Catching Up and Looking Back: Intuition vs. Diet Rules, Social-Media Harms, and More
A journey through my archives, and a roundup of what you might've missed on Rethinking Wellness this month
Last month I tried a little experiment here: a trip through my archives, looking at what I’ve published here (and elsewhere) in the past month, last year, and five years ago, to see the evolution. As I shared in that piece, in general I still stand behind the work I did back then, in the sense that it’s based on sound science and thorough reporting/fact-checking. But I’ve also been thinking a lot lately about the importance of approaching conversations about wellness and nutrition with nuance and compassion, and I know I didn’t always pull that off in the past—especially when I was unconsciously responding to the incentives of social algorithms.
That piece ended up resonating with many of you, and I enjoyed writing it—so this month I’m doing it again! And I may make this “Catching Up and Looking Back” series a somewhat regular feature, if it continues to feel good.
My thoughts on the recent and one-year-ago content is available to everyone, and you can upgrade to paid to see me grapple with some of the older stuff.
This Month
In case you missed it, here’s everything we shared on Rethinking Wellness in the past month. There were some pieces I absolutely loved and worked hard on that didn’t get the reach I’d expected, including the “sunlight before screen light” essay and the deep dive into the new Netflix gut-health documentary (maybe everyone was too busy stress-watching Baby Reindeer to care about another food/health doc? Which is fair). Other content, like the interviews with Ragen Chastain and Kirsten Powers, as well as my monthly link roundup, were even more popular than I’d anticipated.
Our most recent post—Monday’s interview with therapist/nutritionist Pixie Turner, whom you may remember from her stint as wellness influencer “Plantbased Pixie” a million years ago—had a mistake in the subject line when it went out: it was supposed to say “Critical Thinking About Social-Media Wellness Culture and the Plant-Based Diet Trend with Pixie Turner,” but for some reason the “Critical” got left out, which made for a very blah-sounding title. I don’t think the real one even does it justice, though—this was one of my favorite conversations in recent memory, where Pixie shared insights like these (and many others that are much longer and worth a listen/read):
“I’ve interviewed people who used to post ‘what I eat in a day’ videos, and they’ve told me that they used to lie about it. These influencers would just lie about what they were eating, because they were worried about what people were thinking of them or the ways people might judge them if they put something unhealthy [in the videos].”
…
“[Pro-vegan] documentaries are very good at making propaganda look like absolute truth. I think they do that exceptionally well. And I think because it's so well done, it makes it a lot more difficult for people to think critically about not just the documentary itself, but about the whole aspect of being plant based.”
Catch up on everything here (with apologies for the wonkily sized thumbnail images—I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get them to line up):
One Year Ago
A year ago yesterday, I posted an interview with author and podcaster Mary Jelkovsky that’s still one of our most-downloaded podcast episodes. In it, we discuss Mary’s history as a fitness influencer starting at age 16, and how it triggered and exacerbated her eating disorder; how social media algorithms drive us toward extreme diet and wellness content; why and how I took a huge step back from social media, and why Mary was contemplating doing the same; career moves for influencers after influencing; why “just try not to think about it" is sometimes the most helpful advice in the face of wellness culture’s constant push for self-optimization in every area of life; and more.
I’ve been thinking about my conversation with Mary recently while reading Jonathan Haidt’s bestseller The Anxious Generation (and critiques of it), which argues that smartphones and social media are directly responsible for the teen mental-health crisis. I think there are reasons to be skeptical of some of Haidt’s assertions, as
articulated in this recent piece (stay tuned for more from Melinda on this topic!). And Mary’s story of disordered eating and body obsession certainly includes other complicating factors—it wasn’t just social media.But as she describes it, getting on Instagram at age 16 took her existing body anxieties to a whole new level. She started posting workout selfies, but she’d never heard of more extreme forms of fitness like bodybuilding competitions—and then, suddenly, the algorithm was serving her nonstop bodybuilding content. It started to feel like everyone was into bodybuilding, and if you weren’t doing it there was something wrong with you (though she now knows the bodybuilding industry is tiny in the grand scheme of things). “On the internet, you get sucked into these little communities and it’s really hard to find your way out,” she said. Soon she started doing competitions herself, and when she turned 18 she got her first sponsorship deal with a supplement company. “Fitness and bodybuilding [became] my whole life,” she said. “I literally thought it was going to be my career forever. I didn’t see any other way.”
Check out the episode to hear the rest of Mary’s story.
Also a year ago this week: I went on CBS Mornings to talk about The Wellness Trap! It was a great experience that I told many of you about last year (archived here for paid subscribers, if you’re curious). Funnily enough, I re-wore that same green dress for the first time a couple days ago, for another on-camera interview at a rented location where the A/C was turned off for sound purposes…and let’s just say the outfit was NOT sweatproof 🙃 The crew assured me that I still looked cool and collected on camera, but we’ll see how it turns out—hopefully I’ll have something to share here soon. (The CBS Mornings studio, in contrast, was mercifully frigid.)
Five Years Ago
This week in 2019, I published an episode of my first podcast, Food Psych, that’s still a much-referenced fan favorite: an interview with sociologist Sabrina Strings.