Join Dr. Danielle and Aria as they dive into the shift from diet culture to wellness culture in this eye-opening episode. They discuss how the 90s and 2000s were defined by fad diets like Atkins and the Fat Flush, and how the modern wellness industry has repackaged the same harmful ideas under the guise of health and fitness. From detox teas to “nature’s Ozempic,” they reveal how wellness marketing preys on our desire for quick fixes, often leading to more harm than good. Discover why true health isn’t found in a supplement or a trending Instagram product, but through intentional living, thoughtful choices, and understanding the root causes of your health challenges.
SERVICES & MEMBERSHIPS:
📚 Embrace
FREE RESOURCES:
🩸 Best Blood Sugar Supplements
🎙️ Secret Podcast: Wellness Shift (coming soon! let me know you want first access!)
📧 Join the Email Newsletter
DR. DANIELLE TRAININGS
🎥 YouTube or Rumble
💻 Blog
📲 Follow Dr. Danielle on Facebook
📲 Follow The Wilderness of Wellness on Instagram
👩🏼⚕️ Follow Dr. Danielle on Instagram
🌐 Website: www.cryinginmycheesecake.com
Resources from Show
Liver Bitters/Digestive Bitters: https://amzn.to/3Le0cIS
Work with Dr. Danielle: https://l.bttr.to/Pc6aR
Work with Aria, NTP: https://l.bttr.to/PiTYw
Wilderness of Wellness: https://learn.wildernessofwellness.com/wow-1/
Magnesium Glycinate: https://amzn.to/3S1S962
Email Danielle: hello@cryinginmycheesecake.com
Email Aria: hello@wildernessofwellness.com
Grab Danielle’s Activated Essentials to Reduce Oxidative Stress: https://cart.lifevantage.com/US/shoppingcart/share/2cbb8705-cfad-4083-b853-451db92d23db
Follow Danielle on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cryinginmycheesecake/
Follow Aria on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewildernessofwellness
Transcription
Welcome to the crying in my cheesecake podcast, where we are in pursuit of living life abundantly, not held back by our body size or symptoms, nor are we held back by our hurts, habits, or other obstacles in life. Learn the secrets to crush it in your health, wellness, relationships, and spiritual life. I am Dr.
Danielle. I’m Aria. And we are your hosts and practitioners. And in this episode, we are going to discuss how and I guess when, or how, what it looks like that diet culture became wellness culture. Aria, start us out because the way that you brought this idea up It was fantastic. Like I love how you described the repackaging of diet culture.
So start us off on that.
Yeah. Let’s see if I can, uh, articulate this again. Okay. So I think anybody listening will remember. We actually just recorded an episode where we talked about, um, diet culture and we talked about the fads of like the nineties and the two thousands where You know, there was always the next best diet, right?
There was the Atkins diet. There was the fat flesh diet. I only remember that because my parents did it in the 90s. Um, I’m trying to think of like all the names of the diets. There were tons of diets anyway. So that was like the thing of the 90s to 2000s. Then as we got into like, I don’t know, the 2010s or whatever, you know, it started to be a little more taboo to talk about dieting, right?
People became more aware of, like, body positivity and how, you know, we should be embracing that we’re all different and all those things, and that’s great. Um, but then it kind of got rebranded as, like, as wellness culture, right? Wellness culture, as we know today, does have some sneakings of diet culture in it.
You know, especially with when you’re thinking about influencers that promote like those bloat tees for bloating, tees for top trim tummies, um, things that really are like technically laxatives, right? Which that’s obviously not healthy for you. Um, it is a little bit diety. Um, so things like that, you know, how to just, how, Now the overuse of supplements and wellness plans, quote unquote, I’m using air quotes right now, Um, has been rebranded how wellness culture has been, diet culture has been rebranded into an aesthetically pleasing, for Instagram, wellness culture.
You know, just keeping up with the Joneses is now, you know, in that way. If you have the next best thing, next best product, you have the next best, you know, supplement, this new supplement, this new, um, nature’s ozempic, you know, just all of that.
Yep. That is, that is spot on. When you brought up this topic, I’m like, yeah, it is rebranded into wellness culture because now with Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
I realize Gen Alpha is like their teenage, like young teens or, you know, preteens right now. But it’s like, these people care about their health and wellness. They care about what they look like, but it’s more of like, it’s part of their culture to be in the gym and it’s part of their culture to eat healthier, right?
