Making some changes. Elise Loehnen, former chief content officer at Gwyneth Paltrow‘s Goop, spoke out about the “toxic” cleanse culture promoted by her ex-employer.
“When I left goop, I vowed to never do another cleanse again and went into full rebellion, which has been kind of fun, and definitely healthy in terms of letting go of ideas of what my body should look like as a 42-year-old who has had two kids,” the “Pulling the Thread” podcast host wrote via Instagram on Tuesday, March 22. “I needed to break a tendency to be critical and punishing. To chastise myself. All of it. I stopped weighing myself completely.”
Loehnen stepped down from Goop in October 2020 after six years with the company. Paltrow, 49, started Goop as a newsletter in 2008, later expanding the business into an e-commerce shop and producing a docuseries for Netflix.
In her video on Tuesday, the writer said that she “decided to forswear all cleansing” since leaving Goop nearly two years ago. “To me, it had become synonymous with dieting and restriction, and I felt like I was not in a healthy relationship with my body, where I was always trying to punish it, bring it under control,” she explained. “I’ve been eating like a teenager for two years and enjoying it, to be honest.”
Paltrow has previously claimed that she personally only does one cleanse a year, but she once called herself the Goop “guinea pig” because of her willingness to try “anything” for the site. “I did one [cleanse] for seven weeks last year and it was awful,” the Oscar winner told Net-a-Porter’s The Edit in June 2017. “I’ve basically tried everything, from a one-day gallbladder flush fast to a seven-week nightmare. It’s great for eliminating bloat and firming your skin, and just feeling your best.”
Loehnen, for her part, admitted that she recently did a five-day cleanse, but she noted that she did it very differently than she would have during her years at Goop. “I’m not weighing myself,” she explained. “I’m allowing myself to eat beyond what’s necessarily prescribed by the cleanse. But I’m just trying to get to a place where I can again be in conversation with my body.”
In her caption, the editor explained that she no longer has the “energy or the interest” to “punish” herself with food anymore. “Hopefully I’ve broken that cycle for good,” she concluded.”
Us Weekly has reached out to Paltrow and Goop for comment.
