Katy here, and welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body. I remember getting the call as I was walking in the middle of campus at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where I did my undergrad. I answered my phone, and it was the nurse from the student health center where I had my labs drawn a few days prior calling to let me know that my cholesterol was high. 

My stomach sank and my heart started racing. I felt scared, because I understood that high cholesterol is not a great thing, and I was confused as well. Here I was, studying dietetics, and in the trenches of my own diet mentality, and I was very dedicated to what I considered “healthy” eating (which was mostly low fat because we were still in that era). And I was still forcing myself to go to the gym at the student rec center almost every day, so I was exercising a ton. How on earth could my cholesterol be high? 

The nurse proceeded to recommend that I follow a low fat diet. I practically hung up on her after I informed her that my diet was about as low fat as humanly possible. (This should have raised red flags, but it didn’t, and no further questions were asked.) I hardly drank alcohol compared to most of my friends, and I ate a lot of fiber from fruits and vegetables. I was already doing what I was being taught to recommend to people with high cholesterol. 

Fast forward to back in March of 2025, and I had my annual physical, and my labs came back showing elevated cholesterol, again. In fact, never has my cholesterol been normal any time I’ve had it checked. 

This episode is about not only what I am doing from a lifestyle standpoint to navigate my high cholesterol as a dietitian, but as an intuitive eater myself. AND more important than my specific behaviors, it’s about the mindset and the thought process I have behind my strategies.

I’ll be using myself as a bit of a case study to help you see what it looks like in real life to honor your health, and any bloodwork that comes back wonky, or medical concerns that you might have. Or maybe you have family history of certain things like diabetes or high blood pressure, and you are wanting to make sure you’re taking good care of yourself. I’m going to help you see how this absolutely fits right in with IE and how you can think about this in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you are straddling the line between dieting and IE.  

And if you know someone in your life who needs to hear this, who is trying to take care of their health and they’re having trouble seeing how they can do this without following some crazy restrictive diet – be a friend and share this with them. So many people have been made to feel like they can’t eat carbs if they have diabetes, or they can’t have any salt if they have hypertension, or they can’t have fat if they have high cholesterol, and that’s not true. Let’s spread the word to help the people we care about see, and to help YOU see that you can honor your health and any medical concerns without rigid rules or categorically cutting things out. 

Really quick – if you’re listening to this in real time when it comes out, make sure you join us inside my FB group for the 3-day live series on body image and intuitive eating.

Before we dive into our main topic for today, you know what time it is…We’ve 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: Wellness shots

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing these all over social media. It’s these little vials of what looks like juice that people are calling “wellness shots” and my Woo Radar went off immediately, but then I paused to tell myself not to write it off without looking into what’s actually in it and whether there’s any evidence to support it. I lean towards skepticism with this stuff, and one of the good things about doing this segment is it has led me to do a deep dive on stuff like this rather than just writing it off blindly. (Although, sometimes it’s painful to go down the Wellness Woo rabbit hole. It’s a strange place at times.)

Wellness shots are these small concentrated containers of liquid that can contain a variety of substances, and it’s usually the juice from fruits and veggies, with some herbs and spices added. All of this is allegedly supposed to give you energy and a boost of wellness from the nutrients and antioxidants inside.

A common concoction might be lemon juice. ACV (which I’ve already covered as Woo), turmeric, and ginger. 

It’s essentially a concentrated version of a cold pressed juice (which I’ve also already covered as Wellness Woo).

Do these wellness shots have health benefits? Sure, to the extent that consuming any fruit or vegetable does. The rest of this stuff they’re adding is questionable and a lot of it has pretty limited data to support it, like the ACV. 

But I would argue that if drinking something like this is giving you a significant boost in nutrients you’re not already getting from food, then you need to be eating more foods with these nutrients in the first place.

There are all of the usual wellness culture claims attached to wellness shots:

• Improved immunity
• Better digestion
• Reduced inflammation
• Enhanced energy
• …All nebulous claims that are very subjective and can’t really be proven, right? How convenient…

At my local grocery store, HyVee (shoutout to my midwest peeps who love their HyVee), a single wellness shot costs $3.49. That’s 1 serving. Not cheap if you were going to drink one of these daily (that would end up being $104 for a 30 day supply…think about what else you could do to MEANINGFULLY improve your health for $100 per month…) 

Another issue I have with these is that they are marketed with the impression that it covers you if you don’t eat enough fruits and veggies. Like you don’t need to worry about that if you drink this. And that’s not how it works. You’re missing out on the fiber, the fullness, the satiety, and the satisfaction that can come from f/v. The fiber in particular we need for our gut health. (That said, it is possible to get too much fiber, so don’t be going to extremes, ok?) But my point is that wellness shots are just a marketing gimmick that doesn’t do what it says it does, and de-incentivizes you from eating actual fruits and veggies. Just eat normal food, and if you want some juice drink some normal juice. You don’t need to be paying exorbitant amounts for these so-called wellness shots.

