On Diet Culture’s Wellness Makeover

Lately I’ve been thinking about how diet culture didn’t disappear — it just got a new outfit and a better PR team. What used to be called “being good” or “watching your weight” now shows up as “optimizing,” “clean eating,” “hormone balancing,” “biohacking,” or “longevity.” The words changed; the pressure didn’t.

It’s sneaky, the way it slips into our group chats, our Instagram Reels, even our doctor’s visits. Suddenly we’re all supposed to monitor our glucose, fast until noon, cut carbs (but not in a diet way), heal our gut, lift heavy, avoid seed oils, walk 10,000 steps, sleep eight hours, keep our cortisol low, and choke down a $14 green juice. And now, on top of all that: decide whether we should be on a medication we didn’t even know existed three years ago.

And the wildest part? It’s sold to us as empowerment.

But if I’m honest, there are days when “wellness” feels less like caring for myself and more like trying to earn an A+ in womanhood. Like there’s a quiet voice narrating everything I do or don’t do, measuring me against an invisible rubric I never agreed to. And I see it in my friends, too: smart, competent, grown women who can negotiate a salary or run a household... but still feel pulled to smooth out a forehead line at barely 35, as if aging itself needs managing.

Sometimes I wonder what our lives would look like if wellness really meant what it should: feeling at home in our bodies. Not fixing them, not managing them like projects, just simply living in them.

Girls aren’t born worrying about macros or inflammation or whether their breakfast is “supporting blood sugar.” They’re taught to. And if we were taught into it, maybe we can teach ourselves out of it, too.

The beginning of a lighter way to live. Wouldn't that be nice?