Enlarge / Paltrow and Loehnen are sitting at Goop’s headquarters for an interview.
Netflix
A former high-profile executive of Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle and wellness brand Goop has publicly denounced the brand’s “wellness culture” as “toxic” — but only to promote another wellness brand’s products.
In an Instagram post Tuesday, Elise Loehnen, Goop’s former chief content officer, said that when she left the company in October 2020, she vowed to never do a clean again. “I had to break the tendency to be critical and punish. To chastise myself. All of that. I’ve completely stopped weighing myself,” she wrote alongside a short video.
In general, cleanses are gimmicky, short-term diets that require devotees to follow restrictive diets in order to “reset” their bodies and/or eliminate toxic material that has allegedly somehow accumulated in the crevices of their bowels. All of this, of course, is necessary to correct a person’s current dietary and lifestyle choices, which are certainly harmful and deplorable.
As Ars previously noted, cleanses and “detoxes” are unnecessary as long as your kidney and liver are functioning properly – and you haven’t been severely poisoned recently.
For almost seven years, Loehnen bought into Goop’s cleaning-friendly wellness exploits. As CCO, she was Goop’s second-in-command, often appeared alongside Gwyneth Paltrow, and co-hosted the Netflix branded series the goop lab. When she stepped down from the role to write a book in 2020, Paltrow said in a statement that Loehnen “is like a sister to me, and I plan to watch with pride as she embarks on this monumental phase in her professional life.”
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But in this week’s Instagram post, Loehnen tells her followers that her time on Goop has left her feeling “not in a healthy relationship with my body” and seeing her health “skewed.” Since leaving the company, she’s been “eating like a teenager… and enjoying it.” She shared a recent conversation with a friend who reminded her “wellness culture can be toxic.”
But according to this friend, eating like a teenager is also toxic. So Loehnen underwent a five-day cleanse using “broths, smoothies, and lattes” from another wellness brand that she said was “actually really excellent.” Despite breaking her post-goop vow, Loehnen still maintained, “I refuse to punish myself with food.”
It’s unclear how Paltrow feels about her former pal badmouthing Goop’s wellness culture. However, an anonymous source with “awareness of the situation” told BuzzFeed News that when Loehnen left Goop in 2020, she didn’t give up to work on her book. According to the source, Goop execs had become aware of complaints that Loehnen was a “toxic manager,” suggesting her departure was itself a form of punishment.