we've been lied to

This week:

• What I Consumed: my summer house conspiracy theory

• From My Desk: the wellness brands are lying to you

• Behind The Episode: maybe I do want to lose weight? is that ok?

I have spent the better part of a decade telling women how to feel better in their bodies. I have the brand, the retail footprint, the certifications, the interviews. I know the category inside and out.

And then I got pregnant, and I gained sixty pounds from fertility drugs, and I had gestational diabetes, and I delivered, and I just had my retained placenta removed at twelve weeks postpartum, and I’m very much waking up to the fact that nobody knows shit about making babies ,and having babies, and then caring for moms afterwards. And I’m not shitting on doctors here - they do their best. I’m shitting on the dire lack of research dedicated to understanding pregnancy and postpartum better. IT’S DIRE.

The NIH spent only 8.8% of its total budget on women’s health research over the past decade, and only a fraction of that funded pregnancy studies. Meanwhile nearly two-thirds of US maternal deaths happen during the postpartum period. The most dangerous time. The least studied. The moment when everyone stops looking. I could have easily been one of them if I failed to advocate for myself when I started bleeding heavily 4 weeks after giving birth.

That is not an accident. That is a choice. And it is time to say it out loud.

What I Consumed 😮

Summer House. Obviously. And I have a theory. Actually it’s less of a theory and more of a reality TV industry suspicion, so let me share something with you.

It seems as though Kyle and Amanda may have allegedly been separated before production even began last season. And if that is the case, we have to give them the benefit of the doubt on the timeline. All of it.

Production determines storylines ahead of every new season. That is just how this works. So ask yourself: what does Summer House have without Kyle and Amanda? Nothing. No anchor, no stakes, no reason to tune in. Which means if they were allegedly already separated before they ever stepped foot on camera last season, production would have had every incentive to structure a deal. You film the breakdown, you live it out on screen, and you stay contractually quiet about the real timeline publicly. In my opinion, based on my experience in this world, that is just how the sausage gets made in TV land.

Which means, by the way, give Amanda a little grace on the West situation. If she was allegedly already separated when it started, and I personally suspect she was, this is not what it looks like on the surface. Is it a great look for her friendship with Ciara? HELL no. Absolutely not. No amount of timeline math makes that better.

And speaking of the edit. In my opinion Bravo caught wind of West and Amanda way before any of us did. Go back and watch this season. The confessionals, the framing, the way certain moments were constructed. That is not accidental television. It seems to be a network that knew exactly what was coming and was building the runway for it in real time.

As for the leak. Everyone is blaming some girl who photographed them through an apartment window?? But if a civilian had that photo it would have been everywhere immediately. The average person doesn’t sit on something like that. You sell it or you post it or you tell one person and it’s gone. The fact that it came out the way it did, timed the way it was timed, is just my personal opinion here, but it makes me wonder. Bravo has, in my view, historically never been a bystander in their own stories. They are the authors of them….

Anyway, my overall conspiracy is simple. Bravo is Big Brother. They always have been. Way more of this has been happening behind the scenes than any of us know, and the story we are watching on screen is never the whole story. It is the story they decided to tell. I know because I have been on the other side of that decision.

From The Desk

The CEO POV. Work, business, and what I’m actually thinking about.

The wellness industry is currently having a reckoning with itself and I find it equal parts validating and infuriating. What they are calling the over-optimization backlash is basically the industry admitting that years of wearables and biometrics and morning routines and tracking every possible metric made people feel worse, not better. The corrective trend is now officially just... feeling things. Meaning over measurement. The Global Wellness Summit put it in their annual report like it was a revelation.

It is not a revelation. It is an admission.

Love Wellness was built on the premise that the category was lying to women. That products designed to make women feel broken for having normal bodies were not wellness products, they were shame products with better packaging. That positioning was not popular when we launched. Suddenly everyone agrees with it.

The bigger lie that is finally getting called out: the longevity market, the wellness market, the medical system, all of it was built on male data. Women’s health was extrapolated from studies done on men and adjusted. Not a conspiracy theory. Just true. And the era of we will figure out women’s health later is apparently ending?? I will believe it when I see the research funding change. But we are closer than we have ever been, and the founders who were building honestly before it was the obvious play are the ones who are going to matter when it finally arrives.

Behind The Episode

A deeper look at what we talked about this week, and what didn’t make the cut. Watch here, listen on Spotify here, and Apple here.

This week on Tell Me I’m a Good Mom I said something out loud that I have been afraid to say. That I want my body back. Not the exact body, I know that’s gone. But something that feels like mine again.

And I felt immediately embarrassed by it. Like I should be above that. Like wanting to recognize yourself in the mirror after everything you just went through to become a mother is somehow shallow. Vain. The wrong thing to be focused on right now.

But here is what I actually think. Your body is not separate from your identity. It never was. And I spent the last two plus years doing something incredibly hard to it. IVF, 60 lbs gained, gestational diabetes, pregnancy, delivery, a retained placenta, a D&C. My body was a medical situation for so long that I forgot it was also just... mine. And now that the medical chapter is closing I am realizing I am allowed to want it back. That is not vanity. That is just a woman saying I have been through enough and I would like to feel like myself again.

I got one step closer to admitting that on this episode. It felt freeing in a way I did not expect.

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