A Catholic Perspective on Navigating the Online Wellness World

This week’s Q&A is coming to you a day late thanks to a sick child, a flooded basement, a leaking roof in the toy room, another broken fridge, a Thursday night spent in the ER, a scrambled Friday morning, and a road trip across Pennsylvania yesterday afternoon to visit the priest who married us. It’s been a week!

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Oh my gosh, do I ever understand this question. It’s so overwhelming isn’t it? No matter what stage of life you’re in, every influencer and their brother has an opinion about what you should be doing, and a solid quarter of those opinions contradict themselves.

It’s also hard to sort out people’s real thoughts from their financial bottom line. So many supplements. So many coaching programs. So many affiliate links. It’s absolutely dizzying.

And it’s not even like you can avoid it all by simply unfollowing or muting people like you could in the good old days pre-2021. Now, all those suggested reels will hound you no matter what you do (short of getting off social media altogether and only reading Substack newsletters via email … which has its appeal).

As for how to navigate it, I do think the Church has some helpful guidelines, although, they’re more principles to apply than rules to be followed. It’s not like the Vatican has an encyclical on perimenopausal fitness routines or an approved list of wellness influencers. But, it does have 2,000 years of teaching on what it means to be a human person and how to live a virtuous life, so we at least have some solid truth to draw upon and apply here.

Let’s start with looking at four of the Church’s most essential teachings on the human person.

First, according to the Catholic Church, human persons are a union of body and soul. Our souls animate our bodies. Our bodies express our soul; they make visible the invisible truth of who we are. Both body and soul are important. Both, in their own way, are us.

Second, both body and soul are also destined to live forever in Heaven with the One who made them. God doesn’t want only our souls in Heaven. He wants all of us there, the whole person, as He made us to be. And although death initially separates the soul from the body, Christians believe that at the end of days, these mortal bodies of ours will be resurrected, transfigured, and glorified, just as Jesus’ own body was.

Third, we are made in the image of God.

You and I are creatures, not the Creator, so the distance that separates us from God is vast. And yet, like God, we possess the ability to reason, to know right from wrong, and freely choose right or wrong. Also, like God, we are made for life-giving communion. A communion of life-giving lovers—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is who God is. And we, who are made in Him image, are called to a life of communion too, both here and in eternity.

Lastly, while both body and soul matter and are destined for eternity, a hierarchy exists within this union. This hierarchy is expressed in the adage, “The body is the servant of the soul.” Which is another way of saying that the soul does the body’s bidding. Bodies are great gifts. They’re how we make ourselves known and act on the world. Without them, we couldn’t communicate, build, create, move, or love. But it’s always the soul calling the shots. The soul is the part of us exercising free will, knowing right from wrong, and choosing between good and evil. Hence the Catechism’s explanation that it is the soul that is “of greatest value” because it is the soul “which is most especially in God’s image,” (CCC 363, emphasis mine).

Those are four of the most essential truths about the human person. We are a union of body and soul. Both body and soul are destined for eternity. We are made in the image of God. And while both soul and body matter, the soul matters more. Those teachings on the human person are the first foundation we need to navigate the morass of wellness advice coming at us fast and furious these days. But, we also need to understand the virtues, both the human virtues and the theolgical ones.

Human virtues (or natural virtues) are good habits we acquire mostly through our own efforts. There are many of these virtues, but the Church recognizes four—prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance—as “cardinal.” By that she means that our ability to practice the other human virtues hinges on our practice of the cardinal virtues. These four cardinal virtues make other virtues possible. Prudence helps us to know the good. Justice enables us to do the good. Fortitude makes it possible for us to do the good even when it’s difficult. And temperance helps us to balance competing goods in service of the greatest good.

Those are the human virtues. The theological virtues (or supernatural virtues) are faith, hope, and charity. And unlike human virtues, the theological virtues aren’t good habits. They’re gifts of grace, given to us by God. They also have a different purpose than natural virtues.

As I explain in my book, The Catholic Table: Finding Joy Where Food and Faith Meet:

“While the human virtues free us up to live a more fully human life, the theological virtues dispose us to live a divine life. More specifically, faith helps us believe in God and all He’s revealed. Hope helps us desire heaven. And charity helps us love God and neighbor. Together, all three theological virtues till the soil of our souls, so that God’s grace can bear more fruit in us and so that we can enter more deeply into a relationship with Him.”

