Gabrielle Lewis-Lungo Interview on Why Chasing Perfect Health Can Hold You Back
Gabrielle’s journey into nutrition began through her own pursuit of health and healing. After losing over 50 pounds in early adulthood, what appeared externally to be a commitment to wellness became a deeply challenging relationship with food, exercise, and her body. Beneath the pursuit of “health,” Gabrielle found herself disconnected from the very foundations of wellbeing, navigating restrictive patterns and a mindset that left her feeling anything but healthy.
Gabrielle Lewis-Lungo, Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist
Your own health journey changed the way you think about nutrition. How does that experience shape the support you offer clients today?
I’ve had a complicated relationship with food since I was a teenager. I was always the girl on a diet, constantly looking for the next way to lose weight. That obsession with nutrition is actually what led me to study it. I knew every diet trend, read every magazine and blog post I could find, and eventually lost almost 50 pounds before entering college. I went into my degree thinking I had figured out what worked and that I could help others do the same.
What I didn’t anticipate was how easily that same pursuit of information could feed into my own disordered relationship with food. I loved learning about food chemistry, nutrition research, and different food cultures, but I became increasingly aware that knowing more didn’t necessarily mean being healthier.
That experience fundamentally changed how I practice. Knowing what to eat is often the easy part. The harder work is understanding the values, beliefs, and ideologies we attach to food and how those shape our behavior. That’s why I’m less interested in giving someone another list of rules and more interested in understanding what is actually driving the way they eat.
You often talk about helping people rebuild trust with their bodies. What does that process look like in practice?
My favorite way to explain a healthier relationship with food and your body is the ability to navigate between the hedonic and homeostatic portions of the brain with little to no effort or cognitive load. The hedonic system guides food choices toward pleasure, joy, and connection, while the homeostatic system supports nourishment, energy, and physiological function. Both are equally important.
Problems arise when one aspect consistently outweighs the other. Some people become so focused on calories or making the “healthy” choice that they lose touch with enjoyment or pleasure. Others may ignore hunger, fullness, or energy signals and become disconnected from their body’s needs.
My role is to understand what disrupted that relationship in the first place and help clients create a more functional relationship with their bodies. That may mean relearning hunger and fullness cues, becoming more comfortable with pleasure and satisfaction, or challenging the food rules that have taken over their decision-making. The goal is to make those decisions feel more natural and less cognitively demanding over time.
Gut health has become one of the most talked-about areas of nutrition. Where do you think the conversation is still missing the mark?
In my view, the gut health conversation has become too focused on what we can add rather than what may be contributing to the problem in the first place. There is a tendency to reach for probiotics, digestive enzymes, L-glutamine, or elimination diets before looking closely at an individual’s eating patterns and digestive function.
Probiotics are a good example of why this matters. Their effectiveness depends on variables such as the specific strain, dose, timing, and the individual’s existing gut microbiota. If someone has impaired gastric acid secretion, for example, the conditions in their digestive tract may affect whether a particular probiotic survives long enough to reach the intestines. Simply adding a probiotic without understanding the environment it is entering may miss the underlying issue.
That’s why I often look first at what isn’t being addressed, nutritional deficiencies, stomach function, motility, dysbiosis, meal timing, consistency, composition, and volume. Many of these factors can be influenced through strategic changes to the environment in which someone eats. Sometimes the most important intervention isn’t finding the right supplement; it’s understanding what the body is being asked to work with in the first place.
You connect digestion, hormones, metabolism, and the nervous system rather than treating them separately. Why is that integrated approach so important for lasting health?
The body’s systems are interconnected, even though we often talk about them as if they function independently. Stress and nervous system activity can affect sleep, appetite, and digestion, while digestion influences how we absorb and utilize the nutrients that support energy, hormones, and metabolism. Sleep also plays an important role in hormone production and synthesis, while those hormones then influence metabolism, appetite, energy, and recovery. Each system is constantly responding to the others, creating a feedback loop that makes it difficult to meaningfully change one area without considering what is happening around it.
I often tell my clients that they may find more success giving 15% to several important areas every day than giving 100% to one area half the time. When we consistently support the systems that influence one another, we create a stronger physiological foundation for the body to function from.
