Category: mindset

Posted on in beliefs, community, dance, festivals, heathen, hoopcampretreat, hoopdance, hulahooping, memoir, mindset, musicfestivals, nervous system, neuroplasticity, new age spiritual, new age spirituality, nuance, paganism, panpyschism, participation, philosophy, physiology, podcast, portlandOR, sociology, stringcheeseincident, wellness

The Ancient Hunger Beneath Modern Life

Flow Arts, Festival Ritual, and the Lost Wisdom of Participation

Hey hey, welcome back to Taste of Truth, this essay is much different than what I normally write, I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane with me.

For years, strangers would see me walking through an airport, across a college campus, or into a music venue carrying an enormous circle of plastic and ask the same question:

“Is that a hula hoop? What do you do with that thing?”

I usually smiled.

There was no quick way to explain what the hoop had already done with me.

By then, it had bruised my hips, taken over my living room, earned me the nickname “hula-hoop girl” around my college campus, and sent me driving and flying across the country in search of music, teachers, festivals, and other people who understood why it was impossible to put the thing down.

It had carried me onto stages I was terrified to enter. It had introduced me to women I first knew only by their YouTube names and later came to know as teachers, collaborators, friends, and soul sisters. It had given me a language for my body at a time when I was still deeply self-conscious inside it.

At the time, I thought I was learning tricks.

I was learning how to float the hoop from my waist above my head. How to reverse its current. How to move in both directions. How to toss, pause, break, roll, and recover. How to follow a drum solo until movement and music stopped feeling like separate things.

All of that was true.

But something much deeper was happening

This is the first part of a series I have been circling around for a long time, though I didn’t fully realize it at first.

I thought I was writing about hoop dance, festival culture and the importance of ritual.

Then philosophy.

Then paganism.

Then neuroscience.

The deeper I followed the thread, the more I realized they were all pointing toward the same question:

What happens to human beings when participation is replaced by spectatorship?

I keep returning to the difference between knowing about life and actually participating in life.

Modern people are drowning in information about health, spirituality, community, nervous system regulation, trauma, meaning, embodiment, and connection. We have the podcasts, the books, the frameworks, and an ever-expanding vocabulary. We can analyze our attachment styles, map our trauma responses, name our nervous system states, and explain exactly why we feel disconnected.

And yet, so many of us are still lonely….

Still disembodied.

Still watching life through glass.

Still trying to think our way into something the body may only truly recover through embodiment, through rhythm, movement, expression, shared presence, and practice.

This piece is about that hunger.

The ancient hunger beneath modern life.

Not merely the hunger to believe something, but the hunger to belong to a living world again.

For a long time, I thought my years in flow arts were simply a chapter of my life—a beautiful one, but ultimately behind me. Looking back now, I see something different.

Long before I studied philosophy, mythology, neuroscience, religion, or ancestral traditions, my body was already being introduced to a way of knowing that none of those books could have given me.

It had to be practiced. Repeated. Failed. Felt. Shared.

It had to be participated in.

Before philosophy gave me language for participation, my body had already spent years practicing it.

Long before I studied mythology, ritual, paganism, or the neuroscience of embodiment, I had already encountered something those traditions were trying to describe.

I knew it through music. Through movement. Through repetition. And most importantly through community.

By the simple act of showing up, again and again, until something inside me changed.

I no longer interpret every part of those years the way I did in my twenties.

But I trust the experience more than I trust all the language I once wrapped around it.

And that is where this story really begins.

Long before I studied heathenry/paganism,

I danced it.

The First Forms of Participation

Before there was a circle of plastic spinning around my waist, there were trees to climb, horses to ride, ponds to swim in, and twenty-six acres that gave my body somewhere to go. Some of my earliest memories are not of sitting still and thinking about the world, but of moving through it—crossing the dam, wandering the property, climbing high enough to see everything differently.

There was one enormous oak tree that had fallen and become something like a fort. I would retreat there after arguments with my mother, disappearing into its branches and hollows until I felt like myself again. I would not have called that nervous-system regulation. I would not have called it ritual, grounding, or communion with place. I only knew that the tree could hold something I did not yet know how to carry.

Movement was also part of my life in more formal ways. I took ballet, tap, and jazz, although jazz was the form I loved most. Ballet often made me painfully aware of my body—how tall I was, how much space I occupied, how unlike the smaller girls I sometimes felt. Jazz gave me more room. There was something about the music, the costumes, and the freedom of the movement that allowed me to step outside that self-consciousness for a while.

Music offered another kind of participation. I played piano and violin, but orchestra was where something larger began to reveal itself. Practicing alone mattered, but it was never the whole point. The real experience happened when everyone entered together: dozens of separate parts becoming one piece of music that none of us could have made alone.

I did not have words for why that felt so powerful. I only knew the difference between playing a part by myself and feeling it take its place inside a living whole.

The tree was not merely scenery.

The orchestra was not merely a collection of individuals.

Movement was not merely exercise.

Each required me to enter into a relationship—with a place, a rhythm, a group of people, or the limits of my own body. I could not understand any of them from the outside. I had to climb the branches, learn the music, miss the step, lose my place, and begin again.

Looking back, I can see that I was learning the same lesson in different forms: the world became more alive when I participated in it.

I did not yet know that this was a kind of knowledge. I only knew that I felt most like myself when I was moving, making, playing, or contributing one small part to something larger.

The hoop would eventually gather all of this into a single practice—movement, rhythm, repetition, music, play, place, and community.

It did not create the longing.

It gave the longing a shape.

The Circle Opens

One of my roommates and I, playing around with those rinky-dink store-bought hula hoops.

That shape arrived rather unceremoniously in the winter of 2005: a cheap, store-bought hula hoop that I could barely keep spinning around my waist.

At first, it was mostly frustrating. The hoop fell almost as quickly as I could lift it, clattering against the floor while I tried again. Eventually, though, my body found the rhythm. I carried it back to college, where I practiced in the living room while my roommates laughed, none of us realizing what had begun.

That first hoop was a toy. The real initiation came the following summer at Smilefest, a music festival held at Deerfields in North Carolina.

There, I picked up what hoopers called a “real” hoop—large, heavy, handmade, and nothing like the lightweight plastic circle I had been struggling with. I could feel the difference immediately. Its weight slowed the movement enough for my body to follow. For the first time, the hoop did not seem like an object I was trying to control. It felt like something I could enter into conversation with.

I practiced until dark bruises spread across both hips.

Then I strapped the enormous hoop to the roof of the car and brought it home.

Something had taken hold of me.

I began carrying the hoop everywhere. I practiced alone in backyards and parking lots, using my car stereo for music. I watched early YouTube videos of hoopers like Hoopalicious, Spiral, Christabel Zamor, and the Hoopnotica dancers, calling my roommates into the room whenever someone performed a movement I could not imagine being possible.

“Look at this. How does she do that?”

There were tutorials, but no explanation could place the movement inside my body. I could watch someone perform a trick dozens of times. I could study the position of her hands, the angle of the hoop, and the direction of its current. None of that meant I could do it. The knowledge had to travel another route.

I had to pick up the hoop.

I had to drop it.

I had to feel where the movement broke down, make some tiny adjustment I could barely name, and try again.

One of the clearest memories I have from that period is standing in the front yard during my junior year of college, listening to the same music over and over while trying to raise the hoop from my knees back toward my waist. I had watched other people do it. I understood, in theory, what was supposed to happen.

