Author and journalist Rennie Dyball joins us to discuss why she’s reconsidered the rave review of a gut-health diet book she wrote for a major media outlet years ago, why journalists don't often ask critical questions of wellness "experts," why most wellness-diet testimonials you see online are probably wrong, the intersection of wellness culture and breastfeeding, her new book, B Is for Bellies, and lots more.
Rennie Dyball is an award-winning author who has written 16 books and counting, from middle grade novels to celebrity memoirs. She has worked in many areas of media and publishing, and holds a special place in her heart for picture books as a way to connect with the youngest of readers—as well as the adults reading the books aloud. A former writer and editor for People magazine and People.com, Rennie currently reviews books for the brand. She is the managing editor for The Plaid Horse magazine, a lifelong horse lover, a competitive equestrian, and the author of several horse novels. Rennie is also a former diet and wellness culture devotee who is now dedicated to promoting body acceptance in her writing and beyond. Rennie lives in Towson, Maryland, with her husband and two young daughters.
Resources and References
Hear a bonus episode with Rennie about how she avoids getting pulled down wellness rabbit holes online (and what still hooks her), ways to minimize getting targeted with “solutions” to your health concerns, how she sees diet and wellness culture affecting kids, and more.
Rennie’s new book, B Is for Bellies (Bookshop affiliate link) (Amazon affiliate link)
Christy’s new book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
Christy’s online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
Become a Paid Subscriber for bonus episodes and more
Transcript
Disclaimer: While every effort has been made to provide a faithful rendering of this episode, some transcription errors may have occurred. The original audio file is available above.
Christy Harrison: Welcome to Rethinking Wellness, a podcast exploring the Diet Culture, disinformation, dubious diagnoses and disordered eating that are so pervasive in contemporary Wellness culture and how to avoid falling into these traps so that you can find your own true wellbeing. I'm your host Christy Harrison, and I'm a registered dietician, certified Intuitive Eating counselor, journalist, and author of the books Anti-Diet, which was published in 2019 and The Wellness Trap, which came out on April 25th and is now available wherever books are sold. You can learn more and order it now at christyharrison.com/thewellnesstrap.
Hey there. Welcome back to Rethinking Wellness. I'm Christy, and my guest today is author and journalist Rennie Dyball, who has a great new kids book out called B Is for Bellies. She joins us to discuss why she's reconsidered the rave review of a gut health diet book she wrote for a major media outlet years ago. Why journalists don't often ask critical questions of Wellness experts, why many Wellness Diet testimonials you see online are probably wrong, the intersection of Wellness culture and breastfeeding and lots more. A couple of quick content notes. We bleeped out a few weight numbers here because they really aren't necessary to the story and they're potentially activating for listeners in recovery from disordered eating, which is many of you. And at one point early in the interview, Rennie also mentions a weight stigmatizing comment from the obstetrician who delivered her baby in the context of critiquing that comment.
I really enjoyed this conversation, and I can't wait to share it with you shortly. Before I do a few quick announcements, this podcast is made possible by my paid subscribers at rethinkingwellness.substack.com, and a huge thanks to all of them. Not only do paid subscriptions help support the show and keep me able to make the best free content I possibly can, but they also get you great perks like early access to every episode, bonus episodes including one I did with Rennie. This week's guest biweekly bonus Q & A’s subscriber only comment threads where you can connect with other listeners and lots of other cool stuff. Just go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com to learn more and sign up. That's rethinkingwellness.substack.com. This podcast is also brought to you by my new book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation and Dubious Diagnoses, and Find Your True Wellbeing, which is now available wherever books are sold.
The book explores the connections between diet-culture and Wellness culture, how the Wellness space became overrun with scams, misinformation and conspiracy theories, why many popular alternative medicine Diagnoses are misleading and harmful, and what we can do instead to create a society that promotes true wellbeing, just go to ChristyHarrison.com/thewellnesstrap to learn more and buy the book. That's ChristyHarrison.com/thewellnesstrap, or just go into your favorite local bookstore and ask for it there. Now, without any further ado, let's go to my conversation with Rennie Dyball, welcome to the show, Rennie. I'm so happy to have you!
Rennie Dyball: Here. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Christy Harrison: I'd love to start off by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and your relationship with Wellness culture.
Rennie Dyball: Absolutely. So I am the author of a new children's book called B Is for Bellies, A Celebration of Body, and the idea is that the book is, it's alphabetical, so it's 26 little mantras about body acceptance for kids, and I like to say the adults reading aloud to them because we can all use these reminders. I am primarily a children's book author. I'm also an editor. I've been a ghost writer for adult titles as well, and I spent a lot of my career at People magazine and people.com. I was also a decades long diet-culture devotee, and I think that that transitioned smoothly into forays Wellness culture because as you've said, and others have said, Wellness culture is sort of the more well-dressed and perhaps insidious cousin of diet-culture because I think it, it's preying on our insecurities and our desire to be as healthy as possible. So I think after having children, I gave up on strict diets and on really restriction in general, and then I was just a prime candidate to get caught in diets disguised as Wellness. And just this general idea of the morality, I think that's tied up in it that I'm doing better as a mom, as a woman, as a human by prioritizing my Wellness and falling prey to the pretty packages that it comes in.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, absolutely. Can you share a little bit about how those messages hooked you, especially after becoming a mom?