Once those foundations are in place, we can identify where more attention is actually needed. An integrated approach isn’t about trying to fix everything at once. It’s about understanding how the pieces influence one another so we can put our resources where they will have the greatest impact.
For someone dealing with bloating or digestive discomfort, what is the first change you usually recommend before turning to restrictive diets or supplements?
For someone who is otherwise healthy, the first thing I usually look at is when and how they eat before I start removing foods. I see many clients who don’t eat until noon, go long periods without food, and then consume a large portion of their daily intake later in the day. That pattern matters because digestion is not static throughout the day. The gastrointestinal system has its own circadian rhythms, and the timing, size, and consistency of meals can influence gastric function, motility, appetite, and blood glucose levels.
If someone has gone most of the day without eating, I don’t necessarily want my first intervention to be taking away another food. Can we create a better environment for digestion by distributing food more consistently throughout the day? That might mean introducing an earlier meal, shortening long gaps between meals, or reducing the size of an evening meal.
Of course, persistent or severe symptoms require a more individualized evaluation, particularly when conditions such as Hashimoto’s, POTS, or endometriosis are involved. But for many people, the first step is not restriction. It’s changing the conditions under which their digestive system is asked to do its job.
When people feel overwhelmed by conflicting nutrition advice online, how can they tell the difference between evidence-based guidance and wellness trends?
A key indicator is whether someone speaks in absolutes. Nutrition is rarely as simple as “this food is bad,” “this hormone is stopping your weight loss,” or “this one thing will fix your gut.” Fundamental health principles are often less marketable than trends, which is why they are sometimes overlooked.
I also remind my clients that much online content contains a partial truth, which makes misinformation difficult to spot. Often, a legitimate study or concept is exaggerated to support a misleading conclusion. Professionally, I think you have to. Science evolves, and our understanding of nutrition should evolve with it. You shouldn’t have the same viewpoint today that you had ten years ago. Being willing to change your mind when better evidence emerges isn’t a weakness, it’s one of the clearest signs that you understand how science works.
For reliable information, I recommend starting with reputable professional organizations, authoritative health organizations, and qualified nutrition professionals who can interpret evidence within the context of your individual health.
What have your own experiences taught you about the difference between pursuing perfect health and building a healthy life?
Pursuing perfect health often mirrors the internet’s focus on constant self-optimization. A common misconception is that we can control every variable and outcome related to our health. In reality, you can do everything “right” and still face health challenges such as autoimmune conditions, weight gain, digestive issues, or difficulties with your relationship with food.
I understand the perfectionism that can accompany the pursuit of “perfect” health. For me, this led to isolation and losing touch with my true self. I became withdrawn, hungry, tired, and in pain, so focused on health that I lost sight of who I was.
Building a healthy life looks very different. Health is fluid. It will ebb and flow through different seasons of your life, and your needs will change along with them. The bones of that framework remain the same, though: nourish yourself, move your body, rest, and care for yourself. The goal isn’t to live perfectly within those principles every day, but to have a framework that can bend and adapt as your life changes. Health should give you more life, not become the life you’re constantly trying to perfect.
If every reader could change one habit that would have the biggest long-term impact on their health, what would you encourage them to start with?
If I had to choose one habit, I would choose consistency. But if you’re asking me what I think people should consistently do, I would choose two things: move your body and eat regularly.
When it comes to movement, I’m particularly biased toward strength training because of what it allows the body to do beyond appearance. Building and maintaining muscle gives the body greater capacity to utilize glucose, supports metabolic health, and helps preserve strength and physical function as we age. We are not meant to spend our lives trying to make our bodies require less from us. We are meant to build bodies that can do more.
I also think consistent eating is incredibly underrated. When people repeatedly under-eat during the day, skip meals, or wait until they are ravenous to eat, it becomes much harder to regulate appetite, energy, and digestion. Eating regularly gives the body a more predictable supply of fuel to work with.
These aren’t complicated interventions, but that’s exactly why I like them. Long-term health is built through the things we are willing to do repeatedly, not through the things we can do perfectly for a short time.
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