Pharmacist and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor Sarah-Jane Garcia joins us to discuss how smart people get caught up in wellness culture.
She shares her path from the realities of being a pharmacist experimenting with elimination diets to how getting certified in integrative medicine exacerbated her orthorexia to why becoming a parent finally opened her eyes to the fear-mongering happening in wellness communities.
Behind the paywall, Christy and Sarah-Jane discuss what it actually took for Sarah-Jane to break free from diet culture, as well as how she returned to conventional medicine through Intuitive Eating.
The first half of this episode is available to everyone. To hear the whole thing, become a paid subscriber here.
Sarah-Jane Garcia is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor with personal experience navigating binge eating, restriction, and obsessive clean eating. Discovering Intuitive Eating freed her from intense struggle with food—and inspired her to become a counselor, so she could help other women do the same.
Sarah-Jane offers 1:1 coaching as well as a 12-week group program focused on the Principles of Intuitive Eating. She’s also a Specialty Pharmacist, and her approach blends science, psychology, and lived experience to guide you toward a healthier, more peaceful relationship with food.
Resources and References
Contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org, where I earn a small commission for any purchases made.
Christy’s second book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
Subscribe on Substack for extended interviews and more
Intuitive Eating, 4th Edition: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach
Christy’s online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
Transcript
Disclaimer: The below transcription is primarily rendered by AI, so errors may have occurred. The original audio file is available above.
Here’s Christy’s conversation with Sarah-Jane Garcia.
Christy Harrison: You are a pharmacist who got really into wellness culture at one point and eventually started to question it and find your way out. And you have such an interesting journey that I’m excited to talk with you about. But first, I’d love to hear just a bit about your history with diet and wellness culture before all of that. How was your relationship with food and your body growing up and what made you want to go into pharmacy in the first place?
Sarah-Jane Garcia: Well, this is such a convoluted tale, but I’ll do my best to sort of summarize. So growing up, I didn’t have restrictions really on food. It was really not anything that was tough for me to navigate. I grew up very privileged as well. I’m in a thin body. I was spared from any comments from anybody about needing to lose weight or anything like that. But from a young age, I do remember tying my worth to my looks and my body size and my appearance. Like, people would comment on my looks and even though I was part of the A class at school or on the A hockey team, I grew up in South Africa, even though I was able to achieve these accomplishments, it still seemed that my worth became very tied to my looks and my appearance.
I was young teenage years when I moved to the States and I was really unhappy at this time. It was a traumatic experience for me to move at that middle of high school kind of age. And I was pretty lonely. I didn’t really fit in here. But then I also no longer fit in in South Africa. I had pursued modeling for a little bit. Not really because I wanted to, but I sort of felt like I was pushed in that direction a little bit. And then I remembered going to California to this conference and not getting any callbacks after that and feeling like devastated. I remember this mentality of like, I’m just too short and like not skinny enough for the industry.
And I remembered letting that go a little bit. It didn’t really get into my mentality that much. I didn’t hold to that. But I do remember feeling like somewhere along the line I had that had become absorbed within my thinking of how I needed to look for being able to pursue a career in modeling. I was happy to give it up though, because I’m actually quite a shy person and I do not really enjoy being in the spotlight and I was able to really hold on to a little bit of my self worth still because I knew that that was a modeling culture thing and it was not like about really me and my worth, but it was the end of this, like modeling road for me.
And so at that point, I was pretty lonely here in the States. I was navigating new friends groups and I started to somehow outsource my thinking. And I tried so hard to fit in that I would just sort of make friends with anybody and sort of become this chameleon and go with whatever their thoughts and beliefs were about things. I was also told by someone older in my world that I should never expect to have friends because girls weren’t like me. Like, they’ll think that I got this and I’ve got that and I’m privileged or I’m pretty and that it would just be too threatening, which was really tough to hear. And I shouldn’t have bought into it, but I did.
And so then I sort of took it upon myself to just kind of dumb myself down, to be honest. Like, I just felt like, okay, I’m going to focus on making sure that I don’t come across as all of these things that people might view me as. So I did what it took to sort of be liked and to fit in. But along the way, I just really got into fitness and looks because that is then what my worth was tied to. So it’s just this very difficult place to navigate or that was how I felt worthy. But at the same time, I was trying to fit in and dumb myself down in these other ways.
And then by the time I was, like, 19 or 20, I do very much acknowledge the privilege that I have and throughout my childhood and adolescence, there were some pretty significant traumatic experiences that I did go through. I just feel like I could describe myself at that age as very nice and accommodating people pleasing, perfectionistic person, pretty shy and quiet who just wanted to be liked and who tied most of my worth to that outward appearance. Working out was something that was super important to me. I enjoyed it at that time.
I went to college and I heard about the freshman 15. I had a family member, I overheard them talking to another family friend about, oh, it’s just puppy fat, like, expressing a little weight gain that I had in my adolescence that would eventually correct itself. I remember going to the gym and the first time being offered supplements and shakes and things that were supposed to sort of help me maintain or attain this super thin toned body.
Oh, one thing I didn’t mention too, was at this point, I had also had other friends or family members make a comment like, oh, you’ve lost weight, but I hadn’t thought about my body size before. So I was like, well, what was I before? Like, what did you think of me before? So anyway, back to this gym. I was sort of at this gym. And then I remember that trainer took one look at me and he’s like, oh, you’re someone who can just work out for a few days and get the body that you want, aren’t you? And it was like, first of all, was there something wrong with the current body I had? And then second of all, it was like, all it took would be a few days of solid effort and I would get this perfect body? And I did end up getting very, very toned and then I was very hooked.
I remember this distinctly, then a friend had come to visit me from South Africa. And I remember some of our other friends were like, oh, she’s gained so much weight just from being in the States and their portion sizes that they serve there. And I remembered looking at a picture of her and I and us being exactly the same weight. There were a few other things experiences, like with a boyfriend and how he very much tied my worth, I would say, to looks as well, but basically it just became this upkeep. I received continuous comments of my body. Working out now became something I did to maintain my skinny body. And I started to, at this point, binge and restrict. I’d started diets like Slim Fast or cabbage soup diet or whatever else. And then I would end up severely binging.
Everything was tied to my looks. If I broke up a relationship, it was never about, well, we just didn’t mesh and our personality types were different. It was about, like, obviously I wasn’t enough. And so I would just go harder into workouts and fitness. I just never really did this work around loneliness or people pleasing or that.
Christy Harrison: There’s so much in our culture that pushes that too, right? That’s like, if you’re lonely or you have a breakup or something’s going wrong in your life, get better looking, work on your body, right? You can fix it all through diet and exercise and that sort of thing.
Sarah-Jane Garcia: Yeah, exactly. And then like, you’ll show them, right? Like, your revenge body or something. So I then went to pharmacy school. The reason why I got into pharmacy school was actually pretty interesting. I had spent some years not quite sure what I wanted to do. Kinesiology was my major for a while at school and that was like sports science and that was because I wanted to know more about fitness and nutrition. I felt like I was really good at that.
And then due to a few visa issues with my immigration status, I ended up putting off my training for a while. And it wasn’t actually until somebody had said to me have you looked into becoming a pharmacist? I was very interested in the medical field. I just knew I didn’t want to go to medical school. And it was really just from there that I got interested in pharmacy itself. And I was always really interested in chemistry and biology in college. I did well in those classes and it just felt like a logical next step.
At this time I was in pharmacy school and I ended up getting divorced. So I was married pretty young and I got divorced from a really great guy. But in pharmacy school I was now dealing with that and this divorce. And I was still binging and restricting immensely. But what ended up happening at this point was everyone around me was always so impressed at like how well I was handling things or like my dedication to my workouts, which I’d do like at 9pm at night after studying. And I was just really obsessive and perfectionistic about it.
But I would continue to get compliments for how I looked or how dedicated I was to my workouts. And like that made me feel like clearly I’m doing something right to be getting all this praise. I always felt this need to live up to it. Like, not doing it would cause me this identity crisis. At this point in my world, I was just so caught up in binging and restricting. It was just such a struggle. The amount that I could eat, all the things I went through and dealt with and the things I tried, like I couldn’t break free from binge eating. And the cycle of binging and restricting.
Christy Harrison: It’s such a common cycle. I went through it myself and I know many people listening probably have, and I think it was just so eye opening and something that I didn’t even want to really embrace for a long time. But once I finally understood the way that restricting begets binging. And that over exercise contributes to that as well and that you’re creating this energy deficit in your body that your body is just desperate to fill and so binging becomes sort of a survival mechanism almost. That to me was really eye opening.
I’m curious for you, how you got help with binge eating, because I know your recovery process was sort of a long and winding one and led you in some directions that were not so great.
Sarah-Jane Garcia: Yeah, I think at this point I had gone to see my doctor and I had brought this up and I remember she was so kind. But I got like 15 minutes with her and then I remembered seeing in my chart that she had diagnosed me with like chronic fatigue. And I was just like, huh? And I think also anxiety. And I was like, no, it’s not that. I struggle with food. And she had offered some antidepressants at that time. And that was a whole other thing that, I’ve definitely changed how I feel about this, but back then I definitely had a lot of like, well, I can’t take an antidepressant. That’s gonna say so much about who I am or how I struggle. And it’ll just speak to all these parts of me that I don’t really want to feel or confront.
And I think I did end up trying the antidepressant and it just didn’t work. And I remembered thinking, well, it’s like a 15 minute appointment with her and I didn’t really have enough follow up. I sort of managed it myself. It just didn’t feel like really solid care. She was wonderful herself. But I knew that the system wasn’t set up to where I could go in for longer appointments or anything like that.
I had also started seeing this myself in pharmacy where I was a pharmacist myself and started to see patients and I remembered thinking like, I’m going to know all of my patients. I’m going to know their stories, I’m going to know their history. I’m going to know how to help them. Every time they come to the pharmacy, I’ll know who they are and be someone that they feel really safe and comfortable around. And then I started working in retail pharmacy and it was like, you would go up and be called to counsel a patient on their new medication, and there would be a line out the door and instead of being able to do all of these things, I would say, hi, do you have any questions? Because phones are ringing off the hook and we’ve got people coming through the drive through and there’s doctors on the phone. It just felt like it was just too much to be able to actually invest in that person’s health.
And so that made me sort of start to feel like the conventional system was not really set up in a way to be able to help me and let alone anybody else. I also saw patients who would come to the pharmacy and actually express, like, well, my doctor put me on this med, but I really don’t know if I need it and I didn’t have a discussion with them around what the need was or what the thought process was about why they should be starting something.
And then another big moment for me was as a pharmacist, I had tried to research medications that could help with binge eating, and I did find one. It’s a ADHD medication and it’s an appetite suppressant. But at that time, it was off label for binge eating. So I went back to my doctor and I said, could I try this? And she trusted me. I’m a pharmacist. I was very open and honest with her and she trusted me. But she still went back and had to take 10 minutes to look into it. And then she came back and she was like, okay, yeah, I do see that it’s off label for that. We’ll give it a try.
And on one hand, I super appreciate that, that she was willing to go with something I was recommending for myself. But at the same time, it was like, but you didn’t know about that treatment? Like, what else is out there that I don’t know about or that conventional medicine doesn’t know about that could truly help me? And so that was a very big part of it. And then also feeling like we weren’t getting to the root cause together. It was always just chronic fatigue, anxiety but what’s causing this? Like, how did this even come about?
Christy Harrison: Right? What’s driving me to binge in the first place?
Sarah-Jane Garcia: Exactly. And then at this point, I was at the pharmacy one day, and I remembered I was working with a co-worker, also a pharmacist, and we were sort of talking a little bit about struggling with food. I remember we had all this candy at the pharmacy, and we would both just try so hard to ignore it and not reach for it. And then I remember she said to me, hey, have you ever heard of this elimination diet? And I was like, no. Here’s this pharmacist, right? She’s gone through a science background, and she’s like, I’ve found something that may be, like, really promising, do you want to try it with me? And so we did.
We went on this elimination diet at the same time because it had promised that your issue is probably just sugar and an addiction to sugar. And so if you just cut it out, then you’ll stop binging or struggling with food or at least that’s how I interpreted it. At the same time, that same person, she’s lovely, she was also caught up in her own issues, which is also part of the reason why I wanted to talk about this was because it was so many insightful, educated, smart people that would get caught up in plans or protocols or lifestyle things that would seem promising but end up being actually quite harmful. And it’s interesting how we get snagged and caught up in that.
She ended up introducing me to this online wellness guru, and I started listening to his podcast, and it just made so much sense to me. He would talk about how conventional medicine sort of failed him. He had a chronic illness. He couldn’t find the cause and then he went on this quest to find the root cause of his issue. And so then that resonated with me. Like, yes, yes, I want to know the root issue.
So we tracked the same way. We both had a problem. There was no viable solution from conventional medicine. And then we wanted to look at the root problem, which seemed like the most reasonable thing to do. So then I got really caught up in that world, and I started doing the detoxes, all these supplement protocols. And I think the trickiest part of all was that I felt like it actually worked the first time. I felt better and I was like, oh, gosh, this is it. I have now figured out all these ways to sort of help my issue.
And it didn’t work a few months down the road. It became unsustainable. I couldn’t sustain all these sort of practices that I was supposed to be doing. And when it didn’t work, I ended up believing this rhetoric that it was me not trying hard enough, that I just wasn’t doing it entirely, or I had cheated and had a little bit of sugar during the elimination period so it was like, just basically try harder.
The other thing that was really difficult, this is like such a wild story, but I was on vacation for my wedding in Kauai, and I ended up going into this smoothie bowl and there was the wellness guru. Like, he was there in life.
Christy Harrison: Oh, my gosh.
Sarah-Jane Garcia: And so then I was like, he’s even walking the walk. Like, look at him. He’s in this wellness shop and he’s doing all the things. It was confirmation that this was the correct thing. Right? He was doing all that. Anyway, I started to get really into it and I went on to become certified as an integrative health practice practitioner through his online program. So I took a course on how to correct your body with rest and sleep and supplements and all of these. And I was very much into it, sort of ignoring the times when it wasn’t sustainable and just making that about me not doing it hard enough.
Christy Harrison: Rather than that this protocol was maybe exacerbating things for you or was too restrictive or not the right fit for you.
Sarah-Jane Garcia: Totally. And I also felt like once I got into his world, it would lead me to all these other functional medicine people, and they would have thousands and thousands of followers. And I’d be like, what is this? They can’t all be wrong, you know? So there must be something here. How could they all be wrong? And so one person would lead me down the next algorithm echo chamber world. And it just felt like I just really got snagged and really bought into it all.
Christy Harrison: What was it like to get into that whole community and that social media, holistic wellness, integrative health kind of space? What sort of things did you start to believe?
Sarah-Jane Garcia: Well, so at this point, I wanted to become pregnant. And so I would start to post to these groups about the best way to get my body ready for pregnancy. And I would get all this information that sounded plausible, but looking back on it now was just so unsustainable. Various supplements to take, various morning routines to do, acupuncture, chiropractic, certain amounts of workouts, eating this, eating that. It was a lot. But at that point I was definitely into all of this and did my best to follow all of these guidelines.
