Raising Fat Kids, Diet Foods and More Top Picks

Here’s another roundup of my top content picks to support you on your journey toward a peaceful relationship with food and your body.

There’s some really good stuff here.

I encourage you to check it out then share it with anyone you know who personally struggles with these things—or struggles to understand those who do.

Embodied Podcast: Resolved—Your Anti-Diet New Year [WUNC.org]
This three-part series does an impressive job with covering everything from diet culture’s racist roots, medical fatphobia and weight-loss science to Intuitive Eating and body neutrality.

Part 1: Deconstructing diet culture: Lessons unlearned from a thin-obsessed society

Part 2: Relearning how to eat: How intuitive eating can heal your relationship with food

Part 3: Becoming body neutral: why it’s OK to not always love your body

The Problem with Poodle Science [YouTube]
As mentioned in the above Embodied podcast, despite what diet culture wants us to believe, a mastiff isn't meant to have a poodle's body. This short, animated video illustrates why.

A Guide to Parenting Fat Kids [Today’s Parent]
“How do you raise a fat, healthy, happy child? I’m not a doctor or a psychologist. I’m just a fat kid who grew into a fat adult, and this is what would have been helpful to me.”

From not restricting and moralizing food to celebrating body diversity and working on your own food and body issues, this is a must-read for parents and caregivers of larger-bodied kids.

Diet Foods of the ’80s Are Out. But Has Anything Really Changed? [Bon Appetit]
“From the moment in 1898 when J.H. Kellogg introduced Toasted Corn Flakes to get our digestion on track, we’ve looked to food to make us healthier, more virtuous, and thinner. Has it worked? Not really. So why do we keep expecting it to?"

This very relatable deep dive into the evolution of diet foods and the diet and wellness industries will likely make you cringe, laugh and curse. It definitely brought back memories of all the “better for you” (yet terribly unsatisfying) foods I consumed when I was entrenched in diet/wellness culture (fat-free cream cheese, anyone?).

As always, I hope you find these recommendations to be informative, helpful, and ultimately, liberating. Huge gratitude to all the folks who are creating this much-needed paradigm-shifting content.

Note: In alliance with the fat-acceptance community, I use fat as a neutral descriptor.

I Shouldn't Be Eating These Fries

Do any of these thoughts sound familiar?

• These fries are so yummy but I should have ordered a side salad instead.

• I need to eat good tomorrow to make up for all these cookies.

• Once I’m done with this bag of chips, I’m not going to buy them again.

• I can have pizza for dinner but need to get back on track this next week.

• It’s okay if I have a slice of cake; it’s a special occasion after all.

These are all examples of mental restriction.

Although you may believe you aren’t restricting your eating, if you have thoughts like these, you are.

Even if you are allowing yourself to physically eat a food (e.g., I'm going to have a donut), if you’re denying yourself on a physiological level (e.g., I shouldn’t be eating this donut), you are restricting.

While a part of you is saying, “Yes, I'm going to eat this” another part of you is saying, “No, I shouldn’t” or “I won’t again.”

Mental restriction creates a threat of future deprivation that often leads to eating past comfortable fullness, sometimes in a way that feels out of control or binge-like.

This is not due to a lack of willpower or self-control. It’s a natural human response to potential food scarcity.

Unfortunately, this very normal and understandable response can make you feel bad, guilty and ashamed—and trigger a desire to diet as a way to gain control of your eating.

Dieting, with all its food rules, will only exacerbate your restrictive mindset (a.k.a. the diet mentality), ultimately creating a more fraught, roller-coaster relationship with food.

If you long for food peace, it’s essential to let go of all forms of restriction.

Intuitive Eating can help you identify and challenge your restrictive thoughts, which can be sublte and sneaky, so you can truly give yourself unconditional permission to eat in way that both tastes and feels satisfying. You deserve nothing but.


Of course, it’s important to note that some foods may need to be avoided due to certain medical conditions, such as a peanut allergy or celiac disease.

I Wanted to Toss All the Christmas Cookies

Over the holidays, I recalled a Christmas many years ago when I was visiting my parents at my childhood home.

Every year, my mom would attend a cookie exchange and return home with a giant platter full of a variety of holiday cookies.

I vividly remember standing alone over that red platter and quickly eating one cookie after another after another. Even though most of them didn’t taste very good to me, I kept eating them.

It felt like I was in a trance.

When I finally snapped to, I was so mad at myself for eating so many cookies. I felt crappy, out of control and powerless.

I certainly didn’t feel I could trust myself with those cookies.

I wanted to toss the entire platter into the trash to prevent myself from eating more but that wasn’t possible given they were meant to be shared among all my family members. I wasn’t sure how I would explain the missing cookies without a lot of lying, embarrassment and shame.

The only thing that helped was reassuring myself that I would get back on track with my eating as soon as the holidays were over.

The Cookies Weren’t the Problem
I haven’t had an eating episode like this one in years.

As I worked on healing my relationship with food and my body, I came to understand that my cookie experience and hundreds of others like it were not due to a lack of willpower or self-discipline. They were due to dieting.

Once I stopped all the restriction and rule-following and started eating unconditionally with guidance from my body’s cues, like hunger, fullness, desire and satisfaction, food lost its power over me.

Without the threat of future deprivation, I no longer had the urge to eat cookies or anything else as if it was my last supper.

Breaking up with diet culture and making peace with food and my body was one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever given myself.

Resolve to Make Peace Instead
Given the world we live in, the desire to diet is completely understandable.

It’s more tempting than ever this time of year as we’re bombarded by weight-loss company ads promising that their method is better than all the others and guaranteed to result in everlasting thinness, health and happiness—even though they don’t have any substantial, including long-term, research to back up their claims.

If you have a history of dieting (or whatever the food-restriction plan is called), you likely know all too well how this game eventually ends: weight regain, feeling like a failure, an even more messed up relationship with food and your body, and so many other undesired outcomes the diet companies don't warn you about.

What if this year, instead of hopping on the diet train, you resolve to make peace with food and your body?

How would doing so change your life?

The last two years have taught us many things, especially how precious life is.

How would you spend your one precious life if you were no longer wasting so much time, energy and headspace obsessing about what you’re eating and your weight?

What if you signed up for peace instead?