Author and former brand strategist Jessica Elefante joins us to discuss her past life as a “bullshit artist” and what she learned about how to influence people, the health issues that led her to quit her job and start speaking out about the dangers of technology, how to avoid wellness-industry influence, how to question everything without overthinking, and more.
Jessica Elefante is a writer and bullshit artist who has spent the last few decades examining what it means to be human in our modern world.
She is the author of Raising Hell, Living Well: Freedom from Influence in a World Where Everyone Wants Something from You (Ballantine, 2023) which she coined a How-Come (not a How-To). Jessica’s writing works to open people’s eyes on the topics of technology, capitalism, influence, and motherhood and has appeared in The Guardian, Literary Hub, Huffington Post, Bustle, Simplify Magazine, the Dispatch, Whalebone Magazine and more. As the founder of acclaimed Folk Rebellion and a critic of today's culture, Elefante’s award-winning works shine a light on the untenability of our times and have been featured by Vogue, Inc., Los Angeles Times, The Observer, Writer’s Digest, Vice, Paper Mag, Wired, and elsewhere. Her short documentary “What Day Is It?” was awarded semi-finalist of Flickers RIIFF and an Official Selection of Beverly Hills Film Festival and New York Shorts Film Festival, for its portrayal of a mother's perspective on the ever-shifting emotional and mental states of lockdown. In her previous life as a brand strategist, she was recognized on Brand Innovators “40 under 40” list for winning her clients industry recognition including Webby, Edison, and AdAge awards. Jess has proudly been a guest lecturer at Columbia Business School and New York University sharing her expertise in entrepreneurship and branding. She's influenced by the social, cultural, and technological circumstances of her life, but mostly, of her desire to lead a colorful one. Raised in upstate New York, she now lives in Brooklyn with her family. She is no longer bullshitting. Find her online at jessicaelefante.com.
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Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.
If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.
Resources and References
Contains Bookshop affiliate links
Jessica’s book, Raising Hell, Living Well: Freedom from Influence in a World Where Everyone Wants Something from You (Including Me)
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 bonus episodes and more
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.
Christy Harrison: Welcome to Rethinking Wellness, a podcast that offers critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture and reflections on how to find true well-being. I'm your host, Christy Harrison, and I'm a registered dietitian, certified intuitive eating counselor, journalist, and author of three books, including Anti-Diet, which was published in 2019, The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook, which will be out on February 20th, and The Wellness Trap, which was published in 2023 and is the inspiration for this podcast. You can learn more and get them all at christyharrison.com/books.
Hey there. Welcome back to Rethinking Wellness. I'm Christy, and my guest today is author and former brand strategist, Jessica Elefante, who joins me to discuss her past life as a so called bullshit artist, and what she learned about how to influence people. We talk about the health issues that led her to quit her job and start speaking out about the dangers of technology, how to avoid wellness industry influence, how to question everything without overthinking, and more. I really love this conversation, and I can't wait to share it with you shortly. But first, a few quick announcements. The most exciting one is that my first podcast, Food Psych, is back for a monthly series, and the first episode just dropped last week. To kick off the new series, I'm talking with therapists Judith Matz and Amy Pershing, two fan favorite guests from earlier seasons who are now my co-authors on a new workbook about emotional eating, chronic dieting, binge eating, and body image that just came out last week.
We go behind the scenes on the book in our collaboration with lots of great takeaways for anyone who's ever felt like they were an overeater or emotional eater. Check it out by subscribing to Food Psych wherever you get your podcast. That's f o o d p s y c h, or go to christyharrison.com/subscribe. This podcast is brought to you by my second book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free From Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being, which is available wherever books are sold. This book is the inspiration behind this podcast and it covers a lot of what we talk about here, including the role of social media and the Internet in spreading wellness scams, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories, and how to avoid being influenced by wellness culture and think critically about health information. Just go to christyharrison.com/thewellness trap to learn more and buy the book. That's christyharrison.com/thewellnesstrap. Finally, this podcast is made possible as always by my paid subscribers on Substack.
Not only do paid subscriptions help support the show and keep me able to make the best free content I possibly can, but they also get you great perks like bonus episodes with our guests, including one I did With Jess that'll run later this week, subscriber only q & a's, full access to our archives, including deep dives on lots of different health conditions and wellness trends, and commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners. Just go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com to sign up. That's rethinkingwellness.substock.com. And if you're already a paid subscriber, thank you so much. Your support means the world to me. Now without any further ado, here's my conversation with Jessica Elefante.
So, Jessica Elefante, welcome to Rethinking Wellness. Thank you so much for being here.
Jessica Elefante: Thank you for having me.
Christy Harrison: I love your book and your work, and I've seen so many interviews with you recently that just resonate so much with themes that we cover on the show and things that I've been thinking about and processing in my professional and personal life. So I was really excited to have you on to talk about your book and just your whole history, and sort of perspective on wellness culture, but also influence in general, which I think touches everything in our lives, really. So I'd love to start out by talking about your sort of history and how you got here. You say that you were a bullshit artist. So how did that work? How did you influence people, and what effect do you think that had on your own well-being and that of the people you influenced?