Also, the elimination diet that I followed had formed this wellness community for moms who are pregnant or wanted to get pregnant. So I would follow that content a lot, and I would hear about all the things you needed to do to create this healthy baby. And so what ended up happening is now not only was I still binge eating, but I started to now really stress about the food that I was eating and what I wasn’t eating and what I needed to add in to my plans and protocols in order to create a healthy, healthy baby.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, there’s so much pressure on moms to do that and the language, even, of creating this healthy baby. That it’s, like, up to you and it’s all about what you put into your body to create this life in this perfect way. It’s so insidious.
Sarah-Jane Garcia: Yeah, it’s insidious. And it then became just so distressing. It became so distressing because I now felt like I knew what needed to be done to have this healthy, happy pregnancy and ultimately a healthy, happy baby and yet I was still binging and couldn’t stop that. I would email or I’d post in these chats to the group members, like, five months pregnant and I’m really discouraged because I really thought I would be doing clean eating for the full nine months and doing all of these things to help this baby grow.
And I remembered getting to a point where I was like, I’m really worried that I’m going to be ruining her little organs or her immune system, or I’m gonna create a colicky baby because of the sugar that I have in my body and because of how much I cannot stop binging. I don’t know what to do. And so that was really tough. But a lot of the responses I would get would be like, oh, have you tried this way instead? Or, maybe add in this. They were just not sustainable.
Then I ended up giving birth to her, and she was this beautiful, healthy little baby girl. And in that moment was like, huh, okay. And then I also was like, oh, but it’s because I did all these things correctly. Even though I binged during my pregnancy, I still did the liver pills and the choline supplements, the right amount of exercise. And so I was like, that’s why, that’s what saved this little one. So I had this little girl and now it turned into mommyhood and how to raise this baby to be healthy, what to feed her. But at the same time, I also was very concerned about how to prevent her from having any of the eating issues that I had had.
So I started to look into, like, the best approaches for feeding her and how to feed her, what to feed her. And I got again, through social media, I found some baby feeding accounts. And the one account that I did find I actually really loved and resonated with. But they would show food like sandwiches or peanut butter and jelly or granola bars. And I’m like, wait, isn’t that like, ultra processed? So I liked the philosophy around it, but I was like, okay, but I’m just gonna do everything that’s clean and organic and gluten free or whatever else. And so I kind of went down that road for a little bit.
And I remember then getting to this place where she was going to be starting daycare, and I was so worried about the food that they were going to offer at daycare. I had then again reached out to this mama’s group and said, how do you all deal with knowing that your baby’s gonna go somewhere else for the day and get food that has toxins and pesticides and isn’t organic? How do you guys deal with this? I’m so anxious about it.
And the turning point for me was when I had come across another post on social media from a different baby feeding account and this person had posted a picture of a can of organic pineapple and a can of conventional pineapple. And she had said, we’ve got to stop fear mongering around conventional foods. And what she expressed in that post was the downsides of organic fruits is that that we are, number one, fear mongering around conventional foods to the point where some families are not even feeding their children fruit because they fear what it may do to their children’s bodies or how unhealthy it may be. So they’re not even feeding them fruit and then not feeding them anything at all in its place because they may not have access to the organic version.
And then the other part of that was how it’s creating this judgment of those who do choose to eat or get conventional foods that, like the rest of us sort of judge that choice. And that can be incredibly harmful, especially when the bottom line is that there’s some people that really cannot afford to go to various health food shops and get the kinds of foods that these wellness gurus and influencers are saying are the end all, be all to health. I was struck in that moment. I remember I immediately went and deleted the post, the question that I had sent to the moms group. And I felt so guilty. I was like, I’ve been contributing to this fear and how did this happen?
And then at the same time, I had compassion for myself. I was like, I also was fear mongered to. I was sort of caught in this trap because of this rhetoric that I had started to follow so closely. And so I really tried to just stay grounded in that. But nevertheless, it led me to now a whole new world where I had then started following Food Science Babe. Not Food Babe, Food Science Babe. And I started to see how all of these ideas that I had really thought were super plausible, like toxins and foods, the level of pesticides and foods organic versus non-organic could be broken down in a completely different way and completely debunked. And I just was like, oh, my goodness. That account led to another account.
It was pretty interesting at that point how I had started to now straddle the two worlds and started learning about this other side a little bit more. At this time, I got pregnant with my second baby. And this became very tumultuous because, on one hand, was really trying to loosen the reins on what I allowed myself to eat and so when I did, I would still binge eat. So when I was binge eating, I would allow myself to binge eat. But then I would also flip back to like, oh, my gosh, what if that’s not the correct information? What if that’s not the correct research? Everyone’s doing research on everything. How do I know that that’s the correct information? And so I would really be worried about harming the baby.
And on top of that I couldn’t stomach the “good foods.” I couldn’t stomach any of the food that this protocol had had me follow to create this healthy baby. I could no longer stomach those because I was so nauseous. All I could eat was like, cheese on toast, cheesy toast. And so then I was like, I’m ruining this baby. I’m sugar ridden and he’s getting all of it.
Christy Harrison: What a horrible feeling to have. That’s just so much guilt and so much pain.
Sarah-Jane Garcia: Yeah. I then went to my doctor, my OB-GYN. She was incredible. So incredible. Another turning point for me was that she knew that I wanted to try to approach everything naturally and do all these things, but she was so kind about it. I was able to hold onto my autonomy with her. She never told me what to do. She never pushed for anything. But she would give very plausible, sound reasons as to maybe why we wouldn’t engage in the certain practice in pregnancy or maybe why, for me in particular, a home birth wouldn’t have been the best thing.
She’s a conventional doctor, and I think she just started to really allow me to slowly peep back into conventional medicine again because she also spent like 30 to 45 minutes with me, which was like, not typical in that space. And so it really helped me feel open and safe to explore these other ideas because that’s how we need to feel when we want to open our eyes to other opinions or thoughts or beliefs. We sort of have to feel in a safe space to do that. We don’t want to feel shamed because we’ll totally shut down.
Christy Harrison: And to feel held in empathy too, and have someone give you that space, which, yeah, the fact that she made such time for you and had long appointments and was able to just show up and answer your questions, I’m sure felt very different than this image that you had and all the experiences you’d had in conventional medicine that sort of led you to this integrative place in the first place.
Sarah-Jane Garcia: Exactly, exactly. And she was wonderful and then at the same time, she really didn’t know where to send me for this food stuff. She could tell me till she was blue in the face that I’m not ruining my baby. And she just was like, I’ll look for resources for you, but I really am not sure where to sit. She just really didn’t know what to do with me. I then ended up having my son, and he was perfectly healthy and even more chill than his sister. And this was after a pregnancy of severe binging and no wellnessy products.
And so I was like, oh, my gosh, I’ve been duped. Wellness culture has totally duped me. This baby is fine. And so at this point, I then got upset and angry that somehow I had fallen for this. And then it just took me down this other road of figuring out how and why this has happened. And I’m super, super grateful because that’s been really great to sort of understand how many of us can really get snagged, especially now in our political climate, there’s lots of rhetoric around health and wellness and mis and disinformation and what we should be eating and what we shouldn’t be eating, all in this backdrop of there’s not enough people who get to eat in the first place. It’s very convoluted.
Christy Harrison: What do you feel like eventually helped you address the binge eating and orthorexia? It sounds like all of those experiences started to build up and make you question what you had been doing before and start to feel like, okay, I didn’t ruin my baby by eating in this way and sort of let go of some of the wellnessy stuff, the wellnessy products. I’m curious what other things maybe helped you shift that relationship with food for yourself?
Sarah-Jane Garcia: Yeah, I think it was being able to peek back into parts of conventional medicine and then also being given that safe space through my doctor. And then I had also seen a nutritionist at that time who was recommending that I just eat a few more Kind bars. And I was like, this? Are you sure?