But my body did not know yet.

Then, after what felt like endless repetition, something shifted. The hoop caught. My knees and hips found the pulse. The circle began to rise.

I could not have explained what I had done differently.

My body simply understood.

That moment opened a door. Once I felt the movement happen, I knew the other tricks were possible too because I had experienced the difference between knowing what a movement looked like and then knowing it from within.

The Circle Widens

That question did not remain private for long.

In March 2007, only about a year after I first began seriously hooping, I found myself waiting beside a stage in Boulder, Colorado, preparing to perform with EOTO for the first time.

For weeks, I had told everyone how excited I was. I was going to hoop onstage with Jason Hann and Micheal Travis—two musicians from String Cheese Incident (the jam band I had spent the previous summer following across the country.) Until that moment, the whole thing had felt thrilling and almost unreal.

Then it was time to walk onto the stage.

The excitement dropped straight into the pit of my stomach.

Holy shit. I’m really getting up there.

At that very moment, Jamie Janover, one of the other musicians came over, he had noticed how nervous I was and gave me a piece of advice I have never forgotten:

“Just go up there when you’re feeling the groove and get off when you’re done. It’s simple.”

He was right, although it did not feel simple while I was standing there.

There was no choreography to memorize and no fixed sequence waiting for me. EOTO was an improv jam band. The musicians were listening and responding to one another in real time. The audience was responding to the music. To join them, I had to stop thinking about how I looked, listen with my entire body, and enter the moment already unfolding.

I could not calculate my way into it.

I had to feel when to step forward.

For the first time, I was no longer simply hooping to music.

I was moving inside it.

Inside the Music

Once I crossed that threshold, the road opened quickly.

Music was not something playing quietly in the background while life happened elsewhere. It organized our movements, our travel, our friendships, and our sense of time. We planned entire summers around gathering beneath stages and temporary tents. We drove for days to arrive somewhere that would exist for only a weekend, then disappear almost as quickly as it had formed.

For those few days, however, we were not merely an audience.

People danced, cooked, camped, taught, performed, built installations, traded food, shared supplies, carried one another’s equipment, and stayed awake until sunrise. Musicians improvised with one another onstage while dancers responded from the crowd. The boundary between performer and participant was more porous than it appeared.

Symbiosis Music Festival 2007

When there was room, I stepped onto the stage with my hoop. Other times, I danced in the field among everyone else. Both experiences were deeply impactful in my dance practice. Whether hundreds of people were watching me or no one was, I was learning to respond to rhythm rather than impose myself upon it.

The music moved, so I moved.

The hoop changed direction, so I followed.

The crowd surged, softened, shouted, or fell quiet, and the whole atmosphere changed with it.

At its best, it felt less like a performance than a conversation occurring through bodies.

Over time, the women I had once watched with awe became people I practiced beside. Some became teachers, troupe members, collaborators, and friends. I moved to Portland at the end of 2007 and joined Kaivalya Hoop Dancers, entering a community that took the practice seriously while still preserving its sense of play.

I spent Portland’s rainy season obsessively practicing reverse currents. I wanted to move comfortably in both directions, even though one side initially felt completely unnatural. I repeated barrel rolls, breaks, pauses, and reversals until the awkward side slowly became less foreign.

Then severe back pain forced the practice to change again.

At twenty-three, there were days when preparing food or standing for longer than twenty minutes felt nearly impossible. I worried that I would lose the thing that had given my life so much momentum. I could no longer rely on constant waist hooping or the larger, more physically demanding movements that had once filled my practice.

But limitation created another kind of education.

I began exploring pauses, tosses, reversals, off-body movement, and smaller gestures that did not aggravate my back as severely. What initially felt like an interruption became a new creative vocabulary. The hoop was still teaching me, but now the lesson was adaptation.

Participation did not mean forcing myself through pain. It meant listening closely enough to remain in relationship with the practice as my body changed.

Hoop Dance Workshops from all over the country

Eventually, I began teaching more.

At festivals and community gatherings, I watched people pick up hoops with the same awkward uncertainty I had once felt. Some were convinced they could not do it. Others laughed the moment the hoop dropped. I learned that teaching movement required more than explaining where to place the feet or how to push the hips.

Sometimes I demonstrated.

Sometimes I offered a small correction.

Sometimes the most useful thing I could do was give someone enough room to fail without feeling embarrassed.

The moment when a movement finally entered another person’s body was unmistakable. Their face changed. The effort briefly disappeared. What had seemed impossible became available to them from the inside.

At EmergNsee Music Gathering (2008) in Oregon, I taught a HoopYoga and hoop-dance workshop attended by Meghan the Kat, one of the performers who had inspired me during my earliest years following String Cheese Incident. There was something beautifully disorienting about teaching a person I had once watched from a distance.

The hierarchy I had imagined between teacher and student dissolved.

She had given something to me through her movement. I had taken it into my own body, practiced it, altered it, combined it with what I had learned elsewhere, and now I was returning something to her.

Knowledge moved in a circle.

As I wrote at the time:

“It’s so beautiful how we all learn from each other, one hooper heart to the next.”

That sentence is covered in the earnestness of my early twenties, but I still believe what I was trying to say.

The practice did not belong to any one teacher, performer, or school. It passed between us. We learned through watching, imitating, experimenting, teaching, and being corrected. Every person carried the movement differently because every body was different. What one person offered was never reproduced perfectly; it was received, transformed, and passed onward.

By the time I attended Hoop Camp in California in 2008, that circulating exchange had become a culture of its own.

Hoop Camp Retreat 2008

For years, I had known many hoopers primarily through grainy online videos, usernames, festival sightings, and brief encounters on tour. (I can’t help but to hear “This one time…at Band Camp”, if you grew up in the early 2000s, you’ll get this. )

The people I had admired from across the country were suddenly gathered in one place. We practiced together during the day, exchanged ideas in workshops, ate together, laughed together, and filled the darkness with glowing hoops at night.

I was surrounded by women who had shaped my imagination before they ever knew my name, alongside childhood friends, college friends, troupe members, and the people who had become my chosen family on the road.

I described myself afterward as channeling “true Unicorn energy”—nonstop hooping, smiling, laughing, and learning. The language makes me laugh now, but the joy was real.

So was the sense that something larger than individual skill was taking place.

During the opening ceremony, we gathered around a prayer hoop and placed our intentions inside it. One by one, people spoke about what the hoop had done in their lives: the confidence it had restored, the friendships it had created, the grief it had carried, the joy it had unlocked, and the selves it had allowed them to discover.

In my blog afterward, I wrote:

“All of us have been changed by the hoop. It’s impacted our lives, brought us together, shown us ourselves, given us bliss, given us confidence…”

I would describe some of those experiences differently today. I no longer interpret every ecstatic weekend, meaningful coincidence, or intense connection through the same spiritual vocabulary I used then.

But I do not dismiss what happened simply because my language has changed.

We gathered around a shared practice.

We moved together.

We taught one another.

We placed hopes and prayers inside a circle.

And through repetition, rhythm, attention, and communal presence, many of us experienced real transformation.

What had begun as a cheap plastic toy had become a language through which we recognized one another.

A movement became a practice.

A practice became a community.

And somewhere along the way, community began to resemble ritual.

The Hunger We Keep Trying to Name

A movement became a practice.

A practice became a community.

And somewhere along the way, community began to resemble ritual.

I did not yet know the language of moral psychology or sociology. I had never heard Émile Durkheim’s phrase collective effervescence: the strange charge that can arise when people gather, move, sing, mourn, celebrate, and direct their attention toward something together.

I did not know Jonathan Haidt’s idea of the “hive switch”—the human capacity to loosen, temporarily, the boundaries of the individual self and become part of an emergent whole. Haidt has suggested that people sometimes need precisely these experiences of self-transcendence, and that music, dancing, communal worship, and local festivals can offer places where isolated individuals become participants in something larger.

I only knew what it felt like.

I knew the sensation of entering a field where hundreds of people were responding to the same rhythm. I knew what happened when musicians improvised, dancers answered, and the distance between performer and audience became briefly porous. I knew the feeling of looking across a dark campground and seeing circles of light moving through the trees.

I knew what it was to become less preoccupied with myself without disappearing entirely.

The experience was not one of erasing the individual. It was the experience of becoming an individual in relationship—one moving body inside a larger pattern.

Research on communal music and movement suggests that this feeling is not merely sentimental. Singing together can accelerate feelings of closeness among people who begin as strangers, while synchronized and physically demanding dance can deepen social bonding.

None of that proves that every festival is sacred, every crowd is healthy, or every ecstatic experience is transformative. Collective energy can be commercialized, manipulated, and turned toward destructive ends just as easily as generous ones. The same human capacity that allows people to lose themselves in music can also make groups tribal, conformist, or cruel.

But the possibility of misuse does not erase the underlying need.

We are creatures shaped for more than private thought.

We learn through imitation. We regulate one another through voice, expression, touch, and presence. We create attachment through repeated encounters. We remember through songs, meals, places, stories, gestures, and practices carried from one body into another.

And yet modern life increasingly offers us the image of these things without requiring our participation in them.

We can stream concerts without entering a crowd.

Watch other people dance without moving.

Order food without cooking or eating with anyone.

Read about ritual without belonging to a ritual community.

Listen to conversations about friendship while sitting alone.

Learn the vocabulary of embodiment while barely inhabiting our bodies.

We are connected to more people than previous generations could have imagined, yet much of that connection asks almost nothing of us beyond attention.

And attention is not the same as belonging.

Recognition is not reciprocity.

Watching is not participating.

A feed is not a feast.

The distinction matters because loneliness is not simply the absence of people. It can also be the absence of roles, obligations, shared places, repeated practices, and the experience of being meaningfully woven into other lives.

We have become very skilled at diagnosing the resulting ache.

We speak of trauma responses, dopamine, attachment styles, nervous-system dysregulation, depression, social anxiety, and burnout. These frameworks can be genuinely helpful. Naming an experience can make it less frightening and give us a place to begin.

But sometimes I wonder whether we are still trying to think our way out of conditions that cannot be changed through thought alone.

A widely shared passage attributed to Jay LeSoleil puts the mismatch much more sharply:

“You feel depressed and crazy because in every historical human culture known to anthropology, people sang together, danced together, and ate food together—and you don’t sing, you don’t dance, and you eat alone in the dark.

You are a singing ape, and you are meant to know fifty dances by heart, which hilltops are sacred, and the names of every plant it is possible to eat.”

The passage is deliberately sweeping. Depression cannot be reduced to a lack of communal dancing, and no single poetic statement can represent every historical culture.

But it lands because it names something our clinical language often misses.

The problem may not be only what is happening inside the isolated individual.

The problem may also be the world in which the individual is being asked to live.

A world where community has become optional, ritual has become content, food has become fuel, music has become background noise, and places are valued primarily for what can be extracted or built upon them.

A world in which we are encouraged to construct an identity but given fewer durable ways to belong.

Perhaps that is why our hunger attaches itself so easily to substitutes.

We mistake stimulation for aliveness.

Visibility for intimacy.

Agreement for community.

Intermittent attention for belonging.

We search for the feeling of being carried beyond ourselves through fandoms, online movements, romantic fixation, political tribes, spiritual consumerism, and endless streams of other people’s lives. Some of these can produce real relationships and genuine meaning. But they can also leave the body sitting in the same room, staring through the same glass, still longing to be somewhere it is needed.

When I look back now, I do not think I miss only the performances, the festivals, or the person I was at twenty-three.

I miss having a practice that placed me inside a living network of people, music, places, responsibilities, and shared memory.

I knew which songs could shift the energy of an entire field.

I knew who would help me carry my hoops.

I knew where people gathered after the music ended.

I had teachers, students, collaborators, and friends.

I had something to offer the gathering, and the gathering had something to ask of me.

That is different from being observed.

It is different from being liked.

It is different from being included in a group chat.

It is participation.

In 2014, I tried to describe this in a short poem:

Grateful for Dance

Portal to divine connection
A form of sacred expression
Of outward shining expansion
Here I am, calling to attention

It’s time to move
It’s time to be free
It’s time to prove
Your non-complacency

So please follow me
Down this path of dance divinity
It’s time we realize
It’s not you and me, it’s we.

Some of the language makes me smile now. But that final line contains an intuition I still trust. It was never only about what happened to me inside the hoop.

It was about what became possible between us.

This does not mean we need to recreate the past, abandon technology, or spend our lives at music festivals. Nor does it mean every older community was nurturing. Communities can constrain, exclude, punish, and demand conformity. Nostalgia can make us forget that belonging has often come at a cost.

The question is not how to return to an imaginary golden age.

The question is what forms of participation human beings still need—and how we might create them honestly now.

Where can we sing without needing to be singers?

Dance without needing to perform?

Prepare food that will be eaten by more than one person?

Learn the names of the plants and animals around us?

Create rituals that give grief, gratitude, transition, and memory somewhere to live outside our private minds?

Practice something regularly enough that it changes us?

Modern people are drowning in information about how to become healthier, happier, more regulated, more spiritual, and more connected. But information cannot substitute for the meal, the chorus, the dance, the garden, the ceremony, the friendship, or the repeated practice.

Some wisdom can only be received through participation.

And perhaps some forms of loneliness cannot be solved by understanding ourselves more perfectly. Perhaps they require becoming part of something that does not begin and end with the self.

That is the ancient hunger beneath modern life.

Not merely the hunger to believe something.

The hunger to belong to a living world again.

And we may not be able to think our way back into that world.

We may have to participate our way home.

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Articles that influenced this series:

The Way of the Gods: Clarifying Paganism

Power Through Truth

Mediation, Myth and Mystery

the World of GroovinMeGzz: Is That a Hula-HoOp?? (A story of a hooper…)

Posted on in ancienthistory, archaeology, beliefs, cultoffitness, culture, deconstruction, demons, druidry, esotericism, exercise, fitness, fitnessjourney, fitspiration, greekphilosophy, heathen, historicalfigures, history, homeopathy, mindset, musclegrowth, mythicism, nuance, paganism, physiology, podcast, research, stressresilence, wellness, womenshealth

When the Iron Becomes an Altar

Strength and devotion with Primal Druidry

Hey Hey, Welcome back to Taste of Truth Tuesdays!

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.

