In nature, animals don’t just eat to survive - they seek out foods that satisfy. Birds will fly past one feeder to reach the berry bush they prefer.

Our own bodies carry the same wisdom: satisfaction is not indulgence, it’s a signal of balance.

When clients eat in ways that deny satisfaction - choking down protein shakes, cutting out favourite foods, or following portion rules that leave them hungry - they remain restless, searching. This constant deprivation fuels binge-restrict cycles and erodes trust in the body (Polivy & Herman, 1985).

Intuitive Eating’s principle of Discover the Satisfaction Factor reframes satisfaction as a therapeutic tool (Tribole & Resch, 2020). When food tastes good, when it’s eaten in a supportive environment, when the nervous system feels safe, the body naturally regulates hunger and fullness more smoothly.

As naturopaths, we know satisfaction is woven into every other aspect of health: deep rest after exertion, the big sigh after stress, the sweetness of herbs that soothe the gut or calm the mind. To leave satisfaction out of eating is to ignore one of nature’s most powerful healers.

Vis medicatrix naturae isn’t abstract. It’s the reminder that our clients’ bodies hold wisdom equal to any forest, river, or soil ecosystem. When we override hunger and fullness with diet rules, we betray that principle. When we invite our clients to listen inward, we honour it.

So, as naturopaths, our role isn’t to prescribe the next “metabolic reset”! It’s to midwife our clients back into relationship with their bodies, where hunger and fullness are seen not as problems to fix, but as nature’s healing voices to be answered.

Hunger, satiety, and pleasure are natural body cues. Reconnecting with and trusting them means reconnecting with and trusting nature.

With nuance and sensitivity,

Casey Conroy
Non-Diet Dietitian | Naturopath

✨ Want to bring this into your own practice?
👉Download my free practitioner guide: Working with Clients with Disordered Eating for Naturopaths - packed with weight-neutral care tips.
🌿 When you sign up, you’ll also join the waitlist for Body as Earth: Foundations in Disordered Eating Awareness for Naturopaths, Herbalists & Holistic Nutritionists and receive supportive emails every 1-2 weeks to help you integrate naturopathic weight-neutral care into your practice.
​

Dulloo, A. G., & Montani, J. P. (2015). Pathways from dieting to weight regain, to obesity and to the metabolic syndrome: An overview. Obesity Reviews, 16(1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.12250

Polivy, J., & Herman, C. P. (1985). Dieting and binging. A causal analysis. The American psychologist, 40(2), 193–201. https://doi.org/10.1037//0003-066x.40.2.193

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
​
Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (2020). Intuitive eating: A revolutionary anti-diet approach (4th ed.). St. Martin’s Essentials.
​

A reflection on intergenerational hunger, healing, and the body as home.

I was born in 1985 and grew up in a small North Queensland town. When I started primary school I was the only visibly non-white kid: half Australian, half Chinese Malaysian, learning early what “different” looked like. Later, when my parents moved me to a bigger primary school (largely due to being bullied), my brother and I were two of the very few kids who were visibly Asian or mixed-Asian. 

​By the time boys entered the picture in late primary school and high school, I’d already learned what “pretty” meant - white, blonde, familiar - and I knew I wasn’t it.

​My mum migrated from Malaysia, bringing with her the smell of soy and sesame, the stories of migration, and the insistence on thrift and nourishment.

Within me I carried her accent, her cooking, her lineage... and also the subtle and not-so-subtle lessons that difference was something to control. In the 1990s, any lunchboxes that stood out were teased: honey soy chicken wings, Chinese New Year leftovers, anything that earned me the "ching chong chinaman" taunt. I learned to avoid them. Sandwiches and pies were safer. “Normal.”

It took decades to understand how that small-town survival strategy was rooted in something much older and larger: colonialism’s long shadow over food, body, and belonging.
​

After the birth of my second child - and more recently, after a miscarriage - I found myself craving the old Chinese postpartum tradition known as 坐月子 (zuò yuè zi). The English translation, “confinement period,” sounds crappy and doesn’t do it justice: it’s a month or more of deep rest, warmth, broth, and nourishment after childbirth.

I began to see its wisdom: the permission to stop, to be held, to eat deeply and often.

I still cook honey-soy pork belly as a restorative meal; the smell hits something deep in me. It’s not just comfort food. It’s remembrance. Safety. Being of value.

When I stir that pot, I think of my mum.

She often says there was “no food insecurity” in her childhood... and yet when she tells me stories of her Penang upbringing, I hear a different story...

“One whole chicken had to feed eleven people in a two-bedroom flat,” she says. “My father gave my mum two dollars a day for lunch and dinner. She’d buy what was cheapest: bean sprouts, tofu, small mackerel. I’ve seen her eat rice with one bird’s-eye chilli and a teaspoon of fish paste and call it a meal. Chicken curry was a luxury.”

“We didn’t have the luxury of drinking milk. It was black sweetened coffee and bread for breakfast.”

“Twenty cents pocket money for school: five cents each way for the bus, ten cents for noodles. Some nights we’d wait for my father to ride home on his pushbike with end-of-day market sales. Whatever was left became dinner.”

And on top of all that, they kept animals - not as pets, but as food.

“It was hectic, ah,” she laughs. “Eleven people in a two-bedroom flat and my mum still hatched chicks. We had baby chicks cheep-cheep all day and night! Pet cats giving birth under the bed. Some chickens kept under the kitchen sink, and laying hens down in the backyard. We even had Muscovy ducks - they were like guard dogs. My mum named one Ah Hep, because that’s the sound it made when strangers came too close.”

I can almost hear them: the hiss of the duck, the chorus of chicks, the pulse of survival running through that tiny, cramped flat. Buying meat was a luxury, so you raised what you could. A kind of domestic alchemy that turned scarcity into self-sufficiency.

Reading decolonial thinkers and anti-colonial approaches to eating disorder healing (including Nalgona Positivity Pride’s work and Sabrina Strings’ Fearing the Black Body) helped me name what I’d been living.

Eating disorders and body control don’t exist in a vacuum. They echo the same systems that once controlled land, labour, and language.

Colonialism taught that mastery was moral: over hunger, over emotion, over the natural world. Whiteness was defined through self-restraint; the “civilised” body was small, disciplined, and pure. The “other” body - darker, rounder, hungrier - was excess to be managed. (I talk more about how colonialism ties into eating disorders in this article).

In the wellness world, that thinking never disappeared; it just chucked on a pair of yoga pants and started swigging green juice.

You can still see the colonial appetite everywhere: the hunger to consume what’s exotic, while rejecting the people who make it.

In late August 2025, a crowd of hundreds of anti-immigration marchers trundled through Sydney streets under the banner of “Australia First.” Some wore polo shirts and nationalist symbols, others came draped in flags. A handful of politicians showed up for photo ops, pretending not to notice the neo-Nazis and white-supremacist groups marching right beside them.

A few hours later, several of those same marchers were photographed laughing over plates of dim sum at a Chinese restaurant. (7NEWS Australia, 2025). The irony would’ve been funny if it weren’t so familiar.

This image says everything. The colonial impulse to consume what’s useful, discard what’s inconvenient, and still feel righteous doing it.
​
It’s the same impulse that built wellness culture: the clean-eating, detoxing, unsafe breathwork & cacao ceremony-throwing, white sage-smudging industry that mines other people’s cultures for purity points. (I discuss this further with Katya Weiss-Andersson in this episode of the podcast.)

When I saw those images I felt a flash of something old. The same heat that used to rise in my cheeks when kids at my North Queensland school mocked my mum’s accent, or pulled their eyelids to a slant when she came to pick me up after school. The same sneer on the parents who smirked in approval, pretending it was harmless. The same snarl that I now see on the faces of grown men chanting “go back where you came from!”. 

It’s all the same story - the coloniser’s story. Eat the food, take the spice, borrow the wisdom... but don’t you dare be the person it came from.
​

For those of us raised between cultures, the collision runs deep: between our immigrant parents’ survival under colonialism and our own search for belonging beyond it.
​
Our mothers’ thrift becomes our frugality. Their survival becomes our perfectionism. The same thriftiness that once protected us can morph into self-denial, restriction, and the chronic guilt of having enough.​

I still hear the whispers of that scarcity.

I can’t stand to waste food. I have my own little menagerie of chickens now (and several worm farms) to eat our scraps. But I’m way too soft-hearted to kill our chooks... they’re part of the household ecosystem, our beloved pets! (This is partly why I never made it as a vet). When the kids waste food, I feel my chest tighten. I have to balance that old panic with what I’ve learned as a dietitian (the division of responsibility in feeding, thank you Ellyn Satter) and remind myself that throwing scraps to the chooks is not a moral failure.

And yet.... the echoes persist. I still feel the pull of a free meal. I still get a rush from “making do.” But now, if I feel like eating something, I’ll buy it - even the ridiculously overpriced $12 Italian almond biscotti. I savour it with a vanilla black tea (with milk), aware that this too is healing: the act of feeding myself without guilt, without scarcity, without needing to earn it.

I know my privilege: that I can afford these things now, that I no longer have to live in survival mode. After 15+ years of being self-employed, it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve really felt the grip of thrift loosen, that I’ve started to trust abundance without fear.

And not everyone has this privilege.

Decolonising wellness isn’t just about politics or language. It’s about listening to the body - and to the generations behind it - until we can tell the difference between wisdom and wound.
​
Healing from disordered eating isn’t just about what we do (or do not) eat.

It’s about remembering the long history of why we learned to hunger in the first place.


✨ Want to bring this into your own practice?
👉 Download my free practitioner guide: Working with Clients with Disordered Eating for Naturopaths - packed with weight-neutral care tips.
🌿 When you sign up, you’ll also join the waitlist for Body as Earth: Foundations in Disordered Eating Awareness for Naturopaths, Herbalists & Holistic Nutritionists and receive supportive emails to help you practice in a way that moves beyond symptom management to explore the deeper roots of disordered eating: trauma, disconnection, diet culture, and the lingering impact of colonial and patriarchal health narratives.

In thriving, not just surviving,

Casey Conroy
Accredited Practising Dietitian | Naturopath
​

7NEWS Australia. (2025, August 31). Anti-immigration protesters slammed after dining at yum cha restaurant after Sydney rally. 7NEWS. https://7news.com.au/news/anti-immigration-protesters-slammed-after-dining-at-yum-cha-restaurant-after-sydney-rally-c-19876530

Tolle causam. Identify and treat the causes.

Naturopaths, herbalists and holistic nutritionists - we all pride ourselves on treating holistically, not symptomatically. We know symptoms are not random defects but attempts by the body to adapt, recover, and heal.

But what if our profession’s understanding of “root cause” has itself been uprooted from its origins?

What if the systems that taught us to “fix” and “purify” the body were shaped by the same colonial worldviews that divided nature from culture, and reason from intuition?

As Sabrina Strings shows in Fearing the Black Body, Western medicine and wellness alike inherited a moral code that tied discipline, restraint, and whiteness to health. Modern diet culture - and much of what passes as “clean” or “natural” living - still carries this legacy.

If our goal is Tolle Causam, then we can’t stop at physiology. We have to trace the roots right down, deep down into the soil of culture, power, and history. Because disordered eating, weight stigma, and body shame are not individual failures.

They’re predictable outcomes of a system that worships control and pathologises difference.

When we start to see diet culture and disordered eating through that lens, it’s clear they aren’t personal failings - they’re colonial inheritances.

Our profession didn’t create these hierarchies, but we HAVE absorbed them. They show up every time “balance” is framed as self-discipline, every time “toxins” are blamed instead of trauma, every time we mistake restriction for healing.

Decolonising wellness means recognising that many of our “root cause” approaches were built within a white, Western worldview that equated thinness, discipline, and control with virtue. As Sabrina Strings (2019) shows in Fearing the Black Body, modern fatphobia emerged from the same racial hierarchies that defined who was seen as civilised or worthy. These hierarchies still echo in the way we talk about “clean eating,” “toxins,” and “fixing” the body.

This is where naturopathy, for all its holistic intentions, can lose its roots.

When our clinical gaze is shaped by colonial ideals of control and purity, we risk reproducing the very harm we claim to heal.

And yet, there are two glaring blind spots where we often forget this principle in practice:

• Prescribing weight loss as a treatment for chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, PCOS, cardiovascular disease, and infertility.
• Failing to recognise and address eating disorders and disordered eating, which themselves are often the deeper causes of digestive, endocrine, reproductive, and mental health presentations.

When we reduce health to body weight, we mistake correlation for causation... and we ignore the true roots.

Higher body weight is correlated with many chronic diseases.

But correlation is not causation.

When we treat weight itself as pathology, we’re repeating colonial logic: identifying the “problem body,” marking it as deviant, and attempting to control it into compliance. As Nalgona Positivity Pride writes in Anti-Colonial Approaches to Eating Disorder Healing, Western frameworks individualise distress instead of naming the power systems that create it: patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy. In doing so, we turn systemic trauma into personal failure.

But before I tap into the systems bit, let's dissect that correlation is not causation part as it pertains to higher body weight. 

Take baldness: baldness doesn’t cause heart disease. But men with higher testosterone are more likely to experience both. We don’t treat the baldness - we address the cardiovascular disease and the hormone imbalance driving it.

Or yellow teeth: they don’t cause lung cancer. Smoking increases the likelihood of both. We don’t whiten the teeth - we support the client to reduce or cease smoking, and address the lung and systemic damage.

Weight works the same way. Having more body fat doesn’t cause diabetes. We see plenty of people at higher weights without diabetes, and plenty in smaller bodies who do develop it. The common denominator is metabolic dysregulation: insulin resistance, chronic stress, or endocrine disruption that can both increase fat storage and impair glucose regulation.

This is why focusing on weight loss misses the mark. The root cause is not “fatness” - it’s physiology and environment. And the intervention is not calorie restriction. It’s health behaviours: supporting insulin sensitivity with balanced, nutrient-dense meals, perhaps some pointed supplementation with key missing nutrients, herbs suited to the client's constitution and lifestyle, encouraging enjoyable movement, reducing stress where possible (this very much relates to the systems we exist in), improving sleep, and addressing stigma and social factors.

Sure, a client might lose some weight as a side effect of healthier behaviours... but that weight change is not the measure of success. The real markers are improved blood glucose regulation, reduced insulin resistance, and improved quality of life.

In other words: we treat the smoking, not the yellow teeth.
We treat the metabolism, not the weight.

Prescribing a calorie-restricted diet (even one with a "natural" label as I described here and here) will not address these root causes. And it may very well worsen them by triggering weight cycling, stress, and disordered eating.

As Lindo Bacon puts it in Body Respect: “Telling someone to lose weight to manage their diabetes is like telling them to whiten their teeth to manage emphysema.” (Bacon & Aphramor, 2014). I would add, this is especially applicable if the methods employed involve restrictive dieting and/or excessive exercise for the sake of burning calories - methods still used and celebrated in modern natural medicine.

And if a client presents without outward disease but with a wish to “just lose weight”? That too is a symptom: of diet mentality, internalised weight stigma, trauma, shame, and/or dysregulation. Our job isn’t to collude with that symptom. It’s to dig deeper, identify the true causes, and support healing at the roots.

If our oath is to tolle causam, then prescribing weight loss is an obvious breach of that oath.
​

A bigger issue lurks underneath: disordered eating itself.

Diet culture itself is not neutral; it’s a colonial export. “Clean” versus “dirty,” “disciplined” versus “lazy,” “natural” versus “processed” - these binaries mirror the moral codes used to justify domination of both bodies and lands. Decolonizing Wellness author Dalia Kinsey reminds us that wellness culture often rebrands old hierarchies as "self-improvement". The thin, white, able-bodied ideal remains the silent template.​

Far too often, the root cause of our clients’ distress isn’t fatness. Their distress is the consequence of chronic undernourishment and dysregulation:

• Skipping meals or fasting to meet diet rules.
• Restricting entire food groups, mismanaged GLP-1 medication use, or extensively following weight loss meal plans, leading to nutrient deficiencies.
• Over-exercise followed by burnout or injury.
• Emotional eating, bingeing, or purging in response to trauma, stress, or shame.

These patterns starve the body of energy and nutrients. They dysregulate the nervous system.

They worsen digestion, hormones, fertility, and mental health.

Eating disorders remain a MASSIVE naturopathic blind spot. Despite their prevalence, they are often under-recognised in clinical practice. Anorexia nervosa, in particular, carries one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric disorder (Arcelus, Mitchell, Wales, & Nielsen, 2011). 

​Approximately 4% of the Australian population are living with an eating disorder at any one time (NEDC, 2024). By comparison, around 5% of Australians live with type 2 diabetes (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2022). Those are very similar occurrence rates, yet think of how many hours we (health practitioners) spent at uni learning about blood glucose regulation, insulin resistance and so on, compared to how long we spent learning about eating disorders....

Exactly.

And then there's disordered eating more generally.

While clinical eating disorders affect a smaller proportion of the overall adult population, disordered eating behaviours (including chronic dieting, binge eating, and compensatory behaviours) affect a much larger proportion of people. 

One U.S. survey found that up to three in four (~75 %) of women aged 25-45 reported unhealthy relationships with food or body image at some point (Bulik & Reba-Harrelson, 2008).

Take that in.... three quarters of ALL women will experience disordered eating and/or body image concern in their lifetimes. That. Is. HUGE.

When clients struggle with food and body, the cause generally isn’t “lack of willpower.”

It’s trauma.
It’s nervous system dysregulation.
It’s poverty and oppression.
It’s weight stigma and chronic stress.

Here again, anti-colonial frameworks expand what we mean by "trauma". As Nalgona Positivity Pride highlights in her work, eating disorders are inseparable from the collective and historical trauma of colonisation - the loss of land, language, food sovereignty, and body sovereignty. When communities are disconnected from ancestral foodways, that rupture manifests as both hunger and shame.

I have experienced this personally, and I wrote about that here.
​
Bessel van der Kolk reminds us in The Body Keeps the Score that trauma lives in the body, shaping physiology, not just psychology (van der Kolk, 2014). Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory explains how chronic threat states lock the nervous system into survival patterns, including around food (Porges, 2011).

In short: disordered eating is often the body’s best attempt at coping. A strategy for survival when regulation and safety are missing.

Once we understand this, prescribing Metabolic Balance or a practitioner-only weight loss program for a person desperate to lose weight might not seem like such a good idea, after all.

​In fact, it seems like a terrible fucking idea - when instead we should be helping that person feel safe in their body again.

We should be building stability, not throwing more restriction at them.
We should be nourishing, not disciplining.
We should be asking, “What threat is the body still responding to?” instead of, “How can we make it smaller?”

Because when someone comes to us desperate to lose weight, what they’re really craving is RELIEF. From shame. From fear. From disconnection.

And real talk: our profession has a long history of mistaking control for care... a legacy that mirrors the colonial values our whole wellness culture was built on. The thin, compliant, “pure” body became the model of health, and anything outside it was pathologised.

But healing isn’t about compliance. It’s about connection.

It’s about helping people rebuild trust in their hunger, their cues, their bodies, their stories.

When we recognise disordered eating as the body’s best attempt to survive in an unsafe world, the goal isn’t to dominate that body into submission.

It’s to create the conditions where it no longer needs to protect itself that way.

That’s real tolle causam. And that’s the medicine that actually heals.

This is where non-diet frameworks like Intuitive Eating or Health at Every Size offer real root-cause medicine. And when we talk about “intuitive,” it’s worth remembering that intuition itself has been colonised - mistrusted, medicalised, or dismissed as “unscientific.” Decolonising wellness asks us to re-sacralise body knowing, to see it as ancestral wisdom rather than indulgence.

As someone currently undertaking certification in Intuitive Eating counselling, the following principles in particular have stood out for me as being particularly helpful when working with the root causes of disordered eating:

• Reject the Diet Mentality (Principle 1): Food rules don’t address trauma or shame - they mask it.
• Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness (Principle 7): Teaching clients nervous system regulation (when appropriate), emotional literacy, and self-compassion, instead of punishment.
• Honour Your Health with Gentle Nutrition (Principle 10): Supporting nourishment and balance without rigid rules - building safety and trust in the body again. I go into explicit detail on how to facilitate this with your clients in my online training, Body as Earth: Foundations in Disordered Eating Awareness for Nats, Nuts and Herbies.

Together, these principles bring us back to the actual roots: nervous system regulation, nutrient adequacy, and dismantling the internalised shame of diet culture.

​And yet, the deepest roots are cultural. As Gloria Lucas of Nalgona Positivity Pride writes, “Healing from an eating disorder is not a return to normal - it’s a return to yourself.” For many of our clients (and ourselves), that “return” involves decolonising what we’ve been taught about discipline, beauty, and worth.

And of course, roots aren’t only inside the body or psyche.

External environments matter too: stigma, poverty, racism, and cultural oppression are powerful determinants of health.

If we truly want to treat the cause, we must widen our lens beyond biochemistry and behaviour.

We must look at the soil our clients - and our profession - grow from.

Because disordered eating doesn’t just emerge from individual trauma; it’s entangled with historical trauma.

Diet culture, healthism, and even many “natural” protocols descend from colonial hierarchies that taught us to fear appetite, control the body, and mistrust intuition.

Decolonising wellness means recognising those roots, and choosing to practice differently.

It’s about returning to nourishment, relationship, and reciprocity as medicine.

​In an upcoming blog, I’ll explore this more personally: how colonialism shaped my own relationship with food and body, and what it means to reclaim ancestral ways of eating, resting, and belonging.

Tolle Causam in a colonial world asks us not just to treat the physiology, but to heal the history that shaped it.


✨ Want to bring this into your own practice?
👉 Download my free practitioner guide: Working with Clients with Disordered Eating for Naturopaths - packed with weight-neutral care tips.
🌿 When you sign up, you’ll also join the waitlist for Body as Earth: Foundations in Disordered Eating Awareness for Nats, Nuts and Herbies and receive supportive emails every few weeks to help you integrate naturopathic principles into your work with clients experiencing ruptured relationships with food and their bodies.

In solidarity and care,

Casey Conroy
Accredited Practising Dietitian | Naturopath

Arcelus, J., Mitchell, A. J., Wales, J., & Nielsen, S. (2011). Mortality rates in patients with anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry, 68(7), 724–731. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21727255/​

Bacon, L., & Aphramor, L. (2014). Body respect: What conventional health books get wrong, leave out, and just plain fail to understand about weight. BenBella Books.

Bulik, C. M., & Reba-Harrelson, L. (2008). “Three Out Of Four American Women Have Disordered Eating, Survey Suggests”. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill / SELF magazine. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080422202514.htm

Kinsey, D. (2021). Decolonizing wellness: A queer-affirming guide to body liberation. North Atlantic Books.

Lucas, G. (Nalgona Positivity Pride). (2023). Anti-colonial approaches to eating disorder healing. Nalgona Positivity Pride. https://www.nalgonapositivitypride.com

National Eating Disorders Collaboration. (2024). Eating disorders in Australia. National Eating Disorders Collaboration. https://nedc.com.au/eating-disorders/eating-disorders-explained/eating-disorders-in-australia
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Strings, S. (2019). Fearing the Black body: The racial origins of fat phobia. New York University Press.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton.
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van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

Primum non nocere. First, do no harm.

This is the first tenet of the naturopathic oath we all take on graduation day from college, and the most critical.

As naturopaths we strive not to add to the burden of problems of our patients. To refrain from damaging their physical, mental, or emotional wellbeing. To not intervene in ways that harm.

In many ways, we are good at abiding by this foundational tenet...

• We know not to prescribe a herb that will interact dangerously with a client’s medication.
• We avoid recommending restrictive elimination diets when a gentler, more balanced approach will suffice.
• We double-check safety in pregnancy before recommending a herb or an essential oil
• We withhold a liver detox protocol when a client’s constitution is already depleted.
• We understand that sometimes less is more - that doing nothing is better than doing something that could cause harm.

And yet… there's something insidious going on within the naturopathic profession that has not been called out. Despite our best intentions, it's doing serious harm to our clients, our profession, and ourselves.

That thing is a weight-focused approach to health, also known as the weight-centric health paradigm (WCHP) (O’Hara & Taylor, 2018). Whether directly or indirectly, promoting weight loss does irrefutable harm.
​
Even if it’s weight loss “for health.” Or “for fertility.” Or just because “who doesn’t want to be a bit leaner?”
​

Here’s where Intuitive Eating comes in. Its very first principle - Reject Diet Culture - mirrors Primum non nocere.

Diets don’t just fail in the long run. They cause measurable harm.

• Metabolic harm: In the famous “Biggest Loser” follow-up study, participants showed a sustained metabolic slowdown of around 700 calories/day, persisting six years after the intervention (Fothergill et al., 2016). This adaptive thermogenesis increases the risk of weight regain and long-term metabolic disturbance.
• Weight cycling: Repeated weight loss and regain (very common after diets) increases risk of hypertension, insulin resistance, and cardiovascular disease - independent of BMI (Montani, Schutz, & Dulloo, 2015).
• Disordered eating: Dieting is one of the strongest predictors for the onset of eating disorders. Even “moderate” restriction can lead to binge-restrict cycles and clinical eating disorders (Stice, Marti, & Durant, 2011).
• Psychological harm: Dieting is associated with increased body dissatisfaction, food preoccupation, depression, and lowered self-esteem (Polivy & Herman, 1985).
• Nutrient deficiencies: Restrictive diets often reduce intake of essential micronutrients such as iron, calcium, and B vitamins (depending on which diet), particularly when multiple food groups are excluded (O’Hara & Taylor, 2018).

Given this evidence, how can we possibly collude with diet culture and still claim to practice do no harm? To prescribe or promote weight loss is not neutral; it is a harmful intervention that undermines health.

When I first wrote the draft of this article, I just received two emails. One from a well-known nutraceuticals company promoting its “weight loss seminar” to naturopaths. The other - the same email - forwarded from a major natural medicine education institution to its students.

This is SO not okay.

Weight-loss-centred practice is in direct opposition to the first and most crucial naturopathic principle: do no harm.

It’s time - way past time - we course-correct. For the sake of our clients, our profession, and our integrity, we need to embrace a non-diet, weight-neutral, Health at Every Size® approach:

• Non-diet: stepping away from prescriptive meal plans (lookin' at you, Metabolic Balance), rigid food rules, and quick-fix programs.
• Weight-neutral: recognising that health can be pursued without making body size the target or the measure of success.
• Intuitive Eating: restoring trust in the body’s cues - hunger, fullness, satisfaction, and emotion - rather than outsourcing that wisdom to diet plans or apps. It’s a self-care framework grounded in interoception and compassion, not a “hunger-fullness diet.”
• Health at Every Size® (HAES®): an evidence-based framework that supports people of all shapes and sizes to pursue wellbeing through sustainable behaviours, dismantling weight stigma, and respecting body diversity (Bacon & Aphramor, 2011; Tylka et al., 2014).

These approaches are not fluffy ideals or some kind of blind, "woke" body positivity trend - they are grounded in evidence, backed by systematic reviews and position statements from respected medical bodies (Royal Australasian College of Physicians [RACP], 2018). They align far more closely with our naturopathic oath than any supplement-branded "weight loss program" - or even the most well-intentioned naturopathic "weight management" treatment plan - ever could.

But lately, diet culture has learned to shapeshift. It wraps itself in language like non-diet, intuitive eating, and health prioritised over weight loss, while quietly selling the same old pursuit of thinness. This isn't something I alone have noticed and decided to complain about:

• "It is important to be aware, though, that in a society driven by social media, where individuals can build personal brands, many who are not intuitive eating counseling certified are capitalising on promoting intuitive eating content. As a result, they are sharing incorrect messages about intuitive eating, such as the notion that it is simply ‘the hunger-fullness diet,’ which the ten guiding principles clearly show it is not." (Roth, 2024).

As Rachael Hartley (2021) explains, using Intuitive Eating as a weight-loss method “misrepresents the philosophy and reinforces the same external focus that dieting does.”

• "The most important reason to not use intuitive eating for weight loss is because those who are opting out of diet culture or recovering from an eating disorder deserve to have a tool that’s just for them. Please trust the many, many voices out there who have spoken out to say how diet culture and anti-fatness have harmed them - hating their body, thinking about food most of their waking hours, life threatening eating disorders, depression, anxiety, missing social events, and so on."  (Hartley, 2021).

​This co-option of healing frameworks confuses both practitioners and clients, eroding trust and muddying what true body-respecting care actually looks like.

A genuinely weight-neutral, intuitive, and naturopathic approach doesn’t pathologise the body’s natural diversity or rhythms. It seeks regulation rather than restriction, helping clients reconnect with their metabolic intelligence instead of trying to override it.

Practitioner weight loss shakes and programs. Restrictive elimination diets. Calorie-deficit weight management plans. So-called metabolic resets marketed as health solutions.​

These aren’t harmless lifestyle tweaks - they’re the modern naturopathic version of dieting. And they don’t work in the long term.

Take Metagenics’ Shake It Practitioner Weight Management Program. The official practitioner guide instructs clinicians to “establish an approx. 30% calorie deficit to the patient’s pre-program diet” by calculating BMR or phoning technical support for help. Of course someone will probably lose weight in the short term if they’re eating 30% fewer calories than they need - that’s basic starvation physiology FFS! But what happens next? The research is clear: metabolic adaptation kicks in, the body defends against the deficit, and weight regain is the rule, not the exception (Fothergill et al., 2016; Mann et al., 2013).

Or look at Metabolic Balance, currently marketed in naturopathic clinics as a “personalised nutrition program.” I know it's making some practitioners a good income, and I've already been dragged for this, but let's be real for just one minute: it’s a highly prescriptive elimination diet that limits portion sizes and fosters rigid, rule-based eating. While weight may drop initially, studies on similar structured diet programs show the benefits are short-lived, with most participants regaining the weight within two to five years (NHMRC, 2013). Restrictive regimens like this also increase the risk of disordered eating, body dissatisfaction, and weight cycling (Polivy & Heatherton, 2015; Stice, Marti, & Durant, 2011).

And then there are newer players like Metaphysical Wellness, currently (at the time of writing) recruiting naturopaths and nutritionists for their “Metabolic Reset” program. Their free 3-day taster promises to “reset your metabolism, balance hormones, and unlock sustainable fat loss.” In practice, it’s just another low-carb, calorie-restriction plan dressed up in holistic language... complete with macro calculators, before and after photos including participants with known eating disorder histories (holy sh!t) and “pre-wedding fat loss” testimonials.

