BONUS Ep: The Wellness TRAP | When Healthy Goes Too Far

What if the healthiest thing you could do right now is stop obsessing over being healthy?

I know. Coming from me, that is a big statement.

I keep seeing it, in clients, in friends, (sometimes, in myself,) and I can not stay quiet about it anymore.

This bonus episode is the one I had to make. The version of wellness that has gone so far the other way it has quietly become the thing making you unwell. The obsession dressed up as discipline. The restriction that gets hashtagged and celebrated. The mental load that no clean eating protocol is ever going to fix.

What we cover:

• The difference between disordered eating and an eating disorder (this will surprise you)
• How social media is hijacking your relationship with food without you even realising
• The science behind what food anxiety is actually doing to your body
• What balance actually looks like, the real version, not the Instagram version
• The one honest question to ask yourself this week

This is not an anti-wellness episode. It is a pro-you episode.

If you have ever missed a special moment, a date night, a birthday, a holiday, because your brain was too busy negotiating with your own food rules?

This one is for you.

Loved this episode? Share it with a woman who needs to hear it right now

NEXT LEVEL AI: https://www.nicoleabbott.co/nothing-but-next-level

Find me on Instagram //www.instagram.com/_nicoleabbott/ 

Ready for more? https://www.nicoleabbott.co/

Loved this episode? Share it with a woman who needs to hear it right now

Find me on Instagram //www.instagram.com/_nicoleabbott/ 

Ready for more? https://www.nicoleabbott.co/

🎙️ A review on Apple Podcasts takes 60 seconds and helps more women find this show. I'd genuinely love you for it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Protein, the sauna, morning routine, longevity habits, red light, organic everything. I live this and I love it. It's not performance for me, it's genuinely how I actually live. And that's exactly why I need to talk about the trap that can hide inside of this lifestyle. Because I have seen it happen to people I love, to clients I work with, and honestly, I felt it in my own life. Where the pursuit of wellness quietly becomes the thing that's making you unwell. That is what today is about. This is Next Level with Nick. I'm Nicole Abbott, high performance health and identity coach, surfer and mum of three. This podcast is for the woman who wants to feel amazing, sustain her success, and love the life she's building. We talk all the good stuff, no fluff and no filters. Let's go. Before I go anywhere with this, I want to be really clear. I am not here telling you to stop caring about your health. Not even close. Wellness is one of the greatest investments you ever make in yourself. The habits, the routines, the intentionality around what you put in your body. How you move it, how you rest it, that stuff changes everything. I've lived both sides of that and I know the difference. My foundations are non-negotiable. Clean eating, high protein, organic where I can. I surf, I strength train three times a week. I've had a sauna in my life for 10 years. For me, this is not a phase, it's not a trend. This is my life. I genuinely love this stuff and love the endless research behind it. But most importantly, I love how it makes me feel. And because I do love it so much, I feel like I need to protect it from the version of wellness that has gone too far. I want to ask you something and I want you to answer this honestly. When you're at a birthday party and someone puts a delicious piece of cake in front of you, what happens inside of your body? Is it easy? Do you just enjoy it? Or does your mind start looping? Should I eat this? Is it going to undo my week? All the hard work I put in, how many calories? Oh, I've been so good. If that version sounds familiar, I want you to really hear what I'm about to say. The anxiety that just ran through your body is doing more damage than the piece of cake itself. I've seen it happen time and time again. People go so deep into the wellness world, so committed, so all in, that somewhere along the way they cross a line. And now, instead of wellness being something that energizes, grounds them, makes their life feel better, it's become a source of stress, shame, of constant monitoring. That is the vortex and that is a dark place to be. The scary thing is, from the outside, it looks like the healthiest person you know. I want to tell you about a client of mine. She had been doing incredible work on her health. All the things absolutely thriving. One Friday afternoon, she finished work and she just had a craving for a glass of wine, you know, just that urge to sit down and decompress after a huge week. Instead of just having the wine and the cheese platter, her mind went into overdrive. Should I surf instead? Should I go to the gym? Maybe I'll just have a kombucha instead or a bath. Oh, but I really feel like the wine. But should I? It's not on my plan. What if it leads to two? I'm gonna undo everything. By the