Canceled for Carnivore? What Jenny McCarthy’s Story Reveals About Wellness Culture | Ep 34

I explore why we're quick to judge others when their healing journeys don't align with popular beliefs, using Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg's recent backlash as an example of how we silence women's experiences and stories.

• Jenny McCarthy was attacked online for sharing how a carnivore diet helped her heal after veganism damaged her health
• Growing up in a controlling household taught me to silence myself to avoid criticism
• Breaking free from my relationship with my father after 40 years was like "a pressure valve releasing"
• Even trained nutrition professionals can abandon bio-individuality principles when faced with approaches that challenge their beliefs
• Both vegan and carnivore approaches can be healing or harmful depending on the individual
• True health empowerment means making choices from self-trust rather than fear or performance
• Some of the most powerful healing happens beyond physical protocols, often through spiritual growth

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© 2024 Holly Jean Mullen

Chapters

• 0:00 Jenny McCarthy's Health Journey Backlash
• 4:01 Personal Transformation and Family History
• 9:02 Finding Freedom in My Voice
• 10:22 Jenny's Story: Attacked for Sharing
• 15:06 Bio-Individuality in Nutrition and Healing
• 23:16 True Healing Beyond Physical Health

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:01

Hello friends, welcome back to Real Health Transformations podcast. I'm your host, holly Jean Mullen, and I've got some big stuff to talk about today, so let's just dive right in. I want to talk about Jenny McCarthy. She was just on the Heal Squad podcast with Maria Menounos and she was talking about how going vegan almost wrecked her health and that switching to a carnivore style diet is what helped her make progress and heal on her journey. Of course, the internet lost its mind, and that's actually what caught my attention was this podcast audio clip that I saw on Instagram, and the comment section brought out all the trolls and droves. She was mocked, she was shamed, torn apart. Just the comments were brutal, and not because she was on the show telling people this is what you need to do, don't be vegan, you have to go carnivore. She wasn't telling people what to do, she was just sharing her story. She was sharing what worked for her, and this is what got me thinking.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Why are we so quick to turn on people when their healing or their story doesn't fit our personal beliefs or what we personally believe or what has been true for us? Also, how often are we censoring ourselves for this exact reason, this fear of being judged or for retaliation, and that's what I want to talk about today. But first, before we get into that, I need to give a little backstory because, honestly, this show has shifted or it's going to be shifting and I have shifted and I have to share this. Then I'll bring it back full circle to this Jenny story, because it's juicy and some stuff just needs to be called out. So, to start, the show is shifting, not because I'm changing, but because I'm just becoming more sure of myself and more comfortable in using my voice. I'm not changing who I am, like nothing about me has really changed. I'm just finally letting all the parts of me show up in one place.

Speaker 1: 3:36

The earlier version of this podcast felt a little split internally to me. Being a practitioner, being a realtor, I kind of in my brain felt like I had to keep health in one lane and home in another and just kind of hope that people put those pieces. But now I'm feeling more connected. It is one ecosystem, it all belongs and helping women feel good in their bodies and in their homes and in their lives. Like that part hasn't changed. That's just a part of that hasn't changed. None of that has changed, but the way I talk about it and the way it really is, just like I'm thinking about it and talking about it and expressing it in my brain. That has all changed the freedom I feel now in doing it.

Speaker 1: 4:37

That is what is different, and since we're just being real, there's something that I've never shared publicly that I think is relevant to this story otherwise I would not be sharing it and it's the fact that I grew up in a home where having my own thoughts or opinions came with consequences. The motto in my home was my way or the highway. We weren't allowed to have different opinions than our dad, and I will not say I was abused. It was not physical abuse, but the emotional pressure that I felt was constant. There was judgment, criticism, disapproval. Sometimes it was loud and explosive, other times it was silent and cold. But no matter how it showed up, the outcome was always the same and I learned to stay small, careful and agreeable, and for 40 years I lived under the weight of someone else's opinion of me, always bracing for the next correction, always scanning for what I've done wrong.

Speaker 1: 5:56

This time it was that constant walking on eggshells, feeling, shells, feeling. And even in my adult life I did not make any decisions, really without thinking what will my dad say? And the last time I spoke to my dad was just before we moved to Oklahoma and that was four years ago. And while I know he loves me, like I don't doubt that, I also know that relationship kept me in a cage and in a constant state of fight or flight. And I can still feel that instant panic when his name would pop up on my phone, not knowing what I was about to be criticized for, just a text from him saying call me, without any other context. My first reaction was never to call him. It was to text my sister and ask what I do. Is dad mad at me, you know, and vice versa. Every time. That's what it was like into our adult lives.