I searched PubMed and couldn’t find any studies on wellness shots. Sure, you could look up studies on the individual components – but there was nothing I came across that even looked at these shots as an intervention. 

Do plant-based foods like fruits and veggies have great nutrients with health benefits? Yes. Do you need to be drinking wellness shots to get those nutrients? Probably not. Especially not for the cost. There are so many other ways to get those nutrients as part of normal eating, and a lot of the claims they’re making about these wellness shots are made up and theoretical BS. 

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, send it to me at rebuildingtrustwithyourbody@gmail.com. 

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…How I’m Navigating My Own High Cholesterol as a Dietitian and Intuitive Eater

What I Could Have Done…and Why I Didn’t

• As soon as I saw those numbers, the old diet-culture thoughts came flooding in. Like… ‘Maybe I should stop eating cheese. Maybe it’s time to give up eggs. Maybe I should track my food again just to see what I’m ‘really’ eating.’
• There was a part of me that wanted to go into full-blown nutrition bootcamp mode. The ‘perfect’ cholesterol-lowering protocol. I started mentally sorting foods into ‘safe’ and ‘dangerous’—even though I know that’s not how bodies work.
• Being a dietitian gave me tools and knowledge I’m grateful for. But it also made me more vulnerable to that all-or-none thinking. In school I was trained on what helps cholesterol and what makes it worse…so of course my brain went there.
  “I had to actively remind myself: Knowledge is powerful, but when it’s weaponized against your own body, it stops being helpful.
• I know I’m not the only one. Maybe you’ve been told your blood pressure is creeping up, or your blood sugar, or your weight. And your first instinct is to panic, restrict, overhaul everything – and that doesn’t work as a sustainable strategy for your health. 

How I’m Actually Navigating This 

• What I’m adding in (vs cutting out)
  • Soluble fiber – Metamucil which binds LDL and helps excrete it
  • Fiber and plant stanols and sterols from fruits and veggies, as well as whole grains, nuts, beans
  • Unsaturated fats and omega-3s – using oil rather than butter when possible
• Additional non-diet strategies I’m applying
  • Movement – I have always preferred cardio, but these past couple of years after doing pelvic floor PT I’ve also embraced strength training
  • Stress management
  • Sleep
• I’ve talked with my doctor about whether i need a statin, and based on my 10 year risk score, I don’t need one at this time – but if and when I do, I will take it without hesitation. 
• Emphasize flexibility: “This isn’t about perfection. It’s about partnership and working with my body, not against it.

The Mindset Work

• What it’s like to manage health stuff without falling back into black-and-white thinking – you’ve got to keep the bigger picture in mind
• How you’re redefining what “healthy” means for you now
  • I can go to the lake with my friends and eat hot dogs and puppy chow
  • I can intentionally pair a fruit or veggie with most of my meals to add color, texture, flavors and fiber – which I do in ways that are satisfying to me rather than forcing myself to choke down things for “health”
  • I remind myself that I’m already doing so many of the supportive things, and at a certain point it’s out of my hands from a lifestyle standpoint, and if what I’m going behaviorally with food, sleep, movement and stress management doesn’t keep my numbers in a safe range, then I may need the support of medication at some point. Medications are a wonderful gift and tool. Statins in particular (and blood pressure meds, and blood sugar meds) can be life saving.
• Address fear and pressure around “doing it right” as a professional in this space
• Staying grounded in self-compassion and trust that even if my cholesterol gets worse, or I have another health issue emerge, I can tend to it and take the necessary steps for my health. 

What I Want You to Know

• If you are navigating a health worry or a medical diagnosis, it’s ok to have feelings about it
  • You might feel scared or anxious about your health – let this be your north star that is guiding you to address what’s going on rather than ignore it. If you had no feelings about your health, you probably wouldn’t be very motivated to take care of it.
  • You might feel shame and anger towards yourself – this isn’t helpful.
• Approach your health from a place of curiosity, not fear. There are SO MANY non-diet things we can do through the lens of gentle nutrition as part of the intuitive eating process that will meaningfully improve your health.
  • Just the other day a listener (you know who you are!) DM’d me and shared that she had taught her husband some of the strategies that I teach regarding food pairings and blood sugar, and since then his blood sugar has improved dramatically as a result of this. It went from being I think in the 200’s (which is high), to the low 100’s (which is great). 
• I want to reassure you of this: You can care for your health without abandoning your relationship with food or your body.
  • If you’re curious about how to do this, go take my free 2-minute quiz called Discover Your Unique Path to Food Freedom, and after you answer a few questions I’ll send you some custom results based on your answers that are going to outline for you what you need to focus on right now and what elements of intuitive eating are going to be most beneficial for you based on where you’re currently at, along with some tips and resources that will help you. (nondietacademy.com/quiz)
• I would LOVE to hear your experience with navigating health, and how that has impacted your relationship with food. Send me a message – (DM, email, etc.)

That’s a wrap for this episode. Thanks for listening, and in case nobody has told you today – you are worthy just as you are. We’ll talk again soon.

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