But also, sometimes, they can be stressors or unwanted reminders. Our relationships with our bodies can be complicated—and that’s okay. With Well+Good’s latest launch, we’re challenging assumptions about what “healthy” looks like and exploring the many ways we care for our bodies and all they can do.
Abbey Stone, Editor in Chief
Editor's Letter
For over 20 years of my life, I was a dancer. Which means that for all of my childhood, teens, and early 20s—those most formative years—I spent hours (so many hours) each week not just watching my body in the mirror, but actively critiquing it. Is my pelvis level? Are my shoulders down? Is my “core engaged”?
The irony is that at the very same time I was learning the extraordinary things my body could do—Leap! Turn! Balance! Stretch!—I was comparing the way it looked to the bodies of others in my class and the professionals I looked up to on the stage and screen. This didn’t lend to what I would call a healthy body image, and I still struggle with the critique-and-compare trap today.
Diet culture feeds us ideas of what a “healthy body” should look like—slim, toned, agile—and the fitness and wellness industries have played their parts in perpetuating these harmful “standards.” Slim, toned, and agile fitness instructors advertise their classes with promises of a “long, lean body”; brands peddle restrictive diets and detox protocols as silver-bullet solutions for your perceived flaws; magazines use headlines that claim you can “burn belly fat” or “lose 10 pounds in a month” to sell their glossies. But to take these claims as truth is another trap.
With Well+Good’s Bodies Issue, I’d like to offer you some counter-programming. The stories you’ll find here seek to provide a different perspective—one that consciously uncouples (😉) value judgements from our bodies. Actress and activist Jameela Jamil, whom I spoke with for this issue, has been open about her 20-year battle with anorexia and her continued body dysmorphia. For her, accepting a body neutral—rather than body positive—mindset has made all the difference. “I look in the mirror and now can see my body, I think for the first time, as it is,” she says. “I don't look at it with love and I don't look at it with hatred.”
Rather than obsessing over whether they are “good” or “bad,” what if we acknowledged our bodies’ capabilities, accomplishments, and also their limits? “[My body is] my car. It's getting me from A to B,” Jamil tells me. “It took me to have sex last night, and it's going to take me to the fridge and then it's going to take me to work later and it's going to take me to make all of my dreams come true.”
What if we spent less time thinking about—comparing, scrutinizing, hating, even—our bodies and more time using them to make our dreams come true? Just food for thought.
With love,
By Erin Bunch
What My Body Has Taught Me
By Kara Jillian Brown
I Don’t Need My Scars To Remind Me That I’m Strong
By Kells McPhillips
By Zoe Weiner
The Real Cost of ‘Quick-Fix’ Culture
read more
by Christy Harrison, MS, RD
The Sneaky Insidiousness of
'Wellness Diets'
Our bodies are teachers, artists, and healers.
Creative
Alexis Berger – Deputy Editor
Jenna Gibson – Creative Direction
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I Thought I Would Never Walk Again, but Thanks to Bionic Legs—And My Own Resilience—I Just Completed The Final Mile of a Marathon
Alyssa Gray, Madison Bolatto + Natalie Carroll
Art & Creative Production
EDITORIAL
Abbey Stone – Editor in Chief & VP, Content
Betty Gold – SR. Food Editor
Contributing Editors
Jennifer Heimlich – Sr. Health & Fitness Editor
Erica Sloan – Lifestyle Editor
Zoe Weiner – SR. Beauty Editor
Erin Bunch | Kara Jillian Brown
Christy Harrison | Rachel Kraus
Kells McPhillips | Hannah Schneider
Carla Sosenko | Maki Yazawa
Contributors
Jennifer Snyder – SR. Director,
Experiential & Brand Projects
Taylor Camille – Director, Podcasts
PODCAST & TALENT
Celine Cortes – Associate Director,
Audience Development
Delaney Lamb – Email Marketing Associate
AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT
Kendall Bryant – Director of Product
PRODUCT
Alexis Reliford – Director of Social Media
Amanda Gaines – Social Media Manager
SOCIAL
Taylor Bell – Social Media Producer
Alexis Berger – Deputy Editor
Jenna Gibson – Creative Direction
Creative
By Zoe Weiner
"I look in the mirror and now can see my body—I think for the first time—as it is. And I don't look at it with love and I don't look at it with hatred."
read more
If Everyone Would Just Listen to Jameela Jamil, the World Would Be Better
By Hannah Schneider
Weightlifting Helped Me Shift My Goal of Getting Smaller To Taking Up Space—And I Feel More Powerful Than Ever
By Jennifer Heimlich
No One Told Me Motherhood Would Take My Boobs on Such a *Journey*
read more
Folks With Disabilities Were Lacking Representation in the Culinary World, So I Took Matters Into My Own Hand
read more
Medical Bigotry Is Harming
Fat People
presented by
But also, sometimes, they can be stressors or unwanted reminders. Our relationships
with our bodies can be complicated—and that’s okay.
With Well+Good’s latest launch, we’re challenging assumptions about what “healthy” looks like and exploring the many ways we care for our bodies and all they can do.
Our bodies are teachers, artists, and healers.
by Rachel Kraus
By Erin Bunch
What My Body Has Taught Me
I Thought I Would Never Walk Again, but Thanks to Bionic Legs—And My Own Resilience—I Just Completed the Final Mile of a Marathon
The Real Cost of ‘Quick-Fix’ Culture
read more
The founder and CEO of body-neutral fitness platform and app the be.come project shares how a neutral approach to pregnancy and now postpartum life has been healing on a number of levels.
How Bethany C. Meyers Is Meeting Motherhood With a Body-Neutral Approach
Interview
It’s Time To Normalize—And Celebrate—Exercise Variations for Bigger Bodies
By Kells McPhillips
by Carla Sosenko
Medical Bigotry Is Harming
Fat People
by Maki Yazawa
Folks With Disabilities Were Lacking Representation in the Culinary World, So I Took Matters Into My Own Hand
By Hannah Schneider
Weightlifting Helped Me Shift My Goal of Getting Smaller To Taking Up Space—And I Feel More Powerful Than Ever
By Jennifer Heimlich
No One Told Me Motherhood Would Take My Boobs on Such a *Journey*
read more
The Emmy-nominated host, best-selling author, and advocate opens up about finding her voice—and using it to bring attention to the needs of those who are underserved, underrepresented, and underappreciated.
If Everyone Would Just Listen to Jameela Jamil, the World Would Be Better
read more
The Emmy-nominated host, best-selling author, and advocate opens up about finding her voice—and using it to bring attention to the needs of those who are underserved, underrepresented, and underappreciated.
How Bethany C. Meyers Is Meeting Motherhood With a Body-Neutral Approach
Interview
read more
It’s Time To Normalize—And Celebrate—Exercise Variations for
Bigger Bodies
Perspective
Perspective
Melenie McGregor – Sr. Video Producer
