The Toxic History of Diet Culture Part II (1980-2025)

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Sara Childers (00:00.911)
Hello you guys and welcome back to the metabolic wisdom podcast. I'm your host Sarah Childers registered dietitian and today we are going even further into toxic diet culture and the effects that toxic diet culture has had on women up until now. So if you haven't looked at my last episode where I went over like diet culture from like Greco-Roman times all the way to the 1970s go back to that video. I'll try to tag it here and

listen to the beginning parts of this podcast because this is a two part series and even though today's information is so interesting because we're going from the 80s all the way to the present of toxic diet culture and what has been marketed to us and how we have fallen victim to diet culture and how that's affected our health overall as women because we were never meant to chronically restrict ourselves. That is something that is my heart behind these two podcast episodes is

We were not made to constantly be wanting ourselves to be smaller, to shrink ourselves, to conform to what society says is valuable, beautiful, and good. And in the first episode, I mentioned how prophets, patriarchy, and pseudoscience has completely wrecked our outlook of ourselves as women. And I think that's so true. So today we're diving into the 1980s.

first. And I think that this is a really interesting time because this is where the whole fat makes you fat and being slim and being disciplined go hand in hand. And you know there's a lot of thoughts around like well if you're fat you're just not disciplined and it's just outrageous like what the beliefs were about women's bodies around this time. And I think it's also interesting because it's the year of our Lord 2025.

and we've not gotten completely away from some of these ideals. It was 45 years ago, give or take, know, depending on what exact year of the 80s you're falling into, but it was around 40 years ago where all these ideas spread and we're still seeing that a lot of this like misinformation is still believed just because of our outdated Western medicine system and just our outdated

Sara Childers (02:28.393)
look on nutrition and the lack of nutrition education in schools and just everywhere. In the 1980s, to paint a picture for you, we are obsessed with aerobic exercise, working out, appearances. Like honestly, that snatched look that a lot of people are going for, spandex, women in leggings, calorie counting. I think this was possibly the time of like the Jane Fonda workouts where we're trying to like...

burn as much fat as possible and if you ate any fat that is what makes you fat and that is totally not true. Fat does not make you fat and I tell this to so many people because they still believe that like fat makes you fat and like sugar isn't all that bad and I think a lot of this started actually before the 1980s technically because in 1977 the US Select Committee on Nutrition got together and this group was led by George McGovern.

and they instituted what is called the dietary goals in the United States. Now I learned about this in dietitian school, and I say dietitian school, in my undergrad. And these dietary guidelines or these goals are set every like 10 years for the country and it's usually like kind of headed by the USDA and government, but there are so many like...

influential undertones with like these committees and when you want to know the truth I think it's important to follow the money and follow the funding. This particular set this particular community committee was really against saturated fats and fats in food and they wanted to link it to heart disease. Now as a functional dietitian who has seen both sides

I do not believe this. don't think saturated fats are the problem at all. I think sugars and additives and things that are chemically compounded into our food system is what causes things like heart disease. But at this time, whether they had an agenda or not, this is something that they thought. So this is something that they wanted to get rid of in our food system. All this science was cherry picked from this study from Ansel Keys. And this was honestly later on proved wrong, but

Sara Childers (04:42.603)
That of course is not publicized, but this Ansel Keys guy had a seven countries study and again cherry picked. It basically resulted in saturated dietary fat raising cholesterol levels. Now me as a dietitian, I know from studying the human body, but this study was definitely cherry picked and it stated that dietary.

fat raise cholesterol levels. Now cholesterol is something you need in your body. Cholesterol does come from saturated fats, but your body also makes its own cholesterol. And the thing about this is that it's actually not a, it's a metabolic issue when you have high cholesterol. It's usually like a liver issue or some sort of conversion issue because your body, when your body is not metabolizing things right and you're,

your liver and your gallbladder are hugely related to like metabolizing fats and stuff. So like that's why I say it's usually a liver problem when you have high cholesterol because your liver is not metabolizing those fats like it should and things are getting into the bloodstream that don't belong. So really not a fats issue at all. It's a toxic burden issue, which I think is interesting because only a few decades before this is when like mass production of cigarettes,

as diet suppressants and also processed foods were introduced. So there's like a lot of things that were on the rise and very popular decades before this that could clog the liver or burden the liver and cause it to not metabolize things well such as cholesterol. Because of this study, the government enshrined these low-fat national policies. Food distributors and processed food makers, big food, as you could say.

