What I'm Tuning Into [Top Reads & Podcasts]

Every now and then, I like to share what I’m tuning into when it comes to diet culture, body diversity, Intuitive Eating, Health at Every Size and more.

It’s my hope that the following content will help support you on your journey toward a more peaceful relationship with food and your body.

Why Most Diets Don’t Work—and What to Try Instead [Popular Science]
“Something society doesn’t quite grasp yet is that weight is really, really hard to control. When somebody gains weight or their diet fails, they blame themselves rather than the thousands of forces that are conspiring to keep that weight on and to make you gain more weight.”

How to Help Your Kids Build a Healthy Relationship with Food [Popular Science]
“Because it’s so easy for caregivers to pass on their own disordered eating patterns, an important first step in setting healthy standards for your child’s eating is to examine your own relationship with food.”

The Dieter’s Diet [Bustle]
”Noom, the popular weight loss app, promises to teach you how to eat better, not less. (Except also, eat less.)”

For more on this, head on over to Virginia Sole-Smith’s follow-up piece. I also highly recommend her book, The Eating Instinct.

How to Fight Diet Culture at Your Family Dinner Table [Outside]
“Our kids are listening when we talk about ‘earning’ dessert with a hard hike or long bike ride, or when we call their Goldfish crackers ‘junk’ and try to steer them toward farmers’ market veggies instead. And they’re watching when we cut out gluten or stare critically at our thighs or our abs in the mirror."

You’re Showing Up in the World, and Nobody is Fooled [Burnt Toast]
If getting dressed in the morning, shopping for clothes and following fashion “rules” are all major stressors for you, then tune into this conversation between writer Virginia Sole-Smith and weight-inclusive personal stylist Dacy Gillespie of Mindful Closet.

“These ideas that that style is not for you, that you can’t take up space, that you can’t just be the physical person that you are, and that you should strive for an optical illusion that makes you appear smaller, which we then call 'flattering.' And that 'flattering' should be the priority above all else.”

Weight-Focused ‘Workplace Wellness’ Programs Drive Stigma and Inequity. Let’s Leave Them Behind [Self]
“Life is hard enough for workers of all kinds. Weight-focused workplace wellness programs could harm employees’ mental health in the short term, their physical health in the long term, and their pay in the immediate future. As we return to in-person work, let’s make the choice to decrease stigma and increase equity. Let’s leave workplace wellness programs in the past where they belong.”

I’m a big fan of all of Aubrey Gordon’s (a.k.a. Your Fat Friend) work and encourage you to check out her book, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, and her highly rated podcast, Maintenance Phase.

I hope you find this content to be informative, insightful and, ultimately, liberating. Tremendous gratitude to all of these paradigm-shifting individuals for making our world a better place.

I Don’t Want to Pass Dieting On to My Kids

Can you relate to Sandra's story?

For as long as she can remember, Sandra's mom has meticulously counted calories and carefully weighed almost everything she eats.

When her aunts visit her parent's house, the conversation is often centered on who is doing what diet and how it’s going, together celebrating their wins and commiserating over their struggles.

Their own mother, Sandra's grandma, is a very restrictive eater and frequently comments on family members’ weight and polices everyone's eating.

Sandra's dad also has a fraught relationship with food. Over the years, he’s swung numerous times from eating everything to restricting something, whether it’s fat, carbs or the hours he’s allowed to eat.

At the age of 11, Sandra's mom took her to her first weight-loss meeting.

Although she felt a little weird being the only kid in the room, she also felt inspired by the success stories the women in the circle shared, especially when everyone cheered and clapped.

It felt good to be a part of their club and to be doing something to fix her apparently problematic body.

Ending the Legacy
Stepping into that weight-loss clinic as a young girl launched Sandra on the dieting rollercoaster. Since then, she’s tried every diet under the sun. After more than 20 years of yo-yo dieting, she’s hit rock bottom.

Even though she doesn’t like her body, she can’t stand the thought of going on one more diet. More than anything, she can’t stand the thought of passing her family’s legacy of body shame and dieting on to her kids.

Many of my clients who are thinking about starting a family or already have kids express their desire to protect their children from our harmful diet culture. They don’t want them to suffer the way they have.

This is also true for many of my clients who don’t have children but have kids in their life, whether it’s their nieces, nephews, friends’ kids, students or team members.

And it’s true for my clients who didn’t grow up in a family entrenched in diet culture yet didn't escape its pervasive clutches and are deeply motivated by the idea of not handing down their food and body challenges.

I get really excited when my clients share this desire with me because I know the positive ripple effect that can occur when just one person heals their relationship with food and their body, how doing so can put an end to a history of disordered eating and anti-fat bias.

What Kind of Role Model?
For my clients with this goal, we spend time exploring what type of role model they want to be when it comes to food and bodies.

We talk about how they can reclaim their ability to eat intuitively while helping the kids in their life maintain their ability to do so.

Then we do the challenging yet rewarding work that’s required to recover from diet culture and build a peaceful relationship with food and their body, one that they’re excited to pass along.

When Did Food Become Complicated for You?

Recently, I was talking with some friends and family members about what our favorite meal was when we were kids.

Mine was spaghetti.

Specifically, spaghetti with only butter and Parmesan cheese.

I vividly recall eating this combo at one of our family’s favorite restaurants, Spaghetti Works, where it was called “Hot Naked.”

When ordering, I was too embarrassed to say “naked” so I would shyly point to it on the menu as my cheeks burned bright red. My mortification, however, did not stop me from ordering my beloved dish.

In addition to those buttery noodles, I loved many different foods, from pepperoni pizza and buttermilk pancakes to sloppy joes and peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches. And, of course, I relished anything sweet.

Food was easy back then.

I ate it and moved on.

After all, I had far more exciting things to focus on, like riding bikes and playing hide-and-seek with my neighborhood friends.

When Food Became Complicated
I sometimes reflect on when food started to become complicated for me.

While I can’t pinpoint an exact moment, I do recall starting to view food differently when I was around 11 or 12 years old and feeling terribly awkward in my rapidly changing pubescent body.

One memory is of my best friend and I making these giant chef salads loaded with iceberg lettuce, diced turkey, shredded cheddar, herb-seasoned croutons and low-cal ranch dressing. As we dug in, we’d pat ourselves on the back for making something healthy and hopefully slenderizing.

I remember another moment around this time when, as I reached for a chocolate-fudge brownie at a family reunion, an older boy shouted across the crowded kitchen, “Once on the lips, forever on the hips!”

With my shoulders slumped, head down and cheeks burning with shame and humiliation, I turned away without saying a word and headed to a quiet corner to eat my brownie alone because who would want to be watched doing something seemingly bad?

As I entered high school, I started getting more deeply entrenched in diet culture, from drinking diet soda and replacing meals with SlimFast shakes to burning calories in aerobics classes.

For a short while, I doubled down on these efforts believing that if I lost a lot of weight my ex-boyfriend would regret dumping me and beg me to take him back.

Even More Complicated
In my later teens, my dad was diagnosed with heart disease and our kitchen became fat-free practically overnight. At that time, even almonds and avocados were off-limits.

From Snackwell’s chocolate-chip cookies and non-fat lemon yogurt to blueberry bagels with fat-free cream cheese, I continued to eat fat-free throughout college because I was taught doing so was the ticket to good health and a thin body.

Shortly after moving from Omaha to San Francisco a few years after graduating, I started restricting my eating further.

My list of food rules grew longer and more complicated. Being hyper-vigilant with my eating gave me the illusion of control in an environment where I felt like a complete fish out of water.

Hitting Rock Bottom
My struggle with food and my weight went on for years until I finally hit rock bottom.

I didn’t like the person I had become (frankly, neither did the people closest to me). And I no longer wanted to waste my life trying to have a body I was never meant to have.

With the help of some very wise guides, I came to understand that I can trust my body to tell me what it needs and to weigh what it’s meant to weigh—just as I used to do long ago before diet culture eroded this trust.

I returned to making food decisions based on my body’s cues and satisfaction, including how foods tasted and felt in my body. No longer were my choices driven by food rules, good and bad lists, and how something might impact my weight.

I started regularly eating all my favorite foods again instead of restricting then bingeing on them as I did during my dieting days.

And I felt a sense of freedom with food that I hadn’t felt since I was a young girl.

What About You?
We come into this world knowing how to eat intuitively.

Sadly, for many reasons, we start to disconnect from our instincts and internal cues and instead start following external rules that, for many, result in a disordered relationship with food and their body.

When did food start becoming complicated for you?

Can you remember a time when food was not an issue? If so, how did it feel?

If you were to decide tomorrow that you’re finally done with being at war with food and your body, what steps would you take next?

It’s completely understandable if you feel some ambivalence about stopping dieting and being so tightly regimented with food and your body. Loosening the reins can feel both exciting and scary.

Perhaps a first step might just be imagining what would be possible for you and your life if food was no longer complicated.