Catching Up and Looking Back: Wellness Traps, Weight-Loss "Success Stories," and More
A journey through my archives, and a roundup of what you might've missed on Rethinking Wellness this month
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the importance of approaching conversations about health, wellness, and nutrition with nuance and compassion—and how hard it can be to do that in our algorithm-addled, hot-take-hungry media environment, where extreme ideas tend to get amplified and entrenched.
As I shared here, I’ve realized that in years past I personally got pulled into more strident, black-and-white ways of speaking and writing by social algorithms, which favor content that pushes people’s buttons. And I think that process ultimately took me away from who I am and how I want to show up in the world.
In general I still stand behind the work I did years ago, in the sense that it’s based on sound science and thorough reporting/fact-checking, and I wouldn’t want to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. But I’ve been thinking about how interesting it would be to comb through some of my older content and update it from my perspective today, and also to see how my more recent work holds up a year or two down the line.
This feels particularly relevant because today is the one-year anniversary of my second book, The Wellness Trap! 🎉🎉 I still feel really great about that book and the nuance I was able to bring to it, as well as how it’s resonated with so many readers (please buy it now if you haven’t already!!!). But I’m curious to comb through it at some point and see if there are even subtle things that I’d change if I were writing it today.
So I wanted to try an experiment that may end up becoming a semi-regular feature here, if it goes well: a journey through my archives, looking at what we’ve published here recently and seeing how it’s changed from what I was doing a year ago or five years ago.
I also want to try updating some older pieces and sharing the thought process behind those changes, which is obviously kind of a vulnerable endeavor—so for now, I’m putting that section behind the paywall. My thoughts on the recent and one-year-ago content will be available to everyone, and you can upgrade to paid to see me grapple with some of the older stuff.
Speaking of paid subscriptions, just a quick heads-up: I’m getting ready to raise the subscription price for the first time ever. I’ve been hesitant to do that, but since launching Rethinking Wellness more than a year ago we’ve basically doubled the amount of content we’re putting out and invested significantly more in podcast production, and this project is now operating at a loss. So on May 1, prices for NEW subscriptions will increase to $6/month or $60/year. If you subscribe before then, you can lock in the current rate of $5/month or $50/year. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, nothing will change—you’ll keep getting the rate you signed up for!
This Month
I’m obviously biased, but I think we had some particularly great podcast episodes on Rethinking Wellness this past month. In case you missed any of them, catch up here:
One Year Ago
As I mentioned, today is the one-year anniversary of my second book, The Wellness Trap!!! To celebrate the launch last year, I had my friend
guest-host an episode of Rethinking Wellness and interview me about the book. I think this one really stands the test of time, and it’s still our #1 most-downloaded podcast episode!Katie and I talked about why I wanted to write a book about wellness, the potential harms of integrative and functional medicine (and why we’re understandably attracted to these approaches), the connections between wellness culture and diet culture, the legacy of the “hysteria” diagnosis and why women are still having to push back against the idea that symptoms are all in our heads, the role of social media in spreading wellness mis- and disinformation, and more. This conversation also inspired our first bonus episode, where we get into the history of contemporary wellness culture, the symbiotic relationship between wellness and diet culture, and what we can do (both individually and collectively) to avoid falling into wellness traps.
Five Years Ago
I jokingly thought about calling this section “rethinking my career,” because I had a feeling I’d find things from five years ago that I would write or say differently now.