The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care by Rina Raphael offers a thought-provoking critique of the wellness industry, and as someone who has spent a decade immersed in self-help and wellness, I found it especially resonant. Raphael delves deep into the glossy, often alluring world of wellness—from fitness studios and meditation apps to influencer culture and "clean" beauty—and she doesn't shy away from calling out the contradictions and profit-driven motives that lie beneath the surface.

What stood out to me was her exploration of how wellness often veers away from authenticity. She reveals how many influencers and brands sell the idea of a perfect, "balanced" life, while their advice is sometimes hollow or designed to capitalize on people’s insecurities. It reminded me of a time when I considered becoming an influencer myself, only to feel disillusioned by the artificiality that pervades the space.

Raphael doesn’t suggest wellness is all bad; rather, she critiques the commercialization of it and highlights how many people genuinely seeking peace or healing are instead given expensive "solutions" that don’t always work. Her writing encourages readers to question the motives of wellness brands and re-evaluate the kinds of practices that actually help versus those that simply look good on social media.

Overall, The Gospel of Wellness is a refreshing, insightful look at an industry that, for all its positive intentions, often exploits rather than empowers. It left me questioning the path to true well-being and feeling validated in my own journey. For anyone fascinated by or skeptical of the wellness industry, this book is an essential read.

An incredible look into the wellness industry — the rise of the goop era! A fascinating and engaging investigating of what "wellness" really costs,

5 star read.
This book was well written and researched and the bottom line is we don’t have to try so hard and spend money we don't have to attain wellness, health and peace of mind.

This was an interesting read that dives into the almost religious fervor around wellness these days. I appreciated the push back against the pseudoscience of our obsession with chemicals in skincare products as well as organic food and what those concepts do and don't mean. But it covers so much ground it's hard to follow, and I found a lot of the discussions around dieting and sugar and food quite triggering as someone who's had an ED.

I just think Jia Tolentino's "Always Be Optimizing" essay and a few Wikipedia articles about businesses would have done the trick of this whole book and saved a lot of time

The cover art and focus of this book caught my attention. "The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care", by Rina Ralphael, consists of a deep dive into the wellness industry. Ralphael defines wellness as, "the active pursuit of well-being outside the realm of medicine. It's more than just avoiding sickness; it encompasses prevention and maintenance: nutrition, fitness, sleep, community support, and stress management. It's the choices we make to feel better physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually." While there are many positive benefits to so many wellness fads, there's a dark side as well. The author points out that many of the so called benefits are not based on scientific proof of efficacy, but rather, on effective marketing. Ralphael also suggests that most of these wellness feds have become popular simply because it's a means for Americans to combat their loneliness and feel a sense of community and connection.

I thought the author gave a very fair and balanced approach to this topic, without allowing her own thoughts or biases to influence her. If you're interested in wellness or just fads in general, you'll enjoy this book. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

“Wellness” is quite a buzzword today. What makes it particularly useful is that it has a pretty hazy definition. But, no matter: everyone is in pursuit of it. It’s fueling a $4 trillion industry that includes weight loss, youthful appearance, vitality, calmness and happiness, and all-round “success.” It’s intertwined with another popular buzzword: “self-care.” If we (frankly, mainly women) simply take good enough care of ourselves, we will be thin, beautiful, young-looking, happy and successful.

Rina Raphael maintains that this pursuit of wellness has become a kind of modern-day religion. It has many familiar hallmarks: self-denial, devotion, a place to congregate or at least a group of fellow followers to bond with, charismatic leaders. And with life feeling increasingly chaotic and impossible to manage, the types of practices and products for sale offer women the feeling that they can potentially regain some control.

Raphael explores specialty gyms, products of all sorts, diets and cleanses, crystals, and groups that claim to know what’s dangerous (and, conversely, safe) to put in and on our bodies. Many are just as silly and scientifically unfounded as any snake oil treatments from a century ago. They not only part middle- and upper-class people with large sums of cash, but they sometimes do actual harm. And the harm part is particularly true when it comes to how these groups or movements affect lower-income people.

“Because of our current nutrition discourse, those without the means or time to devote to an all-encompassing clean/organic/‘superfood’ lifestyle believe healthy living remains unattainable,” Raphael writes. It’s bad enough that many lower-income consumers live in food deserts. But those who do have access to produce may avoid it because they’re “nervous and confused about pesticides and too cash-strapped to afford organic.”

Others may avoid or delay healthy movement because of feeling intimidated by “fitspo.” The author notes, importantly, that fitness influencers share what they eat and how they work out to show how followers can look like them. But they conveniently leave out that “bodies react differently to specific exercises: genetic diversity cannot guarantee exact results.” And all this fitness (and “clean eating”) imagery isn’t motivating average Americans. “On the contrary, it’s intimidating them to the point of quitting before even starting.”

What’s also important to remember is that fitness doesn’t equal health, nor does health or wellness look a certain way. While influencers and this trillion-dollar industry are pushing and selling “wellness,” what they’re really trying to sell is a desirable appearance. And no one can guarantee that. (Nor health.)

Back to Raphael’s message that wellness is the new religion: “Almost every wellness brand sells some sort of mythical state of bliss on Instagram, their preferred playground. Their sales pitch is less about health benefits and more about something stronger: a feeling. It’s about feeling good, feeling in control, feeling attractive. Brands are counting on you buying a fantasy.”

She concludes by saying that it’s (obviously) good to pursue healthy habits. But the “pseudoscience, hyperconsumerist ethos is muddying the waters…. The religious treatment of wellness might also be because we’ve made it harder for people to find aspects of a fulfilling life in modern society.” What we need to do is truly find meaning and support others in that as well.

To benefit everyone’s true wellness/health, “we need systemic solutions and public infrastructure. We need more medical research, improved doctor-patient relationships, policies to support women, and better consumer product regulatory oversight. We need stronger communities.”

The Gospel of Wellness is one among a number of new books about health and the pursuit of it, and it does a good job of it. I’ll probably find myself reading a few more as well. It’s time for some sane thinking to prevail in what’s become an insane landscape.

"The truth is that deep within the underbelly of self-care—hidden beneath layers of clever marketing—wellness beckons with a far stronger, more seductive message than health alone. It promises women the one thing they desperately desire: control."

Whew, what a relatable, funny, infuriating, vindicating read. I loved this book. LOVED it. It's now swept through my friend group and led to many MANY discussions and tangents about the range of topics under the wellness umbrella--self care rituals; exercise communities; MLMs; alternative medicine and why western medicine is failing women; maternal health; etc. Rina Raphael is a sardonic, well-researched documentarian; she took this book in surprising and interesting directions; and I will certainly be reading more from her.

This is a great choice for a nonfiction book that will engage your book club, buddy reads or book community in engaged conversations.

For fans of:
Cultish by Amanda Montell

Related Reading:
The Cost of Living by Emily Maloney

Thank you so much to Henry Holt & MacMillan Audio for the arcs!
#TheGospelofWellness #NetGalley #nonfiction #womenshealth #bookstagram #bookreview #booksbooksbooks #bookclubreads #HenryHolt #health #selfcare

In The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care, Rina Raphael takes an in-depth look at the myriad ways wellness has infiltrated contemporary American life and how women, in particular, are under immense pressure to subscribe to ever-evolving and expanding definitions of “healthy” and “well.”

The Gospel of Wellness critically assesses many of the ways this idea of “wellness” has infiltrated so many aspects of everyday life, and how it has come to mean so many different things to so many people.

Reading this helped me to look at my own practices and the information and marketing around them more critically. In addition to working toward lives and systems that help us to be truly cared for, that might be the way to actually feel good.

Well written, relatable, and insightful. I loved this.

We hear the word "wellness" everywhere, and it encompasses so much— fitness, diet, sleep, self-care, and more. It's also a huge industry growing even larger even though none of us actually seem to be feeling better.

