory eating. We’ve created these new words that evoke fear and judgment and a hierarchy of food. And the thing is labeling food this way, all it is doing is creating guilt, anxiety and obsession about the food. And when we have neutrality in our thinking about food and when we just see food as the food that it is and we don’t attach judgment to it, we can just be factual about allows us to crave and desire and to eat the entire spectrum of food, to have good food variety and to not have feel guilty about any particular thing.

And what’s interesting is that when we have that peace and neutrality with food, the research shows that you will actually have more balanced nutrition. That it’s this way of trying to control your food and to force yourself to eat in this so called healthy way that will actually create that cycle of restricting and overeating and binging and chaos with food. Food that is stressing you out, it’s making you feel guilty and it ultimately is unbalanced.

And another problem that gets wrapped up in this with the way that we’re labeling food is sometimes it becomes not just about these choices that we’re making about food. It can start to become your identity. I’ve had a lot of clients who will say, you know, it just feels so hard to think about not being known as the person who is the healthy eater or the fitness girl or um, you know, the person who is always good when we go out to eat. It’s like you’re losing part of who you are. And that can be really hard if this has gotten wrapped up as part of your identity and you are going to have to find a new identity and to recognize that there is so much more to who you are as a human being besides the types of foods that you do and don’t eat.

The third sneaky way that diet culture hides in wellness Is this health halo and the fear of doing it wrong. Because now that we’ve got these hierarchies of food and this way of thinking of what’s healthy and unhealthy, it’s like every food choice is now a test of your worthiness and your healthfulness. And these wellness trends, they do so much fear, uh, mongering, more so than the good old fashioned like fad diet culture. That’s not rooted so much in the fear as I see with wellness culture. Uh, things like telling people to be afraid of eating seed oils, which we’ve covered in wellness woo. Is not something you need to be afraid of. Uh, lectins, gluten, dairy. We’ve become afraid of foods that can give us wonderful nutrition and can be part of balanced eating and are often part of things that bring us joy and pleasure. We don’t need to be afraid of food. And it’s created this whole opportunity, uh, that is ripe and prime for people like social media influencers and people who call themselves experts to promote wellness on big platforms that you see online without any clinical training, without any legitimate expertise in this. But they sound so authoritative and they embody the part. It’s almost like they’re playing a character. And we associate this look and this vibe and this aesthetic with them. And the unspoken part of their message is that if you do what I do, if you do what I say, if you take these supplements, if you do these exercises, if you eat these foods, and if you avoid these foods, you will look like me. And that’s such a flawed way of thinking because we could all eat and exercise the same way and we would still all look different and have different body types. And you know, this, this pressure then becomes that you have to do it this certain way. And it’s also a moving target. Like there’s always some new thing that we’re told that we need to be worried about. And it can make food and wellness feel like it’s your full time job. And what happens is it increases your tct, your total conscious time, the percentage of your time throughout your day that you are spending thinking about food, weight, exercise, your body, your health, all of these things that should not be taking up the bulk of your thoughts. Yes, you do need to sometimes think about food. You need to think about food when you’re hungry or when you’re making your grocery list or you’re getting ready to cook dinner. You don’t need to be obsessing about food or what you did or didn’t eat outside of that. It’s just not necessary or actually healthy to obsess about this all the time, you need to have brain space for other things that matter in your life. Here’s what I want you to consider. If your food choices are making you more stressed, anxious or isolated, rather than feeling nourished and free, you might be in the wellness trap that we’re talking about here.

Now let’s talk about what happens when it becomes a full blown obsession, which is what we call orthorexia. It is a type of eating disorder and orthorexia is defined as an unhealthy obsession, obsession with eating only foods that are deemed as pure or healthy. And this is one of those tricky things, because on the surface, it might look like the person is just being very healthy or is deeply concerned about their health and well being.

But it’s when it crosses into that territory of obsession and when it is interfering in a person’s life, that it is no longer healthy anymore. And this differs from eating disorders such as anorexia, where a person is restricting and under consuming food. Sometimes with orthorexia, a person is not eating enough, but sometimes they’re eating enough. It’s not that they’re not getting enough food overall, but they are very obsessive about what that food is and what’s in it and how healthy it supposedly is. Uh, so how do we distinguish between just being health conscious and having orthorexia? And it really boils down to two things, the intent and the impact that it’s having.

So the intent, what is driving the behavior? Why is a person doing it? Two people could follow the same eating pattern, but their motivations and their mindset make all the difference. So a health conscious intent might be someone who’s thinking, I want to take care of my body, I want to feel good. They might be thinking, I choose this food because I enjoy it and it supports my well being. And they’re also flexible and they can adapt when needed. They see that it doesn’t have to be this all or none situation. With an orthorexic intent, it’s much more rigid. The person might be thinking, I must overcome only eat clean foods, or I am unhealthy, or I am impure, or they might think if I eat something bad, I feel anxious, guilty, ashamed, stressed out by that. I’m worried that that’s going to destroy my health. They’re not able to see the middle ground with it. So that’s the intent. And then the second part is the impact. So even if the intent starts out as just a, uh, genuine reasonable desire to be healthier.