So. There’s no body positivity happening and I’m not again, I’m not against body positivity like our body like we should have a positive outlook on our body as it is a holy temple. It is a gift that we get to live in and do our life and our purpose here on this earth and we need to honor it and all of that, but I’m also not.
I’m not going to be positive about obesity, obesity kills, obesity, yes, you can be overweight and, and I have been, I’ve never, I have never, I don’t even think when I was born, I have never been in a healthy BMI ever in my life. Even when I was 165, 170 pounds, I was still considered overweight and obese. I’m five foot 10 and according to my, so I did do my DNA testing and my DNA says I’m supposed to be around like 185 pounds.
That is comfortable to me, like that actually feels comfortable. Now, that doesn’t account for like if I’m building muscle, you know, all of those kinds of things either. But honestly, 180 5 to like 200 feels comfortable to me now. My DNA does say I’m supposed to be 20 pounds heavier than the normal woman my age, and that’s fine, probably also the germanic roots in my body as well, like that part of that, but I’m going to be bigger, but I would never say that I am positive, I’m going to be body positive about obesity or my own unhealth, because there’s nothing positive that comes from it.
And I feel like that’s what millennials did. I’m an elder millennial. I really was raised more like a gen X. So I don’t even identify as a millennial except for the eight, you know, the time. But cause even I was raised differently than Aria and Aria is the same age as my brother. And my brother and I like have different outlooks on life and we were raised differently and we got to see different things, right?
Like we saw different things. And The body positivity, I think, is because we don’t want to change the body positivity. We want to be enabled. I was going to say
it keeps us comfortable. Like it keeps us being okay. You know, being comfortable in our current size or state. And
I am not putting, again, I am the first person that will not put anybody down for being overweight because girlfriend has been overweight and, and, or obese her whole life.
And. I eat, no matter how athletic I was, no matter how anything I was, I’ve always been overweight. I’m not saying that I’m going to be forever. I don’t know about that. We’ll see where my root cause journey takes me. We’ll see how it goes. But the thing is, is I know, and the research and science shows the more weight we put on our body, the higher risk we are for basically death.
Every slow, every slow piece of death, diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, um, fatty liver, Uh, removal, removal of a gallbladder, which I had, um, female reproductive issues, sex life. Everything just sucks as the bigger you get, it really does, which really stems from an addictive mindset, which really we’re hiding something.
And that’s, I’m not saying, I’m not saying for a medical reason that you’ve gained weight. I’m not saying that I’m not, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about those people who know that they over consume. That’s what I’m talking about. But this wellness culture. Now I see it. I cannot open up Instagram.
I don’t get on Facebook. So if you follow me on Facebook, I’m sorry, but you’re not going to see anything from me. And if you sent me a message or anything on Instagram on Facebook, I will not answer it. So please come find me on Instagram at crying in my cheesecake or Dr. Danielle Hofer. Um, but. Find me on there.
I will not be on Facebook. Facebook is not mentally healthy for me. Anyway, I cannot open Instagram without seeing a supplement. Right now it’s that. Is it Amara Collagen? Oh my gosh. I was influenced. I have that. Yeah, I know she was. She told me, she’s like, what do you think about this? And meanwhile, she’d already bought it.
Um,
that one.
Yeah. Yeah.
I don’t even use it anymore.
I know, because, like, I love it when people will send me a message and like, what do you think about this? And they’re like, I already know what you think, but I just need you to tell me not to buy it. And I’m like, okay. All the time, by the way. I know you don’t like this, but.
Yep. Yep, that’s, those are messages I get. I know you don’t like this, but, um, and honestly, when it comes down to it, I save people a crap ton of money, especially on AG1. Like, AG1 used to come to me, but I want to see, I really wonder if AG1 no longer advertises to me because I have the money. put them down so many times in DMs or in, um, like even in person.
Like I have someone that is on the subscription for AG1 and they were like, okay, we have probably 10 bags of it still at home. Can we, is it okay to still take it? Or I’m like, you know what you do you, but don’t buy it. Shut off that subscription. You’re done. Like, If you want to throw it away, you want to donate, whatever you do, you do you, but anyway, this wellness culture is also what’s in common with diet culture is that it is marketing to our desperation.
Yes, it’s still predatory at the,
at the roots. Yes, it’s still predatory because it’s, they know that if they can say we’ve got your prebiotics, your probiotics, all the greens you need in just one drink a day, all your vitamins in one drink a day, that’s all you want. You want something that’s easy.
It’s another quick fix.
