Flat on his stomach | Loounie takes on wellness culture

After dissecting the culture of diets, vegan culinary creator and former occupational therapist Caroline Huard (Loounie) looks at that of well-being in the second season of the podcast show Prone. If well-being is a good thing in itself, it is the pressure to perform that surrounds it and what we are trying to sell to achieve it that it denounces.

A priori, well-being is positive. Everyone aspires to it. Why question the culture of well-being?

I have noticed that there is a difference between what science tells us and what the wellness industries sell us. We are sold the idea that if we eat the right things, if we use a certain supplement or product and if we practice a certain activity, we can practically guarantee our well-being and our individual health. But when we look at the available data, we see that health and well-being are influenced in part by our individual choices and behaviors, but also by many factors over which we as individuals have no control. However, the wellness industries are selling us the opposite idea, which is false. It brings us into a perpetual wheel, always looking for better. The consequence may be that we will buy products, therefore we will have wasted our money, wasted our time, but it can have more serious consequences such as the development of eating disorders and lead to other mental health problems and a feeling continual failure. It’s not the importance of taking care of yourself that I’m questioning. There is a distinction to be made between wellness culture and toxic wellness culture. We need to be able to separate what is toxic from what is not. The goal is to get people involved in the right things.

Have you already adhered to the practices promoted by the wellness industry?

Really. For me, it was a way of shaping myself. It was very much a part of my identity at that time. People who knew me or followed me on social media might have said, “Ah yes, she’s the girl who drinks green juice and has an impeccable diet. She plays sports, she meditates, she does yoga. » For me it was a way of being socially accepted, of having a certain value in the eyes of others. There are some of these practices that are still part of my life because they really make me feel good, regardless of what others think. Do yoga, for example. But now I do it for the benefit it brings me. One thing that fascinates me is that I have a science background. I often have a critical look at the things that are presented to us, but I still fell into the traps. I said to myself: “There are no studies behind it, but I have nothing to lose. I’m going to try it, because it’s the key I’m missing for me to be fulfilled. »

Not everything is necessarily bad in the practices offered to us, so what should we do to promote our health and well-being?

The number one determinant of health and well-being of populations is socio-economic status and money. When I asked, among others, the researcher Benoît Arsenault [professeur agrégé au département de médecine de l’Université Laval et chercheur à l’Institut universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie de Québec] what is one thing that could be done to improve the health and well-being of the population, his first response was: “We should raise basic incomes for many people. » On an individual level, it’s eating well, moving, not smoking, not consuming too much alcohol and drugs, sleeping well, then having healthy relationships and tools to manage stress.

At the end of your process, has your definition of well-being evolved?

Today, for me, well-being is when I manage to be in a state that allows me to carry out activities that are important to me. It’s having enough energy to cook the things that make me feel good, seeing the friends I love, it’s having enough energy, motivation and calm to be able to take part in new activities that challenge me and being able to rest when I need it. What has especially changed in my definition of well-being is that I am learning to mourn an ideal, to accept the fact that it is never going to be perfect. It can be part of my well-being to have days when I am tired, when my morale is lower. It’s accepting that when I feel like this, I don’t feel the need to go buy something new or try something new to make it all go away.

The two seasons ofProne are offered on the application OHdio from Radio-Canada.

The remarks have been edited for brevity.