Body Kindness

Don't miss this important episode in the Learn & Grow Series. We talk about one of the longest studies on weight cycling and dieting — a study that followed the Biggest Loser contestants from Season 8 for six years. I help Bernie understand the outcomes of the journal article and how he can make peace with his experiences and move forward with body kindness instead of dieting. The study found that...

I'm loving this show today, all about anxiety and girls with bestselling author Dr. Lisa Damour. Her new book has just been released: Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls . We discuss what's normal and actually beneficial for teen girls when it comes to stress and anxiety, when you should worry, as well as the options available for talking with girls and young wo...

Why do higher weight folks get denied treatment for hip replacements, IVF, and even adoption? Find out the ways our culture excludes fat people even when research contradicts our approaches. My guest is Fiona Willer, HAES dietitian, academic, educator and creator of the HealthNotDiets Digest. About Fiona Fiona Willer's mission is to empower health professionals to adopt weight neutral practice by...

Bernie Salazar has been a student of the body kindness philosophy for over two years. But early on in his practice, The Biggest Loser was still a popular show and Bernie was still trying to make sense of what it meant to be healthy. Though he was deeply concerned about the well-being of the contestants, he still had his own self love and compassion "work" to do. His original "Loser letter," which...

In the last segment of our series featuring readers sharing their powerful stories, we hear from two trauma survivors, one who was abused and spent most of her life with an undetected eating disorder and one who experienced trauma from dieting on weight watchers, including needing two back surgeries from running injuries sustained while being encouraged to do more and push harder to reach her weig...

Happy New Year! We are talking with readers about how they used Body Kindness as a way to break free from years of dieting and body shame. Tune in and get inspired as you contemplate your next step in healing your relationship with food, movement, and self care. You can't hate yourself healthy but with Body Kindness you can create a better life. Body Kindness is available everywhere books are sold...

Happy Holidays! We are closing out 2018 by talking with readers about how they used Body Kindness as a way to break free from years of dieting and body shame. Tune in and get inspired as you contemplate your next step in healing your relationship with food, movement, and self care. You can't hate yourself healthy but with Body Kindness you can create a better life. --- Body Kindness is available a...

The first historical study of diet books, Dr Adrienne Rose Bitar's book Diet and the Disease of Civilization examines how four popular plans -- Paleo, biblical, primitive, and detox diets -- reflect and shape our social world. Bitar categorized 17,000 diet books based on their titles. All of them, from Paleo to the "biblical diets" and even the first diet book by William Banting, center around the...

You already know that it's not easy to make changes to your habits. At all. It requires serious effort and a compassionate mindset as you try, mess up, and try again. In the next episode of our "body kindness for beginners" Learn and Grow series, Bernie and I discuss what is usually missing from the "new habit equation" and we share our own struggles with habits and how we're working our way throu...

Weight stigma, problems with our culture and the biases we carry about higher weight people harms their health. One pathway is through internalized stigma that elevates a person's worry and anxiety about how they will be treated by the people and the physical spaces in this world (think comfortable seats - or the right to sit!) Founder of the International Weight Stigma Conference , Dr. Angela Mea...

Psychology research in terror management theory has shown that when people are primed with thoughts of mortality, their behaviors change, but not necessarily in helpful ways. Tune in as I talk with dietitian Michelle Alison (the Fat Nutritionist) about how she was able to extrapolate Ernest Becker's research from the 1980s to today's diet culture which is full of "wellness" messages about saving y...

If you're new to #BodyKindness our podcast mini-series, Learn and Grow, was made for you. Bernie Salazar and Rebecca Scritchfield reflect on Bernie's early days saying "bye-bye" to his relationship with The Biggest Loser and diet culture forever! In Episode 5, you'll hear us discuss mindfulness and the beautiful and subtle ways in which Bernie has been able to embrace mindfulness and emotion regul...

In the first of a short series looking at research and weight stigma, I talk to Dr Jeffery Hunger , a postdoctoral scholar in Health Psychology at UCLA. As a social and health psychologist, Dr. Hunger is interested in using insights from psychology to understand and ultimately improve the health of stigmatized groups (e.g., heavier individuals, racial and sexual minorities). We have a great conver...

If you're new to #BodyKindness our podcast mini-series, Learn and Grow, was made for you. Bernie Salazar and Rebecca Scritchfield reflect on Bernie's early days saying "bye-bye" to his relationship with The Biggest Loser and diet culture forever! In Part 4, you'll hear us discuss emotional eating, feeling like you're addicted to food, and why it's probably NOT the case. Tune in to this pivotal epi...

This week I'm speaking at the Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo here in Washington DC, together with neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt . Our session is called The Neurobiology of Dieting: Evidence for Improving Mental Health with a Self-Care Approach . So it's the perfect time to revisit Sandra's popular appearance on the podcast. Sandra's TED Talk "Why dieting usually doesn't work"  has been viewed o...

In the third episode of our Body Kindness for Beginners podcast series "Learn and Grow" Bernie and I reflect on ways in which the practice of intuitive eating has helped him reject dieting and we discover new growth opportunities going forward. Tune in if you've ever felt confused about what the heck intuitive eating is and why it may be exactly what you need in your life. (Hint, the goal is to he...

Are you a "Body Kindness beginner?" This new mini-series will boost your hope and confidence in leaving diets behind. In the second episode Rebecca and Bernie process his unhealthy experience with exercise as a contestant on The Biggest Loser. Tune in to hear an honest conversation about why extreme exercise is unnecessary. If you're new to Body Kindness and would like help in finding that point w...

If you're new to the Body Kindness philosophy, breaking free from diets, and Health at Every Size (HAES) our new podcast series is made for you! Body Kindness Learn & Grow is a podcast series that will boost your hope and confidence in leaving diets behind from exactly where you are today. Think of it like "Body Kindness for beginners." Today is the first episode in our new series where Bernie and...

In this episode, I'm talking about Body Kindness in the family with a fellow HAES dietitian and mom, Anna Lutz . You'll hear us chat about topics like how to approach food at home that supports HAES and why it is never a good idea to label foods as good or bad, how to support kids of all sizes, how to talk about yourself and others' bodies with kids, how to talk to children about nutrition at a de...

Three parents with five kids between them (age ranges 2-12) gather to discuss what it's like to parent with body kindness, endure a child's body shame at the doctors office, re-educate your child after the school's health class taught diet tricks, what to say when your kid first says "fat" — as early as age three! And other things you need to know about raising kids with body kindness. About Krist...

This week I'm talking to author and fat activist  Virgie Tovar about her new book  You Have the Right to Remain Fat . Tune in as Virgie shares her manifesto for standing up to diet culture. Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body image. She is the founder of Babecamp , a 4-week online course designed to help women who...

Women who are pregnant or postpartum should not be dieting and yet, many women do, thanks to diet culture and weight stigma. In this episode, I chat with Lindsay Stenovec , certified eating disorder dietitian about the pressures women face to "get their pre-baby body back." We share personal experiences with postpartum depression and weight stigma during pregnancy as well as research that shows 93...

Continuing my women's health series, today we're talking about sex. My guest is one of my favorite "sexpert" authors  Emily Nagoski , sex educator and author of the New York Times bestseller  Come As You Are: the surprising new science that will transform your sex life .  Among the gems in our conversation today: how our sex-negative culture came to be, intimacy without performance pleasure, and h...

Bernie is back and we chat about weight and body conversations in the media, including my latest Washington Post story "What if doctors stopped weighing their patients? Healthcare might improve." and the amazing Self digital issue on weight. All the stories in the package are worth the read, starting with the letter from the editor who said "the way we talk about weight and health is broken" (yes,...

Continuing my women's health series, I'm excited that my guest is writer and activist Miriam Zoila Pérez . In 2016, Miriam gave a TED Talk : How Racism is Harming Pregnant Women--and What Can Help , which has been viewed over 850,000 times. In our conversation, we talk about the impact of racism on health. We also talk about toxic stress - what that is, how it builds up, and the impact it can make...