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0:00
This episode of Food Psych is brought to you by
0:02
my intuitive eating Fundamentals online
0:04
course. If you're ready to break free
0:06
from diet culture and reclaim the life it
0:09
stole from you, learn more and sign
0:11
up at christy harrison dot com slash
0:13
course. That's christy harrison dot
0:15
com slash course. Welcome
0:17
to Food Psych, a podcast dedicated to
0:19
critiquing diet and wellness culture, and
0:22
answering your questions about intuitive eating
0:24
and the anti diet approach. I'm
0:26
your host, Christie Harrison, and I'm a registered
0:28
dietitian, certified intuitive eating
0:31
counselor, journalist and author of the
0:33
book's anti it, which is available now,
0:35
and the wellness trap, which will be out in
0:37
early twenty twenty three. And
0:39
by the way, on this show, I avoid saying
0:42
diet culture stuff like weight and calorie
0:44
numbers, but we don't censor swear
0:46
words or other adult language, so listener
0:48
discretion is advised. Hey
1:15
there. Welcome to this episode of Food Psych.
1:18
I'm your host, Christy Harrison, and we've got
1:20
a great show for you today. I'm talking
1:23
with a guest for the first time in a long
1:25
time. People who just started listening
1:27
to this podcast this season might be
1:29
surprised to know that this was an interview show
1:31
for its first eight years. And I've
1:33
only been doing it solo this season because
1:36
I now have a baby or really a
1:38
toddler now and I've had to juggle work
1:40
in childcare. But I've really
1:42
missed doing interviews and so
1:44
I've started working on a new series of conversations
1:46
about wellness culture that I'm calling
1:49
rethinking wellness. It's
1:51
with some people that I interviewed for my upcoming
1:53
book, The Mehlman Trap, and some folks that
1:55
I just wanted to talk to about these topics,
1:57
and I knew how interesting things to
1:59
say. And I'm really excited to be sharing
2:01
the first interview in the series with you here
2:03
today. It's with Fitness and
2:05
Wellness historian, Natalia Mehlman
2:07
Petrzela, and we talk about her
2:10
new book, Fit Nation. The historical
2:12
shifts that made fitness go from being
2:14
viewed as a narcissistic prick
2:16
this and even quote unquote deviant to
2:19
being seen as a good thing really across the
2:21
board and across the political Petrzela.
2:24
Why so many people are disillusioned with
2:26
our medical system and looking for answers
2:28
and validation in the alternative
2:30
medicine space and sort of the
2:33
harms that that exposes people to,
2:35
how people can be critical consumers
2:37
of online wellness content and
2:39
lots more. I can't wait to share
2:41
it with you in just a bit. Just a content
2:44
warning for this one that it includes discussion
2:46
of fitness and the food environment, so
2:49
you know, take care of yourself if those topics
2:51
are apt to trigger you. Before
2:53
the interview, just a few quick announcements. This
2:57
episode of Food Psych is brought to you by my intuitive
2:59
eating Fundamentals online course, which
3:01
is a three month immersion in intuitive eating.
3:04
With dozens of hours of content helping you
3:06
learn this anti diet approach, troubleshoot
3:09
common sticking points, and get to a
3:11
place of greater peace with food. It
3:13
also has a huge library of q and a's
3:15
from me and my team to help answer all
3:17
the frequently and not so frequently asked
3:19
questions that come up when you're learning
3:21
or relearning intuitive eating. If
3:24
you're ready to break free from diet culture and
3:26
reclaim your right to a peaceful, easy
3:28
relationship with food, learn more and
3:30
sign up at christy harrison dot com
3:32
slash course. That's christy harrison
3:34
dot com slash course. This
3:36
episode is also brought to you by my second
3:38
book, The Wellness Trap. Break
3:40
free from diet culture, disinformation, and
3:43
dubious diagnoses, and find your
3:45
true well-being. Which is available
3:47
for pre order now. The
3:49
book explores the connections between diet
3:51
culture and wellness culture, how
3:53
the wellness space became a hotbed of
3:56
scams, misinformation, and conspiracy
3:58
theories. Why many popular
4:00
alternative and integrative medicine diagnoses
4:03
are misleading and harmful and
4:05
deeply entangled with disordered eating.
4:08
How well this culture targets vulnerable
4:10
people and ignores social determinants of
4:12
health and what we can do instead to
4:14
promote true well-being at the individual
4:17
and collective levels. Just
4:19
go to christy harrison dot com slash the
4:21
wellness trap to learn more and preorder
4:23
the book for its April twenty fifth release.
4:26
That's christy harrison dot com slash
4:28
the wellness trap. Now
4:30
without any further ado, let's go to my
4:32
conversation with Natalia Mehlman Petruzella.
4:35
Natalia, welcome to the
4:36
show. I'm so glad to be talking with you again.
4:39
I'm so happy to be here. Yeah.
4:42
I'm really excited to talk with you. So
4:44
the genesis of this conversation and kind
4:46
of of this podcast is that when
4:48
I was interviewing people for my new
4:50
book, The Wellness Trap. I kept
4:52
having these conversations that I wish I could release
4:54
just the whole interview of and, you
4:56
know, have it be a pod cast and you were one of those
4:58
conversations. I loved everything
5:01
we talked about and wished I could have used
5:03
it all in the book and just wasn't able to.
5:05
So hoping to sort of
5:07
recreate that in part here and also talk
5:09
about your new
5:09
book, which is Out Now Fit So
5:12
we have a lot to discuss. We do.
5:14
And I should say that I've been a listener of
5:16
your podcast for a while and your voice
5:19
transports me back to when I was living in
5:20
Paris. And walking through the streets listening
5:23
to you. So
5:24
it's much more romantic than
5:26
my current office situation. But,
5:28
yes, I excited to talk to you again
5:29
too. Oh, that's lovely. I lived in Paris
5:32
when my junior year of college,
5:34
and I miss it so
5:35
much. Oh, cool. Yeah.
5:37
Well, so the first thing I would love to talk
5:39
with you about today is just kind of your
5:41
own relationship with wellness culture, you
5:43
know, how your own work intersects
5:46
with your personal relationship
5:48
with with wellness and with fitness?
5:50
Yeah. So first, you know, what is my work?
5:52
I mean, I think I'm talking to you mostly
5:54
as Historia, and I have this book
5:56
about the history of fitness culture,
5:58
how fitness became wellness. And I've been a
6:00
kind of, you know, critical observer
6:03
and scholar of wellness culture in
6:05
America. And my training is as a historian.
6:07
I'm a history professor. But the
6:09
way that I came to this work
6:12
was really being a kind of
6:14
passionate but somewhat skeptical
6:17
consumer and participant in wellness
6:19
culture. And I came
6:21
to write this book fit niche and then to
6:23
kind of spend the better part of the last decade.
6:25
Thank you critically about wellness culture.
6:27
Because I was
6:29
really not an athlete at all
6:31
growing but then I found
6:33
the gym and fitness culture
6:35
in the night, like, late mid nineteen
6:37
nineties. And once I walked and
6:39
honestly it's like a stepper aerobics
6:41
class and found that kind of movement
6:43
environment. I was totally hooked.
6:45
I felt green in my body. I
6:48
was just like, wanted to be in
6:50
this all the time. That being
6:52
said, as I developed my kind
6:54
of scholarly and critical thinking tools
6:56
and really became a feminist, I
6:58
realized the thing this thing that I loved
7:00
so much was also, like,
7:02
deeply problematic. And so that's
7:04
a very sort of quick synopsis of
7:06
the kind of you know, life
7:09
events, but also mindset that
7:11
brought me to be like, hey, I really wanna
7:13
think deeply about this world of
7:15
wellness, which is in many ways very
7:17
empowering and, you know, very powerful
7:19
in our lives and good and bad ways,
7:21
but I think it's like not so
7:23
well understood. And so that's kinda
7:25
how I got here
7:26
today. Yeah. I feel like that resonates so
7:28
much with me and probably with many of our
7:30
listeners too that this thing that you
7:32
loved and that brought you so much
7:34
was also deeply problematic. And
7:36
for me, it was it was deeply problematic
7:38
in terms of, like, creating disordered
7:41
eating and a really orthorexic relationship
7:43
with fitness and food and
7:45
all the things. But I think for
7:47
for everyone, there's probably some problematic
7:49
elements even if it doesn't go to that degree.
7:52
Absolutely. And I should say some of them were
7:54
personal. Like, you know, when I discovered
7:57
the gym and high school, I
7:59
found myself, like, thinking
8:01
I was quote unquote like being
8:03
good by skipping a meal
8:05
to exercise more and that obviously
8:07
can turn and to something really damaging.
8:09
Luckily for me, I didn't go too far in
8:11
that direction. But I already kind of felt
8:13
that that would there was that disconnect personally
8:16
of this thing that our society, like,
8:18
only sees as positive in most ways
8:20
that can become kind of obsessive,
8:22
but then also, like, as I kinda
8:24
grew up and was in graduate school
8:26
and still very much working out, working
8:28
at gyms, got certified as an instructor.
8:31
A lot of the
8:33
language, not only around
8:35
body image, you know, you have to
8:37
lose weight, you have to earn this,
8:39
you know, earn your dessert and all of
8:41
that kind of moralizing. But
8:43
also just like the total
8:45
individualism of it all.