Links:

Druidic Discipline: Physicality as Spiritual Practice

–https://substack.com/@primaldruidry – Insta

“Pagan LARP” – Idolizing the Image

Posted on in ancienthistory, archaeology, beliefs, cults, culture, deconstruction, esotericism, exchristian, faith, heathen, ideologies, magical thinking, manifestation, manipulation, mentalhealth, mindset, misinformation, mythicism, new age spirituality, newagetojesus, nuance, paganism, philosophy, podcast, religion, runes, theology, wordofgod

Mystery, Myth & Manipulation

Runes, Religion & the Search for the Sacred

Hey Hey, Welcome back to Taste0ftruth Tuesdays. In today’s episode we are sitting down with Tina K. of The Rune Shack to explore runes, esotericism, and Norse-Germanic spirituality, alongside my own path through New Age spirituality, Christianity, and deconstruction.

For years, I was searching.

I wandered through wellness culture, festival communities, New Age spirituality, psychedelic conversations, evangelical Christianity, and eventually the long road of deconstruction. Every step taught me something. Every community offered language for experiences that often felt deeply meaningful.

But over time, I began to wonder:

How do we know when spirituality is making us more grounded—and when it is simply helping us escape reality?

Modern spirituality often promises awakening, healing, manifestation, higher consciousness, hidden knowledge, or secret wisdom. Sometimes those ideas genuinely encourage reflection and personal growth. Other times, they can become substitutes for the harder work of living honestly, accepting limits, grieving loss, cultivating discipline, and remaining accountable to reality and to other people.

This conversation isn’t a rejection of mystery. Far from it.

I believe human beings need myth, ritual, symbol, beauty, and experiences that remind us life is deeper than material reductionism alone can explain.

The challenge for me has been learning to distinguish between mystery and manipulation.

That distinction is one reason I wanted to invite Tina K. from The Rune Shack onto the podcast. Rather than centering on a single article, this conversation explores a broader landscape of ideas:

  • What is heathen spirituality?
  • What are runes beyond their popular image?
  • What does esotericism actually mean?
  • Why can spiritual authority become dangerous?
  • What makes New Age spirituality appealing and where can it become escapist?
  • Why do so many modern spiritual movements continue to reinterpret Jesus through ideas like the cosmic Christ or Christ consciousness?
  • And perhaps the deepest question of all:

What does real spirituality actually require?

I don’t approach these questions as someone who has everything figured out.

I ask them as someone who has lived inside several different spiritual worlds and has become increasingly interested in discernment rather than certainty.

My hope is to encourage more thoughtful questions about the stories we inherit, the authorities we trust, and the practices that shape our lives.

I hope you’ll join us for the conversation. Please let me know your thoughts.

LINKS mentioned:

My interview I did with Tina Part 1 & the Part 2 (paid)

Rune Shack Radio with Torna Braggison

Tina’s article on Rune Magick in the Sagas

Posted on in beautyideals, beautystandards, beliefs, biology, bodyappreciation, bodyimage, culture, diet, dietculture, disorderedeating, education, exchristian, fatloss, fitness, fitnessjourney, fitspiration, health, history, holistic health, hormones, mental health, mentalhealth, metabolism, midlife, mindset, misinformation, multilevelmarketing, nuance, nutrition, nutritionadvice, nutritionalscience, podcast, research, self-help, selfcompassion, socialmediainfluence, stress, thyroid health, trauma, wellness, womenshealth

When Discipline Stops Working

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.

If you want to dive deeper into this topic:

From Diary Entries to Digital Screens: How Beauty Ideals and Sexualization Have Transformed Over Time

Where It All Began: The Messages That Shape Us

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.

Dive deeper into my body building journey here:

Fit for TV: How Screens, Diet Culture, and Reality Shows Rewire Our Bodies and Minds

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.

Untangling the Threads of Chronic Pain, Trauma, and Healing

Why Women’s Bodies Adapt Instead of “Bounce Back”

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.

Metabolism Myths: Why Dieting Fails

The Systems That Reinforce Shame

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.

Beyond the Before-and-After: The Truth About Social Media and Body Image

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

  1. Brumberg, J. J. (1997). The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls. Random House.
  2. 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.
  3. Kite, L., & Kite, L. (2020). More Than a Body: Your Body Is an Instrument, Not an Ornament. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Scientific and academic sources

  1. 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.
  2. Lassek, W. D., & Gaulin, S. J. C. (2008). Waist–hip ratio and cognitive ability. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 275(1644), 193–199.
  3. Dulloo, A. G., Jacquet, J., & Montani, J. P. (2015). Adaptive thermogenesis in human body-weight regulation. Obesity Reviews, 16(S1), 33–43.
  4. Fothergill, E., et al. (2016). Persistent metabolic adaptation after weight loss. Obesity, 24(8), 1612–1619.
  5. Kyle, U. G., et al. (2004). Body composition interpretation. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 79(6), 955–962.
  6. Simopoulos, A. P. (2016). Omega-6/omega-3 balance and obesity risk. Nutrients, 8(3), 128.

Trauma, stress, and nervous system context

  1. Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Henry Holt and Company.
  2. Walker, P. (2013). Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Azure Coyote Books.
Posted on in beautystandards, beforeandafter, beforeandafterphotos, beliefs, biology, bodyappreciation, bodyimage, calories, challenges, chronichealth, cultoffitness, diet, dietculture, disorderedeating, exercise, fatloss, fitness, fitnessjourney, fitspiration, goal setting, holistic health, hormones, hypothyroidism, influencers, mental health, mentalhealth, mindset, musclegrowth, newyeargoals, nutritionadvice, nutritionalscience, philosophy, physiology, podcast, self-help, socialmedia, socialmediainfluence, stress, thyroid health, weightloss, wellness

Fit for TV: How Screens, Diet Culture, and Reality Shows Rewire Our Bodies and Minds

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.

Read more:

Understanding the Impact of Diet on Thyroid Health

Personal Lessons: Living It

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.

Read more:

Breaking Free: Escaping the Diet Culture Trap

From Digital Screens to Unrealistic Bodies

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.

Read more:

From Diary Entries to Digital Screens: How Beauty Ideals and Sexualization Have Transformed Over Time

Netflix Documentary: The Dark Side

Fit for TV exposes just how far the show went:

  • 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:

  1. Watch critically: Ask, “What is this really teaching me?”
  2. Respect biology: Your body fights extreme restriction—it’s not lazy or weak.
  3. 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! 🎙️🔒

🆕🆕This collection includes books that have deeply influenced my thinking, challenged my assumptions, and shaped my content. ⁠Book Recommendations – Taste0ftruth Tuesdays

Posted on in beliefs, biology, brainhealth, deconstruction, emotionalflashback, exchristian, goal setting, mental health, mindset, neuroscience, physiology, podcast, polyvagaltheory, resilence, self-help, selfcompassion, therapy, trauma, wellness

Your Body Is the Scoreboard

From Heart to Brain: The Neuroscience Behind Connection and Calm

Welcome back to Taste of Truth Tuesdays, where we maintain our curiosity, embrace skepticism, and never stop asking what’s really going on beneath the surface. Last week, I prepared you for this episode, so if you missed out, please check it out! It’s short and sweet.

The Deluded Brain: Why Control Feels Safe, Certainty Feels Holy, & Complexity Feels Threatening

Now, for today’s episode….