Rina Raphael explores the dark side of the wellness movement, including how so much of it is a result of women feeling their health needs have been dismissed. I was really impressed by the empathy used here that doesn't mock or vilify people who have been hoodwinked by these various trends BUT also doesn't end up as a platform for more weird fitness trends. It's a more nuanced, thoughtful approach than is typically used to debunk stuff like this in popular media, with the exception of the podcast Maintenance Phase. Highly recommended.

The task of giving an overview of the incredibly broad and exceptionally varied market of wellness is a Herculean task, but Raphael accomplishes it well. Major portions of the wellness industry are covered, with mentions of Raphael's experience reporting the different trends over the years. This is by no means an exhaustive exploration of each facet of the industry, but a general overview meant to support the general thesis of the work, which argues for the redirection of wellness back towards a more accessible, egalitarian, inclusive, and collectivist meaning. I agree with Raphael that there has been a shift in the way that people engage with wellness since the onset of the covid pandemic. It will be interesting to see if these shifts towards the aforementioned ideal above keep going or if the industry will continue to become increasingly consumerist and elitist.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Love the cover, title and description of this book. The author did a good job researching and reporting on all the areas you would expect in a book on wellness - the myths, the gurus and influencers (e.g., Gwyneth Paltrow, The Food Babe, Dave Asprey) - but I wished it were more entertainingly told, with more personal examples either from the author or anecdotes of others. I felt like so much of this was a retread of information I've heard elsewhere, maybe because the podcast I love, Maintenance Phase, does such a good job with similar content, so this was not new to me.

Absolutely incredible! Not everything here was new to me, having already read a lot on this topic before, but the author makes it fresh, entertaining, and deeply insightful. This is so comprehensive in what it covers too. It would be perfect for anyone just beginning to try and figure out what's going so wrong with the concept of wellness.

I feel I am the exact audience this book was written for. I am training to be a yoga teacher, take handfuls of supplements, have a particular dislike of doctors, and even have a crystal or too. I was very interested in the topic of this book, and found it to be written in an interesting and easy to ready way.

Unfortunately, I ultimately felt discouraged reading this book. The author spends a tremendous amount of time discussing and questioning many beliefs about health and stress management that have become commonly held. However, there were only a few pages offered at the end of the book with alternatives or other suggestions. I ended the book feeling frustrated. If traditional medicine fails women, and alternative practices are u founded, what do we do?

The Gospel of Wellness is exactly the book I've been looking for! I loved the way Rina Raphael breaks down every aspect of the privilege involved in modern wellness, especially when it comes to food choice and time for rest or exercise.

It is in this week's issue of People Mag! Don't have it handy but it was among one of FALL'S BEST BOOKS, 2022

I love a book that exposes the world of wellness. As someone who has fallen into the trap of the wellness world, it's nice to know that there are other people looking for the cracks in the foundation.

This book was informative and I'll definitely be passing it to friends who have also found themselves wondering why they can't catch a grasp on all this "self care" influencers are always talking about.

This was a really interesting exploration of our wellness habits, and how easy it is to be sucked in by alternative healing practices. It left the reader up to decide if these were good or bad.

While parts of this book felt like slightly slow going, I really enjoyed its holistic view of the wellness industry. The historical sections about "wellness" products of yore were especially interesting. I began reading with the idea that the people who are taken in by some of these things are not at all like me but, especially in the chapter on alternative healthcare, it was made clear that it could happen to anyone and that it is, in some cases, a reasonable response to an overwhelmed healthcare industry that doesn't treat everyone equally. I feel very well-educated and am now much less judgmental: how can I judge when we're all doing our best in a world that just isn't going to help us?

A deep fascinating dive into the world of Wellness.From yoga to Goop and so much more the search for peace health happiness is an important part of today’s living people searching for the answers.This was a well written in depth look at people trying a variety of ways to find wellness’.Thorough well written and really informative.#netgalley#henryholt