time she made the decision, she was exhausted. And when she finally decided to have the drink, she couldn't even enjoy it. You see, in that situation, the wine was not the problem. The overthinking was the problem. The thinking was the nervous system hit. Another client I was speaking to recently had planned a date night with her husband. They had a babysitter booked, it was a beautiful restaurant, the kind of night that doesn't happen often when you have little kids. They sat down, relaxed, excited to just have this night, the two of them. However, she picked up the menu and the loop started. There's nothing clean here, everything has sauce, the pasta looks amazing, but there's too many carbs. The steak's fine, but it comes with fries. Maybe I can ask for no fries. But what if it comes with cream sauce? Could I ask them to do it without? He's gonna order the pasta and I'm gonna sit here with a plain piece of fish and I'm gonna be so jealous. That poor woman spent the entire time in her head, barely hearing what her husband was talking about, still looping on this menu that they'd ordered from 10 minutes ago. They had been looking forward to that night all week, and unfortunately, because of the mind loop that she was stuck in, she missed it. Her nervous system was so hijacked before the food had even arrived. The restaurant was not the problem, the menu was not the problem, the mental load she carried into that restaurant was the problem. No amount of clean eating is worth losing a date night with your husband over. I want to name what I'm describing here because this does matter. This, my friend, is disordered eating. And no, disordered eating is not an eating disorder. They are not the same thing. An eating disorder is a clinical diagnosis that requires professional support. If this is something that you're personally navigating, please reach out to someone qualified to help you. Disordered eating is different. It's the anxiety around food, the overthinking, the guilt, the rules, the restrictions, the spiral when you break them. It can sit completely under the radar because from the outside it looks like discipline. It looks healthy. It gets followed and hashtagged and celebrated on the internet, and that is what makes it so dangerous. To be honest, I've definitely felt my own version of this a few times. Firstly, after my second daughter, when I did some deep gut healing work, and again after my husband and I gave up alcohol for six months. Coming back from both of those was so much harder than I expected. Not physically, but mentally. The recalibration of what was allowed, what was safe, what was still okay after we'd worked so hard to clean things up. When we were in Bali with a few friends, all I wanted was a margarita. Leading up to this trip, I had a feeling that I'd start to crave this because hello, holidays. And trust me when I say this, I'm not saying you need to drink on holidays, not at all. But what I did leading up to that trip is I spent days talking myself out of it. Precious mental energy I will never get back over one drink. Until I was there and I just had it. It was absolutely delicious. Nothing bad happened. And do you know what I realized? Is that the days of resistance had cost me so much more than having that one marguer had. I cannot talk about this issue without mentioning social media because honestly, it is such a massive part of how we got here. The what I eat in a day content, the elimination protocols, the clean go aesthetics, the constant streams and posts of someone else's perfectly curated plate, their perfectly timed meals, their perfectly disciplined choices. When you see this and it triggers you, I want you to check yourself and remember who is proving that that is what they're actually eating? Are they even eating what they're showing or are they just doing what looks good or what's trending, what gets them views? Most importantly, what qualifications do they have to be telling you what to put in your body? Do you know that the algorithm will feed you more of whatever you're engaging with? You follow one clean eating account, suddenly your entire feed is restrictions, protocols, before and afters from someone who's never studied a day of nutrition in their life. And what happens is you absorb it day after day, and slowly, without even realizing it, your relationship with food starts to shift. Not because you decided it to be this way, but sadly the algorithm decided that for you. So I want you to audit who you're following because not all wellness content is harmful, not even close. But ask yourself when you scroll past that account, do you feel inspired or do you feel like you're not doing enough? Because that feeling, that low grade, I'm not doing enough, I'm not disciplined enough, that is chronic stress. And chronic stress is the opposite of wellness. Let me give you the science behind what I'm saying because this is not a mindset thing, this is physiological. When you are anxious, stressed, overthinking, or in a state of guilt around food or any choice you've made, your body releases cortisol. Your