It’s like, it’s like packaging your diet, but now it’s in a shake or now it’s in a pill or a supplement, you know, a
powder like the green. And like with the greens. We think, I want you to think about this guys, like, listening here, when you sit down to have a meal, how many servings of greens do you have on your plate?
Me, I probably don’t have enough, but, one
if
you’re
lucky,
yeah, one if I’m lucky, but how many servings of vegetables do you actually have on your plate? We’re taught to have no more than five. If you are having your day’s worth of greens in one serving, your body cannot digest and absorb all of that. And our body was taught to digest.
Or it was created to digest. If you’re not chewing your greens, the amylase that comes out in your saliva and from your pancreas and your pancreatic, pancreatic, um, hormones, do not get a chance, if you’re not chewing, do not get a chance to even start. Producing, you know, the amylase, the gluco or the insulin, all of that for what’s coming in also doesn’t get a chance to create enough stomach acid.
I know a lot of people that drink greens or drink these other shakes or, you know, whatever. And they claim that they’ve got reflux now. And then they start having pain in their liver area. And then they start getting gallstones. And then they get constipated and like, well, and then I’ll just drink more and it works for a minute.
And it’s like, when are we going to learn that we can’t, if it’s fast, it is destroying us. It is holding us back even longer from healing, from the wellness that we deserve. From what you’re trying to do. I think it’s time that we decide to let go. Like we vote, we vote with our dollars. We vote with where we put our dollars.
And if we have a belief system that I am an instant gratification, I’m an instant fix that I can be an instant fix. I don’t need to think about me. I don’t have to put time and effort in me. Anything that says it’s only like your shake is, this is all you need for the day. Anything that says that is a red flag.
God did not think of you as an afterthought. He did not create you as an afterthought, so why do we treat ourselves as such?
I know. And it’s like, we also think, like, we can out supplement a poor diet, right? Like, we, oh, I’m not, like, I hate those commercials for those kind of things, like those greens powders.
There’s also, have you heard of that balance of nature? So it’s just like a pill. I think it’s a pill or a gummy or something that just has, like, it’s kind of the same concept, just has tons of vegetables and vitamins and minerals all thrown into a pill, whatever. Like, why do we think that? We’re not eating those things, but we’re gonna take a pill and that’s gonna fix Band Aid on the areas that need fixing.
Nope. It’s just, and then, like you said, if we’re, if our body’s not absorbing it or digesting it, we’re just peeing all that out. So
there’s our money. Yep. There’s the money. And then they got you hooked because you have to keep taking it every day. It’s a consumable, whereas you could, and then people, these same people complain about how expensive groceries are now, don’t get me wrong.
They are expensive. They’ll explain about how expensive groceries are, but then if you just ate the food, it’d be cheaper than that stupid shake or whatever you’re trying to get. So funny story. I, uh, one of my patients. sees a nurse practitioner like OBGYN. Um, and I think she’s a midwife. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but she started following me on Instagram.
I’m like, Hey, let’s chat. Let’s, you know, let’s get together, whatever. And so she came and like, we had a good conversation and I adore this lady. And the fact that she even, so she asked me one of the first questions she asked me, she’s like, so what do you think about juice? Plus, I don’t know if you’ve heard of juice plus, but it is rampant here.
Like it is rampant.
Is it an MLM?
I think so. And, um, it’s rampant here. Like, I had heard of it, but it like went out of style in Indiana. And then when I moved here, it’s like, whoa, it’s like everywhere. And I’m like, I don’t, I’m, and I said to her and I was honest, like, I didn’t know anything other than telling her the truth.
And I’m like, well, I don’t, uh, Juice Plus does not have like, The vitamins and minerals in it are low quality and it actually depletes the minerals in the body. Um, and then I was like, you know, if it’s an MLM, they’re, they have to use these because they have to make money. Like it’s, they’re not dumb. They have to make money.
And I don’t just, I don’t fault them for that. Like it’s fine. But I’m like, I don’t recommend this, blah, blah, blah. And then she was like, Oh, well I sell it. And I was like, Oh, okay. And I’m like, You’re welcome to continue using it, but I said I would stop because it’s going to keep depleting minerals from your body and cause more stress on the body and I said, and honestly, here are the things that are going to happen and she stopped.
She sent me a message and she’d stopped and I’m like, it’s and I’m like, because and also I said, if you can’t, if you need these vitamin and minerals, that’s awesome. But if you’re not able to absorb them from food, what makes you think that you’re gonna be able to absorb them from this?
That’s true. It’s completely true.
And then another thing too, and this is something that I didn’t even learn when I did nutrition school, I learned this after, is like all the contraindications and completions of minerals and vitamins to each other.
Yep.
Some just cancel each other out, you know, so you can’t, you don’t know, these people that are creating this stuff are not nutrition experts.
Nope.
For example, let’s just say you’re low in iron. That’s true. Yes, yes. That’s a good one. If you’re low on iron and you drink a glass of milk when you’re eating your red meat, you are going to deplete and you’re going to cancel out that iron’s ability to be absorbed. But iron and vitamin C go together.
Those help each other absorb. So that’s why when my kids were low on iron, um, I would. this was back in the day. I would give them some iron drops, but also give them some kind of fruit like applesauce or something that had a decent amount of vitamin C at the same time. So I knew it got absorbed. I didn’t know something before I knew all this, but I did know a little something.
Um, but it’s like just as simple as that. Like if you are anemic and you’re eating red meat, like you’re supposed to, or you’re eating some spinach, which I don’t recommend spinach for iron depletion, I always recommend. taking beef liver, eating red meat, that kind of stuff. Even pork counts as a red meat.
Um, but if you’re drinking milk or having something like a, if you’re having a smoothie that has milk in it, that’s doing like damage. And I don’t recommend fake milks either because most fake milks are too high in toxicities. And in nature, when you go back to nature, what can we drink a glass of? What is easier to drink a glass of?
You can go to a cow’s udder and get a glass of milk. Easy. You cannot go to nature and go get enough almonds to make a cup of milk in nature easily. Think about the processing that has to go through that. Now I understand. Without a machine. You need a machine to do it. You can’t do it yourself. It’s not direct from the source.
And if you do it at home, you still have to have a machine to go get those almonds off the tree. and separate them from the shell and then you have to soak them for how long and then you have to, you know, like
make my own almond milk back in the day.
Yeah. Yeah. I, I am so glad that I was poor because I would have had that milk maker and all of that.
I am just, I
know, I know that came out after I was making it.
Okay. Okay. Yeah. And I’m not saying that these milks don’t taste great. They do taste great, but they’re processed and they’re usually full of full of carrageenan and they’re full of what’s the other thing that’s in
there?
Yep. The oils.
Yeah. The lecithin, like the thing.
Yes. Emulsifiers, that’s what it’s called.
Yep. Emulsifiers. Yes. So wellness culture is rampant and people are saying eat this way, don’t eat this way. But if you don’t have labs, if you don’t have someone looking at your labs, you don’t have someone looking at your, uh, Um, your DNA, you don’t have someone looking at your, um, just your lifestyle, even your spiritual life, where you are in your relationships, um, if you don’t have someone addressing those things.
You are literally just taking a bandaid and perpetuating diet culture, which is now called, like Aria said, it’s repackaged as wellness culture because it’s more politically correct to call it wellness culture and not diet culture anymore. But it’s the same thing. Like it’s the same thing. And I do believe that there’s an agenda out there to get us.
I do believe that there’s an agenda out there to continue to make people sick so that they can, they can be poor. They can’t work so they can be poor. So then they can get money. From the government from whomever and then when you are you don’t bite the hand that feeds you so then you’re even more manipulatable and controllable and so forth.
And I, I really cannot believe I’m here I thought my dad was like nuts in the 90s saying that this was going to happen and here we are. I’m like. I see.
My dad predicted a lot of things.
Yep. Same. I really think our dads would have like gotten along really well. So you guys, I really just want Aria and her mom and dad to move close to me so that I can get up in the morning, take my nightgown off, get dressed and go have coffee with them and just talk.
Because. I would just have a blast with them. Anyway, um, all that to say, Aria and I have a very high level package that we are offering to a very select few people. This is a, if you’ve been around here a while and you’ve heard me talk about foundational holistic wellness package, that package sold out so many times.
As soon as I opened it within three weeks, the seats were gone. And I work with these people for 12 months at a time. Aria and I have decided to level up this package and we are calling it the Alpiner package. And this package is only open for women, um, before I would take men in the foundational holistic wellness.
Um, but this one’s only open to women. And in this we are offering and including genetics testing. We are doing GI map. Um, you know, like the one where you take your stool and send it in and we can see what’s going on, um, in, in your bowels, which is where all the toxicities tend to live. Um, we are doing blood chemistry, HTMA, which is your hair tissue mineral assessment.
