Wellness warriors ‘confuse privilege for enlightenment’

If you’re failing at your new year’s resolutions, podcast Maintenance Phase should soothe your broken ego and exhausted self-control.

The podcast takes on paleo champion and disgraced TV chef Pete Evans, Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness empire Goop and the Scarsdale diet murder.

Did you make a new year’s resolution to lose weight, get fit and enhance your general wellness? How’s it going? Oh. Sorry for asking. If you’re failing at your new year’s resolutions while casting an angry side-eye at #wellnesswarriors, podcast Maintenance Phase should soothe your broken ego and exhausted self-control.

The pressure to lose weight and the culture of wellness is largely a scam fuelled by shaming larger people in popular culture, podcast hosts Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes tell listeners. The podcast takes on paleo champion and disgraced TV chef Pete Evans, Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness empire Goop and the Scarsdale diet murder, which a quick Google confirms is real.

Former headmistress Jean Harris spent 12 years in prison for murdering her longtime lover doctor Herman Tarnower, who founded the Scarsdale Diet, in 1980. The restrictive diet – 1000 calories a day for a fortnight – was not the motive for the murder. Rather Tarnower was going to leave Harris for his younger office assistant. Harris died in prison in 2012 at the age of 89 after her case became a feminist cause celebre.

It has become less socially acceptable to judge larger people. Only philistines would make fun of someone’s weight these days.

The glorification of slender bodies pushes products carrying the promise to fix consumers, making them whole until their sense of completion fades and they need to buy something else. Really, is the organic Paltrow with her detox salad and vagina candles that different from the champagne party girl she was in the 1990s? Fewer toxins probably, but only slightly more food. In 2009, Paltrow released Goop’s first detox, which restricts food intake for seven days. Sounds like a diet. Apparently a GQ writer who did the first Goop detox vomited on the subway and suffered headaches.

Goop has attracted its fair share of derision, but Paltrow does seem largely well-intentioned – albeit profit-driven. It’s just that she lives a life so far removed from ordinary people that her advice seems a bit pie in the sky. Not an ordinary pie of course, a gluten-free activated turmeric pie blessed by Tibetan orphans born with inverted chakras.

Back to the point. The ordinary working person could hardly afford or sustain themselves through the struggles of life on organic ginger, chia seeds and kale. Nor could they meticulously plan their meals amid a busy schedule of yoga, pilates, mediation and bespoke essential oil blending. Sure some would aspire to this level of wellness – it sounds relaxing – but who has the time or money?

Gordon puts it succinctly. “Goop as a project seems really dedicated to confusing privilege for enlightenment,” she says. “She (Paltrow) is like ‘my life is good because I work out’.

“You don’t think the fact you have literal millions of dollars has anything to do with how good your life is?”

No lies, the podcast is a lot of talking in American accents about the injustice suffered by the ostensibly overweight, which will probably annoy harder listeners. There’s a lot of outrage that may not be everyone’s cup of tea in the discussions of privilege and the like. Review recommends for listeners who want to enjoy their cheeseburger.