Jessica Elefante: Yeah. I mean, I definitely didn't grow up saying I wanted to be a bullshit artist. It was totally accidental, but it's a moniker that I own completely now. I thought I was gonna be an artist. I wanted to be a writer and a photographer, and that was basically, the only thing that I kept coming back to is I love to tell stories and look at the world around me. And so I set out in life to have a very, I don't know, unique path, if you will. Back in the nineties, it wasn't really something that people, you know, stood up and cheered for if you decided not to go to college. And I had had, you know, a whole life plan laid out through the traditional path of going to college and working in media and communications, and I received an academic scholarship that would take care of that, but it was thankfully, many things came to pass that had me kind of thinking about why I made that decision to go and do this thing that was somewhat traditional when I wanted an untraditional experience. And so I flushed that all down the drain two weeks before I was supposed to go to the university and instead started traveling and studying art and studying photography and having these sort of different out of the box jobs.
I was a ballroom dance teacher and a ski resort instructor, and it was actually those two jobs that started me on the path to now what I call a bullshit artist. I thought they were jobs that were outside of, you know, a cubicle, so they were alluring to me. But really what they ended up being was sort of master classes in human behavior. We would study how people operated, how they thought, how to make people feel comfortable or disarm them, how to sit a certain way, how to carry yourself a certain way, all so that you would have your clients or your customers feel comfortable in your presence to get them to do what you wanted to do, which was sign up for more dance lessons or sign up for more snowboarding or ski lessons. And I didn't see it at the time that most people don't learn these types of things in the way that I had. How to Win Friends and Influence People, I had read that probably six times by the time I was 19 under the instruction of bosses. And so it just became a part of me on a deep, deep level that I was very unaware of. And as I grew up and went out into the world and studied more art and studied more photography, this thing happened where I, you know, wanted a nice apartment and lived in New York City to be a struggling artist, but I needed to still pay the bills to pay the rent, and there was this whole industry that was really cool and awesome that was willing to hire artists and creatives and storytellers to work for them, and that was marketing and advertising and brands.
And so that was how I paid the bills. I was kind of a sellout, but at the time, I didn't think I was a sellout. Right? It was cool to work for an advertising agency and help these brands figure out everything from their packaging to how they present themselves to the world. And it just so happened that I was at the right age at the right time with the right background of having worked in, at this time now, traditional marketing for a very long time. I'm talking newspapers, billboards, phone books. You know? I know how to operate a fax machine. And the Internet really started to become something that these corporations and brands could no longer ignore. And having, I guess, like, both languages able to speak to the executives in a way that made sense to them about why this online community was important really just propelled my career into a place that I could never have planned nor predicted. And that's when I became really successful because everybody knew that they needed to be on Facebook or, you know, at the time there was Vine.
I was teaching viral networking 101 classes to small business owners, and I just became a very, very online person on behalf of my clients, not because of any choice. And I was proud at the time. Right? And this was when everybody was just, like, applauding any sort of innovation in the tech and the digital space, and I was being rewarded in every way that we think shows that we're on the right path. Right? You're making money. You're getting clients. You're getting press. You're being invited to speak on a stage, and that I ended up becoming very unwell because of what I was doing for work because of my always-online life. And so I quit that thinking that I can make changes for myself and make changes for the world.
And fast forward, I just ended up recreating the same thing all over again. And at the end of it, with nothing left, with feeling wholly unwell, and I was able to see that there was this big word. It wasn't tech. It wasn't digital. It wasn't media. It wasn't marketing. It wasn't really my own upbringing and feeling like I had something to prove. If I was to put everything in one bucket, there was this overarching umbrella term, and it was this influence.
And when I saw that I had been influencing people my whole life to avoid being influenced into what I saw as a traditional sort of cubicle way of life that I very much didn't wanna live. I just did the same thing all over again. And so I came up with this concept, this sort of big idea of, like, the culture of influence that we all live under. And by becoming aware of it, you can choose what you want to opt in or opt out of, hopefully.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. I mean, that's so powerful, and I haven't really looked at things in that particular way. I've thought about influencers, obviously, and sort of that level of influence on our culture, but you bring in so many different layers and different parts of society and how we're all raised and the different levels of influence in people's lives. And I think that's really interesting aspect of this book. I wanna get into all that and sort of talk about how people can recognize and push back against influence in their lives, or make judicious choices, I guess, about how they're influenced as well. But first, I wanna talk a little bit about your unwellness and sort of how that played into your various pivots and coming to understand what you understand now. Because the pivot that you made when you burnt out in those corporate jobs was to create this brand called Folk Rebellion. Right? And you were trying to wake people up to the dangers of the digital age as you say, but you found that that wasn't the right move. That wasn't actually sort of the thing. And I'm curious why that was, you know, and sort of the effect that that had too on your well-being.
Jessica Elefante: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of terrifying. I mean, this was back in 2012 where I started to see different doctors to figure out what was happening to me. I was very young. I was in my early thirties, and I just started having extreme memory loss. I think that's the most important one or the most alarming one for me personally is just the gaps in memory that were just disappearing. I couldn't have told you what I'd had for breakfast that day, or I couldn't find, like, certain words. That one I still struggle with from time to time, word recall. I think of this time where I was trying to say hanger, right, a coat hanger, but I said the sticks you put your clothes on, which is terrifying. Right? Like, what is that?
But there was a lot of other symptoms as well, like this general, like, fog, dissociation, malaise, going throughout your day of, of course, not being present, but also just the lack of reality that you're not being present. For me, the thing that was driving these doctor's appointments was my memory loss. And nobody had the term back then for, like, digital detox to even suggest such a thing, people thought you're crazy because the world, this is amazing. Everything that is happening is amazing. Innovation and tech in the digital revolution and people were just guzzling this. And so the thought never even crossed my mind. And it was not by choice that I figured out what was wrong with me or my brain.
No doctor could figure it out. They said, you know, I didn't have enough vitamin D. I didn't eat enough green foods. Maybe it was seasonal depression. Maybe it was my hormones. You name it, I did it, And nothing made me feel better. And you start to think, like, maybe this is just my brain, and I'm gonna have, like, early onset Alzheimer's or something. So it was really scary, and I went on vacation with my now ex-husband at the time and our child who is one. And when we landed, there was no Wi-Fi on the plane. And I texted, you know, my boss and my clients, and I said, "I'm available. I just landed." And he told me in the airport, I'll never forget it, this is one of those life moments. He turned around and he's like, "I'm not doing this. Like, I'm not doing this with you for the next two weeks. People wait their whole lives to come to Hawaii." We were going for a wedding. "And you can either tell your boss," in his words, not mine, "to go fuck herself or you can get back on the plane. I'm sending you home."
And I had a choice to make, and you go through all these emotions. I was furious. I had shame. I was crying, but I did it. He said, "Give me all of your devices," and I handed them to him. And so it was because of that, eight days later, I woke up. It was like someone turned a light switch on in my brain. There I was. I was crystal clear. I was feeling creative, energized. I had no problems with my memory whatsoever. The veil was completely lifted. And when I tell this story, people say it's kind of like what an addict experiences when they truly become sober for the first time. And so I came back to New York to my clients and I decided to make these changes to protect my brain.
I closed my computer. I knew I had better thinking when I wrote with a pen and paper. And so you go into these meetings with these new intentions and realized that nobody else has caught up or has even thought of it. And so I decided that I could leave this. Use all my evil marketing skills and advertising and lifestyle brand building to wake people up, like you said, to how we were using our technology wasn't the best way, but I truly believed back then that we could fix it. We could hack our way out of it. We could set boundaries and balance and that I hung my hat on that, and I went around the world advocating and educating for this sort of change in how we have our relationships with our devices. And it unexpectedly took on like wildfire, especially in the wellness community.
They welcomed me with open arms because people who are conscious of what they put in their bodies or on their bodies or how their body looks knew or were feeling that, like, I can do yoga and meditate and drink a green juice, but if I have an unhealthy relationship with my devices, I'm still unhealthy. I'm feeling depressed. I'm feeling lonely. I'm feeling listless. And so, again, I ended up on this unexpected trajectory roller coaster, if you will, of becoming one of the Trojan horses and the digital well-being movement. And I was, again, going being flown all over god's creation to give talks and workshops and, you know, speaking engagements, and I had to monetize it somehow so I could pay the bills. So I knew no one wanted to be told that they scrambled their brains or worse yet, their kids' brains, and so I came at it as this sort of rebellious counterculture lifestyle brand. And we had t-shirts that said, "Wander where the Wi-Fi is weak" and "So many likes when all you need is love."
Again, 2013, 2014, and people were just starting to say, like, this isn't okay. And I just did the same thing all over again. And I ended up with a medical condition due to stress and overwork and burnout. My life behind the scenes was completely falling apart, my marriage, my business partnership, it was just, you know, something for me to pour myself into to kind of ignore everything else that was happening around me, and I was operating I now see, again, when it comes back to that culture of influence, even though I was of positive intentions and even though I was really motivated to change things for my kids and for my own health, I was still operating within the systems of with which I existed. And so it didn't matter that my intentions were good. It didn't matter that, you know, I really truly believe this at my core. I was still utilizing the tools and the tricks of the trade. I was still being rewarded through traditional means in a capitalistic and patriarchal sort of society and culture.
And so I just recreated the wheel, but in maybe a more palatable way. So at the end of the day, it netted out the same. And that's where this book came out because I knew that until I became clear on really what was influencing me, everything from how I grew up to my own beliefs, to the things that I haven't fixed about myself, to the cultures of which I existed in, and that meant timing, right, the lean in movement, hustle culture, girl boss culture, all these things that in my formative years of career influenced how I operated and then, obviously, you know, the world at hand, the outer world, I call it, which is media and politics and the environment itself. And so it took all of that to finally get me to stop and have my life dream come true, the one thing I set out to do when I was a teenager would just write a book, but now this book is something that I'm very, very proud of and is substantial, but it took going through the fire those two times to really see that the problem wasn't these tiny little things. It's not the wellness industry. It's not the corporation. It's not the brand. It's not the social media platform. It's the influence of it all. And yeah.
Christy Harrison: No. I think it's really interesting and important because I think this idea of influence does transcend all these different spaces. And it's kinda like wherever you go, there you are. That's seems like what your experience was with the folk rebellion thing where you were like...
Jessica Elefante: Yep.
Christy Harrison: Setting out to do something totally different, but then you brought with you all of the influences and all of the ways that you were an influencer, you know, not in the sort of professional poster on social media sense, but more an influencer of people and culture and all of that.
Jessica Elefante: Yes. Exactly. And being rewarded by the certain types of influences of which I was accustomed. And, you know, I'm even experiencing that now in the release of the book. I've had to hold firm to what it is I write in the book at the end of how to protect myself, decide what it is I'm willing to do, what I'm not. Because as soon as you have any bit of success in the traditional sense or you create something that really inspires people or challenges people. You become very wanted in this sort of trade. People either wanna tack on or they want to make money off of you or they have offers for you and opportunities.
And so in the publicizing of this book and the promotion and making sure that it finds its readers, I've had to really stick to my core beliefs and what I what I talk about in the book, my practices. Otherwise, what's the point? Because then what am I gonna do? Have a third health mental health and physical health breakdown so everyone wins but me again? No. Now we're here nine weeks after it came out, and I'm happy to say, Christy, that I'm feeling good. And I'm feeling proud, and I'm feeling like the book's doing what it's supposed to do, but it's very much on my terms, not on the influential people or systems in my life's terms.
Christy Harrison: That's huge, and that's something that someone who's written two books myself, I know the pressure of that and the feeling that you have to just kinda say yes to everything because you want your book to sell. Right? And you have to do a lot of self promotion. You have to show up in a lot of different places, and that can be a recipe for burnout, and I've felt varying levels of that. I know lots of authors who felt that. And I'm curious for you, like, how you navigate those pressures and realities while staying true to yourself and without becoming an influencer again. Right? Because you know a book, arguably, it's like a book is It's an effort to persuade people of ideas. That's definitely how my books have been. And, you know, there are other kinds of books and books that just ask questions or whatever. But I think these days, especially, every book has to have an argument, a central argument. Just for things to do well, for publishers to even wanna take you on in the first place, there has to be some sort of polemic or passion or argument at the core of it.
Jessica Elefante: Yep. And everyone wants you to have something a little bit more prescriptive. Tell someone a little bit more how they can change their life, how they can do better, be better, think better. Like, that's what sells right now, and that's because we're so unwell. And so, yeah. No. There's an ultimate irony there.
Right? Like, I am saying, my subtitle is "Freedom from Influence in a World Where Everyone Wants Something from You." And then I have an asterisk next to it, then another one down by my name, and it says "including me." Because it's an ironically persuasive case. I know that by creating this book and putting this out there, I am trying to, again, wake people up, persuade them to make informed and critical choices in their life, but I really didn't wanna make another "how to" book, and so I kept calling this a "how come" book. We've had so much wellness seeking, self care, you know, sort of laying the problem at the feet of the individual of trying to solve things ourself, one, making them feel like the problem is themself, and then you can buy this or do this to make self better and what I really had hoped I had done with the book is show that it's really not our fault. And the reason we are unwell, unhappy, unhinged is because of these greater influences outside of ourself. And by just becoming aware of them and how they operate, it's like a veil is lifted, and you can then choose. If you choose you know, I've had a few of these conversations.
Some people are like, I feel better with Botox. Great. Why do you feel better with Botox? What makes you think that? And, like, it's okay if at the end of the day, you still choose to have Botox, but now you may understand some of the conditioning of why that might make you feel better. And some people may read the book and then be absolutely furious at the fact that they have gone through many years of their life unaware of these things that are now very visible to them. And I'll tell you, my mother, she's very sweet and a voracious reader. She's the reason I'm a writer because she had us grow up around books. And I used to always tell people, my mom can read three books at once, and people thought she was crazy. But now I read three books at once, and you alternate between them.
But she read my book, and she's not a huge nonfiction person. And it's been a couple months since she's read it, and she called me. It was, like, maybe three weeks ago, she goes, "Jessica, I just have to tell you, you have ruined everything for me. You've ruined it. I can't watch TV. I can't walk down the street. The grocery store, I am getting so mad at the grocery store," and I'm snickering. And I go, "Why mom?" And she goes, "Well, I just see all the bullshit. It's just all bullshit. Everything. The TV show."
And so we're watching Thanksgiving Day parade. I went home to visit her, and she's like, "This is sponsored by a can of beans. And look at that one over there. That's probably playing on Spotify, and they probably paid it." And she's making all these connections. And she's seen all of these sort of manipulations that are happening throughout the day, and she's now put together how they all work together and that this is so commonplace that she never even saw it before, but she can't unsee it. And so she was temporarily mad at me because it's kinda like when you hear the laugh track in the back of a TV show that you'd never heard before and then you can never unhear it again.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. I feel the same way with my first book, Anti-Diet, especially. I think people got really mad and, like, threw it across the room a lot of the time. You know, some people, it was a breath of fresh air and a relief for understanding things that they didn't understand before. But I think it's a natural stage of the process, I think, to get angry at the things that have influenced you, that have harmed you or that you're realizing have caused harm and to want things to be different. That's like a natural stage in sort of the grief process, I guess, or the unlearning process. Did you go through a process like that yourself when you started to see kind of the many nefarious tentacles of influence in our lives?
Jessica Elefante: Yes. And I think I'm there again right now. And that's the thing is it's like I say in the book, it's not a something you do and you're done. It's a never ending sort of practice or adventure or misadventure, however you wanna think of it, because influence shifts and the types of influencers grow or change. And when you think you have become aware and set boundaries or made choices or figured it out, something new comes along or someone new comes along or they utilize a different type of persuasion or behavior modification, and it is disheartening. It's you grieve it a little bit. You get sad.
Sometimes I get overwhelmed. Oftentimes, I get overwhelmed. And I go back to in those moments where I feel that overwhelming sense of I can't control this or sadness over the things that are trying to exploit me or my children or the things that just are really unexpected, you know, things that you feel like you can put trust in, whether it's our institutions, like, you know, the education system and you start to see, you know, influence at play there, and it's just very disheartening. And so I have my pity party, and then it usually takes, like, a day. And I go back to the things that I know that I can do and the practices that I can have and help my own children and the people in my house realize what we can do to either protect ourselves or help our community. And it's very, like, self directed. You know, some people would call it, like, intentional living. It's just being so crystal clear, you can have values. Right?
You can have set your intentions, but if you don't realize where those values and tensions came from and they were influenced, then you're just still doing the bidding of the influencers. And so, again, I come back to, like, you have to ask the questions. You have to think critically. You have to see the bigger picture and then allow that to inform your choices. And so, Yeah. I get sad. I get overwhelmed. I get all of it, and it comes and it goes. But I will say it's like more often than not, I feel empowered and hopeful rather than the grief.
Christy Harrison: How do you question everything like that without spiraling into just total overwhelm or anxiety? You know, I'm someone who struggles with anxiety, and that's something that has come up for me a lot in my life, especially in my twenties when I was kinda trying to figure out what to do with my life. It was like a paralysis of overthinking, thinking so much about every little decision and why am I doing this, And what do I really want for my life? And I sort of made the decision, I think, at that point to just shut out some of that and kinda like put my head down and just focus on what was right in front of me and be present and trust that my values were there and that they would guide me, and I think they have in so many ways. You know? I've made a lot of decisions that looking back, I'm like, that was really in line with who I am and my values, and, like, they kinda just felt like grasping around in the dark at the time, but now I can see that there was a guiding force there, like an inner compass pointing me the way.
Jessica Elefante: That's amazing.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. I think it's has served me really well. And I think the older I get and the more responsibilities I have and the more sort of, I guess, creative wins I have behind me and also creative losses and just more accumulation of experience in my professional life, especially, I think it gets harder sometimes to really determine what's the next right move, what of all these different opportunities coming my way is gonna be the most aligned with who I wanna be and who I am and my values and my direction in life. It gets harder to kinda hear yourself think, you know, amid all all the stuff.
Jessica Elefante: Can't even hear your own voice.
Christy Harrison: Exactly.
Jessica Elefante: I mean, you said so many good things there. I just wanna say when we overthink, right, you have, a brain walking around on legs. Like, I am a heady person. I love to roll things around in my brain for sometimes years before I actually write about something. But this sort of analysis paralysis that happens when we are constantly picking ourselves apart and we get stuck in these sort of feedback loops, like you said, almost like potentially anxiety. And so I just wanted to say, you did the right thing of you said that you just started to do the thing in front of you, and so it's like motion creates emotion. Someone said that to me once when I was younger, and it was the idea that when you don't know what to do to get out of this feeling this feedback loop, like, just do something. Just physically do something, like, motion creates emotion. And it's kind of always been something I've operated by because you can you can get stuck there.
And I do think that a lot of what we experience today is almost encouraging this sort of self reflection to the point of picking ourselves apart and becoming so overwhelmed that we do nothing. Right? And there's this escapism that's profitable, right, if you just kind of zone out because you can't cope and so you're on your social media or you're on, you know, Netflix for hours and hours and days on end, and so it's very easy to just opt out, and it's to someone else's benefit. But I guess to your question at the start is how do you know, like, that you hear your own voice or you stay true to your values and think critically or skeptically. And so the whole book, I didn't want it to be a how to or prescriptive. I had told you that. And so at the end of each essay or chapter is a couple questions. They're just questions for someone to think about, and then it's broken up into six sections from "Under the influence" to "Over the influence" at the end. And that last section is broken up into kind of, I guess, the most prescriptive "how to," and they're still essays. There's still my voice coming through loud and clear.