loved this. They ate this up because guess what? Fat is expensive. Saturated fat is expensive because it's animal based and it's not as readily available as row crops such as soy, corn, or whatnot. so they taking fats out of the equation and making things low fat was so good for the profit margins and pocketbook of a lot of big food corporations and how they made things still taste good even though

Sara Childers (07:01.085)
it didn't have fats in the recipe anymore, was to add sugars and refined carbs. So even more sugars and refined carbs. And that's something that you'll see even now is when something's low fat, there's always something else added in because fats are an emulsifier and they taste really good and they create a really good mouthfeel and flavor of food. And so when you take that away, you have to add in something else. And usually it's going to be like synthetic things and or carbs.

like refined carbs, sugars, things that are not good for you and just make your metabolism worse. When I, when I, I already knew this, but when I was doing this podcast, I was like, well, who funded the low fat mania? And there was some sugar industry manipulation, I guess we could say. And I had found where in the 1960s and seventies, Harvard's scientists later revealed in a 2016 JAMA, J-A-M-A study were paid.

by the Sugar Research Foundation to downplay sugar's role in heart disease and blame that instead. Interesting, interesting. These scientists work directly to shape the nutrition textbooks and early dietary recommendations that a lot of dieticians follow. This is why, like, even though I'm a registered dietician and I wear that badge of honor, I do not think all dieticians are created equal because we learn.

some untrue things in school, just to be super honest. And yeah, that's all I'm gonna say about that. So this all happened in the 1960s and 70s. So when the 1980s rolled around, the foundation was already set, that fat was the enemy and sugar was harmless. And especially with people doing a lot of aerobic exercises, I think there was probably not like, if this makes sense, when you do aerobic exercise, when you do cardio, that lowers your blood sugar in the moment. So I'm sure a lot of people were eating low fat foods.

that had added sugar back in them and they were going to exercise soon after their meal. And so there was a constant like blood sugar spike then drop, blood sugar spike then drop. But people probably saw some short-term results with that because their blood sugar was controlled in the moment if they were doing that cardio. That was so popular at the time with it. I dug a little bit deeper into the corporate funding and influence of low fat mania. And I found that food giants like Kellogg's, General Mills,

Sara Childers (09:23.882)
Nabisco and Kraft, which these four companies own 90 to 95 percent of what is in our grocery stores. Just keep that in mind. And 90 percent of our grocery stores today, food-wise, is heavily grain-based, heavily row crop-based, heavily low fat, high sugar-based, even still. And most of the inner aisles of the grocery store are things that destroy your health, like chips, crackers, cookies.

things that are shelf stable and super cheap and the profit margins are huge for it. They've just kind of monopolized and taken over the food industry. And that's why you have things like dairy, eggs and other like more fresh goods are so much more expensive because it's, it's small conglomerates, it's small farms and it is higher quality goods. anyways, like Kellogg's, General Mills, Nabisco, Kraft.

jumped to the opportunity to create new health foods labeled as low fat, fat free and heart healthy. And it says the marketing budgets behind these campaigns dwarfed public health spending. There was money going around everywhere. The low fat craze became not just a health recommendation but a corporate gold rush. And I think it's so interesting because marketing is like, they say that.

Money is the root of all evil and it is, but it has like an evil twin or like an evil cousin or aunt that is marketing. And, as somebody who is self-taught very heavily in marketing, cause outside of like being a dietitian, I am also primarily a business owner since I own my own practice and I do all the marketing for the other businesses that my husband and I own. I've done a lot of self-taught marketing practices and taken a lot of,

courses on marketing in the last few years and I think it's so interesting because marketing every business there's a lot of honest great businesses out there. I run an honest and great business. I know people who own and run honest wonderful businesses and there's a lot of businesses I believe in but most businesses out there especially huge conglomerates and huge corporations like Kellogg General Mills and Kraft they are selling a product and they

Sara Childers (11:41.268)
will find any loophole and any way to market their product to you to convince you that it is healthy or convince you that it is good, convince you that you do need to spend money on it. And so a huge part of like food labeling is so false. Like when you see things that are low fat, fat free, heart healthy, low sodium, like when you see like some of those badges in the grocery store, you should be asking some questions.

and you're taught in dietitian school like, no, these are good, like, you know, recommend, you know, and when, but we're not taught about things like additives and the harm behind certain, like synthetic food emulsifiers and stuff. and when you sway from a food's natural form, you always have to add things back into it that aren't good for the body. So it might say low fat, but it might have tons of like,

sugars and then that's like your blood sugar and also like maybe even heavy metals and synthetic emulsifiers that clog your liver and aren't good for you and not even to mention which I did a whole podcast episode on this before but sprayed with folic acid sprayed with things that your body probably cannot even metabolize and so when you see something is marketed as healthy or

whatever, you should always look at the back of a nutrition facts label and ask some questions, ask, this natural? Is this in its most natural form? You know, just to be a responsible consumer. And I think that goes for anything as far as consumption is concerned, not even with food and health, but just anything like marketing matters. Marketing is important for a business, but there will always be like some businesses or products out there that are falsely advertised or

have you used like marketing wormholes in order to convince you that you're gonna get a certain result or this product told a certain thing that it actually doesn't. So that's enough about that. But that's kind of where you get the birth of big food and the big billion dollar industry that is now the food industry. Like Kellogg positioned itself as like the breakfast say, or whatever. And then you have like special case cereals coming out.

Sara Childers (14:01.873)
And they even have like an ad in the 1980s that came out that targeted women and it said, can you pinch an inch? Which basically means like, can you pinch an inch of your fat when you eat special K cereals? No, you can't, which special K cereals are not healthy. Like they're not even in the realm of health, just saying. But this like kind of pushed the idea that a bowl of refined grains and skim milk was a balanced slimming breakfast when in fact it totally is not.

And the irony is that is just flooded with sugar stripped of nutrients and it triggered a blood sugar roller coaster for the rest of your day. And then you also have things like SlimFast, which this was launched in the 1977, but it actually became popular. SlimFast did in the eighties and the nineties. And their pitch was a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch and a sensible dinner. We even say stuff like this today, like,

companies creating either food replacement shakes or food replacement bars and then saying like, my gosh, you can lose so much weight if you eat a bar for breakfast or shake for lunch and then have like chicken breast and broccoli for dinner. And yes, you can totally get short-term results with that, but everyone who does that, everyone who does that gains all the weight back and more when they're done. People are like at this point living off of like slim fast shakes that are like stripped of vitamins, stripped of nutrients, no fiber.

processed oils, sugar, all the things, and it is causing a metabolic rollercoaster. Something called Snack Whales and the Fat-Free Junk Food Boom that was created in 1982 by Nabisco, and then it blew up, and it was things like guilt-free cookies and crackers with zero fat but tons of refined flour and corn syrup, and it was like a way for women to indulge without getting off on their diets, and by the late 1980s, the diet food...

Isles were a massive, massive staple in a grocery store. Let's go over how low fat destroyed women's health. So for one, your body needs fat for hormone production, fertility, ovulation, healthy menstrual cycles, because every hormone in your body is made out of cholesterol. And cholesterol comes from either your body making it yourself or it comes from saturated fats from animal forms, processed seed oils, and even like most

Sara Childers (16:22.761)
plant-based fats just don't do the job when it comes to making cholesterol that your body uses to eventually make other hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and even thyroid hormone. But not only that, when you add a bunch of sugar and take out the fat in foods, you get a blood sugar roller coaster because fat, fiber, and protein are the three macronutrients that help stabilize the blood sugar. So a lot of times,

you never see protein. mean, nowadays you do, but like back then you did not see protein in any grain-based foods. So the only thing that could possibly keep like a grain-based food or dairy food like stable as far as like blood sugar is concerned is fats, maybe a small bit of protein, but mostly fats. And so when you take out the fats and you just add in more sugar, you're basically just eating sugar, sugar, sugar, and you're having a blood sugar spike, then a crash, then a spike, then a crash.

And that causes your insulin, is your blood sugar hormone, be absolutely insane and haywire. And what I teach a lot of my clients in my container, Fully Feminine, which is a 16 week program, where we work one on one together and I educate you in a simple but deep way about health for women, is your most foundational hormone in your body. There's two. It's cortisol, which is your stress hormone, but then your most, most, most foundational hormone in your body is insulin.

And so when your blood sugar is off balance, absolutely everything else will be off balance as well. So this really just gets, for one, not only blood sugar chaos, but like it gets women's hormones off balance. But what people don't even understand even now is that, that's blood sugar. Even if you don't have any changes with your weight, it causes extreme cravings, energy crashes and mood swings. And I think that, I don't know for sure.

but because I wasn't there, but when you have a whole population of women whose blood sugar is not stabilized and they are having mood swings, horrible cravings, and energy crashes all the time, that is not good. That is like a society that is trending towards burnout and just not good. The vibes are not high.

Sara Childers (18:36.143)
As a result of this, you're having irregular periods, PMS, infertility, and early menopause symptoms. You're also having hypothalamic stress and adrenal fatigue because when your blood trickles off balance for so long, that really causes stress on the body and that causes your adrenals, which are your glands that release your stress hormones and your survival hormones and eventually the hormones that become testosterone and progesterone, which are very important for the metabolism. It pretty much destroys those glands.

I mean, not really. They can be rebooted or whatever, but it causes them to burn out and crash, that's where you have a horrible metabolism and weight loss resistance and all things. I think it's very interesting that in the 1980s, we see soaring and skyrocketing numbers of insulin resistance, type two diabetes, and also metabolic syndrome in women and men, honestly, in this decade. And I think it's because of diet culture and...

the media messaging and also big food becoming a billion dollar industry and making a lot of money off of false marketing. And not only that, but cholesterol also makes a very important hormone called serotonin. And serotonin is like your happy hormone. It's just what, what keeps you not depressed and anxious. And so when we're not able to make that hormone, we also see in the 1980s where you have an increase in influx of depression and anxiety as well. I think that goes along with

blood sugar roller coaster, also like not having the raw materials that you need in order to like make serotonin and not even to gloss over the fact that all of these processed foods that we're eating, all these diet foods that we're eating are highly, highly processed with not so good ingredients and they are ingredients that destroy the gut health. And most of your serotonin, 90 % of the serotonin, the happy hormone that your body makes is made in the gut. And so

The very place where this happy hormone is made is being corroded at this point. Okay, now we're in the 1990s and I think that this is an interesting era because I was born in the 90s and also I think the 90s is a really cool era just in and of itself like 90s vibes like it's everything. But there is a dark side to the 90s. You have like the Slim Fast, the aphidra and like the supermodel type of body type that's very

Sara Childers (21:02.417)
popular at this point. And I think it's so interesting because in the last few months, me and my husband have been watching Friends as like our go-to lighthearted show when we want to just turn something on. And I really noticed like in a lot of the episodes, I was like, wow, these girls are so skinny. Like I don't think I ever realized how small and skinny like the girls were then. And then I, I really just, you can see it when you look at any like movie or magazine or anything that like,

is accurate from the 90s of women who are like really in style at that point. like celebrities and stuff, they are so skinny. And that was like what was so popular is like flat everything supermodel look, not a pinch of fat on you. Almost like, like looking fragile, looking like having that fragility to you, maybe to make you seem more feminine. I'm not really sure, but that was what the thing was. It was like, it's called the heroin chic.

So they are thin, pale and almost like sickly looking. I thought this was interesting. I found a quote of like what the messaging was back then for diet culture. And it was like, you're not just thin, you're disciplined enough to disappear. when you, like when you turn sideways, like you disappear kind of thing. This is where you have like the iconic, like Kate Moss saying, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. And I remember being in my toxic diet era where I said that a lot and I thought that was interesting.

And then you have like Calvin Klein ads that feature people that are just like looking really like adolescent almost looking like frail skinny skinny skinny and Then I think it like really went with like the grunge aesthetic which was kind of popular in the 90s like the thick eyeliner a sheath type dress like just kind of like grungy and also like the low cut bottoms and like the slightly cropped top or you would see like your midsection and just having that very like Slim figure that could like rock that outfit, you know

And that's where like diet pills go absolutely nuclear metabolic booster pills, the pheydra, caffeine pills, really wiring people up, suppressing people's appetite so that they could achieve this skinny look. And you even have people like stacking things, like stacking over the counter fat burners. And then I found some products that were very popular, Metaball Life 356, Exinodrin.

Sara Childers (23:31.793)
Hydroxycut, I do remember commercials for Hydroxycut early version, herbalized thermogenic pills. And these all just combined aphedra, caffeine, and aspirin, the ECA stack to push your metabolism into overdrive, which actually didn't do that, but it's okay. So let's go over what these do. So aphedra is a potent stimulant, chemically similar to amphetamines. So like throwback to the 50s.

It raises your heart rate blood pressure and adrenaline output. It suppresses your appetite. It makes you feel wired with energy and It was really marketed as like booster metabolism naturally burn fat 24-7 turn your body into a fat burning furnace Women thought that they were making a healthy choice compared to prescription drugs, but it was actually just as dangerous so

because of the dietary restriction, you would have like high cardio exercise with like low calorie restrictions. And that's where you have like adrenals going into overdrive, pumping out cortisol, which eventually led to like a slow to thyroid, adrenal exhaustion and rebound weight gain. Rebound weight gain was a huge thing. This really just pushes things like the issues with fertility, PCOS, insulin resistance, and even like...

horrible menstrual cycles and all the things that women deal with at this point. So there's a lot of afeiger related deaths and heart attacks that became headline news by the late 1990s and in 2004 the FDA finally banned afeiger containing supplements after at least 150 documented deaths. And before that millions of women were using these products with no warning. So.

And then you have other like diet miracles of this era are things like Alley or Orlistat later in the 19 or later in the early 2000s where fat blocking pills causing GI distress. And then you had the low carb Atkins resurge in the late 1990s as the anti-fat backlash kind of reversed itself and people were realizing that it's not really that bad for you. Fats aren't. And then it

Sara Childers (25:41.485)
It did, I did find where starvation as status was a trend back then. like fashion houses, magazines were rewarding models who looked like they hadn't eaten. Eating disorders, skyrocketing, anorexia and bulimia rates just skyrocketing. In the 1990s, there was also a pro-ana, so like pro-anorexia.

online community that like glorified starvation, was insane to me. It's a heavy subject, but I will say I've had so many clients who were old enough to be actively dieting in the nineties. And I think there are so many eating disorders that went undiagnosed. And there's even like today women in their forties, sometimes fifties, maybe even women in their thirties, although I don't feel like they're old enough at this point, but forties and on like, think, gosh, like so many just

so much damage from that from those eras of like the starvation and everything. I remember when I was younger I read a book by I can't remember who she was but she was a Christian Victoria Secret model and she was modeling in the early 2000s and maybe in the late 90s and she talked a lot about like just the horrible effects of the modeling industry and like people eating cotton balls to stay thin and like just crazy insane things like

that people would do to stay thin and what they consider beautiful. And it's just so sad. At point, you're having even more increase in things like anxiety, panic attacks, and depression, especially after the rebound depression and the stimulant withdrawal. stimulant withdrawal mixed with the rebound of weight gain, all the things that are just sending people into a tizzy and a spiral. And I think that that kind of leads us to the early 2000s, which is also a great era. I love the early 2000s, but not for diet culture, but just in and of itself.

So the Adkin South Beach Diet and detox teas were the thing, the thing during this time. And you have a lot of people really kind of get more into wellness, especially like with celebrity influence and everything like that. So kind of setting the scene from, we're going like to snack from snack well in the nineties to the South Beach Diet. And at this point, women are kind of realizing that they're metabolically wrecked and

Sara Childers (28:00.233)
all of the things that they'd been trying have not worked. And so they're looking more towards health, not so much like diet. Adkins diet is formed by Robert Adkins. And it was a strict low carb, high protein, high fat diet that promised weight loss through ketosis. So like Adkins is like the great grandfather of keto, I feel like. And then he had the South Beach diet that soon followed after, which was like a gentler version with a veneer of like heart health as...

its sole proprietary and Mediterranean influences in the diet as well. So like the South Beach diet, I think of California, fresh foods, a lot of tomatoes, a lot of low carb vegetables, healthy proteins like fish and stuff like that. And so both gained huge attraction because of the celebrities. And of course our wonderful Jennifer Aniston reported to follow the zone in South Beach diet principles. I love Jennifer Aniston.

so much and I mean the South Beach diet I'd much rather somebody follow the South Beach diet than have like a Adkins shake and like a meal replacement bar and starve themselves you know with something like that. At least it's real food I think that we're trending towards something that's okay at this point and so we're going from like low carb in the 80s to like low fat in the early 2000s so like through that time there's a huge pendulum swing.

Our obsession with control and thinness did not go away at this point. We're still obsessed with it. At this point, since we're getting into more like the wellness health part, you're getting into like the spiritualization of diet. So we're kind of like going back to those principles that we learned in like Greco-Roman times of like diet being tied to like virtue or spirituality or cleanliness. And that's where you have like a lot of cleanses and a lot of detoxes coming into the picture. So like detox teas. And this is where we have like the Gwyneth Paltrow's, the Oprah's, the like goops.

of the world being like this detox tea will just cleanse your liver and make you burn so much fat and it's like not just dieting at this point it is cleansing your body cleansing your soul of your like caloric sins you know but you have detox teas like juice cleanses master cleanses and when you think about like doing like a juice cleanse like that is starvation in disguise that is another flavor of like the

Sara Childers (30:27.691)
meal replacement, slim fast shakes, just in like juice form. Cuz people are doing celery cleanses for three days. And it's just not, it's not getting what it needs to get as far as health is concerned.

Sara Childers (30:44.759)
And this is the birth of like a different kind of eating disorder that not a lot of people even now know about, which is orthorexia, which is the obsession of having like a perfect diet, never getting off track with your diet, always eating clean or pure foods and being purely obsessed with it. And so many times on social media when I see all of these fitness influencers and these people talking about like what I eat in a day or whatever, I see so many people who I'm like, okay, I know.

online is not real life and they might be eating something, you know, fun or not, you know, the healthiest in their own time. But there's so many people like the Instagram models of the world. And I'm like, definitely seeing some orthorexia tendencies, which this is a, I'm a professional. This is my opinion. I've worked with eating disorders. Like I have experience with this. This is not just me throwing spaghetti at the wall, but if this triggers you, please just stop listening to this, to this conversation. But if you're interested in this, in the psychology behind,

all things diet, food industry, body image and stuff like that. This is very interesting conversation. But maybe it's because of all the diet foods, maybe it's because of the juice cleanses, but at this point we're seeing a huge fallout in microbiome depletion with women.

So because of the restriction of like carbs all the time, you're also getting rid of a lot of fiber. So a lot of people are doing like very fat protein heavy foods without any fiber. And we're still seeing that today with like the rise of the carnivore diet and everything like that. But just between like that and all the like processed foods and everything. And then like when people do eat vegetables, it might be in the form of a juice cleanse. So like the fiber is taken out. There's like a lot of depletion when it comes to our.

gut health and you know our gut health houses most of our immunity and this is where we see a huge rise in autoimmune conditions because your immune system is not being fed with the right nutrients that it needs in order to thrive.

Sara Childers (32:45.837)
So these are things like Hashimoto's, Celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis on the rise since then, skyrocketing actually.

And then also you have like things like IBS, course, thyroid disease, PCOS, things that had already been on the rise because of other diets in other decades. But now we're getting into like the autoimmunity of it all, the inflammation of it all.

Sara Childers (33:12.239)
And of course we're seeing still lower rates of fertility. I think honestly, a lot of this stuff is like a stacked effect generationally of just undernourishment and poor decisions. It's not really anyone's fault. I mean, other than the food industry, I guess, but you know, if generation after generation after generation is depleted from their diet, like, okay, well, let's just be real.

women who are in their late teens, even into their thirties, are always worried about how they look because that is like your prime. And if you're always restricting and you're also in the time of like childbearing, your child inherits your nutrient deficiencies. Your child inherits your poor gut health. For better or for worse, your child inherits your health. So I also think that because we have a lot of grandmothers who may have

been in the 50s on the amphetamines and starving themselves. And then we have mothers who are like in the 80s, in the low fat craze. And then in the 90s, like while they're burying their children, like having like no nutrients to give to their children. And then also in the early 2000s, like this gut health depletion, like there is no wonder why we are birthing out very unhealthy people.

at this point, whether you're in your twenties or whether you have just had a child yourself, maybe in the last 10 years, the, the things we've gone through have really stacked up against us as far as diet culture is concerned. And the thing that I am concerned about when I look at all of this about diet culture is, okay, what's this doing to our kids? What's this doing to like the future generations? men are bloated hormonally off, like,

What are we feeding the kids? What are we mirroring or what are we modeling for the children, the girls of the next generation when we're constantly nitpicking our own bodies, trying to be smaller, trying to transform ourselves, not being happy and content in our own bodies and who we are. And I think that's when, you know, people were waking up to this in the 2000s and they were turning to things like those multi-level marketing schemes. And MLMs, MLMs, they're...

Sara Childers (35:33.311)
wellness empires like this is also like a billion dollar industry that has really gypped a lot of people out of a lot of funds. I think that could have went to actual healing rather than quick fixes but these are things like Herbalife, Arbyn, Beachbody, even though I like Beachbody like workouts it is part of this scenario. Isogenics, selling detoxes and shakes as self-improvement and I think it's

it's interesting because it's like shape up for summer type detoxes like really marketing especially MLMs like really get to what women are struggling with like and then they get women who have struggled on board and they're able to repeat their stories even though they haven't seen long-term effects with it to other women and that's just how you grow into this huge

just filthy rich for the people who started the MLMs, but also just have this huge influx of like funds going to something of this. So we go through a period where we've not eaten a lot of carbs for a long time. And this is kind of like the generation, I think that gave us like the gluten free everything because their gut health was so messed up that they didn't even realize why they couldn't tolerate things like gluten anymore.

or grains anymore because they had like that gut permeability and that nutrient depletion. And that's what people don't realize is that when I work with people, usually their allergies become reversed because their gut health just sucks so bad and they had no nutrient stores or no gut buildup of good gut bugs to help digest things like dairy and gluten. And we have like the 2010s where keto, paleo, Whole30 and intermittent fasting come into play.

And I love certain recipes that are whole 30, I'll be honest, and I do kind of follow a paleo diet. So this is like, which I'm not perfect with my diet and I don't recommend anybody be because that would be orthorexia. But this is where you have like yo-yo dieting, biohacking, eating clean, ancestral health come into play.

Sara Childers (37:45.217)
And I think that this is where we see a lot of like undertones from Silicon Valley kind of come into play too. Like the self-improvement, self-optimization trends that come with like things like Whole30 or like the cleansing type of eating. And I think in the 2010s, you also see where the rise of self-improvement of Silicon Valley, which is male dominated, comes into play and it influences women's health. So you have a lot of biohackers that are into like...

fasting, carnivore, keto, cold plunges, and a lot of men are, because this works well for men, I'll be honest, like a lot of this stuff is fine for men, but it's built for the male physiology and it's built by males, and it's been pushed to and marketed to everyone, and I think this is where you get a lot of women who are having a different flavor of like cortisol spikes, because now they're doing HIIT workouts and they're intermittent fasting and they're doing fasting cardio and they're...

eating a crap ton of pre-routine with nothing else and they're doing a cold plunge that raises their cortisol because women are kind of meant to be more warm if that makes sense because of our wombs and our ovaries and all the things. And because of all the inflammation that came from the 1990s and the 2000s with like diet culture and stuff you have people like coming back to their roots like eating like a caveman in order to heal inflammation which I will be honest a lot of these natural foods do.

So it's hard, but it is part of diet culture, so I have to mention it. But a lot of this stuff is like resetting your health, like kind of more like fear-based rigidity with health, like you want to lower immunity and these things are off limits because they will cause disease and having like cheat days and good versus bad kind of go in full circle into like back to mortality.

And I think a lot of perfectionism comes from this and then like keto is kind of popular at this point too. So you have a lot of people who are like restricting carbs at this point. And I think something that has come from this is things like when your blood sugar gets too low for too long, things like thyroid conversion, T3 to T4 stops.

Sara Childers (40:03.721)
Cortisol levels rise, progesterone plummets down, and that causes things like the hormonal acne or infertility, stuff like that. And then you have like irregular cycles and fertility from those cortisol imbalances and low progesterone. And it's just a lot.

Sara Childers (40:25.31)
And then you have intermittent fasting, is the bane of my existence. It's the bane of my existence. It was the it trend 2018 to 2022. felt like intermittent fasting is just a thing and I still get text messages about it every single day. It's But it's marketed for like longevity, anti-aging, mental clarity. And the reason, reason, reason that it helps with mental clarity is because your body's in survival mode and your cortisol is jacked up.

That is the only reason it helps in mental clarity is because your body's in survival mode. And after a long time of doing this, it stops working. Like, trust me, every person who has intermittent fasting has come to me been like, my gosh, it stopped working. Yeah. Cause your metabolism has crashed and the only studies done on intermittent fasting is on men or postmenopausal women. So basically postmenopausal women are, I mean, their hormones are more like men than any other time in a woman's life. And so there's no studies done on like,

premenstrual women, which of course it would be like children, no intermittent fasting for them, absolutely not, never. But like women in their childbearing years does not even come into play in any of the studies, hasn't been studied enough. And it is horrible for your fertility. Every person that comes to me, it's horrible for your weight too, when you're in like your childbearing years. Every person that comes to me that's like classified BMI-wise in the overweight, obese or morbidly obese category, they come into my practice and they are like, I've always had issues.

with my, I have weight loss resistance, have issues with my metabolism and every single time I'm like, what do you eat? And they're like, I don't eat breakfast. I might eat a lunch, maybe not. And then I'll eat a ton for dinner. they're basically in a minute fasting, if you want to like categorize it as that. And it just destroys the metabolism. I'm not a fan.

And the physiological effects of women, the hypothalamus, so the brain's hormone commanding center, senses the energy deficit. It suppresses a GRH hormone, which lowers FSH and LH, and ovulation stalls when you intermittent fast too much. Cortisol spikes to keep up with blood sugar stability, leading to anxiety, irritability, poor sleep, and adrenal burnout. The thyroid drops and many women lose their cycle, libido, inexperience, cold intolerance, and fatigue. Does that sound familiar to anybody?

Sara Childers (42:39.582)
It's just hard, it's just hard.

Sara Childers (42:49.918)
So what has this done to us? Thyroid dysregulation, adrenal burnout, PCOS, gut disorders, insomnia, infertility, anxiety, depression. These are the things that have come from toxic diet culture and us listening too much to the media and marketing and the billion dollar industries of this world that do not care about us as humans. They just want to make profits.

Sara Childers (43:17.438)
And I am a little iffy about even talking about them now, but now we have bariatric surgeries, ozempic, and even body neutrality of like, you don't need to change anything, whatever. We've not yet seen all of the effects of things like ozempic, Menjaro, Wigobi, all those things. So it's hard to speak on it now, but I will say with every client I've had who's been on those, they've gained the weight back and more after they get off. And even if they come and see me when they're on them,

so that they can eventually get off of them, they still struggle because they're just not good. And you even see like a muscle wasting physically on people who have lost weight with things like ozempic, GLP-1s. And the weight loss is just not the same as if you did it healthily. like somebody on a GLP-1 may lose a ton of weight, but they may have tons of like excess skin leftover, tons of muscle wasting.

and they may just look more sickly. Whereas if you have somebody who was patient enough to wait and lose the same amount of weight just in a longer amount of time, so like maybe it versus two months, maybe they lose it all in a year, they just look so much healthier. The skin adheres much better. Muscle tone is created more. They just look like a healthier, more rounded.

not that aesthetics matter all that much, but when somebody has major muscle wasting, that's not good for long-term results either, because if you have a lot of muscle wasting, nine times out of ten, you're going to gain all the weight back and more. But then bariatric surgeries, and I'm very iffy on saying this because I know that I know a lot of people who have had bariatric surgeries, and there are some people out there who have been healthier for it, but there it's very few. You will be hard-pressed to find somebody who has had a bariatric surgery and

is healthy, you know, and hasn't experienced hair loss, hair loss, teeth loss, like poor diet, weight rebounding, all GI issues, chronic issues from the bariatric surgery, all the things. It's very hard on the body and it is just, I mean, I counsel bariatric clients for a while and I still counsel bariatric clients, but we are always fighting for their health, like fighting for their...

Sara Childers (45:27.774)
fighting for their gut health, fighting for their digestion, for their hair loss, and for further weight loss. I think that when you go through such a serious big surgery for the sake of losing weight, it just pushes that obsession with weight loss. And I've had so many clients who have had bariatric surgery, but then they go on and they wanna lose even more weight in there.

constantly restricting for years on end and they ruin their metabolism and then they get to a point where they're like, well, I need to try the GLP ones and they try the GLP ones, but then they gain a little bit back or the GLP ones don't work because their metabolism is just horrible. And they're constantly just trying and there's a huge orthorexia anorexia component there. There's a huge, just it's really messy. So I educate people on this so that you can be self-aware. You can have self-reflection thought patterns in your mind like will be disrupted hopefully by this in a good way.

and you'll be able to self-reflect and see like, is this something that I've done to myself? Am I a victim of diet culture, toxic diet culture? But yeah, that's pretty much the reason, the heart behind it. And I think history is super interesting and I think it often repeats itself unless we're able to break that little curse and cycle by being self-aware and proactive. And if you're interested in being actually healthy as a woman, I do have a program.

You can find it on my website which is linked below SarahChildersNutrition.com. The program is a one-on-one program that's 16 weeks long. We do a little bit of functional testing but mostly it is mindset and simple ways to alter your lifestyle in order to realign yourself with your true biological design as a feminine creature. And it's for women. It's faith-based. I'm a Christian so that's important. And I would love to have you as part of the program. You can book a consultation call for the program on my website.

And yeah, I think that's pretty much it. I'll see you all in the next one. Bye.