Rethinking Wellness with Christy Harrison

Anti-diet Pilates instructor Helen Phelan-Guillemot joins us to discuss her history as a dancer and how that affected her relationship with food and her body, how she moved from disordered eating into wellness obsession, how she’s come to hate toxic fitness culture while still loving physical activity, how to know when you need to take a break from fitness, why we don’t need to constantly self-optimize, and more.Helen Phelan-Guillemot is a comprehensively certified pilates instructor, prenatal and postpartum corrective exercise specialist, Institute for Integrative Nutrition health coach, intuitive eating student, and founder of on demand pilates platform, Helen Phelan Studio with 10 years of experience. The HPS method was born because Helen was feeling frustrated about how social media portrayed wellness: one could either wholly reject exercise and athleticism, or reject their actual health and body image. Helen's intuitive pilates classes are known to be equal parts rigor and restoration to help you build strength, body awareness, while being kind to yourself. She won a Women's Health Magazine Fit Tech Award for "Best Body Neutral Workout" in 2021 and has been featured in InStyle, Bustle, Well and Good, Huffington Post and more. You can find her on IG/Tiktok @helenvphelan, on Substack writing Well Hell, or on helenphelanstudio.com to check out her anti-diet pilates classes.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like bonus episodes, subscriber-only Q&As, early access to regular episodes, community threads, and much more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comQ&A: The next time you come across a wellness influencer saying sensational things, try this. Plus, in a bonus answer for paid subscribers, Christy discusses whether seed oils are as bad for you as some sources claim. Listen to the first question here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode! Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comIn this bonus episode, Ling Ling Huang returns to discuss how wellness culture affected her creativity and work as a professional violinist, how she’s changing her relationship with social media, how algorithms led her to questionable wellness products out of a desire to help a loved one, her upcoming TV series, and more.Ling Ling Huang is a writer and violinist. She plays with several ensembles including the Music Kitchen, Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra, Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra, Shattered Glass, and Experiential Orchestra, with whom she won a Grammy award in 2021. Natural Beauty is her first novel. Learn more about her work at linglinghuang.com.This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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.

Author and violinist Ling Ling Huang joins us to discuss her new novel, Natural Beauty, and the fraught nature of that term; how working in the clean-beauty and wellness space affected her eating-disorder recovery and her mental health; why she invested so much in wellness culture at a time in her life when she could barely afford food; the fetishization and appropriation of Asian cultures in wellness; and lots more.Ling Ling Huang is a writer and violinist. She plays with several ensembles including the Music Kitchen, Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra, Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra, Shattered Glass, and Experiential Orchestra, with whom she won a Grammy award in 2021. Natural Beauty is her first novel. Learn more about her work at linglinghuang.com.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like bonus episodes, subscriber-only Q&As, early access to regular episodes, community threads, and much more. Sign up now at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comIn this bonus episode, illustrator and author Eliza Wheeler returns to discuss how to support a loved one with chronic illness, navigating her own symptoms alongside a partner who also has chronic conditions, and more. Hear more from Eliza in episode 15 at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Eliza Wheeler is an illustrator and author of books for children, and was a recipient of the Sendak Fellowship Award. Her first picture book, Miss Maple’s Seeds, was a New York Times best seller, and her newest book Home In The Woods is based on the true story of her grandmother’s childhood experience of living in a tar-paper shack in the woods with seven siblings and their single mom. Eliza grew up in the northwoods of Wisconsin, lived in Los Angeles, CA for a time, and now calls Minneapolis, Minnesota home. Learn more about her work at wheelerstudio.com, and subscribe to her Creativitea Time Substack.This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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, which is enrolling a new cohort now!

