Writer and ex–wellness influencer Lee Tilghman joins us to discuss how she got into wellness influencing in the first place (and the role of her eating disorder in that process), how it affected her mental well-being to be so wrapped up in wellness for work, what it’s been like to leave influencing, her upcoming book about influencer culture, tips for shifting your relationship with social media, and more.
Lee Tilghman is a blogger, writer, creator, and speaker who has had many internet evolutions over the last decade and a half. Her blogs, For the Love of Peanut Butter and Lee From America, both reached mass audiences through her food photography, essays, relatable content, and honesty. She is currently working on her first memoir, which explores her time as an influencer and why she stepped away from thousand-dollar brand deals to find sanity again. Be sure to check out her Substack newsletter, Offline Time.
Resources and References
Christy’s latest book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
Lee’s New York Times profile
Lee’s website
Lee’s Substack
Lee’s Instagram
Amelia Hruby’s upcoming workshop series for business owners who are considering leaving social media (not mentioned in the episode, but a great resource that’s very aligned). Use the code CHRISTY to take 10% off your ticket!
Christy’s online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
Subscribe on Substack for bonus episodes and more
Transcript
Disclaimer: The below transcription is primarily rendered by AI, so 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 dietitian, 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 Lee Tilghman, an ex-wellness influencer who is now thinking and writing critically about influencer culture. We discuss how she got into wellness influencing in the first place (and the role of her eating disorder in that process), how it affected her mental well-being to be so wrapped up in wellness for work, what it’s been like to leave influencing, her upcoming memoir about life as an influencer and life beyond it, tips for shifting your relationship with social media, and more.
This was a great conversation, and I can’t wait to share it with you. And just a heads up that there are a couple of minor mentions of eating-disorder behaviors in the context of discussing Lee’s recovery.
Before we dive into the interview, a few quick announcements. This podcast is made possible by my paid subscribers at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. 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, biweekly bonus Q&As, subscriber-only comment threads where you can connect with other listeners, and lots more. Just go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com to sign up.
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 Well-Being, 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 well-being. 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.
Also, this was not mentioned in the episode, but if you want a great resource that’s very aligned with the topic of today’s interview, check out Amelia Hruby’s upcoming workshop series for business owners who are considering leaving social media. Use the code CHRISTY to take 10% off your ticket!
Now, without any further ado, let’s go to my conversation with Lee Tilghman.
Lee, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to talk with you for Rethinking Wellness.
Lee Tilghman: Oh, me too, Christy.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, this is going to be so great. I've been following your work for a long time. You've had this whole journey as a blogger and Wellness influencer, and then you got help for your eating disorder and then you left influencing altogether and you're now critical of influencer culture, and I'm really, really interested in the work you're doing. There's so much in your story that I think resonates with me and with the themes we cover in this podcast. So I want to try to explore all of that as much as we can in this hour. But I'd love to start out by talking a bit about your history with Wellness culture. How did you first start to get into it and what led you to become a Wellness influencer?
Lee Tilghman: Well, I think what drove me to Wellness was a curiosity that I've just always had and the promise that wellness's promise that there was something better. I remember my first brush with Wellness, or really when I started to get into it was in 2013 when I would read the blogs and Instagram accounts of these vegan bloggers who were super tan and thin and eating only papayas and bananas. I was like, wow, that looks so, and they were saying how it helps their eyesight and their kids don't have to have glasses anymore, vegan, these crazy claims where I was like, wow, that's so interesting. But I also feel like before then, while even in college, I summered at an organic farm and that was my first kind of introduction. I wouldn't call that even Wellness, but just I've always been interested in the natural world and I've always been kind of a nature girl, and so I feel like it was just the perfect kind of path to find, oh, there's alternative ways of living a very non-conventional, and I was really drawn to that. And I also, one summer I worked at an organic grocery place in my hometown as a way to make money during college. So all those little kind of intros.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, that is a real slippery slope into Wellness culture. I feel like both the organic farming kind of world, and that's where I came into it as well. I worked in environmental journalism. I was really into the environmental movement of college and worked at one of the orgs doing canvassing for environmental causes and went into journalism right after graduating, but got into environmental journalism specifically and wanted that to be my beat. And I feel like that was sort of a feeder into a lot of Wellness culture stuff and certainly a lot of alternative medicine ideas and just ideas about a big food and big farm, big ag and demonizing the food system in a lot of ways that there's certainly issues with the food system, but there's also I think ways in which that can, the sort of rightful calling out of those issues could easily get twisted into this personal philosophy or way of approaching food and the food system that's very shaming and blaming.
Lee Tilghman: Like moral high ground value where it starts to become your identity and the quotes even like you are what you eat. And yeah, I think it all comes from such a good place, and we can probably get into this later. I still love the farmer's market and the C S A, and I also just love food and I thing that some of the fresh food tastes better than older food, but that's also a really interesting part of my recovery is finding out what I like again and reentering the C S A or in the co-op with the kind of this new, because I think the first couple of years I was avoiding all those things totally. But yeah, with this kind of new philosophy that is actually like an anti food as identity philosophy and just having food be something that I can enjoy and that sustains me, but totally different from the way that I used to be food, which will probably get into now.
Christy Harrison: Yes, yes. I'd love to hear more about that, how food became your identity and how you got wrapped up in that.
Lee Tilghman: So basically what I just explained a little bit about my upbringing, I love food. I come from a family that also loves food. My parents fed my sister and I very, very well. We took our family vacations based off of food. They brought us our first trip to Europe. I think I was 14 when they took us to Europe for the first time, and it was one of the most amazing trips of my life. We ate so well. We went to Barcelona and I ate paella and squid pasta, and my parents are very, very big foodies. I know that people cringe at that word now, but I don't really know how else to describe it, which one of the things that brings us together as a family. We ate dinner as a family, all of us, if you were home, you were sitting down at the dinner table.
It's an integral part of our family and my extended family as well. I have an aunt who has published three cookbooks. She opened up a restaurant in Harvard Square in Boston. Now she is a private chef, but she's also worked with people who are recently out of incarceration to help them get off their feet at a non-for-profit, teaching them how to bake. And so food is part of our family, and so I always took a liking to it. My dad, when I turned 18, he gave me his knives that he got when he was 18, and he made sure that before I went off into the real world, I knew how to drive stick shift and cut an onion. Those were the things that he was like, okay, my daughter needs to know how to do these things. She needs to know how to cut onion.
She needs to know how to drag stick shift. So I love it, but I think that I went down this hole and I had an eating disorder. I think it's important to say I had an eating disorder in my teens, so 2006 to 2008. So that was pre Wellness. I mean Wellness was around, but it was definitely pre goop. So I think Wellness was a slippery slope to that eating disorder. And I think I found an excusable way to have my eating disorder with Wellness. And it wasn't until I entered recovery that I realized like, oh my God, I have a fear of regular grocery stores. Oh my God, I have a fear of eating non-organic tomatoes. I am unable to relax around food unless I can control what's going on inside of it. I'm unable to eat at certain restaurants because they're not safe. In fact, most restaurants, I had this kind of circle of restaurants that I would hit up in LA and it's such a bummer because a lot of times now that I'm in recovery, people will be like, oh, you lived in la. Did you ever go to this restaurant? It's like, no, I only went to and Whole Foods and Cafe Gratitude, I only went to the healthy places I was so afraid of. I lived in Koreatown for three and a half years, and I never once ate Korean food. Sad.
Christy Harrison: So sad.
Lee Tilghman: I guess I just got to go back and do it.
Christy Harrison: Right. I know. Good excuse to go visit. I guess.
Lee Tilghman: I did get one year of recovery in LA and I ate food then. But yeah,
Christy Harrison: It's so limiting though. I mean compared to what your, you grew up with too, where it sounds like food was adventure and trying everything, and you just got so hemmed in by this Wellness stuff.