Rennie Dyball: Yeah, I think we live in a culture of a whole lot of mom shaming, quite frankly, and an over productive culture as well. If you're not doing enough, if you're the most, you're not the good mom that you should be. So I certainly fell prey in the beginning to organic everything. Oh, but what about these things that could leach into a baby's food and so I should make my own food? And I was a mom when both my babies were young who worked full-time and didn't have the time for that sort of thing. So the guilt and shame begins there, and I actually, I don't know if you've ever discussed the intersection of Wellness culture and breastfeeding and breast is best, and I think when I had my babies, my girls are six and nine now, I think that it's come a ways since then, but I was convinced in the hospital by the videos that they showed us that formula would poison my babies and that I needed to nurse for as long as possible. So I felt that intersection there. And I think now having done a lot of research, including reading your book and really being able to identify it more and I identify the traps, I think Wellness culture is as insidious as diet-culture, if not more, because of the ways it sneaks up. And even when you're on lookout for it, I think it can get you.
Christy Harrison: I'm so struck by talking to a lot of people who have broken free from diet-culture given up restriction, given up dieting, and kind of sworn it off and seeing all of that for what it is, the problematic nature of anti-fat bias and everything that underlies it. And they're still hooked by things like promises of gut health or promises of health for their baby and the breastfeeding thing. Oh my god, yeah, it's so insidious. The pressure to breastfeed is so real and the idea that formula is poison, it's horrifying to think how many parents have fallen prey to that. You wrote a piece for People Magazine about the ‘Fed is best’ movement, right? I think I saw that.
Rennie Dyball: Yeah. Yeah, I was just going to bring that up. I didn't want it to be too much of a tangent, but I think you're right. And it's absolutely part of this. The ‘Fed is best’ movement works to overcome that messaging that moms are getting from hospital systems. It's a whole program, I want to say it's called a baby friendly hospital or there's a term for it, but basically, it's like anything within diet-culture or Wellness culture where there's, there's a company behind it, there's money involved. And how fed is best came about, at least in the news, was there's a wonderful woman, Jillian, who fell prey to this and wasn't encouraged to give her baby formula in the hospital. She was delayed in getting her milk in, she took the baby home even though the baby had lost weight. And tragically the baby passed away from accidental starvation because she, through no fault of her own, was so brainwashed by this messaging. And so she was lovely and giving enough to tell me her story so that no other mom has to go through something like this. And ‘Fed is best’, has had messaging out for years now that no matter the situation, if your baby is fed, your baby is going to grow and that formula is just fine and that sure breast is best for some, but not for everybody. And feeding your baby is the best thing you can do for them as their parent.
Christy Harrison: I love that messaging so much. And I actually had read some stories about ‘Fed is best’ before giving birth and was sort of prepped for having to really advocate for myself and advocate for formula if I needed it. I even packed some formula for the hospital because I've heard horror stories that they keep it locked up and they won't give it to you, and unless you're really beg and it's a whole fight. And I actually had such a lovely experience, and it was not like that at all. I had to give my daughter formula for the first couple weeks because my milk didn't come in because I had complications from my C-section and wasn't able to breastfeed right away. And within, I don't know, an hour of it becoming clear that I wasn't really, that I was in too much pain to be able to breastfeed her.
I mean probably within a few minutes of that, honestly, a lactation consultant came in and talked to me about it and I can't remember if I brought it up or she did first, but she was like, oh yeah, totally. Let's do this. If you want to breastfeed, we can talk about pumping and you know, can work on your supply that way and maybe be able to breastfeed later. But for now, formula is definitely the way to go, and it was so easy and lovely and I was so grateful to have that experience. Cause I know that's not everyone's experience for sure.
Rennie Dyball: Absolutely. Yeah, nurses that are worth their weight in gold for a new mom.
Christy Harrison: Yes, such a gift. And I know nurses are overworked and have a lot going on, and it's so hit and miss whether you find a nurse who's lovely like that, or a nurse who's going to fight you and be sort of wedded to diet and Wellness culture stuff. And when the shift changed a couple nurses later, because I was in the hospital for a bunch of extra days too, a couple extra days, but the third or fourth nurse we got was super invested in diet and Wellness culture and came in and was talking about basically that we were giving her bad food for giving her formula and that we had to watch her weight and commented on her little squishy face and stuff and it was just, it was awful. So it's never a smooth path, I think, for anyone really.
Rennie Dyball: No, and as another quick aside, sorry to take us off course, but I think you'll appreciate this because it shows up in the medical community in ways that I think we sometimes don't expect. So my second child, I had a lot of complications. I was on hospital bedrest, and she was born in true emergency c-section. From the time I was wheeled into the OR, to the time she was born was 90 seconds.
Christy Harrison: Oh my God.
Rennie Dyball: Yeah. So that time is very, I recall it all quite vividly and there's something that a doctor told me in the NICU that has always stuck with me and upsets me so much, and I hope that bit by bit the medical community is changing for the better. I got to see one of the doctors who was there for her delivery when we were in the NICU kind of getting ready to take her home. We were lucky. She had a very easy time in the NICU. I'm feeling all the love and I said to this doctor one, I don't really remember those early days, but in case I haven't thanked you already, thank you so much. She's healthy, she's perfect, my daughter, I'm so grateful. Thank you for everything. And this doctor said to me, thank you for doing your part as well. When we have a stat C-section like that, when it's a woman like you who is insert the adjective, I don't know if he said trim or thin or fit, mind you, I was very, very sick and probably underweight for me in the hospital because of this complication.
He said, it makes it so much easier to make the incision and get the baby out quickly. You should see some of the patients I have who, again, insert the description, but obviously he was talking about women who live in larger bodies than I do as though that were a strike against them, that I had done something right by having my body look a certain way for him to do his job. And my daughter is going to be seven in September, and I remain horrified that he said that thought that he would compare me to other moms. So yeah, I think at least seven years ago the medical community had a long way to go.
Christy Harrison: I think it still does in so many cases, and that's just horrifying. Why use that moment to say that it's clearly that's something that's so on that doctor's mind weight stigma is so front and center for him that he couldn't help himself basically.
Rennie Dyball: Just Exactly, it must be front and center. Exactly.
Christy Harrison: That's horrifying. Yeah. I'm so curious to talk more about the intersection of Wellness culture and kids, because I know you have some experiences with that too, of having Wellness messaging make you feel guilty about what you're feeding your kids and stuff like that. But before we go there, I'm curious to talk a little bit more about your history personally with Wellness culture. I know you wrote in a piece that you've had mild recurring GI issues for as long as you can remember. And so I'm curious how that played a role in your own relationship with Wellness culture and getting sucked in
Rennie Dyball: For sure. As you said, I think there's a real avenue within Wellness culture about gut health. And I'm not sure if I have IBS, people in my family do, but I've always just thought that I have a sensitive stomach and eating blandly keeps me comfortable, and if I overdo the salads I, I'm not as comfortable to spare any details. So I think that when the messaging pops up, when there's a plan, a book, a whatever that promises to fix the gut, how do you not, here's a way to take care of myself. And of course the messaging is sometimes in there, sometimes not about how much weight you'll lose in the process, but it's just, it's simply preying on things that are not ideal about our personal health, our bodies, here's a way to feel better. It's about the feeling, maybe not the pounds on the scale. So I fell into a lot of those traps in the transition from diet-culture to, Ooh, I'll just be healthier.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. Did you get sucked into any particular sort of styles of eating?
Rennie Dyball: Yeah, I actually, I wrote about this at the time. I did a plan that was supposed to be a reset for your gut, and it was a month long, highly restrictive. It was a diet, of course, I didn't call it that. And going back and reading what I wrote, it's cringy and it's embarrassing now. But I also recognized what I was going for in terms of feeling better, and I did feel better when I did it. The problem is with any diet, it works in the short term, then you've got to live your life. I mean, what I did in that month of cutting out major parts of my diet would never be sustainable in the long term for anybody. But you get this high of I'm fixing myself, I'm getting better. Of course, I was still teetering in the diet-culture then I lost pounds from the plan.
So I was on a high and I thought, of course I'll maintain this. Of course I'll eat more vegetables and there's no need for A, B and C in my diet. And naturally anything else, it all slipped away and I'm back to where I started. And I think now I see that there is, there's no morality in vegetables. I can eat whatever agrees with me. I'm going to eat, I'm going to prepare it in ways that it's palatable to my young kids and beyond that, there is no, I am not superior for eating X amount of vegetables in a day. If I feel good eating what agrees with me, that's what I'm going to do. Not to say there isn't lingering struggle, but I look back on diving into something like that as a failed experiment, really.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. I'm curious about that because I read that piece that you wrote and we talked a little bit about it offline and about how you see things so differently today, and you wrote in the piece about how much better you felt without gluten sugar on this restrictive diet. I'm curious what you think of that now, whether you think you actually did objectively feel a lot better or whether something else was going on.
Rennie Dyball: I have two answers to that. One, I do think I objectively felt better, but I don't think it's for the reasons why this plan convinced me. So I wouldn't have written that I felt better unless I did. I had an old school journalism background and if the plan didn't work for me, I wasn't going to write that. It did. Looking back, I honestly think the difference maker in that plan was that it involved little to no, I think for the first month it was zero caffeine, and that transition from just being an average coffee drinker to no caffeine was so painful between the headaches and the brain fog. I think a life without caffeine can make you feel better. I think it did make me feel better. I also think it's not sustainable. So in hindsight, yes, I felt better, but no, I don't think it had anything to do with cutting out gluten and sugar. I think I wasn't dependent on coffee, so my energy levels didn't swing up and down. That's my take on it all these years later.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, that's so interesting. And I mean, caffeine can affect people with sensitive GI systems, it can have effects as well, and I know it did for me. So I've kind of had a journey with that as well. It's interesting too, to think about these diets and plans that, and functional medicine recommendations and stuff too, where there's a million things you're supposed to do. There's all these foods to cut out, there's all these supplements to take, there's all this additional kind of stuff you're supposed to do, and any one of those little changes might have an impact or might not, or the placebo effect is very real too. And I think just the hope of having something work. And also if you're working with a care provider who's empathetic, there's that part of the placebo effect too. One of the sort of family of placebo effects that is the care effect. All of that can really play a role in people's feeling better. But then instead of saying, well, there's this one maybe evidence-based piece of this or whatever, that that's helping people feel better, it's the whole plan kind of gets the credit. And it's like nobody really knows what, and I've even seen functional medicine and integrative medicine journals write about this, where they're like, it's a holistic plan and you can't separate out the parts. And so the whole plan is what's effective here and that that's what we need to prescribe, not the disparate parts of it.
Rennie Dyball: And isn't that convenient? Right.
Christy Harrison: Isn't that convenient? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And isn't it convenient too that you can't really scientifically test that you can't design an effective placebo that's going to be a placebo for all of the things. And it's an interesting, convenient way to justify all these restrictive things that there may be one part of it that is evidence-based or that is helpful to a particular person, but how do you figure out what that one is when you're loaded up with all these different restrictions?
Rennie Dyball: Exactly. It's not about you can't throw the kitchen sink at yourself and then say it's this, it's that. It just goes to show that doing the whole thing really gives you very little information.