Illustrator and author Eliza Wheeler joins us to discuss the intersection of chronic illness and disordered eating. She shares the unexplained symptoms that led her to try more than a dozen different “wellness” diets, her winding path to an eventual diagnosis of Lyme disease under stringent CDC criteria, why the functional-medicine approach didn’t work for her, how starting to heal her relationship with food has made her chronic illness more manageable, and more.Eliza Wheeler is an illustrator and author of books for children, and was a recipient of the Sendak Fellowship Award. Her first picture book, Miss Maple’s Seeds, was a New York Times best seller, and her newest book Home In The Woods is based on the true story of her grandmother’s childhood experience of living in a tar-paper shack in the woods with seven siblings and their single mom. Eliza grew up in the northwoods of Wisconsin, lived in Los Angeles, CA for a time, and now calls Minneapolis, Minnesota home. Learn more about her work at wheelerstudio.com.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like bonus episodes, subscriber-only Q&As, early access to regular episodes, community threads, and much more. Sign up now at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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—enrolling now for a new September cohort! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comIn this bonus episode, Christy answers audience questions about how to navigate a friendship with a naturopath while trying to reject diet and wellness culture, how to avoid getting sucked into wellness culture's anti-aging advice, dealing with pre-wedding body image struggles, and more. This episode is a recording of the August Q&A for members of Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals course, which is enrolling a new cohort now!This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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.

Writer and ex–wellness influencer Lee Tilghman joins us to discuss how she got into wellness influencing in the first place (and the role of her eating disorder in that process), how it affected her mental well-being to be so wrapped up in wellness for work, what it’s been like to leave influencing, her upcoming book about influencer culture, tips for shifting your relationship with social media, and more.Lee Tilghman is a blogger, writer, creator, and speaker who has had many internet evolutions over the last decade and a half. Her blogs, For the Love of Peanut Butter and Lee From America, both reached mass audiences through her food photography, essays, relatable content, and honesty. She is currently working on her first memoir which explores her time as an influencer and why she stepped away from thousand-dollar brand deals to find sanity again. Be sure to check out her Substack newsletter, Offline Time.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Get the podcast in your inbox, plus biweekly Q&As about wellness culture and more, by signing up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.You can also support the show by becoming a paid subscriber for just a few bucks a month. With a paid subscription, you unlock great perks like bonus episodes, subscriber-only Q&As, early access to regular episodes, and much more. Sign up now at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comIn this bonus episode, Christy answers audience questions about how to be involved in the food and farming world without falling prey to diet and wellness culture, whether mindful eating is a dieting behavior, how to know if you’re not eating enough, and more. (This episode is a recording of the July Q&A for members of Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals course, which will be enrolling a new cohort in the next few weeks.)This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comIn this bonus episode, Christy answers audience questions about whether diet drugs can really quiet “food noise,” and whether it means anything for your eating-disorder recovery if you don’t want sweet foods. This episode is for paid subscribers. To hear the full episode, sign up for a paid subscription here!Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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.

Dr. Dan Wilson of Debunk the Funk joins us to discuss how he went from believing in conspiracy theories about “hidden” cancer cures to becoming a scientist, what led him to rethink his conspiracy beliefs, the crossover between the anti-vax industry and crunchy wellness spaces, how to think critically about common wellness conspiracy theories, and more.Dan Wilson, Ph.D. Is a molecular biologist who earned his doctorate in biological sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. He currently works as a senior associate scientist at Janssen and spends part of his free time exercising his passion for science communication on his YouTube channel, Debunk the Funk with Dr. Wilson. His channel focuses on debunking anti-vaccine myths and disinformation using sources from the primary scientific literature.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Get the podcast in your inbox, plus biweekly Q&As about wellness culture and more, by signing up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.You can also support the show by becoming a paid subscriber for just a few bucks a month. With a paid subscription, you unlock great perks like bonus episodes, subscriber-only Q&As, early access to regular episodes, and much more. Sign up now at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

Author and journalist Rennie Dyball joins us to discuss why she's reconsidered the rave review of a gut-health diet book she wrote for a major media outlet years ago, why journalists don't often ask critical questions of wellness "experts," why most wellness-diet testimonials you see online are probably wrong, the intersection of wellness culture and breastfeeding, her new book, B Is for Bellies, and lots more.Rennie Dyball is an award-winning author who has written 16 books and counting, from middle grade novels to celebrity memoirs. She has worked in many areas of media and publishing, and holds a special place in her heart for picture books as a way to connect with the youngest of readers—as well as the adults reading the books aloud. A former writer and editor for People magazine and People.com, Rennie currently reviews books for the brand. She is the managing editor for The Plaid Horse magazine, a lifelong horse lover, a competitive equestrian, and the author of several horse novels. Rennie is also a former diet and wellness culture devotee who is now dedicated to promoting body acceptance in her writing and beyond. Rennie lives in Towson, Maryland, with her husband and two young daughters.Hear a bonus episode with Rennie about how she avoids getting pulled down wellness rabbit holes online (and what still hooks her), ways to minimize getting targeted with “solutions” to your health concerns, how she sees diet and wellness culture affecting kids, and more.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Get the podcast in your inbox, plus biweekly Q&As about wellness culture and lots of cool bonus content, by signing up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

