Food Psych - Intuitive Eating, Health At Every Size, Positive Body Image, Eating Disorder Recovery, Smashing Diet Culture

Religious scholar and journalist Alan Levinovitz discusses how diet culture is like a religion, why so much modern nutrition advice is dangerous, why we need to think critically about restrictive eating practices, how suspicion of Western medicine can lead people to believe in harmful "miracle cures," why the "nocebo effect" is causing people to unnecessarily demonize particular foods, and lots more. This episode originally aired March 5, 2017.  Alan Levinovitz received his PhD in religion from the University of Chicago where he specialized in classical Chinese thought. He is now assistant professor of religious studies at James Madison University, where he teaches classes on religion, Chinese philosophy, and the connection between religion and medicine. His journalism focuses on the intersection of religion, science, and culture, and has appeared in The Atlantic, Wired, The Washington Post, Slate, Vox, and elsewhere. He is the author of The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What You Eat. Fin

Psychotherapist and co-founder of The Body Positive Elizabeth Scott joins us to talk about the problems with concern trolling and healthism, why it’s helpful to be vulnerable when defending the Health at Every Size paradigm, the process of unlearning diet culture and oppression, why dietitians are in the best position to support body acceptance, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about how healthcare practitioners can unlearn everything they’ve been taught about weight and make peace with food and their bodies. Elizabeth Scott, LCSW, is a San Francisco Bay Area psychotherapist who has been helping people learn to love their bodies and lead happier, more productive lives for more than 25 years. In 1996 Elizabeth co-founded The Body Positive, a nonprofit organization that builds grassroots, peer leadership programs to prevent eating disorders and other forms of self-harm. As Director of Training, Elizabeth instructs treatment professionals, educators, and students to use the Be Body Pos

Pioneering Health at Every Size® dietitian Joanne Ikeda joins us to discuss the history of the HAES movement, how the dietetics field and the role of the dietitian has changed over time, the effects of dieting on weight gain and weight cycling, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about the food industry and diet soda. Joanne Ikeda has been a pioneer in the development of the Health at Every Size paradigm and the fight against weight stigma. As founding co-director of the Center for Weight and Health in the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley, Ikeda has been a leader in efforts to refine approaches to childhood wellness at the local, state and national levels. She is author or coauthor of research publications as well as pamphlets, books, and training kits designed to help health professionals, paraprofessionals and parents instill healthy eating habits and encourage physical activity in children and adolescents. Her most recent effort involves empowering community coalitions to

Health at Every Size® therapist Kathleen Bishop shares how the trauma of dieting gets passed from one generation to the next, how to mourn the loss of the life that diet culture stole from you, ways to start recovering from internalized weight stigma, the connection between substance use disorders and eating disorders, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about how to accept your changing body and stop beating yourself up for not being the same size you were 10 years ago. Kathleen A. Bishop is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor and Relapse Prevention Specialist from San José, California. In private practice, she specializes in Eating and Substance Use Disorders. and she works at a non-profit providing Intensive Outpatient Treatment to clients with Substance Use Disorder and cooccurring mental health conditions like anxiety, depression or Eating Disorders. Kathleen, who is also a body positive size diversity activist who promotes Health At Every Size

Non-diet dietitian Fiona Willer joins to discuss why we need to be critical of current weight research, how the Health at Every Size paradigm can go viral, why weight-inclusive work is a life-saving endeavor, how fatphobia and weight stigma prevent compassionate medical care for people in larger bodies, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about how to adjust to a different culture’s eating times when studying abroad. Fiona Willer, AdvAPD, is the author of 'The Non-Diet Approach Guidebook for Dietitians', and co-author of 'The Non-Diet Approach Guidebook for Psychologists and Counsellors'. Her business, Health, Not Diets, provides online and face-to-face training and workshops for health professionals in the non-diet approach. Fiona's background includes clinical dietetics, private practice and university lecturing in nutrition and dietetics. She is currently conducting PhD research into HAES® use in dietetics. As an advocacy leader in this field, she represented Aus

Writer and activist Ijeoma Oluo shares why she gave up the pursuit of weight loss even though she had "succeeded" at dieting, how she stepped away from the scale and made peace with her size, why body acceptance is a journey and not a destination, how to help kids develop peaceful relationships with their bodies, why worrying about your weight robs you of your life, why we need to stop obsessing about our bodies, how food insecurity affects people's relationships with food, and lots more. This episode originally aired May 29, 2017. Ijeoma Oluo is a Seattle-based Writer, Speaker and Internet Yeller. Her work on race, feminism, and other social issues has been featured in The Guardian, The Stranger, The Washington Post, TIME Magazine, and more. She is the Editor at Large at The Establishment. Her book, So You Want To Talk About Race, will be published in early 2018 with Seal Press. You can find her yelling on Twitter at @ijeomaoluo, and on her website at IjeomaOluo.com. Grab Christy's free guid

Isabel Foxen Duke returns! We discuss the #1 reason why people engage in emotional eating and bingeing, why reclaiming your right to eat emotionally might be a key to healing your relationship with food, why recommendations for weight loss are scientifically unsound, how the effort to control our food can transfer to other areas of life after eating disorder recovery, why meditation and spiritual practice is lifelong work, and lots more! This episode originally aired October 17, 2016. Isabel Foxen Duke helps women "stop feeling crazy around food." After struggling with binge eating for most of her life, and trying to overcome emotional eating and binge eating through various approaches to food—Isabel finally discovered that these attempts to control her food and her body were at the root of the problem itself. She now teaches women struggling with binge eating how to do the very thing they're most afraid of, and the very thing they need to do to recover: let go. Grab her free video training series

Researcher and activist Joy Cox joins us to talk about how we can fight back against internalized weight stigma and body shame, how intersecting identities can affect body image, why refusing to conform to cultural and societal expectations can help change the world, the racist roots of diet culture and why fighting it is an important part of creating a more inclusive society, the problems with framing larger body size as “obesity” and labeling it a disease, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about intuitive eating for athletes. Joy is current doctoral candidate and self-professed fatty in the Department of Communication at Rutgers University using her dissertation to study the impacts of identity and social change within the Fat Liberation Movement. Through interviews and content analysis, Joy has been able to unearth answers to questions around member identification, micro and macro discourse, and political action outcomes for movement members. When not conducting research, Joy ser

Certified Body Trust Provider and Health at Every Size recovery coach and consultant Sarah Thompson joins us to talk about the barriers she faced to getting an eating disorder diagnosis, the ways in which diet culture has infiltrated naturopathy and Chinese medicine, the lack of Health at Every Size education in healthcare programs, the false connection that diet culture makes between larger bodies and being unhealthy, weight bias in “food addiction” theory, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about whether bingeing on fruits and vegetables is a sign of orthorexia. Sarah Thompson is an eating disorder recovery coach, consultant, and writer based in Portland, Oregon and transplanted from Akron, Ohio. Her writing focuses on a wide range of philosophies - Body Trust®, Health at Every Size®, Intuitive Eating, Fat Liberation, eating disorder recovery, and more. She seeks to share what she has experienced and learned from her own discovery and journey with body liberation. Sarah definitely d

Body-liberation activist and author Jes Baker joins to talk about her new book, Landwhale; the value in all kinds of coping mechanisms and why we need to stop demonizing so-called “emotional eating;” the transmission of body negativity, body dysmorphia, and chronic dieting through family members; the swinging pendulum between Dietland and Donutland; and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about how to deal with family members commenting on your snack choices, and whether intuitive eating really requires us to eat entirely without distractions. JES BAKER is a positive, progressive, and magnificently irreverent force to be reckoned with in the realm of self-love advocacy and mental health. She believes in the importance of body autonomy, hard conversations, strong coffee, and even stronger language. When not writing, Jes spends her time speaking around the world, working with plus size clothing companies, organizing body liberation events, taking pictures in her underwear and attempting to c

Writer and “She’s All Fat” podcast co-host Sophia Carter-Kahn joins us to talk about her path from extreme dieting to intuitive eating, how dating interacts with fatphobia and weight bias, overcoming body shame and body dysmorphia, how parents are influenced by diet culture and healthism, why we need to think about weight stigma as an important variable in terms of health, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about using meal plans in eating disorder recovery. Sophia Carter-Kahn is a writer and podcaster based in Los Angeles, California. Along with April K. Quioh, Sophia is the co-host, -producer, and -creator of She's All Fat, the podcast for body positivity, radical self love, and chill vibes only. Sophia and April created She's All Fat to tell the stories of fat women and femmes. They discuss everything from pop culture to strategies to approaching tough conversations with family and friends, all through the lens of fat positivity. She's All Fat has listeners all over the

Body-positive photographer Lindley Ashline joins to talk about the power of representation, the process of breaking fashion rules for people in larger bodies, how the diet industry uses aspirational marketing to lure us in and keep us hooked, Lindley’s journey to her career in photography for diverse bodies, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about whether it’s appropriate to talk to diet-recovery clients about choosing “whole” foods. Lindley Ashline is a professional photographer in Seattle, WA, who specializes in body positive portraits of people of all sizes, genders, orientations, ability levels, and ethnicities, not just the ones whose bodies are likely to be seen in magazines and advertisements. Lindley takes a judgment-free approach to her photographic subjects, with little to no retouching. She created RepresentationMatters.me in 2016 as a response to (and rejection of) the airbrushed, normative, too-perfect stock photography available on the big mainstream stock sites. The im

Anti-diet therapist and author Judith Matz joins us to talk about shifting the focus of emotional eating toward the underlying deprivation and diet mentality, why turning to food to meet emotional needs isn’t an “eating problem” but a “soothing problem,” how diet culture and marginalization rob us of the ability to meet our needs, why Health at Every Size and intuitive eating are better approaches for true health, Judith’s work teaching other therapists about weight stigma, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about how to frame public health efforts to change the built environment in a way that doesn’t stigmatize people in larger bodies. Judith is the co-author of two books on the topics of eating and weight struggles. Beyond a Shadow of a Diet: The Comprehensive Guide to Treating Binge Eating Disorder, Compulsive Eating and Emotional Overeating has been called “the new bible” on this topic for professionals. The Diet Survivor’s Handbook: 60 Lessons in Eating, Acceptance and Self-Care

Psychologist and trans-health educator Sand Chang joins us to talk about the complex experience of body acceptance for transgender folks, the intersections of trans advocacy and Health at Every Size work, the growing body of research around trans folks and eating disorders, the shape-shifting nature of fatphobia and diet culture, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about how food restrictions to try to cure acne can exacerbate an eating disorder. Dr. Sand Chang is a Chinese American clinical psychologist, educator, and writer based in Oakland, CA. Sand identifies as queer, nonbinary, and genderfluid and uses they, them pronouns. Sand currently divides their time between working at Stanford University’s counseling center, Northern California Kaiser Permanente Transgender Services, and a private practice specializing in trans health, relationships and sexuality, trauma, EMDR, eating disorders, and addictions. As a psychotherapist, trainer, and advocate, Sand is invested in healing and em

Anti-diet therapist and Binge Eating Disorder expert Amy Pershing joins us to discuss how our fatphobic culture hinders recovery, how diet culture steals our personal power, the healing that can be found in getting angry, the role of restriction and trauma in binge eating, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about quick ways for primary-care providers to talk to patients about intuitive eating and HAES. Amy Pershing LMSW, ACSW is the Clinical Director of the Center for Eating Disorders (CED) in Ann Arbor. In 1993, she developed “Bodywise™,” a comprehensive treatment program to serve a growing population of clients coming to the center with binge eating disorder (BED). In 2008, Pershing and Chevese Turner, CEO and founder of Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA), joined forces to found Pershing Turner Consulting LLC which offers training to clinicians treating BED nationwide. Pershing has pioneered an integrated approach based on almost 30 years of clinical experience. Her approach i

Disability-rights advocate and writer Rebekah Taussig joins us to talk about why body positivity needs to be a radical and intersectional movement, the connection between body acceptance and disability rights, the many ways in which diet culture has infiltrated disability culture and affects people in disabled bodies, embracing all the emotions that surface when doing anti-oppression work, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about quick ways to respond when a friend says something diet-y or body-shaming. Rebekah Taussig is a Kansas City writer and teacher with her PhD in Creative Nonfiction and Disability Studies. She is interested in the powerful connection between the stories we tell and the world we live in, from physical spaces and economic opportunities to social roles and interpersonal relationships. Her writing contributes to the collective narratives being told about disability in our culture -- empowering, mundane, wild, heart-breaking, exhilarating, ordinary stories of her li

Health at Every Size therapist Jennifer Rollin joins us to talk about dispelling eating disorder myths, why weight stigma in the eating disorder field is harmful, how Health at Every Size work contributed to healing Jennifer’s body image and breaking down her learned fatphobia, the problem with the idea of “weight management,” and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about how to handle it when a significant other’s family comments on your weight. Jennifer Rollin, MSW, LCSW-C is a therapist in private practice in Rockville, Maryland, eating disorder and body image specialist, and expert writer and speaker. She is passionate about helping people to find freedom from eating disorders and body-hatred. Jennifer has completed certificates in CBT-E for Eating Disorders, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. She is a member of The Junior Board of Directors for The National Eating Disorders Association. Her articles have reached thousands of people through m

Certified Body Trust Provider and Health at Every Size personal trainer Kristy Fassio joins us to talk about the restrict-binge cycle and binge eating disorder, how to make fitness work for people in larger bodies, why diet culture is The Life Thief and how it steals our power, freedom, and joy, how restriction feeds into emotional eating, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about how to refute arguments in favor of a particular diet. Kristy Fassio is a mom, AFAA certified personal trainer, and a certified Body Trust Provider. When she’s not planning her next Disney vacation, she can be found working on her Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, tending to the small menagerie of animals that live on her 10 acres, telling women their bodies are not broken or driving her kids to dance lessons. She believes movement should be joyful, life should be lived wholeheartedly, and that self-care is inescapable. Find her online at KristyFassio.com. Grab Christy's free guide, 7 simple s

Health at Every Size psychologist and Body Trust Provider Rachel Millner joins us to discuss how diet culture masks anorexia, why it’s so important for everyone in our society to address our own weight bias, the power of community in breaking free from diet culture, the role of clinicians as activists, how we can spread the Health at Every Size message and plant seeds for change, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about dealing with anger toward a parent who constantly pushed diets on you in childhood. Rachel Millner, Psy.D., CEDS is a licensed psychologist and certified eating disorder specialist. She sees adults with all forms of eating disorders and disordered eating and those wanting to break out of diet culture in her private practice, and treats children and adolescents with eating disorders as part of the Eating Disorder Assessment and Treatment Program at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Millner is a certified Body Trust(r) provider. She practices from a Health at

Body image researchers and Beauty Redefined co-founders Lindsay and Lexie Kite join us to talk about diet culture as “The Life Thief,” and how self-objectification operates in a similar way, overcoming body shame, building body-image resilience, how feminism has informed Lindsay and Lexie’s work, why body positivity and body image work are social justice issues, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about whether it's possible to stop the binge-restrict cycle while living in poverty. Beauty Redefined, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to promoting positive body image online and in live speaking events, is run by identical twins Lexie Kite, Ph.D. and Lindsay Kite, Ph.D. Since establishing Beauty Redefined in 2009, Lexie and Lindsay have become leading experts in the work of body image resilience through research-backed online education available on their website, social media, and through speaking events to tens of thousands across the US. While many well-intentioned people promote posi