They're each a practice. And they're really simple when you look at them of how to kind of look at everything. I mean, I knew that this culture of influence, this word influence, was really big and a catchall, and I did it on purpose because I really truly believe that everything influences and everyone, us included, obviously. And so there's a device at the start that helps you understand and kind of put them into buckets really easily. So I took every influence. I started putting it on post it notes years ago of the things that were trying to change my behavior, get me to do something, have me make a decision, and it could be voting. It could be clicking on headline, it could be, you know, the trend of how I take my coffee, and I started putting them on post it notes.
What I did is I started to then take them and organize them. Well, these feel like this, and these feel like this. And in the end, I saw these three very clear buckets of things that influence me. And there's your inner world. So that was things like your biology or your beliefs or that you were the firstborn in a family of however many siblings. There's some that you can change, like your beliefs and your education, and then there's the things you can't change, like the fact that I'm the firstborn and forever resentful as the eldest daughter, but those are my inner influences. Right? They are me. They are inside me.
And then there was this second sort of ring or bucket, which was what I ended up calling your surface world. So these were the people that I was in community with, the things that I was in community with outside of my front door, local businesses, schools, where I go to work, where I go to the gym, my friends, my family, things that I could see right in my actual physical world. And then there was all this other stuff, and that was what I called your outer world. And that is media, politics, the environment, things that are not maybe right on your doorstep, you know, in your day to day life. Of course, they're they're actually in the air that you breathe. They're everywhere. And so by seeing these things and bucketing them that way and giving the reader a device, I was hoping that they could start to use them as guideposts for analyzing the influences in their lives. And then once you kinda start to understand that, I mean, I don't know.
It could be a PTA meeting and you're you're able to just start to see, "Oh, okay. This is one of those surface world influences, and how is that going to now feed my inner world." Right? And you just start to think about it a little bit. And I think it takes the analysis out of it because it's not just it's about you and about your feelings or your thoughts, but you're able to actually almost step back and see maybe why you're having those feelings or thoughts in the first place. Right? And I find that a little bit more empowering. And so at the end, there are these practices of how you kind of pick apart an influence to see the real motivation or the person who really wins at the end, whether it's a headline, all the influences at play of why that headline might be the way that it is, and you make your choices accordingly. And so I don't want to overwhelm the reader. It can feel overwhelming to live In a world where you realize that everything is influencing because it is. But once you see it, and I hope my devices have helped people then learn how to operate within it, that it does become less so.
Christy Harrison: I love what you said about skepticism, you know, and and just sort of approaching things in this way that's like, I'm gonna take this with a grain of salt until proven otherwise, especially when you talk about headlines. You know, that's something I think about a lot with I get a lot of questions from people being like, "Oh my god. I saw panic headline about sugar or diet soda or heavy metals and chocolate," blah blah blah. This is actually something that I think is a larger discussion we can have too because, like, the food industry. Right? I think you're probably a little more down on the food industry than I am because from my perspective as a dietitian treating disordered eating and also someone who's recovered from an eating disorder, I'm like, "Okay. We have to embrace all foods. We can't have any foods be bad or off limits because when we do, then we have this influence in another direction, I guess, of making it the forbidden fruit that tastes the sweetest and beating ourselves up when we eat it and feeling guilty and shamed and this it's like this push pull of deprivation and letting go and then feeling like we're overeating and then back to deprivation, and that's not helpful for anyone." And, also, there's evidence that people who are dieting and restricting their eating or deprived of food in some way are more likely to reach for those kinds of foods that are, quote, unquote, hyperpalatable or whatever, the foods that higher in sugar and fat and that are, like, marketed heavily and stuff.
And so to me, the solution to that is, like, get clear and grounded in your own relationship with food and don't have the deprivation to start with and also getting, like, the healing you need in other areas of life, the psychological stuff that might be partially driving that, binging, or whatever it is. And then when you get to that place, you're kind of freer to say, do I want this or do I not? And sometimes you might and sometimes you might not, but you're not in this sort of push pull relationship with it. So I'm curious from your perspective, you also have some really compelling takes on kind of how the food industry influences people and just the marketing, I mean, that's there across all brands, really, including brands that might make you think that they're doing good and sort of position themselves as being good for the planet or good for people's health or good for whatever. So I'm curious that sort of nuance, like how you can think about the influence there in, like, the food industry specifically and in other industries as well in, like, a skeptical way without falling into this sort of orthorexia territory of like, "Oh, I don't touch thing like that," and then you get into this really unhelpful dynamic with it.
Jessica Elefante: Yeah. I mean, just on that note, it's very easy for me to fall down a rabbit hole of who's trying to influence me in a negative way or who benefits when I lose, how am I losing? And also then, typically, you're doing that sort of research on the Internet, which the algorithm picks up on and I know then influences me to click further and further more terrifying statistics, whether I'm learning about food, for example, pushing me further and further gradually into this other place. And so anytime I'm being pushed or manipulated or influenced in a way where an extreme version of something seems to be when I'm headed down that road. I know it's very unhealthy. I know that it's like something is not right here. And so I go back to the, well, why am I being pushed into this extreme place of thinking or of consumption? Or and it's, again, somebody else is winning, right, by making me go down this further and further down this rabbit hole. So I think there is a gift there of understanding, you know, how these influences work in the tech space and in the media space and then applying it elsewhere to food, for example.
