Holistic (or wholistic) is a buzzword these days. It’s often used to describe an approach to health or lifestyle that is “natural”, “alternative”, or complementary. Any approach that “isn’t mainstream”.

I think this is deeply inaccurate. At least, it’s not what I mean when I describe myself as a holistic health practitioner.

Yesterday I was speaking with an experienced body worker (Julian at GET FIXED Remedial Massage) and was reminded of the way so-called holistic approaches are often used in a completely allopathic, symptomatic fashion, the very same pattern many of these alternative-seeking folks are trying to avoid.

What does this look like? Here are some examples of the “green allopathy” I see commonly:

• Ingesting X essential oil to fix multi-factorial, chronic gut dysfunction
• Taking one nutraceutical or herb to recover long term missing periods without considering behaviour, stress levels, mental and spiritual health
• Natural health practitioners who prescribe strict elimination diets to treat a person’s IBS, without addressing or even recognising an individual’s underlying disordered eating behaviours
• Folks self-prescribing bone broth fasts whilst still in denial about their eating disorder
• Getting MTHFR or pyrrole testing (and treating indefinitely with supplements) without addressing deeper issues like chronic malnutrition, mental health and stress.

A truly holistic approach doesn’t simply look for unidirectional cause and effect. Black and white solutions. This = that. Instead it looks at the entire interconnected web of factors impacting an individual’s health.

Nutrition and exercise are just two (not as all-important as we've been lead to believe) factors! There are so many other determinants of health, such as:

• socioeconomic status
• genetic variability
• trauma
• environment
• presence and degree of oppressive systems (eg. racism, weight stigma, homophobia, sexism, ableism), and
• stress levels due to all of these factors.

There is NO point telling folks that they’d just be healthier if they ate more organic veggies and started practising clinical Pilates, if they’re under the poverty line and barely able to stay awake to cook dinner after working 3 jobs to look after their kids.

A truly holistic approach takes all of these factors into consideration. I think that we need to recognise the fact that 50% of women (and up to 75% by some research) have some form of disordered eating that will in all likelihood be impacting their long term health (Bulik, 2008).

We need to acknowledge that weight stigma and poverty and other forms of oppression are real and these impact many folks’ ability to nourish themselves in a so-called ideal way, or to trial any of these “wonder” lifestyles (read: diets) and forgo all grains, dairy, legumes, sugar and other major accessible food groups for the sake of adhering to a paleo label.

Truly holistic medicine acknowledges these barriers and tries to lower them.

For practitioners: whether it’s offering a sliding scale or community classes to improve access to services, educating people on how to forage highly nutritious and wild foods that cost little to nothing, providing free talks or information, or simply taking the time to properly explain things to your clients during a consult... there are ways to improve accessibility to and effectiveness of health knowledge and services.

For individuals: your health doesn’t hinge on whether you can afford the autoimmune paleo diet this month, or $400 worth of supplements, or becoming an MLM essential oil distributor just to be able to keep accessing all the oils you’ve been convinced you need to maintain your health. Your health is influenced by many factors including cultural conditioning (e.g. the belief that thin = healthy. Or lean = healthy. Or even that natural = healthy). There are ways to truly look after yourself that won’t break the bank, ask you to change jobs, or require immense privilege.

You can go to a health practitioner (science-based OR traditional) and experience a truly holistic approach. This is what I experienced yesterday with Julian, a strictly science-based practitioner who went beyond just giving me a massage and took the time to explain what was happening in my body, and the impacts emotional and mental health can have.

Similarly you can be treated symptomatically with a myopic focus on pathology, not overall health, regardless of the type of practitioner you’re seeing.

“Holistic” isn’t an approach that is solely and automatically practised by natural health practitioners. Nor is it out of the realms of possibility for “mainstream” medical folk to practice holistically. We need to stop thinking in such reductionist terms and look beyond the marketing and labels if a truly holistic approach is what we’re after.

If a practitioner cares about you as a whole person (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) and works alongside you to restore health, then chances are they are “holistic”... whether or not they market themselves as such.