This isn’t vis medicatrix naturae. It’s diet culture hiding under a cloak of "natural medicine".

Whether it’s branded as clinical, personalised, or holistic, these “natural” weight-loss programs are built on the same flawed premise: calorie restriction leads to sustainable health. The evidence says otherwise. Short-term weight loss is followed by weight regain, often with added metabolic and psychological harm (Montani, Schutz, & Dulloo, 2015; Polivy & Herman, 1985).
​
As naturopaths, we cannot keep colluding with these systems and still claim to honour primum non nocere.
​

Some food for thought: weight loss isn’t a health behaviour. It’s an outcome - one the body will defend against at all costs. What actually improves health are behaviours: eating a wider variety of foods, moving joyfully, resting well, having social support, and lowering stress. These are the legit roots of health (Ernsberger, Paul, & Koletsky, 1999; Matheson, King, & Everett, 2012).

When we focus on weight, we undermine these very behaviours. Clients end up obsessing over “good” and “bad” foods, exercising out of guilt, spiralling into shame when the scales don’t move, and backlash binge eating. That isn’t prevention, it’s harm.

And just to be clear - I’m not anti–weight loss.

If someone’s weight changes while they’re focusing on improving their relationship with food, nourishing themselves consistently, managing stress, getting better sleep, or finding more joy in movement, that’s fine.

What I hold is weight neutrality.

That means I don’t celebrate weight loss as the ultimate marker of success (and certainly not the ultimate marker of health), and I don’t see weight gain as failure.

I care about what’s happening underneath: stress levels, mood, menstrual or perimenopausal symptoms, libido, digestion, sleep quality, lab results (but not just lab results!), body satisfaction, relationship with food, interoceptive awareness, self-esteem, and self-worth.

If health behaviours improve and the person feels more connected to their body, that’s progress. Whether the scale moves up, down, or not at all.

The awesome news is that there is an evidence-based, compassionate alternative: Health at Every Size®, Intuitive Eating, and the Non-Diet Approach.

These approaches have RCTs and systematic reviews behind them (Clifford & Curtis, 2015; Tylka & Kroon Van Diest, 2013). They focus on behaviours, stigma reduction, inclusivity, and true holistic wellbeing.

They are not about weight - they are about health. 

They fit naturopathic philosophy perfectly:

• Do no harm = reject diets.
• Treat the whole person = see more than a BMI or body fat %.
• Docere = teach body trust, not calorie counts or following obscure "individualised" meal plans that "don't count calories" but still total only 1000 calories a day.
• Prevention = support sustainable, joyful habits.
• Vis medicatrix naturae = honour hunger, fullness, and satisfaction as nature’s wisdom.

This is where naturopathy can shine. Our roots are in prevention, whole-person care, and vis medicatrix naturae. Honouring hunger, respecting fullness, respecting the body - these are not new ideas. They are what naturopathy has always claimed to stand for.

So let’s stop borrowing diet culture’s tools. Let’s stop selling shakes, “detox” packages, and calorie-deficit protocols dressed up as “holistic”... even if Metabolic Balance is lucrative.  If we are to preserve the credibility and integrity of naturopathy, we need to step into weight-neutral, non-diet practice.

To practice with integrity, we need to uproot diet culture in our clinics, and in the quiet corners of ourselves.

If you’re ready to explore weight-neutral, non-diet practice more deeply, here are some trusted starting points:

• Fiona Sutherland - The Mindful Dietitian website - themindfuldietitian.com.au for training and professional supervision for non-diet practice. I've known Fiona for many years and she is a trusted mentor and heart-led, non-diet ally!
• Fiona Willer - The Non-Diet Approach Guidebook for Dietitians (Brisbane: Lulu Press, 2013). Practical, client-friendly strategies for weight-neutral care. Also Fiona's Health Not Diets website - healthnotdiets.com for training, supervision, and resources for non-diet practice.
• Health at Every Size® (HAES) Australia - haesaustraliainc.wildapricot.org
• Intuitive Eating Official Website - intuitiveeating.org I'm currently completing the Intuitive Eating Counsellor certification by the original creators of this method, Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole.
• Linda Bacon & Lucy Aphramor - Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight (2014).
• National Eating Disorders Collaboration (NEDC) Australia - nedc.com.au (resources, statistics, practitioner guidelines).

​

Bacon, L., & Aphramor, L. (2011). Weight science: Evaluating the evidence for a paradigm shift. Nutrition Journal, 10(1), 9. https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-10-9

Clifford, D., & Curtis, L. (2015). Health at Every Size (HAES) approach to weight loss: Evidence from randomized controlled trials. Journal of Obesity, 2015, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/580624

Ernsberger, P., Paul, S., & Koletsky, R. J. (1999). Weight cycling and mortality: Support from animal studies. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 18(3), 253–261. https://doi.org/10.1080/07315724.1999.10718862
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Fothergill, E., Guo, J., Howard, L., Kerns, J. C., Knuth, N. D., Brychta, R., Chen, K. Y., Skarulis, M. C., Walter, M., Walter, P. J., & Hall, K. D. (2016). Persistent metabolic adaptation 6 years after “The Biggest Loser” competition. Obesity, 24(8), 1612–1619. https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.21538

Hartley, R. (2021, July 26). Why intuitive eating should not be used in weight loss counseling. Rachael Hartley Nutrition. https://www.rachaelhartleynutrition.com/blog/why-intuitive-eating-should-not-be-used-in-weight-loss-counseling

​Mann, T., Tomiyama, A. J., Westling, E., Lew, A. M., Samuels, B., & Chatman, J. (2013). Medicare’s search for effective obesity treatments: Diets are not the answer. American Psychologist, 68(2), 93–104. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028230

Matheson, E. M., King, D. E., & Everett, C. J. (2012). Healthy lifestyle habits and mortality in overweight and obese individuals. Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, 25(1), 9–15. https://doi.org/10.3122/jabfm.2012.01.110164

Montani, J. P., Schutz, Y., & Dulloo, A. G. (2015). Dieting and weight cycling as risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases: Who is really at risk? Obesity Reviews, 16(Suppl 1), 7–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.12251

National Health and Medical Research Council. (2013). Clinical practice guidelines for the management of overweight and obesity in adults, adolescents and children in Australia. NHMRC. https://www.nhmrc.gov.au

O’Hara, L., & Taylor, J. (2018). What’s wrong with the ‘war on obesity?’ A narrative review of the weight-centered health paradigm and development of the 3C framework to build critical competency for a paradigm shift. SAGE Open, 8(2), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244018772888

Polivy, J., & Herman, C. P. (1985). Dieting and binging: A causal analysis. American Psychologist, 40(2), 193–201. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.40.2.193

Puhl, R. M., & Heuer, C. A. (2010). Obesity stigma: Important considerations for public health. American Journal of Public Health, 100(6), 1019–1028. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2009.159491

Roth, J. (2024, May 15). The rise of intuitive eating. Exploring Health. https://exploringhealth.org/2024/05/15/the-rise-of-intuitive-eating/

​Royal Australasian College of Physicians. (2018). Tackling the obesity epidemic: Position statement on obesity. RACP. https://www.racp.edu.au/docs/default-source/advocacy-library/tackling-the-obesity-epidemic.pdf

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. (2019). Management of obesity. In Guidelines for preventive activities in general practice (9th ed.). RACGP. https://www.racgp.org.au/clinical-resources/clinical-guidelines/key-racgp-guidelines/view-all-racgp-guidelines/red-book

Schaefer, J. T., & Magnuson, A. B. (2014). A review of interventions that promote eating by internal cues. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 114(5), 734–760. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2013.12.024

Stice, E., Marti, C. N., & Durant, S. (2011). Risk factors for onset of eating disorders: Evidence of multiple risk pathways from an 8-year prospective study. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 49(10), 622–627. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2011.06.009

Stice, E., & Van Ryzin, M. J. (2018). A prospective test of the temporal sequencing of risk factor emergence in the dual pathway model of eating disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 127(3), 214–225. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000330

Tylka, T. L., & Kroon Van Diest, A. M. (2013). The Intuitive Eating Scale–2: Item refinement and psychometric evaluation with college women and men. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 60(1), 137–153. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030893

Tylka, T. L., Annunziato, R. A., Burgard, D., Daníelsdóttir, S., Shuman, E., Davis, C., & Calogero, R. M. (2014). The weight-inclusive versus weight-normative approach to health: Evaluating the evidence for prioritizing well-being over weight loss. Journal of Obesity, 2014, 983495. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/2014/983495​

Tylka, T. L., Calogero, R. M., & Daníelsdóttir, S. (2019). Intuitive eating is connected to self-reported weight stability in community women and men. Eating Disorders, 28(3), 256–264. https://doi.org/10.1080/10640266.2019.1580126

The “wellness” world loooooves a trend.

Ice baths. Fasting windows. Keto meal plans.
They promise all energy, focus, and “balance” - the holy trinity of modern womanhood.

But most of these hacks were built on male physiology!

They rarely consider what happens when oestrogen and progesterone begin their unpredictable midlife waltz... when sleep gets lighter, moods swing harder, and recovery takes longer.

Perimenopause isn’t a malfunction. It’s the changing of the tide, a body moving from flower to fruit to seed.

A recalibration. Beneath the surface, hormones surge and ebb like weather fronts. Bones remodel. Nerves rewire. This isn’t decline. It’s meant to happen.

But the wellness industry can’t stand what it can’t control! So it sells us “resets,” ice baths, fasts, and cleanses - all in the name of balance (or discipline / purity / whatever-the-fuck).

The underlying message, of course, is this: Be smaller. Be quieter. Be easier to manage.

Meanwhile, your body is doing something revolutionary: reclaiming itself. Wild. Wise. Inconveniently alive for the systems that prefer your power domesticated.

Perimenopause is a remembering of nature’s pace, and nature doesn’t rush her tides. So maybe it’s time to put down the bro hacks, return the tools to the earth, and listen for what’s stirring beneath the surface.

Let’s unpack five of the biggest “wellness” culprits - five wellness trends your perimenopausal body f*cking hates - and what actually supports your body through this transition.
​

The promise: boost metabolism, reduce inflammation, harden up - or something like that?!

But in perimenopause, your internal thermostat is already working overtime. When oestrogen dips, thermoregulation changes. You can swing from chills to hot flushes within hours. Adding extreme cold into the mix often ramps up stress rather than releasing it.

Cold plunges cause intense vasoconstriction and a spike in cortisol, the opposite of what most women actually need to regulate their nervous systems. Research shows that women tend to shiver sooner and recover more slowly from cold exposure than men at the same temperatures (Charkoudian & Stachenfeld, 2016).

So while the wellness world might call it “building resilience,” your body may experience it as just another form of stress.

If you love the water, gentle cold exposure (like a cool swim or ocean dip) can still feel invigorating. But for most women in midlife, heat does more good than ice.

Saunas and warm baths stimulate heat-shock proteins, which support cardiovascular health, improve circulation, and help lower cortisol (Patrick & Johnson, 2021). They also relax smooth muscle, soothe the stress response, and support deep sleep... all things your body is already craving.
​
Resilience isn’t about withstanding more stress. It’s about recovering well from the stress you already have.
​

The promise is everywhere: better metabolism, better focus, effortless fat burning!

Skip breakfast, get “fat-adapted,” and live longer. Sounds bloody great, right?!

The reality is that most fasting research was done on men... or mice! Female physiology runs on a different rhythm. And perimenopausal physiology is a whole. Other. Animal.

When you regularly skip meals in perimenopause, cortisol rises and thyroid output slows. Add caffeine, stress, and poor sleep, and the body reads it as famine, not discipline (Sims & Yeager, 2021).

Low energy availability also suppresses luteinising hormone (LH), which can further disrupt already fragile oestrogen and progesterone rhythms (De Souza et al., 2021). This hormonal chaos often shows up as fatigue, sleep issues, anxiety, or stalled strength gains... the exact opposite of what intermittent fasting promised.

What helps instead:
​

• Eat three solid meals and snacks that combine carbohydrates (see #3), protein, and fats.
• Fuel before training, especially if it’s longer or more intense, and refuel afterwards to lower cortisol and support recovery.
• Consistency builds resilience. If your metabolism feels “broken,” it’s more likely under-fed than over-fed.

Think nourishment, not restriction. If you’ve been eating less and still feel stuck, it doesn’t mean your metabolism is broken - it’s probably under-fueled and protecting your energy.
​

The promise sounds seductive: burn fat, balance your mood, banish brain fog.

Cut carbs, boost ketones, and become your “best self!”

But your brain and hormones run on glucose. In perimenopause, falling oestrogen changes how your body handles blood sugar: insulin sensitivity drops, and your cells need more support to stay steady. Carbohydrates actually help regulate those swings (Harvie et al., 2017; Sims & Yeager, 2021).

Low-carb paleo, primal, or ketogenic diets might feel good for a few weeks, but over time they can disrupt sleep, elevate LDL cholesterol, and speed up lean muscle loss... exactly what we’re trying to protect (Phillips et al., 2023; Paddon-Jones & Rasmussen, 2009).

Carbs are scaffolding for your hormones and nervous system. They stabilise serotonin, support thyroid conversion, and protect muscle mass. In sports nutrition, they’re known as protein-sparing - meaning your body doesn’t have to break down protein (or its own muscle) to create glucose through gluconeogenesis.

When you eat enough carbohydrate, you preserve muscle, energy, and calm.

What helps instead:
​

• Keep carbohydrates around 40-50% of total intake, adjusted for your unique activity and energy needs (seeing a dietitian like me can help here!). This range is supported by Dr. Stacy Sims and international sports nutrition guidelines (Sims & Yeager, 2021; Thomas et al., 2016).
• Focus on fibre-rich, colourful foods - legumes, roots, fruit, wholegrains.
• Time your starchier carbs around exercise to replenish glycogen and support recovery.
• Pair carbs with protein and fats to steady blood sugar and hunger cues.

This is nourishment that works with your physiology. Your body isn’t craving restriction, it’s craving rhythm, consistency, and fuel.
​

We’ve been taught that more movement means better health. Generally, that's a pretty good general guideline. But then wellness culture sits down at the bar...

So we run harder, sweat longer, and push through fatigue, thinking we’re building resilience.

But for many women in perimenopause, constant cardio and relentless training do the opposite. Regular long-duration, high-intensity workouts can raise cortisol and oxidative stress, making anxiety sharper and recovery slower (Phillips et al., 2023; Sims & Yeager, 2021).

This stage of life calls for training that supports, not depletes.

Strength is medicine!

Aim for 2-3 strength sessions per week, lifting heavy enough that 6-10 reps feel genuinely challenging.
​
But heavy doesn’t always mean maximal. As Dr Shannon Ritchey of EVLO Fitness teaches, lighter weights (but still under 30 reps per set) can be just as effective when performed slowly and with control, working close to fatigue (or "muscle failure") without pushing into pain. The goal is to create mechanical tension, not systemic exhaustion.

Strength training improves metabolic rate, stabilises blood sugar, builds bone density, and supports mental health (Sims, 2019; Ritchey, 2024). It’s one of the most powerful ways to protect yourself against the physiological stress of hormonal change.

Add short bursts of intensity when you want to.

A couple of HIIT sessions per week - 20 to 40 minutes with real recovery between intervals - is plenty. That might mean hill sprints (my usual choice as I live near some pretty hills), resistance circuits, or cycling intervals that raise your heart rate, then allow it to settle. Quality matters more than volume here (Sims, 2019).

Cardio still has its place.

If you love running, walking, or swimming, keep it up. Aim for 30-60 minutes of moderate activity most days, ensuring it's movement that energises rather than drains.

Have a rest day when you're feeling depleted. And make sure you fuel around your workouts, eating pre- and post-workout as required, especially for weight lifting or SIT / HIIT sessions, or light to moderate cardio sessions more than 45 minutes long.

And in between the structure, move the way you live: walk, stretch, garden, dance, breathe. The point isn’t to burn calories or fix your body. It’s to stay connected to it!

Perimenopause isn’t a test of endurance. It’s an invitation to rebuild strength, trust, and rhythm on new terms.
​

Cycle syncing began as a gentle way to tune in to your body. For years, I have loved knowing roughly when my period is going to start, when to expect ovulation, and so on.

But sometimes, in certain circles, I've seen cycle syncing lose some of its gentleness.

Eat this (and less overall) in your follicular phase. Train like that in your luteal phase. Complete rest when you're bleeding (even if you actually feel better during your period than the days leading up to it, and need more premenstrual rest, like I do).

Optimise everything. Track everything. 

Except perimenopause doesn’t care about the pretty, colour-coded apps. Hormones stop moving in tidy patterns. Oestrogen can surge sky-high one week and plummet the next (Hale et al., 2020). Progesterone production slows down. Cycles can shorten, lengthen, or disappear for a bit. What was once predictable becomes more like weather - sometimes calm, sometimes stormy, rarely the same two weeks in a row.

Trying to monitor every shift can make you tense and self-critical. It can pull you back into over-management, where listening turns into controlling. For some, it reopens old food rules or the need to get it all “right” again (Stice et al., 2013).

Perimenopause invites a different skillset. One built on flexibility and curiosity.

Pay attention to what’s actually happening: sleep, mood, hunger, libido, energy, the way you handle stress. Let those be your cues instead of the phases on a chart.

Think of this stage as an apprenticeship in adaptability. A season of learning to stay steady inside change. A time to trust that your body knows how to lead, even when the map keeps redrawing itself!
​

All these trends have the same root. They treat the body as something to manage. Something to optimise and correct, rather than a living process to be in conversation with.

Wellness culture has taught us to measure, track, and perform health like a full-time job. Every symptom becomes a flaw to fix. Every fluctuation, a failure of discipline. The message is the same: stay productive, stay small, stay in control.

But perimenopause isn’t asking for control! It’s asking for a change in rhythm.

This is the season where physiology begins to turn inward, where the body reclaims its energy for wisdom, intuition, and repair. A deep re-wiring that pulls us away from output and into embodiment.

The work now is to meet that shift with nourishment and consistency.

To build strength from the inside out.

To rest as an act of resistance.
​
Perimenopause is not a collapse of function. It’s a reorganisation of power. The body has its own agenda, and it’s wiser than the wellness noise. It is gathering itself for what comes next.

In perimenopause it's crucial that we eat enough. Often enough. Especially protein and carbohydrates.
​
As oestrogen fluctuates, your ability to build and maintain muscle gets knocked around. The enzymes involved in muscle protein synthesis become less efficient, so you need more raw materials - and more consistency - to get the same effect.

Aim for around 2.0-2.2 g of protein per kilogram of body weight each day. 

That’s roughly 35-40 g at each main meal, and 20 g for snacks, especially at breakfast when cortisol is naturally higher and your body needs stable fuel to start the day.

​I know, that seems impossibly high. And I'm not saying it's not a challenge. But it is possible, and it's an experiment worth trying.

If you move, train, or lift - pretty please, do it in a fed state.

Fasted workouts can trigger greater stress-hormone release, muscle breakdown, and post-exercise fatigue. A small pre-training snack with protein and carbohydrates (like half a serve of overnight oats, Greek yogurt, banana with peanut butter, or a collagen hot chocolate) can buffer cortisol, improve recovery, and help your sleep that night.

After exercise, refuel within 30-60 minutes with both protein and carbs. This helps repair muscle, stabilises blood sugar, and resets your circadian rhythm.

Carbs are hormonal scaffolding, not enemies.

Most should come from fruits and vegetables, but include starchy carbs around workouts - oats, rice, pasta, bread, potatoes. These help replenish glycogen, support thyroid function, and keep serotonin and mood steady.

Then comes recovery, the piece most of us skip.

• L-theanine (100-200 mg) can help quiet an overactive mind in the evening.
• Magnesium L-threonate or magnesium glycinate supports sleep and nervous-system repair.
• Calming evening rituals like herbal tea, reading, or time outside, all help your hormones find rhythm again.

And the rest?

• Lift heavy things.
• Sleep like it’s sacred.
• Connect and de-stress in real life -  not just through social media.
• Get sunlight, laughter, and salt.

That’s the real “protocol.”  The one your mitochondria, hormones, and nervous system understand.

✨ Want to Bring This Into Your Own Practice?
👉 Download my free practitioner guide:
Working with Clients with Disordered Eating for Naturopaths - packed with weight-neutral, hormone-supportive care tips.

🌿 When you sign up, you’ll also join the waitlist for
Body as Earth: A Root-Cause Approach to Disordered Eating for Naturopaths,
launching mid-2026... with early-bird bonuses for those on the list!
​

Charkoudian, N., & Stachenfeld, N. (2016). Sex hormone effects on autonomic mechanisms of thermoregulation in humans. Autonomic neuroscience : basic & clinical, 196, 75–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autneu.2015.11.004

Churchward-Venne, T. A., Holwerda, A. M., Phillips, S. M., & van Loon, L. J. C. (2016). What is the optimal amount of protein to support post-exercise skeletal muscle reconditioning in the older adult? Sports Medicine, 46(9), 1205–1212. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-016-0504-2

De Souza, M. J., Koltun, K. J., & Williams, N. I. (2019). The Role of Energy Availability in Reproductive Function in the Female Athlete Triad and Extension of its Effects to Men: An Initial Working Model of a Similar Syndrome in Male Athletes. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 49(Suppl 2), 125–137. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-019-01217-3

Hale, G. E., Robertson, D. M., & Burger, H. G. (2014). The perimenopausal woman: endocrinology and management. The Journal of steroid biochemistry and molecular biology, 142, 121–131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsbmb.2013.08.015

Harvie, M. N., Pegington, M., Mattson, M. P., Frystyk, J., Dillon, B., Evans, G., Cuzick, J., Jebb, S. A., Martin, B., Cutler, R. G., Son, T. G., Maudsley, S., Carlson, O. D., Egan, J. M., Flyvbjerg, A., & Howell, A. (2011). The effects of intermittent or continuous energy restriction on weight loss and metabolic disease risk markers: a randomized trial in young overweight women. International journal of obesity (2005), 35(5), 714–727. https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2010.171

Paddon-Jones, D., & Rasmussen, B. B. (2009). Dietary protein recommendations and the prevention of sarcopenia. Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition & Metabolic Care, 12(1), 86–90. https://doi.org/10.1097/MCO.0b013e32831cef8b

Patrick, R. P., & Johnson, T. L. (2021). Sauna use as a lifestyle practice to extend healthspan. Experimental gerontology, 154, 111509. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2021.111509

Phillips, S.M., Chevalier, S., and Leidy, H.J. (2016). Protein “requirements” beyond the RDA: implications for optimizing health. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. 41(5): 565-572. https://doi.org/10.1139/apnm-2015-0550

Ritchey, S. (2024). Why light weights can build muscle: The EVLO approach to mechanical tension and fatigue. EVLO Fitness Blog. https://www.evlofitness.com/blog

Sims, S. T. (2019). Women are not small men: Specific research considerations for the female athlete. 

Sims, S., & Yeager, S. (2021). Next level: Your guide to kicking ass, feeling great, and crushing goals through menopause and beyond. Rodale Books.

Stice, E., Becker, C. B., & Yokum, S. (2013). Eating disorder prevention: current evidence-base and future directions. The International journal of eating disorders, 46(5), 478–485. https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.22105

Thomas, D. T., Erdman, K. A., & Burke, L. M. (2016). Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine: Nutrition and athletic performance. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 116(3), 501–528. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2015.12.006
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World Health Organization (Joint WHO/FAO/UNU Expert Consultation) (2007). Protein and amino acid requirements in human nutrition. World Health Organization technical report series, (935). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18330140/​

Welcome to part three of the Disordered Eating for Naturopaths series. In the last two instalments, we explored the spectrum of disordered eating and the red flags practitioners should never miss.

Now, we’re looking at the uncomfortable middle ground: The place where disordered eating and naturopathic practice intersect.

It happens in two key ways:

1. When clients seek affirmation of their disordered eating through naturopathic care.
2. When naturopaths unintentionally - or sometimes directly - reinforce those patterns.

Let’s be honest: this one’s going to sting a little. But it’s also where real growth starts. So let's go!
​

“I feel puffy whenever I eat carbs - should I cut them out?”
Cue discussions of insulin sensitivity and inflammation. But that transient “puffiness” is usually just water, not “toxins” or fat gain, and not inflammation.

When you’ve been restricting carbohydrates for a while, your body’s glycogen stores (its form of stored carbohydrate) become depleted. Each gram of glycogen binds to roughly 3-4 grams of water, so when you start eating carbs again, your body naturally replenishes those stores... and holds onto the associated water. The result is a temporary feeling of fullness or “bloat” that’s completely normal and actually a sign of re-nourishment, not dysfunction.

Ironically, chronic restriction itself can also drive water retention. When the body perceives scarcity - whether through low calorie intake, stress, or dehydration - cortisol rises, sodium handling shifts, and tissues may hold more fluid. So what looks like “carb bloat” is often the body finally exhaling.
Cutting carbs in response only deepens the cycle:
restriction → water loss → temporary “lightness” → reintroduction → water return → panic → restriction again.
​
It’s not pathology... it’s physiology. Plus, cutting carbs is usually cutting connection to body trust.​


“I’m highly sensitive to processed food - I can only eat organic wholefoods.”
This one’s a cousin of the "I can only eat clean" narrative, but with an added dose of classism, ableism, and moral superiority disguised as health. On the surface, this sounds sophisticated, even admirable. The language of sensitivity and purity fits perfectly within modern wellness culture, where “clean eating” has become shorthand for moral worth. But under that polished phrasing often lies fear, not actual physiology.

Sometimes, clients truly do have reactions to certain additives or preservatives. But more often, “sensitivity” becomes a socially sanctioned way to describe anxiety about contamination and loss of control.

The idea that only organic, “natural” food is safe offers a sense of order in a world that feels chaotic.

And this is where classism, ableism, and moralism creep in.

Wellness culture rarely acknowledges that “organic-only” eating requires money, time, and privilege... luxuries that not every body has. For many clients, these strict food rules begin as a health pursuit and end as a burden: socially isolating, financially draining, and shame-inducing whenever “lesser” foods are eaten.

Physiologically, chronic restriction and stress can lower digestive capacity, making even small deviations feel uncomfortable: a self-fulfilling loop that reinforces fear. The nervous system tightens around food rules, and the body mirrors that tension in the gut.

When we, as practitioners, celebrate “purity” without examining its roots, we unintentionally reinforce disordered eating... wrapped in ethical, environmental, or spiritual virtue.

So instead of nodding along, we can gently widen the frame:

• “What does ‘processed’ mean to you?”
• “How do these food choices impact your sense of freedom and connection?”
• “What would balance look like if health wasn’t equated with purity?”

This isn’t about dismissing organic food. It’s about dismantling the hierarchy that makes someone feel “dirty” for eating anything else. Our role isn’t to moralise food choices; it’s to return clients to the radical, nourishing truth that all foods can belong - because they truly do!


“I know I’m eating too much - can you help me with portion control or increasing my metabolism?”
Ah yes... the metabolism question, diet culture’s favourite pseudoscience dressed up as biochemistry. It sounds rational: If I could just speed up my metabolism, I’d finally eat “normally” and not gain weight. And it’s so easy, as naturopaths, to meet that question with talk of thyroid function, adrenal fatigue, mitochondrial cofactors, or methylation support.

But underneath it all, this isn’t really a question about metabolism - it’s a question about permission. About who is allowed to eat, how much, and without apology.

The funny (but not funny) thing is that most people asking this are already under-eating. Chronically restricted intake slows resting metabolic rate as the body adapts to perceived famine (Keys et al., 1950). It’s a protective mechanism, not a personal failure. When food becomes unpredictable (through dieting, fasting, or endless Whole 30 “resets”), the body lowers energy expenditure, conserves glycogen, and increases efficiency. In other words: the “broken metabolism” is usually a smart metabolism responding to chronic scarcity!

When nourishment finally increases, glycogen stores refill, digestion ramps up, and thermogenesis returns. That can feel like “eating too much,” but it’s actually restoration... the metabolism turning back on.

Diet culture hijacked this concept decades ago. Now, “boosting metabolism” is code for “how to eat less without your body noticing.” Supplements, detox powders, and so-called “metabolic resets” all exploit that anxiety. Even practitioner-only protocols promise to “rebalance metabolism” or “reset leptin sensitivity”, language that sounds scientific but usually just means calorie restriction with methyl donors chucked in.

True metabolic support looks far less glamorous: consistent meals, adequate carbohydrate intake to suppress cortisol, enough protein and micronutrients to rebuild muscles and enzymes, and permission to rest. Sometimes the most effective metabolic tonic is a friggin' sandwich and a nap.

When clients frame eating in terms of metabolic optimisation, we can gently redirect the conversation:

• “What would it feel like to focus less on speeding up your metabolism, and more on trusting that your body knows how to find equilibrium when it’s fed?”

After all, the goal of naturopathy isn’t metabolic manipulation, it’s metabolic safety.

At first glance, all these client statements sound familiar, even reasonable. They use the same language we’re trained to respond to: toxicity, inflammation, sluggish metabolism, imbalance.

​But beneath those clinical phrases is often a plea for control, safety, and validation. They’re often expressions of fear, shame, and control, not physiological dysfunction.
​
Our job is to listen for the story underneath the story.

• When a client says “toxic,” do they mean guilt?
• When they say “clean,” do they mean safe?
• When they say “balanced,” do they mean smaller?

What sounds like a request for naturopathic care is often really a request for permission to continue restrictive or compensatory behaviours.

And this is where things get tricky. Because if we don’t pause and examine what’s driving those “symptoms,” we risk becoming diet culture’s most credentialed accomplices.
​

Sometimes the problem isn’t just what clients bring - it’s what we prescribe. And to be clear, I'm sure most (well, hopefully all!) naturopaths don’t intend to do harm.

We enter this profession because we care deeply, because we want to help people feel better in their bodies.

But intention doesn’t cancel impact.

Many of the popular “clinical” nutrition programs in naturopathy are diet culture in a lab coat. They look scientific. They sound sophisticated. They’re often expensive. But they reinforce restriction, guilt, and shame.
​
Let’s talk about the biggest culprits.
​

Take a deep breath - this one’s going to be a full dissection.

Let me preface this by saying: if you’re a practitioner using Metabolic Balance, this isn’t a personal attack. I know and respect many naturopaths who are certified in the program. I also know that you genuinely want to help your clients feel better, and I get it. The system is seductive. It looks clinical. It sounds scientific. It’s packaged as personalised, balanced, holistic.

And hey, let’s not ignore the cherry on top: it’s a pretty lucrative offering.

Where It Comes From - and How It’s Sold

Metabolic Balance was developed in Germany in the early 2000s by Dr Wolf Funfack (a physician) and Silvia Bürkle (a food scientist). The program claims to “balance your metabolism” through a nutrition plan calculated from your blood values - marketed as personalised nutrition based on science.

It was introduced to Australia around 2011 - 2012, and is now offered through the official Metabolic Balance Australia network, which recruits naturopaths, nutritionists, GPs, and other natural health practitioners as licensed coaches. It is marketed to practitioners as an evidence-informed, personalised approach to metabolic health - yet there is currently no published peer-reviewed research validating its claims of biochemical personalisation or long-term metabolic benefit.

The website calls it “the program with a side effect of weight loss.” In other words: still a diet,  just rebranded as biochemistry.

There’s no publicly available data on how many Australian naturopaths are certified MB practitioners... which in itself speaks volumes about transparency. But a quick scan of naturopathic websites shows hundreds of practitioners across Queensland, Victoria, and New South Wales promoting MB as a premium “clinical” service.

The standard program cost in Australia sits between AUD $1600 and $1800, often packaged as a 12-week plan that includes pathology testing, a personalised food list, and follow-up sessions. Payment plans are offered, and the marketing frequently frames this as an “investment in your biochemistry."

That’s a steep price for what is, functionally, a glorified meal plan.

The Four Phases (and Why They’re Harmful)

Phase 1: “Cleansing”
Two days of low-calorie eating: soups, juices, sometimes fasting. This phase primes clients for restriction and frames the body as dirty or toxic, a narrative straight from diet culture’s playbook. The program’s website claims that during this time, “the body feeds itself from within, from the fat reserves (keto metabolism)” and that “hunger is minimised.”

That might sound reassuring - but physiologically, it doesn’t hold up. When calorie intake drops suddenly, the body initially suppresses appetite through a short-term surge in stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. This can create a temporary illusion of reduced hunger - a kind of metabolic shock response. But it’s not balance; it’s survival. Within days, hunger hormones such as ghrelin and neuropeptide Y rise sharply to restore energy intake (Rosenbaum & Leibel, 2010). In other words, any absence of hunger isn’t a sign of metabolic harmony... it’s the body sounding the alarm more quietly before turning up the volume later.

Also... true ketosis doesn’t occur in two days of low calorie restriction or “cleansing.” Most people require several days - and some closer to a week - of <50 g carbohydrate intake and significant glycogen depletion to enter nutritional ketosis (Bergman, 2025; Ketosis.Org, 2025; Skartum et al., 2025).

In practice, the claim that “hunger is minimised" teaches clients to mistrust their bodies. When hunger appears (as it inevitably will), it’s interpreted as failure rather than feedback. This lays the groundwork for the shame-and-suppression cycle that so often follows in restrictive eating: hunger pathologised, fullness moralised, and body wisdom overruled by external rules.

Phase 2: “Conversion” or "Detox"
The Metabolic Balance Australia & New Zealand website describes this phase as lasting “at least 14 days,” during which “the body needs time to detoxify and adjust your metabolism in order to get back into a healthy balance.”

It promises that “a little bit of discipline is worthwhile,” that “alkaline minerals bind acids and allow them to be removed,” and - in what might be the most telling line - that “if you want, you can stay longer in the DETOX phase.”

Let’s unpack that.

First, the idea of “detoxifying” for two weeks is biochemically meaningless. The liver’s phase I and II detoxification enzymes are working continuously, not on a schedule (Rang et al., 2024). They don’t need 14 days of restriction and alkaline vegetables to do their job... they need consistent energy, amino acids, and micronutrients. The notion that alkaline foods “bind acids” is also pseudoscientific. Systemic acid–base balance is tightly regulated by respiration and renal function; food has a minimal effect on blood pH (Remer & Manz, 1995).

Second, the claim that one should “stay longer if you wish” raises a serious ethical red flag. Fourteen days of restrictive eating is already sufficient to alter thyroid hormones, resting metabolic rate, and gut motility (Keys et al., 1950; Rosenbaum & Leibel, 2010). Encouraging people to extend this period risks pushing clients into chronic under-fueling, electrolyte imbalance, and disordered eating patterns. In plain terms: why would you want to prolong a phase that deprives the body of the very nutrients it needs to detoxify and heal?

Third, the insistence on “discipline” - no oils, no snacks, five-hour fasting windows, one protein per meal, foods are weighed... and then there are obscure items like carp or eel appear on meal plans that are supposedly “personalised.” All of this reframes obedience as wellness. These rules may generate short-term weight loss, but physiologically they reflect energy deficit, not metabolic magic. Hunger suppression, fatigue, and mood swings are interpreted as “adjustment,” when in reality they’re the predictable effects of under-eating and low blood glucose.

And perhaps most concerningly, this language teaches clients that wellbeing is something they must earn through compliance. For anyone with a history of food restriction or body shame, that spells relapse, dressed in the language of biochemistry and moral virtue. It teaches compliance, rather than connection. Hunger becomes failure. Clients - especially those who are neurodivergent or have trauma histories - internalise that their body’s cues are wrong.

Phase 3: “Achieve Your Goal” (a.k.a. Conditional Freedom)
The Metabolic Balance AU & NZ website reassures clients that “now it will get easier,” because “no one can achieve a goal through constant restriction.” Gotta love it when diets pretend not to be diets! In Phase 3, participants are invited to “experiment” with foods not on their list, and to enjoy occasional “treat meals,” described as “a highlight” - a brief relaxation of the rules where you can “eat what you feel like.”

At first glance, this sounds great! A gentle reintroduction, some flexibility. But on closer look, it’s still deeply rooted in diet logic. The structure teaches that pleasure must be rationed and spontaneity earned. “Treat meals” imply that all other meals are treatment - a kind of ongoing penance for being in a body that needs management.

From a behavioural perspective, this planned rebellion doesn’t resolve restriction; it reinforces it. Alternating between tight control and sanctioned indulgence keeps the brain locked in a reward-punishment loop. Dopamine and endorphins spike during “treats,” followed by guilt, fear, or renewed restriction: classic diet-binge conditioning (Polivy & Herman, 1985).

Physiologically, this pattern is destabilising. Periodic over- and under-eating disrupt insulin sensitivity and appetite regulation, making it harder - not easier - for the body to find equilibrium (Sumithran & Proietto, 2013). The pattern of restriction and release the program claims to resolve is, in practice, reinforced by its design.

Even the language of “achieving your goal” is telling. What if the goal is simply nourishment? Or peace with food? In that context, Phase 3 isn’t progress, it’s probation. A period of conditional freedom where eating without fear is permitted only sometimes. For anyone healing from disordered eating, this doesn’t build body trust. It fractures it.

True metabolic balance isn’t achieved through controlled rebellion. It’s achieved when food no longer carries moral weight... when the body’s cues, not an MB practitioner's list, set the rhythm.

Phase 4: “Live Your Life” (a.k.a. Maintenance Mode)
According to the Metabolic Balance website, this is the triumphant finale:

“You did it. Your metabolism has reset, and your weight regulation is visible in so many ways beyond a number on the scales. You feel good, sleep well, and your rejuvenated appearance gives you new self-confidence.”

Let me be blunt: your metabolism hasn’t “reset.” You’ve just been semi-starved.

After weeks or months of energy restriction, metabolic rate doesn’t reboot - it slows down. The body conserves energy through adaptive thermogenesis, decreasing thyroid output, reproductive hormones, and non-exercise activity to protect against further energy loss (Leibel et al., 1995; Rosenbaum & Leibel, 2010). The “reset” people feel at this point... the lightness, the calm... is often the dopamine hit of control and the short-term relief that comes before rebound hunger inevitably sets in.

The claim that “weight regulation is visible in so many ways beyond the scales” sounds holistic, but it’s still aesthetic. It’s still about visibility. A “rejuvenated appearance” isn’t a marker of metabolic balance; it’s a marketing promise dressed as physiology.

Then comes the bait-and-switch:

“Avoid diets that are not conducive to you or cause discomfort.”

Wow, now that's a clever rhetorical pivot. The program positions itself as anti-diet while functioning exactly like one - teaching people to distrust their appetite, outsource food decisions to a plan, and moralise hunger as imbalance. It’s the diet that swears it isn’t a diet.

And perhaps the most insidious part:

“If you still get into trouble with your metabolism, you always have your Metabolic Balance practitioner to turn to and your plan to go back to.”

That isn’t empowerment; that’s dependency. It ensures clients remain tethered to the system: financially, psychologically, and metabolically. Once the inevitable rebound weight gain or digestive discomfort appears (because the body is finally refuelling), clients are encouraged to see it as a personal failing or metabolic “trouble,” not the predictable aftermath of chronic restriction. The “plan” becomes both problem and product. A lifelong subscription to control.

So no, your metabolism hasn’t reset. It’s been suppressed, defended, and exhausted.

And while you might feel temporarily in control, your body is just biding its time - waiting, as bodies always do, for safety, for enough, for permission to eat again.


The Bigger Picture: What “Balance” Really Means

If you zoom out, the four phases of Metabolic Balance read like a case study in how diet culture adapts and survives. Restriction disguised as cleansing. Compliance repackaged as self-discipline. Conditional freedom renamed as intuition. Dependence framed as empowerment.

And this is where we, as naturopaths, herbalists, and nutritionists, need to take a good look at what we’re endorsing, and what we’re enabling. Programs like this trade on the language of “metabolism,” “detox,” and “balance,” yet they operate on the same physiological principle as every other diet: energy deficit equals weight loss... until it doesn’t. They offer biochemical mystique, but their true currency is body control.

As practitioners guided by principles like Primum non nocere (First, do no harm) and Tolle totum (Treat the whole person), we’re called to do better. Balance isn’t achieved through depletion; it’s restored through nourishment, connection, and safety. The real reset happens not in the mitochondria, but in the nervous system, when clients finally trust that they don’t have to earn their food, or their worth.

So if you want to talk about metabolic balance, let’s redefine it.

It’s regular meals.
Enough carbs.
Rest.
Pleasure.
A metabolism that hums because it’s fed... not because it’s fighting for survival.
That’s the kind of balance worth teaching.

What Clients Are Saying

A quick scroll through Reddit threads paints a more complex picture of Metabolic Balance than its glossy marketing suggests.

Some participants report early enthusiasm - “I’m on Phase 2 and love it,” one commenter wrote - describing rapid weight loss and the comforting structure of having every meal prescribed. Others said the plan felt empowering, even transformative. One person shared that both she and her partner lost weight, improved sleep, reduced inflammation, and “rediscovered their love for cooking.”

But for every glowing testimonial, there are stories that tell a different truth:

“It’s too extreme, restrictive, and unsustainable,” wrote one user. “I thought this would be a nutritional re-education, not another impossible standard.”

Another participant realised they were eating fewer than 1000 calories a day, despite the program being marketed as “balanced.” Others reported side effects like fatigue, anxiety, and eczema flares:
“I lost weight, sure, but I was eating under 1000 calories. My body crashed and I gained it all back.”

From an eating disorder dietitian’s standpoint, this is a serious red flag.

Eating under 1000 calories a day isn’t “metabolic balance” - it’s metabolic shutdown! At that level of intake, the risk of refeeding complications, nutrient deficiencies, and cardiovascular strain rises sharply. Clinical guidelines for eating disorder management recommend prophylactic thiamine supplementation whenever energy intake drops below 1000 cal per day or during reintroduction after restriction (Hay et al., 2022).

Thiamine depletion can occur within 2-3 weeks of inadequate intake and may lead to neurological and cardiac complications such as Wernicke’s encephalopathy, a preventable, sometimes fatal condition. In other words: if a program leaves clients so under-fueled that thiamine deficiency becomes a foreseeable risk, it’s not “balanced.” It’s medically negligent.

But I digress... let's continue with the client experiences.

Several users highlighted the program’s rigidity and opacity - confusion over food lists featuring obscure fish like carp and eel, and frustration that the reasoning behind food prescriptions was withheld as proprietary “intellectual property.”

As one commenter put it:
“They said my blood tests were sent to Germany, but I’m not allowed to know what they found because it’s the company’s intellectual property. There’s no published science, just marketing.”

And the financial strain was not lost on participants. Multiple users described it as an “expensive waste of time” once the initial novelty wore off, citing costs around $1700 AUD and disappointment that the promised “personalisation” was really just a restrictive meal plan.

Taken together, these stories reveal a familiar pattern: the program works for some (at least temporarily), but for many others, it delivers the same arc as any other diet. Restriction, weight loss, exhaustion, rebound. The same shame cycle, just dressed in clinical language.

These online stories echo what I’ve heard countless times in clinic. Clients who come to me months after completing Metabolic Balance (or programs similar to it) describe feeling confused, guilty, or physically unwell. Many say it started off feeling “empowering,” and “scientific,” but quickly turned into another cycle of fear and fatigue. Some arrive with disrupted digestion, stalled or wacky periods, or a sense of failure because they “couldn’t stick with it."

Even more concerning - and honestly, infuriating - are the clients who’ve told their naturopath they have a long history of disordered eating, sometimes even a diagnosed eating disorder, and were still put on a Metabolic Balance plan. Maybe with a few “minor tweaks” to make it sound softer... but the core remains the same: restriction, food weighing, calorie counting dressed up as “clinical.” I cannot tell you how wild it is to hear this over and over again. Because when a client is still weighing food, still tracking every bite, still being told their body can’t be trusted, that’s not holistic care. That’s retraumatising someone who came to you for help.

That’s active harm. Full stop.

And this is what worries me most: when programs like this are framed as “holistic” or “evidence-based,” they gain legitimacy within naturopathy. We mistake rigidity for rigour. We confuse compliance with healing. And we end up colluding - often unknowingly - with the very diet culture we claim to oppose every time we say, “It’s not a diet!”

When people leave these programs ashamed, disconnected from their bodies, or financially depleted, that isn’t healing. It’s harm. And it’s happening under our professional banner.

And it directly contradicts the principles we’re supposed to uphold as naturopaths:

• First, do no harm. Rigid restriction is harm - especially for someone vulnerable to disordered eating.
• Treat the whole person. MB treats blood test results, not human beings with histories, preferences, and nervous systems.
• Healing power of nature. This isn’t nature. It’s control. And control isn’t healing.

Why It Appeals to Practitioners

This might be a "well, duh" moment. But I'll say it out loud for those at the back. Metabolic Balance offers naturopaths something the industry rarely provides: a turnkey product that promises results, authority, and financial security.

It’s marketed as a way to “differentiate your clinic,” complete with scripts, branded materials, and coaching certification.

For practitioners under financial strain (which soooo many are) that’s an attractive proposition. But it comes at a cost: ethical compromise and erosion of trust.

When clients hand over $1700 for “metabolic balance,” and it triggers restriction, bingeing, or body distrust, they don’t just lose faith in MB - they lose faith in naturopathy. 

The Myth of “Metabolic Fixing”

Another thing I feel the need to say out loud (there are a lot of them!): metabolism doesn’t need “balancing.”

It needs feeding.

Restrictive, low-energy diets slow metabolic rate - the opposite of what MB claims to do (Keys et al., 1950; Leibel et al., 1995). This program marketed as “metabolic restoration” actually teaches the body to conserve energy and distrust hunger.