Lee Tilghman: Yeah.
Christy Harrison: I've heard you mention that you thought you had an adrenal gland problem that was related to some period problems you were having, and that's what led you to start doing some of the Wellness things and bringing your followers along with you when you had some followers online already. Looking back, what do you think was at the root of those period problems and that supposed adrenal issue? Do you think that it had anything to do with your eating disorder?
Lee Tilghman: Yes. When I moved to LA it was 2015, I was definitely restricting probably minorly or definitely underweight if I were to look at it. Now, I was also in this kind of period of maybe undereating and then maybe, I don't know, I don't even want to say overeating, but my weight had been always going up and down within these however many pounds, which is really common with dieting, yo-yo. And it wasn't probably noticeable to most people, but it was very noticeable to me. And so I wasn't really consistently Feeding my body. I was also kind of using substances when I had been living in New York and I'd also been purging, but when I moved to la, I was two years or a year off of purging, but I was purging in other ways. I was over exercising, so I just was basically putting my body through the rigor, and I moved to LA and I think my body, and already before I moved to la, if I drank coffee, I was basically going through panic attacks and I mean, it was over 10 years ago, so I don't really know exactly what led to it, but I do remember moving to LA and kind of falling into a depression, and I was experiencing social anxiety for the first time, but I was also trying to live differently and not rely on drinking and using drugs, and I was also trying to be healthy and make new friends.
I barely knew anyone in la, and so I was really tired all the time and I was sleeping a lot and the coffee was making me go crazy. And I think just after some Googling, I was like, oh, I think I have adrenal gland issues. Another thing that led me down this path was doing some research and thinking, okay, I have PCOS and I went to actually a real doctor. I went to an endocrinologist and I was like, oh, I think I have PCOSs. Can you test? And I fell under some of the symptoms. I was growing hair on my face that was really thick. I was missing periods. I was tired. So my doctor was like, yeah, you probably have PCOS. And so that was kind of the extent of it. She didn't do any other, and that's also what I think PCOSS can be is just a number of symptoms. Sometimes you do have cysts, and I did not, but she was like, yeah, you can still have PCOS without cysts. I was basically like, okay, cool. I guess I fall under these circumstances. I probably have PCOS and I probably have adrenal gland issues.
Christy Harrison: No actual testing really. I mean, that's funny. I was actually misdiagnosed with PCOS too also when I was restricting and not eating enough and sort of seesaw between restriction and rebound eating and thought I was super healthy and was very orthorexic actually, and I was actually tested and the doctor interpreted the labs in this sort of non-standard way that I now realize is a functional medicine thing that's like these values are normal, but taken together, the ratio is abnormal, so you have PCOS, and I didn't, it turned out that it wasn't that for me, it was the period issues ended up having to do with not eating enough and over exercising and just disordered eating. But it's interesting how easily some people can get misdiagnosed with that and that there's not a digging and an effort to say, are you eating enough? Are you exercising too much? What's going on at the root of this? Right.
Lee Tilghman: And I don't even know now if I have pieces. I don't know if it was a misdiagnosis. I have no idea. And part of my recovery has been not really following up with that because I'm getting my period every month and my weight's stable, and that's all that I'd rather have. I still have some of the symptoms of PCOS. I have hair that grows from my chin and all these other things, but don't, the way that I've talked about it with my dietitian is that's a very small side effect to not having to live a restrictive lifestyle. I'd rather have the PCOS symptoms. I'm not trying to manage those symptoms because they’re so much lesser of a problem than an eating disorder. And when I try to manage my PCOS, I get an eating disorder, so I don't even know if I have it part of my, maybe one day I will go back on a little journey and I don't know. I don't know, but I get my period, I'm healthy. That's kind of a marker now.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. I'm so curious how you got to that point. That is a pretty far level of recovery to get to. How did that start to shift your relationship with your content, what you were putting out there and with Wellness culture?