Christy Harrison: Absolutely. The diet also involved a lot of other restrictions, and particularly in terms of times you are allowed to eat and thought that was interesting in your piece. We're not going to link to the piece, by the way, for anyone who's listening because it's just too potentially triggering. And because you've said that you don't really believe in that anymore. But I think it’s an interesting activity to unpack the piece and talk about how you relate to it now. But when you asked the creator of the diet why you were restricted from eating at certain times, she gave you an answer that invoked the gut microbiome and the supposed health of the microbiome from restriction. And I'm curious what you think about that now, because in the piece you wrote something like, can't argue with that or something.
Rennie Dyball: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I remember thinking, oh, okay, well that makes sense. Certainly nothing against this particular expert that I spoke to, but in hindsight, I think I figured this is an expert, this is their expert take. I think since the time of writing the piece we have just as regular people, I think we've all come a long way with learning what research really is during the pandemic. We all did our research, but what is that? Right? So now my follow-up question about the restriction overnight for however many hours in the microbiome, my follow-up question would be like, well, are there peer-reviewed studies to support that or is this your theory or is this something you found anecdotally? There were a lot more follow-up questions there that at the time I didn't know or think to ask.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think you're right that the pandemic has given a lot of people an education on science reporting and sort of how to do it best. Although I still see so much uncritical reporting about nutrition studies and diet studies and weight loss medications and all that stuff too. So I think that really does raise an interesting question though of how journalists are prepared or not prepared to do that sort of digging and follow up with scientists and experts. I think that for me personally, when I went into my career as a journalist right out of college, I hadn't majored in anything to do with science. I majored in Rhetoric and French literature. I was preparing myself for a career in writing and argumentation and ideas, and that was great. It was great preparation for that, but it didn't effectively prepare me to pursue the beats that I ended up pursuing, which were related to nutrition and health and food and digging into the science around different things.
So I did go back to school and get my master's in public health nutrition and my registered dietician's license that I knew that that would be helpful to me in my journalism career. I didn't realize how helpful, and I didn't realize how much I didn't know until I took research methods classes and started looking at Scientific studies in a really detailed way and reading more than just the abstract. And so now I feel like I'm so much more equipped and there's still so much I don't know about statistical methods or that I've forgotten from training and stuff, but at least I feel pretty equipped to ask really critical questions and dig deeper and go beyond the headlines. But I think so many journalists are not trained to do that and not equipped to do that and find ourselves just thrown into the deep end of relying on experts. And I think oftentimes, especially with this gut health stuff, but with a lot of other questions in Wellness culture, it's just such emerging science and there's no good randomized controlled trial evidence to suggest that something is going to be effective for human health and clinical reasons. There might be studies in animals or studies in cell cultures or studies in a few volunteers that are very different from people who didn't volunteer for a study like this.
Rennie Dyball: Yeah, I think it also goes to show that this was not a hard-hitting journalistic piece so much as a personal experiment and resulting diary. But I think what it goes to show is that I wanted this to work. I wanted my GI issues to improve, and I certainly liked the idea of losing pounds. So if this expert told me, oh, you know, can't eat from the hours of X to Y because of your microbiome, I wanted it to be true. So I didn't think to ask follow-ups because that was a good answer. Do you know what I mean? Wanting something to be true within Wellness culture can be very powerful.
Christy Harrison: I so agree, and I think so many journalists and other media people now who are content creators and influencers and stuff like that have their own biases in that way. They have their own investment in diet and Wellness culture. I know I certainly did when I started my career in journalism. That's largely what attracted me to those fields. I think to those beats was my own desire to know more and to do better and better and heal myself or lose weight or whatever it was. I wanted to find the secret to those things and that's why I was drawn to that. And I think that's the case for so many journalists. I always like to talk about that. Cause I feel like it helps people who are consumers of media be more critical of what they read and realize it's humans on the other side of the screen or the paper doing a reporting and those humans have biases that go into it.
Rennie Dyball: Exactly, yep.
Christy Harrison: On that point, it was interesting how you really raved about that diet in the piece and really came away with a positive view of it. So what made you stop doing it? Why wasn't it something that you just kept up with forever if you were raving about it so much?
Rennie Dyball: I think it's like anything else in diet and Wellness culture. I certainly tried, the plan was super restrictive that way for a month, and then it was about reintroducing certain types of dairy and certain types of gluten. So I think I did stick with it for a while, and it just became not reality like any other plan or diet or book I ever tried before. Again, you want it to work. You think this is it. This is the one I can eat X number of vegetables every day. So I did for a while and then life kicks in and there's, there's so many hours in the day, there are so many dollars to go shopping at Whole Foods with. So I think regular life just kind of overtook the desire to stick with this plan that made me feel better. Just like a diet can make you feel better because you feel happier with a smaller body and then life creeps in or restriction ends or what have you, and you go back. You always go back. So in that sense, I don't see it as being any different than any other diet I've ever been on.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, that's really important. When we were talking off mic before you said this line, that was really powerful to me. You said choosing to be on this plan versus choosing life, you ended up choosing life over the plan because it was so restrictive and interfered so much with your life.
Rennie Dyball: And I feel that way about really everything with diet and Wellness, it's something that's so personal and so individual and where I think people get lost and where I've gotten lost is that it doesn't mean you can't have both. I think that I take care of myself, and I invest in Wellness in my own way without spending any money on anybody's product. There's a way to do it for me. There's a way to do it within my life. Wellness is not the right word because that's sort of been hijacked and taken from us, but taking good care of myself, my insides and my outsides and my mental health and all of that, that's the priority now. So choosing life doesn't mean I can't do good things for my body, and I can't figure out ways to feed myself that don't give me a stomachache all day long. There are, I'm just not doing it by anybody else's rules.