nervous system goes into fight or flight, digestion slows, inflammation increases, your quality of sleep drops, your hormones shift. This is what chronic food anxiety does to your body, regardless of whether you ate the cake or not. Here's the thing that really hit me in that stage. I noticed that after six months of being off alcohol and coming back to having the occasional drink when I'm socializing or when I'm on holidays, relaxed, I literally feel nothing negative from that drink. However, if I'm at home and things are stressful or I'm in the thick of everyday life, even just one glass can feel completely different. Because when your body is calm, when cortisol is low and your nervous system's regulated, you metabolize things differently. Your body's not already under load. It can actually process what you have given it. But when you're already in fight or flight, already flooded with stress hormones, you have compounded the problem with a choice that in a regulated body would have been completely fine. So I want to share with you what balance actually looks like in my life, not the aspirational Instagram version, the real day-to-day version. My daily foundations have always been clean. This is a non-negotiable for me, and it doesn't feel like restriction because I genuinely love this food. High protein, organic where I can, I make my own sourdough, I choose organic meat, and I cook most of our meals. And I still have treats every single day. Whether that's a raw treat I've made, a piece of chocolate, or a collagen hot chocolate, something that brings me joy, not guilt. When I'm out for dinner, away traveling or socializing, I allow myself to enjoy it. I'm not scanning the menu for what I can't have, I'm not calculating, I'm not making negotiations with myself, I just eat what I feel like. I enjoy the company and I come home and go back to my foundations the next day. I do not feel the need to go and eat something greasy or gross just because I've relaxed my routine or I'm rewarding myself. Because the lifestyle that I live is not a restricted one that I'm rebelling against. This is just how I eat, it's how I live and it's who I am. That, my friend, is the goal. Not stressing your way through a restaurant menu, not calculating whether you've earned the dessert, a relationship with food that is so solid, so grounded, so genuinely just nothing, that the occasional deviation from it doesn't register as something negative. One more distinction I want to make clear because I do talk a lot about tracking protein and macros. There is a profound difference between tracking wellness and longevity and tracking to suppress. One is information and one is control. One builds up your health and one quietly dismantles it. If you're tracking protein because you want to make sure you're fueling your body well, that is a wellness tool. But if you're tracking every calorie because you're afraid of what happens if you don't, that is definitely worth looking into, honestly. So I'm going to give you three practical things you can focus on right now. Number one, audit your socials. Go through who you're following right now and ask yourself honestly. Does this account make me feel good about my choices or does it make me feel like I'm not doing enough? Unfollow anything and everything that consistently makes you feel worse about yourself. Because that is not inspiration, that is just noise dressed up as wellness. Number two, check your relationship with food honestly. Not what you eat, how you feel about what you eat. Is your relationship with food calm or is it consuming? Does thinking about a meal out make you feel excited or anxious? Does eating something off plan send you into a spiral or do you enjoy it and move on? Just be very honest here. If the answer is that food takes up more mental space than it should, that is information that deserves attention. Not shame, but attention. Trust me, that is part of why I built next level AI. It will help you with this. It combines the lifestyle and the mindset piece. I'll link this in the show notes. Number three, trust your body. Your body has signals. It knows when it's hungry, when it's satisfied, when it actually wants something, when it's craving something because it needs it. We have spent so long overriding those signals with rules and protocols that a lot of women have genuinely lost touch with what their own body is intuitively telling them. So start listening again. Have the margarita in Bali. Eat the birthday cake. Enjoy the wine and cheese. Come home, go back to your foundations, and allow yourself to feel completely fine about all of it. That is wellness. Wellness is one of the greatest gifts you will ever give yourself. So do not let the vortex take it from you. I will see you next week. Don't just listen and move on. Grab a pen, write down your next level move, and actually do it this week. That one thing is your 1% and your 1% compounds. If this resonated or someone in your life needs to hear it, share it. Find me on Instagram at underscore NicoleAbbott or head to NicoleAbbott.co. See you next week.