The 7 Pillars Of Health & How We Are Getting Self-Care Wrong With Sarah Ann Macklin

Jul 11, 2024

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Welcome to Radical Vitality! In this episode, I speak with Sarah Ann Macklin about what it means to be truly well, how appearance doesn’t indicate wellness, deep self-care, and navigating the modern nutrition environment.

Sarah shares her story of transitioning from an international model of 15 years to a nutrition educator. She was living what seemed like the perfectly glamorous life as a model who seemingly had it all on the outside but whose health and well-being were suffering hugely on the inside. Eventually, she hit rock bottom from habitual burnout, and her body shut down. She had become completely disassociated from her body and self.

We talk about the importance of true self-care, how it is an indicator of how much self-compassion and self-respect we hold, and the different shapes it can take. Unfortunately, navigating social media and constantly battling with narratives of how we should fit in make it very easy to speak cruelly to ourselves and compare ourselves to others. Even if you are eating all the right foods and doing all the right things, you are arguably not healthy if stuck in a comparison trap. Our internal narratives impact every aspect of our health.

Sarah explores intuitive eating, the modern food landscape, and how to navigate the explosion of ultra-processed foods. Listening to our body’s intuitive signals in this environment is challenging. Sarah’s work investigates how people can transcend the barriers that stop them from doing what they know they should be doing, such as eating real, whole, nourishing foods.

We then discuss the need to separate physical appearance from health and shift from focusing more on the inside than the outside. Sarah dives into another of her seven pillars of health: connection. She shares her experiences of loneliness when she was modeling and how loneliness is detrimental to health. Finding a sense of belonging is fundamental to vitality.

I guarantee you will walk away from this episode inspired to take better care of yourself, disassociate yourself from size and appearance, and focus on how you feel and how you show up in the world.

Episode Outline

(04:36) Seven pillars of health and self-care

(09:19) From Burberry to burnout to Live Well Be Well

(21:28) Navigating social media in a healthy way

(27:17) The mind-body metabolizing connection

(32:17) “Willpower doesn’t exist in our food landscape.”

(41:10) Your body does not define your worth

(53:30) Fostering human connection and loneliness

Resources Referenced:

7 Pillars of Health

Ellen Langer

Connect with Sarah Ann Macklin: