Gwyneth Paltrow’s former right-hand woman at Goop reflected on the “toxic” wellness culture that led her to have an unhealthy relationship with her body.
Elise Loehnen, Goop’s former chief content officer, previously co-hosted “The Goop” podcast and made appearances on Netflix's “The Goop Lab.” She departed from the company in late 2020 in pursuit of a book deal and a new podcast, per BuzzFeed News.
What is it? Launched in 2008, Goop is a wellness and lifestyle brand founded by Paltrow, offering health and wellness advice along with a curated shop full of beauty, fashion and home products.
Driving the news: In a video posted on Instagram, Loehnen talked about her unhealthy relationship with diet cleanses during her time at Goop.
“To me, it had become synonymous with dieting and restriction, and I felt like I was not in a healthy relationship with my body, where I was always trying to punish it (and) bring it under control,” Loehnen explained. Things are different now. She’s been “eating like a teenager for two years and enjoying it.”
This has helped her let go “of ideas of what my body should look like as a 42-year-old who has had two kids,” Loehnen added in the caption. “I needed to break a tendency to be critical and punishing. To chastise myself. All of it. I stopped weighing myself completely.”
A dilemma: Finding the perfect balance when it comes to overindulging can be hard and Loehnen is willing to explore that.
“When I talked with my friend (Ellen Vora) on Pulling the Thread recently, we explored diet and she reminded me that wellness culture can be toxic AND that eating an abundance of overly processed foods can also be toxic,” she said. “And I realized in that moment that I’ve kind of deserted how my body actually feels — as much as I’ve enjoyed two years of eating whatever my young kids want. And that I’m clearly being called back to a place somewhere in the middle because my stomach often hurts.”
Flashback: Simon Stevens, the chief executive of Britain’s National Health System, said that Goop promotes untested treatments, like vampire facials and colonic irrigation, adding that the British health authorities have issued advice stating there is no scientific evidence to support such claims.
“Gwyneth Paltrow’s brand peddles ‘psychic vampire repellent,’ says ‘chemical sunscreen is a bad idea,’ and promotes colonic irrigation and DIY coffee enema machines,” he said.