Now what does all this tell us about what we should and should not be doing to care for these mortal coils of ours?

For starters, because of the Church’s teachings on the human person, we know that both body and soul matter. Both are fundamental to who we are, and both have an eternal destiny, so both require care. We have to be good stewards of our bodies and good stewards of our souls.

When it comes to the body, this means we need to move it and feed it and let it rest, so that it can do all the loving, serving, and giving God calls it to do. We live in a fallen world, where sickness, injury, and ultimately death are inevitable, but while we can, to the best of our ability, we need to take reasonable measures to pursue health and strength, nourishing our body with good food, appropriate exercise, fresh air, plenty of water, and plenty of sleep. It is not good to neglect the body. It is no virtue. (And saints who did treat their earthly bodies less than kindly at times, such Saint Francis of Assisi, often died wishing they had been kinder to “Brother Ass.”)

As bad as it is to neglect the body, though, it’s even worse to neglect the soul. Being a good steward of our soul requires, among other things, nourishing it with prayer and sacraments, the study of God, the sound formation of our reason, and the lifelong pursuit of the virtues. It also requires the pursuit of communion. We can’t care for our soul without nourishing our relationships with others. Our souls need those as much as our bodies need air and water.

But what happens when the needs of the body and the needs of the soul compete against each other? In this world, time and energy are both finite. There’s not always enough to go around and do all the exercising our body needs and serving our soul needs.

Besides that, how does understanding who the human person is help us figure out if we should be eating three meals a day or fasting every other day? It’s all well and good to say the human person is made in the image of God, but what does that have to do with the carnivore diet, creatine, and lifting heavy?

This is where the virtues come in. The virtues can help us sort through all that competing advice and apply it moment by moment to our unique bodies and lives, in different circumstances and seasons.

For example, justice reminds us what we owe to both our bodies and our souls (see: nourishment, exercise, rest, prayer, sacraments, time with loved ones, etc.). It also reminds us what we owe to others: love, affection, attention, presence, encouragement, time, hospitality, prayer, help, and more. In short, justice helps us see our obligations to ourselves and to others.

Likewise, prudence helps us make smart decisions—decisions about how we spend our time (sleep > binge watching), evaluate the claims of influencers (opinions of doctors and scientists > opinions of attractive “content creators”), nourish our body (real, whole foods > processed foods), exercise (fitness advice for 20-something women ≠ fitness advice for 40-something women), and spend our money (tithing > one more expensive powder promising to fix every problem of perimenopause).

Next comes fortitude, which helps us pursue the goods of body and soul, even when it’s hard to do that—when we’re rather rest instead of exercise, scroll our phones instead of pray, skip breakfast instead of eat, and watch a show instead of go to the party we promised to attend.

Last of all, temperance helps us choose between competing goods, giving us the freedom to skip our walk after a rough night with the baby, stretch instead of lift when we feel a cold coming on, eat the cake our friend made for us regardless of what it does to our macros, but also stick to just one piece of the cake instead of two.

When it comes to the supernatural virtues, faith helps us see that eating well and exercising are acts of stewardship, that food is meant to nourish our souls, not just our bodies, and that as we eat and move, we’re called to give thanks to the God who makes all the eating and moving possible.

Hope helps us keep our eyes on Christ as we pursue bodily health and prioritize the things of heaven over the things of earth, reminding us that being a saint is more important than being thin, cut, or jacked.

And charity? Charity helps us consider the needs and feelings of others as we make decisions about health and wellness, showing us, for example, when a session at the gym needs to cede place to a conversation with an anxious friend.

In short, all the virtues help us know what matters most and choose it, moment by moment, because the answers won’t always be the same. Some days, going on a walk will be the right choice. Other days, the right choice will be reading a book or talking to a friend or sleeping an extra hour. For one person, spending the money on creatine or grass-fed beef or a gym membership will be the virtuous call. For another, it won’t be. We all have different bodies, different lives, different finances, and different needs, so the choices we make will often look different and the Vatican never will put out a point-by-point wellness plan for you to follow.

That being said, for most people, in most situations—barring addictions, allergies, and illness—the general shape of our choices will look similar, because when you understand you are not a project to be optimized, but a person made for communion, you will put communion first.

You will put sharing a meal with loved ones over fasting.

