Why People With Chronic Illnesses Are Vulnerable to Deceptive Diet Advice
“I came to discover that when you want an answer and you can’t get one, you can bury yourself in the delusion that one exists.”
“If you’re going to continue eating gluten, I cannot continue working with you.” The face staring back at me from FaceTime was smooth and dewy, but her eyes were cold. It belonged to a wellness coach I’d paid $300 for a phone session to change my life. She promised me that together we could break my bad habits around food and heal the damage I’d been doing to my gut for years — damage that, according to her, was exacerbating my autoimmune conditions.
I hadn’t told anyone about the phone sessions because I was embarrassed I was paying such an exorbitant fee for them in the first place. I wanted them to be my dirty little healing secret, a place where I gave in and let myself be guided to some Instagrammable dimension where I’d never crave sugar or cheeseburgers again.
I also didn’t want to admit to anyone how desperately attached to her I was. She answered my panicked texts in the middle of the night. She listened to my weepy frustrations over the sadness in my daily life I didn’t really understand. She understood how it gritted my teeth each time an unwitting…