Speaker 1: 7:06

So, yes, it's sad that he's no longer a part of my life, but it's also been a strange relaxing of the nervous system, kind of healing like a pressure valve finally releasing, some kind of healing like a pressure valve finally releasing and a weight even that I didn't realize I was carrying finally being set down. And I believe that that stress, that lifelong pressure to filter and silence myself, played a role in some of my health challenges, maybe in my body, breaking down in some way, when I couldn't hold the performance anymore, which is why this podcast and this pivot this season in kind of like reclaiming my voice. It's not just business growth, it's like the soul work happening and that's what makes this moment just feel so powerful. And it's kind of coming full circle here, because now I know that I don't need to be someone else to be accepted and I don't need to filter or water down my message. I don't need to play it safe for anyone else's comfort. So I do still get nervous about being judged. I think that's human, that doesn't go away. But there is a difference. Now, like I can honestly say I don't care what strangers on the internet think about me, because I know there's always going to be trolls. I know there's always going to be trolls, but that doesn't mean, um, it doesn't affect me in some way. You know? Um, I don't think it's the same. I can share. I care about sharing honestly and showing up as myself and not as someone I'm pretending to be or not, as someone that I'm censoring myself to be in order to please someone else. So what's happening with me, my business and this podcast is not rebrand. It's not a new direction, it's a clarity moment.

Speaker 1: 9:09

So to get back to the other point of this podcast, speaking of people getting judged for being themselves, we'll go back to Jenny McCarthy here for a second. My admiration for Jenny goes way back, and not because I've agreed with every single thing she's ever said or done, but because of her courage to say it. Years ago, when she spoke about her son's autism and the role she believed vaccines played, she was absolutely just shredded in the media and she wasn't spouting conspiracy theories here. She was telling her story. She was telling her experience with her son, what she was learning, what she was doing that was working and helping all things from her perspective and as a mom trying to make sense of what happened to her child. And the backlash she experienced was absolutely brutal. She was ridiculed, dismissed, labeled, shunned. She was canceled. Before cancel culture was even a thing. And now, years later, here we are. She's rebuilt her career. She goes on this top podcast.

Speaker 1: 10:33

Recently she shares about her health and how it tanked doing the vegan diet and even though she was doing like all the things right, according to say, popular wellness culture, her body just wasn't responding well to it. She said her hair was falling out or her body was breaking down and she ultimately started feeling better when she switched to this carnivore, carnivore style approach. She started eating red meat and eliminating other foods. She's even said in this interview that she doesn't think she'll do it forever and she's not even saying that it's for everyone. She very clearly says this is what's working for me right now in my body and it might not be what works for someone else. She very clearly says that.

Speaker 1: 11:25

But she was attacked again and whether or not you personally resonate with that story isn't really the point. What struck me was the response. What struck me was the response. The media unsurprisingly ran with the story in a sensational way. I saw a headline that said Jenny McCarthy almost died from a vegan diet and she says red meat saved her. And immediately again, the backlash started. The comments again harsh, mocking, cruel. All over again. It's like a repeat from before. People were calling her a killer, an idiot and saying that she just did veganism wrong, not engaging with her story at all, just attacking her for even having a story, for having an opinion and for sharing it. So you see, the pattern here is the same. It's the same playbook People tearing her up for sharing her personal experience, for saying this is what helped me, and this is exactly what I mean when I say we've created a culture where women are constantly told to trust themselves, but only if it aligns with what's currently trending or with someone else's experience, or with the media or with the science.

Speaker 1: 12:52

And that's not empowerment, that is performance, that's marketing, that's propaganda, that's marketing, that's propaganda. And it's also why I will always come back to the core of my message Bio, individually, bio individuality matters, body wisdom matters, and we are also allowed to change. We are allowed to try things and to pivot and to course correct, adapt and evolve, because what might have worked before can change to where we are now. We're allowed to listen to our bodies over what someone says on the internet, and we're absolutely allowed to make choices that don't make sense to anybody else but ourselves. And I know what it's like to second guess every word or to feel like your voice is dangerous, or to live under the weight of someone else's disapproval for so long that you start to silence yourself before anyone else has the chance to do so. So when I see someone, especially a woman, speak up about what helped her, knowing that it's not popular and then get blasted for it. It hits deep with me, it strikes a chord and that's why this show matters to me. It's not just a podcast. To me, it's a practice. It's me also learning how to use my voice.

Speaker 1: 14:26

There's a little plot twist in here, and this is where it gets a little even more disappointing to me, because that same knee-jerk, judgmental response that my celeb homegirl, jenny, experienced. I saw it in a private alumni group that I'm in, and this is a group of trained, educated nutrition professionals, and someone asked a very straightforward question. It was straight up what are the cons of a carnivore diet? And instead of there being a thoughtful, experience-based or research-based responses, people were responding with bias, opinion and, quite frankly, fear-driven talking points. Even and I read comment after comment that sounded more like social media soundbites than what we were trained in, which would have been a lens of individualized nuance. And these are people who have been through the same program I have. It's a program that emphasizes bio-individuality and context and meeting people where they are, but when it came to a topic that felt extreme or controversial, that training seemed to just go out the window, and it wasn't about discussion or understanding it was about doubling down on what felt safe or familiar or what was true to them.

