When wellness culture becomes toxic…

Before I was a trainer and coach, I was a mom who was chasing around kids and helping with homework and cleaning house. You know the drill, right?

My interest in nutrition got started after the birth of my last daughter, when I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease. Hashimoto’s disease is an autoimmune disorder that can cause hypothyroidism, or underactive thyroid. With this disease, your immune system attacks your thyroid. The thyroid becomes damaged and can’t make enough thyroid hormones.. Symptoms can range from tiredness to weight gain, joint and muscle pain, trouble tolerating cold, and even thinning hair. My hair was falling out in droves and while I wasn’t gaining weight, I sure as heck couldn’t lose any either. I was tired of messing around with medications and I wasn’t even convinced that I actually needed to take them and my doctor suggested that I try a vegan lifestyle. “If you go vegan you won’t ever have to worry about your weight again.”

Like the perfectionist that I was, I entered the rabbit hole of elimination diets that, while well-intended, catapulted me into a world of wellness that took over my mental energies. When the vegan lifestyle didn’t magically get me back to my pre-pregnancy weight or stop my hair from falling out, I started looking at other things that might help. If the Lemonade Cleanse could work for Beyonce, I figured it could work for me too. It didn’t do anything but add more stress to my marriage and relationships.

I threw everything wellness had at my body—maca powder, spirulina, raw food, bone broth, Shakeology, and an arsenal of the purest, most expensive vitamins and supplements available to me. I cringe just remembering the crazy bottles of pills and powders and shakes…ugh.

According to the wellness industry, I was healthier than I had ever been but I don’t think my stress levels had ever been so high. The demands of keeping up with the lifestyle were suffocating, and the fear of not meeting expectations took up more brain space than motherhood. I continued to struggle for years as I kept trying new products and ideas and really just trying to be the healthiest mom that I could be.

And then my marriage fell apart and I started bingeing again.

Interestingly, my history of the binge-restrict cycle had gone dormant during this period of “Wellness.”. I thought I had it beat. I was working out and “eating right” and I had it together. What I know now is that the mental energy required to maintain an eating disorder born of Diet Culture (which centers around controlling food and body in the name of thinness) had simply rerouted into the mental energy required to maintain orthorexia, the eating disorder born of Wellness Culture (which centers around controlling food and body in the name of health).

Orthorexia is sometimes referred to as the newest eating disorder, and often goes undetected because it is easily regarded as just being “really healthy,” and is actually admired and applauded rather than seen for its detriment to mental health and well-being. Orthorexia is another way that disordered eating passes as the cultural norm, because it is virtue-stamped by wellness culture.

When the binges returned, it threw me for a loop. I responded with further restriction, initiated in the name of intermittent fasting or a cleanse, but was ultimately driven by the fear that I might gain back the weight I had lost through so many elimination diets.

My body, not one to be fooled, responded by increasing my binge urges, as bodies are designed to do.

For the next couple of years, I maintained the front of a “healthy” trainer while secretly battling the inner demons of bulimia, binge eating, and orthorexia. What I can assure you of here is that I was not alone. Many of the coaches I have talked to throughout my journey have struggled with disordered eating, all while showing their IG followers the food they eat in a day, just to maintain their golden health halo.

Slowly, I began to recognize my obsession with health and wellness as another manifestation of my obsession with weight, living under the same disordered umbrella. What had once felt like a “way out” of disordered eating unveiled itself as another diet dressed in fancy clothing. The bottom line was the same: rigid rule-following, good vs bad mentality, high levels of discipline and control, and oppression of the haves vs have-nots.

The realization alone wasn’t enough to “cure” me, but once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. For a while I waffled between embracing my “wellness” ideas and just rejecting certain parts of them, because there were some nutritional benefits that still made sense to me. Eventually, I came to see that my involvement was too messy and I needed to get away from it altogether.

It took me more than a year to go through this process and come out on the other side. After a year of allowing all foods, with minimal consideration of their caloric or health virtues, I finally began to experience what it feels like to be well.

Wellness, now, is something I understand in a different way than is currently marketed to us. While some level of nutrition and exercise remain part of my routine, I have also learned to appreciate the importance of rest, good food, joy, socializing, and creativity as pieces of a much larger wellness package. There is no “look” to being Well. You do not need visible abs or green juices to be healthy.

As a society, I think we have lost touch with the human capacity to be well via basic routes like eating when we are hungry, stopping when we are full, moving in ways that feel good, resting when we’re tired, and finding joy in the moments we share with one another. There is a simplicity that is often overlooked and yet incredibly powerful.

Laughing is wellness.
Doing what you love is wellness.
Enjoying your food, accepting your body, and finding self-compassion are wellness.

If your nutrition supports your physical and mental health, it can be a building block to feeling well. However, if you think that your interest in nutrition has turned into an obsession that feels more like fear, it’s probably worth getting curious about. There is help available so please don’t hesitate to reach out to informed doctors, therapists, registered dieticians, and coaches to explore your symptoms further and get support. NEDA is a great resource and place to start if you don’t know where to begin. You aren’t alone…I swear.