Rethinking Wellness

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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com

Christy answers audience questions about IgG tests for food sensitivity, glyphosate in food, recent headlines about chemicals in baby wipes and tampons, and whether you really need to avoid dairy for acne.

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.

Family doctor and science communicator Brad McKay joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about alternative medicine, chronic fatigue, Peter Attia, wellness IV drips, how placebos can actually cause harm, and more. Behind the paywall, we talk about the weight-inclusive approach, my book ANTI-DIET, our differing views on GLP-1 drugs, pharmaceutical-industry influence and the need for healthy skepticism, and more.

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. 

Dr Brad McKay MBBS, FRACGP, MPH (he/him) is an experienced family doctor and dedicated health and science communicator. His commitment to evidence-based medicine, critical thinking, and combating misinformation inspired him to create his book, Fake Medicine: Exposing the wellness crazes, cons, and quacks costing us our health. Learn more about his work at drbradmckay.com.au.

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.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com

In this bonus episode, we discuss the experience of getting a new diagnosis, and the insatiable curiosity, vulnerability to misinformation, and identity shifts that often go along with it.

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.

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

Science and parenting journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer joins us to discuss the real risks of social media and smartphones for kids (and all of us), what the popular book THE ANXIOUS GENERATION gets wrong about the science on teens and technology, the similarities in the discourse about tech and “ultraprocessed” food, diet culture in the parenting space, how to raise kids to have a healthy relationship with technology and smartphones, and more.

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. 

Melinda Wenner Moyer is a science, health and parenting journalist and is a regular contributor — and former columnist — at The New York Times. She writes the parenting Substack Is My Kid the Asshole?, which has more than 24,000 subscribers from 159 countries. Her first book, How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes, has been published in 13 languages and won a gold medal in the 2022 Living Now Book Awards. Her second book, Hello Cruel World: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times, will be published in the summer of 2025. 

Melinda was the recipient of the 2022 Excellence in Science Journalism award from The Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2019 Bricker Award for Science Writing in Medicine, and her work was featured in the 2020 Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. She has taught science journalism at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She has a master’s degree in Science, Health & Environmental Reporting from NYU and a background in cell and molecular biology. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband, two children, and her dog.

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.

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

Jenn Romolini, author of AMBITION MONSTER, joins us to discuss how ambition and overwork affected her well-being, why workaholism is often a response to trauma, why she developed an eating disorder as a teenager (and the specific personality trait that helped her recover), what it was like to have her mom get into New Age philosophies, how she’s found healing from trauma and work addiction, and more.

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. 

Jennifer Romolini is a former editor and high-level media and tech executive, the author of the memoir Ambition Monster, and the co-host of Everything Is Fine, a weekly podcast for women over 40. Romolini is also the creator and host of 2023’s critically acclaimed documentary podcast Stiffed, with Crooked Media. Her first book, Weird In a World That’s Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, was published in 2017. Find her on Substack.

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.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com

Christy answers an audience question about the food rules she stopped following—and shares four food-related principles she tries to practice.

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. 

Jessica Steier of The Unbiased Science Podcast joins us to discuss the need for empathy and bridge-building in science communication, why she’s critical of restrictive diets and other wellness trends while holding space for their proponents to evolve (and why she’s faced backlash for that), tribalism in the science community, our differing views on weight and why she’s open to learning about the weight-inclusive approach, and more.

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. 

Dr. Jessica Steier is an empathetic, passionate, and quirky public health scientist with expertise in chronic and infectious disease prevention. She hosts The Unbiased Science Podcast, which is devoted to objective, critical appraisal of available evidence on science and health-related topics relevant to listeners’ daily lives.

Dr. Steier has expertise in public health policy, research and evaluation design, biostatistics, and advanced analytics. She believes strongly in scientific education and health literacy, and the translation of research for the general public in a way that maximizes people’s ability to make informed and evidence-based decisions.

The goal of The Unbiased Science Podcast is to dispel misinformation and misconceptions across an array of science and public health topics (e.g., vaccines, GMOs, fad diets, supplements). With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the podcast initially dedicated most episodes to distilling the latest research about the ongoing pandemic in real time as the evidence unfolded. But the podcast has evolved over time and now tackles a variety of issues. Learn more about the podcast at unbiasedscipod.com.

If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it!

Support Rethinking Wellness 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.