Lee Tilghman: It was very slowly. And then all at once, I decided to go on Instagram hiatus in 2019, and I turned Instagram off and everything comes flooding. When you take something away, I feel like you close one door and another one opens. And my eating disorder got really loud when I turned Instagram off and I went to a treatment center. Well, first actually, I was seeing a therapist or I had been seeing a therapist, and I was like, I think I'm restricting. And she was like, just stop. It's almost a joke. It's like, okay, how are you still a therapist? And she was like, just stop restricting, just eat. So I stopped seeing her, and then I called another one. I called a friend and I was like, who's your eating disorder therapist? And she gave me that number and I talked to that therapist for 20 minutes just on a consultation call.
And she's like, sweetie, I think you need more help. You just sound bad. So she's like, why don't you go? I don't know. So then I was like, oh. So I called a treatment center in LA and I thought, oh, I'll do their monthly outpatient groups. And then I went in for a consultation and they were like, oh, you need to be here every day. So I did outpatient daily, and that just, I was so ready to be healthy. I was so ready to be healthy. And the funny thing is be healthy to me means all foods fit, but before be healthy to me means only 5% of foods or something that I could eat. That's what I used to get so triggered when people are in early recovery, like the world health. But now I'm like, oh, no, health is so different for everybody. And for someone who's in recovery from an eating disorder, for me, I can't have restrictions and rules. And so that's what I needed. And my treatment center did a really good job of helping me see how living in la, the lines between disordered eating and eating disorders are very blurred.
Christy Harrison: That's really interesting. And the Wellness milieu there, I feel like is so strong. Everybody's pursuing Wellness in certain circles anyway, but it feels like pretty ubiquitous actually, from the time I've spent there. I've never lived there myself, but spent some time there with friends and family members who've lived there and stuff, and it just feels like, it feels like it's just so pervasive and people are going to places like Cafe Gratitude or yoga or whatever, just for fun as a social thing, but then it can easily turn into, not to call them out or whatever, lots of places like that, but just that's the social meal you're a part of and it's so Wellness and then being an influencer too, I mean, there must've been a real pull to keep doing it from that as well.
Lee Tilghman: And I mean, when I was an influencer, it's not like I was like, oh God, I got to do this Wellness stuff. I was so into it. The more I shared about it, the more I got into it. I just kind of kept falling deeper and deeper into this rabbit hole. I certainly felt like as an influencer, I needed to look a certain way. It was probably similar to how actresses and models feel. I feel like my image was my brand, my body was my business card. I couldn't gain weight. It was also so twisted. I felt like, I mean, I was so disordered and I had such body dysmorphia that I was like, okay, compared to the anorexic twigs of the 2010s, like the Lindsay Low hands and Nicole Richie, I'm curvy. I was like, I'm a natural looking. Isn't that insane?
Christy Harrison: Yeah,
Lee Tilghman: Yeah. I was like, oh, I'm natural looking, and I have curves. And now I look at those pictures of myself and I'm like, God, I look so underweight. And I also have, I'm pretty sure I had orange skin because I was eating so many carrots. I mean, it was also definitely the day of the filters, but I think I actually just truly had orange skin. I was overeating carrots, which is really common,
Christy Harrison: So many fruit and vegetables.
Lee Tilghman: But I didn't eat fruit, Christy, it had too much sugar.
Christy Harrison: Oh, right. Of course. Of course.
Lee Tilghman: I was very anti-sugar.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, that's a big trend in wellness for sure.
Lee Tilghman: Oh, it's been a journey. You name a trend. I've done it. I was like, and yeah. Oh man.
Christy Harrison: How do you see that differently now? What Wellness trends that you were really into then, do you just sort of cringe at now or see in a different light?
Lee Tilghman: I mean, the way that I see it now is like, oh my gosh, it's so funny because I mean, I'm still always learning, and I think I see some younger women going down that path in their twenties. I think it's a common path to go down, especially in your twenties as you're exiting the party stage and you're figuring out who you are, especially Gen Z, language urines to be more, we're all talking about mental health, doing what's good for you. I'm just like, oh, Lee, you were on that journey. You were just trying to find what's good for you and you got lost along the way. Or another way to look at it is like, cool. Yeah, Jack and Jill, I'm just giving random names. They can do their Wellness stuff and have a happy life and be fulfilled, but there's something in your brain that you can't because you are predestined for whatever reason, to have an eating disorder.
And so anytime you are overthinking food and your body, that's bad. It's kind of like a cigarette smoker. You just can't do one. So it helps me to think about it that way. The way that I thought about it back then. Here's some examples, red light therapy and saunas and Creo therapy. If those were ever brought up to me, the way that I knew that it's disordered is because I was always thinking, will this help me lose weight? Everything was always connected to weight for me, like gut health and bloat and digestion and travel and sleep. Everything was like, oh my God, I need to always just be at the lowest weight I can possibly be. And a lot of people, they do red light therapy and they're not thinking about their weight. So it's like everybody's going to come at it differently. And I can't say what's working for one person, but I know for me, I was always like, will this affect my weight? How will this help me be thin?
Christy Harrison: I feel like that's the subtext of a lot of the marketing and the promise of those things, even if it's not explicitly said. And yeah, there are some people who can do it and not get sucked in that way. But I think so many people, whether they have an eating disorder, like a genetic tendency towards an eating disorder or chronic dieting, or they've been in a larger body and they're pressured to lose weight from the conventional healthcare system slash diet-culture, so many people are coming into it with preexisting baggage around weight and food. And so it's hard not to get sucked into such a degree. And I'm sure there are people out there who don't, but I feel like the norm in the people that I see for sure is to get sucked in to where it becomes really unhealthy, this pursuit of health. How did it affect your mental wellbeing to be so obsessed with Wellness?
Lee Tilghman: I mean, it was definitely anxiety provoking. It was always something to worry about. When you're terrified of toxins and how foods are cooked, it's kind of like a rabbit hole. There's always something else to improve. It's kind of tied to the bulletproof ization, bulletproof ization of our lives where it's especially, well, this is so biohacked, very masculine, optimizing every area of your life. And I think just that level of self-awareness is too much. I believe for me, there is a level of too much thinking about oneself and a lot of Wellness is just thinking about oneself and me. How can I improve? How can I be better? How do I look? How do I feel? I just don't think that that's good for me to think that much about myself, to be honest. So there's your answer, just not great.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, for sure. And I'm curious too, how your content started to shift once you got into recovery, because it sounds like recovery was really, you were really ready for it, and you kind of threw yourself into it, and I'm sure that affected the content that you were putting out on Instagram. And how did people respond to that for you having been a Wellness influencer and having been so into all this stuff that was really linked to your eating disorder?
Lee Tilghman: Well, I think when I came back from my hiatus and I was in recovery, I didn't want to talk about my eating disorder. I wanted to just be me. I wanted to show everybody this other side. I had basically shown them one side of Lee for the past five years, and I wanted to be a different side, and I had cut my hair and I was ready to be my goofy normal self and share about other things that I liked, but people were following me for the recipes and for the Wellness inspo. And so it was not received well. There were certainly people who were guys leave her alone, but the credits were loud. The way that I like to say it is it's imagine if Toyota, the car shop was all of a sudden like, Hey guys, we're going to sell lamps. People would be like, what? No, you sell cars. Toyota can do whatever they want. It's none of my business. I don't personally care, but it's on the internet. People are just loud. So yeah, I would say it didn't go great. I lost a lot of sponsorships. I lost a lot of money and I lost a lot of followers.
Christy Harrison: How did that affect you to have that kind of reaction and that kind of consequence to your shift?
Lee Tilghman: I mean, I always knew that it was a question of life or death for me, so I was ready to accept it. I was just like, all right, give me what you got. I'm never going back to that Lee. I'm so much happier now. And so if this is what people want from me, then maybe this isn't the best career. If they only want this one side of me, then I'll find something else to do. I'll go back and I'll wait tables or I'll get a job somewhere and figure it out.
Christy Harrison: And you did that for a while. You shut down your leave from America account four years ago, and you only just recently started posting again. So what was that process like?
Lee Tilghman: Well, I moved back to the east coast, which felt really significant because I was like, God, was I only living in LA because I had eating disorder. It was warm all the time. And I thought, oh, I'll drink more smoothies. Literally every decision Christie was about my body. So I moved back to the east coast and I moved back to be close to my family, and I kind of settled into New York for 10 months before even making a peep on Instagram. Then I just kind of did a post like, Hey guys, I'm moved to New York. I'm back. Saying goodbye to that career as an influencer was slow. It wasn't just such a quick kind of turnoff. I was trying to maybe do content from New York and I just was like, this isn't aligned with me anymore. And now I simply view it as a platform to share what I want to share, whether that's my work or my newsletter or I don't know, a picture of my dog, but it's not something that I have to do every day. Certainly, definitely not that. And it's just a place for me to connect. I view it as a business platform. I view it as a place to, I don't know, maybe if I'm selling a bureau, someone could buy a bureau from me. It's kind of just using it. Everyone else uses it.
Christy Harrison: So you're not trying to monetize it or make it into a thing? No,
Lee Tilghman: I'm not trying to become an influencer. I mean, I do promote my newsletter and other things that I'm doing. If I'm doing this podcast, I'll probably post about it there. I share updates. People share their babies. I share, this is my baby. I work. I don't know, but I'm not trying to go full hard influencer anymore.
Christy Harrison: It sounds like that life was not sustainable for you, and you've talked about influencers as having a shelf life of three to four years, and then they're kind of done because they had been a part of a niche or a trend, and that goes out of style. And you did a post recently about talking to young people who want to be influencers, and I think it's really important to share that inside information with people who want to be influencers. They definitely don't know that. I don't think think young people see influencers as like they have this life forever or something. And even adults who stumble into careers as influencers, I think don't realize it's not going to last forever. Even me with my limited, I was never an influencer to that degree of doing sponsorships or anything like that, but using my platform to build up other aspects of my business, it's not something I can do forever.
And I've realized that before going on maternity leave and then very much after maternity leave too, just not wanting to come back, not wanting to have to use it, and really shifting how I use it. For anyone who is an influencer, maybe listening or who wants to be an influencer or anyone in a related field, a public figure in some way who's using social media in influencer like ways maybe to promote their business, what do you think are some ways that people can prepare themselves for that shift and that shelf life and think about moving on when it's done?
Lee Tilghman: For me, the most important thing was really kind of going cold Turkey with it. I think my last sponsor post was February, 2022. I tapered off beginning in 2020, but it was so hard for me. But then after that one I was like, okay, I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. And figuring out how else am I going to make money? And now that I've figured out other ways that I can make money, I feel so free. That pressure's gone, so to speak. And also not even talking about monetization wise. And I do think that that's important to realize. So if your business is dependent on your social media, starting now to figure out, okay, how else can you use? What are the parts that you don't mind? What about a newsletter? Be careful because basically content's content. Then all of a sudden you have to do a newsletter every week.
It's like, what do you enjoy? What can you do? What's realistic? But I think also another part about it is there are definitely influencers out there who no longer do sponsored posts and they just post for fun, but they're still posting every day or posting like an influencer, just not doing sponsored stuff. And if that works with you, then that's fine, but I think it's also really just realizing there's a whole world out there of people who do not use social media and who are doing just fine, and whether they work for themselves or work for someone else, there's a lot of people out there. And so just getting into the world and talking to people and seeing what other people are doing and getting inspired that way.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I love that. I mean, we connected because, well, we had a mutual friend, but also I've read the piece about you, the profile of you in The, New, York Times, which we'll link to in the show notes about leaving, influencing. And I really resonated with a lot of what you shared there because I'm starting to think about do I actually want to go and work for someone else for a while and parlay sort of what I've done, building my own little media business into getting back into a career as an editor, which is my first career and constant love, and it's what I've been doing for 20 years, but kind of done this way of building it for myself, but thinking about there are benefits to working for a company or for someone else, and not being the c e o of your own business and the face of your own business and having to constantly think about just that, always on sort of feeling and the feeling like you have to just respond to everything and put out the fires and you can't put it down.
And now that I have a daughter, I'm like, I want to be able to put it down. I want to be able to step away. And I'm thinking about what that can look like for me. And I love your idea of post and ghost, which you shared about recently. That's something I've been doing for the last couple years. I sort of stumbled into that myself as a way to just not be so addicted. And it took me a long time actually to break myself of the habit of checking back for likes after I'd posted something or responding to comments or even just getting sucked into scrolling on the app because I had downloaded the app to post. And then I'm like, oh, let me just check real quick before I leave. And then it's like an hour's gone by and I'm just in a hole.
So I really appreciate the model that you're giving for people of how to step away from influencing, thinking about other paths and thinking about the fact that working for someone else or working for a company is actually freedom in some ways. Every job sucks in some way, I think. And certainly there are jobs that suck a lot and way more than others. There's systemic inequality and all that stuff that leads to people having lack of autonomy and really bad working conditions and all the things. But some of the jobs that people who are formerly influencers could get, might in some ways feel like there's more freedom to them actually than this supposed freedom of being an influencer and controlling your hours and stuff like that. Because actually a trick, you actually aren't really controlling your hours. You're expected to be on all the time. You're expected to be liking and commenting and posting and sharing, and if you don't, you end up losing followers and money, so it feels like you're stuck.
Lee Tilghman: There's a meme that's leaving my nine to five job to become my own boss, and then the next thing is me with my own business, it's 24 hours. I just think that our cultural romanticizes, and I hail from the girl boss era, and now my little cousin who's Gen Z, she's from the TikTok era where she's watching people go viral and overnight launching their bracelet or jewelry business from going viral on TikTok. So it's like they're also girl bossing, and it's like, yeah, okay. There's benefits to that and there's also benefits to not living online and having to be on 24 7 and just being on Slack. Yeah, that sucks. But have you ever been on Instagram for 12 hours a day? That sucks too. The article that you were talking about and some of my posts on Instagram, it's caused a lot of people to be like, well, what's better? And I guess it's not, that's for people to discuss, and I don't mind that discussion, but I guess I, I want to share what is it really like being an influencer? Unless you're an influencer you don't know.
Christy Harrison: And I think a lot of influencers have an incentive not to talk about it too, not to talk about the parts that suck because their followers want positivity from them,
Lee Tilghman: And they don't want to talk about maybe leaving. It's kind talking to your boss that you might want to leave before you do. It's like that's why I just actually five minutes ago when you were like, oh yeah, you guys, I might go back to work for someone else. I'm shocked that you actually just said that because, but that's so cool. Yeah, it's kind like, okay, yeah, maybe I'm not that happy. And I don't honestly know how readers or consumers of media feel when they see an influencer complaining about their job. I'm going to assume not great, because historically influencers are seen as really lucky. They can't complain. They have it so good. I get that the way that they share there are definitely perks to the job and the cost is also really great. The cost is also really, really great. And I think that's just kind of the message that I've been wanting to share.
Christy Harrison: Well, and I think that lack of sustainability is so key to it too, because I think people don't realize sometimes the fact that there is this short shelf life and that influencers aren't going to keep doing it forever. And so even though it's all this seeming freedom and there is creativity in it, and there is money in it, it's not like you're going to be making that money for the rest of your life. You're maybe going to be able to do it for a few years and then have to pivot and figure out something else. And sometimes that pivot can be really painful. I think
Lee Tilghman: The painful pivot.
Christy Harrison: Painful pivot. Yeah. Well, you're working on a new book about some of this stuff and about the painful pivot and how to get through it, and I'm curious to hear more about that and how that all came about.
