Anti-diet dietitian Leah Kern joins us to discuss how struggling with anxiety made her susceptible to a wellness diet that promised safety and longevity, how that diet quickly spiraled into full-on disordered eating, how being eco-conscious and “earthy” can easily lead into wellness traps, the connection between spirituality and wellness culture, why she finally stopped trying to fix her anxiety with food and started taking meds, and more.
Thank you for this conversation, I had a similar experience with Eat to Live. I see now that Dr. Fuhrman is a bully and over-the-top patriarchal, capitalistic and dogmatic. Ugh. I was so pulled in. As I understood how problematic he is, I've released my grip on his right/wrong, good/bad approach. AND I have questions about making choices that align with our values. Animal welfare and climate change are huge issues for me -- and they impact all of us. I don't have to do it perfectly, but making choices that OVERALL are easier on animals and the environment feels important. Why eat things that make such a detrimental impact if we don't have to? YES, there are systemic issues that need to be changed but isn't one way of changing those systems is to say Nope, I don't want so much animal products? We have agency over our choices -- both in terms of their impact on the earth and their impact on our bodies and well being. I feel uncomfortable throwing out the values/ethics side of things. I'd love to hear any thoughts.
Thanks for sharing, Susan! Ugh, so glad you were able to release that thinking.
And that's a great question about the values/ethics of food choices. I appreciate what you're saying, and I think it's totally possible for people to make food choices in line with their values--AND that it's really hard to do in this culture without it getting tangled up in orthorexic thinking and in many cases re-igniting or exacerbating disordered eating. It's especially hard to do while you're actively recovering from disordered eating, so in most cases I'd recommend waiting until you're in solid recovery for a good amount of time before attempting to exclude certain foods for ethical reasons. That's not to say that it can't be done--there are definitely some people who are able to keep the values/ethics central and not let the disordered-eating beliefs take over. But in my experience those people are rare, and they're typically those who started eating vegan exclusively for very deeply held, longstanding animal-rights beliefs and without having diet/wellness culture anywhere in the mix who are able to do this while recovering. And that's often people who are like, punk-rock vegans or older hippie vegans--people who have this sort of culture around their decision for being vegan that doesn't have anything to do with diet/wellness culture or the world of "plant-based eating" on the Internet or Instagram, because people who discovered veganism through those worlds are very susceptible to disordered eating.
I'm not sure where you are in your relationship with food, so those considerations may not feel relevant if you're in really long-term recovery. But I hope that's at least somewhat helpful, and I definitely want to have more of these conversations on the pod. I have some ideas for potential guests who can speak to these things with a lot of thoughtfulness and nuance, so stay tuned!
Thanks for such a thoughtful conversation. I was vegan for a number of years (for animal welfare reasons) but am not anymore. I only realized several years after no longer being vegan that my veganism could be construed as a socially acceptable way to restrict/have an eating disorder without being subject to as much of the diet talk and food judgment. For a bit I wondered whether the animal welfare reasons were just a cover, but I've come to realize, like you discussed in the episode, that I was genuine and sincere in being vegan for animal welfare reasons *and* it was a way to hide an unhealthy relationship with food. Like so many things in life, it's not either-or, and there's a lot of gray between the black and white.
Thank you for this conversation, I had a similar experience with Eat to Live. I see now that Dr. Fuhrman is a bully and over-the-top patriarchal, capitalistic and dogmatic. Ugh. I was so pulled in. As I understood how problematic he is, I've released my grip on his right/wrong, good/bad approach. AND I have questions about making choices that align with our values. Animal welfare and climate change are huge issues for me -- and they impact all of us. I don't have to do it perfectly, but making choices that OVERALL are easier on animals and the environment feels important. Why eat things that make such a detrimental impact if we don't have to? YES, there are systemic issues that need to be changed but isn't one way of changing those systems is to say Nope, I don't want so much animal products? We have agency over our choices -- both in terms of their impact on the earth and their impact on our bodies and well being. I feel uncomfortable throwing out the values/ethics side of things. I'd love to hear any thoughts.
Thanks for sharing, Susan! Ugh, so glad you were able to release that thinking.
And that's a great question about the values/ethics of food choices. I appreciate what you're saying, and I think it's totally possible for people to make food choices in line with their values--AND that it's really hard to do in this culture without it getting tangled up in orthorexic thinking and in many cases re-igniting or exacerbating disordered eating. It's especially hard to do while you're actively recovering from disordered eating, so in most cases I'd recommend waiting until you're in solid recovery for a good amount of time before attempting to exclude certain foods for ethical reasons. That's not to say that it can't be done--there are definitely some people who are able to keep the values/ethics central and not let the disordered-eating beliefs take over. But in my experience those people are rare, and they're typically those who started eating vegan exclusively for very deeply held, longstanding animal-rights beliefs and without having diet/wellness culture anywhere in the mix who are able to do this while recovering. And that's often people who are like, punk-rock vegans or older hippie vegans--people who have this sort of culture around their decision for being vegan that doesn't have anything to do with diet/wellness culture or the world of "plant-based eating" on the Internet or Instagram, because people who discovered veganism through those worlds are very susceptible to disordered eating.
I'm not sure where you are in your relationship with food, so those considerations may not feel relevant if you're in really long-term recovery. But I hope that's at least somewhat helpful, and I definitely want to have more of these conversations on the pod. I have some ideas for potential guests who can speak to these things with a lot of thoughtfulness and nuance, so stay tuned!
Thanks for such a thoughtful conversation. I was vegan for a number of years (for animal welfare reasons) but am not anymore. I only realized several years after no longer being vegan that my veganism could be construed as a socially acceptable way to restrict/have an eating disorder without being subject to as much of the diet talk and food judgment. For a bit I wondered whether the animal welfare reasons were just a cover, but I've come to realize, like you discussed in the episode, that I was genuine and sincere in being vegan for animal welfare reasons *and* it was a way to hide an unhealthy relationship with food. Like so many things in life, it's not either-or, and there's a lot of gray between the black and white.
Thanks so much for having me on, Christy! I loved the topics we explored in this conversation💛
Thanks so much for coming on, Leah! I really loved it too <3