Wellness culture promises optimum health. New research suggests it might be hiding a bigger risk: disordered eating.

 

Beth Shelton sits down with researcher Ruby Kagan to unpack why. We're used to thinking that visuals of thin bodies online drive the risk of eating disorders. Kagan's research points to something else. The bigger problem is wellness framing itself.

 

Kagan studied "what I eat in a day" and clean eating videos on TikTok. She found that the more "healthy" and admirable a video felt, the less likely viewers were to notice it was actually about food restriction. Often, that restriction was extreme, and not healthy at all.

 

She unpacks what she calls the "aestheticisation of restriction," and how we and our loved ones can protect ourselves from an endless scroll of content that isn't what it seems. You'll hear how wellness can disguise harm, and how to engage with your feed with a more critical eye.

 

Resources

FOLLOW BUTTERFLY'S NEW CAMPAIGN REDEFINING WELLNESS

LEARN MORE ABOUT RUBY KAGAN

NEED SUPPORT? CONTACT THE BUTTERFLY HELPLINE

 

Contact our Helpline

 

Follow Butterfly Foundation on Instagram here

Production Team:
Produced by Beth Shelton and Sam Blacker from The Podcast Butler
Executive Producer: Camilla Becket
Supported by the Waratah Education Foundation

For more information about this episode, visit www.butterfly.org.au/podcast and click through to this episode.

 

If you're concerned about an eating disorder for yourself or someone you care about, please reach out to the Butterfly National Helpline or chat online with one of their specialist counsellors. Recovery is possible with the right support.

 

Wellness culture promises optimum health. New research suggests it might be hiding a bigger risk: disordered eating.
&nbsp;
Beth Shelton sits down with researcher Ruby Kagan to unpack why. We're used to thinking that visuals of thin bodies online drive the risk of eating disorders. Kagan's research points to something else. The bigger problem is wellness framing itself.
&nbsp;
Kagan studied "what I eat in a day" and clean eating videos on TikTok. She found that the more "healthy" and admirable a video felt, the less likely viewers were to notice it was actually about food restriction. Often, that restriction was extreme, and not healthy at all.
&nbsp;
She unpacks what she calls the "aestheticisation of restriction," and how we and our loved ones can protect ourselves from an endless scroll of content that isn't what it seems. You'll hear how wellness can disguise harm, and how to engage with your feed with a more critical eye.
&nbsp;
Resources
<a href="https://butterfly.org.au/get-involved/campaigns/biedaw-2026/">FOLLOW BUTTERFLY'S NEW CAMPAIGN REDEFINING WELLNESS</a>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruby-kagan-388281218/">LEARN MORE ABOUT RUBY KAGAN</a>
<a href="https://butterfly.org.au/get-support/helpline/">NEED SUPPORT? CONTACT THE BUTTERFLY HELPLINE</a>
&nbsp;
<a href="https://butterfly.org.au/get-support/helpline/">Contact our Helpline</a>
&nbsp;
Follow Butterfly Foundation on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/thebutterflyfoundation/?hl=en">here</a>
Production Team:
<ul>
<li>Produced by Beth Shelton and Sam Blacker from The Podcast Butler</li>
<li>Executive Producer: Camilla Becket</li>
<li>Supported by the Waratah Education Foundation</li>
</ul>
For more information about this episode, visit <a href="http://www.butterfly.org.au/podcast">www.butterfly.org.au/podcast</a> and click through to this episode.
&nbsp;
If you're concerned about an eating disorder for yourself or someone you care about, please reach out to the <a href="https://butterfly.org.au/get-support/helpline/">Butterfly National Helpline</a> or chat online with one of their specialist counsellors. Recovery is possible with the right support.
&nbsp;

This is Let's Talk from the Butterfly Foundation. Join your host, Yvie Jones, as we explore living with body image issues and eating disorders.

This is Let's Talk from the Butterfly Foundation. Join your host, Yvie Jones, as we explore living with body image issues and eating disorders.

Butterfly: Let's Talk

This is Let's Talk Body Image and Eating Disorders from the Butterfly Foundation, your national voice for all people affected, now hosted by Dr Beth Shelton, a counselling psychologist with 30 years supporting people with lived experience and their loved ones, while also shaping services, training clinicians, and bringing her signature wisdom and warmth to many national leadership roles.

This is Let's Talk Body Image and Eating Disorders from the Butterfly Foundation, your national voice for all people affected, now hosted by Dr Beth Shelton, a counselling psychologist with 30 years supporting people with lived experience and their loved ones, while also shaping services, training clinicians, and bringing her signature wisdom and warmth to many national leadership roles.

The Wellness Trap: How 'healthy' content harms users at risk for eating disorders

Evidence-based treatment for eating disorders rightly focuses on restoring health and changing eating disorder behaviours. But what if those behaviours are also protecting something much deeper?

What if lasting recovery starts not with asking "What's wrong with me?" but "What happened to me?"

In this episode of Let's Talk, Beth talks with clinical psychologist and schema therapy expert Dr Susan Simpson about her new book Breaking Negative Eating Patterns and Remembering Your True Self, which offers a compassionate new way of understanding eating disorders. Drawing on more than 25 years of clinical experience, Susan explains how eating disorders can develop as intelligent coping strategies that protect us from shame, loneliness, unmet emotional needs and painful life experiences.

Susan explores the core ideas behind schema therapy, including our different "parts", the role of the inner critic, and how reconnecting with our authentic self can reduce the need for eating disorder behaviours. She also walks through the four-stage recovery journey outlined in her book, shares practical exercises listeners can try, and explains how clinicians and people with lived experience can use the book alongside evidence-based treatment.

It's a hopeful conversation about understanding the story behind your struggles, reconnecting with yourself, and discovering that recovery is about far more than changing eating behaviours.

Resources
Breaking Negative Eating Patterns and Remembering Your True Self
Susan Simpson LinkedIn
Book: Schema therapy for eating disorders
Schema therapy training online

Contact our Helpline

Follow Butterfly Foundation on Instagram here

Production Team:
Produced by Beth Shelton and Sam Blacker from The Podcast Butler
Executive Producer: Camilla Becket
Supported by the Waratah Education Foundation

For more information about this episode, visit www.butterfly.org.au/podcast and click through to this episode.

If you're concerned about an eating disorder for yourself or someone you care about, please reach out to the Butterfly National Helpline or chat online with one of their specialist counsellors. Recovery is possible with the right support.

 

Evidence-based treatment for eating disorders rightly focuses on restoring health and changing eating disorder behaviours. But what if those behaviours are also protecting something much deeper?
What if lasting recovery starts not with asking "What's wrong with me?" but "What happened to me?"
In this episode of Let's Talk, Beth talks with clinical psychologist and schema therapy expert Dr Susan Simpson about her new book Breaking Negative Eating Patterns and Remembering Your True Self, which offers a compassionate new way of understanding eating disorders. Drawing on more than 25 years of clinical experience, Susan explains how eating disorders can develop as intelligent coping strategies that protect us from shame, loneliness, unmet emotional needs and painful life experiences.
Susan explores the core ideas behind schema therapy, including our different "parts", the role of the inner critic, and how reconnecting with our authentic self can reduce the need for eating disorder behaviours. She also walks through the four-stage recovery journey outlined in her book, shares practical exercises listeners can try, and explains how clinicians and people with lived experience can use the book alongside evidence-based treatment.
It's a hopeful conversation about understanding the story behind your struggles, reconnecting with yourself, and discovering that recovery is about far more than changing eating behaviours.
Resources
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/breaking-negative-eating-patterns-and-remembering-your-true-self-susan-simpson/book/9781032410210.html?srsltid=AfmBOorI6F2XndUi-DtcoWZ3GLnFVBcaZINP9pawoDo3_KbMmlTu6ONG">Breaking Negative Eating Patterns and Remembering Your True Self</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-simpson-stts/">Susan Simpson LinkedIn</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Schema-Therapy-Eating-Disorders-Group-treatment/dp/0367272407">Book: Schema therapy for eating disorders</a></li>
<li><a href="https://courses.schematherapytrainingonline.com/l/products?sortKey=name&amp;sortDirection=asc&amp;page=1">Schema therapy training online</a></li>
</ul>
<a href="https://butterfly.org.au/get-support/helpline/">Contact our Helpline</a>
Follow Butterfly Foundation on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/thebutterflyfoundation/?hl=en">here</a>
Production Team:
<ul>
<li>Produced by Beth Shelton and Sam Blacker from The Podcast Butler</li>
<li>Executive Producer: Camilla Becket</li>
<li>Supported by the Waratah Education Foundation</li>
</ul>
For more information about this episode, visit <a href="http://www.butterfly.org.au/podcast">www.butterfly.org.au/podcast</a> and click through to this episode.
If you're concerned about an eating disorder for yourself or someone you care about, please reach out to the <a href="https://butterfly.org.au/get-support/helpline/">Butterfly National Helpline</a> or chat online with one of their specialist counsellors. Recovery is possible with the right support.
&nbsp;

Dr Susan Simpson on schema therapy and her new self-help book for recovery.

Therapists are often encouraged to bring empathy and authenticity into the therapy room, but what happens when that understanding comes from their own experience of an eating disorder? Should they disclose it to clients, or keep it private? And what does that decision mean for both therapist and client?

In this episode of Let's Talk, Beth talks with clinical psychologist and researcher Pheobe Ho, who draws on her own recovery, years of clinical practice and her PhD research to explore one of the most complex and under-discussed questions in eating disorder treatment: the ethical, professional and deeply personal decisions faced by clinicians who've been there themselves.

Phoebe shares what it was like to work alongside members of her own treatment team, and at a service where she was once a client. She explains why disclosure is never a simple yes-or-no decision. Together, she and Beth discuss workplace stigma, supervision, the emotional toll of concealing lived experience, and why psychologically safe workplaces matter for clinicians and clients alike.

They also explore how the eating disorder sector can better support clinicians with lived experience, why clearer guidance is urgently needed, and how new research could help shape the future of care.

It's a conversation for anyone curious about what happens when personal experience and professional expertise intersect.

Resources

Pheobe’s blog on being a clinician with lived experience in eating disorders.

Pheobe’s blog on supporting clinicians with lived experience.

Pheobe’s Linkedin.

Contact our Helpline

Follow Butterfly Foundation on Instagram here

Production Team:
Produced by Beth Shelton and Sam Blacker from The Podcast Butler
Executive Producer: Camilla Becket
Supported by the Waratah Education Foundation

For more information about this episode, visit www.butterfly.org.au/podcast and click through to this episode.

 

If you're concerned about an eating disorder for yourself or someone you care about, please reach out to the Butterfly National Helpline or chat online with one of their specialist counsellors. Recovery is possible with the right support.

 

Therapists are often encouraged to bring empathy and authenticity into the therapy room, but what happens when that understanding comes from their own experience of an eating disorder? Should they disclose it to clients, or keep it private? And what does that decision mean for both therapist and client?
In this episode of Let's Talk, Beth talks with clinical psychologist and researcher Pheobe Ho, who draws on her own recovery, years of clinical practice and her PhD research to explore one of the most complex and under-discussed questions in eating disorder treatment: the ethical, professional and deeply personal decisions faced by clinicians who've been there themselves.
Phoebe shares what it was like to work alongside members of her own treatment team, and at a service where she was once a client. She explains why disclosure is never a simple yes-or-no decision. Together, she and Beth discuss workplace stigma, supervision, the emotional toll of concealing lived experience, and why psychologically safe workplaces matter for clinicians and clients alike.
They also explore how the eating disorder sector can better support clinicians with lived experience, why clearer guidance is urgently needed, and how new research could help shape the future of care.
It's a conversation for anyone curious about what happens when personal experience and professional expertise intersect.
Resources
<a href="http://butterfly.org.au/being-a-clinician-with-lived-experience-in-eating-disorders">Pheobe&rsquo;s blog on being a clinician with lived experience in eating disorders.</a>
<a href="http://butterfly.org.au/supporting-eating-disorder-clinicians-with-lived-experience/">Pheobe&rsquo;s blog on supporting clinicians with lived experience.</a>
<a href="http://linkedin.com/in/phebslh123/">Pheobe&rsquo;s Linkedin.</a>
<a href="https://butterfly.org.au/get-support/helpline/">Contact our Helpline</a>
Follow Butterfly Foundation on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/thebutterflyfoundation/?hl=en">here</a>
Production Team:
<ul>
<li>Produced by Beth Shelton and Sam Blacker from The Podcast Butler</li>
<li>Executive Producer: Camilla Becket</li>
<li>Supported by the Waratah Education Foundation</li>
</ul>
For more information about this episode, visit <a href="http://www.butterfly.org.au/podcast">www.butterfly.org.au/podcast</a> and click through to this episode.
&nbsp;
If you're concerned about an eating disorder for yourself or someone you care about, please reach out to the <a href="https://butterfly.org.au/get-support/helpline/">Butterfly National Helpline</a> or chat online with one of their specialist counsellors. Recovery is possible with the right support.
&nbsp;

Should a therapist reveal they’ve experienced an eating disorder?

Men's body image is having a moment in the cultural conversation, but beyond the clickbait, what's actually going on? Where's the line between caring about your body and falling into something that can take over your life?

In this episode, Beth sits down with two guests who've seen it firsthand. Mark Beretta OAM, sports broadcaster, Australian waterski champion, and 2019 Father of the Year, speaks from decades in elite sport and media, and as a father raising a son. Shane Jeffrey, also a father, is an accredited sports dietitian with over 25 years working with clients experiencing eating disorders.

Social media algorithms and influencers are pulling young men into exercise and nutrition behaviours that look reasonable on the surface, but are often unscientific, unregulated, and quietly damaging to both their mental and physical health. Mark and Shane unpack how that happens, why supplements are filling a gap that good nutrition should, and how healthy habits can snowball into something extreme and consuming before anyone notices.

Shane describes what he's seeing clinically in boys aged 14–18. Mark talks about watching some mates head down that road and his own personal experiences growing up in sport culture.

They also cover what families, friends, and sporting clubs can do, and why getting in early with honest conversations can make all the difference.

Whether you're concerned about yourself, a mate, or a young person in your life, this one's worth your time.

 

 

Resources

 

Learn More about Mark Beretta

Learn more about Shane Jeffrey

See our Spot Your Mate Campaign about male body image

See our resources for males and men

Contact our Helpline

 

Follow Butterfly Foundation on Instagram here

Production Team:
Produced by Beth Shelton and Sam Blacker from The Podcast Butler
Executive Producer: Camilla Becket
Supported by the Waratah Education Foundation

For more information about this episode, visit www.butterfly.org.au/podcast and click through to this episode.

 

If you're concerned about an eating disorder for yourself or someone you care about, please reach out to the Butterfly National Helpline or chat online with one of their specialist counsellors. Recovery is possible with the right support.

 

 

Men's body image is having a moment in the cultural conversation, but beyond the clickbait, what's actually going on? Where's the line between caring about your body and falling into something that can take over your life?
In this episode, Beth sits down with two guests who've seen it firsthand. Mark Beretta OAM, sports broadcaster, Australian waterski champion, and 2019 Father of the Year, speaks from decades in elite sport and media, and as a father raising a son. Shane Jeffrey, also a father, is an accredited sports dietitian with over 25 years working with clients experiencing eating disorders.
Social media algorithms and influencers are pulling young men into exercise and nutrition behaviours that look reasonable on the surface, but are often unscientific, unregulated, and quietly damaging to both their mental and physical health. Mark and Shane unpack how that happens, why supplements are filling a gap that good nutrition should, and how healthy habits can snowball into something extreme and consuming before anyone notices.
Shane describes what he's seeing clinically in boys aged 14&ndash;18. Mark talks about watching some mates head down that road and his own personal experiences growing up in sport culture.
They also cover what families, friends, and sporting clubs can do, and why getting in early with honest conversations can make all the difference.
Whether you're concerned about yourself, a mate, or a young person in your life, this one's worth your time.
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
Resources
&nbsp;
<a href="https://butterfly.org.au/who-we-are/ambassadors/">Learn More about Mark Beretta</a>
<a href="https://www.riveroakhealth.com.au/">Learn more about Shane Jeffrey</a>
<a href="https://butterfly.org.au/eating-disorders-body-image/who-does-it-affect/males/">See our Spot Your Mate Campaign about male body image</a>
<a href="https://butterfly.org.au/resources/resources-for-men/">See our resources for males and men</a>
<a href="https://butterfly.org.au/get-support/helpline/">Contact our Helpline</a>
&nbsp;
Follow Butterfly Foundation on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/thebutterflyfoundation/?hl=en">here</a>
Production Team:
<ul>
<li>Produced by Beth Shelton and Sam Blacker from The Podcast Butler</li>
<li>Executive Producer: Camilla Becket</li>
<li>Supported by the Waratah Education Foundation</li>
</ul>
For more information about this episode, visit <a href="http://www.butterfly.org.au/podcast">www.butterfly.org.au/podcast</a> and click through to this episode.
&nbsp;
If you're concerned about an eating disorder for yourself or someone you care about, please reach out to the <a href="https://butterfly.org.au/get-support/helpline/">Butterfly National Helpline</a> or chat online with one of their specialist counsellors. Recovery is possible with the right support.
&nbsp;
&nbsp;

The Wellness Trap: How 'healthy' content harms users at risk for eating disorders

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