The Time I Couldn’t Scroll Past — and Why It Still Matters

In 2020, I did something I almost never do: I commented publicly on a celebrity wellness post. Not a thread, not a blog, not even a long rant — just one comment. But for me, even that was breaking a rule.  I sometimes offer encouragement or support on social media — a quick “yes” or “so well said” here and there — but I seldom push back. Most of the time, it feels like shouting into the void. I’d rather put my energy where I know it will land: in a client session, a classroom discussion, or a personal conversation.

This time, though, I couldn’t scroll past. The post was promoting a book called Intuitive Fasting, with a foreword by Gwyneth Paltrow. Two words — “intuitive” and “fasting” — sitting side by side like they belonged together, when in truth they pull in opposite directions.

As a therapist who works with body image, trauma, and eating disorders, I’ve spent years helping people untangle from diet culture. Intuitive eating — the real kind — is about rejecting restriction, rebuilding trust with your body, and listening to its cues without judgment.  Pairing “intuitive” with “fasting” isn’t a clever twist. It’s a contradiction. It’s like marketing “spontaneous scheduling” or “free will discipline.” The words cancel each other out, but not before sending a confusing message: trust your body… unless it tells you to eat, in which case, don’t.

This isn’t about one celebrity, one book, or one brand. It’s about a trend I see over and over in the wellness industry: taking the language of freedom and reattaching it to control. Selling restriction in prettier packaging.  When wellness becomes an aesthetic — all white linen, artisan candles, and green juice — it can lose connection to actual science, accessibility, and equity. And when it co-opts recovery language, it risks pulling people back into cycles they’ve fought hard to leave behind.

I’ve sat across from clients who thought they were making a “healthy choice” by doing a cleanse or intermittent fast — because it was marketed as mindful, balanced, or even spiritual. What started as a “reset” sometimes led straight back to obsessive food rules, shame spirals, and physical depletion.  That’s the harm. It’s quiet, often invisible at first, but it’s real. And when the words “intuitive eating” get diluted into just another diet trend, the people who most need its freedom may never find it.

Intuitive eating — and body-trusting frameworks like it — are about reclaiming something diet culture takes away: the belief that you can be trusted with your own body. It’s about removing the morality from food choices and making peace with eating again.  That’s worth protecting. And it’s worth speaking up — even if it’s just one comment on Instagram — when language is twisted in ways that might lead people back into harm.

Next time you see a wellness product or program, ask yourself: 

Who benefits from me believing I need to control my body this way?