Author and rhetoric professor Colleen Derkatch joins us to discuss why wellness sells (and her new book by that name), how wellness culture promises an alternative to the biomedical/pharmaceutical model but fails to deliver, why it’s important to acknowledge that certain aspects of wellness culture are helpful to people even as we critique its harms, and more.Colleen Derkatch is Associate Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of English at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the author of Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine (University of Chicago Press) and Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press). Her Twitter handle is @ColleenDerkatch.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!Get the podcast in your inbox, plus biweekly Q&As about wellness culture and lots of cool bonus content, by signing up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

Cookbook author Julia Turshen joins us to discuss her history with an eating disorder and how orthorexic thinking showed up in her work, how a loved one’s boundary on diet talk helped her realize her relationship with food was problematic, how letting go of diet and wellness rules changed her cooking, how social media is like diet culture and how she’s taken a big step back from it, and more.Julia Turshen is a New York Times bestselling cookbook author. Her latest book, Simply Julia, is a national bestseller. She has written for multiple publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, and more. She is the founder of Equity At The Table (EATT), an inclusive digital directory of women/non-binary individuals in food, and the host and producer of the podcast Keep Calm and Cook On. She sits on the Kitchen Cabinet Advisory Board for the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and is a member of God’s Love We Deliver’s Culinary Council. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her spouse Grace and their pets. She teaches live cooking classes every Sunday afternoon. Find her online at juliaturshen.com.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! You can also sign up to get the podcast in your inbox (with a full transcript), plus biweekly Q&As about wellness culture, at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

Journalist and medical doctor Seema Yasmin joins us to discuss why misinformation and conspiracy theories about health and wellness are so alluring; how to recognize and fight back against false claims; the difference between misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation; holding the two truths that science is one of the best tools we have for finding facts and science hasn’t always gotten it right; and more. Plus, Christy shares an excerpt from the audiobook of The Wellness Trap about wellness mis- and disinformation and how they’ve come to proliferate online.Dr. Seema Yasmin is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, Pulitzer prize finalist, director of the Stanford Health Communication Initiative and professor of crisis communication at UCLA. Yasmin served as a disease detective in the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and a science correspondent for major newspaper and broadcast outlets. She is the author of five books, including What the Fact?! Her reporting appears in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, WIRED, Scientific American, and other outlets. She received her medical degree from the University of Cambridge and trained in journalism at the University of Toronto.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox each week (with a full transcript) at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

Author and podcaster Mary Jelkovsky joins us to discuss her history as a fitness influencer starting at age 16, and how it triggered and exacerbated her eating disorder; how social media algorithms drive us toward extreme diet and wellness content; why and how Christy took a huge step back from social media, and why Mary is contemplating doing the same; career moves for influencers after influencing; why “just try not to think about it" is sometimes the most helpful advice in the face of wellness culture's constant push for self-optimization in every area of life; and more.After recovering from a lifelong battle with food and body obsession, Mary Jelkovsky started her Instagram @maryscupofteaa to inspire people to accept their bodies and learn to love themselves unconditionally. Now Mary is the author of the bestselling book The Gift of Self-Love as well as the journal 100 Days of Self-Love. Over the past five years, she's been leading worldwide self-love retreats and her message has been highlighted in TEDx, Teen Vogue, Shape, and Health Magazine. She is also the host of the Mary’s Cup of Tea Podcast: the Self-Love Podcast for Women, which has more than 1 million downloads. By openly sharing her personal journey to self-acceptance, Mary has helped inspire millions to accept their bodies and love themselves unconditionally. When Mary's not writing, podcasting, or hosting retreats, she is spending time with her little sister Ilana, who is her biggest inspiration.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox each week (with a full transcript) at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

