A few days ahead of this year's Oscar ceremony, a drug manufacturer released an ad I was not expecting to see. Some people have been using medicine never meant for them. For the smaller dress or tux for a big night. Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company that makes Monjarro for diabetes and Zetbound for weight loss, was discouraging the use of anti-obesity medications for cosmetic weight loss. Some said that this This ad, which was titled Big Night, was targeting celebrities and others who take the drugs but don't really need them. Either way, I got to say it ended on a pretty powerful note. People whose health is affected by obesity are the reason How do you work on these medications. It matters who gets them. Now, to be honest, I'm not sure how effective an ad like this really is, but the message did make sense to me. Demand for these medications has outpaced supply, so they end up being unavailable to people who actually do need them and have prescriptions for them. But I got to say, not everyone was impressed with the ad, including my guest today.

I'm not interested in anything, Eli. I really have to say about anything. But I do know that it is a shame that we have become so obsessed again with a really extreme level of thinness that people who do not need to lose any weight are taking medication and risks with their health to be able to get to extreme thin body types.

That's British actress and activist Jamila Jamil. You probably know her. She's got millions of followers across social media. She's been on the cover of a few magazines, including Glamor and British Vogue. But she's probably best known for her role on the hit MBC sitcom The Good Place. That aired from 2016 to 2020. And Jamila played Tahani, a fashionable and beautiful character who was also a bit self-involved.

People are just drawn to me. One of my shyest friends, I won't say his name to preserve his privacy, but he found my presence so comforting that he asked me to co-host his TV show, Anderson Cooper, 360.

Jamila has also appeared in Marvel's She-Hulk, Attorney at Law, and the film, Marry Me with Jennifer Lopez. But her acting career is not all she wants to be known for. That's what we're going to talk about today. Over the past few years, she has used her celebrity to raise awareness about a range of issues that affect our health and our well-being, including the pressure to be thin and to conform to certain body types.

Just a quick reminder, enjoy your food and enjoy your life, and the diet industry.

She's been called an advocate for body positivity. That's a movement that encourages people to love their bodies no matter the shape or size. But I got to say, in talking to her, I think she prefers to advocate for body neutrality. The idea that you don't have to love, you don't have to hate, you don't even really have to think about your body that much at all. If anything, you should mostly be encouraged to be grateful for what your body can do.

I get more done when I'm not thinking about my body because body positivity still means obsessing over your body because you're thinking, I love myself, I love myself, I love my thighs. I love my stomach. I just don't want to think about it at all.

Jamila thinks a lot about diet culture, and part of that means even challenging products and challenging people that could cause harm. She has called out celebrities like Cardi B and Kim Kardashian for promoting questionable weight loss products. Sometimes, she even pokes fun at these kinds of endorsements on social media.

Hi, you guys. I just had to tell you about this new amazing Super the bottle shake that I've been drinking. I've only been taking it for three days, and I've already lost 35 pounds, and I've got ads, but I've never done a day's exercise in my life, and I haven't been- Here's something else that I think is worth mentioning.

She actually asks magazines not to airbrush her photos. In 2018, she launched iWay, a platform and podcast that promotes mental health and encourages her followers to share their stories, their ideas, maybe their activism. Today, we're going to have a really interesting conversation with Jamila to find out what it's like to challenge diet culture from inside Hollywood. I ask her about the connection between her activism and her own health and what she thinks it really means to have a good body image. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent, and this is Chasing Life.

When I started doing television, which is now 23 years ago, it was unusual, I think, for an Indian person to be doing it. Yeah, same for me. Same for you. My mom, who's still alive, doing great, still refers to my television part of my life as my other job. How's that other job of your thing going? What was it like for your family when you started doing this work?

There was always the hope I would become a doctor because Indians are going to Indian. But when I didn't, it was largely accepted and it's fine. I have a very unconventional family, and I also just do my own thing anyway. I don't really care what anyone thinks of me or what I do.

Jamil and I launched right into it. We talk for a while about our respective upbringings, the things that we have in common, also what we learn from our parents who grew up in India and Pakistan. I was curious about her path, how she got to this headspace where she could reliably not care what people think. I think that's easier said than done. But what we ended up talking about the most was something that surprised me, her own struggles with disordered eating, with anorexia she was a teenager and beyond. Jamila says she's healthier now, but that whole experience continues to impact her physically and emotionally.

What has been your journey with health and weight?

God. Well, when I was younger, I had anorexia for about 20 years, and so that was a very sad and very bad journey that was perpetuated largely by our culture with an obsession around female thinness. But also, I think my desire to feel like I could control something in a world that didn't make me feel like I was the boss of my own destiny because I am a woman. I think there was just a lot going on there that was coming out in me abusing my body. But then I've been in recovery for about eight or nine years, and I feel great, and I feel fully recovered. I really do feel fully recovered, which is very rare because eating disorders, anorexia, I think, is the highest cause of death of any mental illness, so I'm extremely lucky. My journey with health and weight, therefore, has just been quite skewered and quite dangerous and problematic to me. I'm sure I'll have bone problems when I'm older because I starved myself for such a long time. But I'm doing what I can to fix it now. I'm only in my 30s.

This whole body positivity, body neutrality, Body Liberation Movement is to say, basically, don't shame people. But when you see somebody who's overweight or obese, for example, United States, what do you think to yourself now, given all that you know?

I don't really think anything to myself because that person could I mean, is it their fault?

Is it because of the food system? I mean, I guess that's what I'm driving at.

What I'm saying is that I think anyone who looks like they're struggling with their health, whether they are incredibly underweight or they are a higher weight than their body can cope with, then it's normally a sign that there is some an imbalance. As someone who's eaten far too little, I've seen that that's damaged my body more than when I've eaten too much. We always focus obsessively on the one, but we never talk about the other. I'm going to get probably osteoporosis when I'm older. Only one of my kidneys works because of everything I did to it during anorexia. I've got a functioning digestive system. My teeth are not in the same condition they were before my eating disorder. I've hurt myself far more in under eating than over eating, but both come down to our sick society. When I see anyone in any extreme body type, the thought is never to think. They just need to be shamed. I need to go up to them and tell them to do a better job. My thinking is that they haven't been provided the correct nutritional information or the correct nutritional resources, and they are in a society that is perpetuating whatever it is that is leading to them, either under or over eating.

I just want to say I'm sorry you've gone through all this and the fact that it's obviously you're doing well now, which is terrific, but this is something that will stay with you. It sounds like the kidney function, the osteoporosis, things like that.

Definitely. But that's why I'm so vocal All about it is because I'm so worried that other people will go down the same route and people don't take it seriously. As I said, anorexia is the highest cause of death in any mental illness. We should be talking about this all the time. All we talk about is being overweight, overweight, overweight, this, morbid, obese, this, that, the other. It's fine for us to focus on people's health. But why are we not addressing one of the biggest killers that is right in front of us? It's because when we look at a very thin person, we feel no concern. Often, we feel some form of admiration for their self control. We have a problem with the way that we look at extremes, where we only hyper focus on one extreme and don't pay attention to the highest killer in any mental illness. I'm pro-balance, and I think that Everyone should have access to proper nutrition so they can live a healthy life.

How much does this occupy your mind now? Do you define a healthy weight for yourself? No.

I don't think about it at all now, ever, because I don't practice body positivity. Body positivity is for people who live in much larger bodies where they are actively discriminated against at the doctor's employment in love, or it's people with disabilities who face the same experience. I practice body neutrality, which has been a complete, almost divorce from my body. I'm like, my body is this vessel that gets me from A to B. It's now basically my car. I don't look at it any longer as a reflection of me. It is not an advertising billboard for other people. It is not there for them to judge. It's not there for me to judge. It's a vessel that carries around my brain. Now all I care about is genuinely is my brain, my spirit. I have a job that unfortunately focuses on the way that I look, so I have to show up and present a certain way sometimes. But that, again, I feel very disassociated from my body when I'm doing that. It's like I'm dressing up a doll rather than me myself. I've separated my identity from my esthetic, and that took a long time, but has completely saved my life because now, whether I get bigger or smaller, I just don't judge myself.

I just know that, okay, my body is trying to give me a signal that something's out of equilibrium if I'm going up or down too fast. Everything I'm looking at is, how is this going to make me feel?

What you're describing this idea of dissociating like that, is that common? I mean, is it common Hollywood? Or is it common among women your age?