What are the actual effects? What’s the impact that it’s having? So a positive impact from a health conscious standpoint would be that you enjoy your meals without stress, you eat a variety of foods without guilt. You can be spontaneous with food, you can go out to eat with friends, you can travel. It’s not that big of a deal. You feel mentally at ease around food while still honoring your health. A, uh, negative impact. With orthorexia, you would feel anxious or guilty if you eat something that’s off your plan. You might avoid social situations because you can’t control the food. You might spend excessive time researching, planning and worrying about food. You might be spending excessive money on specialty foods or special healthy grocery stores, supplements, things like that. You might be spending excessive time in the kitchen preparing things from scratch. And because of this, your body suffers. Your, you’re tired, you might lose your period, you might have digestive issues, you might have nutrient deficiencies.

And it’s so ironic. Some of the most unhealthy individuals that I have ever worked with from a medical standpoint are the ones with orthorexia. They are the ones who are trying to be super healthy with food and in the process they have become literally malnourished. So that’s intent and impact that we have to look at. We also need to consider how does orthorexia show up in your real life, in your day to day life? What is that looking like for someone with orthorexia? And as I’m listing more of these things and giving you some more examples, I want you to think about this either as it applies to yourself, if you’re kind of seeing yourself in this discussion today, or somebody, uh, that you might know and love and care about. Um, like I said, it could be excessive time spent researching foods, recipes, ingredients, meal planning, spending excessive time in the kitchen, feeling extreme guilt and anxiety when eating something unhealthy, avoiding social events or not taking vacations because of food concerns. Or sometimes, uh, we’ll see people taking their food with them to a restaurant or packing all of their food for a trip because they don’t want to eat food that’s from a restaurant or a gas station or something like that. And it can also create a bit of a false sense of superiority about food choices. Feeling like, uh, you’re being so good and almost holier than thou and maybe, uh, even in the back of your mind judging people who don’t care as much about their health or who are choosing to eat these things that you think of as crap.

And again, there can be physical consequences of this. We sometimes see nutrient deficiencies. We sometimes see amenorrhea, which is when you’re. You, uh, don’t have enough body fat and enough estrogen to have a regular period. Digestive issues are extremely common with orthorexia because part of the problem is when we’re not using our digestive tract appropriately with balanced eating, uh, it can get out of whack. And that can sometimes further fuel the orthorexia and, and this wellness mindset thinking, oh, I need to cut out more and more foods. When in reality it’s the cutting out of the food that’s causing the digestive issues. Um, fatigue, hair loss, sometimes weight fluctuations, sometimes not. It’s, uh, important to recognize though, that there can be a lot of physical consequences of this. And they’re not always obvious things. They might be kind of seemingly small things or you might chalk it up to being caused by something else. Or, um, sometimes we’ll see people going to especially, uh, alternative medicine type of providers that often goes hand in hand with this wellness trap is seeking out naturopaths and functional medicine doctors and people who are promoting all sorts of wellness woo and her fueling this mindset and that makes it so tricky because it like solidifies that and validates it in a person’s mind.

Uh, orthorexia is one of those things it. People don’t set out to choose to develop it. It often comes from very, you know, innocent and healthy intentions. It often starts just as that desire to eat healthier, but then it escalates. And I see this a lot with elimination diets. Those become such a slippery slope. People who start by cutting out dairy, then gluten, then sugar, then meat, then processed food. And before we know it, we’ve got this very narrow realm of food that they consider safe and healthy. But it does often start with good intentions. It’s not the intention isn’t, oh, I’m going to restrict and deprive myself. The intention is I want to be healthier. I want to feel better. And it often goes through these stages. So, uh, you can think of it in four stages.

So the stage one is those innocent intentions. I want to eat healthier.

Stage two, we start to develop some food rules. I’ll cut out sugar, I’ll cut out processed food. I’ll take these supplements. I’ll stop eating fast food.

Stage three, the fear and the rigidity increase. You’ll start having thoughts like, I can’t eat that. It’s toxic, it’s bad for me, it’s garbage.

And then stage four, the negative impact sets in. The anxiety, the isolation, the obsession, the distress when you’re not able to eat the healthy way that you want to.

And here’s the deal. If your pursuit of health is making you feel worse instead of better, it’s time to reassess it. And social media is one of those things that can just fuel this in so many ways. And so if you’re struggling with this, you may need to take a break from social media. And at the very least, you probably need to go through and audit and curate your social media feed and weed out some of the stuff that is reinforcing this orthorexic wellness mentality.

Because when you’re seeing all these wellness influencers doing these things that honestly are disordered, it starts to normalize it for you. And we need to get that out of your psyche. You don’t need to be seeing that all day, every day. And I also want to be clear that you don’t have to have a full blown eating disorder or a, uh, diagnosable case of anorexia for wellness to be harmful. Even mild orthorexic tendencies can damage your relationship with food. So if this is causing distress in your relationship with food, it is worth taking a look at. Uh, so let’s shift gears here and look at breaking free from the wellness trap. And let’s align with what does true health look like, because like I said, I support your goal and your desire for health. I have no problem with that. But keep in mind, your health is not just about what you eat. It’s about your mental, your emotional, your social well being. And sometimes the healthy thing to do is eat chips and salsa while you’re drinking a margarita with your friends. Sometimes the healthy thing is getting ice cream with your kids. Sometimes the healthy thing is eating a hot dog at a backyard barbecue. If your healthy eating rules aren’t allowing you to participate freely in life, then I would argue it’s not actually healthy. I have both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in dietetics and nutrition. And I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that you can eat the entire spectrum of food, including things like pizza, potato chips, brownies, ice cream.

You can eat all those foods and still be healthy. You can also eat things like gluten, dairy, seed oils, and all of these things that have been vilified by wellness culture.

So the first thing I want you to do to begin breaking free from the wellness trap is to think about what does it look like to shift from food rules to food freedom. So one of the principles of intuitive eating and one of the things that we’re looking for with food freedom is gentle nutrition. And gentle nutrition is exactly what it sounds like. It is gentle. It is not rigid like this wellness mentality. And oftentimes with wellness culture, it’s all about cutting these things out, cutting out these things that are supposedly bad and processed and toxic and blah blah, blah, all the fear mongering, right?

With gentle nutrition, we tend to focus more on adding and providing your body with what it needs, not on restricting. And the first thing with general nutrition is are you eating enough? Because a lot of times in wellness culture there is this undercurrent of restriction and we’ve normalized this thought process that not eating and under eating are healthy things to do, that somehow that’s improving our nutrition. And it’s crazy when you say it out loud like that. So nutrition means giving and providing your body with nutrients that it needs in order to feel good and function well. And eating all foods can be part of a balanced, healthy life. You don’t have to cut out those foods you love. We can eat those alongside all the other food groups. You know, you can have uh, pizza and have it with a, uh, salad. So now we’ve got carb, protein, fat, we’ve got some fiber, we’ve got all the different food groups represented, we’ve got all the different nutrients coming in there. You can have things like uh, potato chips and maybe we have that as part of a meal or maybe as part of a snack. We also throw in uh, like a cheese stick. So we have some protein. Protein. You can have all foods and still have health and balance and good nutrition.

So the next thing is thinking about, okay, instead of having rigid food rules, we want to practice general nutrition, which is about giving your body, not avoiding things. And we’ve also got to practice noticing and challenging your food rules. In fact, this is exactly what we’re going to do inside my Unchallenge, where we’re intentionally unlearning diet and wellness cultures rules in order to help you create more peace and freedom with food while still taking care of your health. So instead of thinking I have to eat perfectly or I have to eat healthy, you’re going to practice telling yourself, my body can handle a variety of foods. And instead of I can’t eat that, it’s bad for me, you can say, I trust my body to guide me towards balance. Instead of thinking I failed because I ate X food, you can say, all foods can fit into A healthy lifestyle. So we become more balanced and nuanced and flexible in our way of thinking. So we want to shift from food rules to food freedom. That’s the first thing.

And the next thing is let’s redefine health. Because if the way that you’re defining health is based on this image that you’ve got from diet culture and from wellness culture, it’s probably a very restrictive and distorted version of health. We need to keep in mind that health is more than just what food you do or don’t eat like. Sure, that plays a part in health, but we also have to look at the bigger picture. Health is also going to include your mental health, because constant food anxiety is not healthy. Uh, if you’re stressing about food, that is not healthy. Joy and connection. If your food rules are making your world smaller and you’re not able to experience joy of going out.

And, um, I’m thinking of this putt putt golf place, this mini golf place near my house that my son and I love to go to. And a lot of times they have an ice cream shop attached to it. It’s a joyful memory for me to think about going, uh, mini golfing and then grabbing a scoop of ice cream and enjoying it afterwards. Like, if you can’t do those things without feeling stressed out, then your relationship with food is not healthy. Health is also going to include are you sleeping enough? Are you, um, avoiding things like drugs and alcohol and smoking? Are you moving your body in a reasonable way and not overdoing it? Because you can go overboard with that too. Are you getting your preventative care exams from your doctors? Are you following the advice of your doctor? Are you taking medications that have been prescribed for you? And then let’s not forget the social determinants of health, because the biggest predictor of health, frankly, is the amount of money a person has that the poorest people in the world. This is not shocking, right? Have poor health outcomes. We have to acknowledge that there’s a lot of privilege in being able to participate in wellness culture. It’s very expensive. But simply the access to healthcare and the ability to afford a doctor’s visit, the ability to afford medications, the ability to afford fresh food, uh, those are big variables when it comes to health.