We are doing, um, I’m missing one, the organic acids test. So that’s a urine test. And that shows us also, um, it gives us a full picture of who you are, what your weaknesses are, what your toxicities are and so forth. And this is a package that is brand new. And like I said, it’s all included. Um, if you are interested, I’m going to leave the email down below.
Just send us an email and we would be happy to have a conversation with you and make sure that you’re a right fit and make sure that you’re ready to go. This is a very high touch, high level, high transformation package. Um, you will be talking about, like I said, your relationships. You will be talking about your sex life.
If you are married, you will be talking about, um, all sorts of things. Nothing is off limits and we will be moving you through, um, a progress of getting you to where you want to be, where you can have that confidence that you are. Honestly, I think that’s what we desire. We desire confidence from our dieting programs.
So you will be more confident. You will feel better about yourself. You will learn how to speak up for yourself. You will learn to say, Hey, uh, is this supplement right for me or not? Which is probably not going to be, if I haven’t recommended it. Um, you are, Oh, and I forgot this also includes your first month’s supplements.
Um, that the fee also includes that. I totally forgot about that. And then you will also get access to the wilderness of wellness and all of the, everything that’s in there. So you have access to so much stuff, so many tools, so many resources. You don’t have to use all of them either. I’m in a mastermind and I pay a pretty good penny for this mastermind.
And I, The, what I get out of it is the relationships with my mentors, um, the ability to speak up and say, Hey, I need someone to correct me. I need someone to guide me. I need someone to help me. It’s that it’s not necessarily handholding though. We handhold you, but it’s that space of we’re trying to teach you independence from, from whoever or whatever has control over you.
That is making you not feel great. These are for people that are maybe new moms. This package is great for new moms. This package is for the woman who is a businesswoman or who is in corporate and needs to be taken care of. She takes care of everybody else, not herself. And that is actually like that gives us joy.
We love this. Ari and I work with two other patients together in another high level package and it brings so much joy to support women in every aspect of their lives. This may be for the woman who Um, just needs that validation needs to say needs someone to turn to and say, this just happened. How do I handle this?
This is not just about your food. It’s not just about your root cause of physical things. It’s also about the root cause of the people and the way you respond and, and modifying your own behaviors and thought processes and pointing you to Jesus as well. So. If you are interested in that package, please go check it out in the show notes.
If you want to have a conversation with us, come check us or come find me on Instagram at crying in my cheesecake. And I’d love to have a conversation with you, um, about this package. Again, this is a highly sought after package and the ladies that are part of this are just, they’re our heart and soul.
And they are what keep us going because their transformations are faster. They, because it’s, because we are able to give you that personal, like when I say personalized, I literally mean we’re up in your business. We know, yeah, we know exactly your behavior, like we learn you, we learn about you so much that I, that we both know your tendencies and we know how you’re going to respond to something.
So we’ll check in on you and say, Hey, wait. Uh, have you thought about this yet? Or what are you going to do when this happens? Or like, we learned so much about you that we make sure that you are taken care of so that you can continue doing what you love to do and not feel so far, you know, not feel behind, not feel so left out and not feel like you go to bed at night saying, Oh, I have to do better tomorrow.
Or, you know, going to bed with regrets is not fun. So. All right. So there is that. Anything else, Aria?
No, that’s it. I think that’s it. I mean, I’m just really excited to meet whoever decides they need the help because just doing it last year has been such a blessing, even to me, just being able to be alongside those women and support them.
Like as you were just talking, it was just reminding me of all the, just seeing the growth and change in people, like from when we first started working with them. So now it’s like. Wow. I know.
And like, so was it, okay. I think both of them came to us for weight loss, I think was like the over, but what they got, they got weight loss, but they got friendships.
breaking old patterns of having just a mindset
thing. Yes. Yeah. But just looking at the mindset piece and seeing responses from like what one person would say about situation one, you know, one day, maybe months ago. And then today I’m like, wow, you actually listened and you did what the work and you did the work on yourself.
You showed up.
Yes, that’s them showing up. That’s huge. Because again, we tend to live small. We tend to worry about what everybody else is thinking. And, oh, that just, okay. I’m so excited again, because I just adore them. Um, all right, guys, until next week, make sure you check the show notes again, if you want more information about working with us, but until next week, we will talk to you soon.
Thanks for listening to the crying in my cheesecake podcast. I hope it encouraged you to make a next best step for your health. Take a look at the show notes for more information or other links I mentioned in the episode. And if you got to this point, come find me on Instagram at crying in my cheesecake and send me a DM.
Tell me you listened to this episode and what you got out of it.