Author and journalist Virginia Sole-Smith joins us to discuss the allure of wellness approaches for those with chronic pain and illness, her experience navigating endometriosis and migraines in diet and wellness culture, the difficulty of describing pain, the notes of orthorexia and fatphobia that show up in otherwise helpful kid-feeding philosophies, her book Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, and more.Virginia Sole-Smith is the author of Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture and The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America. As a journalist, she has reported from kitchen tables and grocery stores, graduated from beauty school, and gone swimming in a mermaid’s tail. Virginia began her career in women’s magazines, alternatively challenging beauty standards and gender norms, and upholding diet culture through her health, nutrition and fitness reporting. Motherhood inspired a reckoning, and led to her first book, The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Scientific American and many other publications. Virginia now writes the popular anti-diet newsletter Burnt Toast and hosts the Burnt Toast Podcast.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox each week (with a full transcript) at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Pre-order Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, for its April 25 release, and get access to an exclusive webinar discussing the book by submitting your proof of purchase at christyharrison.com/bookbonus!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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

Katie Dalebout guest-hosts the show to interview Christy about her new book, The Wellness Trap! Christy shares why she wanted to write a book about wellness, the potential harms of integrative and functional medicine (and why we’re understandably attracted to these approaches), the connections between wellness culture and diet culture, the legacy of the “hysteria” diagnosis and why women are still having to push back against the idea that symptoms are all in our heads, the role of social media in spreading wellness mis- and disinformation, and more.Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, is a registered dietitian nutritionist, certified intuitive eating counselor, and journalist who has been covering food, nutrition, and health for more than 20 years. She is the author of two books, The Wellness Trap and Anti-Diet, and the producer and host of the podcasts Rethinking Wellness and Food Psych, which have helped tens of thousands of people around the world think critically about diet and wellness culture and develop more peaceful relationships with food. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, SELF, BuzzFeed, Refinery29, Gourmet, Slate, the Food Network, and many other publications, and her work is regularly featured in national print and broadcast media. Learn more about Christy and her work at christyharrison.com.Katie Dalebout is a writer who produces and hosts podcasts. Her weekly interview show, Let It Out, began in 2013 and now has over 400 episodes. In 2019 she started producing Spiraling, a mental health show she co-hosts with Serena Wolf. In 2016, she published her book Let It Out, an interactive book about using writing for emotional wellness. She now teaches writing workshops, consults with individuals and brands on creative strategy, and writes a weekly newsletter. She lives in Los Angeles where she walks everywhere like she still lives in New York.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox each week (with a full transcript) at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Pre-order Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, for its April 25 release, and get access to an exclusive webinar discussing the book by submitting your proof of purchase at christyharrison.com/bookbonus!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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

Nutritionist and author Laura Thomas joins us to discuss what it’s like for kids living in the long shadow of “clean eating,” the “almond mom” trend on TikTok, the "wellness to woo pipeline," how parents and caregivers can let go of wellness-culture beliefs about food for themselves and their kids, and more.Laura Thomas is an anti-diet Registered Nutritionist. Her clinical work focuses on supporting parents and families to end intergenerational dieting and body shame, and work towards a greater sense of embodiment and ease in their relationship with food. She supports families of children experiencing a wide range of feeding and eating challenges, such as concerns with weight, very selective eating, food preoccupation, and other feeding and eating differences. Laura also runs the newsletter, podcast, and community Can I Have Another Snack? on Substack, where she is exploring bodies, appetite, and identity with a focus on parenting. She is the author of two books: Just Eat It and How To Just Eat It.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox each week (with a full transcript) at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Pre-order Christy's upcoming book, The Wellness Trap, for its April 25 release, and get access to an exclusive webinar discussing the book by submitting your proof of purchase at christyharrison.com/bookbonus.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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

Alan Levinovitz, religious-studies scholar and author of Natural and The Gluten Lie, joins us to discuss the problems with framing eating and wellness practices as “natural,” the weird parallels between gun culture and wellness culture, the tricky balance between empathizing with why people are driven to harmful wellness practices and being clear in calling out misinformation, the need for nuance when discussing the connection between physical and psychological issues, and more.Alan Levinovitz is associate professor of philosophy and religion at James Madison University, and the author, most recently, of Natural: How Faith In Nature's Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox each week (with a full transcript) at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Pre-order Christy's upcoming book, The Wellness Trap, for its April 25 release, and get access to an exclusive webinar discussing the book by submitting your proof of purchase at christyharrison.com/bookbonus. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe