Traditional Astrology, Ancestral Religion, and the Refusal of Spiritual Fantasy
In this conversation, I sit down with my friend Zeke Greene (veteran, former law enforcement officer, father of three, traditional astrologer, and practicing Heathen) to talk about his long search for purpose. We explore his deconstruction from Christianity, his experiences in a pagan cult-like environment, the difference between traditional astrology and modern New Age spirituality, and why discernment, historical literacy, and methodology matter when navigating spiritual claims.
We also dig into the Lion’s Gate 8/8 phenomenon and the dangers of magical thinking: what happens when symbolism becomes certainty, intuition becomes unquestionable revelation, and modern inventions are dressed up as ancient wisdom?
Zeke’s before photo from 2021
Finally, Zeke shares the deeply personal physical transformation that accompanied this larger rebuilding of his life. Rather than treating losing more than 100 pounds as a simple before-and-after success story, we talk about what fitting back into his military uniform represented to him, the vow he made along the way, the role of medication and mental health, and why the experience became something much more profound than weight loss.
Ultimately, this is a conversation about becoming more honest…with history, with spirituality, and with ourselves.
Thank you for taking the time to listen/share and leave a comment! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Please contact us if you’d like any further information from Zeke about astrology.
What if strength training wasn’t simply about building muscle?
What if stepping beneath a barbell could become an act of devotion?
In this episode, I sit down with Awen of Primal Druidry, whose approach to physical training challenges many of our modern assumptions about both fitness and spirituality.
For her, the gym isn’t merely a place to improve health or appearance. It becomes sacred space—a place where discipline becomes ritual, physical hardship becomes offering, and strength training becomes a way of cultivating relationship with the divine.
Throughout our conversation, we explore questions like:
What is Primal Druidry, and what makes it a living tradition rather than an attempt to recreate the ancient past?
Why has strength training become such a central part of her spiritual practice?
What changes when exercise becomes ritual instead of self-improvement?
How does physical discipline shape character, devotion, and spiritual life?
What does she mean when she describes receiving guidance through training?
How do we think carefully about deeply personal spiritual experiences without dismissing them…or accepting them uncritically?
One aspect of our discussion that I found especially compelling is the challenge it poses to a very modern assumption: that the body is simply a vehicle for the mind. Throughout history, many religious and philosophical traditions have understood bodily practices (whether fasting, pilgrimage, martial arts, dance, or manual labor) as capable of shaping the soul.
This conversation asks whether lifting weights might belong in that lineage.
Even if you don’t share her theology or spiritual framework, I think the deeper questions are worth exploring.
Can repeated physical practice become a form of prayer?
Can discipline become devotion?
Can the body become a place where meaning is discovered rather than simply performed?
Those are the questions at the heart of this conversation.
As always, the goal isn’t to tell you what to believe. It’s to explore ideas with curiosity, ask better questions, and think more deeply about the relationship between body, mind, and the search for the sacred.
Thank you for taking the time to listen/watch, comment and share. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
A conversation with Jay Feldman on bioenergetic health, stress physiology, and what mainstream fitness culture misses
This week I have a really exciting interview for you with Jay Feldman of Jay Feldman Wellness, and this conversation felt like such a natural continuation of everything we’ve been unpacking lately around calories, metabolism, stress, food, fitness culture, and what happens when the body finally says, enough.
If you listened to the episode I dropped a couple weeks ago, Calories In, Common Sense Out, this conversation with Jay is the perfect next step.
That episode laid the groundwork for something I keep coming back to: the body is not a calculator. Yes, calories matter. But the way modern fitness culture talks about calories often strips the body of important context: stress, hormones, thyroid function, energy production, sleep, recovery, nervous system load, and years of restriction.
Jay and I both come from backgrounds where we have done restrictive dieting, pushed hard, and learned the hard way that the body eventually keeps the score. That shared history is part of what made this conversation so good. We’re not talking about metabolism from a detached, abstract place. We’re talking about what happens when people spend years under-eating, overtraining, living on caffeine, pushing through exhaustion, and then wondering why their body no longer responds the way it used to.
In this episode, we talk about Jay’s approach to bioenergetic health, which starts with cellular energy rather than just calories, macros, or “discipline.” Instead of asking only, “How do I lose weight?” we ask a deeper question:
Does the body have enough energy to do what we keep demanding from it?
A lot of my audience includes current or former athletes, military and veteran types, fitness-minded people, chronic dieters, and folks who are used to pushing through pain. Many have spent years being praised for discipline while quietly feeling cold, exhausted, anxious, inflamed, underfed, over-caffeinated, and metabolically stuck.
We get into the difference between looking fit and actually being healthy. Can someone look lean, disciplined, or high-performing while internally running on stress hormones? How can you tell the difference between real energy and survival energy? Are cold hands and feet, waking at night, cravings, low libido, anxiety, or needing caffeine just to function clues that something deeper is going on?
We also talk about one of the most frustrating places people end up:
“If I eat more than 1,500 calories, I gain weight.”
That is such a common fear, especially for people who have dieted for years. And this is where the conversation gets really practical. We talk about metabolic adaptation, why the body may resist weight loss after long periods of restriction, and why eating more can feel terrifying even when it may be part of the long-term solution.
This also ties into something I’ve talked about before in my Earn Your Right to Diet episode: sometimes the next step is not another fat-loss phase. Sometimes the next step is rebuilding. That can mean a slow, strategic reverse diet—gradually adding calories back in, supporting thyroid and metabolic function, reducing stress load, and spending time at maintenance before asking the body to diet again.
Reverse dieting is not “just eat everything and hope for the best.” It is a methodical process of giving the body more energy while watching biofeedback: temperature, sleep, digestion, mood, training recovery, hunger, cravings, cycle health, libido, and overall energy.
Toward the end of the episode, Jay gives tangible advice on how people can start making sure they are eating enough food.
We talk about using basic calorie-needs charts as a starting point, especially because many adults are eating amounts that are closer to what a child or sedentary teenager might need… then wondering why they feel awful.
I also share some visuals during the episode, including examples of what 1,800, 2,000, and 2,200 calories can actually look like across three meals and two snacks. Because sometimes people hear those numbers and assume it means massive amounts of food, when in reality it can look pretty normal, nourishing, and manageable.
This episode is for anyone who feels like their body is betraying them after years of trying to do everything “right.”
We talk about:
bioenergetic health and cellular energy
the limits of “eat less, move more” advice
chronic dieting and weight-loss resistance
stress physiology and caffeine-driven energy
the difference between discipline and health
former athletes, veterans, and burned-out high-achievers
reverse dieting and rebuilding metabolic capacity
why the body may need more food before it can safely lose fat again
This is not a conversation about abandoning personal responsibility or pretending calories do not matter. It is a conversation about restoring much needed nuance and context.
Because sometimes the problem is not that you need more willpower.
Sometimes the problem is that your body has been running on fumes for far too long.
And that’s all I have for you folks, I’d love to hear your thoughts, leave me a comment or shoot me a private message to share them. If you appreciate this kind of work, please share and subscribe—that would mean a lot to me!
On metabolism, nourishment, food reverence, and the systems that shape what feeds us
Welcome back to Taste0fTruth Tuesdays. Today, we are mixing things up with a subject that is very near and dear to my heart: nutrition, metabolism, and our increasingly distorted relationship with food in our modern world.
This episode covers a lot of ground. We are moving from diet culture and my own history with restriction into metabolism, morality, industrial food, local agriculture, and the growing technological control of our food systems. It may sound like several different conversations, but they are all part of the same story.
This episode will also lay some of the groundwork for an upcoming interview at the end of the month with Jay Feldman Wellness.
Jay is a health coach, independent health researcher, and host of The Energy Balance Podcast. His work explores bioenergetic health and nutrition, including ideas influenced by biologist Ray Peat—principles I have found myself returning to, on and off, for the last several years.
But before we get there, I need to explain why this conversation is so personal for me.
As many of you know, I have spent more than 20 years in the health and fitness world. I have also written openly about how intense and complicated that journey has been.
I came of age during the late 1990s and early 2000s, an era saturated with diet magazines, celebrity weight-loss stories, low-fat everything, Special K commercials, “bikini body” workouts, and television programs that treated shrinking the body as both entertainment and moral achievement.
And those cultural messages did not exist in isolation.
I grew up in a household where my body was not simply noticed. It was scrutinized, compared, and commented on.
Those kinds of comments do not disappear with time. They become part of the architecture of how you see yourself. They follow you into mirrors, fitting rooms, photographs, swimming pools, doctors’ offices, and every room where you become aware that other people can see your body.
They teach you that the body must be managed and monitored.
They plant the belief that remaining small is the price of safety.
I grew up believing that if I could control my body well enough, I could avoid humiliation. I could avoid becoming the punchline. I could avoid being seen in the wrong way.
For a while, I turned that fear into something our culture rewards: discipline.
But fear does not stop being fear simply because it learns the vocabulary of health and fitness.
In high school, I followed plans like the Special K diet. I relied on Carnation Instant Breakfast instead of complete meals. I skipped classes to work out before heading to my afterschool job. My protein intake was low. My fear of gaining weight was high.
Restriction became familiar.
And because restriction was praised as willpower, I did not always recognize it as deprivation.
That is the background I bring into this conversation. I am not critiquing calorie culture because I have never understood its appeal. I understand it intimately.
Numbers can feel safe.
Numbers feel objective. They offer the illusion that if you calculate carefully enough, track consistently enough, and exert enough control, the body will become predictable. Calories give food a score. The scale gives the body a verdict. And when you have learned to fear your own appetite, arithmetic can feel more trustworthy than sensation.
I have lived through periods in which weight loss looked like success from the outside while my body was becoming increasingly undernourished, stressed, depleted, and disconnected from its own signals.
So when I say that weight loss and health are not synonymous, trust me: I learned that lesson the hard way.
That is why I am interested in the bioenergetic perspective. Rather than asking only, “How little can I eat to make the number on the scale decrease?” it asks a more useful question:
How well is the body actually producing and using energy?
This episode is not intended to settle every claim made within bioenergetic nutrition. That is part of what I want to explore with Jay during our upcoming conversation.
Today, I want to lay the groundwork by examining the difference between consuming calories and producing usable cellular energy; between losing weight and becoming healthy; and between treating food as a number and understanding it as biological information, ecological relationship, and participation in a living system.
Because the body is not simply a furnace. Food is not merely a number.
And losing weight is definitely not proof that a person is nourished or healthy while doing so.
Modern nutrition has flattened food into arithmetic while removing almost everything that makes it meaningful.
SAD is the perfect acronym for the Standard American Diet because, whew, it really is sad what modern food culture has become.
And I do not just mean sad in the obvious “everyone is eating ultra-processed food and wondering why they feel terrible” kind of way. I mean sad in the deeper sense.
Sad as in spiritually impoverished.
Sad as in disconnected from land, animals, seasons, labor, gratitude, death, and actual nourishment.
Sad as in we have managed to turn food (one of the most intimate relationships a human being has with the living world) into a bland, plastic-wrapped transaction between a lonely person and a microwave, or a vehicle going to a fast food drive thru window.
That sounds dramatic.
But is it really?
We live in a culture that calls ultra-processed food “good enough,” celebrates weight loss regardless of how it was achieved, and then treats anyone who questions that framework as judgmental, elitist, or unnecessarily intense.
But that is exactly the problem.
Our culture has reduced food to numbers while stripping it of meaning. Calories. Macros. Points. Deficits. Cheat meals. Protein hacks. Low-cal swaps. “If It Fits Your Macros.” (I lived and breathed that lifestyle) We talk about food like it is accounting, not relationship. Like the human body is a calculator.
Of course, calories matter. I am not pretending energy balance is fake. But if your entire health philosophy begins and ends with calorie math, you are missing the human being attached to the equation.
Food is not only fuel. Food is information. Food sends a signal. Food affects insulin, thyroid output, leptin, ghrelin, cortisol, digestion, gut signaling, inflammation, mitochondrial function, cell communication, mood, cravings, satiety, sleep, fertility, and gene expression. A Hot Pocket and a grass-fed steak may both contain calories, but they do not speak the same biological language once they enter the body.
The lie of “calories in, calories out” must die.
Not because energy does not matter. It does. But because reducing food to calorie math is one of the dumbest things modern nutrition culture has done to the human body.
A calorie is a unit of energy, but the number printed on a label cannot tell us how effectively a food will be digested, absorbed, converted into ATP, or allocated among the body’s competing demands. That process requires minerals, vitamins, enzymes, hormones, functioning mitochondria, adequate protein, and a body that is not constantly underfed, inflamed, stressed, or depleted.
This is where the “just eat less” crowd loses the plot.
Most people are not building truly nutrient-dense meals, even when they think they are. They may be tracking protein, counting calories, or hitting some macro target, while still missing the deeper nourishment their body needs to actually turn food into energy. If someone is living on refined grains, muscle meats only, no seafood, low mineral intake, low variety, and almost no traditional foods, they can be “hitting their calories” while still undersupplying some of the micronutrients and cofactors involved in energy metabolism, tissue repair, and hormonal function.
But producing energy is only part of the story.
The body must also decide where that energy goes.
Mitochondrial psychobiologist Martin Picard and his colleagues have proposed an emerging framework called the Energy Constraint model. Their central idea is that the body operates with a limited but dynamic energy budget that must continually be allocated across cells, organs, systems, and behaviors.
Everything costs energy.
Neurons firing costs energy. Producing proteins costs energy. Mounting an immune response costs energy. Digestion, movement, cognition, reproduction, tissue repair, and communication between cells all carry energetic costs.
Nothing is free in biology.
Hierarchy of Energy Needs. From @martinpicard, “Energy Constraint on Health,” based on the Energy Constraint framework developed by Alexander Behnke, Evan Shaulson, Herman Pontzer, Chris Kempes, Martin Picard, and colleagues. Reproduced with permission from Martin Picard. Original article and primary paper linked here.
In their framework, the body’s energetic demands can be divided into three broad categories: vital functions; stress responses; and growth, maintenance, and repair.
At the base are the vital functions necessary to sustain life in the immediate term: breathing, heart activity, brain function, membrane potential, ion exchange, and basic metabolism. These processes receive priority because they are necessary for survival over minutes, hours, and days.
The next category includes stress-related demands. Exercise is a stressor. So are infection, inflammation, toxins, psychological distress, injury, sleep loss, and activation of the sympathetic nervous system. All of these require the body to spend energy responding and adapting.
At the top are growth, maintenance, and repair. These processes may not be essential for surviving the next several minutes, but they are essential for healing, resilience, muscle maintenance, reproduction, cognition, motivation, vitality, and long-term health.
When the body’s total demands become difficult to sustain, energy is not distributed evenly. More urgent vital and stress-related processes may be prioritized while investment in growth, maintenance, and repair becomes compressed.
In other words, the body may preserve what is necessary to keep you alive while reducing what is available to help you recover, reproduce, think clearly, maintain muscle, and feel fully alive.
This does not mean these higher functions simply switch off in a rigid order. It means the body makes trade-offs.
And duration matters.
Not every stressor is harmful. Exercise itself temporarily redirects energy, but when it is appropriately dosed and followed by sufficient nourishment, sleep, and recovery, the body can adapt and become more resilient.
The deeper problem is stress that becomes excessive, chronic, or inescapable.
When energetic demands continue for weeks, months, or years—whether from illness, infection, psychological stress, overtraining, sleep disruption, undernourishment, or some combination of pressures—the body may repeatedly postpone the repair work that was supposed to happen later.
This framework helps explain how someone can technically be eating enough calories (or even losing weight successfully) while experiencing fatigue, poor recovery, low libido, disrupted cycles, reduced motivation, brain fog, loss of muscle, or declining resilience.
It does not mean every one of those symptoms has a single energetic cause. But it gives us a much richer way of understanding health than simply asking whether someone stayed within a calorie target.
The body is not failing to obey an equation.
It is adapting to competing demands.
Nutrient status is only one part of this energetic landscape, but it is an important one. The body’s ability to produce, allocate, and use energy is also shaped by sleep, illness, stress, activity, mitochondrial function, recovery, and the cumulative demands being placed upon it.
This is why vitamins and minerals matter so much. They are not little bonus points sprinkled on top of a diet. They are part of the machinery that turns food into usable energy. They help build hormones and neurotransmitters, repair tissue, maintain immune function, support the liver, regulate the nervous system, and keep the organs doing their jobs.
Or said more simply: macronutrients burn on the flame of micronutrients.
That is the part calorie math misses. A Hot Pocket and a mineral-rich, protein-rich, whole-food meal may both contain calories, but they do not offer the body the same tools. One delivers energy potential wrapped in industrial convenience. The other provides the raw materials the body needs to actually build, repair, signal, regulate, and produce real cellular energy.
So when people say “it’s just calories in, calories out,” what I hear is a worldview that has confused potential with function.
A body is not helped by potential alone. It needs conversion. It needs nourishment. It needs signal. It needs minerals, protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, salt, sunlight, rest, and rhythm.
Food is not just a number entering a furnace. Food is a set of instructions entering a living system. And if the instructions are poor, incomplete, synthetic, depleted, or chaotic, the body will respond accordingly.
This is where the lazy appeal to “thermodynamics” becomes almost comical. Yes, the laws of thermodynamics exist. Congratulations. But the human body is not a closed metal box in a lab. It is a living, adaptive, self-regulating organism. Inputs change outputs. Food changes appetite, energy expenditure, hormones, cravings, sleep, mood, metabolic rate, and behavior. The “calories out” side is not fixed. It responds to the quality, timing, and composition of what we eat.
Rupert Sheldrake has criticized the way modern science can harden living systems into dead-mechanistic models, and that critique fits here. The calorie model treats the body like a machine. But we are not machines. We are organisms. Food is not merely burned. It is received, interpreted, metabolized, stored, signaled, and woven into the body.
So yes, calories matter. But “calories in, calories out” as a complete theory of health is basically nutritional kindergarten, and it’s time to grow out of that.
But calorie reductionism is only one way modern food culture disconnects us from the complexity of nourishment.
We also have a tendency to turn eating into a moral identity. Foods become clean or dirty, virtuous or shameful. Diets promise not only better health, but innocence: a way to eat without exploitation, suffering, contradiction, or death.
I understand the appeal of that promise because I lived inside it.
I was vegetarian for years. At the time, I genuinely believed it was both the healthier and more ethical choice. I cared about animals. I still do—deeply. I did not want to participate in harm if I could avoid it.
But eventually, health-wise, vegetarianism stopped working for me. My body was not thriving. Practitioners I trusted encouraged me to reconsider whether I was receiving enough protein and nourishment, and over time I began incorporating animal foods again. That transition gradually led me toward a more pro-metabolic, ancestral approach to food.
I am not as critical of vegetarianism as I am of veganism because vegetarian diets can still include many traditional, deeply nourishing foods: eggs, butter, cheese, milk, yogurt, cream, and honey. These foods can still connect us to animals, farms, fermentation, older foodways, and the forms of nourishment on which human communities have relied for generations.
Veganism is different. I understand the moral impulse behind it. But modern veganism often depends heavily on the very industrial food system it imagines itself resisting.
It often depends upon global supply chains, fortified products, industrial monocrops, protein isolates, seed oils, and laboratory-like replacements for foods that once came directly from local land, animals, kitchens, and communities.
That does not describe every vegan meal or every person who avoids animal foods. But veganism as a widely accessible modern lifestyle has been made possible, in large part, by the industrialization and globalization of food. It became easier to imagine a diet detached from local ecology only after the modern food system detached nearly everyone from local ecology.
Before supermarket abundance, refrigerated transport, synthetic supplementation, and year-round imports, diets were far more directly shaped by region, climate, labor, animals, seasons, preservation, and survival.
This is what troubles me about the moral certainty that can surround veganism. Morality can bind us around compassion, but it can also blind us to costs outside the frame we have chosen. A person may avoid animal foods while remaining dependent upon monocropping, habitat loss, exploited labor, heavily processed substitutes, and corporations with no meaningful relationship to the land being depleted.
The suffering has not necessarily disappeared.
It has moved out of sight.
An ethical identity can become so focused on the visible animal that it loses sight of soil, insects, wildlife, farmers, rural communities, and the ecological relationships required to sustain human life.
This is why I keep thinking about survival programs like Alone. You do not typically see people in genuine survival conditions adhering to rigid dietary identities made possible by modern abundance. They eat the carbohydrates they can gather. They fish, hunt, forage, trap, and preserve whatever food the environment makes available.
A television program does not settle the ethical debate. But it does expose how much our modern food identities depend upon stability, infrastructure, supplements, supermarkets, and global abundance.
Most of us have no idea what we would actually eat if supermarkets, refrigeration, restaurants, and global supply chains disappeared.
It is easy to construct an identity around dietary purity while standing beneath fluorescent lights in a store containing food from every climate on Earth.
Survival has a way of stripping ideology down to appetite, ecology, and availability.
The point I’m trying to make here, is the deeper problem is not simply meat. It is our total disconnection from food itself.
The Standard American Diet is not built around reverence. It is built around convenience, profit, shelf life, hyper-palatability, and perpetual consumption. It is often high in refined carbohydrates and industrial fats, low in nutrient density, easy to overeat, and engineered to override the body’s natural signals.
It keeps people fed but not nourished.
Full but not satisfied. Stimulated but depleted.
I do not blame meat itself for the sickness of modern food culture. I blame the collapse of small and local food systems. I blame industrial agriculture and the consolidation of food production. I blame ultra-processed convenience food. I blame the severing of people from land, seasons, animals, kitchens, skills, and community.
I blame a culture in which people no longer know where their food comes from, what it took to produce it, or what kind of life and death made it possible.
Because that is the uncomfortable truth: death is always involved in food.
Neither vegetarianism nor veganism remove death from the food system. Fields are cleared. Habitats are displaced. Soil life is disrupted. Insects, birds, rodents, snakes, rabbits, and countless unseen creatures are killed through large-scale crop production. Farm workers are exploited. Water is diverted. Communities are transformed to serve distant markets.
Even a plate composed entirely of plants carries a cost.
That does not mean all dietary choices are morally equivalent. It means purity is not available to us. The moral task is not to imagine that we have escaped the web of life and death. It is to become more conscious of how we participate in it.
Nature is a total system, and within that totality it is not morally tidy.
We often use the word “natural” as if it means good, pure, balanced, or morally clean. But nature does not produce constant perfection. Nature produces totality. Beauty and monstrosity. Strength and weakness. Flourishing and failure. Healthy forms, botched forms, failed adaptations, extinction, decay, renewal.
Food belongs to that same uncomfortable order. There is no pure way to eat outside of life, death, appetite, cost, and consequence. The fantasy of a morally spotless diet is just another modern escape hatch from reality.
Morality works in a similar way. It is not merely a list of rules imposed from above. It is an energy-management system. It curbs violence, lust, greed, vengeance, ambition, and appetite so a group can maintain some version of peace. Morality contains the passions so they do not destroy the social body.
At both the personal and social level, morality determines which appetites may be expressed, which must be restrained, and which costs remain visible.
And maybe this is why modern food culture feels so spiritually sick. It has stopped containing appetite. It does not discipline desire. It engineers it. It stimulates it. It tells us we can eat industrially manufactured, hyper-palatable food and reduce the whole thing to calorie math, as if the body is not receiving signals, adapting, craving, storing, resisting, inflaming, and remembering.
Food is energy, yes. But not in the dead mechanical sense. Food is energy moving through a living moral and biological system.
That is why “calories in, calories out” feels so thin. It treats food as if it enters a furnace. But food enters a body. And bodies are not furnaces. Bodies are fields of signal, memory, hunger, restraint, ancestry, hormone, and meaning.
I completely understand the discomfort around eating conscious animals. I have read so many stories from first-time farmers who raise animals with love and then struggle deeply when it is time for slaughter. That pain means something. I respect it. Honestly, I trust that pain more than the numbness of the average grocery store shopper tossing factory-farmed meat into a cart with no thought at all.
The pain shows there is still reverence there.
And maybe that is what we have lost most.
We have been removed from the reality of food for so long that we tend to swing between two false extremes. On one side, we sentimentalize animals from a distance and pretend we can opt out of the death cycle entirely. On the other hand, we consume without thought, without gratitude, without responsibility, without even a pause. Both are forms of disconnection.
The more honest path, at least for me, is not pretending death can be removed from food. It is learning to approach food with more gratitude, humility, and responsibility.
That means caring about how animals are raised. It means caring about soil. It means caring about farmers. It means caring about local food systems. It means asking whether our food builds health or slowly drains it from us. It means understanding that “cheap” food often has hidden costs paid somewhere else, by animals, by land, by farm workers, by our own bodies, by our children, and by our communities.
And yes, it also means having higher standards.
I am tired of the cultural pressure to pretend that all food choices are basically the same as long as the calories work out. They are not. A calorie deficit may lead to weight loss, but weight loss is not the same as nourishment. You can lose weight while eating foods that do very little to support your metabolism, hormones, digestion, mood, or long-term health. You can shrink a body while starving it of what it actually needs.
Real nourishment asks more of us.
It asks us to pay attention. It asks us to recover old skills. It asks us to cook, to preserve, to source better when we can, and to know the difference between food shaped by land, animals, microbes, seasons, and human hands—and food assembled in a factory to survive for months in a freezer.
This is where food becomes spiritual for me.
Not spiritual in the vague influencer sense. Not “raise your vibes with an açai smoothie bowl” nonsense.
I mean spiritual in the older, more connected to earth sense: eating is an act of dependence, participation, and transformation.
Rudolf Steiner once approached nutrition through the idea that eating is never merely mechanical. Whatever one makes of his more esoteric language, I think there is something valuable in the underlying insight: food does not simply enter the body and disappear into a calorie ledger. The body must meet it, break it down, transform it, and incorporate it into the self.
What was once sunlight, soil, rain, grass, grain, fruit, milk, muscle, mineral, or microbial life becomes blood, tissue, hormone, neurotransmitter, heat, thought, movement, and memory.
Eating is one of the most literal ways the world becomes us.
That alone should make the act feel less trivial.
We are not floating minds temporarily renting bodies. We are dependent creatures. We require soil, water, sunlight, animals, plants, microbes, farmers, bees, rain, death, decay, and renewal. Every meal places us inside a web of relationships whether we acknowledge them or not.
And this means that food may shape more than our body weight.
What we eat can influence energy, mood, cognition, resilience, inflammation, digestion, and the clarity with which we move through the world. I do not mean that one perfect diet produces spiritual enlightenment, or that illness reflects moral or spiritual failure. Food is not a purity test.
But neither is it neutral.
The quality of what we repeatedly take into the body helps shape the material conditions through which we think, feel, recover, create, and relate to others.
Modern food culture wants us to forget all of this.
It wants food to be easy, cheap, fast, addictive, and morally weightless. It wants us to believe that a frozen pocket of refined flour, industrial oils, modified starches, sodium, flavoring agents, and processed ham is simply another option.
Just calories.
Just convenience.
Just people doing their best.
But I do not believe “doing our best” means lowering our standards until nothing matters. Nor do I believe the answer is to shame ordinary people for choosing the foods that our economic and agricultural systems have made cheap, available, familiar, and nearly effortless.
It is easy to preach ancestral nourishment from a well-stocked kitchen.
A serious food ethic must also account for price, time, disability, geography, cooking knowledge, working conditions, and access. Reverence that only the wealthy can afford is not reverence.
That does not mean pretending a Hot Pocket and a nutrient-dense meal are biologically or spiritually interchangeable. They are not.
It means directing our anger beyond the individual shopper and toward a system that has made industrial convenience easier to obtain than genuine nourishment—and then taught us to call that arrangement freedom.
But reverence cannot remain an individual lifestyle choice.
Our relationship with food is shaped by the systems surrounding us: what is affordable, what is available, what is subsidized, what is processed, what is imported, and what people realistically have the time and energy to prepare.
It is one thing to tell people to eat closer to the land. It is another to live inside an economy that has made industrial food cheaper, faster, and more accessible than the local, nutrient-dense food we claim to value.
So, this is not only a question of personal responsibility.
It is also a question of access, power, and who controls the conditions under which nourishment is produced and distributed.
As of May 2026, grocery prices were 2.7 percent higher than they had been one year earlier. Fruits and vegetables were up 6.1 percent. Food away from home was up 3.5 percent. Meanwhile, overall energy prices had risen 23.5 percent over the same period. These increases are layered on top of years of cumulative inflation, and they shape what families can realistically put on the table. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Consumer Price Index Summary—May 2026.” June 10, 2026.
At the same time, the infrastructure surrounding American agriculture is becoming increasingly centralized and digitized.
In February 2026, the USDA announced its “One Farmer, One File” initiative, which is intended to create a single record following each farmer across the Farm Service Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Risk Management Agency. The department says the system will reduce duplicated paperwork, retire outdated technology, improve program delivery, and be completed in 2028.
“Protecting America’s farmland is protecting America itself, and this work gives USDA the visibility and speed needed to safeguard our food supply,” said USDA Chief Information Officer Sam Berry.
The government presents this as modernization: faster services, stronger cybersecurity, reduced fraud, better disaster response, and greater protection of American farmland and the food supply. Some of those goals are understandable. Farmers should not have to enter the same information into a dozen broken government systems. Disaster assistance should not be trapped behind obsolete technology. Modernization is not inherently sinister.
But neither is it irrational to ask questions when enormous amounts of agricultural information are consolidated through a company deeply involved in defense, intelligence, surveillance, and government analytics.
Who controls the data? Who is permitted to access it? How is that access audited?
Can information gathered for one purpose later be used for another?
What happens when one private contractor becomes embedded deeply enough in public infrastructure that removing it becomes nearly impossible?
How are farmers protected from political misuse, commercial exploitation, cybersecurity failures, or policies imposed by people who understand data models far better than they understand soil, weather, livestock, and living ecosystems?
Food is not merely another sector to be optimized.
Agriculture is biological, regional, unpredictable, and rooted in relationships that cannot be fully represented on a dashboard. Technology may assist farmers. Data may make government programs more efficient. But efficiency and resilience are not the same thing, and greater visibility from the top does not automatically create greater security on the ground.
A resilient food system requires more than centralized information.
It requires independent farmers, healthy soil, regional processing facilities, seed diversity, local knowledge, accessible markets, functioning supply chains, and communities that retain some capacity to feed themselves. It requires people who know how to grow something, preserve something, cook something, and recognize nourishment before a corporation packages and markets it back to them.
That is why the spiritual, biological, economic, and political dimensions of food cannot be separated.
The same reductionist worldview that treats the body as a furnace can treat the farm as a data point.
The same culture that reduces nourishment to calories can reduce agriculture to output.
The same system that tells us a calorie is a calorie can tell us that control is merely efficiency and dependence is merely convenience.
I reject both forms of reductionism.
A body is not a furnace to be calculated.
A farm is not a monocrop to be optimized or a data file to be controlled.
Food is not merely fuel, inventory, content, or data.
It is soil transformed by sunlight. It is water, labor, death, digestion, memory, culture, and life passing into life. To control food is to touch the most intimate point of contact between the individual body, the community, and the living world.
So, the question is no longer only whether we can eat without forgetting.
It is whether we can remember soon enough to reclaim some agency over what feeds us.
What Women Were Never Told About Weight, Aging, and Control
The Science They Never Told Us
This is the first episode of 2026, and I wanted to start the year by slowing things down, getting a bit personal instead of chasing the latest talking points.
At the end of last year, I spent time reading a few books that genuinely stopped me in my tracks. Not because they offered a new diet or a new protocol, but because they challenged something much deeper: the story we’ve been told about discipline, control, and women’s bodies.
There is a reason women’s bodies change across the lifespan. And it has very little to do with willpower, discipline, or personal failure.
In Why Women Need Fat, evolutionary biologists William Lassek and Steven Gaulin make the case that most modern conversations about women’s weight are fundamentally misinformed. Not because women are doing something wrong, but because we’ve built our expectations on a misunderstanding of what female bodies are actually designed to do.
A major part of their argument focuses on how industrialization radically altered the balance of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in the modern food supply, particularly through seed oils and ultra-processed foods. They make a compelling case that this shift plays a role in rising obesity and metabolic dysfunction at the population level.
I agree that this imbalance matters, and it’s a topic that deserves its own full episode. At the same time, it does not explain every woman’s story. Diet composition can influence metabolism, but it cannot override prolonged stress, illness, hormonal disruption, nervous system dysregulation, or years of restriction. In my own case, omega-6 intake outside of naturally occurring sources is relatively low and does not account for the changes I’ve experienced. That matters, because it reminds us that biology is layered. No single variable explains a complex adaptive system.
One of the most important ideas in the book is that fat distribution matters more than fat quantity.
Women do not store fat the same way men do. A significant portion of female body fat is stored in the hips and thighs, known as gluteofemoral fat. This fat is metabolically distinct from abdominal or visceral fat. It is more stable, less inflammatory, and relatively enriched in long-chain fatty acids, including DHA, which plays a key role in fetal brain development.
From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes sense. Human infants are born with unusually large, energy-hungry brains. Women evolved to carry nutritional reserves that could support pregnancy and lactation, even during times of scarcity. In that context, having fat on your lower body was not a flaw or a failure. It was insurance.
From this perspective, fat is not excess energy. It is deferred intelligence, stored in anticipation of future need. This is where waist-to-hip ratio enters the conversation.
Across cultures and historical periods, a lower waist-to-hip ratio in women has been associated with reproductive health, metabolic resilience, and successful pregnancies. This is not about thinness, aesthetics, or moral worth. It is about fat function, not fat fear, and about how different tissues behave metabolically inside the body. It is about where fat is stored and how it functions.
And in today’s modern culture we have lost that distinction.
Instead of asking what kind of fat a woman carries, we became obsessed with how much. Instead of understanding fat as tissue with purpose, we turned it into a moral scoreboard. Hips became a problem. Thighs became something to shrink. Curves became something to discipline.
Another central idea in Why Women Need Fat is biological set point.
The authors argue that women’s bodies tend to defend a natural weight range when adequately nourished and not under chronic stress. When women remain below that range through restriction, over-exercise, or prolonged under-fueling, the body does not interpret that as success. It interprets it as threat.
Over time, the body adapts, not out of defiance, but out of protection.
Metabolism slows. Hunger and fullness cues become unreliable. Hormonal systems compensate. When the pressure finally eases, weight often rebounds, sometimes beyond where it started, because the body is trying to restore safety.
From this perspective, midlife weight gain, post-illness weight gain, or weight gain after years of restriction is not mysterious. It is not rebellion. It is regulation.
None of this is taught to women.
Instead, we are told that if our bodies change, we failed. That aging is optional. That discipline and botox should override biology. That the number on the scale tells the whole story.
So, before we talk about culture, family, trauma, or personal experience, this matters:
Women’s bodies are not designed to stay static. They are designed to adapt.
Once you understand that, everything else in this conversation changes.
Why the Body Became the Battlefield
This is where historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s work in The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, provides essential context, but it requires some precision.
Girls have not always been free from shame. Shame itself is not new. What has changed is what women are taught to be ashamed of, and how that shame operates in daily life.
Brumberg asks a question that still feels unresolved today: Why is the body still a girl’s nemesis? Shouldn’t sexually liberated girls feel better about themselves than their corseted counterparts a century ago?
Based on extensive historical research, including diaries written by American girls from the 1830s through the 1990s, Brumberg shows that although girls today enjoy more formal freedoms and opportunities, they are also under more pressure and at greater psychological risk. This is due to a unique convergence of biological vulnerability and cultural forces that turned the adolescent female body into a central site of social meaning during the twentieth century.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, girls did not typically grow up fixated on thinness, calorie control, or constant appearance monitoring. Their diaries were not filled with measurements or food rules. Instead, they wrote primarily about character, self-restraint, moral development, relationships, and their roles within family and community.
One 1892 diary entry reads:
“Resolved, not to talk about myself or feelings. To think before speaking. To work seriously. To be self-restrained in conversation and in actions. Not to let my thoughts wander. To be dignified. Interest myself more in others.”
In earlier eras, female shame was more often tied to behavior, sexuality, obedience, and virtue. The body mattered, but primarily as a moral symbol rather than an aesthetic project requiring constant surveillance and correction.
That changed dramatically in the twentieth century.
Brumberg documents how the mother-daughter connection loosened, particularly around menstruation, sexuality, and bodily knowledge. Where female relatives and mentors once guided girls through these transitions, doctors, advertisers, popular media, and scientific authority increasingly stepped in to fill that role.
At the same time, mass media, advertising, film, and medicalized beauty standards created a new and increasingly exacting ideal of physical perfection. Changing norms around intimacy and sexuality also shifted the meaning of virginity, turning it from a central moral value into an outdated or irrelevant one. What replaced it was not freedom from scrutiny, but a different kind of pressure altogether.
By the late twentieth century, girls were increasingly taught that their bodies were not merely something they inhabited, but something they were responsible for perfecting.
A 1982 diary entry captures this shift starkly:
“I will try to make myself better in any way I possibly can with the help of my budget and baby-sitting money. I will lose weight, get new lenses, already got a new haircut, good makeup, new clothes and accessories.”
What changed was not the presence of shame, but its location. Shame moved inward.
Rather than being externally enforced through rules and prohibitions, it became self-policed. Girls were taught to monitor themselves constantly, to evaluate their bodies from the outside, and to treat appearance as the primary expression of identity and worth.
Brumberg is explicit on this point. The fact that American girls now make their bodies their central project is not an accident or a cultural curiosity. It is a symptom of historical changes that are only beginning to be fully understood.
This is where more recent work, such as Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, helps extend Brumberg’s analysis into the present moment. Perry argues that while sexual liberation promised autonomy and empowerment, it often left young women navigating powerful biological and emotional realities without the social structures that once offered protection, guidance, or meaning. In that vacuum, the body became one of the few remaining sites where control still seemed possible.
The result is a paradox. Girls are freer in theory, yet more burdened in practice. The body, once shaped by communal norms and shared female knowledge, becomes a solitary project, managed under intense cultural pressure and constant comparison.
For many girls, this self-surveillance does not begin with magazines or social media. It begins at home, absorbed through tone, comments, and modeling from the women closest to them.
Brumberg argues that body dissatisfaction is often transmitted from mother to daughter, not out of cruelty, but because those mothers inherited the same aesthetic anxieties. Over time, body shame becomes a family inheritance, passed down quietly and persistently.
Some mothers transmit it subtly.
Others do it bluntly.
This matters not because my experience is unique, but because it illustrates what happens when a body shaped by restriction, stress, and cultural pressure is asked to perform indefinitely. Personal stories are often dismissed as anecdotal, but they are where biological theory meets lived reality.
I grew up in a household where my body was not simply noticed. It was scrutinized, compared, and commented on. Comments like that do not fade with time. They shape how you see yourself in mirrors and photographs. They teach you that your body must be managed and monitored. They plant the belief that staying small is the price of safety.
So, I grew up believing that if I could control my body well enough, I could avoid humiliation. I could avoid becoming the punchline. I could avoid being seen in the wrong way.
For a while, I turned that fear into discipline.
The Years Before the Collapse: A Lifetime of Restriction and Survival
Food never felt simple for me. Long before bodybuilding, chronic pain, or COVID, I carried a strained relationship with eating. Growing up in a near constant state of anxiety meant that hunger cues often felt unpredictable. Eating was something to plan around or push through. It rarely felt intuitive or easy.
Because of this, I experimented with diets that replaced real meals with cereal or shakes. I followed plans like the Special K diet. I relied on Carnation Instant Breakfast instead of full meals. My protein intake was low. My fear of gaining weight was high. Restriction became familiar.
Top left is when I started working out obsessively at age 16, top right and bottom photo are from middle school when I was at my “heaviest” that drove the disordered behaviors.
In college, I became a strict vegetarian out of compassion for animals, but I did not understand how to meet my nutritional needs. I was studying dietetics and earning personal training certifications while running frequently and using exercise as a way to maintain control. From the outside, I looked disciplined. Internally, my relationship with food and exercise remained tense and inconsistent.
Later, I became involved in a meal-replacement program through an MLM. I replaced two meals a day with shakes and practiced intermittent fasting framed as “cleanse days.” In hindsight, this was structured under-eating presented as wellness. It fit seamlessly into patterns I had lived in for years.
Eating often felt overwhelming. Cooking felt like a hurdle. Certain textures bothered me. My appetite felt fragile and unreliable. This sensory sensitivity existed long before the parosmia that would come years later. From early on, food was shaped by stress rather than nourishment.
During this entire period, I was also on hormonal birth control, first the NuvaRing and later the Mirena IUD, for nearly a decade. Long-term hormonal modulation can influence mood, inflammation, appetite, and weight distribution. It added another layer of complexity to a system already under strain.
Looking back, I can see that my teens and twenties were marked by near constant restriction. Restriction felt normal. Thriving did not.
The book Why Women Need Fat discusses the idea of a biological weight “set point,” the range a body tends to return to when conditions are stable and adequately nourished. I now understand that I remained below my natural set point for years through force rather than balance. My biology never experienced consistency or safety.
This was the landscape I carried into my thirties.
The Body I Built and the Body That Broke
By the time I entered the bodybuilding world in 2017 and 2018, I already had years of chronic under-eating, over-exercising, and nutrient gaps behind me. Bodybuilding did not create my issues. It amplified them.
I competed in four shows. People admired the discipline and the physique. Internally, my body was weakening. I was overtraining and undereating. By 2019, my immune system began to fail. I developed severe canker sores, sometimes twenty or more at once. I started noticing weight-loss resistance. Everything I had done in the past, was no longer working. On my thirty-fifth birthday, I got shingles. My energy crashed. My emotional bandwidth narrowed. My body was asking for rest, but I did not know how to slow down.
Around this time, I was also navigating eating disorder recovery. Learning how to eat without panic or rigid control was emotionally exhausting even under ideal circumstances… but little did I know things were about to take a massive turn for the worst.
COVID, Sensory Loss, and the Unraveling of Appetite
After getting sick with the ‘vid late 2020, everything shifted again. I developed parosmia, a smell and taste distortion that made many foods taste rotten or chemical. Protein and cooked foods often tasted spoiled. Herbs smelled like artificial chemical. Eating became distressing and, at times, impossible.
My appetite dropped significantly. There were periods where my intake was very low, yet my weight continued to rise. This is not uncommon following illness or prolonged stress. The body often shifts into energy conservation, prioritizing survival overweight regulation.
Weight gain became another source of grief. Roughly thirty pounds over the next five years. I feel embarrassed and avoid photographs. I often worry about how others will perceive me.
If this experience resonates, it is important to say this clearly: your body is not betraying you. It is responding to stress, illness, and prolonged strain in the way bodies are designed to respond.
When years of restriction, intense exercise, chronic stress, illness, hormonal shifts, and emotional trauma accumulate, the body often enters a protective state. Metabolism slows. Hormonal signaling shifts. Hunger cues become unreliable. Weight gain or resistance to weight loss can occur even during periods of low intake, because energy regulation is being driven by survival physiology rather than simple calorie balance.
This is not failure. It is physiology.
The calories-in, calories-out model does not account for thyroid suppression, nervous system activation, sleep disruption, pain, trauma, or metabolic adaptation. It reduces a complex biological system to arithmetic.
Women are not machines. We are adaptive systems built for survival. Sometimes resilience looks like holding onto energy when the body does not feel safe.
Despite this biological reality, we live in a culture that ties women’s value to discipline and appearance. When women gain weight, even under extreme circumstances, we blame ourselves before questioning the system.
Diet culture frames shrinking as virtue.
Toxic positivity encourages acceptance without context.
Industrial food environments differ radically from those our ancestors evolved in.
Medical systems often dismiss women’s pain and metabolic complexity.
Social media amplifies comparison and moralizes body size.
None of this is your fault. And all of it shapes your experience.
This is why understanding the science matters. This is why telling the truth matters. This is why sharing stories matters.
In the book, More Than a Body, Lindsay and Lexie Kite describe how women are taught to relate to themselves through constant self-monitoring. Instead of living inside our bodies, we learn to watch ourselves from the outside. We assess how we look, how we are perceived, and whether our bodies are acceptable in a given moment.
This constant self-surveillance does real harm. It pulls attention away from hunger, pain, fatigue, and intuition. It trains women to override bodily signals in favor of appearance management. And over time, it creates a split where the body is treated as a project to control rather than a system to understand or care for.
When you layer this kind of self-objectification on top of chronic stress, restriction, illness, and trauma, the result is not empowerment. It is disconnection. And disconnection makes it even harder to hear what the body needs when something is wrong.
Weight gain is not just a biological response. It becomes a moral verdict. And that is how women end up fighting bodies that are already struggling to keep them alive.
The Inheritance Ends Here
For a long time, I believed that breaking generational cycles only applied to mothers and daughters. I do not have children, so I assumed what I inherited would simply end with me, unchanged.
Brumberg’s work helped me see this differently.
What we inherit is not passed down only through parenting. It moves through tone, silence, and self-talk. It appears in how women speak about their bodies in front of others. It lives in the way shame is normalized.
I inherited a legacy of body shame. Even on the days when I still feel its weight, I am choosing not to repeat it.
For me, the inheritance ends with telling the truth about this journey and refusing to speak to my body with the same cruelty I absorbed growing up. It ends here.
Closing the Circle: Your Body Is Not Broken
I wish I could end this with a simple story of resolution. I cannot. I am still in the middle of this. I still grieve. I still struggle with eating and movement. I am still learning how to inhabit a body that feels unfamiliar.
But I know this: my body is not my enemy. She is not malfunctioning. She is adapting to a lifetime of stress, illness, restriction, and emotional weight.
If you are in a similar place, I hope this offers permission to stop fighting yourself and start understanding the patterns your body is following. Not because everything will suddenly improve, but because clarity is often the first form of compassion.
Your body is not betraying you. She is trying to keep you here.
And sometimes the most honest thing we can do is admit that we are still finding our way.
References
Brumberg, J. J. (1997). The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls. Random House.
Lassek, W. D., & Gaulin, S. J. C. (2011). Why Women Need Fat: How “Healthy” Food Makes Us Gain Excess Weight and the Surprising Solution to Losing It Forever. Hudson Street Press.
Kite, L., & Kite, L. (2020). More Than a Body: Your Body Is an Instrument, Not an Ornament. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Scientific and academic sources
Lassek, W. D., & Gaulin, S. J. C. (2006). Changes in body fat distribution in relation to parity in American women. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27(3), 173–185.
Lassek, W. D., & Gaulin, S. J. C. (2008). Waist–hip ratio and cognitive ability. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 275(1644), 193–199.
Dulloo, A. G., Jacquet, J., & Montani, J. P. (2015). Adaptive thermogenesis in human body-weight regulation. Obesity Reviews, 16(S1), 33–43.
Fothergill, E., et al. (2016). Persistent metabolic adaptation after weight loss. Obesity, 24(8), 1612–1619.
Kyle, U. G., et al. (2004). Body composition interpretation. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 79(6), 955–962.
Simopoulos, A. P. (2016). Omega-6/omega-3 balance and obesity risk. Nutrients, 8(3), 128.
Trauma, stress, and nervous system context
Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Henry Holt and Company.
Walker, P. (2013). Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Azure Coyote Books.
When Willpower Isn’t Enough: Media, Metabolism, and the Myth of Transformation
You’re listening to Taste Test Thursdays–a space for the deep dives, the passion projects, and the stories that didn’t quite fit the main course. Today, we’re hitting pause on the intense spiritual and political conversations we usually have to focus on something just as powerful: how technology shapes our bodies, minds, and behaviors. We’ll be unpacking a recent Netflix documentary that highlights research and concepts we’ve explored before, shining a light on the subtle ways screens and media program us and why it matters more than ever.
I have a confession: I watched The Biggest Loser. Yep. Cringe, right? Back in 2008, when I was just starting to seriously focus on personal training (I got my first certification in 2006 but really leaned in around 2008), this show was everywhere. It was intense, dramatic, and promised transformation—a visual fairy tale of sweat, willpower, and discipline.
Looking back now, it’s so painfully cringe, but I wasn’t alone. Millions of people were glued to the screens, absorbing what the show told us about health, fat loss, and success. And the new Netflix documentary Fit for TV doesn’t hold back. It exposes the extreme, sometimes illegal methods used to push contestants: caffeine pills given by Jillian Michaels, emotional manipulation, extreme exercise protocols, and food as a weapon. Watching it now, I can see how this programming shaped not just contestants, but an entire generation of viewers—including me.
Screens Aren’t Just Entertainment
Laura Dodsworth nails it in Free Your Mind:
“Television is relaxing, but it also is a source of direct and indirect propaganda. It shapes your perception of reality. What’s more, you’re more likely to be ‘programmed’ by the programming when you are relaxed.”
This is key. Television isn’t just a casual distraction. It teaches, it socializes, and it normalizes behavior. A study by Lowery & DeFleur (Milestones in Mass Communication Research, 1988) called TV a “major source of observational learning.” Millions of people aren’t just entertained—they’re learning what’s normal, acceptable, and desirable.
Dodsworth also warns:
“Screens do not show the world; they obscure. The television screen erects visual screens in our mind and constructs a fake reality that obscures the truth.”
And that’s exactly what reality diet shows did. They created a distorted narrative: extreme restriction and punishment equals success. If you just try harder, work longer, and push further, your body will cooperate. Except, biology doesn’t work like that.
The Metabolic Reality
Let’s dig into the science. The Netflix documentary Fit for TV references the infamous Biggest Loser study, which tracked contestants years after the show ended. Here’s what happened:
Contestants followed extreme protocols: ~1,200 calories a day, 90–120 minutes of intense daily exercise (sometimes up to 5–8 hours), and “Franken-foods” like fat-free cheese or energy drinks.
They lost massive amounts of weight on TV. Dramatic, visible transformations. Ratings gold.
Six years later, researchers checked back: most regained ~70% of the weight. But the real kicker? Their resting metabolic rate (RMR) was still burning 700 fewer calories per day than baseline—500 calories less than expected based on regained body weight.
In everyday terms? Imagine you used to burn 2,000 calories a day just by living. After extreme dieting, your body was burning only 1,300–1,500 calories a day, even though you weighed almost the same. That’s like your body suddenly deciding it needs to hold on to every calorie, making it much harder to lose weight—or even maintain it—no matter how “good” you eat or how much you exercise.
This is huge. It shows extreme dieting doesn’t just fail long-term; it fundamentally rewires your metabolism.
Why?
Leptin crash: The hormone that tells your brain you’re full plummeted during the show. After weight regain, leptin rebounded, but RMR didn’t. Normally, these rise and fall together—but the link was broken.
Loss of lean mass: Contestants lost ~25 pounds of muscle. Regaining some of it didn’t restore metabolic function.
Hormonal havoc: Chronic calorie deficits and overtraining disrupted thyroid, reproductive, and adrenal hormones. Weight loss resistance, missed periods, hair loss, and constant cold are all part of the aftermath.
Put bluntly: your body is not passive. Extreme dieting triggers survival mode, conserving energy, increasing hunger, and slowing metabolism.
I know this from my own experience. Between May 2017 and October 2018, I competed in four bodybuilding competitions. I didn’t prioritize recovery or hormone balance, and I pushed my body way too hard. The metabolic consequences? Echoes of the Biggest Loser study:
Slowed metabolism after prep phases.
Hormonal swings that made maintaining progress harder.
Mental fatigue and burnout from extreme restriction and exercise.
Diet culture and TV had me convinced that suffering = transformation. But biology doesn’t care about your willpower. Extreme restriction is coercion, not empowerment.
This isn’t just a TV problem. The same mechanisms appear in social media fitness culture, or “fitspiration.” In a previous podcast and blog, From Diary Entries to Digital Screens: How Beauty Ideals and Sexualization Have Transformed Over Time, we discussed the dangerous myth: hard work guarantees results.
Fitness influencers, trainers, and the “no excuses” culture sell the illusion that discipline alone equals success. Consistency and proper nutrition matter—but genetics set the foundation. Ignoring this truth fuels:
Unrealistic expectations: People blame themselves when they don’t achieve Instagram-worthy physiques.
Overtraining & injury: Chasing impossible ideals leads to chronic injuries and burnout.
Disordered eating & supplement abuse: Extreme diets, excessive protein, or PEDs are often used to push past natural limits.
The industry keeps genetics under wraps because the truth doesn’t sell. Expensive programs, supplement stacks, and influencer promises rely on people believing they can “buy” someone else’s results. Many extreme physiques are genetically gifted and often enhanced, yet presented as sheer willpower. The result? A culture of self-blame and impossible standards.
Fitspiration and Self-Objectification
The 2023 study in Computers in Human Behavior found that exposure to fitspiration content increases body dissatisfaction, especially among women who already struggle with self-image. Fitspo encourages the internalized gaze that John Berger described in Ways of Seeing:
“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself… she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.”
One part of a woman is constantly judging her body; the other exists as a reflection of an ideal. Fitness becomes performative, not functional. Anxiety, depression, disordered eating, and self-objectification follow. Fitness culture no longer focuses on strength or health—it’s about performing an idealized body for an audience.
The Dangerous Pipeline: Fitspo to Porn Culture
This extends further. Fitspiration primes women to see themselves as objects, which feeds directly into broader sexualization. Porn culture and the sex industry reinforce the same dynamic: self-worth tied to appearance, desire, and external validation. Consider these stats:
Over 134,000 porn site visits per minute globally.
88% of porn scenes contain physical aggression, 49% verbal aggression, with women overwhelmingly targeted (Bridges et al., 2010).
Most youth are exposed to pornography between ages 11–13 (Wright et al., 2021).
91.5% of men and 60.2% of women report watching porn monthly (Solano, Eaton, & O’Leary, 2020).
Fitspiration teaches the same objectification: value is appearance-dependent. Social media and reality TV prime us to obsess over performance and image, extending beyond fitness into sexualization and body commodification.
Contestants were given illegal caffeine pills to keep energy up.
Trainers manipulated emotions for drama—heightened stress, shame, and competitiveness.
Food was weaponized—rationed, withheld, or turned into rewards/punishments.
Exercise protocols weren’t just intense—they were unsafe, designed to produce dramatic visuals for the camera.
The documentary also makes it clear: these methods weren’t isolated incidents. They were systemic, part of a machine that broadcasts propaganda as entertainment.
The Bigger Picture: Propaganda, Screens, and Social Conditioning
Dodsworth again:
“Watching TV encourages normative behavior.”
Shows like The Biggest Loser don’t just affect contestants—they socialize an audience. Millions of viewers internalize: “Success = willpower + suffering + restriction.” Social media amplifies this further, nudging us constantly toward behaviors dictated by advertisers, algorithms, and curated narratives.
George Orwell imagined a world of compulsory screens in 1984. We aren’t there yet—but screens still shape behavior, expectations, and self-perception.
The good news? Unlike Orwell’s telescreens, we can turn off our TVs. We can watch critically. We can question the values being sold to us. Dodsworth reminds us:
“Fortunately for us, we can turn off our television and we should.”
Breaking Free
Here’s the takeaway for me—and for anyone navigating diet culture and fitness media:
Watch critically: Ask, “What is this really teaching me?”
Respect biology: Your body fights extreme restriction—it’s not lazy or weak.
Pause before you absorb: Screens are powerful teachers, but you have the final say.
The bigger question isn’t just “What should I eat?” or “How should I train?” It’s:
Who’s controlling the story my mind is telling me, and who benefits from it?
Reality shows like The Biggest Loser and even social media feeds are not neutral. They are propaganda machines—wrapped in entertainment, designed to manipulate perception, reward suffering, and sell ideals that are biologically unsafe.
I’ve lived some of those lessons firsthand. The scars aren’t just physical—they’re mental, hormonal, and metabolic. But the first step to freedom is seeing the screen for what it really is, turning it off, and reclaiming control over your body, mind, and reality.
Thank you for taking the time to read/listen!
🙏 Please help this podcast reach a larger audience in hope to edify & encourage others! To do so: leave a 5⭐️ review and send it to a friend! Thank you for listening! I’d love to hear from you, find me on Instagram! @taste0ftruth , @megan_mefit , Pinterest! Substack and on X!
Until then, maintain your curiosity, embrace skepticism, and keep tuning in! 🎙️🔒
If you’re a woman in midlife witnessing changes in your body, let’s be honest—hearing one more expert say “just move more and eat less” might make you scream. That tired, oversimplified advice ignores the very real ways our bodies change—and the decades of life we’ve already lived in them.
Midlife, generally defined as the ages between 37 and 65, isn’t just a calendar phase. It’s a biological, emotional, and identity-shifting chapter. For women, it often marks the beginning of perimenopause—the transitional period leading up to menopause, when the ovaries gradually produce less estrogen. Menopause itself is defined as the 12-month mark after your final menstrual period, but the hormonal fluctuations and symptoms often begin years before and can last well beyond that point.
To really understand what’s happening in our bodies now, we have to rewind the clock.
From puberty, our bodies have been shaped by an elegant hormonal dance. Estrogen, progesterone, and to a lesser extent testosterone, govern everything from our cycle to our skin, from our energy to our emotional responses. These hormones rise and fall in predictable patterns until they don’t. And when they don’t, you feel it.
Hot flashes. Sleep disruptions. Brain fog. Mood swings. Slower recovery from workouts. A scale that doesn’t seem to budge no matter what you do. And the silent undercurrents like the gradual loss of bone density—osteopenia—that often go unnoticed until it’s too late.
These aren’t random annoyances. They’re signals. And they deserve to be understood.
In this post and in today’s podcast episode, I talk with registered dietitian and research wizard Maryann Jacobsen about what actually helps us thrive during perimenopause and menopause. We get into why muscle is metabolic gold, why cardio isn’t always the answer, and how biofeedback your body’s own cues like hunger, energy, sleep, and mood can tell you more about what’s working than any calorie tracker or influencer’s reel ever could.
We also challenge the idea that your bathroom scale is the best measure of health. Spoiler alert: it’s not. Tools like DEXA scans provide deeper insight into your bone density and lean mass—two things that matter more than “weight” ever could in this stage of life. And while your smart scale using bioelectrical impedance might not be as accurate, it can still help you track general trends if you know how to interpret it.
One part of our conversation that hit me hard was Maryann’s mention of the body fat research around fertility. Scientists have found that a minimum of 17% body fat is required just to get a menstrual cycle, and about 22% is needed to maintain ovulation. But here’s the real shocker: in mature women, regular ovulatory cycles are often supported best at 26–28% body fat. (PMID: 3117838, 2282736) That means what many of us have been taught to chase ultra-lean physiques (around 17 BF% or so), chronic calorie restriction, or overtraining can actually backfire on our reproductive health, bone health, and overall vitality.
In populations where food is scarce or physical demands are high, we see patterns: delayed first periods, longer gaps between births, earlier menopause. It’s the body adapting for survival. But in modern life, we sometimes impose these same conditions on ourselves in the name of “fitness.”
And while estrogen usually gets the spotlight in menopause care often treated as the main character it’s progesterone that deserves a standing ovation. Many women are told they “need progesterone” just to protect themselves from estrogen’s effects, as if it’s merely a buffer. But that undersells its brilliance.
The name progesterone literally means “pro-gestation,” but its impact goes far beyond fertility. Progesterone is a master regulator. It stabilizes tissues, supports metabolic balance, calms inflammation, protects against stress, and even plays a role in brain health. While estrogen stimulates, progesterone shields. While estrogen builds, progesterone restores.
Fascinatingly, our bodies produce far more progesterone than estrogen especially after ovulation and during pregnancy. That’s not a fluke. It reflects just how critical progesterone is to our overall well-being.
So when ovulation slows or disappears in midlife, it’s not just your period going quiet. It’s this entire downstream network of hormonal resilience especially progesterone that starts to fade. And that’s when symptoms ramp up.
Understanding this isn’t just about managing menopause. It’s about honoring your biology, updating your strategy, and supporting your body like the powerful, responsive system it actually is.
If we want to balance and optimize our hormones in midlife, we have to re-evaluate our goals. This isn’t about grinding harder it’s about getting smarter. And to get smarter, we need to zoom out.
Ovulation isn’t just some fertility footnote-it’s the main event of your cycle. But many of us were taught that the bleed is the cycle. Nope. That’s just the after-party. The headliner? Ovulation.
Why does this matter in midlife?
Because ovulation is what triggers the production of progesterone a hormone that plays a critical role in metabolism, mood, sleep, brain function, and bone health. And spoiler: progesterone is the first to dip off the radar as we enter perimenopause. That’s why your energy feels off, your sleep gets weird, and your tolerance for stress tanks. Your body isn’t broken—it’s adapting.
Here’s where things click into place: your body will only ovulate consistently if it feels safe and nourished. That means you’re eating enough, not overtraining, and not living in a cortisol-fueled chaos spiral.
Ovulation isn’t just about reproduction it’s a vital sign of health. And the two hormones that anchor your entire cycle, estrogen and progesterone, do so much more than regulate periods.
From bone density to brain function, from insulin sensitivity to mitochondrial health, these hormones influence nearly every system in your body. So, when they fluctuate…. or flatline… you feel it. Not just in your body, but in your entire day to day experience.
So, let’s break the rules, rewrite the midlife playbook, and finally start listening to the wisdom our bodies have been whispering all along.
Welcome to Taste of Truth Tuesdays—the podcast where we dive into hard questions, challenge the status quo, and explore the wild, messy journey of life. I’m your host, Megan Leigh, and wow… here we are. The finale. 🎭
It’s hard to believe we’ve reached this point, but just like any great adventure, sometimes you’ve gotta know when to step back, take a breath, and let the journey settle. But before I hang up the mic, we’re going out with a bang—talking about something that’s taken over our minds, our lives, and—let’s be real—our souls: social media.
Now, don’t roll your eyes just yet. I know, I know—you’re probably thinking, “Oh, great. Another episode on social media. Can’t wait for more doom and gloom.” But stick with me. We’re not just talking about your Instagram algorithm or the latest TikTok trend. We’re diving deep into the brain science behind our scrolling obsession, the way social media messes with our mental health, and—hold on to your hats—the role it plays in shaping our very identities.
So, buckle up, because this is the episode where we reclaim our time, our attention, and—if we’re lucky—our sanity.
It’s time to get real. Let’s unravel the truth about how social media is rewiring our brains… and what we can do about it.
Social media: It started as a fun way to connect, share cat memes, and stalk your high school crush’s wedding photos. Ah, the good old days, right? Over the years, it has morphed into something far more insidious—a time sink, an anxiety amplifier, and, for many, an addiction.
We’ve all felt it: that pull to check our phones every five minutes, the sudden rush when our post gets shared, the quiet frustration when we can’t get the perfect shot for the ‘gram. But these reactions aren’t accidents. They’re carefully crafted designs by tech giants who know exactly how to keep us coming back for more. Let’s begin by diving deep into the science behind the scroll…..
The Science Behind the Scroll
The tech companies behind Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook have cracked the code on how to get us hooked—and it’s all about the brain’s reward system.
Every like, comment, or share triggers a dopamine release. That’s the same brain chemical activated when we eat chocolate, win a prize, or, frankly, get any form of instant gratification. Dopamine feels good, and your brain remembers that. Over time, your brain starts to associate social media with that feeling of pleasure, and bam—you’re hooked. This is the kind of addiction we’re talking about.
According to recent studies, social media addiction is particularly prevalent among younger demographics. Approximately 40% of users aged 18 to 22 report being addicted to social media. This trend continues into the age group of 23 to 38, where 15% admit to addiction.
But the consequences go deeper than wasted time. This constant stimulation has been linked to:
Decreased attention spans: You know that feeling when reading a full page of a book feels like climbing Mount Everest? That’s your brain, rewired by quick-hit content.
Cognitive overload: The endless stream of content leaves little room for deep thinking or creative problem-solving.
“Brain rot”: This TikTok trend perfectly sums up the mental fatigue, fog, and disconnection many of us feel after hours online.
And this isn’t just some accidental byproduct. Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Righteous Mind, highlights the complexity of our moral and psychological wiring. He argues that human brains aren’t just wired for truth or objective reasoning. We are, at our core, designed to belong—to feel like part of the group. The “we’re right, they’re wrong” mentality? It’s not just a political tactic. It’s part of our psychology. Our social groups, whether online or in person, reinforce this mindset by creating echo chambers of validation and us-versus-them narratives.
Haidt’s quote on this rings true here:
“Our brains are more like lawyers arguing a case than scientists seeking truth.”
The constant validation we get from social media platforms taps into this dynamic—we’re more interested in being right and fitting in than in evaluating the facts or considering alternative perspectives. This is why social media can be so dangerous for our mental health. It’s not just about being addicted to the likes; it’s about how we’re rewiring our brains to crave validation over truth and connection.
Unveiling the Influence: Social Media’s Role in Recruitment and Brainwashing
Throughout Season 2, we’ve explored social media’s pervasive impact. From its role in shaping our perceptions to its influence on our behaviors, the digital realm’s grip is undeniable.
Social media wields considerable influence in radicalizing individuals and indoctrinating them into high-control religions, MLM schemes, and even ideological movements. The speed and reach of online platforms have amplified some of the most extreme, fringe ideas—turning them into mainstream conversations. A prime example of this is the social contagion of trans ideology, where a once niche and academic discussion about gender dysphoria has rapidly become a cultural movement that shapes public perception and (unfortunately) policy.
As platforms have expanded, the lines between identity, ideology, and community have blurred. Individuals seeking validation or belonging often find themselves drawn into conversations that are not just about personal identity, but about deeply entrenched political narratives. This creates fertile ground for ideological recruitment, where the promise of solidarity and empowerment can quickly morph into a dogmatic worldview.
But it’s not just about identity politics or radical gender ideologies. Social media also plays a pivotal role in radicalizing racial narratives. What were once niche, academic discussions about systemic racism, implicit bias, and social justice have now been thrust into the mainstream. These conversations, once confined to university lecture halls and activist circles, are amplified in real-time, shaping cultural narratives. This has created a new, all-encompassing cultural force.
The rise of radicalized racial narratives and the widespread adoption of a “prejudice plus power” definition of racism online has altered how these conversations unfold. The Internet lowers the cost of group action, making it easier for movements to organize, but also more vulnerable to collapse under scrutiny. While these conversations can be valuable, the speed at which they spread leaves little room for nuance, making the discourse more polarized and susceptible to manipulation.
The same strategies used by high-control groups, MLMs, and radical ideologies are now being leveraged in these public online spaces. Emotional appeals, the promise of community, and a collective sense of identity are powerful tools, but they also trap individuals in narrow, divisive worldviews. The social contagion effect of these movements, whether it’s trans ideology or the racial justice discourse, can lead to rapid shifts in beliefs that feel almost impossible to resist, especially when everyone around you is also influenced by these same narratives.
How Social Media Impacts Mental Health
It’s no secret that social media takes a toll on mental health. But let’s get specific.
A 2020 study in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking found that excessive use is directly correlated with higher levels of anxiety and depression.
A 2018 British study revealed that social media disrupts sleep patterns, which are crucial for mental well-being.
And those carefully curated Instagram feeds? They lead to a nasty habit of social comparison, where we measure our real lives against someone else’s highlight reel.
The result? A vicious cycle of feeling “less than.” Even when we know that influencer’s perfect morning routine is staged, it’s hard not to feel like we’re falling short.
As a military spouse, I’ve felt this firsthand. In the loneliest seasons—new city, no community, husband busy working, social media felt like a lifeline. I craved connection, and Instagram was always there. But what I found wasn’t real friendship. It was hollow validation—likes, emoji reactions, and disappearing DMs. A digital sugar rush with zero sustenance.
Eventually, I had to get brutally honest with myself: social media had become my coping mechanism. I wasn’t reaching out to real people—I was scrolling through their highlight reels, mistaking proximity for intimacy.
Here’s the friendship test I use now: Did you know about their vacation before they posted the beach picture? If not, are you actually close?
Somehow, we’re more “connected” than ever, yet we’ve never felt so alone. That’s the connection conundrum.
As humans, we’re wired for belonging. We want to be seen, heard, loved. But seeing people online—and being seen by them—isn’t the same. It doesn’t satisfy the soul. It’s like eating fast food when what we really need is a home-cooked meal. We’re being fed, but we’re not getting nourished.
And that’s the scary part. People are starting to wonder what’s wrong with them. Why do I feel so empty? Why do I still feel lonely after a scroll session? But it’s not you—it’s the system. Social media has rewired our sense of connection. We think checking someone’s profile counts as keeping in touch.
But here’s the truth: it’s not enough. It was never meant to be.
The Lies Social Media Tells Us (And What Happens When We Stop Believing Them)
Inspired by Carly Burr’s “The Social Media Shift”
Social media is built on illusions—on selling us a version of reality that makes us feel just dependent enough to keep coming back. But Carly Burr cracks that illusion wide open in The Social Media Shift, revealing the deeper psychological and social conditioning behind our screen habits.
Let’s bust a few of the biggest myths that keep us stuck:
Lie #1: “I’ll lose connection.”
Platforms want you to believe they’re the glue holding your social life together—but that’s marketing, not truth. As Burr points out, real connection isn’t algorithmically filtered. It’s not passive. It’s intentional. It’s messy. It shows up in the awkward pauses of a phone call, the unsaid comfort of sitting beside someone, or a handwritten birthday card instead of a story reply.
The dopamine hit of a like isn’t the same as being seen.
Lie #2: “I’ll lose friends.”
Okay, but let’s talk about the quality of those friendships.
Social media keeps us tethered to past versions of ourselves—people we haven’t seen in a decade, relationships that faded for a reason, or mutuals we don’t even talk to. Burr argues that the constant stream of “updates” creates a false sense of closeness, making us feel socially exhausted while still emotionally empty.
Letting go of these weak ties isn’t loss. It’s liberation. You create space for depth over breadth—real conversations, real community.
Lie #3: “I’ll miss out.”
Ah yes, FOMO—the bread and butter of the scroll. But Carly flips this on its head with the concept of voluntary disconnection—not as retreat, but as rebellion. When you step away from the curated highlight reels, you stop comparing your real life to someone else’s filtered one.
This is the beginning of JOMO—the Joy of Missing Out.
Imagine the freedom of opting out of the noise so you can tune into your creativity, your actual priorities, and the people in the room with you. Spoiler alert: You’re not missing out—you’re waking up.
If this is what social media does to fully developed adults—those of us with matured brains, responsibilities, and years of analog life under our belts—then what happens when the same platforms are handed to kids?
Enter: Generation Alpha. A generation being raised on screens, where digital stimulation replaces real-world experience, and curated identities form before self-awareness even sets in.
Let’s talk about the kids. Because this isn’t just a personal problem anymore—it’s a cultural crisis.
Generation Alpha & the Screen Trap: Childhood Rewired
Generation Alpha—kids born between 2010 and 2025—aren’t just growing up with technology. They’re growing up inside it.
Unlike Millennials or even Gen Z, who eased into the digital world, Gen Alpha was handed iPads before they could speak in full sentences. Their lullabies come from YouTube. Their friendships are filtered through emojis and DMs. The result? Alarming trends in social development: reduced face-to-face interaction, emotional dysregulation, increased narcissism, and shrinking independence.
Parents, this is a wake-up call. You don’t need another expert to tell you what you already feel in your gut: handing a toddler a tablet to keep them quiet isn’t harmless. Kids need eye contact, boredom, dirt under their nails—not dopamine loops and digital pacifiers. For thousands of years, parents raised kids without screens. This is not impossible.
In The Anxious Generation, psychologist Jonathan Haidt breaks it down: the brain’s reward system (aka dopamine central) develops early, but the self-control center—the prefrontal cortex—doesn’t fully mature until about age 25. So, when kids are handed infinite-scroll devices packed with peer comparison, algorithmic manipulation, and curated realities, it’s like giving a toddler the keys to a sports car and pointing them toward a cliff.
Haidt calls screens “experience blockers.” Instead of learning through play, climbing trees, exploring neighborhoods, and negotiating playground politics, today’s kids are navigating TikTok trends and selfie angles. We’ve traded real-world resilience for digital performance.
“When you remove thousands of hours of unsupervised play, real-life social interaction, and physical exploration—and replace it with filtered selfies, infinite scroll, and a feedback loop of online validation—you don’t just rewire childhood. You rewire the brain.” — Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation
And that’s exactly what we’re seeing: a generation more anxious, more depressed, and more disconnected than ever before.
This isn’t about shaming parents—it’s about reclaiming childhood. Because what’s at stake isn’t just screen time. It’s the architecture of the next generation’s minds.
From Screen Time to Screen Stardom: The Rise of Kid Influencers
But it’s not just about passive consumption anymore. Increasingly, kids aren’t just watching content—they are the content.
Welcome to the unsettling world of kid influencers. Platforms like YouTube and Instagram have turned childhood into a brand opportunity, with children as young as five raking in sponsorship deals, building fan bases, and performing for millions.
And behind the ring lights and carefully edited vlogs? A growing wave of exploitation.
A recent Netflix documentary pulls back the curtain on this world, spotlighting the case of Piper Rockelle—a child YouTuber whose life has been shaped by online fame. What the documentary uncovers is deeply troubling: blurred boundaries, lost innocence, and kids caught in a perpetual performance loop for clicks, clout, and cash.
These children aren’t just growing up on camera—they’re growing up for the camera.
The pressure to maintain a digital persona, please followers, and produce viral content creates a toxic cocktail of emotional distress and identity confusion. They’re rewarded not for who they are, but for how well they perform. And the cost? A real, grounded childhood, full of uncurated, unsponsored experiences.
We’ve moved from screens blocking real-world development to screens broadcasting their absence.
What started as a parenting shortcut has morphed into a monetization machine—and the kids are paying the price.
How to Reclaim Your Life from Social Media
Ready to take your brain back? Here’s how to kick the scroll addiction and get your attention span (and your life) back on track—without moving to a cabin in the woods.
What Your Morning Scroll Is Doing to Your Brain
When we first wake up, our brain is gently humming in alpha and theta waves—those dreamy, creative states where intuition, introspection, and problem-solving flourish. Think: peaceful forest glade at sunrise.
But the moment your thumb reaches for your phone? Bam—dopamine starts firing, cortisol spikes, and your brain is jolted into high-beta wave activity. Translation? You’ve just swapped a meditative meadow for the chaos of a Vegas casino floor—bright lights, ringing bells, constant stimulation.
And we wonder why we feel frazzled before we’ve even had coffee.
1. Set Boundaries with Your Devices
• Start and end your day screen-free. The first and last hour of your day should belong to you, not your feed. Use that time for reading, stretching, journaling, or making actual eye contact with a human or a pet.
• Silence the dopamine drip. Turn off notifications for non-essential apps. That buzz you feel when you get a like? It’s manufactured.
• App timer yourself. Even five-minute limits can break the spell.
2. Give Your Brain (and Eyes) a Break
• Try the 20-20-20 Rule: Every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. This not only reduces eye strain but helps reset your nervous system and disrupt the scroll trance.
3. Declutter Your Digital Space
Unfollow with intention. If an account makes you feel less-than, anxious, or enraged, you don’t owe it your attention.
Hide the candy. Move social apps off your home screen—or delete them entirely. Make mindless checking inconvenient.
4. Prioritize Analog Experiences
Reconnect with real-life hobbies. Gardening, painting, cooking, journaling—anything that grounds you in the physical world.
Create with your hands. We’re wired for tactile engagement. Knitting does more for your nervous system than 1,000 likes ever will.
Start small. Spend just 30 minutes this week doing something screen-free that brings you joy. Bonus points if it’s outside.
5. Use Technology Intentionally
Before you open an app, ask yourself:
“Is this productive or passive?”
Reading an article that educates you? Great.
Doom-scrolling through drama accounts?? Not so much.
Pause. Choose. Proceed.
As we navigate social media, it’s crucial to develop critical thinking skills that help us evaluate the flood of information we encounter. This isn’t about censorship, but about cultivating the ability to separate fact from fiction, identify bias, and question what’s being presented to us. The power of algorithms and viral content means we are often exposed to extreme or misleading viewpoints. By sharpening our ability to critically analyze media, we can better protect ourselves from manipulation while still engaging with important issues in a thoughtful way.
And that’s a wrap-not just on Season 3, but maybe, just maybe, on Taste of Truth Tuesdays entirely.
I started this podcast to explore the hard questions, challenge the dominant narratives, and create space for curiosity and critical thinking. And I’ve loved every gritty, gut-honest, mind-expanding moment with you. But here’s the truth I can’t ignore: the very platforms that help us spread ideas and connect also fracture our attention, distort our sense of reality, and leave us more addicted than aligned.
So, if this is the end, it’s not because I’m out of things to say—but because I want to live what I preach. I want to reclaim my time. I want to make art, grow food, write slowly, and have real conversations without an algorithm eavesdropping.
If you’ve walked with me through this journey—thank you. From the bottom of my heart. You’ve made this sacred.
And if this is goodbye, it’s also an invitation. To stay curious. To remain skeptical. To turn down the noise and tune into your own voice.
This isn’t the end of my voice, but it might be the beginning of a different kind of truth-telling—one that doesn’t require a platform to feel real.
So, for one last time…
Maintain your curiosity,
Embrace skepticism,
And keep tuning in-
Even if it’s just to your own soul.
Thanks for reading Taste of Truth! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Sources:
1. Hagar, Ashley, and Hisham Bensaadat. “‘iPad Kids’ Are Shaping the Future of Education.” Seattle Spectator.
4. Andreassen, Cecilie Schou, et al. “The Relationship Between Addictive Use of Social Media, Narcissism, and Self-Esteem: Findings from a Large National Survey.” Addictive Behaviors, Volume 64, 2017, Pages 287–293.
5. Keles, Betul, et al. “A Systematic Review: The Influence of Social Media on Depression, Anxiety and Psychological Distress in Adolescents.” International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 2020.
Over the past year, we’ve explored a web of interconnected topics—religious extremism, theology, the role of social media in radicalization, and most recently, body image and the impact of fitspiration.
These discussions aren’t isolated; they all trace back to a common thread—how external influences shape our beliefs, behaviors, and sense of identity. Today, we’re diving deeper into that connection, looking at how beauty standards, social media, and the normalization of self-objectification are part of a larger cultural shift.
The Evolution of Body Image: From Calorie Counting to the Cult of Fitness
Our cultural obsession with body modification isn’t new—it’s just evolved.
In The Body Project, historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg explores the history of American girls and how today women have more freedom and choice than ever before, but many of us begin a pattern of negative self-image, beauty obsession and dieting as early as five or six. Brumberg states:
“All throughout history, adolescent self-consciousness is quite persistent, but it’s level is raised or lowered, like the water level in a pool, by the cultural and social setting.”
For instance, in the late 19th century, girls might have been particularly conscious of their hands and feet due to the fashion and modesty standards of the time, as well as the emphasis on delicate and proper presentation. Additionally, the ideal feminine silhouette of the time, with tightly laced corsets and voluminous skirts, might have made girls more conscious of their waists and overall body shape.
So, while in modern day times, we may cringe at the confinements of what the Victorian society and wearing the corset did to women, but I’d like to argue that in 2025 body angst is driven by much more sinister forces. Today, commercial interests utilize marketing strategies that result in enormous amounts of profit for the manufactures of cosmetic, surgery, hair products and of course diet foods.
The reality that American girls now center their lives around their bodies is neither coincidental nor trivial: it reflects historical shifts that are just now being comprehended.
15th November 1926: Film star, Mae Murray (1889 – 1965) making herself up in a mirror in the lid of her make-up box.
Brumberg examines how the modern fixation on weight began in the early 20th century. Historically, the surge of explicit “girl talk” about body and sexuality is a relatively recent American phenomenon. As the language surrounding sex and the body has evolved, so too have the body projects of different generations of American girls. By the 1920s, girls began writing about their efforts to develop sexual allure through clothing and cosmetics, and for the first time, they experimented with “slimming”—a new body project tied to the scientific discovery of the calorie. The dieters and sexual players of the 1920s were generally girls in middle to late adolescence, finishing high school or heading off to college and jobs in the business world—unlike today, where such concerns often affect younger children and teenagers.
By the 1970s and 1980s, body control became about more than just being thin; it evolved into sculpting the ideal physique. This shift gave rise to what we now recognize as the cult of fitness—a movement that reframed body control as discipline and self-mastery. The rise of bodybuilding, aerobics, and the emerging diet industry all played a role in selling the idea that, with enough effort, anyone could build their “dream body.”
The Role of Genetics in Muscle Growth: What Fitness Culture Gets Wrong
But science tells a different story. While training and nutrition matter, genetics play a massive role in muscle development, strength, and even fat distribution. A study published in Communications Biology (2020) found that an individual’s ability to build muscle and strength is 50-80% genetic(Pei et al., 2020).
This means that two people following the exact same training program and nutrition plan will not achieve the same results—because their genetic blueprint largely determines their potential for muscle growth, recovery speed, tendon strength, and even motivation to train.
Yet, fitness culture—including myself as a personal trainer for nearly 20 years—rarely acknowledges this, pushing the narrative that extreme discipline alone is the key to achieving a certain look. This myth is not only misleading but also damaging, leading many people to believe that if they just worked harder, ate “cleaner,” or followed the right influencer’s workout, they could look like a fitness model.
How Genetics Impact Strength and Muscle Development
Muscle Fiber Composition: The Fast-Twitch vs. Slow-Twitch Factor
People with a higher percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers (Type II) have a genetic advantage in strength and hypertrophy (muscle growth). These fibers respond better to resistance training and grow larger than slow-twitch (Type I) fibers, which are more endurance-focused.
Some individuals are naturally fast-twitch dominant, making it easier for them to build muscle. Others are slow-twitch dominant, meaning they may struggle with size gains but excel in endurance sports like long-distance running (Timmons et al., 2010).
Myostatin: The Genetic “Muscle Growth Brake”
Myostatin is a protein that regulates muscle growth by preventing muscles from getting too large.
People with lower levels of myostatin (due to genetic mutations) have an easier time building muscle naturally. Some bodybuilders and elite athletes are born with myostatin deficiencies, giving them an unfair advantage (Lee & McPherron, 2001).
Testosterone and Hormonal Variability
Testosterone is a major driver of muscle protein synthesis, and its levels vary wildly among individuals.
Some people naturally produce more free testosterone (the biologically active form), which enhances muscle recovery, strength, and hypertrophy.
Women generally have 10-20 times lower testosterone levels than men, making significant muscle gains much harder without pharmacological assistance (i.e., steroids)(Kraemer et al., 1998).
Bone Structure and Muscle Insertions: The Aesthetic Factor
Ever wonder why some people seem to have a “naturally sculpted” look even before they start training?
Bone structure (such as clavicle length, rib cage width, and hip-to-waist ratio) dictates how muscle mass is distributed.
Muscle insertion points vary genetically, meaning some people have longer muscle bellies, which create fuller-looking muscles, while others have shorter insertions, making certain muscles appear smaller or less defined no matter how much they train (Abe et al., 2016).
The Dangerous Myth of “Hard Work = Guaranteed Results”
Fitness influencers, personal trainers, and the entire “no excuses” culture have sold the idea that discipline alone determines success. And yes—training consistency and proper nutrition absolutely matter. But they will never override genetic limitations.
This myth leads to:
Unrealistic Expectations: People blame themselves when they don’t achieve Instagram-worthy physiques, despite training and eating “perfectly.”
Overtraining & Injury: Chasing unrealistic body standards leads many to overtrain, ignore recovery, and develop chronic injuries.
Disordered Eating & Supplement Abuse: Some resort to extreme dieting, excessive protein intake, or even performance-enhancing drugs to push past genetic limits.
The Industry’s Selective Silence on Genetics
Why does fitness culture ignore genetics? Simple: it doesn’t sell. If people accepted that their muscle-building potential was largely predetermined, the billion-dollar fitness industry wouldn’t be able to push:
Expensive training programs promising “X body in X weeks.”
Supplement stacks claiming to “maximize muscle growth.”
The illusion that buying a program from a shredded influencer will make you look like them.
Ironically, many of the biggest names in fitness—especially those with extreme physiques—are genetically gifted (and often enhanced by PEDs). Yet, they claim their results come solely from “hard work and dedication,” keeping their followers trapped in a cycle of unrealistic expectations and self-blame.
After nearly 20 years as a personal trainer, I wish I had been more honest about genetics with my clients. Fitness is absolutely a combination of training, nutrition, recovery, and mindset—but genetics are the foundation that determines what’s possible.
Let’s stop pretending everyone can achieve the same results through sheer willpower. Fitness should be about maximizing your individual potential—not chasing an impossible ideal. Focusing on body neutral fitness and strength training gave me tangible, measurable improvements, but it also made me realize how much misinformation circulates in mainstream fitness spaces, particularly in the fitspiration content flooding social media.
Fitspiration: The Reinvention of Beauty Standards
A 2023 study in Computers in Human Behavior compared the effects of fit ideal vs. non-fit ideal body types in fitspiration imagery. The findings? Exposure to fitspiration content significantly increases body dissatisfaction, especially in women who already struggle with self-image. This isn’t surprising—social media’s curated highlight reels create a distorted sense of what’s achievable. And just like 90s diet culture failed to acknowledge genetic differences in weight, today’s fitness culture largely ignores the reality that strength and muscle growth are heavily influenced by genetics.
But the impact of fitspiration goes beyond body image. The same mechanisms that fuel fitness obsession—comparison, idealization, and self-objectification—are also at play in the broader cultural shift toward hypersexualization.
Fitspiration and Self-Objectification: The Internalized Gaze
Self-objectification occurs when a person sees themselves through the eyes of others, measuring their worth by how they look rather than who they are. And nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in fitspiration culture.
John Berger describes this process perfectly in Ways of Seeing:
“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself… From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.”
Fitspiration content encourages this exact split identity—one part of a woman is the observer, constantly assessing whether she looks toned, lean, or strong enough. The other part is the observed, existing only as a reflection of an idealized body type. It’s no longer just about fitness; it’s about performing fitness for an audience.
And the consequences are severe:
Chronic body surveillance leads to increased anxiety, depression, and disordered eating (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997).
Instead of focusing on how movement feels, women focus on how their bodies appear while exercising.
The line between fitness and sexualization blurs, reinforcing the idea that a woman’s body is only valuable when it is desirable to others.
In this way, fitspiration isn’t just a rebranded version of diet culture—it’s also a pipeline to broader cultural hypersexualization, where the body is constantly on display, measured, and objectified. And this feeds directly into an even deeper issue: the normalization of pornography and the sex industry, where women’s bodies are not just idealized but commodified.
By promoting self-objectification as empowerment, fitspiration culture primes women to see themselves as both the product and the consumer, caught in an endless cycle of external validation. And the most insidious part? It’s framed as self-improvement—when in reality, it’s just another system designed to keep women watching themselves instead of living fully.
The Connection Between Fitspiration, Porn Culture, and Self-Objectification
The way women are impacted by pornography—and by extension, the sex industry—is something far too many people overlook. The statistics are staggering:
The top three porn sites receive a combined 134,491 visits per minute.
Most pornographic videos contain some form of aggression or violence, particularly toward women. A 2020 meta-analysis found that 88% of pornographic scenes contain physical aggression (slapping, choking, hair-pulling) and 49% contain verbal aggression, with women overwhelmingly being the targets (Bridges et al., 2010).
Most young people are exposed to pornography between the ages of 11 and 13, with some studies reporting an even earlier age for boys (Wright et al., 2021).
How This Connects to Fitspiration and Porn Culture
At first glance, fitspiration (or “fitspo”) might seem like it has nothing to do with pornography or the sex industry. After all, isn’t fitness about health and strength? But when we look closer, the connections become clear.
Both fitspiration and porn culture promote self-objectification. Fitspiration culture tells women that their worth is tied to their body’s appearance—specifically, whether they have a lean, sculpted, and sexually desirable physique. This reinforces self-objectification, where women begin viewing their bodies primarily as objects to be judged rather than lived-in, experienced, and valued beyond aesthetics.
Remember our study in Computers in Human Behavior (2023) found that exposure to fitspiration imagery leads to increased body dissatisfaction and self-objectification, particularly among women who already struggle with body image….Similarly, pornography fuels external validation as a primary measure of self-worth.
Women in both fitspo and porn culture are expected to conform to an idealized version of femininity that is both hypersexualized and carefully curated for male consumption.
Both industries capitalize on the illusion of empowerment. One of the biggest arguments in favor of fitspiration and porn is that they “empower” women. But empowerment, in its truest sense, involves autonomy, agency, and self-determination—not just adhering to societal beauty standards under the guise of “strength” or “choice.”
Fitspiration content often presents extreme dieting, excessive exercise, and body sculpting as forms of self-discipline and self-improvement, even when they veer into disordered behaviors.
The porn industry promotes the idea that sex work is a path to empowerment, despite overwhelming evidence of the harm it causes to those involved. Research on women in the porn industry has found high rates of PTSD, substance abuse, and coercion (Farley et al., 2003).
The same narrative that tells women they must be “empowered” by fitspiration also tells them they must be “empowered” by commodifying their bodies through sex work. The reality is that both industries profit from women internalizing external standards of worth rather than defining it for themselves.
The rise of OnlyFans and the blending of fitness and sex work. Social media has blurred the lines between fitness influencers and the sex industry in a way that previous generations didn’t experience. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and OnlyFans have created a new category of influencers who monetize their appearance—whether through fitness content, sexually suggestive photos, or outright pornography.
Some fitness influencers now have OnlyFans accounts, where they claim to be selling fitness content but also offer sexually explicit material.
The normalization of “soft porn” in fitness spaces (suggestive poses, hypersexualized workout attire) conditions women to see their fitness journey as something that must be publicly displayed and validated by others.
Many young women have turned to selling “spicy content” on OnlyFans as a form of income, believing it to be harmless self-expression—only to later experience the psychological and social fallout.
This isn’t just theoretical. A growing body of research shows that women who engage in sexualized self-presentation online report higher levels of self-objectification, body dissatisfaction, and lower self-esteem(Boursier et al., 2020).
The Psychological Toll: What Happens When Women Internalize These Messages?
Self-objectification doesn’t just impact body image—it affects mental health, cognitive performance, and even physical performance. Studies have found that women who are primed to focus on their appearance:
Perform worse on cognitive tasks (Fredrickson et al., 1998).
Experience greater body shame and anxiety (Moradi & Huang, 2008).
Are less likely to engage in activities that prioritize function over appearance (Roberts & Gettman, 2004).
And this has real-world consequences. Women who internalize self-objectification are more likely to experience:
Higher rates of depression and anxiety
Greater susceptibility to eating disorders
Lower confidence in their physical abilities
Reframing the Narrative: What’s the Alternative?
Recognizing these patterns is the first step in breaking free from them. If fitspiration, porn culture, and social media all push the message that women must shape themselves into externally validated objects, then the antidote is reclaiming agency over our bodies—not as things to be looked at, but as tools for living, experiencing, and creating.
Strength training should be about what your body can do, not how it looks.
Health and fitness should prioritize function over pain.
Challenge Beauty Norms & External Validation. Who benefits from women being consumed by their appearance? The more we recognize these influences, the easier it is to resist them.
Women should be encouraged to pursue movement, sport, and physical strength without the added layer of performative sexuality.
Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s The Body Project reinforced for me how unprepared young women have been for the level of sexualization and exploitation in our culture—something that has only worsened with social media. The way sex work is framed as “empowerment” in some circles ignores the long-term harm it inflicts, and I’ve seen that firsthand.
I can’t wait to discuss this more with my friend Sloane Wilson, a survivor advocate with Exodus Cry, on my podcast later this season. Her insights into the realities of the sex industry and the dangers of normalizing self-objectification are incredibly important for this conversation.
Taste0ftruth Tuesdays 