So I did work for food companies, healthy snack companies. And I write about in the book how we sat for days, literal days in an office with 20 to 30 people trying to figure out how to get around the word sugar, and I write about it in the book. How do we get around the word "sugar" on healthy packaging? Right? Healthy snack packaging because there's definitely sugar in this. But how do we get around it? I mean, I'm talking a week maybe we sat in that room to try and manipulate what we wrote on the package because we knew that the people that were going to be buying this were sugar averse for the people who would be consuming it. And so there is entire industries and systems and people that are on the other side of these industries trying to figure out workarounds and ways arounds to become as profitable and as palatable as possible. And so just becoming aware that you have that influence on your package of the food that you bought, you then have the influence of the marketing that goes with it, but then as well of the FDA and what they have allowed or approved because they were influenced by lobbyists or administration that was in at the time.
And it's really hard to not go to a dark place of extremism where it can be both. Right? It can be that, yes, you have been manipulated, and, yes, maybe the food company has not attempted to do right by you, and, yes, maybe the systems that we have in place with our government to protect ourselves with our food isn't, you know, the best, most healthy way. But also then to go the complete opposite way isn't as healthy either. And so those are kind of you have to be skeptical. You have to pick it apart, but not to the point of thinking that everything is out to get you and everyone is out to get you and, you know, that we end up these extreme conspiracy version avatars of ourself.
Christy Harrison: That's helpful to think about it with that kinda nuance. And, also, I think about when you go to that extreme of conspiracy thinking, then you're being influenced in this whole other way. Right? There's people there's companies capitalizing on that fear to sell you things. You know?
Jessica Elefante: Of course. And that's why I really do think if people read the book and they get to the end, you know, I have this question of who benefits, who wins. Like, take yourself out of it. By you taking whatever this action is, whether it is watching the eight thousandth podcast episode on clean eating. Right? Who benefits? At the end of all these questions that I have you ask and you start to really understand in when you ask these questions that there are many other people who benefit from this behavior that likely, you're listening to this for the eight thousandth time because you feel unwell. And so it's an understanding that we just keep doing these things that are creating a wellness for a company or a podcaster or an algorithm, but are just keeping us in this place that's, you know, maybe not even keeping us, maybe pushing us further into unwellness.
And it's that whole mentality of you have to be skeptical. You have to say prove it to me. You, of course, have to do your own research, which now is like this crazy term that instantly makes people think like, "Oh, you're this. You're an anti vaxxer. You're a this. You have this this type of politics," and that's not true. It's in that skepticism and that sort of critical thinking that kind of just gets you out of that default mode that all of these influences want us to be in.
Christy Harrison: And I think too, I appreciate your point in the book and what you've said here too about, you know, you can think about who benefits. You can think about who's influencing you or what they stand to gain and what systems are at play. Truly consider that and then think, well, you know what? It's actually better for my mental health just to eat this food because I'm not gonna go down that rabbit hole again of fearing all these things, and so I'm gonna do it knowing that this company is not the best company, but I need to do this for me or whatever it is.
Jessica Elefante: Right. You pick your battles, and it's an intentional choice, an informed choice, And it's your choice. And so, therefore, you don't feel bad about it. It's taking that sort of guilt, that mindless sort of listlessness or, you know, we've been lulled into this sort of submissive state. And if you choose it, choose it with gusto. Right? And so it it feels good, you know, by knowing everything that's at play. I mean, my guilty pleasure is McDonald's french fries. I know everything that there is to know about McDonald's and french fries and the food system and what it's doing to our country. But guess what? When I feel sad, I want McDonald's french fries, and I'm okay with that. And I own it.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. And I don't even think it necessarily has to be a guilty pleasure. You know? I feel like the guilt is just...
Jessica Elefante: That is true. Very good point.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. It's like it's a pleasure, and it's in line with your values to choose it sometimes and not others or whatever, you know, or you just have other reasons for choosing it even if certain things about it are not aligned.
Jessica Elefante: A 100%. Maybe my inner world influence is that it makes me feel that it reminds me of home and being home with my mom, and that's okay.
Christy Harrison: And that's huge. Like, that's such an essential part of our relationships with food too, I think, is that connection to the past and to people we love and to culture and all of that stuff.
Jessica Elefante: Memory.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. The Proust Madeleine in the form of a French fry. Let's talk a little more about how influence shows up in wellness culture. You write about trends, and I thought that was really fascinating part of the book about how trends are predicted and forecasted and that that's actually a job people can have and a skill people develop in marketing type jobs is like trend forecasting and that you've gotten really good at that through that work. But also that trends are kind of engineered and pushed by brand strategists and that there might be something that's sort of predicted to happen in the zeitgeist, and then it's, like, picked up and just pushed out by these strategists to create trends. And I'm curious how you see that showing up in the wellness space and how people can kinda be aware and mindful when they see trends of the influences that are happening there.