And when practitioners package that as personalised care, we become complicit in metabolic confusion... selling suppression while calling it science.

Sorry... You Can’t Have It Both Ways.

​Finally (I know this has been a lot, thanks for reading this far!) - it’s a select few naturopaths - but the ones who publicly claim to reject dieting while selling Metabolic Balance make me fucking furious.

Here’s my message to them:

You can’t sell Metabolic Balance and also say you practise body trust.
You can’t promote trauma-informed care and enforce rigid food rules.
You can’t claim to help clients heal their relationship with food while centring weight loss.
​
If your “wellness” program only works when people eat less, it’s not wellness... it’s dieting with better branding, and a $1700 price tag.

So what do we do instead?!

We don’t need to ditch naturopathy or pretend our $85K degree was a bad investment.

​We just need to take it back - from the detoxes, from the diets, from the BS.

True naturopathic medicine, when practised with integrity, is meant to restore harmony and trust in the body - not reinforce control over it.


1. Return to Core Principles

Our roots already hold the answers. We just need to remember them.

• Tolle Totum: Treat the whole person - body, mind, and social context. When a client says they feel “toxic,” look beyond biochemistry. Ask about stress, shame, housing, hunger, and rest.
• Primum Non Nocere: First, do no harm - even when “help” sells better. That means pausing before prescribing another restrictive plan, even if it’s trending or super lucrative (maybe, especially then?!).
• Docere: Teach, don’t control. Support curiosity rather than compliance. Empower clients to understand their bodies, rather than fear or micromanage them. This is what separates healing from health marketing.

2. Learn to See the Red Flags

Screen. Reflect. Ask why.

When “gut healing” smacks of perfectionism, or when “listening to your body” sounds like fear in disguise - pause. Use tools like the SCOFF, ED-15, or EAT-26 questionnaires to start conversations early.
If you need a refresher on what to look for, revisit my blog The Eating Spectrum and Five Red Flags of Disordered Eating - they map out the subtle ways disordered eating shows up in clinical practice long before it looks like an “eating disorder.”

And if a client seems relieved when you validate their restriction, that’s your cue to slow down!


3. Build Collaborative Pathways

You don’t have to fix everything! But, you do need to know when not to try.

Collaborate with GPs, non-diet dietitians, psychologists, and trauma-trained practitioners. Knowing your lane and widening the safety net for your clients is a massive strength. 

Remember: while naturopaths can’t diagnose eating disorders, we can and should recognise the warning signs. When restriction, bingeing, purging, or obsessive food behaviours appear, flag your concerns with the client’s GP and recommend further assessment. A simple, respectful letter outlining what you’ve observed can make a huuuge difference... and it keeps care coordinated, transparent, and within scope.

If you can’t find trusted colleagues yet, start building those bridges now.

​
4. Hold Space for Complexity
​Sometimes the most healing thing you can say is:
“I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”
Or,
“What would it feel like to make this less about control, and more about care?”
​
This is real naturopathy. The kind that listens, adapts, and refuses to confuse purity with professionalism.

And if you want to go much deeper into how to actually do this in practice - from screening and red-flag recognition to case studies and scope navigation - we dive into it in detail inside my upcoming practitioner course, Body as Earth: A Root-Cause Approach to Disordered Eating for Naturopaths.

Clients are coming to us first... often before anyone else! That’s a huge responsibility. Let’s meet it with integrity, rather than ideology.

We don’t need to be dietitians to support clients with disordered eating.

But we do need humility, discernment, and the courage to question our tools.

It’s time to unlearn the diets disguised as protocols and return to what we do best: helping people come home to their bodies, not escape them.

✨ Want to bring this into your own practice?
If this resonated - if you’re ready to practise naturopathy that nourishes rather than restricts! - I’ve created a free guide to help you start.

👉 Download my free practitioner resource: Working with Clients with Disordered Eating for Naturopaths - filled with practical, weight-neutral strategies to help you recognise red flags and offer care that heals, not harms.

🌿 When you sign up, you’ll also join the waitlist for my upcoming course, Body as Earth: A Root-Cause Approach to Disordered Eating for Naturopaths - launching mid-2026. You’ll get early access, special bonuses, and supportive emails to help you integrate non-diet, trauma-informed, and neuroaffirming care into your work.

​Reclaiming naturopathy starts here... in the messy, beautiful work of helping people come home to their bodies.

Bergman, C. (2025, June 7). How long does it take to get into ketosis? Verywell Health. https://www.verywellhealth.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-into-ketosis-8402250

Desai, M. S., Seekatz, A. M., Koropatkin, N. M., et al. (2016). A Dietary Fiber-Deprived Gut Microbiota Degrades the Colonic Mucus Barrier and Enhances Pathogen Susceptibility. Cell, 167(5), 1339-1353.e21. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27863247/

Skartum, O., Smith, C. R., Laupsa-Borge, J., Dankel, S. N. (2025). Symptoms during initiation of a ketogenic diet: a scoping review of occurence rates, mechanisms, and relief strategies. Frontiers in Nutrition. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2025.1538266/pdf

Halmos, E. P., Power, V. A., Shepherd, S. J., Gibson, P. R., & Muir, J. G. (2014). A diet low in FODMAPs reduces symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. Gastroenterology, 146(1), 67–75.e5. https://doi.org/10.1053/j.gastro.2013.09.046

​Hay, P., Mitchison, D., Bussey, K., Pike, K. M., Mond, J., Rodgers, B., … & Maguire, S. (2022). Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of eating disorders, version 2022. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 56(12), 1321–1422. https://www.ranzcp.org/getmedia/0ee7d923-af5f-44ad-b411-46edf10ba0b8/eating-disorders-cpg.pdf​

KetosisDiet.org. (2024). How long on keto diet to reach ketosis? Accelerating the process. https://ketosisdiet.org/plans/how-long-on-keto-diet-to-reach-ketosis-accelerating-the-process/

Keys, A., Brožek, J., Henschel, A., Mickelsen, O., & Taylor, H. L. (1950). The biology of human starvation (Vols. 1–2). University of Minnesota Press. https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/full/10.5555/19512901515​

Kinnaird, E., Norton, C., Stewart, C., & Tchanturia, K. (2019). Same behaviours, different reasons: What do patients with co-occurring autism and eating disorders want from treatment? International Journal of Eating Disorders, 52(7), 661–670. https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.23068

Leibel, R. L., Rosenbaum, M., & Hirsch, J. (1995). Changes in energy expenditure resulting from altered body weight. New England Journal of Medicine, 332(10), 621–628. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199503093321001

​Mayer, E. A. & Tillisch, K. (2011). The Brain-Gut Axis in Abdominal Pain Syndromes. Annual Review of Medicine, 62, 381-396. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-med-012309-103958

Polivy, J., & Herman, C. P. (1985). Dieting and binge eating: A causal analysis. American Psychologist, 40(2), 193–201. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.40.2.193

Rang, H. P., Dale, M. M., Ritter, J. M., Flower, R. J., & Henderson, G. (2024). Rang & Dale’s Pharmacology (10th ed.). Elsevier.
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Remer, T., & Manz, F. (1995). Potential renal acid load of foods and its influence on urine pH. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 95(7), 791–797. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0002-8223(95)00219-7

Rosenbaum, M., & Leibel, R. L. (2010). Adaptive thermogenesis in humans. International Journal of Obesity, 34(Suppl 1), S47–S55. https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2010.184

Sonnenburg, E. D. & Sonnenburg, J. L. (2017). Diet-induced extinctions in the gut microbiota compound over generations. Nature, 529(7585), 212-215. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16504

Sumithran, P., & Proietto, J. (2013). The defence of body weight: A physiological basis for weight regain after weight loss. Clinical Science, 124(4), 231–241. https://doi.org/10.1042/CS20120223

I had a heated discussion with my dad today. He only reads the Courier-Mail - one of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp rags - and he was adamant that “immigrants are taking all our jobs and houses!” In particular he singled out Palestinian refugees, echoing the tabloid line that they’re flooding in unchecked and "could be terrorists.”​

He didn’t know the actual stats. He didn’t know that Palestinians fleeing war go through multiple rounds of health, identity, security, and character checks before they can even get here. Between October 2023 and August 2024, Australia granted 2922 visas to people from Gaza and the West Bank. Of those, only about 1300 have actually arrived (ABC News, 2024; Wikipedia, 2024).

Most of those arrivals are on visitor visas - which mean no right to work, no Medicare, and no social support (ABC News, 2024). In the same period, thousands more Palestinians applied for protection or humanitarian visas and were denied (SBS News, 2024). The government even admitted it’s rejecting more applications than it approves.

In early 2025, officials reported that almost 1000 humanitarian visas had been granted to Palestinians and Israelis fleeing the conflict (CathNews, 2025). Yet when you compare that to the scale of displacement - more than 1.9 million Gazans uprooted - these numbers are tiny.

My dad's response to these numbers? "Oh. Is that it?"

This is not some wide-open floodgate. It’s extreme gatekeeping disguised as generosity.

It reminds me of a landlord who turns off the water for the whole apartment block, then sits back while the tenants fight each other for the last drips from the tap. The real question isn’t who stole your glass of water - it’s why the fuck the landlord cut it off in the first place.

That’s what scapegoating does. It directs our anger sideways or punches down - at immigrants, or at any of a number marginalised groups (take your pick: trans and LGBTQ+ people, people on welfare or unemployed folks, First Nations people, women and feminists, unions and striking workers, climate activists and scientists, Muslims and other religious minorities, young people and students, disabled people and NDIS users)... instead of upwards, where the real damage is being done.

So let me be crystal clear about who's actually to blame for the housing crisis.
​

Renters under housing stress show significantly worse mental health than homeowners (Baxter & Sullivan, 2022). Chronic stress doesn’t just live in your head... it hardwires itself into your body. It’s linked to heart disease, depression, and immune dysfunction.

And it feeds disordered eating. When people can’t afford groceries, when they’re juggling three jobs, or when wellness culture tells them to “fix” their stress with fasting and detoxes, food becomes another locus of control and desperation. Skipping meals to save money (and "bonus, get skinny!"), bingeing when the stress becomes unbearable, obsessing over “clean” food as a way to feel safe - these are survival responses dressed up as personal failure.
​
I know what that stress feels like. As a uni student, I lived off rice and tuna some weeks, until I discovered dumpster diving (glory be!). I juggled multiple jobs, applied for every scholarship I could get my hands on, right up to and including my Masters. I bicycled, took public transport, or carpooled to 80% of my decade of on-campus university study, until I moved to the country and had to drive to a train station to get to the city.

​These days I’ve got a mortgage. It’s not easy, but it’s still not as soul-crushing as the insecurity of wondering if you can make rent. That kind of all-consuming precarity erodes your nervous system from the inside out.

On 31 August 2025, the March for Australia rallies were held across the country. They were heavily promoted by the National Socialist Network (NSN), a neo-Nazi group, and drew in a mix of extremist organisers and sympathetic politicians (Karp & McGowan, 2025).

What cracked me up was watching people rock up to these rallies and then act all shocked when they realised they were marching alongside Nazis. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

The message from the rallies was the same as always: blame immigrants for the housing crisis. But the facts just don’t stack up.

Over the last decade, more homes have been built than there are new arrivals. Between 2014 and 2024, Australia’s population grew by 16%, but the number of dwellings increased by 19% (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2024). In other words, supply has outpaced population growth.

So why are rents and mortgages still absolutely crushing people? Because thousands of homes remain deliberately left empty. In Sydney alone, more than 24 000 dwellings were classified as vacant or “ghost homes” in 2023 (McGowan, 2024). Developers and investors hoard these properties to drive up scarcity and prices. It's hard to fathom, let alone swallow.

And what really shits me is this: the March for Australia anti-immigration rallies were fronted by people with property developer ties. While they rant about refugees “stealing homes,” their own circles are sitting on them, treating houses like Monopoly pieces while ordinary people are left scrambling (Karp & McGowan, 2025).

Immigration is not the problem. Housing speculation is. Treating homes as assets instead of human rights is what fuels the crisis - and the health fallout that comes with it: stress, anxiety, depression, and families pushed into homelessness.

Another lie spun at those rallies is that immigrants are “stealing jobs.” The numbers tell a very different story.

In 2022-23, net overseas migration hit a record 518 000 people - after the all-time lows during COVID (Department of Home Affairs, 2023). By 2024-25, the pace had slowed: net overseas migration was around 316 000 in the year to March 2025 (Karp, 2025).

The 2024-25 Migration Program is capped at 185 000 permanent places, and 71% of those are earmarked for skilled visas, targeting actual workforce gaps (Department of Home Affairs, 2024). Nurses, aged-care workers, engineers, IT specialists, teachers, tradies... these are the people coming in. They’re not “taking” jobs. They’re filling the ones Australia desperately needs.

And this isn’t abstract for me. My mum migrated from Malaysia in the 1970s and became a nurse. She was incredibly hardworking, the kind of nurse whose skill you can’t fake. In my small hometown, patients would often specifically request her when they needed blood drawn, because she was that good. I am the child of an immigrant. And I know firsthand how much migrants contribute - not just in numbers, but in care, skill, and community.

The rest of Australia’s migration intake is mostly family reunion and humanitarian visas (Refugee Council of Australia, 2024). That includes people fleeing wars and disasters, or reuniting with loved ones after years apart.

And let’s not forget: Australia is one of the most multicultural countries in the world. As of June 2024, 31.5% of Australians were born overseas, and nearly half (48.2%) have at least one parent born overseas (ABS, 2024; ABS, 2022). This isn’t new. It’s who we are.

People often complain when health is framed as political. They want it to stay in the realm of “personal responsibility” - eat better, exercise more, think positive.

But health has always been political.

Whether you have safe housing is political. Whether your local hospital is funded is political. Whether billionaires pay tax or hoard property is political.

It’s the same logic that fuels diet culture: blame the individual for their weight, their hunger, or their eating habits, while ignoring the structural causes of disordered eating - poverty, trauma, racism, fatphobia, and chronic stress. It’s easier to blame the person than to hold systems accountable.

Health doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens in bodies shaped by policy, power, and politics. Pretending otherwise is just another way of protecting the status quo.

​This isn’t just some far-out philosophical idea for me. In my Masters of Nutrition and Dietetics, I majored in public health and did placements at community hubs working with newly arrived migrants from Sudan and Laos (raddest of my placements by far!). Public health has always mattered to me... it’s why I put my arse on the line during COVID in the permaculture village I lived in, and got punished for speaking up. But I’ve studied this stuff, I’ve lived it, and I can’t in good conscience stay silent.

Wellness isn’t adaptogens and yoga passes. It’s being able to pay rent without having a panic attack. It’s knowing your community centre hasn’t been gutted. It’s enough teachers in your kid’s school. It’s a hospital bed when you need one.

Immigrants aren’t the problem.

Trans people / First Nations people / (insert marginalised group here) aren’t the problem.

Marginalised communities aren’t the problem!

The problem is billionaires, corporations, and the politicians who protect them while the rest of us scramble to survive.

If we want real public health, we need to stop blaming each other and start demanding change from the top. That’s where the fight belongs.

