Cult of wellness | Welcome to Well Hell
The 2010s really did feel like the golden age of wellness…in a v bad way.
I remember being new to NYC, very much still in denial about my eating disorder—after all, back to back cycling classes and juice as a meal and living a sad life without dairy were all highly commendable actions to take. They made me “good” and people without the discipline to do what I was doing “bad”. Forget the fact that I was always tired, easily injured, chronically irritable, and experienced frequent humiliating moments of digestive distress, (IYKYK IBS girlies!) and had a fucked up menstrual cycle…but I ate clean and worked out like crazy so, obviously I was soooo healthy!!
Fast forward to 2022, after nearly 10 years of living in the most cutthroat city in the world, accruing a laundry list of certifications, working at some of the chicest, most widely known boutique studios in said competitive city, and even training a celeb or two (or five but who’s counting?!) along the way, plus many hours of therapy, and hundreds of self help books later, I couldn’t have a more DIFFERENT approach to well-being practices .
So here, we are- Well Hell is a space I’m carving out to take a critical but loving lens to the wellness industry so we can try and figure out how to partake without practicing disordered eating or exercising habits and also not take ourselves so seriously (because as I sometimes need to remind myself: at the end of the day this is stretchy pants and sweat not international diplomacy and there’s no such thing as a pilates emergency!).
Now, don’t get me wrong, Goop and the “rich mom” era of wellness helped to kick off an time where smoking is no longer cool (unless you’re French and DGAF), women are encouraged to be strong, not just skinny (although I have a lot more to say on the coded language around “fit” in a future post!), body positivity is mainstream, and the uniqueness of vulvas are celebrated on Netflix programming (Gwen’s not all bad!!) . Butttttt, if you’re here, you can probably relate when I say the current state of the wellness industry gives major ICK. Wellness not only shouldn’t be a luxury, but it’s pursuit shouldn’t be confused with the quest to align with beauty standards or equate thinness with health.
In my experience teaching boutique fitness in NYC for nearly 10 years, people tend to think of wellness in very binary terms:
The hardcore, diet culture-y, body shame-y, “never miss a Monday”, quarterly Prolon fasting, “we all have the same 24 hours in a day” girlies that encourage disordered toxic fitness behaviors…
….and the anti-diet world that can sometimes (if unintentionally) villainize fitness goals or any sort of rigorous movement practice outside of Yoga or gentle stretching.
I created my online pilates studio, HPS and now this newsletter, to reach the real life people in between:
Those who actually DO enjoy working hard in a class but also want to divest from diet culture. Those who get off on nailing a new exercise and love when it hurts so good to laugh but also know counting macros and obsessing about “clean” foods isn’t healthy. The people who think the beauty myth is patriarchal propaganda but can’t yet surrender their inner girl’s girl who loves makeup and fashion. (I myself recognize the problematic aspects of skincare marketing but I am not yet evolved enough to part with my daily routine). The people who understand that anti-diet doesn’t equal anti-health and the ones who know how the fitness world can be simultaneously empowering and dangerous. Truthfully, I think there are a lot more of us out there like me than social media would have us believe. Two things can be true at once!
And if you’re still an intuitive wellness skeptic— I definitely get it! I give you full permission to cut yourself some slack if you’re not quite ready to quit dieting yet. As joyless as it is, it can also be a tough habit to break. While practicing intuitive eating and exercising has been nothing short of a radical transformation that improved my mental and physical health in myriad ways, it also took me YEARS to get to this place. As the saying goes “hate the diet, not the dieter”. I do, however, hope this newsletter helps inch you in the right direction and encourages you to keep an open and curious mind. Even practicing body neutrality imperfectly (which is a joke because there is no perfect way to practice it) will improve your health in ways dieting couldn’t even dream of.
Wherever you land on the spectrum, I’m glad you’re here. Let’s f*ck some wellness sh*t up.