Anxiety Dieting, Disordered Eating, and the Crunchy-Granola-to-Wellness Pipeline with Leah Kern

About this episode

Leah Kern discusses her journey from anxiety to disordered eating and the pitfalls of wellness culture.

Anti-diet dietitian Leah Kern joins us to discuss how struggling with anxiety made her susceptible to a wellness diet that promised safety and longevity, how that diet quickly spiraled into full-on disordered eating, how being eco-conscious and “earthy” can easily lead into wellness traps, the connection between spirituality and wellness culture, why she finally stopped trying to fix her anxiety with food and started taking meds, and more. This episode previously aired on our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness . Leah Kern is an anti-diet dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor who specializes in helping people heal their relationships with food and body. Her approach to coaching is firmly evidence-based, rooted in the Health At Every Size (HAES®) & Intuitive Eating frameworks. In her private practice, Leah teaches her clients to harness their body’s innate wisdom to govern how they eat and live. Leah believes that the work involved with unraveling years of conditioning in diet culture and learning to come home to one’s body is deeply spiritual work and she treats it as such. It is Leah’s mission to help her clients make peace with food and body so they can unlock…

People in this episode

Host: Christy Harrison

Guest: Leah Kern

Topics covered

• anxiety
• dieting
• disordered eating
• wellness culture
• spirituality
• intuitive eating

Keywords

• anxiety dieting
• disordered eating
• wellness traps
• spirituality
• intuitive eating
• eco-conscious
• diet culture

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Health At Every Size (HAES®), Intuitive Eating

Books & works: Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook

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• Should You Buy Organic? And Should You Eat Organic in Recovery from Disordered Eating? · April 30, 2026 · 21 min
• 2 Weird Food Rules I Don’t Follow Anymore (and 4 Other Principles I Try to Live By) · April 16, 2026 · 15 min
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