The Toxicity of the Wellness Culture

That is a radical statement! Being well is something we all want. We follow the latest diet trends. We take the recommended supplements. We become "fat phobic," telling ourselves we are not "good enough" if we are overweight. Debra Benfield, founder and owner of Body in Mind Nutrition, told me that there is an ageist diet/wellness culture that leads to a lack of body respect in the Pro-Aging movement. Deb wants to blaze a path into elderhood without the scales! Topics covered: Internal biases around eating, diet, weight and fitness, specifically focused on women over 50 We have learned that in order to be loved, be worthy or be of value, we must be thin, This belief leads to disordered eating, feeling badly about ourselves.  Intuitive eating - eat when you are hungry, stop when you are full. Stay out of your head, stop counting calories, stop tracking,  We can feel overwhelmed by so many different diets and even may have forgotten how to eat a healthy diet. Research shows that it is not obesity that causes heart disease, diabetes or other diseases, it is actually the behaviors or genetics or trauma. You can be fat and fit.  Being thin does not equal healthy. Episode Takeaways: 1. Wrap your head around the idea that all bodies are worthy 2. These suggestions can help you age with vitality and protect you from disordered eating Move your body so it feels like play Be socially connected Manage your stress Use intuitive eating Thanks so much for listening. Subscribe on Apple Podcast, Stitcher , Google Podcast. or Spotify Follow up on Facebook and Instagram How to reach us You can email me with questions or comments at [email protected] Join the Hey, Boomer Walk to End Alzheimer's Team at act.alz.org/go/HeyBoomer  – Wendy Green is a Certified Life Coach, working with people going through the sometimes uncomfortable life transition from full-time work to “what’s next.” Find out more about Wendy’s 6-week “What’s Next Transition” Coaching workshop – You can find Debra Benfield at debrabenfield.com  - On Instagram at @agingbodyliberation - or email her at [email protected] Books mentioned in the show The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach How to Raise an Intuitive Eater: Raising the Next Generation with Food and Body Confidence Show transcript Toxicity of the Wellness Culture.m4a Hello. Welcome to the Hey Boomer Show, which is live each Monday on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube and then available the next day on your favorite podcast app. My name is Wendy Green and I am your host for Hey Boomer. And Hey, Boomer is for those of us who believe we are never too old to set another goal or dream, a new dream. It is for lifelong learners who have found meaning and are finding meaning and purpose in their lives and are living their best lives into this new chapter. We at hey boomer are on a push to grow our hey boomer Walk to end Alzheimer's team and what I would like to do is welcome our newest walk member, Kathy McAfee. She joined our Greenville, South Carolina, team. We also have Melanie Whitlock, who is out in Clearlake, California. And you can join her team, her hey, boomer team or Bernadette Wagner. She's having a team out in Hagerstown, Maryland. Everybody who joins the team is going to get a cute, hey, boomer hat that you can wear for the walk and you can wear afterwards with great pride because you are a boomer. So join our team, any of these teams by going to act.ALZ.org/goto/HeyBoomer and if you don't want to walk with us or you feel like you can't, you can still go ahead and contribute so that we can find a cure and end this disease and meanwhile help people that are still going through the disease. I also wanted to mention the What's Next Group Coaching program. This program helps answer the question Who am I now? Who do I want to be? Will I ever feel useful and productive in society again? And what is my value to my family, my community, my society now that I am no longer fully employed or following my career path? At the end of the six week program, you will have a six month plan and possibly a 12 month plan, and the next cohort begins on September the 20th. And let me show you how you can reach out. You can go to Calendly/heyboomer/20min and we can set up a free 20 minute consultation. Find out where you're at, where you want to be. See if this makes sense to you or you don't have to talk to me if you don't want to. You can just check out the program at HeyBoomer.biz/Coaching and learn all about it. It really can be a program that can move you into your next chapter with great comfort and ease. So let's get to what we're talking about today. And I've been struggling with this topic a little bit, the toxicity of the wellness culture. I mean, I mostly try to eat healthy. I take supplements. I exercise some most of the time. No, probably not as much as I should. And I have to admit, I am a fair weather walker and hiker when it is cold and rainy. I am not the one that's out there, but I do get uncomfortable when the scale says I've gained a few pounds and all of these beliefs about weight and fitness and behaviors. These all are reinforced by my family and by the media. You know, we all hear comments like, oh, she's really put on some weight or, well, wouldn't she be pretty if she just lost some weight? Advertisements and TV shows portray happy, slender people and not so happy larger people. And if they're heavy older people, the images can be even more demeaning. So preparing for this show has shown me how much I've bought into these ideas that fat is bad and skinny is good. Did you know that we as a society spend over $35 billion on diet products annually? It is a lucrative industry. And diet culture is that collective set of social expectations telling us that there's one way to be. And one way to look. And one way to eat. So that we are a better person. And we're a more worthy person if our bodies are in that mold that we all hear about. So today we're going to dissect what it is meant by the wellness culture, how it can be toxic and how it affects us as we age. And I really want you to join in and ask questions, because a lot of this is learning for me, and I'm sure it's learning for you. So feel free to join us. And let me bring on our expert today. Her name is Deborah Benfield. Hi, Deb. Wendy. Hey, everybody. So Deborah invites you to join her on the intersection of pro aging and body liberation on her newest website. DebraBenfield.com. From her experience, she understands how aging creates vulnerability to the ageist, diet, wellness, culture, and how frustrating it is to find a profound lack of body respect in the pro aging movement. And I had to check with her on that quote because I was like, Wait, pro, aging? Aren't we, like all about accepting where we are? Well, you're going to hear about some of how it's not accepting. Deb is a registered dietitian nutritionist with over 35 years of experience in that field. She's also a registered yoga teacher. She is the founder and owner of Body and Mind Nutrition, a group practice of registered dietitians and nutritionists. And like I said, the founder of her newest site, which is more focused on the aging, she'll tell us more about that. Deborah Benfield She's passionate about preventing and treating disordered eating and eating disorders and supporting you in feeling more comfortable and confident in your relationship with food, eating and your body. So, Deb. Tell me how you got into this field in the first place and then kind of what your journey has been to move more into the aging space. Well, I first want to thank you. I really appreciate your openness to this conversation, because I know it's kind of tricky and surprising to think about how the pro aging movement may have some problems with how we look at bodies. And I think that may be more true for women's bodies. I also want to say that my pronouns are she, her, hers. And I want