Living with chronic illness changes everything—your energy, your capacity, your trust in your body, and even your relationship with food.
When you feel like your body has betrayed you, it becomes even easier to fall into the promises of diet and wellness culture. I know this personally. From elimination diets to detoxes, “healing protocols,” and now the explosion of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, these promises can feel like lifelines when you’re desperate for control, relief, or even just a moment of calm.
In this episode, I answer a listener’s question about why so many folks with health conditions wind up with a disordered relationship with food. They also ask if I can share some of my personal experiences with the chronic-illness-to-wellness-culture-pipeline.
(It’s an extended version of a newsletter I wrote a few months back.)
I share nine reasons that chronic illness can intersect with, lead to, and worsen disordered eating and body dissatisfaction. This includes more on:
Why uncertainty and pain make us vulnerable to promises of control.
How heightened body awareness and sensory discomfort can lead to self-blame and restriction.
Distinguishing between food choices that are about care versus control.
The impact of weight stigma in healthcare and the moralization of health.
Trauma, isolation, and the seductive pull of restrictive wellness regimens.
Practices for resting without apology, setting boundaries, and eating without rigid rules.
Chronic illness doesn’t have to mean shame, guilt, or disordered eating. Recognizing the overlap and systemic pressures allows us to step into care that is compassionate, evidence-based, and nourishing—without relying on restrictive protocols.
This one is a special bonus! To listen to the full episode, and to read the full transcript, upgrade to paid right here.
Transcript:
Hey friends, welcome back to Full Plate. Today it is just me and you because I’m going to be answering a listener question.
We’re talking about something that I know a lot of you have lived through, perhaps quietly, or maybe it feels like it’s invisible. It’s something that doesn’t get named directly or get talked about enough, as you’ll hear from the listener question today.
It’s about what happens to our relationship with food, our body, and even our whole selves when we live with chronic illness.
Because when your body hurts and is incredibly unpredictable—when it feels like it’s working against you—it just fundamentally changes everything.
It changes how you think you should eat, how much rest or movement you get, how much you trust yourself.
The thing I want to talk about in particular today, in answering this question, is how and why living with chronic illness—an autoimmune disease, chronic pain—can make you so vulnerable to diet and wellness culture promises.
For example, if you’ve ever been told that your pain would disappear if you just lost weight, or if a doctor suggested a certain way of eating instead of an actual treatment, or if you—like me—traveled down the very dark rabbit hole of elimination diets, detoxes, and “healing protocols” from self-proclaimed gurus…
And most recently, if you’ve witnessed the explosion of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic marketed as weight-loss miracles, and maybe even experienced shortages of those drugs for diabetes for yourself, but also how they’re impacting the conversation around chronic illness…
Then you know how much this all gets tangled up in shame and stigma—weight, functionality, and all of these things.
The truth is, chronic illness complicates everything, and it can make us really hyper-aware of our bodies and desperate for control.
So, what I’m going to do in this episode is read the listener question. The full episode is for paid subscribers, so this is a great opportunity to support the show and get behind-the-scenes content, deeper personal reflections from me, and my own story—particularly some stuff that happened this summer with one of my chronic autoimmune conditions.
Then I’ll walk through all the different things I see impacting people with chronic illness through diet and wellness culture: nutrition, body image, movement, and more. And then what we can do instead—especially when it feels like your body is the enemy.
I hope you join us on Substack. There’s so much goodness behind the paywall, and it’s a big thank-you for being here.
All right, so let’s get into the question.
It’s from a listener who’s a paid subscriber. Thank you, Alicia. Alicia wrote:
“I’d love to hear you talk about the connection between chronic illness and disordered eating. It seems like so many people who struggle with food also live with ongoing health conditions, but I almost never see anyone naming this overlap directly. Why is it so common? And if you’re open to it, could you share some examples from your own experience?”
Alicia is right on the money. The overlap is everywhere, yet it’s rarely discussed in mainstream conversations. It’s one reason why the principles of intuitive eating were difficult for me personally—chronic illness, along with neurodivergence and OCD, complicates things. There’s nuance lacking in some of those principles, and it can be misleading, maybe even leading us astray in healing.
If you’ve ever felt pulled into restriction, protocols, or wellness promises while living in a sick body, this episode will resonate.
So let’s start with why chronic illness and disordered eating coexist.
Because I don’t think about individual psychology or willpower in a vacuum. I think about…
