Food Psych Podcast with Christy Harrison

New York Times bestselling author and former CNN political analyst Kirsten Powers joins us to discuss her history of chronic fatigue and her experience with dubious diagnoses and wild wellness treatments. She also shares what she discovered about the true causes of her issues, how disordered eating helped mask and exacerbate her symptoms, how she’s rethought her relationship with work in general (and her own past work in particular), her viral post “The way we live in the United States is not normal,” her decision to move to Italy, and more. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Kirsten Powers is a New York Times bestselling author and writes the bestselling Substack newsletter Changing the Channel. Kirsten served as a CNN senior political analyst for seven years, providing on-air analysis for major political and cultural events. The Columbia Journalism Review called her "an outspoken liberal journalist" in a sea of opposition at Fox News, where she previously served as a political analyst. She was a columnist for USA Today for more than a decade and, before that, for the Daily Beast and the New York Post. More from Christy: Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Pharmacist and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor Sarah-Jane Garcia joins us to discuss how smart people get caught up in wellness culture. She shares her path from the realities of being a pharmacist experimenting with elimination diets to how getting certified in integrative medicine exacerbated her orthorexia to why becoming a parent finally opened her eyes to the fear-mongering happening in wellness communities. Behind the paywall, Christy and Sarah-Jane discuss what it actually took for Sarah-Jane to break free from diet culture, as well as how she returned to conventional medicine through Intuitive Eating. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Sarah-Jane Garcia is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor with personal experience navigating binge eating, restriction, and obsessive clean eating. Discovering Intuitive Eating freed her from intense struggle with food—and inspired her to become a counselor, so she could help other women do the same. Sarah-Jane offers 1:1 coaching as well as a 12-week group program focused on the Principles of Intuitive Eating. She’s also a Specialty Pharmacist, and her approach blends science, psychology, and lived experience to guide you toward a healthier, more peaceful relationship with food. More from Christy: Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Writer, speaker, and weight-inclusive health/fitness professional Ragen Chastain joins us to discuss the potential side effects and other downsides of using GLP-1 drugs (like Ozempic and its ilk) for weight loss, the massive influence the manufacturers of these drugs are having on the public discourse about them, why the media don’t often report on these conflicts of interest, how drugmakers have co-opted talking points about weight stigma and weight cycling, how opposition to these drugs in some integrative- and functional-medicine spaces still perpetuates stigmatizing ideas about body size, and more. The first half of this interview is available to everyone, and you can hear the whole thing by becoming a paid member at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ragen Chastain is a speaker, writer, researcher, Board Certified Patient Advocate, multi-certified health and fitness professional, and thought leader in weight science, weight stigma, health, and healthcare. Utilizing her background in research methods and statistics, Ragen has brought her signature mix of humor and hard facts to healthcare, corporate, conference, and college audiences from Kaiser Permanente and the Diabetes Education Specialists National Conference, to Amazon and Google, to Dartmouth, Cal Tech and canfitpro. Author of the Weight and Healthcare newsletter, the book Fat: The Owner's Manual, co-author of HAES Health Sheets, and editor of the anthology The Politics of Size, Ragen is frequently featured as an expert in print, radio, television, and documentary film. In her free time, Ragen is a national dance champion, triathlete, and marathoner who holds the Guinness World Record for Heaviest Woman to Complete a Marathon. Ragen lives in Oregon with her fiancée Julianne and a rotating cast of foster dogs. Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode, Christy answers two audience questions about period pain, endometriosis, and whether “anti-inflammatory” protocols or elimination diets can alleviate symptoms. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. More from Christy: Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anti-diet dietitian Leah Kern joins us to discuss how struggling with anxiety made her susceptible to a wellness diet that promised safety and longevity, how that diet quickly spiraled into full-on disordered eating, how being eco-conscious and “earthy” can easily lead into wellness traps, the connection between spirituality and wellness culture, why she finally stopped trying to fix her anxiety with food and started taking meds, and more. This episode previously aired on our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Leah Kern is an anti-diet dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor who specializes in helping people heal their relationships with food and body. Her approach to coaching is firmly evidence-based, rooted in the Health At Every Size (HAES®) & Intuitive Eating frameworks. In her private practice, Leah teaches her clients to harness their body’s innate wisdom to govern how they eat and live. Leah believes that the work involved with unraveling years of conditioning in diet culture and learning to come home to one’s body is deeply spiritual work and she treats it as such. It is Leah’s mission to help her clients make peace with food and body so they can unlock their most aligned and fulfilling lives. Learn more about her work at leahkernrd.com. Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Christy offers 5 tips for dealing with diet evangelists and diet-culture messaging this time of year. This episode originally aired in January 2023. If you're ready to break free from diet culture once and for all, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. Pre-order Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, for its April 2023 release! Christy's first book, Anti-Diet, is available wherever you get your books. Order online at christyharrison.com/book, or at local bookstores across North America, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Grab Christy's free guide, 7 simple strategies for finding peace and freedom with food, for help getting started on the anti-diet path. Subscribe to our newsletter, Food Psych Weekly for weekly Q&As and more. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, go to christyharrison.com/foodpsych. Ask your own question about intuitive eating and the anti-diet approach at christyharrison.com/questions. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Journalist and professor Mallary Tenore Tarpley joins us to discuss her new book Slip and the realities of life in the middle of eating disorder recovery. She shares how losing her mother as a young girl led to disordered eating, why residential treatment was beneficial (and not), and how the pressures of maintaining “full recovery” led to years of struggle. Behind the paywall, Mallary and Christy discuss the many definitions of “full recovery,” the challenges of writing a book about disordered eating that’s honest without being activating, and how Mallary talks to her kids about food. Heads up that Mallary’s book (and parts of our conversation) contain a frank discussion of eating disorders including some potentially triggering details. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Mallary Tenore Tarpley is the author of the new memoir SLIP, which blends personal narrative, reportage, and research to offer up a new way of thinking about recovery as a "middle place" where slips happen but progress is always possible. Mallary is a journalism and writing professor at the University of Texas at Austin's Moody College of Communication and McCombs School of Business. She frequently leads trainings on memoir and personal essay writing, and she gives talks and writes articles about topics such as eating disorders, recovery, and embracing imperfections. A journalist by trade, Mallary’s recent work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, TIME Magazine, and Teen Vogue, among other publications. She lives outside of Austin with her husband and two young children. More from Christy: Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Katja Rowell, M.D. joins us to discuss responsive feeding, picky eating, and how to parent without passing diet culture norms on to your kids. We also explore the science behind a few common misperceptions from parents and doctors including: why playful or gamified tactics to change eating habits can be harmful and backfire, the problems with many “early interventions” around child BMI, and reasons to question growth charts in early childhood. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Katja Rowell, M.D. is a family doctor, author, and feeding specialist. Described as “academic, but warm and down to earth,” Rowell believes that helping children grow up to have a healthy relationship with food and their bodies is preventive medicine. Her interest in the world of feeding was sparked by her own worries as a parent, ending up with a toddler preoccupied with food. Helping her family get onto a better path inspired Rowell to learn more. Rowell expanded her knowledge; learning from and collaborating with OTs, Speech Pathologists, dietitians, psychologists, and eating disorder experts. Rowell has particular interests in avoidant, or “extreme picky eating” including ARFID, as well as food preoccupation. She supports adoptive and fostering parents through a trauma-informed lens. Learn more at thefeedingdoctor.com. More from Christy: Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Registered dietitian Jackie Silver joins us to discuss nutritional approaches that are helpful for neurodivergence, why neurodivergent people are often the targets of wellness and diet culture, the kinds of wellness-culture messages she’s gotten as a person with a disability, and why the advice to cut out gluten for autism is often harmful. Behind the paywall, we get into why ultraprocessed food consumption doesn’t cause autism and why cutting out these foods doesn’t “cure” it, the harmful discourse around autism and ADHD in the culture right now, why it’s harmful to categorize foods as “good” and “bad,” and more. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Jackie Silver is a Registered Dietitian and founder of Jackie Silver Nutrition, a virtual private practice specializing in supporting neurodivergent kids, teens, and adults with ADHD, autism (ASD), and intellectual/developmental disabilities (IDD). Her team offers neurodiversity-affirming, nonjudgmental, and weight-inclusive care. Jackie earned her Master of Health Science in Nutrition Communication from Toronto Metropolitan University and has specialized training in mindful eating and sensory-based feeding therapy. She and her team support clients across Ontario, Canada, and several U.S. states, including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, helping with meal planning, selective eating, food aversions, digestive health, chronic disease management, and more. In her free time, Jackie enjoys rock climbing, yoga, pilates, swimming, traveling, visiting museums, and spending time with family and friends. Learn more about her work at jackiesilvernutrition.com. Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Physician and writer Mara Gordon joins us to discuss diet and wellness culture among medical doctors, why she took Ozempic for weight loss (and what made her quit), how she came to practice weight-inclusive care, and lots more. Behind the paywall, we get into why she was initially reluctant to write about weight inclusivity, her perspective on Ozempic and other GLP-1s now (and whether she prescribes them to patients), her upcoming book, and more. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Dr. Mara Gordon is a family physician and writer based in Philadelphia. She is a frequent contributor to NPR and often writes about size-inclusive medicine, fatphobia in health care, and is at work on a book about body justice. She also writes the Substack newsletter "Chief Complaint" at maragordonmd.substack.com. Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Eating-disorders dietitian Marci Evans joins us to discuss the current science on “food addiction” (sometimes called “ultraprocessed food addiction”)—and what’s changed since I first interviewed her about this topic for Food Psych back in 2016. We get into how food addiction is defined and measured (and what that definition leaves out), the overlap between disordered eating and high scores on food-addiction scales, how food-addiction discourse perpetuates weight stigma, the nuances behind the research showing that people’s brain scans are different when eating ultraprocessed vs. minimally processed food, and whether it’s really useful to think about food in terms of addiction. In the paid portion, we talk about practical applications: how Marci would help someone who has addictive-like tendencies or thinks of themselves as being addicted to food, what we can learn from this discussion of “food addiction” to help people have a better relationship with food, and more. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Marci identifies as a Food and Body Imager Healer® practicing from a weight inclusive and anti-oppression lens. She has dedicated her career to counseling, supervising, and teaching in the field of eating disorders. She is a Certified Eating Disorder Registered Dietitian and Supervisor and certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. In addition to her group private practice, in 2015 Marci launched an online eating disorders training platform for clinicians. In 2016 she joined the Simmons nutrition department to co-develop a specialized eating disorder internship and teach graduate level courses on nutrition counseling for eating disorders. She loves books more than just about anything. Find her at marcird.com. Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Filmmaker and podcaster Kelsey Snelling joins us to discuss her new podcast, Camp Shame, which exposes the troubling history of a notorious weight-loss camp. We get into the effects of deprivation and starvation, the cult-like nature of the camp, how it weathered its many scandals, whether it’s possible to run a camp for larger-bodied kids that’s weight-inclusive or ethical, how she made the podcast, and more. Kelsey Snelling is a Philadelphia filmmaker whose work centers social and environmental justice. Her dream is to direct music videos for Billie Eilish, hike the Appalachian Trail, and return to her previous residence of Alaska to live on a farm overrun with cats. “Camp Shame” is her first audio project. Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Author and activist Amanda Martinez Beck joins us to discuss her experience of taking Ozempic for diabetes while also working to accept her body and break down anti-fat bias in society. She shares her history of dieting and disordered eating, how chronic conditions including diabetes as well as fibromyalgia and post-Covid syndrome have impacted her relationship with food and her body, why she started taking Ozempic in the first place, how diet culture is a new form of religion, and how her actual religious faith has influenced her eating-disorder recovery. Behind the paywall, we get into the tricky landscape of Ozempic and eating disorders, how Ozempic has fallen short of what the ads and influencers promise, her take on all the GLP-1 hype, and more. This episode previously aired on our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Amanda Martinez Beck is a fat activist, educator, and the author of More of You: The Fat Girl's Field Guide to the Modern World. She runs the Instagram account @your_body_is_good, where she combines her love of hand lettering with her vision of fat liberation. Amanda lives with her husband and four kids in northeast Texas, and she writes a weekly Substack called The Fat Dispatch. Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Registered dietitians and diabetes educators Jessica Jones and Wendy Lopez join us to discuss why weight loss isn’t necessary for managing blood sugar, why the popular wellness-culture notion of diabetes “remission” or “reversal” can be harmful, how the popularity of Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs as diet drugs is affecting people who use them for diabetes, the continuous-glucose-monitor trend for monitoring blood sugar in people without diabetes, Jess’s experience navigating prediabetes and other health conditions, and more. This episode previously aired on our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Wendy Lopez and Jessica Jones are nationally recognized Registered Dietitian Nutritionists and Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialists. With over a decade of clinical experience, they have helped thousands of individuals improve their relationship with food and achieve better health outcomes. Wendy and Jessica are the co-founders of Diabetes Digital, an innovative telehealth platform designed to empower individuals to manage and prevent diabetes through 1:1 virtual nutrition counseling. Through their previous work with Food Heaven, Wendy and Jess have made a lasting impact on nutrition and wellness, promoting healthier relationships with food and inclusive health education. The Food Heaven Podcast, boasting 5 million downloads, explores evidence-based nutrition, mental health, HAES, intuitive eating, and body respect. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Journalist Virginia Sole-Smith joins us to discuss how GLP-1 hype has changed the conversation about diet culture, the importance of body autonomy, how “bro” diet culture became public policy, how she handles haters, the “fed is best” approach to parenting, and lots more. Behind the paywall, she shares her experience of weighing herself for the first time in years, what it’s been like to date for the first time in a larger body, how she’s changed her relationship to cardio, and more. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. As a journalist, Virginia Sole-Smith has reported from kitchen tables, graduated from beauty school, and gone swimming in a mermaid’s tail. Virginia's latest book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, is a New York Times bestseller that investigates how the "war on childhood obesity" has caused kids to absorb a daily onslaught of body shame from peers, school, diet culture, and families—and offers research-based strategies to help parents name and navigate the anti-fat bias that infiltrates our schools, doctor’s offices and dinner tables. Virginia began her career in women’s magazines, alternatively challenging beauty standards and gender norms, and upholding diet culture through her health, nutrition and fitness reporting. This work led to her first book, The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America, in which Virginia explored how we can reconnect to our bodies in a culture that’s constantly giving us so many mixed messages about both those things. Virginia’s work appears in the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and many other publications. Virginia lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her two kids, two cats, a dog, and way too many houseplants. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Parent coach Oona Hanson joins us to discuss how going to a physical therapist for back pain led her down a wellness-culture rabbit hole, why dietary restrictions to “fight inflammation” just ended up harming her relationship with food and her body, how she got the dubious diagnosis of “adrenal fatigue,” and more. Behind the paywall, we get into how she helped her child heal from an eating disorder (and how that process changed the course of her career), how parents can help their kids navigate pressures from diet and wellness culture, why smart and science-minded people can still fall for wellness misinformation, her experience with perimenopause and wellness culture, and more. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Oona Hanson is a nationally recognized parent coach who supports families navigating diet culture and eating disorders. She is passionate about helping parents raise kids who have a healthy relationship with food and their body. A regular contributor to CNN, Oona has been featured widely, including on Good Morning America, The Washington Post, USA Today, US News & World Report, People, and Parents Magazine. Oona holds a Master's Degree in Educational Psychology and a Master's Degree in English. She writes the Parenting Without Diet Culture newsletter and will publish her first book in 2026 with Cambridge University Press. She is a mother of two and lives in Los Angeles. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Dietitian and diabetes educator Janice Dada joins us to discuss why there’s so much stigma and blame on people with diabetes, the wellness-culture belief that people can “reverse diabetes” by restricting foods and taking a bunch of supplements, why people don’t “give themselves diabetes” by eating too much sugar, the myth that people with diabetes can’t eat sugar or carbs, her new book on intuitive eating for diabetes, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into the myths about diabetes and body size, the harms of trying to lose weight with diabetes, issues with the “prediabetes” label, the GLP-1 craze, and how to practice intuitive eating with diabetes. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Paid subscribers can hear the extended interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Janice Dada is a weight-inclusive registered dietitian with a private practice in Newport Beach, CA. She is a certified intuitive eating counselor, certified diabetes care and education specialist (CDCES), and certified eating disorders specialist (CEDS). She is passionate about simplifying and destigmatizing the nutrition- and weight-based discourse around diabetes. Intuitive Eating for Diabetes: The No Shame, No Blame, Non-Diet Approach to Managing Your Blood Sugar is her first book. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Registered dietitian and INTUITIVE EATING co-author Elyse Resch returns to help dispel myths about intuitive eating, including that it means *only* listening to instinct and not the rational brain, that it’s incompatible with eating-disorder recovery, that it’s impossible in an environment rife with “ultraprocessed” foods, and more. She also shares her definition of gentle nutrition, plus some behind-the-scenes looks at the latest books in the IE series and her new intuitive eating app in development. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDS-C, Fiaedp, FADA, FAND, is a nutrition therapist in private practice with 43 years of experience, specializing in eating disorders, Intuitive Eating, and Health at Every Size. She is the co-author of Intuitive Eating, now in its 4th edition, The Intuitive Eating Workbook and The Intuitive Eating Card Deck: 50 Bite-Sized Ways to Make Peace with Food (Bookshop affiliate links). Elyse is also the author of The Intuitive Eating Workbook for Teens and The Intuitive Eating Journal: Your Guided Journey for Nourishing a Healthy Relationship with Food, and a chapter contributor to The Handbook of Positive Body Image and Embodiment as well as a chapter contributor to Weight and Wisdom: Reflections on Decades of Working for Body Liberation. She has published journal articles, print articles, and blog posts. Elyse does regular speaking engagements, podcast interviews, and extensive media interviews. Her work has been profiled on ABC, NPR, CNN, KABC, NBC, KTTV, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, KFI Radio, USA Today, and the Huffington Post, among others. Elyse is nationally known for her work in helping patients break free from diet culture through the Intuitive Eating process. Her philosophy embraces the goal of reconnecting with one’s internal wisdom about eating and developing body liberation, with the belief that all bodies deserve dignity and respect. She is a social justice advocate, a member of the Healer’s Circle of Project Heal—Help to Eat, Accept, and Live, and consults with and trains health professionals. Elyse is also a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist and Consultant, on the Advisory Board of Within Health, a Fellow of the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals, and a Fellow of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Learn more about her work at elyseresch.com. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Dietitian and author Jenna Hollenstein joins us to discuss her experience with alcoholism and recovery, the intersection of disordered eating and disordered drinking, the sobriety trend in wellness culture, Dry January, mindful drinking, “food addiction,” and more. (This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.) Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Jenna Hollenstein, MS, RDN, CDN, is an anti-diet dietitian-nutritionist, certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, speaker, meditation teacher, and author of five books, including Eat to Love and Intuitive Eating for Life. She blends Intuitive Eating with mindfulness to help people transform food and body shame into joyful eating and movement. Jenna received a BS in nutrition from Penn State University and an MS in nutrition from Tufts University. She has trained in numerous integrative modalities, including polyvagal theory, somatic self-compassion, trauma-sensitive mindfulness, and embodied social justice. Jenna has spoken at universities, retreat centers, and extensively online for both consumer and clinician audiences. Her work has been featured in the The New York Times, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Yoga Journal, Health, Self, Lion’s Roar, Mindful, Vogue, Elle, Glamour, and Women’s World. Learn more about her work at jennahollenstein.com. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anti-diet personal stylist Dacy Gillespie joins us to discuss diet and wellness culture, her bad experience with functional medicine (and what attracted her to it in the first place), how she’s dealing with her chronic symptoms now, and why she doesn’t think clothes should be “flattering.” Behind the paywall, we get into how to shop for clothes after your body changes, how to start discovering your authentic personal style beyond diet culture’s ideals, the advice that revolutionized Christy’s approach to fashion, the parallels between intuitive eating and fashion, and more. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. As a weight-inclusive, anti-diet personal stylist, Dacy Gillespie helps her clients reject fashion rules and ideal standards of beauty imposed by the patriarchy, white supremacism, and capitalism so that they can uncover their authentic style. Through their work building a functional wardrobe, Dacy’s clients make a mindset shift from thinking they need to wear what’s flattering to unapologetically taking up space in the world. After a lifetime of jobs in high-stress careers that didn’t suit her highly sensitive, introverted personality, Dacy started mindful closet in 2013 in an attempt to create a more emotionally sustainable lifestyle. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Real Simple, New York Magazine’s The Strategist, and Lifehacker, and she is a frequent podcast guest. Dacy lives with her husband and two children in St. Louis, Missouri. Learn more about her work at mindfulcloset.com. If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy