In this bonus episode, anti-diet dietitian Leah Kern returns to discuss how health-conscious people can keep from getting pulled into harmful aspects of wellness culture, how to avoid wellness traps if you’re interested in environmental issues and sustainability, and the wellness-y practices she still enjoys even though she’s critical of wellness culture.
Leah Kern is an anti-diet dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor who specializes in helping people heal their relationships with food and body. Her approach to coaching is firmly evidence-based, rooted in the Health At Every Size (HAES®) & Intuitive Eating frameworks. In her private practice, Leah teaches her clients to harness their body’s innate wisdom to govern how they eat and live. Leah believes that the work involved with unraveling years of conditioning in diet culture and learning to come home to one’s body is deeply spiritual work and she treats it as such. It is Leah’s mission to help her clients make peace with food and body so they can unlock their most aligned and fulfilling lives. Learn more about her work at leahkernrd.com.
Resources and References
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
Christy’s episode of Leah’s podcast
Leah’s episode about food systems
Subscribe on Substack for bonus content 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: Hey there. Welcome to this bonus episode of Rethinking Wellness. I’m Christy, and my guest today is Leah Kern, a fellow anti-diet dietitian, who returns to discuss how health-conscious people can keep from getting pulled into harmful aspects of wellness culture, how to avoid wellness traps if you’re interested in environmental issues and sustainability, and the wellness-y practices she still enjoys even though she’s critical of wellness culture.
Now, without any further ado, here's my bonus interview with Leah Kern. So Leah, welcome back. Thank you so much for sticking around for this bonus episode.
Leah Kern: Of course. I'm excited to see what questions come through.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. One question I had that I'm just always curious to hear people's thoughts on, but I think particularly for you, because of how your healing has gone and becoming critical of wellness culture as you are, are there any wellness practices that you still find helpful or enjoyable and relate to differently and more critically now that you've sort of seen wellness culture for what it is?
Leah Kern: I love that. Probably the first one that jumps to my brain is yoga. It just feels lovely to stretch and breathe and go to a class and be in community with other people, but it really depends on the teacher. I'm actually struggling to find someone here that I like. I just moved to California, not just, it's been nine months, but I had a teacher who I loved in New York, and it really depends. Sometimes they crossed the line of being a little too wellness for what's comfortable for me, and then other times it's just a lovely experience and I try to suss out teachers so that I know what I'm getting into, but it's hard to explain, but it's something that it just feels like you can tell the difference between a teacher who is authentic and there to facilitate and be a vessel for the class to come through, versus this type of teacher who I've totally encountered where it feels more performative and it feels like it's about them showing their stuff in their cute little matching set in the front of the room. Have you seen the show? My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend?
Christy Harrison: Oh, yes, yes, totally.
Leah Kern: Okay. I haven't seen it, but my friend showed me a clip from it, and it's a little musical thing where it's like, I'm so good at yoga. Did you see that? I
Christy Harrison: Did, yes. That's hilarious.
Leah Kern: So that's what I think of, and that's where it almost like that feels associated with wellness culture to me. But then other times, as I'm saying, it's lovely and it doesn't feel wellness. So yeah, that's definitely one practice that comes to mind. I guess other things, I actually had this thought this morning. I'm sitting here with my cup of tea. When I was deep into wellness culture, I was guzzling green tea, crazy person. That was something that I had learned somewhere along the way was necessary for wellness, having green tea, and now I still enjoy green tea, but it's not from this place of I have to drink it. It's like, Ooh, it's something more bitter, sounds nice alongside my more sweet breakfast or a sweet, I don't know, biscotti or shortbread or something. So it's more from a place of satisfaction and taste of, oh, the contrast sounds lovely versus a prescriptive, you need to be doing this to cleanse your body type thing. Or they always said to burn stubborn fat. That's what I always heard about green tea. It was very much like this more, I don't know, obligatory action versus, oh, that sounds lovely. And so yeah, that's another one that comes to mind.
Christy Harrison: I love that. That's really interesting too. I think for me, yoga and meditation have definitely been things that have been a constant, and similarly, I've had to find the right teachers and learn to practice in a way that was not so wellness, but tea I hadn't even thought about as something that you can kind of circle back to. And yeah, there's so much emphasis on green D and wellness culture and using it in DIY ways. So that's nice that you've been able to reclaim your relationship with that.
Leah Kern: Yeah, and I think I said this when you're on my podcast, there's little things that maybe aren't wellness culture, but that I'm aware are overblown sometimes the benefits. I got a facial with a friend for a birthday gift, and the woman who's doing the facial is telling me about all the products and what they do and how come I need all of them and everything. And I was just like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Keep telling me about this because the facial feels lovely. So I think that sentiment of taking things with a grain of salt when there's a practice that is sort of being advertised as all these benefits has kind of transferred over to things beyond what might be conventionally considered wellness.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I love that. I think that's such a great approach too, is being skeptical and just having your boundaries, even when somebody is trying to sell you on something and appreciating the aspects of it that you appreciate, but not getting sucked in, which I mean kind of goes back to our conversation about vulnerability on the main podcast where we're talking about certain times in people's lives, they can be so vulnerable to these kinds of pitches and to being part of a community or having the desire for community translate into following all these other rigid practices, because that's what people in the community are doing. And I feel like when people are vulnerable like that, I think it's easy to be sucked in, and I think it's easier to be skeptical and easier to create those boundaries when you're not as vulnerable and when you're not as searching or seeking for something.
Leah Kern: Yeah, that's such a good point. If I was just going back to the facial example, if I was in a state of having really intense acne and skin flareups, I might be like, oh my God, tell me everything. Yes, what should I buy? What should I do? But having right now, this season of life, the privilege of not really dealing with acne or skin issues, I was able to much more be like, eh. Okay. So yeah, I think that you bring up such a good point depending on how susceptible you are, and it can really impact how critically you think.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. Which is another reason I think that we're all in the soup and we're all potentially susceptible. It's not just, I was talking to Rina Raphael who wrote the book, the Gospel of Wellness about this recently. Yes,
Leah Kern: I read that. Yeah.
Christy Harrison: We both have had this experience of getting interested in the skeptical movement, but then being kind of turned off by sort of prominent skeptics tone and way of delivering information where it makes people feel like they're stupid for buying in. And I think I certainly, and Rina said this too, we don't feel like we're stupid, and yet we bought in and we got sucked in. And many of our friends and many of our colleagues and many people that I've interviewed on the podcast who are all smart, thoughtful people, and oftentimes critical thinkers in their way and yet end up getting sucked into wellness culture because of personal need or vulnerability or something that's not being served to them in the conventional healthcare system, or just a need that's not being met in their life. So I think it's important to acknowledge that and to recognize we're all potentially vulnerable. I wrote a book about critiquing wellness culture. I do this podcast, and yet I feel like as much as I'm a critical thinker and try to teach other people critical thinking and also try to be compassionate in my skepticism, I could be sucked in again at any moment depending on what happens in my life. So just trying to have that sort of humility about it I think is important for me too. Yeah.
Leah Kern: I remember you sharing on my podcast about, was it acupuncture during your pregnancy journey,
Christy Harrison: Laser acupuncture, which is such a weird esoteric thing. Yeah.
Leah Kern: And it's like I could see myself doing that if I was in a similar boat. I haven't yet ventured into having kids, but it's definitely something that I want for my life. And if I was in that vulnerable state of really wanting to get pregnant and there were struggles and they said there were things I could do, I would certainly weigh the benefits. I wouldn't start having food restrictions because as an Intuitive Eating dietitian and a person with a history of disordered eating, I know that that won't be supportive. That will lead to stress, and stress isn't supportive for fertility, but I could definitely see myself entertaining things that I sort of feel like, what do I have to lose?
Christy Harrison: And at some level it's like, okay, what do I have to lose? Maybe it's money, but is it anything beyond that? If not, maybe that's okay. But I think it's when it gets into something that is potentially sucking you deeper into a problematic place or taking you into other, leading you to other practices that might not be so benign, that's when it becomes a little fraught.
Leah Kern: Yeah. Yeah. I love that question. What have other people answered? What kind of things are you hearing?
Christy Harrison: I hear from a lot of people, yoga, meditation, stuff like that. I heard one person say, Reiki Pooja LaMi, and talked about reiki where she's like, it's very woo woo, but it's relaxing. It's a way to just lie on a table and have someone pay loving attention to you for an hour. And as a stressed out person and a new mom, I just need that escape. And I think when you can sort of see it for what it is and see the positives of something without getting sucked into all the Rhetoric around it, then maybe it can just be that nice lovely thing. I mean, it's nice that for you with the facial, you were getting pitched, but it didn't feel bad. It was kind of just like this person talking at you while they were doing a nice thing to your face or you're like, sure, keep going. But when it slips over into a pitch that detracts from the experience, maybe that's harder.
Leah Kern: Totally. I have a Dear friend who, she lives in a larger body, and she was recently getting a massage, and she was like, Leah, the way this woman was talking to me while she was massaging me low key being like, you would lose weight if you ate this and did that and have CMOs. And she has a lot of experience in advocating for herself and anti-diet culture and all of this work. She's my best friend and she's gone through her own Intuitive Eating journey, and still that sucks to be shamed like that while you're supposed to be having a nice experience. I mean, her experience was, yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep talking lady. This is a great massage. But totally. I mean, I think that kind of does happen already in a susceptible state. They're already doing work on you, so you're almost like, I think about that with yoga too. They have this, I don't know, like I said, power in that they're facilitating whether they're leading the class, doing the facial, doing the massage, that it can open channels that might make you more susceptible than you otherwise would be.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, it's a tricky thing. I think that susceptibility versus the ability to set boundaries, a lot of these practices do break down our boundaries in some ways, so it makes it harder to resist or to see something for what it is when somebody's trying to get you to do something that might not feel good to you.
Leah Kern: Yeah.
Christy Harrison: Well, switching gears a little bit, another thing I wanted to talk about from the main episode was that we were talking about how environmental issues and sustainability and sort of crunchiness can be like this pipeline into wellness culture and wellness traps. But I'm curious from your perspective, if someone is interested in those things, those sustainability, the environment, nature, all of those things are great, but how do you think people can have an interest in those things and pursue it without falling into wellness traps, without being susceptible?