So I want you to sit with with this and to even journal about it. How are you defining health and what do we need to shift or broaden about that definition? I also want to remind you that health is not a number on the scale, that we cannot measure how healthy a person is simply by looking at their weight.

Health also needs to include how are your organs functioning? And one of the best ways that we can assess that and gauge that is by blood work. And I really want to challenge you as well to consider are the doctors and the medical providers that you are seeing practicing pseudoscience? Because some of you are getting all this crazy blood work done and they’re making these big claims about it that are not actually rooted and validated with science. So sometimes that’s another part of this health distortion is these underlying assumptions about these medical tests that are allegedly telling you things that are not really a legitimate finding.

Now, I want to give you a few practical steps here before we wrap up to Escape from the Wellness Trap. So, uh, we touched on this, noticing your food rules, challenging them. And when I say challenging your food rules, I mean both mentally, but I also mean like physically challenging it. So if you have a food rule like I shouldn’t eat processed food, we need to mentally challenge that, that your body can handle processed food just fine. And of course, I wouldn’t tell somebody to only eat processed food, but I wouldn’t tell somebody to only eat fresh food either. There’s room for all of it in a healthful eating pattern. So we got to challenge that.

But then another part of it is that you need to go eat some processed food because you can challenge your thoughts all day long, but you need to start incorporating those foods that you feel guilty about eating. So that’s part of it. Uh, reintroducing any of those foods that you’ve cut out. And that may have to be a systematic thing, and you may need a dietitian to help you with that. Because of course, there are times when somebody has a food allergy or a food intolerance or sensitivity, like those are still real things, or somebody might have a functional gut disorder like ibs. And we do need to take a look at that.

So with that piece of things, I would encourage you to work with a non diet dietitian, someone who can help you sift through what’s legit and not legit that you have been doing in terms of your food restrictions. Unfollow, um, the triggering content on social media. We talked about that already, um, getting support. And I just mentioned the dietitian piece. A therapist is another person who can be a great member of the team. I would say probably 90% of my clients that I work with in my private practice also see a therapist. And I team very closely with that therapist. Um, having a community of Support. So there are various support groups online, especially for things like Orthorexia. Uh, there is my intuitive eating Made easy Facebook group. It’s a wonderful, supportive community. If you’re not in there, get inside. It’s a great place to be. But I want you to know you don’t have to do this alone. And a lot of times you need some support that’s outside of wellness culture to be able to help you look at this from a different vantage point.

And then the next thing I want you to do, I want you to go take my free quiz. So if you are recognizing as you’re listening, that you’ve got some work to do on your relationship with food, like, hi, hello. That’s pretty much everyone who lives in our society. So no shade, no shame. But I, uh, want you to get curious about what do you focus your energy on and what are your next steps to take? How do you make peace? How do you find freedom with food? I want you to go take my free quiz. It’s two minutes long. It’s kind of fun to take. And based on your answers, I will send you results that are tailored to where you’re at, what you’re struggling with, what I would recommend that you work on and focus your energy on. So the quiz is called Discovered. Discover your unique path to food freedom. And I’ve linked to it in the show notes. Or you can just go to nondietacademy.comquiz and I will leave you with this.

Your body does not need food rules. It needs trust. You can honor your health and be intentional with your nutrition without micromanaging every bite. And wellness culture has become this branch of diet culture that is so convincing and can be so intoxicating that it can be hard to recognize when we’re in it, when we’re sucked into that trap. And while there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be healthy, when taken to extremes, it can be just as damaging, if not more so, than dieting. And so I want to remind you that food is not meant to be a source of stress, and your worth is not tied to what you do or don’t eat.

If this episode resonated with you, I want you to know you are not alone. I see you, I believe in you, and I want you to know that you can heal your relationship with food. And if you know somebody in your life who needs to hear this message, I want you to share a link to this episode with them.

If you are listening to this because someone shared it with you, it means that they care about you and not that they’re judging you, it means that they care about you and they want you to have peace and freedom with food. And that’s amazing. Don’t forget to go take the free quiz again. It’s nondietacademy.com quiz. I can’t wait for you to dig in to check out your results. If you have any questions about it, or if you want to bounce any ideas off of me, let me know.

And in case nobody has told you today, you are worthy just as you are.

We’ll talk again soon.

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