I don't know. I don't know if it's even the healthy way to be or not. I just know that I get more done when I'm not thinking about my body because body positivity still means obsessing over your body because you're thinking, I I love myself, I love myself. I love my thighs. I love my stomach. I just don't want to think about it at all. I would rather be thinking about all the fun that I can have before I die. I would rather be thinking about my friends. I would rather be thinking about the world and how I could be helpful. Part of the reason I've been so ignorant and made so many mistakes in my life, I genuinely attribute to this eating disorder because I was consumed with it. It's all I thought about from the minute I woke up to the minute I went to sleep. I was thinking about calories. I wasn't learning anything about the I wasn't learning anything about people. I wasn't learning anything about social constructs. All I learned was calories. I was obsessed. It is a completely destructive and overwhelming disease, mental illness. It slowed down my progress as a person.

Now that I'm not thinking about it ever, I have space to be informed. I'm a little late to the game, and I've made some very ignorant public mistakes. But I think my lack of fear of those mistakes is what I hope is inspiring to people because it is never too late to grow and to change and to change your mind and to do better. Yeah.

Look, I'm already learning a lot just listening to you. I didn't know all of this about you. I mean, just on a day-to-day basis, do you follow a particular diet or exercise routine?

No, I walk an hour a day with my dogs, religiously, pretty much. Walking, that's the only exercise I do because I don't really enjoy a lot of exercise. But I'm working on finding more enjoyable ways to move my body because I need to start strength training so that I can build up my bone density again. When I'm in America, I eat much more healthily than I do in any other country because the food here is a really big problem. So I'm eating more organic and having to research the farms that I get it from. I don't have to do this in any other country.

After the break, the connection between food and mental health Jamila Jamil's take on that.

What every individual does to themselves is fine, but don't profit off of this incredibly misogynistic ideal of what women are supposed to look like. We're obsessed with young women obsessed.

I'm curious about the podcast, the Iway podcast.

How did that come about?

Well, the Iway podcast The cast was just a natural progression of what had been a groundswell movement that was not going away. I started the Iway movement in 2018 from the back of a tour bus with PMS, where one day I got pissed off about the way that women were undervalued, and I tweeted about it and it became viral. I presumed it would only stay viral for a week at best. Then after two and a half years, it was still viral, and people were still talking about it, and we were just growing in millions and millions of followers. So it felt like It made sense to now turn this into something substantial. When you're taking on the internet, you better be ready to kill them with the facts. I wasn't. I figured that the podcast would be a great way to learn publicly. It's ridiculous. The way that we demonize people who still have something to learn, the way that we demonize mistakes, to the point where we make people even afraid to admit that they need to learn something, so then they don't delve into the subject at all. They just completely stay out of it.

I wanted to be an example of someone who wasn't afraid to learn, who wasn't afraid to own up to my ignorance. And I felt like we could learn as a community. And so I tried to create that safe space.

Was there a particular message or a particular theme you really... Because this is a big topic. Was there something in particular you really wanted to explore via the podcast?

I would say that the leading subject that guides my heart is mental health. I think that that is the foundation of every trial and tribulation that humanity experiences. I think if people had better mental health, we would have less dictators, less fascists. I think there would be less wars between the genders. I think there would be less racism, less bigotry. I think that there is a direct correlation between the declining mental health of our society and the increase in violence, violence against the self. I guess maybe my early years of having wanted to be a doctor has trained me to look for the cause and not obsess over the symptoms. I think the cause is our happiness and our mental health and our mental stability. Our governments around the world are making it almost impossible for us to have mental stability because we are so stressed and trying so hard to survive, and we exist in such a scarcity mindset that it's impossible for people to be balanced.

I should point out that you've been talking about this for a while. A few years ago, you asked a magazine not to airbrush your photos, which I applaud that.

I really do.

But I also imagine maybe it's hard because people see those photographs and you realize that they're being compared to other airbrush photographs, right? So that becomes the norm.

Yeah, but it's worse for my brain if I see it. I generally tell everyone not to airbrush me. I tell everyone not to airbrush me. Magazines, posters, Marvel, The Good Place, Vogue. I can't 100% control it, but generally, it's on all my TV contracts, et cetera, because it's bad for me to see That perfect version of myself, that flawless, unwrinkled version of myself with no discolourations in the skin and no overhang when I wear a strapless dress, even though I've got big boobs. When people air brush out my stretch marks, it's like, Why have to live with those stretch marks? I have I have to live with that flabby upper arm. I have to live with that nose or those wrinkles. That's interesting. So don't advertise a version of that that doesn't exist, a version of me that doesn't exist, because then what you're saying, A, is that the way that I show up in life is not good enough and you had to erase it. But B, then I'm naturally going to compare myself to that image, and I'm going to feel embarrassed when I meet people in real life if this perfect image of me is put out into the world.

So it's not a noble crusade. I'm just protecting my mental health. I don't want to see images of what I could look like if I were more attractive and perfect. That's not good for anyone. Look at the rise in the mental health statistics. Look at the rise in eating disorders. Look at the rise in teenagers wanting plastic surgery. It's Snapchat filter that they bring in all the time to plastic surgeons saying, I want to look like this.

I've been on the podcast talking a lot about these weight loss medications, the Ozempix, Wegovis, Mounjaros. What do you think about those those medications.

It is a shame that we have become so obsessed again with a really extreme level of thinness that people who do not need to lose any weight are taking medication and risks with their health to be able to get to extreme thin body types. It was very prevalent Fashion Week. I went to Paris and Milan and New York and London Fashion Week, and the models were thinner than they've been in years, and there were less plus-sized models walking the runway. The actresses and the models sitting in the front row were all emaciated in a way that I haven't seen, probably in 10 years. There's definitely been an impact from that that I think has not been It's been very extreme esthetic focus that worries me.

When you've talked about Iwe, the mission statement, you say it's more than a podcast. It's a community, a lies-ship platform. How do you describe the Iwe community? Who are they?

They're just a bunch of people who are frustrated with the way things are. They are people who have liberal values but do not wish to go about it by demonizing themselves or demonizing other people for not being perfect. My audience are very cool, and I'm surprised there are so many of them who are on this journey with me. It just shows me that it is the silent majority who do not behave like some of the loud and rude people who represent us online. And by the way, I was one of those people. I was that loud, judgmental, rude, liberal public speaker who who spoke down to people and did not offer people enough grace. I was being called the feminist hero we need. I made Time magazine's 25 Most Influential List. I was so heavily decorated for my no filter approach to speaking about injustice. I look back now and I cringe. Around the time of the pandemic, I looked at how people were speaking to each other, and I hated it. I've spent the last three or four years trying to roll that back and become part of unifying people rather than pushing them further apart.

Is it challenging? I mean, you have these things to say. There's, I guess, a eloquent or empathetic way to say these things, but they need to be They need to be said, it sounds like. That's what you're getting at.

They need to be said, but they could be said. I still say the same things. I just say it in a slightly more elegant way now, and I find that I'm able to reach much more people because now they don't feel attacked by me. All I'm saying is that it can easily change who we see as us versus them. It also means that there's a lot of hope in how we could stop seeing each other as them and we could come together. It's just down to how we deliver the information. I think that's why comedy and kindness is more effective than screaming at people and telling that they're inherently evil. Does that make sense?

Yeah, look, amen to that. The emotional centers of our brain get fired up really quickly, really easily. And the judgment parts of our brain, they take a little longer to come along.

But that aside, I am curious. If you think about the Iway community, the Iway movement, which you have started that, you are a, I guess, conventionally beautiful woman, slender woman.

People who don't know about your background, your health background, as we were just talking about, do they question why you are the person who should be at the forefront of a movement like this?

They do, and they should, and they must. I'm open to being questioned on that. I feel very confident that my story stands up and that with time, people will be able to see my work. I think when I first came out in 2018 as Tahani, as this glamorous actress, I think people had a lot more doubt back then, and they felt like I was doing this, to jump on a quick bandwagon to make a name for myself. And now, six years later, I'm still in it. I'm still doing it. I'm still fighting for people's rights. I'm still taking huge risks and still sacrificing my own career to have these conversations publicly.

None of this is easy. She has to balance all these things, her platforms, the community she's organizing, how her messaging comes across. The conversations she's having are connected, they're complex, they're nuanced. But there is a common theme, and that is the food we are putting into our bodies. As much as we may try, if most of the food choices we actually have are not healthy, healthy, the odds become very stacked against us.

The food in America is incredibly toxic. There are so many things that are banned in Europe, as in the same product, the American version is banned in Europe, and There's way less chemicals, way less preservatives. I also think that the people are being poisoned, literally, from a place of, I guess, profit, because not as in it's not to deliberately It's not to completely poison people, but it's in order to sell food that lasts a long time and mass-produced food. Then how much time they're spending on screens and how addictive everything is designed to be and how much we don't encourage people to get out to exercise, how expensive we've made exercise culture, how exclusionary we have made looking after yourself, how much more expensive organic food is versus processed food that can sit in your freezer for two years.

I'd like to take a quick pause here and just add a little bit of context. It is true that many food items sold in the United States do contain additives, and some of these chemicals have been banned in other countries. Certain dyes, flavor enhancers, sweeteners, especially those in ultra-processed foods. Scientists are still working to determine how exactly these additives affect our health, especially the ones that she's talking about in those ultra-processed foods.

This isn't something that we can't do something about. This isn't happening to us. We are, just as a people, not feeling aligned with each other enough to to stop staring at each other and start looking at the government and being like, oi, what are you doing? I do think that part of what I care about is making sure that people don't feel as though this is just something we can't do something about. We just can't do it while we're nitpicking ourselves and nitpicking each other.

If you do more with this, count me in, especially on the food part. Most of that has to do with how we nourish ourselves or not nourish ourselves that well. It's really striking, and you're We should not shrug our shoulders at it. It is a fixable problem.

The fact that it costs- Yeah, I don't want to look back on this in 100 years and be like, What a shame. I want to fight it now.

You've challenged the diet industry, the diet culture in a thoughtful and compassionate way. I think Look, I think out of all the things that bring us purpose in life, I imagine this will be something you look back on and say, Yeah, I'm really, really glad that I did that.

Yeah, I'm glad I did that. What every individual does to themselves is fine. But don't profit off of this It's an incredibly misogynistic ideal of what women are supposed to look like. We're obsessed with young women, obsessed to the point where we expect all women of all ages to emulate the face and the body of a young woman eternally. We see no value in a woman with age or with a woman with experience. If anything, with every year, I recognize my value increases. With every year, I feel stronger, I feel smarter, I feel more confident, I feel more optimistic, I feel less anxious I love growing older, and I find it hysterical that I'm now at an age that when I was younger, I thought would make me invisible. In the next few years, I might be entering perimenopause. Things are going to change. But the only thing I can control is what I am putting in and making sure it is as nutritious as possible. And also delicious because, my God, we deserve some pleasure in this terrible world.

I'm inspired by it.

Thank you. Oh, that's very kind. Listen, there's lots of important things to work on in this life, and I finally learned how to recognize what my corner is and stop trying to fight every single cause for every single person because it means I'm spread too thin. I think I found my place within mental health, and everything I work on is a offshoot of that, and that's where I'm going to stay.

Sounds like a good plan to me. I know that this conversation already has me thinking about those connections between food quality, body image, how we nourish ourselves, and how all of that affects our mental health. So thank you Jamila for coming on the show to share your experiences and share your work. Next week, we're talking about the Joy of Food with Dr. Linda Hsu. She's a physician and she's a chef, and she wants to remind people, no matter what their health or weight goals are, to see food as a source of joy. And she's going to share some tips on how to find that perfect balance between nutrition and satisfaction.

Food has to be at flavor first. None of us will eat food that is good for us from a health sense if we don't want it.

Chasing Life is a production of CNN Audio. Our podcast is produced by Erin Mathieson, Jennifer Lai, and Grace Walker. Our Senior Producer and Showrunner is Felicia Patinkin. Andrea Cain is our medical writer, and Tommy Buzzerian is our engineer. Dan Dizula is our Technical Director, and the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Ligtie. With support from Jameis Andrest, John Dianora, Haley Thomas, Alex Manasari, Robert Mathers, Laine Steinhart, Nicole Pessereau, and Lisa Namerot. Special thanks to Ben Tinker, Amanda Sealy, and Nadia Konang of CNN Health, and Katie Hinman.