8:47
Right? Like, all that's standing
8:49
between you and the body you want is
8:51
your will power. Like, that whole
8:54
sense of, like, your body and your
8:56
health is only in your hands. On
8:58
the one hand, I felt It
9:00
was very empowering because, yeah, it's much
9:02
easier to do that than
9:03
to, like, solve
9:03
climate change or any of these bigger or
9:06
thornier issues. On the other hand,
9:08
come on, I like you enough from
9:10
reading some books and being a
9:12
citizen of the world to realize there's
9:14
so much more than individual
9:16
whales standing in the way of any
9:18
person and their
9:19
goals. And so I was, you know, grappling
9:21
with that, and I and I still do.
9:23
Mhmm.
9:24
And you're still a fitness instructor. Right? You still
9:26
do that on the side? Yeah. So
9:28
the workout that I teach is this wonderful
9:31
program called INTensate and
9:33
it combines affirmations and really
9:35
high energy I got
9:37
certified, like, back when I was in grad
9:39
school in two thousand seven, totted
9:41
Equinox for many years. And then I actually stopped
9:43
for a while when the brand left Equinox because
9:45
I'm a professor. I have two kids, etcetera,
9:47
who recently very sadly earlier
9:49
this year, The founder was
9:51
program for Trish Thermo, a wonderful
9:53
teacher and friend of mine, died
9:55
very early cancer. And so now I'm
9:57
teaching again. Intermittently doing kind of
9:59
resonancies. But if you're interested in that,
10:01
it's easy to find me on social
10:02
media. Yeah. That's great.
10:05
I'm so curious about how you came to realize
10:07
this sort of individualistic pursuit
10:10
of wellness was problematic
10:12
in the in the history of
10:13
Right? The roots of that in American culture.
10:16
Yeah. So okay. One of
10:18
the things that is really interesting
10:20
or weird about my positionality,
10:23
and this whole conversation is
10:25
that even though I live in the world
10:27
we all live in, we are kind of the
10:29
pursuit of wellness and health
10:31
and fitness and weight loss and you know,
10:33
physical beauty and all that is pretty
10:35
much uncritically celebrated.
10:38
My scholarly and intellectual
10:40
development has happened
10:42
almost entirely in a
10:44
field that actually looks
10:46
at kind of structural forces.
10:49
As, like, the driving force in society.
10:51
So this is a little in the weeds. Bear
10:53
with me. I think it is relevant
10:55
here. So, like, I think a lot of people have heard about, like,
10:57
the great man theory of
10:59
history. Right? That, like, there's, like, these individual
11:02
heroes and they're the reasons that, like, historical
11:04
progress happened. I came
11:06
into the field of studying history
11:08
in graduate school and even as an undergrad,
11:11
when there was so much pushback to that. And
11:13
write good pushback. And the pushback to
11:15
that was, no, it's not
11:17
individuals and these, like, hero
11:19
figures we should be looking at. It's
11:21
actually big structural forces
11:24
that actually shape how we
11:26
live and how social change does
11:28
or does not happen and how solutions
11:30
can come to to be. So in terms of,
11:32
like, wellness culture, I mean, a big thing
11:34
people were talking about when I started paying
11:36
attention to this stuff was around, like,
11:38
food justice and nutrition. Right?
11:40
And historically, if we look at or even
11:43
today, if we look at the
11:45
way that inequality
11:47
and kind of nutrition related
11:49
illnesses, are talked about is
11:51
they're often talked about as a kind of
11:53
failure of individual behavior
11:55
and individual choice. Right? Well,
11:57
these people don't care about health
11:59
or they don't want to eat good food or
12:02
sorry the kids throw out
12:04
the greens on their lunch plate.
12:06
And we tend to frame that. I know I'm preaching
12:08
an choir here, but we tend to frame
12:10
that as an individual choice. Well,
12:13
the scholars, etcetera, that I was
12:15
immersed in were saying, like, no,
12:18
let's look at the
12:20
federal subsidies corn. Let's look
12:22
at the rise of the fast food industry.
12:24
Let's look at which foods are
12:26
affordable, right, beyond these kind of
12:28
individualistic pieces. So conversation
12:30
around food was happening already when I
12:32
was in grad school and
12:34
literally about everything else. Like, I
12:36
would have failed if I had written a
12:38
paper that, like, centered in individual
12:40
and their decisions as, like,
12:42
a primary mover in history. So
12:44
that is relevant because then
12:46
when I'm in the gym and
12:48
I'm hearing and seeing all
12:50
of this talk and like all of this, you
12:53
know, tag Fit Spell about, like, all you
12:55
need is a pair of sneakers and some will
12:57
power. And I and, like, yeah.
12:59
And that stuff is everywhere. Right?
13:01
And we all have the same twenty four hours in
13:03
the day as, you know, Beyonce. No. We
13:05
don't because she was, like, almost half. Right? And
13:08
so my brain was already trying
13:10
to really have my hackles up
13:12
when I heard that kind
13:13
of, like, highly individualistic motivation
13:16
on thinking. That's really
13:18
interesting. And then looking at the
13:20
history too, it seems like American
13:22
individualism really started
13:24
to to intertwined with
13:26
thinking about fitness you talk
13:28
about in the book maybe around the
13:29
1800s. I'm not sure. I'm curious to
13:32
hear that story. Yeah.
13:34
Absolutely. So, fitness as
13:37
this kind of unqualified virtue,
13:39
that really doesn't exist in
13:41
American society in a mainstream way
13:43
until relatively be something like nineteen
13:45
sixties, seventies, it's happening. But you're
13:47
absolutely right that going back
13:49
to people who were kind of
13:51
boosters of fitness in the eighteen
13:53
hundreds or in the early part of the twentieth
13:55
century, they are connecting
13:58
exercise and to a
14:00
certain extent like control
14:02
of food to discipline.
14:04
Right? This is discipline of the flesh.
14:06
Like, it's no accident that there's a whole
14:09
movement called muscular Christianity,
14:11
and much of that
14:13
ethos there was saying
14:15
that the external appearance of your
14:17
body and how you care and
14:19
disciplined your body through exercise and
14:21
other means. That is a sign of
14:23
salvation. And it's funny because
14:25
that eat those and those folks.
14:27
We're speaking in very explicitly
14:30
Christian terms, but that's
14:32
exactly the ideology that's
14:34
just why much more wise
14:36
spread and kind of secularize today.
14:39
So that's happening in the
14:41
1800s, but it's still like sort of
14:43
niche. And one of the things that I
14:45
do it in the book, like, because I really I don't I
14:47
think it's hard for contemporary people
14:49
to kind of appreciate this. Is I try
14:51
to show how weird and
14:53
almost subverts it it was to work
14:55
out. And so you have people who
14:57
are kind of enthusiasts for strength
14:59
training really, like,
15:01
having to lay it on so thick to
15:03
say, like, no. No. No. Like,
15:05
disciplining and caring for
15:07
your body through exercise. This
15:09
is not like manual labor
15:11
that immigrants and black
15:13
people do. This is about civilization.
15:16
This is about channeling and disciplining
15:18
your strength to achieve some kind
15:20
of higher state. And they were doing
15:22
that because they had to say that. So
15:24
explicitly because it was
15:26
seen as kind of
15:28
shady or sketchy or seedy
15:31
for men to, like,
15:33
be so into their bodies. Like,
15:35
that must mean that you are not
15:37
straight. That must mean there's something wrong with
15:39
you. And for women, it was seen
15:41
as inappropriate too because why are you
15:43
trying to build strength? Like, don't you know that
15:45
could, you know, harm your fertility?
15:47
Don't you know that could cultivate unlady's
15:49
like sensibility's like being too
15:51
individualistic or competitive. So try
15:53
to kind of set up both exactly what
15:55
you're saying that there were these early
15:57
size enthusiasts who tied it to individual
16:00
virtue, but there really was
16:02
also this kind of dominant sense
16:04
to exercise, was kind
16:06
of
16:06
seedy, it was a waste time, it can even
16:08
harm your body. Howard Bauchner: And
16:09
also, the province of narcissists, right?
16:11
I even mentioned that in
16:12
the past as well, but, like, it was
16:14
seen as a very narcissistic pursuit. To
16:17
be exercising. Yeah. I
16:19
think that's so interesting in light of
16:21
how it's seen today as now
16:23
sort of this matter of personal
16:26
responsibility, but also in a way, like, responsibility
16:28
to others. You know, I think this is maybe more
16:30
common in places like that have nationalized
16:33
medicine like the UK or something where it's like you
16:35
owe it to your fellow countrymen to
16:37
exercise because otherwise you're a drain on the
16:39
NHS or something. But even in
16:41
the US, there's there's some of that, you
16:43
know, that you're like harming
16:45
society or something by not engaging
16:47
in quote unquote healthy
16:48
lifestyle. Know what? That's totally right.
16:51
And on your first point about narcissism,
16:53
that plays out differently for men and
16:55
women in kind of interesting ways.
16:57
Like, for men and men
16:59
contend with this well into the
17:01
nineteen seventies. Even today, I
17:03
honestly see this in some environments
17:05
where men are not as frequently
17:07
seen, like, in some boutique fitness
17:09
environments, the idea that a man
17:11
who's so into, like, his appearance,
17:13
and through working out
17:15
or certain form of working out that, he's inherently
17:18
suspicious. Women, interestingly,
17:20
sometimes get mocked for that stuff,
17:22
especially, like, expensive workouts
17:24
or ones that seem have like a lot of
17:26
sort of bells and whistles. But
17:29
because we've always sort of
17:31
accepted that, of course, women should
17:33
spend time and money on
17:35
looking pretty to the extent
17:37
that exercise is tied not to
17:39
building strength or to building
17:41
community or all these other great things that
17:43
can happen. But to losing weight or
17:45
getting prettier skin or being
17:47
attractive to men, it actually becomes
17:49
much more palatable for women
17:51
to
17:51
exercise. That's so interesting. And so
17:53
it makes me think of something you mentioned in the book too
17:55
about how, like, in the nineteen
17:57
seventies and eighties, I think, like, feminists, like,
18:00
Gloria Steinham were extolling
18:02
the virtues of exercise and talking about
18:05
exercises, this like feminist act.
18:07
And that seems to sort of fly in
18:09
the face of this idea that women
18:11
shouldn't be too strong because it will
18:13
take away from their prettiness and
18:15
their ability to be good
18:18
mothers or whatever it is, be fertile. But then
18:20
also, as you trace in the book,
18:22
there's this interesting sort of
18:24
individualism that comes into play
18:26
on the left as well, right, where it it
18:28
becomes this pursuit
18:30
of individual fitness become sort
18:32
of tied up with projects on the left
18:34
as well as on the right and makes
18:36
this kind of a universal pursuit
18:39
of
18:39
fitness, like this ideal across the political spectrum. Howard
18:41
Bauchner: Yeah, and thank you for reading
18:43
so closely. But when we're talking,
18:45
it's not out yet. I'm like,
18:47
my god. These smart people are actually reading
18:49
my words. I appreciate that. Yeah. So to
18:52
kind of elaborate on that a little bit, so how do we
18:54
get from that we that moment when
18:56
exercise was, like, weird and fish
18:58
as to where we are today,
19:00
yeah, you you you hit it on the head.
19:02
Right? And so the argument that I make is
19:04
that middle of the twentieth century
19:07
starting with some federal projects that
19:09
connect being fit to, like, civic duty,
19:11
a little bit of what you were talking about before
19:13
you owed to other people. Mentality was not so
19:15
much you owe it to other people, but more you owe it to
19:17
your country. So there was this big move to
19:20
an it was a very splashy PR
19:22
campaign, not so much investment in
19:24
infrastructure, but this big move to
19:26
kind of boost up physical
19:28
education programs, public recreation.
19:30
It was this whole campaign. It said,
19:33
like, No one gets cut from squad of fitness.
19:35
Like, this is not like sports. Everybody
19:37
should be fit because if the cold
19:39
war gets hot, you're gonna
19:41
have a responsibility to go fight. And
19:44
JFK is like a perfect influenza
19:46
for this because he takes
19:49
Eisenhowever, who came before I have,
19:51
he takes his kind of, like, military
19:54
preparedness thing, and then, like, makes it,
19:56
like, sexy, glamorous, and fun because
19:58
he's JF k. And so, you know, he
20:00
gets reamed for this by his
20:02
opponents who talk talk about like JFK's
20:04
silly fits at fitness, but he does a
20:06
really good job of saying this is not about
20:08
preparing now soldiers. This is about
20:10
fun and being with your family and
20:12
like challenging each other to like
20:14
healthy hikes and all the rasp But
20:16
if so that's likely is the foundation
20:19
for, like, fitness is a civic Mehlman.
20:21
But then, yeah, in the sixties and
20:23
seventies, you have this, like, while
20:26
intellectual shift that happens
20:28
where the notions that
20:30
I think actually underpin modern
20:32
wellness kind of come to gather. And those are ideas
20:34
really. And one is that
20:36
mind and body are connected and
20:38
that you can't be a kind of
20:40
fully actualized self unless
20:43
you're working on your body, that kind
20:45
of gets widespread traction.
20:47
And two, that
20:49
it is up to an
20:52
individual to kind of
20:54
take control and steer that
20:56
process of achieving wellness or
20:58
achieving health. That
21:00
set of ideas is very attractive
21:03
across the political spectrum. So
21:05
on the left, you have
21:07
people who've been marginalized by
21:10
medical communities, whether they're
21:12
feminists, whether they're people of color
21:14
who are like, yes, I
21:16
want to be trusted to
21:18
have agency over my body and my
21:20
health. I'm sick of these dudes
21:22
in white coats telling
21:24
me I'm thick or I don't feel
21:26
pain or that this is what I should put in my
21:28
body or my body is not good enough.
21:30
And that's very, very empowering.
21:32
On the right, this fits in perfectly
21:34
with all of this language
21:36
and personal responsibility that
21:39
is kind of conservative and libertarian
21:42
ideology. And so, you know,
21:44
I'm a a historian of ideas
21:46
to a certain extent and so that's like
21:48
an interesting shift I saw, but
21:50
what's so cool is to see how it plays
21:52
out literally on the ground. Like, with
21:54
something like jogging, you both have
21:56
these like happy environmentalists, like, back to the
21:58
land joggers, you have women, who are
22:00
feminists, who are, like, claiming their
22:02
right to run long distances. And
22:04
then you also have like conservative
22:07
Christian campuses celebrating
22:09
these cardio and aerobics programs
22:11
and talking about how Jesus
22:14
wants you saved body and mind, and
22:16
it's such a convergent discourse,
22:18
and I think really accounts for
22:20
why this stuff remains so
22:23
popular across the
22:23
Petrzela. fitness, wellness is
22:26
malleable to many different ideologies.
22:29
There's so much there that I wanna unpack,
22:31
like, this shift that happens in the
22:33
sixties and seventies because we talked about that for my
22:35
book too. Right? The idea
22:37
that wellness culture was sort of
22:39
born out of that shift in many ways
22:41
and that people seeking out like
22:43
alternative medicine, alternative
22:45
points of view about health and
22:47
well-being kind of out that some ways, you
22:49
know, the the disillusionment that so many people
22:51
were feeling, which people are still feeling today. And
22:53
I think has driven
22:56
wellness culture to become such big business,
22:58
right, and and alternative medicine to become
23:00
such big business. Because justifiably,
23:02
I think many people feel abandoned
23:05
or ignored or
23:07
unserved by the medical system in many
23:09
ways, especially marginalized people,
23:11
people of color, women, LGBTQ
23:13
people, all kinds of folks don't feel really
23:15
served by the medical system and
23:17
feel increasingly like the
23:20
alternatives might be more helpful
23:22
and that self care is
23:24
perhaps an alternative to
23:25
that. Howard Bauchner: I think that's totally right. And
23:27
I just went to visit a class
23:29
yesterday. That is talking about wellness
23:32
and culture. And one of the things I think
23:34
is really hard, and I don't have the answer
23:36
to it, is that everything that you just said
23:38
is right, that this kind of resistance
23:40
to authority and skepticism of
23:43
expertise comes out of real
23:45
pain and real exclusion and
23:47
marginalization and and it comes
23:49
from a culture that often has like
23:51
uncritically elevated certain
23:53
forms of expertise over
23:56
others, right, in a way that can be really
23:58
damaging, and I like appreciate
24:00
that. On the other hand, and we are
24:02
seeing this play out right now in the wellness
24:04
world around like COVID response,
24:06
what can sometimes feel like
24:08
a nice compromise of how we resolve that,
24:10
which is like, well, everybody can
24:12
just define wellness for themselves, like,
24:14
yes, I agree with that, but then I'm so
24:17
troubled to see, you
24:19
know, among many prominent wellness
24:22
influencers. That that gets kind of distorted into,
24:24
you know, the government's line
24:26
to you, like you, they might tell you
24:28
to take this vaccine, but I
24:31
believe in this temperature over here
24:33
or in a less controversial mode, the
24:35
kind of overall unquestioned
24:39
authority of the personal journey
24:41
as, like, as legitimate as, like,
24:43
the peer reviewed study. And I
24:45
have a really hard time saying, like, who to
24:47
trust when my students ask me? Because I'm
24:49
like, no. One person who,
24:51
I don't know, cured themselves of
24:53
a chronic illness or lost weight or,
24:55
like, has great skin
24:57
and wants to share their journey. I'm
24:59
not telling you that's not valid, but I also in
25:01
the sort of hierarchy of evidence and
25:04
authority, cannot say that that is the same
25:06
validity as a peer reviewed, you
25:08
know, set a double blind study.
25:10
Even though I know that the
25:12
medical institutions and the
25:14
medical profession in pharma and all the
25:16
rest are hardly actors
25:19
without checkered pasts and present. So
25:21
it's super, super hard to
25:23
know how to navigate that. And I think the
25:25
wellness industry culture is like
25:27
and all of our cultures against
25:29
a little bit of crisis because of
25:30
that. Howard Bauchner: Agreed, completely. It's it
25:33
I mean, that was one thing I kept thinking
25:35
about when I was writing the book and
25:37
was so troubled by as well. Like,
25:39
how do you know who to
25:41
trust? How do you discern? How do you
25:43
discern what's useful and what's
25:45
not? And I've been thinking a
25:47
lot about the placebo effect and
25:49
kind of the family of placebo effects
25:51
that are related effects
25:53
in wellness spaces and
25:55
how how powerful that is. Right?
25:57
How powerful the mind body connection is
25:59
and the way that, you know, taking
26:02
something maybe when you're at the
26:04
height of sort of a natural history of disease where
26:06
there's ebbs and flows. And oftentimes
26:08
people end up seeking out alternative
26:10
medicine or really any kind of medicine
26:13
or care. At the height of one of
26:15
those ebbs, you know. And then
26:17
the natural history of disease ends up that,
26:19
you know, they go into a
26:21
dip and symptoms are mitigated kind of naturally with
26:23
the ebb and flow of the disease. And I have
26:25
multiple chronic illnesses that very
26:27
much have cycles like that.
26:30
And so, you know, when reaching for
26:32
an alternative or a
26:34
cure, purported cure at the height
26:36
of the disease, it's going to very much look
26:38
like, you know, something to something
26:41
works, whatever you take at the at that
26:44
height, at that peak works because you end
26:46
up getting better on your own. Right?
26:48
But then Yeah. What
26:50
how do we discern, like, what
26:52
really has an effect over and above that?
26:54
You know, that's where, I think, peer reviewed
26:57
randomized controlled, double blind, placebo
26:59
controlled, you know, studies come in.
27:01
But those can be really problematic too.
27:03
You know, there's a really interesting book called
27:05
snake oil science that goes into the
27:08
issues with alternative medicine research
27:11
and why it's almost impossible to do
27:13
really good studies on a lot of alternative
27:15
medicine approaches. So
27:18
I think it can be really confusing for
27:20
people who don't know how to you
27:21
know, the average consumer. Right?
27:24
Right. And yet at in the other than the average
27:26
consumer, I mean, when I think about the stuff, like,
27:28
for a living, and it's really hard.
27:30
Right. Right. And I think that, like, the
27:32
go to, like, you know, whatever
27:34
feels right for you, that
27:36
is not really enough right now, but
27:38
it's not all we've got, but
27:40
it's hard to give sort of
27:42
more conclusive evidence than that. And, yeah,
27:44
your point about like the natural ebbs
27:46
and flows of certain conditions they
27:48
need to sort of laugh. I was, like, almost forty one weeks
27:51
pregnant with my second child. And
27:53
I I had a very sort of, like,
27:55
western and wonderful OB,
27:57
but very much in western medicine. And
27:59
I was like, oh my god, you know, get this baby
28:01
out of me already. And I was like, what do you
28:03
think about me going and doing some, like, aggressive AccuPont
28:06
insurance? She's like, okay, go for it. And she's and I was like, do you think it's
28:08
gonna work? And she's like, listen, you're like forty one
28:10
weeks pregnant. This baby's gonna come out in the next
28:12
couple of days. If you go and do acupuncture, or
28:14
now, you know, maybe you can, like, tie that cause of a
28:16
bag or it's just because it's time for the baby to be
28:18
born, you know. And I thought that was kind of
28:21
interesting and not every
28:23
situation obviously fits into that. But
28:25
I do one of the things I try to see
28:27
when I'm talking about this is, like, the notion
28:29
of, like, complementary techniques or
28:32
complimentary cures. Like, who am I to
28:34
say? Accuparture didn't work or
28:36
didn't hasten it or that another
28:39
complimentary and alternative intervention
28:41
doesn't work. I do not have the hubris to
28:43
say that, but, you know, I
28:45
do think scientific expertise counts
28:47
for something as imperfect as it is, but it
28:49
is hard and more in a tough moment, I think,
28:51
especially with the pandemic and
28:53
public health system on
28:55
that
28:55
point. Right, in the ways that a lot
28:58
of public health institutions have
29:01
had very big missteps and
29:03
and failings and admittedly
29:05
so. Right? The CDC has done its own kind
29:07
of internal investigation and found, like,
29:09
yeah, we really screwed up in terms
29:12
of communication and
29:14
some of the guidance to people and
29:16
stuff like that and and, you know, so it's
29:18
it's it definitely feels like it's enough to make
29:20
a lot of people lose trust. think there's
29:22
this interesting. I know we touched on this in our interview
29:24
for the book a little bit too. Like, the
29:27
way the role that the Internet plays
29:29
and social media plays in
29:32
sort of fostering that. Right? There's maybe a
29:34
little spark of doubt for a lot of people
29:36
or a sense of, you know,
29:38
justified skepticism that many people
29:40
have when they see kind of issues like the
29:42
CDC's pandemic response
29:44
being somewhat botched in some ways
29:46
or the OxyContin
29:48
scandal or things like that, right,
29:50
where the the medical establishment
29:52
really is has messed up and
29:54
and does the Tuskegee experiment, you know, these
29:56
things that are just, like, really,
29:58
really problematic and
30:00
create a health, you know, justified skepticism in
30:02
people, but then the Internet and
30:04
social media and and these, in
30:06
some cases, bad actors just
30:09
disinformation purveyors kind of
30:11
jump on that and, you know, fan
30:13
this flame of skepticism into a
30:15
raging fire that wants to burn down
30:17
everything about the established
30:19
medical system and make
30:21
you mistrust and have, you know, this conspiracy
30:24
sort of thinking toward everything
30:26
in the system and then a a sort of
30:29
attendant openness to these
30:31
really wild things that
30:33
maybe would be skeptical about. Otherwise, if
30:35
you hadn't had, you know, the sort of faith
30:37
in mainstream institutions and
30:39
science just completely burned down
30:42
by the social media environment
30:44
that we're
30:44
in. Yeah. No, I think that's
30:47
absolutely right. And I think
30:49
that, you know, I was talking before
30:51
about that kind of training that I came up in
30:53
that emphasized kind of structural critique
30:55
and institutional critique. And
30:57
in some ways, I think what you're describing
31:00
is in like, an assault from what
31:02
from a sensibility that generally exists on
31:04
the right. Right? It's like an attack on,
31:06
you know, COVID, it's a hoax, this like
31:09
Biden's pandemic, etcetera.
31:11
But I think that that
31:13
kind of attack on institutions,
31:15
whether it's medical profession or the CDC,
31:17
is helped along in a big
31:20
way from decades of
31:22
scholars and a kind of progressive
31:24
tradition, which has been
31:26
very critical of institutions for some
31:28
really good ways, but for some really good
31:30
reasons. But those two things kind of come
31:33
together. And I actually that
31:35
that was so weird and that's been it. So,
31:37
like, brought out so much weirdness in our
31:39
culture, but I was really surprised
31:41
when the bank stands for came out, which is a great
31:43
moment. I mean, I'm I'm
31:45
vaccinated, and I'm, like, very happy about
31:47
that. But when the vaccines came
31:49
out and holidays kind of,
31:51
like, lefty progressive people who are people I agree with
31:53
them a lot of things. We're, like, wearing these
31:55
t shirts. Like, how's the Pfizer
31:58
oh, we're modernity and Moderna. And I'm like,
32:00
are you guys really, like, pharma
32:03
shells right now? Like, what happened to
32:05
you? Like, it's just so weird. Right?
32:07
I'm, like, through the people who have
32:09
been crafting really thoughtful
32:11
critiques about big pharma and, like,
32:13
you know, the medical industrial complex or
32:15
whatever. And, like, great. This vaccine
32:17
seems like a good
32:17
thing. I trust it and everything. But,
32:20
like, this is not what I
32:22
would expect. You know? Right.
32:24
The sort of like, uncritical
32:27
embrace of I mean and
32:29
again, I'm also vaccinated,
32:31
boosted twice, you know, like, love
32:33
it. Really grateful for it. My daughter is
32:34
vaccinated, you know. But Same.
32:36
Same. All the caveats. Yeah. All the
32:39
caveats. And and I think, yeah, it's
32:41
been just truly incredible, the
32:43
speed with which these companies were able to
32:45
develop vaccines that are safe and
32:47
effective and, you know, helping blunt the
32:49
pandemic. But Yeah.
32:51
Like, the pharmaceutical industry certainly
32:53
has its own issues. And, you
32:55
know, I think, as I talk about in
32:57
the book, the supplement industry has
33:00
in some ways even more issues because
33:02
it's very, barely regulated, at
33:04
least with pharmaceuticals you
33:06
have you know, strict regulation and the necessity
33:08
to prove safety and efficacy before something
33:10
goes to market, not that that's,
33:12
again, OxyContin scandal is sort
33:14
of a big example of how
33:16
that failed, right, in one case, but also
33:19
or how that could potentially fail. But, you
33:21
know, I think in most cases, the system
33:23
works well for establishing
33:26
safety and efficacy of drugs before they go to market
33:28
whereas with the supplement industry, you have none of
33:30
that. Right? You don't have to there's
33:33
no no necessity establishing safety and efficacy
33:35
before going to market. There's a lot
33:37
of adult duration that happens in the
33:39
supplement industry that isn't found
33:41
sometimes for years. But
33:43
the pharmaceutical industry certainly has
33:45
its own problems. But, yeah, the
33:47
pandemic has just been so
33:49
has sort of upended a lot of the
33:52
usual lines of because
33:54
also you see people really
33:56
embracing uncritically embracing supplements
33:58
and going, like, the full I've
34:00
even seen people, and this is, again,
34:02
I think, somewhat on the left and on
34:04
the right, actually, where they're
34:06
embracing all other kinds of vaccines, but the COVID vaccine
34:08
somehow is bad or wrong and, you
34:10
know, developed too quickly and blah blah
34:12
blah. And so they're going you
34:15
know, full alternative medicine on the
34:17
pandemic, which is just so
34:20
troubling. I have seen that too. Yeah,
34:22
that we can probably stay on the pandemic forever. The
34:24
one other pandemic piece that has put me a little bit maybe at at
34:26
odds is maybe either not starting up or
34:28
too strong over word with, like, some of my
34:30
usual, like, fellow travelers
34:32
is, like, now at
34:34
this stage in the pandemic. I've
34:36
and I'm keep in mind, I'm in classrooms
34:38
all day. And I'm in classrooms
34:42
that still even with Vax and Booster requirements and
34:44
until very recently weekly PCR
34:46
tests, where we're a hundred percent
34:48
masked. And
34:50
don't think this is okay. I've been really vocal
34:52
about the fact that, like, starting with
34:54
my college students who aren't even getting a brunt
34:56
of it because little kids cabin
34:58
worse than a lot of ways. They haven't seen each other's faces for four
35:00
years. Like, I have seniors saying to me,
35:02
like, I just want to hear my
35:06
professor talk, like, properly, not muffled. Like, I want
35:08
that kind of engagement of faces
35:10
and I feel in that
35:13
environment that's actually a totally
35:16
legitimate position, and actually,
35:18
to this point of wellness, but I'm you know, I
35:20
don't want your listeners to be like, what is this, like, COVID
35:22
ramp thing that I signed up for
35:24
at this episode. But I think from the
35:26
perspective of broader wellness and
35:28
like situating our health in social
35:31
context, to me, that's the key
35:33
piece here. Like, you know, it is
35:35
debatable and it's not my excuse to say whether like the cloth or
35:37
surgical masks that most people are wearing
35:39
and there are actually preventing
35:42
to COVID transmission, among one hundred percent vaccinated people,
35:44
maybe they are, maybe they are not.
35:46
But there's something broader in
35:48
terms of our social health that
35:51
I think is pretty clearly being lost. And
35:54
so in that protected environment with
35:56
our vaccines and our weekly testing, it
35:58
seems like we should be able to see each
36:00
other spaces. This is I'm
36:02
not saying you necessarily agree with me or or
36:04
not, and we don't have to get into that. But I think
36:06
one of the positive things about
36:08
our wellness culture is that
36:10
it does kind of at least position as an
36:12
ideal a kind of holistic set of
36:15
a holistic definition of
36:18
health. Which incorporates, like, various things beyond just
36:20
the absence of illness. And I think
36:22
in some emerging and
36:26
educational institutions, in certain
36:28
regions, we've really lost that
36:30
in a really unfortunate and I think
36:32
surprising way. My
36:34
students are and my colleagues and like
36:36
everyone is kind of losing out when our only goal is preventing COVID
36:38
transmission and not thinking about other
36:40
health implications. Yeah, that's interesting.
36:44
Mehlman, and that makes me think too, we talked
36:46
about for my book and that is in
36:48
your book about how wellness culture
36:52
and fitness culture as well, embrace this, like, lofty
36:55
ideal about holism as
36:57
this ideal. Right? Holism as
36:59
the goal and with
37:02
fitness culture, it was with yoga. Yoga sort
37:04
of drove that shift, right, of thinking
37:07
about enlightenment and exercises
37:09
more than just physical and vanity. It's this
37:12
mind body connection. Right? But
37:14
then in practice, the way that the
37:16
sort of holistic ideal
37:18
gets translated is not always
37:21
so holistic. Curious to hear
37:23
you talk about the history of
37:25
that and how you see playing out today as
37:27
well? Totally. So I think first, just like
37:29
taking it further back to that mid century
37:31
moment. We were talking about kind of
37:33
post world war two. So in
37:35
the fifties and sixties, there are a
37:38
lot of advances in biomedicine
37:40
and there's a kind of general boost in
37:42
American prosperity, not across the board.
37:44
You still have a lot of inequality. But, you know, middle
37:46
class people can own a home like
37:48
all of those nineteen fifties images that
37:50
you see did not apply to everybody, but
37:52
they did
37:54
reflect kind of broader prosperity and growth in
37:56
middle class, largely white middle class.
37:58
Think of in terms of bodily
38:00
health, what we are coming out of,
38:03
to world wars, to depression. The
38:05
thing we don't always remember about
38:07
world war one and two is not only the lots of
38:09
American soldiers die, Many came back
38:12
like disfigure. Right? And with
38:14
disabilities, same effects of the
38:16
depression as well.
38:18
You have advances in vaccines, polio, gets
38:20
eradicated, advances in buying
38:22
medicine, greater access to
38:24
medical care, in those years
38:26
after World War two. And
38:28
you have the rise of
38:30
not the rise, but, like, more mainstreaming.
38:33
Of the therapeutic profession. So
38:35
all of that kind of converges in
38:37
our culture to kind of ways the
38:40
standard of like how people should
38:42
expect to feel and live. And
38:44
so there's this idea that
38:46
now we don't need to
38:48
worry about starving. We can, like, start thinking about what kinds of
38:50
foods we put in our body and
38:52
nutrition and seeing, you know, and understanding
38:54
where they where they
38:56
come from. We don't need to worry
38:58
about being sent off to war quite yet. We can worry about heart health
39:00
than, like, these kind of, more elevated
39:02
things. We if you feel
39:05
you know, alienated or depressed
39:08
or etcetera. There's a doctor
39:10
for that because you deserve to be happy.
39:12
And now some of the remediations were
39:15
like pretty terrible. Like all sorts of
39:17
chemical interventions, a lot of the food that
39:19
was considered healthy, bad, was actually
39:22
totally processed. So the solutions were
39:24
not perfect. But there is
39:26
this kind of like rise
39:28
in standard of expectation
39:30
around how to live that really
39:32
takes hold in that period. That
39:34
sort of is evolving and you have particularly in the
39:37
nineteen sixties and seventies counter
39:39
culture that really
39:42
is embracing kind of the pursuit
39:44
of enlightenment for lack of a better term. Some of that,
39:46
ironically, is rejecting aspects
39:49
of American prosperity. So
39:52
you imagine, like, generationally, like, a kid who grows up in the suburbs
39:55
that is told to, like, jog
39:57
daily around the block protect
40:00
their heart health and they have, like, you know, don't worry
40:02
about lack of food and and
40:04
all the rest. There's a whole bunch of
40:06
kids that grew up like that who were,
40:09
like, this, like, suburban,
40:12
American, western ideal is
40:14
very stultifying. It's inauthentic.
40:16
I wanna find real in my admit.
40:18
What's interesting is they're positioning that so called real enlightenment in
40:22
contrast to this inauthentic kind of
40:24
mainstream suburbia, but they could only kind of
40:26
have that
40:28
level of expectation because of that prosperity. Right?
40:30
And that gets to some of the class dynamics.
40:32
So then you have folks, and not all
40:34
of them were sort of middle class and white,
40:37
But getting into experimenting with,
40:40
you know, so called eastern
40:42
traditions, with rejecting kind
40:44
of industrial food, you have the
40:46
beginning of the organic food movement in this
40:48
period, you have acupuncture,
40:50
yoga, all of these kind of
40:52
like bodily practices, that are embraced by what
40:54
is mostly like a counter culture.
40:57
That's happening throughout the kind of
40:59
sixties and seventies and
41:02
this still seeing us a little bit sort of like out there.
41:04
I think by by a lot of folks,
41:06
like, there's this broadcast in nineteen
41:08
seventy nine on six sixty
41:11
minutes. We're a very young man, rather it's
41:13
like, wellness. There's a word you don't hear
41:15
every day. And I'm like, no, because
41:18
I hear it all the time. Now, and
41:20
he goes out to this clinic and
41:22
I think more in and he interviews these
41:24
folks who are saying things that today
41:26
sound like totally run-in the mail. Like, I just believe
41:28
body and mind are connected. You know, I
41:30
couldn't get relief
41:32
from my elbow
41:34
injury, and so I tried this, like, non western
41:36
position, and now everyone thinks
41:38
I'm crazy. Like, things that now
41:41
really, really in the mainstream. And then at
41:43
the same time, have this burgeoning
41:45
fitness culture, which is expanding
41:47
as cardio, which was then called a
41:49
robotics be like expands the definition of what's considered
41:51
exercise beyond weightlifting in calisthenics.
41:54
We have the kind of eighties aerobics
41:56
thing going on, which
41:58
is not connected to that
42:00
counter culture, like, at all. It's
42:02
very, like, hard driving,
42:04
get skinny, dance party,
42:07
like, it's I think people describe having
42:09
transcendent experiences in those classes, but
42:11
it's not connected to, like, a
42:13
broader social critique for sure
42:15
or anything like that. Intense
42:18
bodily experience. In the nineteen
42:20
nineties and then the two
42:22
thousands, these really
42:24
come together in mainstream yoga culture. And
42:26
a lot of people who write about this, write about it
42:28
from the perspective of
42:30
yoga, this
42:32
like pure spiritual practice being corrupted by
42:34
this houté fitness industry, which
42:36
is all about thinner thighs and kind
42:38
of like strips out the spirituality and
42:42
just tries to make it into essentially like a weight loss.
42:44
That is not untrue in
42:46
certain aspects, but what I look at in the
42:48
book and I think is really, really a
42:51
important in understanding where we are today is the
42:53
way that yoga culture
42:56
actually shapes fitness culture in these
42:58
years and that
43:00
you have a workout industry, which is much bigger than the
43:02
yoga industry ever was,
43:04
a fitness industry, which was very
43:06
like physical and about the body.
43:09
And for that reason, still, even as many people were doing
43:11
it, considered kind of narcissistic or
43:14
kind of silly,
43:16
it adopts and
43:18
incorporates this kind of language
43:20
of spirituality,
43:22
enlightenment. It's not an
43:24
instructor. It's my guru. This
43:27
is about self care, and that
43:29
really serves to elevate
43:32
exercise to a practice,
43:34
you know, not just like quick
43:36
burn and then you get out of there. And I think that that
43:39
integration is really important in
43:41
understanding, like, why exercise
43:44
has really
43:46
virtuous cast today and then more
43:48
concretely, like the result of all of that
43:50
and part of how it's happened was things
43:53
that are still with us today. Like,
43:55
yoga, fusion bootcamp, power, yoga,
43:57
you know, all of these kind of,
43:59
like, fusion formats which I think
44:01
are not only a result of the so called
44:04
corruption of yoga by fitness,
44:06
but actually part of, in some ways, a
44:08
very willing embrace. On both
44:10
sides. Like, there are I read, like,
44:12
every every issue of yoga
44:14
journal for, like, twenty years or something,
44:16
and there there's a debate that's
44:18
constantly happening. There are plenty of
44:20
people in the yoga community who are like, this is great. We're finally shedding this like esoteric
44:22
cast that we're like this weird
44:25
spiritual thing. Like, Great. We should
44:27
be in every sports medicine clinic in
44:30
America. And so there are people who
44:32
are excited about that. But whether you
44:34
think it's good or not, that
44:36
influence went both ways and is so
44:38
crucial to the way that
44:40
today we invest working
44:42
out as this, like, elevated,
44:44
worthy pursuit that, like, I don't
44:46
think most people are sort of apologizing
44:48
for
44:48
anymore. Yeah. Well, so non apologizing
44:51
that you said in the book,
44:53
like, you're one of the first responses
44:55
that people would have when you said you were writing
44:57
a book about fitness
44:58
culture. It was like, oh, I don't exercise
45:00
enough. I'm so terrible. Like,
45:02
yeah. That
45:02
we now have taken this on as like a mantle of
45:05
morality. Right. And that is
45:07
such a relatively new expectation.
45:09
It really, really
45:12
is. Like, oh, I'm so mad and work out today
45:14
or I should work out more. I'm like, I'm not the
45:16
workout police. I don't know. You're a special
45:20
kind of food expert, but I would imagine that, like,
45:22
some folks who work in your field, like, go
45:24
out to dinner with friends and their friends, like,
45:26
apologize for the food on their plate in front of
45:28
them
45:29
or, like, it's so bad. Like, I'm sure. It's part of the reason I
45:32
started saying I'm an anti dietitian
45:34
is to try to foreground,
45:36
like, the anti
45:38
diet part and say, I'm not gonna judge you about what you're eating otherwise,
45:40
if I say I'm a dietitian, that's always
45:42
the first response. Oh, I need to eat
45:44
better or like, oh, I'm trying this
45:46
new keto thing, which you think
45:49
of it or really thorny conversations
45:51
that I wanna sort of not have
45:53
to go down that
45:55
road. Yeah. It does. I
45:57
think pertinent to both that point that you make
45:59
and also actually this thing we were just talking
46:02
about, which is the kind of rise of
46:04
this wellness talk around
46:06
exercise and about too.
46:08
In some ways, I mean, they're good
46:10
aspects to that. I think it's great that
46:12
we talk more about going to exercise or
46:14
eating because that's how it makes me
46:16
feel. And I go for other reasons that
46:18
are not just about the physical
46:21
transformation or for women often the shrinking
46:23
of our bodies. I think that's really
46:25
good. The thing that worries me, and I'm curious to
46:27
know what you think because I think it was
46:29
probably almost even more apparent in the
46:31
food world, is that
46:33
I think there's been this kind of
46:36
silencing among certain circles
46:39
around, like, weight loss
46:41
talk or kind of honest talk
46:44
about how you feel about your body or
46:46
how you want to look such
46:48
that we have this new language
46:50
which dresses up in some ways the
46:52
same old sentiments, you
46:54
know. And I think that
46:56
I'm really divided on that.
46:58
Like, you know, so I have converse
47:01
I'm turning forty four next week. I have two kids. So, you know, my
47:03
look, I think, my age and all that. But, like,
47:05
I have some conversations with friends who
47:07
might or like
47:10
me are seventy's, right, our forty's, most lesser moms or whatever.
47:12
And there's almost, like, this furtive
47:14
thing if we feel, like, oh,
47:16
there's, like, my pants to fit a little
47:18
differently. And I
47:20
don't wanna I don't think that's good or bad, but it is strange that
47:22
when the dominant discourse in our
47:24
culture for so long has actually
47:26
been like you should
47:28
announce you wanna lose weight and post your
47:30
transformation pictures and all of that. I still think
47:32
that actually that feeling is very much
47:34
with us. But at least in
47:36
certain circles, you almost can't talk about it,
47:38
and so it's harder to
47:40
move past it. So I'm
47:42
dealing with this too. So I'm not
47:44
offering solutions, but I think it's
47:46
a historical phenomenon that we'd be remiss to not kind
47:47
of, you know, think worth thinking
47:49
about. I agree. I think it's
47:51
really interesting because you
47:55
know, in my perspective and and definitely in the food world, I
47:57
think there's a lot of this couching the desire
47:59
to lose weight or the desire to eat
48:01
a certain way
48:04
for like perceived moral reasons like that you're
48:06
you're bad if you eat quote unquote
48:08
bad food or whatever. I think
48:10
now with the
48:12
rise of the anti diet
48:14
movement Mehlman I've certainly been a part of that
48:16
and my first book is called anti diet and
48:18
stuff like I think with
48:20
the rise of that, I think there are a lot of
48:22
people now who think
48:24
it's bad to express
48:26
those sentiments and yet
48:28
still want that. And so there's
48:30
some market there's a lot more marketing I now to language
48:32
of anti diet culture
48:35
and talk about you
48:38
know, the other reasons or the other benefits people might get from
48:40
eating a certain way or from exercising a
48:42
certain way or whatever it is. It's
48:44
like coated language. No. It's not
48:48
shrink your body or lose x pounds or whatever,
48:50
but it's like, you know, feel good in your
48:52
skin or glow from within
48:54
or something like that. You know? And
48:57
what does that actually mean? You know? I think
48:59
it still means the same
49:00
thing, but it's it's got this, like,
49:03
slightly loftier framing to it.
49:05
Right. And it's so hard. I mean, I
49:07
think we should never really be judging history
49:09
of, like, purely, like, is this better or
49:11
is this worse? But it's, you know, it
49:13
is, like, I read, so many historical advertisements for
49:15
different, what they call it, used to call it, reducing
49:18
products and different exercise products. And I
49:20
mean, they literally,
49:22
there are record sold
49:24
in the sat in the sixties that are,
49:26
like, how to please your husband,
49:28
be whistle bait after thirty?
49:30
Like, it's literally, like, that I talk
49:32
about it. It looked like it's so
49:34
you should exercise so that
49:36
you continue to merit nail
49:38
attention. Like, full stop, no questioning.
49:40
End of story. It is very good
49:42
that we have moved on past this. Right. And
49:44
I think I like it's great because those
49:46
kind of ads, like, there are little girls
49:48
out there and boys, by the way, on their
49:50
mom's shelf and that was their first
49:52
inclination that this is how they should think. And so I
49:54
think it is a huge improvement that
49:56
we've passed that. But I
49:58
think we haven't moved
50:00
past the underlying emotions
50:02
that, like, drive that kind of marketing,
50:04
but we just have or, like, dressed
50:06
up way of talking about that. And I think that
50:09
that's really hard. And I've been really kind
50:11
of inspired and thought a
50:14
lot about some of the pushback on the, like, love your body language.
50:16
Right? That, like, it kind of wrapped
50:18
up in that. It's like, oh, you don't love
50:20
your body. Oh, you're not, you
50:22
know, enlightened or, like, what's wrong with
50:24
you? Are you all this internalized
50:26
oppression? And I'm, like, oh, my god. That's you don't
50:28
need to feel guilty, not only maybe
50:30
for not looking like you want to, but they're not loving, how do you like,
50:32
that doesn't seem like progress. So
50:34
I know it's really challenging and
50:37
coversation you're talking about, I think, is right of
50:39
this new language. And then
50:42
maybe this is too far into the food industry
50:44
for for me to comment, John, but I
50:46
was following you know, one of
50:48
these internet controversies where there was a nutritionist who was kind of talking,
50:50
what sounded great? Like, a very, like, anti
50:54
diet lying about their no dad or good foods. And it out
50:56
she was, like, paid by some, like, chips
50:58
or fast food company. And I'm, like,
51:02
that to me undermine such important work
51:05
in anti diet culture because
51:07
I don't think Nutritionist
51:09
or not would
51:12
say that, you know, bags of chips are the same as
51:14
eating fresh food. Right? And that
51:16
totally just I don't know.
51:20
It's just so it's it's really hard. I feel like I'm saying that a lot in
51:22
this interview because you're asking really good questions.
51:24
But how to navigate this? All I can
51:26
tend to say
51:28
is, like, you know, not just do your own research, but, like,
51:30
think about how everything we're experiencing
51:32
is constructive. Right? And it's
51:34
not every
51:36
food or every workout is exactly of
51:38
the same quality or will be the same effectiveness or
51:40
is right for everyone and also
51:43
try and consult research and
51:45
you're making your decisions beyond that
51:48
uncredentialed influencer who, like,
51:50
looks pretty and has a lot of followers. And
51:52
so it tells you that it makes because her
51:54
journey more that out. And I think
51:56
that, you know, as we're talking
51:58
about sort of hierarchies of authority,
52:00
it felt like, you know, there there
52:02
are very little checks on people getting
52:04
online and issuing health
52:05
advice. And, yeah, something we
52:07
gotta look out for. Completely. And,
52:09
I mean, the do
52:11
your own research is so interesting. We talked about that in our book interview
52:13
to you about how this phrase has
52:16
become so loaded and what does it even mean
52:18
to do your own research
52:20
and with you know, the anti
52:22
Vax sort of take on do your own
52:24
research. It's basically do your research
52:26
in these particular ways, in
52:28
this particular look at these memes that
52:30
have been curated for you by the algorithm that amplifies
52:34
Discord and moral outrage,
52:36
and so it's gonna drive you further and further
52:38
down this anti box rabbit hole because that's what
52:40
drives engagement. Like, look at these. This is your
52:42
research. You know, don't
52:44
look at you know, the scientific studies and journals that have been
52:46
published for decades and decades that, you know, that
52:48
that's somehow invalid and that
52:50
only this particular type of
52:52
research is
52:53
is the valid form of doing
52:55
your research? No. Absolutely. I think
52:57
that's right. And I said, you know, as a historian, like,
52:59
what do I do? I research methods. It's been
53:01
very dizzying from me that to your own research has
53:03
been weaponized. Right? Because now
53:06
I feel
53:08
like this is the conversation I have. I'm teaching a research seminar this
53:10
semester, and we talk about that
53:12
in this sort of, like, a personalized
53:15
flow crisis that we're in. But usually,
53:17
my answer would have always been like, go to
53:19
the primary sources. Right? And now we have to have,
53:21
I think, a more sophisticated conversation
53:24
about that. Empowered because of this weaponization of do your own
53:26
research, but also just the sheer
53:28
barrage of information that we have available
53:30
to us. Even if you're
53:32
going in in
53:34
a good faith way to do your own research. It's harder
53:36
and harder, I think, to get
53:38
something close to a three sixty view
53:41
of what's going on. And so
53:44
when I that, and maybe this is just good life advice even beyond writing a
53:46
history of these as is,
53:48
like, constantly, like, be
53:50
humble in
53:52
your knowledge. What am I not seeing? What are the blinders? Like, what would
53:54
someone not with my positionality think?
53:56
And, like, that
53:58
pushes me certainly in writing
54:00
the book, but also just in making, you know,
54:02
decisions about, like, how to live life,
54:04
right, and how to do well, to
54:06
kind of reach for perspectives that may not be intuitive to mine,
54:08
realize I probably don't have the whole
54:10
picture. And,
54:12
yeah, it is a form
54:14
of doing your own research, but I think in a more good way than that
54:17
term has often
54:18
used. Howard Bauchner: Yeah, I mean, I think that's
54:22
really well said and so valuable to think about
54:24
humility as as an aspect of this
54:26
because we see a lot of and
54:28
again, you know, this has become my bugbear
54:32
as I researched my book and looked at, you know, what are
54:34
the drivers of missing disinformation
54:36
about wellness? How do we even, you know,
54:38
define missing disinformation first of all?
54:40
But then
54:42
what has driven those to be so prominent in the wellness
54:44
space and really seeing the role that social
54:46
media and algorithms have played
54:48
in driving that. You know, like,
54:51
I think my own, you know, I talk about
54:53
this in the book like that my
54:55
own discourse and rhetoric became
54:58
more polarized
55:00
and more black and white by virtue of the
55:02
algorithms rewarding that, you know, just
55:04
seeing what worked on social media and thinking,
55:06
okay. Like, these more
55:08
nuanced memes don't try get as
55:10
much traction. These ones that are much
55:12
more black and white, and this wasn't even really
55:14
a conscious decision, you know. It was just
55:16
something that happened over the years. Right? That
55:18
the the stuff with fewer filler
55:20
words and more concrete
55:22
sort of black and white language tends to get
55:24
more likes and more shares, more traction,
55:26
and more angry comments as
55:28
well. Right? And there's this notion of,
55:30
like, if you're provoking angry comments
55:32
or if you're creating controversy, then you're doing something right. And it's
55:35
like, I'm not that kind of person,
55:37
actually. I don't like creating controversy.
55:39
That's not my personality
55:42
and so to feel at the center of that a lot
55:44
of times has been just like
55:46
very overwhelming and scary
55:48
for me in some cases. And, you know, looking
55:50
at the ways in which the platforms
55:52
actually drove me to this sort
55:54
of way of relating that maybe wasn't
55:56
what I had intended or what I
55:59
really stand for and, you know, trying
56:01
to figure out how to be more nuanced and
56:03
thinking about these issues and step away
56:06
from social
56:08
media. And not let that influence my writing or my speaking
56:10
as much has been really helpful to me, I
56:12
think, and is an ongoing
56:13
project, of course. I think that's such a
56:16
good point and you have a bigger social
56:18
media following than I do, but I feel
56:20
like I've noticed that in the same way.
56:22
And that's also, like, I don't separate from
56:24
controversy, but, like, I feel like if I have
56:26
a brand, it's Nuance.
56:28
Right? And so I
56:30
am not
56:32
my thoughts that I feel are most
56:34
worth sharing or, like, could actually add something are not best articulating.
56:36
And then, like, can you believe
56:40
it, outraged, tweet or etcetera or some, like,
56:42
you know, on Instagram, more some,
56:44
like, receptor instruction
56:46
on, like, how to live
56:48
or how to feel, which I feel like do
56:50
do really well in that way.
56:52
And I see people honestly who I
56:54
respect. I feel though sort of off the
56:56
rails in this way. And I'm like, you actually this
56:58
way? Or are you just, like, courting
57:00
likes, you know? And I think that's
57:02
kind of pathetic. And it's actually made
57:05
me I it's in part it's because I I
57:07
was done with this book, and so I have a little
57:09
bit more writing space, but I have
57:11
been writing a lot
57:14
more, like, in real outlets in order to
57:16
have a thousand words or two thousand words
57:18
to actually make a point. And I
57:20
feel like for me,
57:22
that is and I'm lucky to have that
57:24
access, but, like, that
57:26
is a more effective way to make
57:28
a good
57:30
contribution because I don't know. I mean,
57:32
I tweet a lot and I share things on Instagram, but I find, like, on Instagram,
57:34
I share very just, like,
57:37
Hi. I'm doing this thing. Come to this event or, like, here are my kids
57:40
or in stories. I'll share articles and
57:42
stuff. But, like, on Twitter, I
57:44
share things, but it's not the
57:46
best place
57:47
kind of have nuanced conversation in part because
57:50
people are so out for blood. Oh,
57:52
totally. It's so it's so
57:54
hard. It's not a place for
57:56
Nuance conversation at all in my experience and
57:58
that, you know, I think the the
58:00
platform generates that too because I
58:02
definitely know people in real life who
58:04
I'm like, you're not like that in in your offline
58:06
persona. You know, this persona that you have
58:08
online is like this heightened
58:10
version of you know, maybe you're a
58:12
little bit edgy or something in real life, but
58:14
you're like this edge lord on
58:16
Twitter or you're much more
58:18
nuanced in conversation when we have time to
58:20
like really flesh out an
58:22
idea. And then on social media, it's just
58:24
very black and white. And I've
58:26
also seen people sort of driven to
58:28
the edge by you know, driven kind of up a wall by
58:30
this, by the way that the algorithms
58:32
push controversy and push people
58:34
into sort
58:36
of debates and and not even just debates but flame
58:38
wars with each other and getting so obsessed
58:40
with kind of like the Internet fight
58:42
that they're in of the day. And
58:45
not being able to step away from it. And I've had
58:47
little moments like that myself. I've never really,
58:49
like I've certainly been sucked
58:52
into, like, unwinnable debates and things
58:54
like that. I've I've tried to
58:56
avoid anything majorly controversial,
58:58
but still it's it's happened and it's made
59:00
me feel awful and, you know, really
59:02
impacted my mental health in a negative way.
59:04
And I've started to feel like, okay, what's
59:07
the common denominator here? Every time
59:09
I open this app is I start to feel
59:11
this way, you know. And that is where
59:13
I think this sort of, like, idea of a mind body connection and thinking
59:16
about -- Mhmm. -- you know, well-being
59:18
holistically really can come into play.
59:20
It's like, how am I feeling my
59:22
body right now? What is this triggering
59:24
for me? You know? And and is
59:26
this the best environment for me? Is this
59:28
something maybe I could do well to step
59:31
away from? Absolutely. I think if we
59:33
read more books than tweets and have
59:35
more in person conversations than
59:37
like Facebook, social
59:40
media, changes, we'd probably be in a much better place. Yes. Yes.
59:42
And it's hard. It's hard in
59:43
this, you know, modern era, especially
59:46
with COVID, right, having disconnected so
59:48
many of us
59:50
from in person communities and for people still who are,
59:52
you know, immunocompromised and things like
59:54
that, having to still be really
59:56
careful and avoid a lot of in person
59:58
interaction. And
1:00:00
so online has become such a more important
1:00:02
part of so many people's social lives. So
1:00:04
I get why social media
1:00:07
use kind of exploded around the
1:00:08
pandemic. And yet, I think it's really
1:00:11
had so many negative impacts on us
1:00:13
as well. I grew and one
1:00:15
other piece that I think exacerbates especially in the wellness industry, like
1:00:17
certainly in Mehlman, I would say in
1:00:20
food and
1:00:22
in this role
1:00:24
of which didn't exist, like,
1:00:26
much thirty years ago, the life coach.
1:00:28
Mhmm. All of those things, I
1:00:31
think, are really important to think
1:00:33
about in terms of the rise of social media
1:00:35
and some of its harms in
1:00:37
that it's such an
1:00:40
unregulated space Right? Like, people can rise to have such
1:00:42
influence there because all
1:00:44
they need is their media savvy. And
1:00:46
like I said before, they're kind of like
1:00:49
personal journey to impart
1:00:52
advice. And I'm not saying that we should crack
1:00:54
down with, like, you need a
1:00:56
credential to, like, tell people what you ate for
1:00:58
breakfast or, like, how many push
1:01:00
ups did that you did today or
1:01:02
whatever. I think his credential over
1:01:04
credentialing can be a real problem too
1:01:06
in connection shut out, marginalized people as it has throughout all
1:01:08
of history, especially women in
1:01:10
the care
1:01:12
industries. But I do think
1:01:14
we need to see those as
1:01:16
interconnected phenomenon. Like, you
1:01:18
would not have
1:01:22
wellness influencers for good and bad online having so
1:01:24
much influence if we had a more
1:01:26
rigorous kind of definition
1:01:28
or credentialing or process
1:01:30
of
1:01:31
some sort. For who could impart this advice. Such a
1:01:34
great point. And, yeah, I agree with the
1:01:36
overcredentialing piece. It's really tricky
1:01:38
and problematic
1:01:40
and you know, and also I see
1:01:42
so many people who do have credentials, who are getting sucked into these
1:01:44
really extreme versions of
1:01:48
their views, online and
1:01:50
in social media or views that they maybe
1:01:52
wouldn't even, you know, that didn't
1:01:54
come from the credentialing process or
1:01:56
the what they learned, but, you know, going
1:01:58
And, you know, I mean, I I didn't learn health at
1:02:00
every size or intuitive eating in school either. So I I get
1:02:03
it, you know, I think we discover
1:02:06
things and might find a niche that works
1:02:09
for us after school and sort
1:02:11
of beyond the credentialing process. And some of that
1:02:13
is good. You know, I
1:02:16
do think intuitive eating is really a
1:02:18
wonderful practice. I still really stand by
1:02:20
it, but I also think, like,
1:02:22
because lack
1:02:24
of regulation, there can be even credentialed
1:02:26
people who, you know, have views that
1:02:28
are very
1:02:29
polarizing, very extreme, and not
1:02:31
necessarily evidence based. Yeah.
1:02:34
No. I absolutely agree. It's it's
1:02:36
thorny, but yeah, I absolutely agree that,
1:02:38
you know, not all knowledge needs
1:02:41
being premature of like, you know, a peer reviewed study
1:02:43
or a university credential, but that does
1:02:46
count for something too. Yeah. I think it
1:02:48
counts for a lot, especially, you
1:02:49
know, just in thinking
1:02:52
about, like, how do we separate out these sort of
1:02:54
other phenomena that are so unique or
1:02:56
so so universal to humans,
1:02:58
I think, of, like, you
1:03:01
know, the placebo effect or the natural history of disease or all those
1:03:03
sort of related things, you know,
1:03:05
I think giving individual's
1:03:08
journey that they're sharing on social media,
1:03:10
like more credence in some cases
1:03:12
than scientific studies. You know, I I
1:03:14
know that I've definitely heard people say
1:03:17
that they believe thing more because they think it's
1:03:19
less influenced, it's less bought, it's
1:03:22
less embedded with the pharma
1:03:24
industry, the medical industry that they want nothing to
1:03:26
do with. Not realizing
1:03:28
how individuals can also be
1:03:30
influenced and pushed in certain directions and
1:03:32
maybe not necessarily by a huge industry like
1:03:34
that, although in some cases. Yes, if
1:03:36
it's the food industry paying you to say
1:03:38
anti diet stuff, which is just
1:03:40
horrifying. But, you know, it it just all makes
1:03:42
me think like, we need to
1:03:44
take everything we see
1:03:46
online, especially on social media with a
1:03:48
huge grain of salt and
1:03:50
maybe not not base our life decisions around that, you know, which is
1:03:52
so much easier said than done, and I know so
1:03:54
many people lack access to a good healthcare
1:03:56
team that
1:03:58
could advise them in a better way.
1:04:00
And, you know, there's all the issues around around that. But
1:04:02
to whatever extent, I think it's
1:04:05
possible for you if you can have more in
1:04:08
person support or, like, even
1:04:10
virtual online support that's one on one
1:04:12
versus, public
1:04:14
context of social media where, you
1:04:16
know, the algorithms are really influencing and
1:04:18
shaping what you see and what people
1:04:19
say, I think that would be to
1:04:22
the good. Absolutely. I
1:04:24
mean, this is how I just think, like,
1:04:26
sustained human contact. And again, not
1:04:28
everyone can have it ever or
1:04:30
right now, but especially around
1:04:32
making really important intimate decisions
1:04:34
about your body and your health and
1:04:36
your mind. Like, you know, we were talking
1:04:38
narcissism early on. And I think sometimes like personal
1:04:41
care for lack of a
1:04:43
better overarching term, can
1:04:46
be sort of dismissed as just like a leisure
1:04:48
pursuit. And of course, it's a luxury to
1:04:50
think about the way you move your body and
1:04:52
the way nourish your body. But, like,
1:04:54
this stuff is really important, you know,
1:04:57
and they think that we should
1:04:59
not be shy about saying
1:05:01
that and really encourage, you know,
1:05:03
our certainly, our policy makers
1:05:05
to make create policies that
1:05:07
may get more accessible to get good
1:05:09
advice in this regard. But so
1:05:11
people, like, yeah, it's worth talking to a few
1:05:14
people about the health decisions you make. It's probably
1:05:16
worth getting out of your house and going to an
1:05:18
appointment if
1:05:20
you can. And I think that that can sometimes fall by the wayside. We're
1:05:22
all busy and or
1:05:24
constrained in various
1:05:25
ways. Mhmm. And it's again,
1:05:28
so messy and tricky as we've said in this
1:05:30
-- Yeah. -- this conversation many
1:05:32
times. Right? That there's so many systemic
1:05:34
barriers to that as well. Mhmm.
1:05:36
And so
1:05:37
Well, Natalia, I could talk to you forever
1:05:39
about this stuff.
1:05:39
No. No. It's
1:05:40
really been fun. Can you tell us
1:05:43
about your book and where people can find
1:05:45
it and learn more about you? Absolutely. So my book
1:05:47
is Fit Nation, the gains in pants
1:05:49
of America's exercise obsession.
1:05:51
It is out anywhere
1:05:53
books are sold. So you can get it at that
1:05:56
big retailer. I know you know, but also
1:05:58
your independent booksellers or
1:06:00
directly from the press at University of
1:06:02
Chicago press. You follow
1:06:04
me on Twitter or
1:06:06
Instagram or any of the other platforms too.
1:06:08
And if you're in New York, come take
1:06:10
class with me. I do speaking all over the country too, so you can find
1:06:12
me on those
1:06:13
platforms. You wanna talk more about that? Thank you
1:06:15
so much. It's been such a pleasure
1:06:17
talking with you. Likewise,
1:06:21
thank you. So that's
1:06:23
our show. Thanks again so much to
1:06:25
Natalia Mailman Mehlman for that
1:06:28
great conversation. And thanks to you
1:06:30
for listening. This episode was brought to you by my upcoming book The Wellness Trap.
1:06:32
Break free from diet culture, disinformation,
1:06:34
and dubious diagnoses, and
1:06:38
find your through well-being, which is available for pre order now
1:06:40
and comes out on April twenty five
1:06:42
and features some quotes
1:06:44
from Natalia So you can go to
1:06:46
christy harrison dot com slash the wellness
1:06:48
trap to learn more and preorder the
1:06:50
book. That's christy harrison dot com
1:06:52
slash the
1:06:54
wellness trap. If you're looking for help healing your own relationship with
1:06:56
food, grab my free audio guide,
1:06:58
seven simple strategies for finding
1:07:00
peace and freedom
1:07:02
with food, which is available at christy harrison dot com slash
1:07:04
strategies. If you want full show
1:07:06
notes and a transcript of this episode,
1:07:08
just go to christy harrison dot com slash
1:07:10
three ten.
1:07:12
And to get the
1:07:13
transcript, you can scroll down to the bottom of the page enter your email address.
1:07:16
Big thanks as always
1:07:16
to our editor and sound engineer,
1:07:19
Mike La Land. Community and
1:07:22
content associate, Vinci Chuay, an
1:07:24
administrative assistant, Wojtaszek,
1:07:26
for helping me out with all the moving parts
1:07:28
that go into producing this show. Our album
1:07:30
art was photographed by Abby Moore
1:07:32
Photography, and logo was designed by Melissa
1:07:34
Alam. Our theme song was written and performed by
1:07:36
Carolyn Penny
1:07:38
Packer Rigs. And I'm your host and
1:07:40
producer, Christie Harrison. Thanks again for listening and until next time,
1:07:44
stay site.
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