You will put eating what someone has prepared for you over your own food preferences.

You will drink a glass of wine with friends and eat a piece of your child’s birthday cake.

You will not let food and macros and calories occupy more space in your head than your family, your vocation, or God.

You will not spend more time exercising than you spend with your children or spouse.

You will not neglect your body, but you will not worship your body either.

You won’t build your life around any one fad, diet, or expert, because you know science is not fixed, research evolves, trends come and go, and experts who say one thing today will likely say another thing tomorrow.

You will entrust all your anxieties and fears about food over to God, knowing that time and His grace can bring both healing and freedom … and also knowing that what kills the body is not to be feared as much as what kills the soul: gluttony, greed, sloth, pride, vanity, envy, and a lack of love.

Above all, you will recognize that death comes for us all, and that when you die, it’s more important to have a clean soul than a clean diet; that God will not judge you on how much you lifted but rather on how much you loved; and that eating well and exercising are not ends in themselves. They are the means by which you have the strength and energy to do all the loving and serving God has called you to do.

So, that’s my advice: Know who you are and how God has called you to love, and the rest will become a whole lot less confusing. Not always completely easy. But easier.

I know this because over the past 25 years, I’ve had to learn and relearn all these lessons many times over: as a recovering anorexic in my twenties, as a woman with a host of health problems in my thirties, as a new mom in my forties, and now as a perimenopausal woman in my early fifties.

Through it all, I’ve gained weight and lost weight, then gained weight and lost weight again. I’ve developed great routines for diet and exercise, then had to develop whole new ones as my body aged and my life changed. I’ve also had to face the slow loss of my mom to Alzheimer’s and think about how I can improve my habits and routines now, so that I can be fully present to my children for every moment I am given on this earth.

I’ll admit, right now, I do a lot of what women of a certain age are told to do on social media. I lift heavy, run sprints, and eat protein. I do take HRT, collagen, and creatine. But I also eat pasta, drink wine, refuse to count macros, and never exercise for more than 30 minutes at a time. I feel great. And yet I know a car accident or cancer diagnosis could change it all tomorrow. So, I hold it fairly loosely, always striving to keep my priorities straight, put first things first, and find health and happiness in the mean, not the extremes of the health and wellness world. Doing this is keeping me sane and healthy. I think it can do the same for you.

But no matter what, just keep remembering who you are. You are not a machine that need optimizing or a project that needs perfecting. You are a human person, made in the image of God, who is called to communion. Evaluate everything through that lens, and you will find your way.

I’ve written a lot more about approaching food and fitness from a Catholic point of view in two of my books, The Catholic Table and These Beautiful Bones: An Everyday Theology of the Body, as well as two essays for Substack, “Thin and Thinner, Part 1” and “Thin and Thinner, Part 2.” If you want to think about these topics more in-depth, I recommend checking all those out.

1. For those of you who feel like you are struggling through the single years, searching for your vocation, or longing for children, a beautiful new collection of stories from 17 women in a similar place, offers solidarity and consolation. Sacred Heartache, edited by Claire McCreavy, is a beautiful companion for all those in a season of vocational waiting.

2. No episode of Visitation Sessions this week (Casey is in Birmingham, Alabama, playing Saint Francis for a show on EWTN), but if you need a good podcast episode to listen to, my favorite in recent weeks was Jonathan Pageau’s interview with the inestimable poet Malcolm Guite. It’s all about stories, poetry, and Arthurian legends, and was just so delightful.

3. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been reading The Green Ember series aloud to the children and we are all enraptured. I first heard about the series maybe five years ago, from my friend Rachael, and followed the author S.D. Smith on Instagram, but only recently did I crack into the books. They are beautifully told and beautifully written tales full of adventure, danger, courage, and swords … lots and lots of swords. All the kids are on the edge of their seats (more accurately beds) while I read and would have me in there reading all night if it were up to them. Highly recommend, for both boys and girls, ages 5/6-12 (and really anyone who likes a good story).

4. I am doing virtually no speaking these days, but there will be rare Emily Chapman sightings twice in the next six months or so. On October 12, I’ll be giving a talk in the parish where I was baptized, St. Mary’s in Rock Island, Illinois, and on March 13, I’ll be speaking at the Catholic Women for Christ Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. I’ll post more details as they become available, but if you’re in either area, go ahead and mark your calendars now because I would love to meet you.