ABC News. (2024, September 20). Palestinian arrivals in Australia left in limbo by restrictive visas. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-20/palestinian-gaza-visas-immigrating-australia-jobs/104371952

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2022, June 28). 2021 Census: Nearly half of Australians have a parent born overseas. Australian Bureau of Statistics. https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/2021-census-nearly-half-australians-have-parent-born-overseas
​
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2024, June 30). Australia’s population by country of birth. Australian Bureau of Statistics. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/australias-population-country-birth/latest-release
​
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2024, March). Building activity, Australia: March 2024. Australian Bureau of Statistics. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/building-and-construction/building-activity-australia/latest-release
​
Baxter, J., & Sullivan, D. (2022). Housing affordability stress and mental health: Evidence from Australian renters. arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.01255. https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.01255

CathNews. (2025, January 21). Australia grants almost 1000 humanitarian visas to people fleeing Gaza conflict. CathNews. https://cathnews.com/2025/01/21/australia-grants-almost-1000-humanitarian-visas-to-people-fleeing-gaza-conflict

Department of Home Affairs. (2023). Australia’s Migration Program 2022–23 Report. Commonwealth of Australia. https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/research-and-stats/files/australias-migration-program-2022-23-report.pdf

Department of Home Affairs. (2024). Migration Program planning levels 2024–25. Commonwealth of Australia. https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/what-we-do/migration-program-planning-levels

Karp, P. (2025, September 18). Australia’s immigration is not out of control: It’s trending lower and has been for over a year. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/18/australias-immigration-is-not-out-of-control-its-trending-lower-and-has-been-for-over-a-year

Karp, P., & McGowan, M. (2025, August 31). Neo-nazis and politicians among protesters at anti-immigration March for Australia rallies. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/31/march-for-australia-neo-nazis-among-protesters-at-anti-immigration-rallies

Marmot, M., & Allen, J. (2020). COVID-19: Exposing and amplifying inequalities. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 74(9), 681–682. https://jech.bmj.com/content/74/9/681

McGowan, M. (2024, July 22). Sydney’s “ghost homes”: Thousands of houses sit empty while rents soar. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-22/sydney-ghost-homes-vacant-houses/104076682

Refugee Council of Australia. (2024). Refugee frequently asked questions: get the facts.
https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/rcoa-refugee-get-the-facts/ 

SBS News. (2024, November 15). Thousands of Palestinians fleeing war-torn Gaza denied Australian visas. Special Broadcasting Service. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/thousands-of-palestinians-fleeing-war-torn-gaza-denied-australian-visas/lqvktl19v

The Australia Institute. (2024). The housing crisis is turning into an inequality crisis. The Australia Institute. https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/the-housing-crisis-is-turning-into-an-inequality-crisis

The Lancet Public Health. (2023). Inequality and health outcomes: The structural determinants. The Lancet Public Health, 8(6), e435–e436. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667%2823%2900157-3/fulltext
​
Wikipedia. (2024). Palestinian Australians. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Australians

Transformation | Remembrance | Rejection & insecurity | Bringing subconscious fears to light | Tending to the wounded healer


This highly recognisable mushroom may bring to mind whimsical images from childhood fairytales, yet today it’s often feared as deadly by those unfamiliar with her deeper healing potential. To dispel this myth: Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria), unlike some in her genus, is not deadly when prepared properly. Still, this storybook toadstool commands deep respect and understanding.


Amanita arrives in a cloak of childlike wonder - bright, enchanting, curious, and mischievous - yet her roots run deep, touching the hidden places within the earth and soul. She is the little one who knows the way to the underworld. In her presence, we remember that even innocence can open ancient doors. 


She reflects both the Six of Cups and The Magician cards of tarot - a bridge between tender remembrance and inner transformation. Amanita invites us to playfully reconnect with forgotten and ignored parts of ourselves, while guiding us through a sacred alchemical transmutation in which we become awake to that which no longer serves. 


Amanita muscaria, though toxic if misused, has been revered for inducing altered states, catalysing inner alchemy - a reshaping of consciousness, much like the Magician’s role in the tarot. Transformation in this sense is not an end, but a clearing - one that the ego often resists, yet is essential for new growth. The descent is rarely soft, but in yielding to it, we awaken a raw, childlike curiosity that matures into deep inner strength. From that softened place trapped energy begins to flow, offering quiet liberation. 


Called “the archetypal magic mushroom” by Australian mycologist Caine Barlow, Amanita muscaria has long held a place in traditional cultures as a spiritual ally and entheogen. Amanita was often used in ritualistic or initiatory contexts, testing the limits of the mind and spirit. This mushroom represents the cost and consequence of seeking true power. But magic without grounding is delusion. Though powerful and potentially overwhelming when taken beyond microdose levels, if approached with reverence and preparation it can bring profound initiation - mirroring rites of passage and ego death. 


In my experience, the essence of Amanita offers a gentler, safer, and more sustainable way to work with her. Through dreams, visions, and gentle unraveling, she brings subconscious fears - especially around rejection, insecurity, and change - into the light of awareness. Her medicine deepens when paired with dreamwork, meditation, or spirit communion. 


Amanita is especially resonant for those who walk at the edges -the bog witches, wood dwellers, wild seers and wounded healers - those who guide others through chaos yet often avoid their own depths. Her essence helps dissolve long-held patterns shaped by pain, fear, or isolation. In the breaking open, something softer, more authentic, and more whole is born.


Tarot correspondence: The Magician, 6 of Cups


Element: Fire, Earth


Planets: Sun, Moon, Mercury


Dosage: Take 2-4 drops up to 4 times per day, directly on the tongue or in a glass of water.


Ingredients: Amanita muscaria vibrational essence. Made with gluten free brandy and filtered rainwater. 


Amanita is the first in a sacred triad of allies for walking the shadowed path - joining Datura and Angel's Trumpet as gatekeepers to the underworld and midwives for the soul’s return. Together, these three master plants guide the spiral descent into the depths and the luminous reemergence that follows.


If your spirit feels the call to walk this path with intention, mystery, and deep remembrance, you’re invited to join myself, my beloved sister and herbalist Dominika, and these potent green teachers for a 6-week guided descent:

🌑 The Poisoned Path – Journey Into the Underworld 🌿

Come prepared to meet your shadows, your power, and the wisdom that waits in the dark.


​Handcrafted with love by Casey Conroy, qualified naturopath and herbalist using organically grown or sustainably wildcrafted plants and fungi. This is a vibrational remedy.


15mL stock bottle



** Payment for Amanita Mushroom Essence **


Due to Square’s payment policy, we’re unable to process payments for Amanita muscaria products through their system.

(It’s a bit of a silly rule - this is an essence containing no actual mushroom material - but Square still blocks it under their “restricted items” list.)

✨ If you’d like to order Amanita muscaria essence, please use direct bank transfer instead:


Account Name: Casey Conroy
BSB: 923 000
Account Number: 307015668
Reference: Please use your full name as the payment reference so we can match your order.


If your order includes any Amanita essence - whether this is your entire order or you wish to also buy other products, please email me with what you'd like and I will send you a quote and put your entire order together. 

​Please note there is an addition to your order total of $15.95 for regular postage or $22.95 for express postage in Australia. 

Please email casey@funkyforest.com.au to let me know you've placed an order. Once payment is received, we’ll confirm your order by text or email. Thank you for your understanding!

This article is part 2 of a mini-series on disordered eating in naturopathic practice. Over three parts, we’ll explore the eating spectrum, the red flags you need to know, and how to avoid accidentally fuelling diet culture in clinic.

Whether you’re a naturopath, herbalist, or other holistic practitioner, this series will start giving you the frameworks to support clients safely and effectively - without causing harm.

Through a naturopathic lens, this is Primum non nocere (First, do no harm) and Tolle totum (Treat the whole person). We’re not here to police plates; we’re here to restore healthy relationships with appetite, body, food... and essentially, oneself.
​

I’ve spent years trying to capture what disordered eating looks like in real life. The problem was, my lists kept getting longer and longer: the client who avoids carbs after 6pm, won’t eat until 11am, keeps boxes of weight loss supplements stashed away, cooks high-calorie meals for everyone else but won’t touch them, body-checks every time they pass a mirror, or spends 75% of their waking hours thinking about food and weight.

The truth is, disordered eating shows up in endless ways. And when I focused on every possible detail, it was easy to miss the bigger picture.

So instead of a looooong checklist, I now group these patterns into five broad families. I won’t list every symptom under each, but if you know the gist of these five, you’ll be much better equipped to spot disordered eating in practice... without losing sight of the person in front of you.

So here are my five red flags, in no particular order of importance:

Clients bouncing from keto to intermittent fasting to sugar detoxes, each one promising to be the fix. They may cut out whole food groups (no carbs, no dairy, no gluten) without a medical reason, or cling to timing rules like “I can’t eat after 6pm” or “I only eat within an 8-hour window.” Yes, I'm looking at you, intentional intermittent fasting!

Some refuse “processed” foods at all costs, keep cupboards stacked with detox teas or fat-burning supplements, or religiously weigh out portions even of nutrient-dense foods. And when those rules inevitably get broken? Cue guilt, shame, or a frantic plan to “make up for it” with more restriction, exercise, or fasting.

Red flag: “Willpower” often masks shame, fear, and a desperate attempt to feel in control. On the surface it can look disciplined or “healthy,” but underneath it’s anxiety in disguise.

The numbers: Dieting isn’t harmless. About 35% of “normal dieters” progress to disordered eating, and of those, 20-25% develop a clinical eating disorder (National Eating Disorders Collaboration [NEDC], 2019). This makes dieting the single strongest predictor of eating disorder onset, not a path to long-term health (Mann et al., 2007; Bacon & Aphramor, 2011).

Practitioner reframe: Instead of praising their “discipline,” I suggest you could ask some open, compassionate questions about the net effect of these rules on their quality of life:
​

• “How do these food rules affect your energy and mood?”
• “What happens socially or with your family life when these rules are in play?”
• “Do you notice how you feel about yourself when you break a rule?”

These kinds of questions shift the frame from “good vs bad eating” to “what helps vs what harms.”

Protective framework: This is where Intuitive Eating Principle 1 - Reject the Diet Mentality is so powerful. Naming dieting for what it is (a false promise with real risks) can help clients unhook from the belief that the next diet will fix everything.

Naturopathic principles: Primum non nocere (First, Do No Harm) and Praevenire (Prevention). Dieting is not benign. Our job is to stop adding fuel to the fire with more restrictive protocols, and to prevent progression along the spectrum - from “wellness” dieting into full-blown disordered eating or eating disorders. Prevention means protecting clients from harm by not prescribing interventions we know don’t work, and by helping them build sustainable, flexible relationships with food.

Instead of food and body quietly taking their place in the ecosystem of a person’s life, they start behaving like invasive species. They spread, crowding out joy, connection, and the ability to hear the body’s other voices - hunger, play, rest, intimacy.

​Clients log every macro, body-check in every mirror or shop window, weigh daily (or multiple times), scroll “fitspo,” compare photos, refuse meals they didn’t plan, or skip social events because the menu isn’t controllable. Or if they do decide to go out and eat socially, they'll spend the day before and/or after "making up" for it - saving calories beforehand so as to appear "normal" when in the company of others, or planning a long run or power walk after the meal to burn the calories off.

​Some keep “fear foods” out of the house, measure their worth by watch metrics, or spend hours planning “perfect” days of eating.
​
Red flag: Preoccupation crowds out life. When attention is glued to food/shape, flexibility, connection, and joy shrink. This is a risk state for escalation.

Practitioner reframe (what to ask):

• “Roughly how much time/brain space does food/body take on a typical day?”
• “If you got even 30% of that time back, what would it go to?”
• “What happens to your mood, sleep, or relationships when tracking ramps up?”

Protective frameworks:

• IE Principle 7 - Cope with Emotions with Kindness and Principle 8 - Respect Your Body. These pivot from control to care, and from appearance to function/values.
• Micro-experiments: a scale holiday, social media feed hygiene (unfollow triggering accounts), mirror neutrality drills (describe, don’t judge), and a time audit of “life stolen by food/body thoughts.”

Naturopathic principles:

• Scientia Critica (Critical Thinking, or Doctor as Learner): Preoccupation is often rewarded in wellness culture (“you’re so dedicated!”), even by us practitioners if we’re not careful. Critical thinking means resisting the urge to applaud obsession, and instead asking, “What is actually happening when the client tracks less or deletes the fitness app for a week?”. Let outcomes (not ideology) guide learning.
• Tolle Causam - Treat the Cause: Preoccupation is a signal, not the root. Address upstream drivers like stigma, perfectionism, underfuelling, sleep, or anxiety. In my upcoming course Body as Earth: A Root-Cause Approach to Disordered Eating for Naturopaths, we break down the nervous system/food obsession loop, and how herbs and gentle nutrition can help without feeding the fire.
• Praevenire - Prevention: Preoccupation is a risk state. Protect against escalation by de-emphasising weight goals, promoting flexible structure, and keeping space for joy and connection.

​

Clients arrive with wardrobes in three different sizes, or they “won’t buy new clothes until they’re back to goal weight.” They drop kilos on the latest detox or practitioner-only program, regain it, blame themselves, then repeat the cycle. Sometimes they say “this time will be different” while signing up for the same punishment in a shinier package.

Red flag: Shame and guilt dominate. Behaviours swing between extremes, with self-worth hanging on the scale.

The numbers:

• 80-95% of dieters regain weight within 1-5 years (Mann et al., 2007; Bacon & Aphramor, 2011). Weight cycling is the norm for yo-yo dieters, not the execption.
• Weight cycling is not benign: a 2025 Vanderbilt study (>83 000 adults) found it increased risk of heart failure by 50%, and raised diabetes, fatty liver disease, and sleep apnoea risk by ~30%, compared to stable higher weights (Silver et al., 2025).

Practitioner reframe: Normalise weight regain as physiology, not failure. Ask:

• “How has focusing on weight cycling affected your mood, sleep, or energy?”
• “What would it be like to measure health by stamina, digestion, or joy - instead of the scale?”
• Sometimes I'll ask the client if they'd like to map out a timeline of all the diets they've tried and how much weight was lost, then regained. This can be eye-opening, but be sure to reassure them that this is not proof that they are failed, but rather that the diets failed them.

Naturopathic principles:

• Primum non nocere - Do No Harm: Stop prescribing more restrictive protocols; they fuel the cycle and worsen risk.
• Tolle Causam - Treat the Cause: Look at stigma, stress, chronic sleep disruption, and metabolic adaptation. The problem isn’t willpower, it’s biology plus oppression.
• Prevention: Protect clients from being funnelled into another cycle by focusing on behaviours that enhance wellbeing.

​Aligned Intuitive Eating principles:

• #1 Reject Diet Culture
• #8 Respect Your Body
• #10 Honour Your Health with Gentle Nutrition

👉 We unpack the physiology of weight cycling and how to communicate this to clients without triggering shame in my upcoming course, Body as Earth: A Root-Cause Approach to Disordered Eating for Naturopaths.

Clients come in convinced they have IBS, SIBO, or a long list of intolerances - and they might. But often they'll request restrictive elimination diets to address these issues. They describe bloating, reflux, constipation, fatigue, or say they feel “out of control” with food. Some also report menstrual changes: painful, heavier, or irregular periods, PMS that feels unbearable, or cycles going missing entirely.

Red flag: These symptoms can trace back to underfuelling, erratic eating, and stress, rather than mysterious intolerances.