Finally... sometimes all that is needed to stimulate the body’s self-healing mechanisms are the basics: fresh air, clean water, sunlight. A holistic approach doesn’t have to be complicated. This picture of my son Archie at the beautiful Booloumba Creek Falls reminds me of the healing power of nature, and how simple it can often be to begin restoring health.
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Restrictive eating is a major pain, especially when it causes you to lose your period. Hypothalamic Amenorrhoea (HA) leads to infertility but also a bunch of other lesser known issues. Anti-diet naturopath Phoebe Jobson and I talk all things HA - a condition close to both our hearts as we each have experienced and recovered from this condition.
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In this episode:

• What is HA? Plus some signs, symptoms, and accompanying issues (short and long term)
• All about the food piece – how much, how often, and whether calorie counting to ensure minimum intakes helps or hinders (hint: it depends!)
• Why potatoes are not the devil (and carbs may actually be your secret weapon)
• Guidelines on exercise in HA recovery
• Why rest rocks
• The importance of seeing a psychologist / psychotherapist / counsellor as part of your team 
• Tips on dealing with diet mentality and diet culture 
• Busting some common HA myths
• Partial vs full recovery
• The problem with skipping the nutritional rehabilitation part of healing from HA and jumping straight to herbs, fertility medications and/or injectables
• Body appreciation

About Phoebe:
Phoebe Jobson is a Sydney based Speaker and Naturopath at Nutmeg Naturopathy. Naturopathy encompasses a number of modalities, particularly herbal medicine and nutrition, to help support acute and chronic illnesses and imbalances within the body. Having had her own health challenges in the past and being diagnosed with a Restrictive Eating Disorder, Phoebe knows what it is like to be in a place of dis-eased health. She has learnt how nutrition, herbal medicine and other holistic principles have the power to help and enable our body and mind to thrive. Phoebe is so passionate about supporting individuals and helping them take care of their precious health. We must learn to appreciate and love who we are, nourishing ourselves on a daily basis. Helping others add health, happiness, and soul back into their lives truly makes Phoebe’s heart sing. Each and every one of us is on a different health journey and Phoebe is here to help support, build and energise that journey.

Links:
Phoebe's Website, Instagram & Facebook
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For our collective liberation, it is crucial that our wellness practices go beyond the mainstream representation of individualised, material self-care. Laura Jean, APD talks about community care as a form of self-care that creates space for everyone, including marginalised and oppressed groups of people.

In this episode:

• The "epiphany moment" book that turned both of us onto the non-diet path
• Self-care is an act of liberation, especially for oppressed and marginalised groups of people
• Unshackling ourselves from patriarchal ideas of what it is to be a "good mother"
• Differentiating commodified wellness from community care as accessible, equitable self-care
• "Who benefits?" and "What feels nourishing?" as ways of questioning self-care practices 
• Why emotional and comfort eating are not “bad”
• Food is much more than medicine
• The radical, feminist roots of self-care
• How white supremacy shows up for health practitioners
• Investigating needs, values based living, and self-compassion

About Laura:
Laura Jean is an Accredited Practicing Dietitian who focuses on the ‘whys’ of eating and how body connection can guide our interaction with food. She is passionate about helping women develop a healthier relationship with food and supporting them to become the expert in their own food experiences.

Laura's Website, Instagram & Facebook

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Did you know that many far-flung ‘superfoods’ carry a heavy environmental and social footprint? This episode builds upon a discussion of the over-harvesting of medicinal plants and superfoods that began in episode 15 with Katya Weiss-Andersson about wellness capitalism.

In this episode:
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• WTF is a superfood? (and some brief thoughts on Juice Plus+)
• Rarity breeds desire
• Issues around the sustainable harvesting of quinoa
• Yogis, food and karma
• Cost-effective alternatives to exotic $$$ superfoods

Links:

​Ep 15: Wellness Capitalism: Essential Oil MLMs, Whitewashed Herbalism, and "Naturopreneurs" with Katya Weiss-Andersson

Ep 11. Wildly Accessible Food & Medicine: Foraging Edible Weeds & Bush Foods with Pat Collins
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Original article this episode is based on

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Sure, bulking and cutting (let's just call it B+C) can work in the short term and therefore be “effective” – especially if your definition of effective is short-term weight loss.

(Note I didn't use the more popular term fat loss, because when cutting you won't only lose fat - you will lose some muscle too. Y'know, that tissue most people are trying to build or at least maintain. You don't get to pick which body tissue you reduce when you diet!)

Cut too early or severely (or really, at all) and you will lose muscle mass, meaning performance can suffer. I’ve seen intelligent, experienced powerlifting coaches trying to make it into a lower weight class for a comp cut too early (or cut when they really didn’t need to, hello disordered eating disguised as athleticism) to the detriment of their performance...

...to the point where they couldn’t even compete due to health issues and/or overtraining injuries elicited by the calorie deficit. In which case, what the f*%k is the point?

As I alluded to, "cutting for comp" can be a free pass for some to control or lose weight using disordered eating behaviours.

For experienced and professional athletes who need to make weight, B+C can work for competitive purposes when performance nutrition and loss of the muscle mass that comes with cutting is carefully taken into consideration.

But remember for these folks, their sport is their full time career. They have an entire support team on board: sports coach, strength and conditioning coach, team or personal sports dietitian or nutritionist, and sometimes a personal chef behind them to do all the number crunching and food prep for them. How much support and time do you have?
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Bulking and cutting demands that you ignore the body’s intuition by (usually) tracking macros, which tells you how much protein, carbohydrate and fat you should eat in combination with your training plan.

You may have heard of "If It Fits Your Macros", or IIFYM for short. Macro tracking is closely tied in with bulking and cutting, as it's frequently the diet of choice for people wishing to build muscle and then "reveal" it by losing fat through restrictive dieting. 

As macro tracking is based on strict external rules, very little room is given for those times you feel hungry but have no macros left and aren’t allowed to eat. Or when you’re full but you haven’t hit your numbers for the day.

In short, it's a diet (despite emancipation-themed claims of "flexible dieting", "lifestyle change", etc.) No surprises there.

B+C can also obliterate your connection with your internal cues. And the low carb, low calorie hell of cutting can make you feel really hungry and fatigued - which isn't exactly a recipe for effective training and high athletic performance.

Remember, bodies resist restriction. And for the majority of people the cutting phase (which, let's face it, is just calorie restriction with a fancy #fitspo name) can’t last forever without you developing a long lasting restrictive ED in order to sustain it.

​Which sadly, happens.

After an initial honeymoon phase where some weight loss might occur, most bodies will fight the calorie deficit of a cutting phase by slowing metabolism resulting in weight gain weight. You can probably tell by now that this is not a sustainable way to eat long term. 
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“But the athletes who bulk then cut look so happy, healthy and shredded!” Dig a little deeper and you’ll see that many of these athletes look good enough for a photo shoot once, maybe twice a year. The preparation for something like a bikini competition can be excruciating, and hormonal imbalances, loss of menstrual periods, low sex drive, thyroid dysregulation, exhaustion, constipation, and hair loss are not uncommon. Then there’s the dehydration and outright misery in the final days leading up to comp.

​Not exactly sounding like a healthy - or safe - long term weight control strategy.

The rest of the time, these athletes are in "off-season" mode and look like any other human. Most experienced weight class athletes know B+C is a short term strategy, not a long term form of weight control.

Additionally, the physiological aftermath of years of bulking and cutting can be significant, with the attendant risks of derailed fertility, weight cycling, and eating disorders.

Unless you’re a professional athlete or physique competitor, you don’t have an off-season. Do you have the time to go through the horrendous mood swings of low carb hell or stringent macro counting when you’re busy parenting, working, and all the rest of it?

Only you can answer that. For me, it's a hell no. 

It's time we explored capitalism in it’s indiscriminately elderberry syrup guzzling, MLM essential oil dowsed, $400 supplement protocol pushing form: Wellness Capitalism. 
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In this episode

• The value of healthy skepticism, and where Katya's comes from
• How capitalism takes holistic healthcare - which was traditionally accessible, deeply contextual and collectively empowering - and warps this to make it inaccessible, commodified and whitewashed
• The trouble with smudging
• Cultivating a relationship with the plants you use in your healing
• Essential oils: would a simple tea do? Plus oral ingestion, COVID "cures", and MLMs
• One-size-fits-all herbalism versus constitutional herbal traditions such as Ayurveda and TCM
• Over harvesting of medicinal herbs and "superfoods"
• "Naturopreneurs", supplement-heavy protocols, and Tony Robbins
• Disease mongering in holistic wellness
• Finding a practitioner who will help, not harm
• Katya's recovery from anorexia nervosa and PTSD, and how lived experiences with disordered eating can make us better practitioners
• Astrology, tarot and the truth about cusps!

Links
Katya's website, Instagram, and her podcasts: Kumbaya Confessional and Queer Wellness
The Dream: a podcast exposing the dangers of multi-level marketing
Food Empowerment Project: a resource to help others recognise the power of their food choices

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There has been a phenomenal uptick of rising yoga and wellness influencers posting anti-racism sentiments on social media. Yet in stark contrast to the important message of bringing light to police brutality against BIPOC, or tackling underrepresentation of coloured folks in wellness spaces, these feeds are filled with white, thin, able-bodied, cis-het women striking yoga poses on beaches. The question is: are these influencers for real?
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In this episode:

• The rise of performative activism in yoga social media, and why it comes across as disingenuous
• How white yoga and wellness influencers can leverage their privilege to do better
• My personal experiences of racism growing up, how these pale in comparison to those of BIPOC, and how I'm responding to racial injustice
• The damage done by sentiments like, “No One Is Superior”, "We Are All One", or "I Don't See Colour"
• An example of feigned anti-racism in an Australian context
• Spiritual capitalism and the ways white supremacy manifests IRL white yoga studio culture
• 3 tactics of defence and dismissal used by white wellness influencers to deflect accountability around racism
• Folks who are doing excellent work in allyship, de-centering themselves, raising the voices of BIPOC, and/or speaking out as BIPOC wellness and yoga influencers themselves

Resources mentioned:

• Dianne Bondy on challenging racism and spiritual bypassing, on the triyoga podcast
• Acknowledgment of Country by Georgia Mae Capocchi-Hunter
• Casey's article on The Spiritual, Sexy, Successful Woman Ideal
• Transcript of this episode with links to posts mentioned
• Yoga is Dead podcast

Influencers to follow:

@goodbodyfeel
@nalgonapositivitypride
@mynameisjessamyn
@theunderbellyyoga
@diannebondyyogaofficial
​​@iamchrissyking
​@skillinaction
@rachelcargle
​@accessibleyoga
@amberkarnesofficial
@nicolecardoza

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​There is a lack of representation of women aged 40+ in fitness. Rachelle Ballard-Clayton is shifting that pattern by basing her approach to training womxn on their shifting internal landscape and cyclical patterns.

​In this episode:

• A little pre-interview solo ramble on systemic racism and unrecognised privilege in yoga/wellness/spirituality worlds
• Training womxn and running a fitness business, without body transformations or weight loss challenges (!)
• The importance of strength training – as opposed to just cardio and yoga - for womxn, especially those over 30 years of age
• Movement and the menstrual cycle: adapting your training to the hormonal fluctuations of one’s menstrual cycle - or mood cycle for peri-menopausal womxn
• What movement might look like for a midlife womxn 
• Why we might find ourselves at this stage of life feeling less likely to move, more burnt out than ever and what we can do about that
• Throwing all expectations of what we should be doing out the window
• Understanding what our bodies are doing by tracking cycles
• How to work with and not against your body 
• Why some weight gain around menopause is normal and protective
• “Focus on what you can do, and understand YOU better”

​PLUS, some post interview-thoughts on:

• Rites of Passage in womxn’s lives, also known as the blood mysteries – menarche, childbirth, menopause
• The phenomenal benefits womxn get from strength training
• Better indicators of fitness than six pack or how lean you are
• “Does weight training make you bulky?” 
• #YogaEveryDamnDay – with no other form of movement - is non-sensical
• What yoga is missing that strength training can provide
• What my own personal movement practice looks like

About Rachelle:
​Rachelle Ballard-Clayton owns MEE Active a Womxn’s health and movement coaching practice on the Gold Coast, Australia and delivers her programs worldwide. She creates a safe space for midlife womxn to step off the sidelines & connect deeply with their mind & body.

Rachelle's Website, Instagram & Facebook

Resources mentioned:

• Wild Power by Alexandra Pope
• The Optimised Woman by Miranda Grey
• The work of Jane Hardwicke-Collings
• Casey's articles on why strength training is especially helpful for breastfeeding women here and here
• Will Lifting Weights Make Me Bulky?

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