The gospel of wellness.

Via Mimi Di Cianni

Contradicting people’s beliefs about wellness feels like walking through landmines.

It’s the same with me – I have landmines inside.

When I see a random tweet about some food being like opioids, I want to blow up. It is so agitating.

These tweets are always in response to some study, and I want to cite the studies I believe in that say something different, but what’s the point? Ultimately it’s about which study we choose to believe. It’s about the studies and doctors and researchers I have faith in, and the same with them. Just seeing an opposing study isn’t enough to shake faith.

Faith is beyond facts and figures, and there is a gospel of wellness/diet culture in the same way there’s a gospel of anti-diet. We just believe different things, period.

I blew up a whole friendship of over 13 years by wading into all of this and infringing on that friend’s beliefs. I am always afraid of doing the same thing again. I tip toe around people’s talk of being unable to stop eating whatever. I want to say, “Restriction is what causes food obsessions, there’s no such thing as food addiction” in the spirit of sparing them some time and frustration, but that’s not what would happen. I wouldn’t be sparing them anything. They wouldn’t thank me and just absorb whatever I’m saying. Why should they? They’ve been told the opposite from sources they know and trust for a long time. As far as they’re concerned, their experience backs it up, too. How can I reinterpret their experience, unasked, using sources they don’t know or believe, without invalidating them as a person? I can’t. I can’t.

So I try to keep it moving, leave it alone.

 

It's hard because there’s no reciprocity. There isn’t a shared understanding of our opposing gospels.

No one is sparing me their diet gospel, knowing I won’t find it helpful and might feel invalidated by hearing it, etc etc. Part of the reason that 13 year friendship ended is because of the way this friend went full speed ahead, actually amped up their diet talk to me, after I asked not to hear it. Instead of harping on what that means about her (nothing in particular – everybody tends to proselytize and be defensive and inflexible about deeply held beliefs when challenged), I’m trying to focus now on how to not do that to other people. How to see the off-hand tweet about food addiction, feel like blowing up, and instead either ask gentle questions, or say nothing. Keep scrolling. Talk to myself. Seek out the people who already believe what I believe, instead of thinking I can or should convert anyone.

It doesn’t work.