Lee Tilghman: Yeah. Well, last year in 2022, I was back to working for another brand full stop. Wasn't doing sponsor posts anymore, was posting on Instagram sometimes, but mostly just vibing, just sharing on Instagram when I wanted to and going on my nine to five, and I was working actually with influencers at that job. I was doing social media management for a company and I was working with influencers, and I was like, gosh, I have stuff to say. I have things to say. All the things that I'm sharing about with you now, Chris, you were blooming in my mind. And I woke up one morning and I was like, I need to write a book book. I mean, it probably wasn't like that, honestly. I studied creative writing in college. I've always been a writer. I've written, if you've been reading my blogs for the past 14 years that I write.
And so it's not that surprising, I guess, for me, but it was like, it's time. It's time. And when I was an influencer, I was always getting approached about doing a book and not always whatever. I got approached a couple times like, oh, you should do a Wellness book, a cookbook. And there was so voice inside me that was like, Nope, not right. Last year I was in September, I was like, all right, I'm ready to do this book. And I was already doing my Substack, but I started working on the book that is going to be this book. So I'm sorry I'm smiling. I'm so excited. It feels like a dream. But yeah, I just started dreaming about it and I started to put in the work. Now it's going to be coming to a bookstore near you in spring summer 2025.
Christy Harrison: Can you give people a little taste of what's going to be in it and some of the things you're going to delve into and explore?
Lee Tilghman: So the title that we have is it's still two years out, so it might change.
Christy Harrison: Sure. In my experience, they always do.
Lee Tilghman: Yeah, it's called, if You Don't Like This, I will Die. And it exposes the underbelly of influencing, and I'll definitely talk about the health crisis that I hit at my bottom and how losing those hundreds of thousands of followers and sponsorships and finding myself was, it's a memoir and I have a lovely editor. It's happening Simon and Schuster is publishing it, and I am just over the moon. So it's going to be kind of the story of really wanting to be online famous, going viral, getting all those likes, becoming addicted to the likes, and then kind of the unraveling.
Christy Harrison: I love it. I'm so excited to read it and talk to you more about it when it comes out. I know you're in process with it, and that can be a tricky part. Having written two books of my own, although I haven't written a full memoir, I've included some memoir elements, but a full memoir I think is just even more emotionally draining, I think probably than a typical nonfiction book. So I'm sure that's going to be a journey to write it, but I'm so excited to see what comes out of it. And I also love your newsletter, and I feel like that's a good place to see little bits and pieces of what might end up in the book
Lee Tilghman: Poem book. Yeah, definitely.
Christy Harrison: I loved your recent post about Instagram dentists. It was a poem
Lee Tilghman: And
Christy Harrison: The I ramification of everything, and I really identify with that too, wanting more analog, real world experiences, but I can imagine you didn't always feel that way, so just I feel like the shift in your thinking from wanting to be internet famous and being an influencer to this feeling of wanting just non Instagramable life and to go back to a more analog way of being is that's a huge shift. And yeah, I'm just curious to hear more about it and talk to you more as things unfold. Where can people find you and learn more about your work?
Lee Tilghman: They can find me. My newsletter is called Offline Time, and it's leetilghman.substack.com. You can also go to my website, leetilghman.com, shoot me a message over there, and then of course, I still post the occasional gram @leefromamerica.
Christy Harrison: Amazing. We'll link to all that in the show notes so people can find you and subscribe to you, get your info, whatever you want to engage. Thanks, Lee. It's so great to talk with you.
Lee Tilghman: Thank you so much, Christy.
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 rethinkingwellness.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.
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Rethinking Wellness is executive produced and hosted by me, Christy Harrison. Mike Lalonde is our audio editor and sound engineer. Administrative support from Julianne Wotasik and her team at A-Team virtual. Our album art is by Tara Jacoby, and our theme song is written and performed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Thanks again for listening! Take care.
A Former Wellness Influencer Shares What It Was Really Like with Lee Tilghman