Jessica Elefante: Yeah. I mean, I say at one point that I had learned in marketing 101 was to provide a solution to a problem, but that at an ad agency, I learned that that problem could be completely made up. And so when I think back to you were asking me before about people with reading a headline about, you know, artificial sweeteners and freaking out about it. We would hire, you know, these sort of research companies to do a study, you know, we would say, this is our overarching theme that we wanna tap into, right, of health and wellness for busy moms, and could you find what's called an insight or a pain point that then we could solve with our product. And they would do these studies, and they would they're all very different.
But let's say you took 6,000 women that were feeling at a certain age, x, y, or z. And they would meet with them, and they would ask them all these questions, and they'd find a nugget somewhere along the way, right, of this one thing that they could pull out of context, out of the study, and then we would take that and we would pitch that to news reporters and to editors, and we would say, "Hey. Did you know 87% of women over the age of," blah blah blah, "feel this way?" And it could be anything. It could be an ingredient that we found. It could be a feeling or an emotion. But you'd find the thing that was the most alarming or the most interesting, And it could be, you know, health and wellness. It could be body positivity. It could be sugar. It could be that kids don't play enough outside. It could be overuse of screens, but you're finding an insight into what people are struggling with at home, and you are giving them a product, a solution in its place that is neatly tied up in a ribbon for a journalist.
And it goes out on the newswire, which is journalists and editors nationwide, worldwide receive these every day, and you hope that other people pick it up and that it gains steam. And behind the product or with the product is typically an entire ad campaign or a marketing campaign that is gonna be the focus of the brand that told you about this problem that they're now going to solve on their nationwide, whatever, experiential campaign, and they've brought in this not for profit who's going to x, y, and z. And so, basically, everything that you're seeing in the zeitgeist or in press and media, these things that are, like, seem to be gaining steam oftentimes were just from pieces of research that, from a research company that a brand has hired someone, hired a group to go out and find.
And so a body positivity, right, with the Dove campaign is one of the ones that is the most notorious that, you know, is hailed with all of these awards and changing culture, but at the end of the day, they developed that to sell soap, and that's it. And we have to realize that these stories that they are crafting out there to help people feel more well about their bodies and create this sort of more equitable world was just done for profit. And, you know, there's this younger generation that is growing up, seeing their brands doing good, trying to make the world more well, trying to bring in self care, Trying to provide solutions to all of our problems, but the more that we entrust our problems that they often are a part of to them, the more we take away holding those that should be responsible for these problems, like, accountable. Right? If we're looking to a brand to help us feel better, you know, I think of, like, these wellness pop ups where a brand is hiring therapists to come and download text-talk therapy for kids on their devices.
Like, there's so many layers of cognitive dissonance there that it's really difficult to, like, pick it apart. And so that's why I just thought that this book could help. Again, I'm trying not to be a savior and ego driven on my own, "I'm gonna save the world." But I really did think that those that choose to read this book, not because I manipulated them to, but because it sounds interesting to them and, hopefully, I found them in a place where I feel good about, like, you know, having this conversation with you today that when they do read it, it does help them in whatever way they need help. You know? I'm not telling them to live a better life. I'm not telling them what a better life even looks like, but it gives them a skill that they can choose to use however they want.
Christy Harrison: I think that's really powerful and important. Well, thank you so much for everything you shared. This is a great conversation. I could talk to you for another, like, two hours.
Jessica Elefante: Best thing ever when somebody says I could talk to you forever, because I feel like I could too.
Christy Harrison: Well, can you tell people where they can learn more about you and buy the book?
Jessica Elefante: Yeah. So the book is for sale wherever books are sold, and it's on shelves now nationwide. You can support your local indie bookstore or one that isn't local through bookshop.org. And me, personally, I do most of my writing content staying in touch happens on my Substack, which is called Modern Bullshit. And I also have an Instagram that I am rarely on, but it's called Folk Rebellion, so they can find me there.
Christy Harrison: Amazing. We'll put links to all that in the show notes. I very much relate to having an Instagram that I'm rarely on these days.
Jessica Elefante: Yeah. We don't have to follow the trends the algorithms. We can use it how we want.
Christy Harrison: Totally. Yeah. I think that's great. Well, thank you again, Jess. It's really lovely to talk with you.
Jessica Elefante: No. This was wonderful. Thank you so much for everything, Christy.
Christy Harrison: So that's our show. Thanks to our guests for being here and to you for listening. If you've enjoyed this conversation, I'd be so grateful if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. You can also support us by becoming a paid subscriber for just a few bucks a month on Substack. With a paid subscription, you unlock great perks like bonus episodes, subscriber only q & a's, and much more. Sign up now at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. That's rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Got burning questions about wellness trends, diet fads, or anything else we cover on the show? Send them my way at christyharrison.com/questions for a chance to have them answered in an upcoming episode.
And if you're looking to heal your relationship with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, I'd love for you to check out my online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals. You can learn more and enroll now at christyharrison.com/course. Rethinking Wellness is produced and edited by Softer Sounds podcast studio. Julianne Wotasik does our website production. Our album art was created by Tara Jacoby. Theme song was written and performed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. And I'm your host and executive producer, Christy Harrison. Thanks again for listening, and take care.
How to Think Critically About Influence and Influencers with Jessica Elefante