Let me ask you something:

Why does your body feel like it’s on high alert… even when nothing “bad” is happening?
Why do you either trust too quickly or not at all and end up anxious, burned out, and ashamed?
Why is it so damn hard to regulate your emotions, especially when you’re great at controlling everything else?

If those questions hit a little too close to home… this episode is for you.

Last season, we dove deep into complex trauma through Pete Walker’s From Surviving to Thriving, unpacking how childhood neglect, emotional abuse, and developmental trauma shape adult patterns.

And today? We’re going even deeper — through the lens of neuroscience.

Because what if these aren’t personality quirks or moral failings? What if your brain and body are actually doing their best to protect you, using adaptations wired by Complex PTSD?

My guest today is Cody Isabel | Neuroscience, a neuroscience researcher and writer whose work has become a game-changer in trauma conversations. He holds a degree in Cognitive Behavioral Neuroscience, has training in Internal Family Systems psychotherapy, and specializes in the emerging field of Psychoneuroimmunology — the study of how your thoughts, brain, and immune system interact.

His Substack article, “PTSD & Complex PTSD Are NOT the Same Thing,” has been one of the clearest, most validating reads on this topic I’ve found.

So, if you’ve ever felt stuck, shut down, reactive, misunderstood, or like your nervous system has a mind of its own…. stay with me.

Because today we’re not just talking trauma.
We’re talking nervous system intelligence.
We’re talking identity repair.
We’re talking real, embodied healing.

And before we get into that, I want to bring a few threads together from past episodes—because they’re all woven into this conversation.

Unraveling the Impact of Stress on Chronic Health with Theresa Piela

We’ve talked about fawning, the lesser-known trauma response that shows up as chronic people-pleasing, self-abandonment, and conflict avoidance—especially common in those who’ve survived high-control environments. In this episode with Theresa, we also explore the stress cycle. According to Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome, your body moves through three stages when facing ongoing stress: Alarm, Resistance, and eventually, Exhaustion. And fawning, while behavioral, can easily become your nervous system’s go-to tactic—especially during prolonged stress or in the presence of power dynamics that feel threatening.

We have talked about the Emotional Hijack and how trauma impacts the brain in this episode.

Emotional Hijacks & Nutritional Hacks: Unveiling the🧠Amygdala’s Secrets

We’ve also referenced the vagus nerve, but not specifically Polyvagal Theory—but today, we’re going deeper. Instead of seeing your stress responses as “malfunctions,” it reframes them as adaptive survival strategies. Your nervous system isn’t betraying you—it’s trying to protect you. It’s just working off old wiring.

Think of it like this:

Your nervous system is constantly scanning for cues of safety or threat—this is called neuroception. And based on what it detects, your body shifts into different states—each with a biological purpose.

The Polyvagal Chart breaks this down into three major states:

1. 🟢 Ventral Vagal – Social Engagement (Safety)

This is your “rest-and-connect” zone. You feel grounded, calm, curious, and open. You can be present with yourself and with others. Your body prioritizes digestion, immune function, and bonding hormones like oxytocin. You’re regulated.

This is the state we’re meant to live in most of the time—but trauma, chronic stress, or inconsistent caregiving can knock us out of it.

2. 🟡 Sympathetic – Fight or Flight (Danger)

When your system detects danger, it flips into high alert. Blood rushes to your limbs, your heart races, your digestion shuts down. You either fight (rage, irritation) or flee (anxiety, panic). This is survival mode. It’s not rational—it’s reactive.

And if that still doesn’t resolve the threat?

3. 🔴 Dorsal Vagal – Freeze (Life Threat)

This is the deepest shutdown. Your system says: “This is too much. I can’t.” You go numb. You collapse. You may dissociate, feel hopeless, or emotionally flatline. It’s not weakness—it’s your nervous system pulling the emergency brake to conserve energy and protect you.

Here’s what’s crucial to understand: these responses aren’t choices. They’re biological defaults. And many of us are stuck in loops of fight, flight, or freeze because our systems never got a chance to complete the stress cycle and return to safety.

So instead of shaming yourself for overreacting or shutting down, what if you asked:

“What is my nervous system trying to do for me right now?”
“What does it need to feel safe again?”

That shift—from judgment to curiosity—is the beginning of healing.

And we’ll connect this to another major thread—attachment systems, which we haven’t unpacked in depth yet, but absolutely need to.

Your attachment system is the biological and psychological mechanism that drives you to seek safety, closeness, and emotional connection—especially when you’re under stress. It develops in early childhood through repeated interactions with your caregivers, shaping how you regulate your emotions, perceive threats, and relate to others. If those caregivers were emotionally attuned, predictable, and responsive, you likely formed a secure attachment. But if they were inconsistent, neglectful, controlling, or chaotic… your attachment system learned to adapt in ways that may have kept you safe then—but cost you connection now.

In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt points to a disturbing moment in psychological history that disrupted the natural development of secure attachment: the rise of behaviorism in the early 20th century.

John B. Watson, a founding figure of behaviorism, famously applied the same rigid, mechanistic principles he used on rats to raising human children. In his 1928 bestseller The Psychological Care of Infant and Child, he urged parents not to kiss their children, not to comfort them when they cried, and to withhold affection—believing emotional bonding would produce weak, dependent adults.

By the mid-20th century, attachment theory began to challenge these behaviorist claims. John Bowlby, in the 1950s, argued that infants form emotional bonds with caregivers as an innate survival mechanism—not merely as conditioned responses to rewards, as behaviorism suggested. His work, drawing from ethology, psychoanalysis, and control systems theory, moved beyond behaviorism’s narrow stimulus-response framework. Mary Ainsworth’s empirical research in the 1960s and ’70s, through her Strange Situation study, confirmed that attachment styles stem from caregiver sensitivity and infant security needs, rather than simple conditioning.

Yet, ironically, during the 1970s and ’80s, Christian parenting teachings—particularly those popularized by figures like Dobson—adopted and amplified the very behaviorist ideas that attachment research was already disproving. These teachings emphasized strict discipline and emotional control, often citing Scripture to justify practices rooted in outdated psychological theories rather than theology.

Let that sink in.

For decades, dominant parenting advice discouraged emotional responsiveness, treating affection not as a necessity but as a liability.

This wasn’t just bad advice—it was the psychological equivalent of nutritional starvation. Instead of missing vitamins, children missed attunement, safety, and connection. As attachment research has since shown, those early emotional experiences shape nervous system development, stress regulation, and whether someone grows up trusting or fearing closeness.

So, when we talk about stress responses like fawning… or chronic over-functioning… or emotional dysregulation… we’re often seeing the adult expression of a nervous system that never learned what safety feels like in the presence of other people.

And that’s why today’s conversation matters. Because healing isn’t just about rewiring thought patterns. It’s about rebuilding your felt sense of safety—in your body, in your relationships, and in your life.

And if you are anything like me and have found yourself wondering… why your nervous system reacts the way it does… or why regulating your emotions feels impossible even when you “know better” … this episode will connect the dots in ways that are both validating and eye-opening.

We’re talking trauma, identity, neuroplasticity, stress, survival, and what it really means to come home to yourself.

The topics we explore:

  • The critical differences between PTSD and Complex PTSD — and how each impacts the brain and body
  • Why CPTSD isn’t just a fear response, but a full-body survival adaptation that reshapes your identity
  • What it means to heal “from the bottom up,” and why insight alone isn’t enough
  • How books and language can validate our experience — without replacing the need for somatic work
  • The push-pull of relational safety: why CPTSD makes connection feel risky, even when we crave it
  • How trauma affects the Default Mode Network, and why healing often feels like rediscovering who you are

Whether you’re navigating relational triggers, spiritual disorientation, or the long road of recovery, this conversation offers clarity, compassion, and a grounded path forward.

Please enjoy the interview!

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LINKS:

Check out Cody’s work! About – The Mind, Brain, Body Digest

The Top 5 Childhood Core Wounds in Overachievers 🧠

No Bad Parts | IFS Institute | Schwartz

Transcending Trauma Healing Complex PTSD with Internal Family Systems Therapy

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Taste Test Thursdays: A BONUS Series!

A New Way to Dig Into Truth Together

Hey everyone, welcome to the very first episode of Taste Test Thursdays! If you’re new here, this is a special bonus series where I’ll be giving you a behind-the-scenes look at the topics I didn’t get a chance to fully explore during Season 3 of Taste of Truth Tuesdays. Think of this as the leftovers—the ideas that were simmering on the back burner but never made it onto the main plate.

But this series isn’t just about what I didn’t cover. It’s about giving you a deeper look into my thought process—how I research, why I choose certain topics, and the unfiltered thoughts I don’t always include in the main episodes. Some weeks will be casual, some will be research-heavy, and some, like today, will be personal.

Because for this first episode, I want to start with a topic I’ve touched on but never fully shared: my own experience with chronic pain and how it shaped not only my fitness journey but my entire approach to health and resilience.

The Story Behind My Chronic Pain & Fitness Journey

Let’s rewind a bit. Growing up, I was always active, but I never saw fitness as something I’d build my life around. That changed when I started dealing with chronic pain. At first, it was subtle—nagging aches, stiffness that didn’t go away. But then it became something more. Pain wasn’t just an inconvenience; it dictated what I could and couldn’t do. Doctors didn’t always have clear answers, and at times, it felt like I was being dismissed.

That frustration pushed me to start researching on my own-diving into biomechanics, nutrition, corrective exercise, and the ways the nervous system and pain are intertwined. I wasn’t just looking for relief; I was trying to understand why my body was responding this way. And what I found changed everything.

A while back, I wrote a blog post about this—one that really captures my experience in a way that feels raw and honest. And instead of just summarizing it, I want to share it with you here. So, here’s that piece, in its entirety.

Untangling the Threads of Chronic Pain, Trauma, and Healing

How It Shaped My Career & Perspective

This experience didn’t just lead me into fitness; it redefined how I approach movement altogether. It made me realize that pain isn’t just a physical experience—it’s emotional, neurological, and deeply personal. It’s why I’m so passionate about evidence-based approaches to health and why I push back against a lot of the oversimplified fitness narratives out there.

I’ve seen firsthand how the right training, nutrition, and mindset shifts can change the way someone interacts with their own body. And I’ve also seen the damage of quick-fix culture—where people are told they just need more discipline, or worse, that their pain is all in their head.

What I Wish More People Knew About Chronic Pain & Fitness

One of the biggest misconceptions I had to unlearn is that pain automatically means damage. That’s something I wish more people understood. Pain is real, but it’s also complex—it can be influenced by stress, trauma, movement patterns, and even the stories we tell ourselves about our bodies. Learning that was a game changer for me.

Another thing? There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Healing, strength, and movement look different for everyone, and that’s okay.

What to Expect From Taste Test Thursdays

So, that’s today’s leftover—a topic I didn’t get to fully explore in Season 3 but felt like now was the right time to share. But Taste Test Thursdays won’t always be this personal. Some weeks, I’ll take you inside my research process—breaking down how I fact-check, where I find sources, and the information I don’t trust. Other weeks, I’ll revisit ideas I didn’t have time for, explore unfiltered takes, or answer your burning questions.

Next week, we’ll be talking about how I put together my episodes—how I decide on topics, what I look for in sources, and some of the biggest red flags I watch out for when researching.

I’d love to hear from you—what’s been your experience with pain and fitness? Have you ever had to unlearn things about your own body? Let me know over on Instagram or in the comments if you’re listening somewhere that allows it.

Thanks for being here, and as always—maintain your curiosity, embrace skepticism, and keep tuning in!

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From Diary Entries to Digital Screens: How Beauty Ideals and Sexualization Have Transformed Over Time

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

  1. 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).
  2. 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).
  3. 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).
  4. 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).
  • A 2020 study found that 91.5% of men and 60.2% of women had watched porn in the past month (Solano, Eaton, & O’Leary, 2020).

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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

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Beyond the Before-and-After: The Truth About Social Media and Body Image

🎙️ Welcome back to Taste of Truth Tuesdays! This week, we’re diving deep into the fascinating and impactful world of body image and social media, guided by two incredible guests who bring evidence-based insights and a passion for accessibility in mental health research.

🧠 First, let me introduce Dr. Hannah Jarman, Ph.D., a trailblazer in psychology whose work sheds light on how we perceive ourselves in the digital age. Alongside her is the brilliant Ms. Claudia Liu, a Ph.D. candidate whose research explores the intersection of social media and body image. These two share a common mission: making complex research not just understandable but applicable in everyday life

Body image—it’s a term we hear often, but what does it really mean? At its core, body image is your perceptions, beliefs, feelings, thoughts, and actions related to your physical appearance. Think of it as your personal relationship with your body. Sounds simple, but in a world shaped by curated social media feeds and fitspiration photos, it’s anything but.

To ground our discussion, we’ll be exploring the four components of body image, starting with Perceptual Body Image—how you see yourself. Here’s the catch: the way you see your body often doesn’t match reality. It’s a perception distorted by negative self-talk and societal pressures. But awareness is the first step. Interrupting that loop of negative talk can help shift your perception toward something healthier.

Next, there’s Affective Body Image, which reflects how you feel about your body—your likes and dislikes. These feelings are deeply influenced by the media we consume, from TV and movies to social media trends like “fitspiration.” Here’s the thing: hating your body is not a prerequisite for change. Dissatisfaction and acceptance can coexist. Making intentional choices about what media you engage with can profoundly impact how you feel about yourself.

Then we have Cognitive Body Image, or the thoughts and beliefs you hold about your body. Ever heard someone say, “I’ll be happy when I hit my goal weight”? It’s a dangerous trap because happiness isn’t tied to a number on the scale. Chasing an external solution for an internal problem often leads to harmful patterns and a cycle of discontent.

2018: My leanest physique post-bodybuilding competitions. I sat here feeling self-conscious, convinced I looked ‘fat.’ It’s wild to look back and realize how much my mind distorted my reality.

When I look back at photos of myself at my leanest—whether it was during my bodybuilding competitions or soon after—I remember how uncomfortable I felt in my body even then. This always reminds me that body image isn’t actually about how your body looks; it’s about your relationship with your body and, ultimately, with yourself.

Finally, Behavioral Body Image—the actions we take based on our perceptions, feelings, and beliefs. When someone struggles with negative body image, they might engage in destructive behaviors like over-exercising, disordered eating, or social withdrawal.

Today, we’ll unpack these components with Dr. Jarman and Ms. Liu and dive into their groundbreaking research on the impact of social media and fitspiration on our body image. We’ll also share actionable tips to help you reshape your relationship with your body and your digital environment.

Get ready for an enlightening and empowering conversation. Let’s go!

Dr. Hannah Jarman, a research fellow at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, who specializes in body image, eating disorders, and the influence of media. Dr. Jarman’s interest in this field began when a young child in her life, around 5 or 6 years old, started expressing distress about her body, saying things like “I’m fat, I need to lose weight.” This was concerning not only because of the child’s age, but also because her family had a history of eating disorders. Recognizing the red flags, Dr. Jarman sought advice from a lecturer specializing in body image, which sparked her passion for research and intervention.

This led to her work on body image interventions in schools and later, a PhD on the impact of social media on adolescent body image and well-being. Dr. Jarman’s work continues to explore the critical intersection between media influence and body dissatisfaction, aiming to identify predictors and create effective prevention strategies for eating disorders.

Claudia, a final-year PhD candidate in Psychology at Melbourne University. Claudia’s research focuses on disordered eating, body image, and digital health—an emerging area in the field. Her passion for this work stems from her own personal experiences with disordered eating and negative body image during her younger years. Growing up in Southeast Asia, where thin ideals were heavily glorified, Claudia internalized these societal pressures, which led to unhealthy behaviors. Fortunately, she overcame these challenges, and this journey inspired her to pursue a PhD, hoping her research can provide insights and support for others facing similar struggles.

I’ve also seen in the data that children as young as 5 are struggling with negative body image, and I can really relate to Claudia’s experience. I, too, have struggled with disordered eating. I’ve enrolled in eating disorder therapy and have been given some of the most extreme programs, like having to eat the same meal plan six times a day for 12 weeks. The strictness of it led to binges, and it was clear that something wasn’t working.

Thank you to all the researchers out there, because while I don’t have a PhD, I did pursue a psychology certification as part of my continuing education for personal trainers. The more I worked with clients, the more I realized the connection between psychology and nutrition. Many of my clients came to me wanting to “lose weight”, but before we could even start thinking about that, we had to address underlying issues like under-eating, yo-yo dieting, and inconsistency. I had to teach them that they had to earn their right to diet, which was a difficult but crucial concept to stress. That’s when I knew I needed to learn more about psychology—it wasn’t just about the physical aspect but the mental and emotional work that had to come first.

Dr. Jarman adds, it’s so ingrained in our society, these ideals and these pressures and dieting. If you think about the people around you, how many—probably the majority, particularly of females, but also a lot of males—struggle with these issues and have unhealthy relationships with food or exercise or whatever it may be. These perfect ideals are supposedly so easy, and they should all be achieving them. But that’s absolutely right.

Men do have the pressure as well, like this big masculine look or the negative term of ‘dad bod.’ Men are also getting objectified or judged. So much of what the fitness industry sells is a psy-op. They’re just trying to sell you the idea that you can control this. It’s like in the religious world, where we have something called the prosperity gospel—‘If you do this, you’ll get God’s blessing.’ Diet culture plays the same tune: ‘If you do this, you’ll get that.’ It’s a deep psychological hook, tapping into our need for control. This need triggers dopamine, which reinforces these behaviors. Whether it’s following rigid fitness plans or religious dogma, it’s the dopamine hit that keeps us hooked. I appreciate you guys getting on here.

A little bit off-mic, season 2 was exploring breaking free from diet culture, body-neutral fitness, and focusing on performance-based goals. While you might see some changes in aesthetics, that’s just a bonus. The real focus is on getting stronger, improving blood markers, or simply walking every day. I’ve learned as a personal trainer that even when clients achieve their weight loss goals, it doesn’t always lead to a better body image or happiness. So, what is body appreciation, and why is it so crucial for mental well-being?

Body Appreciation

Claudia: “Yeah, I can take that one. So, body appreciation is basically a key or core positive body image concept that involves recognizing, valuing, and respecting the body for its functional capacity and its health, rather than how it looks. I know you mentioned that earlier on. So, it’s really about shifting the focus away from aesthetics and towards its functional capacity and functionality. Over the past 10 years, there’s been a surge in research showing that greater body appreciation is associated with a number of psychological outcomes—such as improved self-esteem, better quality of life, and overall emotional and physical well-being. Studies also show that body appreciation encourages people to adopt healthier, more flexible eating patterns, like intuitive eating. For these reasons, it’s been proposed as a potential protective factor against issues like body dissatisfaction, symptoms of disordered eating, and building resilience against societal pressures to fit unrealistic beauty standards. So, that’s kind of my interpretation of body appreciation and why it’s so important.”

Dr. Jarman: “I guess just adding to that briefly as well, I think the focus really is understanding that our bodies are wonderful. They do so much for us, and we get so caught up in how they look and the expectations in that area, that we forget how lucky we are to have a functioning body. OK, maybe you don’t like your arms or think they’re flabby, but you can hug your child or do all these incredible things that we just get so caught up in and forget. It’s about being able to take a step back and really think about and appreciate and value those things.”

You: “And also, I think body appreciation can go a level deeper for those who might be disabled or have lost certain abilities—maybe weren’t born with them, but have lost the ability to move in certain ways. That can be really difficult, because… But you can still find ways to appreciate the small things, like the sun on your skin. Or, maybe you can’t walk or hug your child like you once could, but there are still ways to appreciate the vessel that you dwell in, and that helps you interact with the world. That’s why I like body appreciation. It strips away a lot of those pressures and ideal body standards. And I think for fitness, it really… I don’t know what happened, if it’s always been poison, but wellness culture became so focused on looks. I was raised in the ‘90s—Jessica Simpson was considered fat. That slim, hair-thin ideal was pushed. And now, I’m almost 40—just crazy, that’s what I was raised with. The low-rise jeans…”

Hannah: “They’re back now, maybe just in Australia, but they’re back!”

You: “No, no thanks!” (laughter)

How Social Media Shapes Body Image and Eating Behaviors: Understanding Its Impact on Mental Health and Well-Being

Social media has become a double-edged sword in terms of its influence on our body image and eating behaviors, especially among young women. Dr. Hannah Jarman, a research expert in the field, sheds light on the complexities of this issue, drawing from the latest findings in the field.

Research consistently shows that social media tends to worsen our body image. It often leads to comparisons, where we measure ourselves against the seemingly “perfect” lives and bodies of others. This sense of inadequacy can drive us to want to change our appearance, often through unhealthy means, believing that losing weight or attaining a certain body ideal will bring happiness.

Dr. Jarman explains that while time spent online used to be the primary focus of research, recent studies have shown that the content we engage with plays a more significant role in shaping our mental health. Specifically, appearance-focused content—such as photo edits, filters, and comparison-driven posts—are more harmful than we might realize.

Interestingly, content that is perceived as “inspirational” can also contribute to this negative cycle. Instead of motivating positive behaviors, it can lead to feelings of pressure and shame, pushing individuals further away from the very practices meant to improve their well-being. Instead of encouraging exercise or body appreciation, these idealized portrayals often result in a sense of failure, making it harder to engage in self-care.

So, what can we do to become more aware of the impact social media has on our mental well-being? Dr. Jarman suggests that the first step is reflection. Being mindful of what we follow and consume online is essential. Are the accounts and content we engage with making us feel better or worse about ourselves? By being selective in our media consumption and actively avoiding harmful content, we can better protect our body image and mental health from the negative influences of social media.

Taking Control: How to Curate Your Social Media Feed for Better Body Image and Mental Health

While social media algorithms have a strong influence over the content we see, Dr. Jarman emphasizes that we do have some control over our feeds. The key lies in curating what we consume. If you find yourself comparing or feeling bad about your body after viewing certain content, it’s time to take action. Don’t hesitate to unfollow, hide, or block accounts that negatively affect your mental well-being. Instead, fill your feed with content that lifts you up—whether that’s accounts that make you laugh, reflect your hobbies, or celebrate your personal interests.

Another vital tool in reducing the harm of social media is social media literacy. Dr. Jarman encourages us to critically evaluate what we see: Who is posting this content, and why? Are they promoting a product or idea, and how realistic is what’s being presented? Developing these critical skills can help you navigate the often-misleading nature of social media, empowering you to consume content that truly adds value to your life, rather than contributing to unrealistic standards and comparisons.

By being intentional about what we engage with, we can protect ourselves from the detrimental effects of social media on body image and mental health.

Mindfulness in Social Media Consumption: A Personal Approach to Authenticity

Mindfulness is key when engaging with social media. As Dr. Jarman mentioned, it’s not just about the time we spend online, but how we feel when interacting with certain content. When consuming posts, take a moment to check in with yourself: How do you feel after reading this? Does it leave you feeling inspired, or does it trigger negative comparisons? Recognizing your emotional response is an essential step toward curating a healthier online experience.

Personally, I’ve chosen to operate from a place of transparency. I don’t monetize my content, push affiliate links, or promote products for profit. For me, it’s not about selling anything; it’s about sharing information and offering genuine value. I even make my strength training guide available for free to anyone who asks. Why? Because I want to be seen as an expert, but also as a normal, imperfect human. It’s about finding the balance between encouraging people to be open with their own journeys while demonstrating that vulnerability and authenticity are part of what makes us all human.

Dr. Hannah Jarman emphasizes that while fitspiration content can appear motivating, it may unintentionally harm individuals by focusing on unattainable ideals. She notes that before-and-after images, for instance, can imply that the person in the “before” image is unworthy, while the “after” version suddenly seems perfect. Instead, she suggests shifting the focus to how individuals feel, highlighting personal performance or other non-aesthetic milestones.

In response, I throughout the suggestion of fitness coaches adding cover photos to before-and-after images, which could serve as a “trigger warning” for those scrolling through. This small change could offer viewers the opportunity to engage more thoughtfully, especially if they have a tendency to be triggered by such comparisons.

Dr. Jarman agrees, emphasizing the importance of showcasing the entire journey—ups, downs, and all. She advocates for content that highlights authenticity, as it’s often a longer, non-linear process. By focusing on emotional growth, feelings of self-worth, and overall well-being, the goal shifts away from just numbers and aesthetics, promoting healthier perspectives on body image and wellness.

Claudia shares her personal journey with body image and disordered eating, revealing how following fitness influencers who idealized a specific body type negatively impacted her mental health. She explains how curating her social media feed by unfollowing these influencers and instead following those who emphasize strength and science-based training was transformative. This shift helped her focus on performance and appreciation for her body rather than aesthetics or calorie-burning, leading to a healthier and more sustainable approach to fitness and nutrition.

To wrap up, Dr. Hannah highlights the importance of accessible information and shares a resource for listeners: their social media accounts on Instagram and TikTok, The Well-Being Doctors (@the.well.being.doctors), which focus on making research on wellness and mental health easy to understand and implement. She encourages listeners to follow their content for practical tips and evidence-based guidance.

✨Let’s anchor in this transformative message: Your body is an instrument, not an ornament. Positive body image isn’t believing your body looks good; it’s knowing your body is good, regardless of how it looks. This quote from More Than a Body beautifully captures the essence of what we’ve explored today.

💡 The fitness industry often sets standards based on bodybuilding gurus and extreme aesthetics—standards appraised by critical judges or an audience that values visual perfection. But let’s be honest: the behind-the-scenes reality of preparing for these aesthetic ideals often includes extreme measures—severe dehydration, malnutrition, laxative and stimulant abuse, and emergency-level exhaustion. No legitimate doctor would ever recommend these tactics for health. They’re the opposite of health-promoting.

💪 Instead, let’s focus on experience and benefit, not being ornaments to be admired. Metabolic health, strength, and stamina are far more meaningful indicators of well-being than achieving a “perfect” appearance. When we prioritize function over aesthetics, we open the door to a new, more effective, and empowering way to experience health and fitness.

🚨 At first, the idea of letting go of weight goals or aesthetic ideals might feel like giving up on your body or your health. But the reality is, letting go of these pressures frees you to reconnect with your body in a way that truly serves you.

🌟 Your body is how you live, love, and experience the world. It’s the way you savor delicious food, dance to your favorite songs, feel the rain on your skin, and embrace the people you love. By focusing on what your body can do rather than how it looks, you can deepen your relationship with it and rediscover what health and fitness really mean for you.

🎙️ So, let’s commit to shifting our focus. Set goals rooted in function, experience, and well-being—not in unrealistic aesthetic ideals. Because when you change the way you think about your body, you’ll find the freedom to live more fully in it.

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How to AVOID bad fitness advice

Navigating the Sea of Experts

In today’s digital age, it seems like everyone on social media is an “expert” in health, fitness, and nutrition. With so many voices claiming to have the answers, how can you tell what’s actually beneficial, what’s mediocre, and what might harm your progress? Let’s break it down and help you navigate this complex landscape.

Credentials Matter—But Don’t Get Fooled

While it’s important to consider credentials, they don’t guarantee good advice. Registered Dietitians, Certified Nutritionists, and certifications from organizations like ISSA, ACE, NASM, NCSF, AFFA, ACSM, NETA, and more can show that someone has taken the time to learn. However, even those with certifications can spread misinformation. We’ve seen firsthand how regulatory agencies can be captured by outside interests and how lobbying can influence what gets taught.

If you’re considering working with a coach or trainer, don’t hesitate to ask about their credentials. Slide into their DMs or ask in person: What do those letters behind your name mean?

Educated Recommendations: The “Why” and “How”

Your coach or mentor should have a clear understanding of the “WHY” and the “HOW” behind their recommendations. It’s not just about pushing a workout or diet plan—it’s about making sure you understand the reasoning behind every decision.

When they introduce something new to you, it shouldn’t feel like a sales pitch for their latest product. Instead, ask questions to dig deeper:

  • Why am I doing this?
  • How does this work?
  • What’s happening inside my body to promote these changes?
  • How will this help me achieve my goals while keeping me safe and healthy?
  • Can you teach this to me in another way so I firmly understand it?

These questions will not only help you grasp the concept, but they’ll also weed out anyone who can’t explain their reasoning. If they can’t give you a clear answer, it may be time to move on.

The Bottom Line: Trust Your Instincts

If something feels off, triggering, or harmful to you, trust your gut and ask questions. Don’t let flashy marketing, unrealistic promises, or a push to sell products convince you that something is right for you. Your body and health deserve the best, and that means getting information that is clear, evidence-based, and tailored to your needs.

Remember, the best fitness advice comes from someone who can explain, educate, and empower you, not someone who’s just looking to make a sale. Stay curious, stay skeptical, and don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions. Your fitness journey is too important to leave in the hands of someone who can’t back up their advice.