Rethinking Wellness

Christy answers an audience question about whether artificial food colorings and other additives really have any impact on ADHD.

The full version of this episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to the first question here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the rest!

Get full show notes and references here.

Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode!

Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, 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, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

Psychotherapist Asher Pandjiris joins us to discuss their experience with chronic illness and “autoimmune diets,” why they were attracted to naturopaths and other alternative-medicine providers, the role of values in people’s attraction to wellness culture, cultural healing traditions vs. cultural appropriation, their approach to working with orthorexia, and lots more. 

Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first part is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. 

Asher Pandjiris is a psychotherapist, Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy Provider, Disordered Eating Consultant and Co-Director of The Kintsugi Therapist Collective. They come to their work as a scholar of critical, psychoanalytic, and mindfulness-based theories. Asher has 14 years of experience working with issues related to trauma and its impact on the body and has published on the topics of intergenerational trauma transmission, the treatment of eating disorders, the wellness industrial complex, gender dysphoria, and clinician burnout. Find them at asherpandjiris.com and kintsugitherapistcollective.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 extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, 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.

Former anti-vaccine “crunchy mom” and current public-health nurse Lydia Greene joins us to discuss why she was susceptible to anti-vax messaging despite having a science background, how and why she developed orthorexia, how a chronic digestive disorder made her susceptible to “leaky gut” rhetoric, how her orthorexia affected her parenting, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into why she came to rethink her anti-vax stance, how she started to question wellness culture and heal from orthorexia, how her anti-vax views masked her son’s autism diagnosis, how she’s dealing with her digestive disorder now, and why she decided to become a public-health nurse and co-found Back to the Vax, a group devoted to vaccine advocacy.

Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Lydia Greene is a married mother of three. She spent over a decade as an anti-vax crunchy mother when the pandemic made her reconsider her views. Her family is now fully vaccinated, and she recently graduated nursing school and has now become a vocal vaccine advocate. Learn more about her work at backtothevax.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 extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, 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.

In this solo episode, Christy discusses the evidence on sugar and health—specifically what the science really says about the links between sugar and the risk of various chronic diseases, as well as the inherent limitations of the data. Plus, in honor of Halloween this week, she shares some thoughts (and some data) on princess culture and girls’ body image, and why she’s starting to let go of some of her angst about her daughter’s current princess obsession.

This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a free preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!

Get full show notes and references here.

Christy's second 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.

Cognitive psychologist Gordon Pennycook explains the psychological reasons we fall for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and general bullshit (a technical term!). We discuss why people with an analytical cognitive style tend to be more skeptical of alternative medicine and health misinformation, some of the pitfalls of intuitive thinking (and why intuitive eating may actually be more of an analytical or deliberative process), why being skeptical of out-there wellness practices is actually a sign of open-mindedness, why even very smart people can fall for wellness misinformation, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into the difficulty of trusting experts in matters of health and wellness, the importance of thinking critically about science, the attention economy and how it contributes to incentivizing misinformation, how conspiracy theories have touched Gordon’s life, his surprising findings about what it takes for people to drop conspiracist beliefs, and the best ways to stop the spread of misinformation.

Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. 

Gordon Pennycook is a Himan Brown Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. He obtained his PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Waterloo in 2016 and held a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale University. 

His expertise is human reasoning and decision-making, and he has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, including in journals such as Nature and Science. He has published research on the spread of fake news and misinformation, as well as the first ever paper on the psychology of bullshit.

Gordon has received several awards, such as the Governor General’s Gold Medal, Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network “Researcher of the Year,” and early career awards from the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science, the Psychonomic Society, and the Association for Psychological Science. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in 2020.

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 extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, 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.