What the evidence shows:

• Gut dysregulation from undernutrition: Low energy intake slows gastric emptying and bowel motility, leading to constipation, reflux, and early satiety (Gaudiani, 2018). Delayed gastric emptying is common in restrictive eating disorders and often improves with nutritional rehabilitation (Quigley, 2019).
• Functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs): People with eating disorders are far more likely to meet criteria for IBS, functional dyspepsia, and chronic constipation (Evans & Garcia, 2017). Up to 90% of those with anorexia nervosa report GI symptoms (Norris et al., 2016). And it’s not just one-sided - studies show a substantial proportion of people with FGIDs also meet criteria for disordered eating or eating disorders, suggesting a strong bidirectional link between gut distress and disrupted eating patterns (Becker et al., 2022).
• Erratic eating patterns: Skipping meals or fasting all day then eating large amounts at night places strain on the digestive system, worsening reflux, bloating, and pain (Becker et al., 2022). You’ll also see echoes of this in your intermittent fasting clients - especially the OMAD (one-meal-a-day) crowd. On the flip side, constant grazing (eating stretched out over many hours) can throw off the migrating motor complex (MMC), raising the risk of SIBO and other digestive issues.​
• Stress and the gut–brain axis: Hypervigilance around food cranks up sympathetic tone, which literally switches digestion off. Result: cramps, nausea, bloating, and that classic “food just sits there” feeling (Becker et al., 2022).
• Microbiome changes: Restriction and cutting whole food groups reduce fermentable fibres and microbial diversity, which worsens bloating and visceral hypersensitivity (Becker et al., 2022).
• Hormonal impacts: Around 58% of women with EDs report menstrual irregularities (Basu & Golden, 2023). Dysfunction shows up across all ED types, not just restrictive anorexia (Pinheiro et al., 2007).
• Menstrual distress: Women with eating disorders report more PMS pain, mood changes, and bloating than controls (Klatzkin et al., 2024).
• Bone and endocrine consequences: Prolonged undernourishment alters HPO-axis signalling, raises cortisol, and reduces bone density (Gaudiani, 2018). Even subclinical restriction can worsen PMS, throw cycles off, and set up stress fractures down the track.

Practitioner reframe: Instead of reflexively prescribing another elimination, get curious:

• “Could these symptoms be the body’s response to not enough food?”
• “Do your gut issues flare more in high-stress times?”
• “Have menstrual cycles shifted since food restriction started?”

Naturopathic principles:

• Vis medicatrix naturae - The Healing Power of Nature: Adequacy and rhythm first. Then, herbal allies like Matricaria chamomilla (calming, carminative), Althaea officinalis (soothing, demulcent), and Gentiana lutea (bitter, supportive of digestion) can be helpful, depending on the client's constitution.
• Tolle Totum - Treat the Whole Person: Gut symptoms aren’t “just the gut.” They connect to nervous system dysregulation, hormones, microbiome shifts, and undernourishment.
• Prevention: Avoid quick-fix eliminations that reinforce fear. Protect gut and hormonal health by restoring adequacy, rhythm, and safety.

Aligned Intuitive Eating principles:

• #3 Make Peace with Food
• #4 Discover the Satisfaction Factor
• #10 Honour Your Health with Gentle Nutrition

​👉 In Body as Earth: A Root-Cause Approach to Disordered Eating for Naturopaths, we dive deeper into supporting gut, cycle, and hormonal health without fuelling restriction - including which herbs soothe, all without moralising food.

Food and body control often double as coping strategies. Clients may weigh every lettuce leaf, binge to numb stress, or cling to “clean eating” as proof of worth. ADHD and OCD traits often show up here, as does perfectionism.

Red flag: Eating behaviours are welded to identity, safety, or self-worth.

The evidence: EDs co-occur at high rates with anxiety, OCD, ADHD, and trauma. Early intervention matters: research shows that recovery improves dramatically when treatment is accessed sooner (Treasure et al., 2020; Flynn et al., 2020).

Practitioner reframe: Validate food as a coping tool before offering alternatives. Ask: “It makes sense food has been your anchor - what else could help you steady yourself?”

Naturopathic principles:

• Tolle totum - Treat the Whole Person: See the physical, emotional, social, and cultural layers.
• Docere - Doctor as Teacher: Model inclusive language, and empower body trust.
• Critical Thinking / Doctor as Learner: Too often in wellness spaces, practitioners either (a) collapse everything into “nutrition” - as if protein could cure trauma - or (b) back away completely - “oh, that’s mental health, nothing I can do, out of my scope.” Both extremes do harm. 

Critical thinking here means staying curious and nuanced. Ask: “What role is food playing for this person right now? Comfort? Control? Safety?” Then decide what’s yours to support (gentle nourishment, herbs for sleep, nervous system grounding) and what needs a referral (trauma therapy, psych support).

It’s also about recognising the systems at play. If a client with ADHD is struggling with food routines, that’s executive function - not laziness, and certainly not "a lack of connection". If someone binge-eats after trauma triggers, that’s their nervous system doing its best to self-soothe. Your scope isn’t to “fix” trauma, but you can make the terrain safer: stabilise blood sugar, protect sleep, support digestion, and model body respect.

👉 In my course we dig into how to avoid both overstepping and underserving. We map where your role ends and referral begins, all without abandoning the client. Because “critical thinking” isn’t about being the smartest in the room. It’s about staying teachable, curious, and willing to be part of a larger healthcare team.

​Aligned Intuitive Eating principles: #2 Honour Your Hunger, #5 Feel Your Fullness, #7 Cope with Emotions with Kindness.

One of the challenges in practice is that the red flags of disordered eating don’t exist in isolation. Many of the same symptoms can appear in other health conditions. For example:

• Cold intolerance may suggest hypothyroidism or iron deficiency, not just restrictive eating.
• Amenorrhoea or irregular cycles could be related to PCOS, thyroid dysfunction, stress, or other endocrine conditions.
• Low mood, anxiety, or fatigue may be part of depression, trauma histories, or chronic illness.
• GI complaints overlap heavily with IBS, SIBO, coeliac disease, and other functional gut disorders.

So how do you tell the difference? Context is key. Disordered eating red flags cluster together and are linked with food and body concerns. A client presenting with bloating and reflux plus rigid food rules, body preoccupation, and weight cycling is telling a different story than someone with identical gut symptoms but no disordered eating patterns.

This is where critical thinking and thorough assessment come in. A careful history - exploring eating behaviours, body image, dieting history, and mental health - helps you tease apart whether these symptoms are primarily medical, primarily behavioural, or (most often) both.

👉 In my course we dig into this in detail: how to differentiate between comorbidities like hypothyroidism or depression, and when to refer for labs versus when to focus on eating behaviours and psychological supports.
​

If you’re seeing yourself in this, here are five places to start. I go into much more detail in my course, with scripts, screening tools, and case studies you can practice with. For now, these steps will get you started safely.
​

1. Hold space without judgment. Clients are often drenched in shame. Phrases like “That sounds really hard” or “You’re not alone in this” can be more therapeutic than any supplement or food plan.
2. Stay within scope - but don’t shrink yourself. You’re not here to treat trauma or diagnose DSM disorders. But you are qualified to observe, screen, and flag concerns. And those observations can be the missing piece that helps a GP or psychologist take a client seriously - I feel like at least once a week I'm flagging what looks like an ED in a client referred to me by a GP for something else entirely (usually IBS, diabetes, or weight concern).
3. Support what you can. Herbs for digestion or sleep, nervous system regulation, gentle nourishment frameworks. Be the safe, consistent presence who doesn’t prescribe shame.
4. Refer early. Research shows recovery outcomes are significantly better with early referral (Treasure et al., 2020). Build your network of GPs, psychologists, and HAES-aligned dietitians, and frame referral as “adding to the team,” not “I can’t help you.”
5. Keep learning. Frameworks like Intuitive Eating and HAES are protective; mindful eating can help with awareness but isn’t enough on its own. Staying updated keeps you from unconsciously fuelling diet culture.

👉 In my upcoming course (waitlist now open!) we zoom right into each of these: how to document, what language to use, and how to communicate with other professionals so your concerns get heard. But start here, and you’ll already be protecting clients from a lot of harm.

Key takeaway: Spotting red flags isn’t about thinking, "shit, this is out of my depth!", retreating or ignoring. It’s about holding space, supporting rhythms and safety, and knowing when to refer. We need more practitioners like you to take the reins! Done well, you can prevent escalation, reduce shame, and make a huge positive difference to the lives of your clients.

So there you have it: five red flag families and some first steps to respond without causing harm. These aren’t the whole map - more like trail markers to keep you oriented while you’re still learning the terrain.

In my course we go much deeper: into scripts, referral letters, case studies, and the nuts-and-bolts of working alongside psychs and GPs. But if you start with these basics, you’re already waaaay ahead of the average naturopath in terms of keeping clients safe.

✨ In the next episode, we’ll turn the spotlight back on ourselves as practitioners. I’ll unpack the ways naturopaths sometimes accidentally fuel disordered eating - and what to do instead. And yes, we're going to talk in depth about Metabolic Balance.


✨ Want to bring this into your own practice?
👉Download my free practitioner guide: Working with Clients with Disordered Eating for Naturopaths - packed with weight-neutral care tips.
🌿 When you sign up, you’ll also join the waitlist for Body as Earth: A Root-Cause Approach to Disordered Eating for Naturopaths and receive supportive emails to help you integrate Intuitive Eating and naturopathic principles into your practice.

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Thanks for being here and for doing this work that really matters. Remember: you don’t have to be a dietitian, GP, or psychologist to support clients with disordered eating... but you do need the right frameworks to avoid harm.

Until next time, take care of yourself, nourish your own body, and don’t forget: nuance is the new rebellion!

With warmth,
Casey 
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Bacon, L., & Aphramor, L. (2011). Weight science: Evaluating the evidence for a paradigm shift. Nutrition Journal, 10(1), 9. https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-10-9

Basu, S., & Golden, N. H. (2023). The connection between menstrual status and restrictive eating remains essential to the diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes of eating disorders. Journal of Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility, 8(2).

Becker, K. R., et al. (2022). The overlap between eating disorders and gastrointestinal disorders. Practical Gastroenterology, 46(8), 33–47.

Evans, M. M., & Garcia, K. (2017, November). The intersection of eating disorders and functional gastrointestinal disorders. Academy for Eating Disorders International Conference, Prague, Czech Republic. [Conference presentation].

Flynn, M., et al. (2020). Assessing the impact of First Episode Rapid Early Intervention for Eating Disorders (FREED). European Eating Disorders Review, 28(6), 1–10.

Gaudiani, J. L. (2018). Sick enough: A guide to the medical complications of eating disorders. Routledge.
Klatzkin, R. R., et al. (2024). Menstrual cycle–related symptomatology in women with eating disorders. Archives of Women’s Mental Health, 27(3), 451–463. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-024-01542-1

Mann, T., Tomiyama, A. J., Westling, E., Lew, A. M., Samuels, B., & Chatman, J. (2007). Medicare’s search for effective obesity treatments: Diets are not the answer. American Psychologist, 62(3), 220–233.

National Eating Disorders Collaboration. (2019). Disordered eating and dieting (Fact sheet). https://nedc.com.au

Norris, M. L., et al. (2016). Gastrointestinal complications associated with anorexia nervosa: A systematic review. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 49(3), 216–237.

Pinheiro, A. P., et al. (2007). Patterns of menstrual dysfunction in eating disorder patients. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 40(5), 424–434.

Quigley, E. M. M. (2019). Gastric emptying and upper gastrointestinal symptoms in anorexia nervosa. In Encyclopedia of Gastroenterology (pp. 1–8).

Silver, H. J., et al. (2025). Weight trajectory impacts risk for cardiometabolic diseases. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Advance online publication.
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Treasure, J., et al. (2020). Early intervention for eating disorders. European Eating Disorders Review, 28(6), 1–10.

Being a holistic health practitioner after the tidal waves of COVID-19 that have hit us often feels like walking a frayed tightrope. On one side, mainstream medicine pretty much dismisses anything outside the biomedical model as pseudoscience, “woo,” or magical thinking. On the other, parts of the wellness industry veered into contrarianism, conspiracism, rugged individualism, and healthism - using the pandemic as fuel for branding and sales.

And those of us in between - who care deeply about evidence, community, and tradition - were left trying to hold nuance in a world that desperately wanted extremes.
​

During COVID, I watched with a mix of grief and fury as much of the wellness industry proudly unmasked itself (literally and figuratively). Wellness entrepreneurs flaunted their disregard for public health measures, framing masks or vaccines not as collective responsibility but as an assault on “freedom.”

Now, don’t get me wrong - I too am skeptical of governments, and the vaccine rollout was far from smooth. Mistakes were made, inequities deepened, and vulnerable communities were often left behind. In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were officially prioritised early in the rollout, but in reality they were left waiting: supplies of Pfizer were delayed, remote communities struggled with staff shortages and logistics, and culturally safe communication wasn’t prioritised. Many mob saw confusing, even patronising messaging from mainstream health authorities, while their own ACCHOs weren’t given the resources or autonomy they needed. The result was lower vaccination rates, higher risk... and yet another example of how systemic racism plays out in public health.

But to me, the shittiness of the rollout reflects a broken system in need of transformation - not evidence of a global conspiracy. This isn't a reason to turn our backs on the system altogether, but to demand and co-create something better: a public health response rooted in equity, transparency, and community care. But as usual, I digress...

At its height, the pandemic also became a business model. And even as I write this in 2025, fear remains a lucrative commodity for some wellness grifters. Suddenly, “immune-boosting protocols,” “frequency devices,” and “spike protein detox” supplements appeared on websites and social feeds. Some even claimed (and still claim) they “don’t advertise due to censorship”, a framing that of course fuels knee-jerk contrarianism by making products feel like “forbidden knowledge”. The kind of "secret wisdom" that intentionally stokes curiosity and drives sales. Others hawked colloidal silver or “miracle mineral solution” as universal cures - at best, ineffective, and at worst dangerous products that found new life in conspiracy-driven wellness circles.

And then there was ivermectin. Ahhhh, the infamous “horse wormer”! As someone who used to be a veterinarian, I found this particularly laughable - it simply doesn’t work that way. What made it even stranger was the irony: ivermectin was produced by Big Pharma, the very machine these same wellness conspiracists claimed to be resisting. Yet there I was at a breathwork retreat, having participants lean in with conspiratorial whispers and finger-to-nose gestures, telling me they “knew someone who could import a bunch of ivermectin.” It would have been hilarious if it weren’t so deeply sad.

When I named my concerns, I paid the price. Living in a permaculture community at the time, I received backlash for expressing something as simple as solidarity with public health. Speaking about masks or vaccines in those circles was framed as selling out to “the system.” I’ve written about that painful chapter - the heartbreak of losing community over a commitment to truth - in Prajña: Practising discernment in a climate of COVID misinformation.

And it hasn’t only been COVID. Long before the pandemic, I was calling out unsafe practices in the wellness world... like multi-level-marketing essential oil companies encouraging ingestion of neat oils. That led to one of my most-read pieces ever, Essential Oil Ingestion - Just Don’t Do It, which earned me my fair share of angry messages from distributors, but also gratitude from people harmed by bad advice.

As herbalist Dave Meesters has written, COVID revealed how “wellness culture has a strong pull towards right-wing libertarianism and individualist ‘freedom’ politics” - currents that many herbalists and naturopaths got swept up in, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes deliberately to build their brands (1).