Challenging Wellness Brands

This month, so many of my clients have wanted to talk to me about The Glucose Goddess. In my work, clients often want to talk to me about so many wellness brands and influencers. These brands change over time, but many core issues around them remain consistent. I always try and support my clients to understand the following:

No one can give you nutritional advice if they don’t know you. 

If anyone who does not know you gives you nutritional advice they are just arbitrary rules that are rather unlikely to match your individual needs. How does anyone know what you need as an individual, when they don’t know you, your body, you history, your lifestyle, your culture and your health goals. For instance, it may work for some people to have a vegetable starter but I can think of many scenarios where that is not appropriate or safe advice. 

Even if the advice is “scientifically proven” it may not relate to you. It is great that there had been some research on food and certain ways of eating, but in the same way many “scientifically proven” medications are not related to your individual needs, nor may these pieces of research. I often tell my clients “there is no nutrition without the body”. Scientifically researched to prove what exactly and for whom?

Wellness brands or influencers often a have set health goal in mind.

This is often the goal that an individual wants to achieve for themselves or they believe is going to make them the most money. They then tailor their “advice” to make it sound like they are fulfilling this goal. However, most individuals have complex and multiple needs, individual situations and lifestyles. 

Wellness brands always promote the same kind of recipes. These recipes always have a “compromise”, e.g. being low fat or lower carbohydrate or less sweet. Following these recipes can result in you feeling the “compromise” in your body – less satisfied and less nourished. This has significant consequences on your wellbeing. How can we all be our true, healthy, calm and happy selves – if our dinners are not fully nourishing?

Following Wellness brands disconnects you from your vital individual bodies and needs. If one thinks ‘I should follow these recommendations and recipes and rules’, one is NOT thinking ‘what do I need and want today?’. In clinic, it is very clear that by engaging in and trusting one’s individual intuition and bodily signals, one is far more likely to be as mentally and physically healthy as possible. 

If you are in need of nutritional support, then it is always recommended that you seek out a qualified professional who can take a person-centred approach to your lifestyle, personality, culture and needs.