New York Times bestselling cookbook author Julia Turshen joins us to discuss intuitive cooking and how it relates to intuitive eating, how diet-culture recovery has influenced her approach to cooking and recipe writing, learning to accept that not every meal is going to be stellar (and why that’s a powerful antidote to social-media diet culture), her new book, What Goes with What, and more. Behind the paywall, we discuss how we’ve both gotten to a place where work isn’t our whole life, some behind-the-scenes looks at book publishing and book deals, Julia’s experience of powerlifting and how it’s changed her relationship with her body, how she navigates the diet and wellness culture in powerlifting, and both of our thoughts on the extreme protein consumption pushed by strength coaches and “protein girlies.”

Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Julia Turshen is a New York Times bestselling cookbook author. Her latest book, Simply Julia, is an IACP award-winning national bestseller. Julia has written for multiple publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Vogue. 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 IACP-nominated podcast Keep Calm and Cook On, which the New York Times has called “an antidote to diet culture.” Epicurious has named Julia one of the ‘100 Greatest Home Cooks of All Time.’ 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 writes a weekly newsletter, teaches live cooking classes every Sunday afternoon, and is a competitive powerlifter. Julia lives in the Hudson Valley with her spouse Grace and their many pets. Her next book, WHAT GOES WITH WHAT, will be out on October 15th.

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 extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, 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.

Registered dietitian and author Shana Minei Spence joins us to discuss how a career in fashion affected her relationship with food and her body, her experience with a holistic provider who recommended elimination diets, how values and social norms influenced her use of alternative medicine, her disordered motivations for becoming a dietitian, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into how she recovered from her eating disorder, why she takes an anti-diet approach to nutrition, her experience working in the public-health field, cultural appropriation in wellness, and where she stands on wellness culture and alternative medicine now.

Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. 

Shana is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist based in Brooklyn, New York. She currently works in public health for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, doing community nutrition lessons, and also owns her own company, The Nutrition Tea ®. She describes herself as an "all foods fit" dietitian. and creates a platform for open discussion on nutrition and wellness topics that are inclusive, non-diet, and weight-neutral, all with an intersectionality of social justice. She also writes frequently for publications such as Self, Shape, Outside, and Well + Good Magazines. Her debut book came out in August 2024, titled Live Nourished: Make Peace with Food, Banish Body Shame, and Reclaim Joy (Bookshop affiliate link). Speaking engagements include Peloton, NEDA, Eating Recovery Center, The Rose Retreats, Food Fluence, Eat Well Global, and NBC. She can be seen in media such as NPR, Shape Magazine, GQ, SELF Magazine, Women's Health Magazine, Outside Magazine, ABC Good Morning America, and Healthline.

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 extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, 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.

In this solo episode, Christy discusses how evidence-based mind-body practices like yoga and meditation can be essential for balancing overactive minds, helping us shift out of our intellects and into different modes of being—but they can also act as a gateway into the more out-there parts of wellness culture, where we get exposed to ideas and protocols that are lacking evidence and riddled with pseudoscience.

This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a free preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!

Get full show notes and references here.

Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.

Registered dietitian Kat Garcia-Benson joins us to discuss the multilevel marketing (MLM) industry and its connection to diet and wellness culture, her experience of getting recruited to an MLM as a new dietitian, how she eventually got out, why she shifted to an anti-diet approach in her work, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into how MLMs affect people’s relationships with food and their bodies, how to make peace with food after an MLM, what to do if you know someone who’s involved with a wellness MLM, what makes people vulnerable to recruitment, how the MLM experience affected her sense of self, and how she’s found healing.

Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. 

Kat is a registered dietitian nutritionist and board-certified sports dietitian with a unique background in Multi-level Marketing (MLM), now dedicated to helping individuals break free from nutrition MLMs and the constraints of diet culture and nutrition misinformation. Specializing in digestive health and sports nutrition, she creates empowering content designed to cultivate a healthy relationship with food and body.

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 extended interviews, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, 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.

In this solo episode, Christy shares the first in what has become a multi-part series about why bright, analytical minds are often susceptible to wellness woo.

Get full show notes and references here.

Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.