Christy Harrison: I love that distinction. That's really important. I also think it's so important for people to hear how far you've moved away from the sort of positive view that you had of this plan when writing that piece. Because there are so many of these articles and social media posts out there where somebody is raving about a diet and how much better their gut feels or how much weight they've lost or how much less tired they feel or whatever it is. But those things are a snapshot in time and it really doesn't last. And it's also just an one of one, right? A sample size of one. Exactly. When somebody's writing about that, it's not peer reviewed Scientific research. So there's so many other things that could be at play for the person, whether it's placebo effect or stumbling into something, one aspect of the plan that actually is helpful to them, but everything else is not, or all the stuff we talked about.
And so seeing those sort of testimonial pieces, I think it's really powerful for people when they read them though, because it's like, well, this worked for this person. We're so drawn to stories. Humans are just, I think stories rather than science and evidence and sort of hard facts are really in a lot of ways what compels us and what motivates us in some sense to try different things. And so when people read these kind of testimonial articles, it's just worth remembering not only that this is not science, and that scientific evidence really is what can kind of separate out what actually works from the placebo effect. But also these testimonial articles are a snapshot in time that someone might be discovering online long after the writer abandoned the diet or the plan long after the writer came around to seeing that it wasn't actually as helpful as they had thought when they wrote it. And so I think that your story and unpacking this piece is really important in that sense too.
Rennie Dyball: Yeah, I'd venture to say most of those testimonial stories that live online forever, they have a part two, they have a PS, and I'd love to update that story. I can't do that anymore, but I do think that it's yet another grain of sand that we take these things with is to read these stories and go, okay, but then what it's like when you read a review on Amazon and then the person comes back and gives their long term follow up, that's to be trusted more than that snapshot high of, I bought this product and I love it, five stars versus the person who writes that review and then comes back a year later and says, actually, this was supposed to last me five years and it died at nine months, so my new review is one star. That's what I'm doing with you. I'm taking this plan from my previous glowing review to my, yeah, I don't think this is what I thought it was,
Christy Harrison: Which is so worth it. I think it's really important to do that kind of unpacking and you are able to do that as a journalist having written this stuff down in a public forum. But I think even people listening who haven't necessarily shared publicly about their diet experiences might be able to look back through old journals or just think about what they thought about a particular plan at the time, and then how they now think of it and kind of revise their thinking. And I find that sometimes when people do that, there's this sort of shame or this sense of guilt. I didn't do it right. I couldn't keep up with the plan. Life got in the way, I committed harder, but I failed. I do. I couldn't do it. And even if it's kind of like, yeah, well I, I'm choosing life over the plan. I feel like sometimes people say that with a sense of chagrin or shame. It's like, oh, well I couldn't do it. Maybe someone else could choose life and this plan, but I wasn't strong enough.
Rennie Dyball: And I certainly used to feel that way. Yeah.
Christy Harrison: How do you see that now? How do you feel about it now?
Rennie Dyball: I used to look back on things like that and say, wow, great start, but you couldn't stick with it. It's like we are all our own worst critics in every way, but I think the important reminder is that on a wellness plan we are set up to fail—otherwise the industry would not continue to make money hand over fist. So the victory for me now, it used to be a source of shame for sure. The victory of me now looking back at that is to say even smart people, even well-meaning smart, educated people fall into the traps. I am now out of it, and I won't fall for it again. That's the win.
Christy Harrison: That's huge. And to remember too, that you are a well-meaning educated, smart person that doesn't take anything away from you to have fallen into this. Because I think there is also a sense of if you start to see these things critically, then oftentimes I went through this too. It's like you're beating yourself up for not having seen it sooner. How did I miss the signs or whatever.
Rennie Dyball: Definitely. Yeah.
Christy Harrison: I think we're all vulnerable for various reasons. We all have our things that were not being served in the conventional healthcare system by, or the pressures that are put on us by diet culture to look a certain way or whatever.
Rennie Dyball: And that's why these industries are so successful because even with our best efforts, it, it's something that strikes many of us.
Christy Harrison: It preys on our vulnerabilities, and we all have them.
Rennie Dyball: And it's hard to overcome that.
Christy Harrison: I feel like having written a book about Wellness culture and doing this podcast and having talked about the problems with Wellness for 10 years now on my other podcast and other writing and stuff, I still find myself when I'm looking to unpack the science around a particular thing, oftentimes I'll go in and be like, oh, okay, I'm really skeptical here, but sometimes I'm like, oh God, is this, have I been missing something? Is this the key? Is the thing I need to feel better? And then inevitably, I kind of do the research methods kind of thing of unpacking the research and seeing what's really there. And I'm like, okay, no, I don't have to feel like that.
Rennie Dyball: And it's so reassuring that even somebody with your credentials, I mean, that's just how good it is and just how insidious it is your image with the snake. I mean, we are fighting something that can be stronger than us and sneakier than us. So I think I try to give myself grace too. If I go down a rabbit hole with something even now, and you get that flash of, oh wait, no, this is it. This is outside of Wellness culture. This is a real thing. This is going to make me feel better. But being at a place where you can stop and not follow the Trap and not spend the money on the plan again, is where the victory lies.
Christy Harrison: Yes, totally. Just having that little space to make the decision and to take a breath,
Rennie Dyball: Take that pause. Exactly.
Christy Harrison: Something that just popped into my head as we were talking was that I've been working on a little piece, or I don't know what it's going to be, but just kind of doing my own, doing my research on AI and health misinformation and how the AI platforms are handling health questions right now. And it's striking to see the sort of fabrications and hallucinations that are coming up in some of these AI systems. Just to kind of see what it would do with some of the questions I get from listeners. I gave it with also preserving privacy. I didn't let chat G P T learn from my chats, but I fed it a couple questions to see what it would say, and I was trying to get it to write the answers in different ways. And one prompt I gave it was referring to scientific research in PubMed, linking to your sources, please answer this question.
And it gave this very convincing answer and had sources linked, and this happened multiple times that I tried this with various questions with that same prompt, and it would come back with a plausible sounding answer and then a link to a scientific study in PubMed. And then I would click through to that, and the study would have nothing to do with what was claimed. It would be completely different on a completely different topic. And I was like, okay, is it somehow looking through the references of this study? Is it looking at, I would get the full text of the study and try to comb through to see is there any relevance here whatsoever? And it was just not at all, and it felt, it seems to be maybe a hallucination that then it's grabbing some random link to try to justify that hallucination. But that's truly terrifying when you think about what AI is going to be used for pretty soon and is already in development where it's like doctors are starting to use it to communicate with patients and websites are starting to use it to give people supposedly credible information and
Rennie Dyball: Yet another scary way that this is all unfolding.
Christy Harrison: And if you didn’t have that extra few minutes to click through and see what it actually said, you might be tempted to just be like, okay, well, there's a PubMed study. I know it's real, so I'm going to move on and trust that that's accurate.
And I actually see that even in the absence of AI, I see that happening a lot in Wellness culture with big name people in functional medicine spaces. Won't name any names, but I've seen this many times now where these people will be blogging about something and have a supposed reference to support the claim that they're making, and then you click through to the actual study that they're supposedly using to reference it, and it's nothing to do with the claim. It has no bearing on what's being claimed.
And so that's scary to think that we have to be so vigilant, and most of us don't have the time, and even people who are super educated on this stuff don't have the time. Often. I only found this because I was doing this research specifically on this question, but if I was just kind of skimming the internet, I probably put these blog posts in a certain bucket of, okay, this is dubious information. This is not something I trust. But if someone came to me and was like, well, what about the evidence on this? And they quoted from one of those pieces, I might be like, oh God, I better look to PubMed. Maybe I missed a study. I don't know.
Rennie Dyball: Yeah.
Christy Harrison: So it's truly wild how much misinformation is out there and how easy it is for us to all get sucked into it.
Rennie Dyball: And how much work we have to do now to avoid it.
Christy Harrison: So much work. Yeah, it's a minefield. That brings me to talking about your career in journalism and working at People magazine because you were there for 15 years, and I can imagine there was some really wild celebrity diets and Wellness plans and stuff that you came across. How did diet and Wellness culture show up in your work there?
Rennie Dyball: I think I was already very steeped in it throughout college, just wanting to be the smallest I could be, frankly, the best looking I could be. It was like that was part of, it's a little embarrassing to say now, but at the time, it felt like it was part of my personality and part of my worth to work out a whole lot and restrict enough to be the size that I wanted. So I got my job at People right out of college. A matter of days I started, so I went from doing it on my own as a 22-year-old new college graduate to living and working in New York City and covering celebrity cultures, starting at a time that it was a very different landscape. I mean, we were still doing the best and worst dressed, and sometimes the people who landed on the worst dress list were there because of the way their body looked in the clothes and it didn't match the ideal.
We had a half their size issue every year to coincide with New Year's, and I don't blame people as a brand for a minute when it comes to any of this stuff because that's where the culture was at the time. That is the information people wanted to consume, and if they didn't get it from people, there was a million other places you could get it from. So certainly not knocking the brand in any way, but being 22, being very concerned with how my body looked, and it was like diet-culture on steroids to be immersed in these photos and working on these stories and having tangible information from celebrity dieticians and personal trainers that I would interview them, and I would have the quotes and it felt like I had these special secrets. Then I remember I was getting married several years into my career at People, and it felt like I had all the tools to be the skinniest bride I could be, and I remember just how important that seemed.
Even just looking at photos of very thin celebrities day in and day out. It just does something to your brain surrounding yourself with that kind of thing. And I see such a difference now with the advice from authors and digital creators to curate your social media to see what you want to see. And if an account or a person or whatever is making you feel bad about yourself, that's an unfollow, and you follow the things that make you feel good and you see the things you want to see. When I started at People, there was no social media, not to age myself here, but I started my job there at 2002. So whereas my peers outside of celebrity media were just living their lives and consuming this in a way and in a frequency that they wanted to consume it, I was surrounded by it at work all day every day. So I think it's, it exacerbated everything that was already there in me.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I can totally imagine that. It sounds like a minefield for someone with disordered eating and body image struggles. What do you think now about the stuff that you saw there, the celebrity diets and information from those nutritionists and stuff? Do you still feel like that's in your head somewhere and you're kind of fighting to get it out? Or have you just let it all go or somewhere in between?
Rennie Dyball: I think I've let it all go, and I think part of the reason that I've been able to is because I was getting at before, it was a time and a place. I think that certainly People, but really all the magazines that remain on the news stand, I think everybody has dialed back and it's less intense. I remember the transition at People when we went from a Best and Worst Dressed list to just a Best Dressed list. That transition was many, many years ago that we said, this is going to be a positive. That's not to say that 95% of the celebrities that we featured on the Best Dressed list, that super thin ideal, but no, really it feels like I was steeped in it and then I left the company to pursue my own work as an author and editor, and I just dropped it. That type of media that I consume now, I think it's a lot better. I think media in general probably still has a long way to go. I think the culture has a long way to go, but I do think incrementally we're making good changes.
Christy Harrison: I agree. Just the egregious stuff and the egregious cover lines about X pounds in X days or best and worst dressed or whatever, the half their size list, all of that stuff doesn't seem to be happening so much anymore. And that's progress.
Rennie Dyball: To Jessica Simpson's memoir on Audible, and it brought me right back to those covers that People and plenty of other brands did when she was the subject of some unflattering photos. Frankly, I think that's all it was, and the headlines about her mom jeans and her weight gain and her body then and now, and I just remember feeling, listening to this memoir being like, wow, I was part of that machine. But again, it's giving myself, for me personally, I feel like I have to give myself grace in in the same way that I do with my disordered eating and all the dieting over all those years. It was a different time. And now being able to make so much of my work, particularly my work with children about body acceptance and a counter messaging for diet and Wellness culture has been so fulfilling and really just makes me feel so much better about the trajectory. Yes, I was part of that very loud noise. A lot of us were, was it right? No. Was it a time and a place? Yes. Am I doing the opposite now and putting some good into the world? I hope so. That's the goal.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, absolutely. And where are you now in your relationship with Wellness culture personally?
Rennie Dyball: I think for the most part, I am able to see it for what it is, which makes me personally very proud and empowered. I feel like I have a lot of agency now that I didn't have before, and again, I'm so reassured that you do this too. There are certainly occasions where something sneaks in part of me wonders if it's this idea that our phones are listening to us, because I just this week saw something that tapped into a personal issue that I have, and it gave me that moment of, oh, wait, I should do that before I dismissed it. I have chronic tailbone pain as a result of pelvic floor dysfunction. So for a long time I went to a pelvic floor physical therapist, and she helped me so much, and I think it's 90% better, and that's as better as it's going to get.
But so I know the inner workings of the pelvic floor having had two children and now this new pain condition that is under control. But what I just this week saw was an ad for this program where you heal and strengthen your pelvic floor. Right? Wellness culture screaming here. I didn't notice quite yet. And then it showed, and as a result, and it was these before and after photos of women from the side showing what their Bellies looked like before the pelvic floor and after. And I went, well, I mean, still need to get 10% better with my pelvic floor problem, and if I do this plan, I'm also going to get a flatter stomach, which I've always wanted. So it didn't last long, I'd say it was a few minutes of getting sucked in. And then I went, wow. I feel like I was personally targeted with something that I'm very familiar with and this spin on it where we're going to heal it, and as a result, you're going to look so much better in a bathing suit. So I got to say bravo, hats off. You almost got me. But I'm not buying in. If my pain continues, I'm going back to my physical therapist not falling for this.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. Oh my God, that is, yeah, they really have our number sometimes with these pitches,
Rennie Dyball: So it's the occasional rabbit hole, I would say.
Christy Harrison: Right, right. Yeah. But it sounds like you have a, it's a pretty short distance from starting to fall down that rabbit hole to coming out.
Rennie Dyball: Yes. I'm fighting the good fight.
Christy Harrison: Well, I could talk to you forever, but I want to make sure we have some time to do our bonus episode as well. So we'll start to wrap up here, but people can listen to the bonus episode for more. Cause I definitely want to dig in a bit more to the rabbit hole issue and how you find your way out and some other things that we discussed and your whole work in the equestrian world and how body shame and weight stigma show up there, which we haven't even touched on yet. So lots more to come in that bonus episode. But for now, I'd love for you to tell us about your new children's book, B Is for Bellies. What inspired you to write that?
Rennie Dyball: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I always say B Is for Bellies was born in a grocery store one day when my older daughter was seven and we were walking down an aisle together and a great song came on in the grocery store, which seems to happen when you're over 35 or 40. He suddenly recognized the music in there, and I did a little dance with the grocery cart as you do, and my daughter had these big wide eyes and looked horrified, and I thought, oh, this is so funny. This is the first time I'm embarrassing her because she's seven. And that hadn't really happened yet, but it was actually something much bigger than that, and I think much worse than that. Her eyes all big. She said to me, mommy, something is jiggling as though that were the worst thing a body could do. And I needed to stop immediately before someone saw.
And I'll be honest with you, my first reaction to this was, oh crap, what's jiggling on me? How do I fix it? That the knee jerk reaction was like, oh no. But I did not say that out loud to her. I instead said, what's wrong with the body jiggling? And she got a little clammed up and was like, I don't know. And I said, I, it's okay. I said, but just so you know, bodies jiggle sometimes body parts jiggle when you move and there's nothing wrong with that. And she was like, okay. And we picked out her cereal or whatever, but I couldn't stop thinking about it because I have always made it such a priority with my girls to keep my body image issues to myself. I don't say negative things about my body or what I'm eating or anything like that in front of them.
This is my struggle for me, for my therapist, for my friends, not from my young daughters who are watching everything I do also, since they were very young, have made a point that when people compliment them on their looks, this is my next picture book that comes out in 2025. When people compliment on their looks, I would say, thank you. And you know what? She is really smart, and she is really strong or insert the adjective. And we do that at home too. If it comes up, I look so pretty in this dress like, yes, you do, but what's more important than being pretty? And my little girls recite smart, strong, kind, caring. So I have always worked very hard at putting that in their little heads. So when my seven-year-old was horrified by the jiggling, I thought, okay, so if this isn't coming from me, diet-culture has its claws in her and she's in second grade.