Speaker 1: 16:05

Now I understand that a lot of those people responding may not have been in practice for a while. They may be new grads or they may be people that just don't see a lot of clients. And I will say that there was probably a point early on in my career that I might've said the same thing when I was just newly out of school and had not worked with a lot of people. I hadn't had a lot of experience. But after working with hundreds of women now and very, very really experiencing bio-individuality and seeing it in a clinical setting and how each person is so different and how one way of eating or one way of living or one supplement or one protocol can be completely different in terms of outcomes and results for another person like that, it really does take that experience to fully get it. So I will maybe just defend some of those comments and maybe just kind of chalk it up to. Maybe they were just green, but it was still as disappointing to see that the comments were just as biased and just as judgmental from a single question. That was provoking dialogue.

Speaker 1: 17:53

What stirred up in me when Jenny was sharing her story and was torn apart for it. It wasn't just empathy, it was familiarity. And I have lived and known that feeling of fear of speaking up and saying the wrong thing and dealing with the aftermath. And in my home, growing up in my and in my life as an adult, I've experienced it both. And I don't care if you're vegan or carnivore or paleo or eating tacos in your car after soccer practice. What I care about is why you're doing it and how it's working for you, and whether it's something you choose from a place of empowerment, not fear, not pressure, and definitely not from trying to perform for somebody else or be something for somebody else that you are not. And just, I will pause right here and just say I am sorry for the barking and the chain rattling. I have a puppy and oh, if you're watching the video you will see him entering the screen now. But this is puppy life, so I apologize for this. It is what it is.

Speaker 1: 19:07

But we just have to stop making healing and health a popularity contest. We need to just stop assuming that someone else's success and what they find works for them is somehow a threat to our own experience or our own beliefs. I'd love it if we could start creating more space for people to be honest about what's working for them. We can learn from it, even if it doesn't line up exactly with what has been true for us or what we're going through or what the current trend says. Because, back to this whole vegan carnivore thing, the truth about that is both vegan and carnivore diets are restrictive. They are both extreme. They could also both be healing. They could both be harmful, depending on how they're done, who's doing them, how long they're being followed and a dozen other factors like genetics and mindset, gut health, your toxic load, certain nutrient deficiencies. It's not about the diet, it's about the individual.

Speaker 1: 20:24

And when someone like Jenny McCarthy I'm sorry, jenny McCarthy Wahlberg I mean no disrespect, not saying her full married name. She is Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg when she shares her story, jenny McCarthy Wahlberg, when she shares her story, the question shouldn't be how dare she? How dare she? The question should be what can we learn from this? What can I take away from this? Or, at the very least, if you don't want to get that deep, if you don't want to think about it, then just say cool story, bro and move on. No comment necessary. We can totally just scroll on right.

Speaker 1: 21:02

So as you go about your week scrolling, watching, consuming, I would just like to gently remind you that you don't have to agree with everything, but you also don't have to attack it. We can observe, reflect, disagree, move on. You are allowed to hold space for your true experiences and someone else's, without making either one wrong, because that's what maturity looks like and I think that's what the wellness space really needs more of. So, whether you're in a season of restriction, rebalancing, or tacos in the car survival, I am cheering you on because this is your body, this is your home, this is your healing. And if this episode resonated with you or if you can think of a friend that might need to hear it, I just invite you to share it with them. And before I wrap up, I do just want to say something else that has been true for me and it just might be the reminder that someone else needs to hear today.

Speaker 1: 22:14

But no matter what diet you're following, or maybe a protocol you might be trying, or what season of life you're walking through, healing is not just a physical thing that we do. It also comes through a spiritual aspect and probably the biggest area of growth for me and what I've experienced in the last couple of years has come through faith, and for me that just means Jesus and to me he's been the healer and the one who has met me in the middle of my mess in these last few years have been very messy for me after everything with my dad and with our move and through my faith, I've just held. I've found that space to just kind of ask questions and find peace kind of in a time where nowhere nothing else kind of met me in that place. So, whether you share that belief or you're still figuring out what you believe, just know this you're, you're never alone in your healing. I want you to know that you are seen and you are known and you are wildly loved, and even on your worst day. So, yes, keep listening to your body, keep nourishing yourself and your home and your family, but also I invite you to just stay open to doing the deeper work that cannot be measured in a lab test, because some of the most powerful healing that you'll ever experience is going to happen in your heart.

Speaker 1: 23:57

So that is it for this episode. Thank you for joining me on Real Health Transformations. This is season one of the podcast. We are soon going to be coming back for season two as the health and home podcast, and I hope you will join me then. I can't wait to see you. See you next time.