Wow, this starts sooner than I thought. So I dove into the research, it's what I do as a writer, and I read that the perception of thin is good. Fat is bad among children can start as early as preschool. So it was like by second grade she didn't have a chance. So I went home, and I wrote down, J is for jiggle, bodies bounce when they move. When you're dancing, parts wiggle, get into the groove. And then I was like, I want to do a letter every letter of the alphabet with an affirmation like this to steer my seven-year-old in the right direction. And also try to get these ideas into my four-year-old before the culture and the world get to her. Because I think that we start this conversation with children too late. I think they've already had plenty of experience with diet culture, with body shaming by the time it comes up in conversation.
So my idea was let's start sooner. Let's start with the youngest of readers who have an adult reading aloud to them. And in the process, I would like to share these messages with the adult reading because I think we could all stand to hear them. So that's how B Is for Bellies was born. I'm so thrilled with how the illustrations turned out. And the book is about more than just size and shape. We worked really hard to represent any kid who is reading it. We want them to see themselves on the page. So we have an array of races, sizes, shapes, abilities, gender expressions, you name it. We wanted it to be on the page so that every kid see sees themself. So it is out July 11th, and I just couldn't be more pleased and I'm so excited to get it into people's hands.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I'm so excited to read it to my daughter. Honestly. I read the galley of it online and I'm going to get a copy, a physical copy to read to her because she's under two. But I want to make sure that because of that research, what you said, the fact that by preschool they already have picked up on the good and bad rhetoric.
Rennie Dyball: The biases.
Christy Harrison: The biases. And I think framing things in a positive way you do in that book and some other children's books we have do is really helpful because I don't want to present anything to her that's like too over her head or she doesn't exactly, yeah, understand her that's going to make her scared or anything like that. But just to reinforce the positivity of difference in diversity in size and shape and skin color and gender and all the rest is really important.
Rennie Dyball: Yeah, that's my hope is that if a child really learns to accept themselves, everything about themselves, that it will be easier for them to accept other people no matter how they might look or how matter, no matter how different they may look than the child.
Christy Harrison: I love that. Well, the title of this podcast is Rethinking Wellness, and the last question I've been asking my guest recently is what does Rethinking Wellness mean to you and how are you doing that in your life right now?
Rennie Dyball: I've been thinking about that question, and for me, really it all comes down to, borrow a line from Marie Kondo sparking joy and bringing joy into your life. The best kind of place I have to describe it is my daughters, again, are six and nine, and they both love to swim and they're on our community swim team, and they just love it. And I'm so happy seeing them do something they love. And they taught me recently how to do all these strokes correctly. I mean, I can tread water and I can get myself from point A to point B in the water, but I don't know how to time my strokes with my kicks and freestyle. So my kids were teaching me, and it was exhausting. It was a great workout. I no longer work out for calorie burning. I work out for how good I feel inside and out after I do it.
And I was joking around with them about not only how tired I was, but how hungry I was afterward. And they were like, so we know. So we went home from the pool that day and I made us a big hearty lunch and we spent lunch talking about how great swimming is and how much they love their races and their meets. And it made me think, this is how we're doing Wellness in this house. It is good to move your body. It is good for you in your mind, in your brain, and for your body to do something like this. And we are always going to find ways that it feels good, and it brings us joy. Same thing with food, and no parent is perfect. We never think we're doing it right, but in this particular area, I think I'm doing something right and I just hope I can keep it up by finding the joy and being well that way.
Christy Harrison: I love that. Thank you so much for that and everything you shared, this was such a great conversation. We're going to jump into the bonus episode, so paid subscribers can listen to us talk some more about all these topics and stuff that we haven't touched on yet. But for everyone else who's listening, can you just let people know where they can find you and find your book and learn more about your work?
Rennie Dyball: Yeah. Well, thanks so much for having me. First off, the book is B Is for Bellies, a celebration of everybody. It's on sale July 11th, wherever you buy books. And for more about me, you can visit my website renniedyball.com. That's www.renniedyball.com.
Christy Harrison: Amazing. We'll put links to that in the show notes as well so people can find it. Thank you so much again, it's been lovely talking with you.
Rennie Dyball: Thank you. Same to you.
Christy Harrison: So that is our show. Thanks so much to our amazing guest for being here and to you for tuning in. If you've enjoyed this conversation, I'd be so grateful. If you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. You can also support the show by becoming a paid subscriber for just a few bucks a month with a paid subscription. You unlock great perks like bonus episodes subscriber only Q & As, early access to regular episodes and much more. Sign up now at rethinkingwellnes.substack.com. That's rethinkingwellness.substack.com. If you have any burning questions about Wellness trends, diet fads, or anything else we cover on the show, send them my way at ChristyHarrison.com/wellnessquestions for a chance to have them answered in the Rethinking Wellness newsletter or even on a future podcast episode.
And if you're looking to heal your relationship with food and break free from diet and Wellness culture, I'd love for you to check out my online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals. You can learn more and enroll now at ChristyHarrison.com/course. That's ChristyHarrison.com/course. Rethinking Wellness is executive produced and hosted by me, Christy Harrison. Mike Leland is our audio editor and sound engineer, and an administrative support was provided by Julianne Wotasik and her team at A-Team Virtual. Our album Art was created by Tara Jacoby, and our theme song was written and performed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Thanks again for listening. Take care.
