Food Psych Podcast with Christy Harrison

Anti-diet psychotherapist Carmen Cool joins us to discuss embracing anger against diet culture and the patriarchy, how to give yourself permission to engage in health-promoting behaviors for non-diet reasons, why intersectional feminism was so integral to her eating disorder recovery, the perceived hierarchy of disordered eating behaviors, her experience training health professionals in a weight-i...

Cultural historian Emily Contois joins us to talk about the history of diet culture, how women's political power increased the pressure on women and femmes to restrict their eating, the need for an intersectional approach to healthcare and food access, the religious undertones to our food behavior, gender roles in food, the body-image issues that men face in an industrialized patriarchal socie...

Lindsey Averill, writer, activist, and film maker, comes on the show this week to discuss the release of her new movie, “Fattitude,” how she found intuitive eating and discovered body acceptance, the issue of weight discrimination and size bias in media and the medical community, her work in body image, the problem with mainstream body positivity, and more! PLUS, Christy answers a listener questio...

Ragen Chastain, the fabulous fat-acceptance activist, writer, and speaker, returns to dig into the dangers of weight loss surgery, navigating the healthcare system as a fat person, the problem with the current weight science and fatphobia within the medical community, why weight loss interventions can’t coexist with eating disorder recovery programs, and so much more. PLUS, Christy answers a liste...

Isabel Foxen Duke is back! The anti-diet coach and emotional eating expert returns for the THIRD time to share more about why we fight food and how to stop, why Isabel wants to destigmatize emotional eating, the problems with healthism, how the human desire for control runs deep within many of our decisions, how to handle triggers as a recovered person, her exploration of diet literature dating ba...

This week we’re talking with Deb Burgard, one of the founders of the Health at Every Size movement. The psychotherapist, author and activist discusses weight stigma in the healthcare system, pursuing joyful movement, size oppression and the exclusion of fat bodies from eating disorder treatment, her discovery of fat activism and feminism, how to find joy and healing, and much more! PLUS, Christy a...

Fellow intuitive eating coach and non-diet dietitian Jenna Hollenstein discusses food as self-care, why people fall into disordered eating and alcoholism as coping mechanisms, the connection between dieting and religion, how to tolerate discomfort, the role of diet culture in keeping social progress for happening, how to set boundaries and limits, how to practice self-compassion, and a whole lot m...

Melissa Fabello returns! The activist and scholar shares why dieting and restriction reduce our sex drive, how beauty can be reimagined and reclaimed, how the need for affection and intimacy differs from the need for sex, what "skin hunger" is all about, why the Netflix movie To the Bone is so problematic and triggering, how she navigates complex issues in feminism, and a whole lot more! P...

Psychologist and author Louise Adams discusses why the Health at Every Size approach is essential in treating disordered eating, the problems with the "obesity epidemic" rhetoric, how trauma and body neglect shaped her relationship with food at a young age, why self-compassion is an essential antidote to shame, how to move from a deprivation mindset to an intuitive mindset with uncondition...

Writer and activist Sonya Renee Taylor joins us to discuss why we need more radical body love in the world, how to deal with weight gain and weight stigma while learning intuitive eating, what mainstream body positivity gets wrong, why understanding oppression and intersecting identities is the key to creating a world that's *truly* body-positive, how to navigate diet culture as a body-accepta...

Jes Baker, body-liberation activist and author of the book Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls, discusses her continuing process of recovery from trauma related to food, eating, and fatphobia; why talking about trauma is so important; why she uses the term "body liberation" instead of "body positivity" or "fat acceptance"; why we need to have more nuanced conversations about...

Art therapist and Health at Every Size counselor Maggie Ritnour shares how she was introduced to body comparisons and disordered eating in the dance world, how depression and grief led her to restrict her eating, how art and writing helped get her through that difficult period, why art therapy is an important tool in recovery from disordered eating, how it feels to find our authentic voice, how to...

Yoga teacher and fellow Health at Every Size dietitian Casey Berglund shares how she overcame restriction and food shame, how she went from having an intuitive relationship with food as a child to trying to manipulate her body size, why yoga was exactly what she needed to break through perfectionism, why she started thinking outside the box in her career, why it's dangerous to approach intuiti...

Fellow Health at Every Size RD Anna Sweeney shares how having a disability has affected her relationship with food and her body, how she's come to terms with the identity of being a disabled person, why anti-diet work is about social justice and equality for *all* bodies (not just those that are considered socially acceptable), why having a loved one with an eating disorder can bring up confli...

Body-image activist Connie Sobczak joins us to discuss recovering from diet culture and body dissatisfaction, her role in creating the concept of body positivity and how HAES and fat acceptance were integrated from the start, the pluses and minuses of the current body-positive movement, why calling it "body neutrality" might work better for some people, why BMI is BS, the beauty ideal and...

Fellow Health at Every Size dietitian Heidi Schauster shares how she overcame restriction and bingeing, why perfectionism fuels the fire of disordered eating, how intuitive eating leads to a peaceful relationship with food, what health professionals need to know about Health at Every Size, how to overcome self-judgment and speak more kindly to yourself, why the thin ideal is so damaging to people&...

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 obs...

Jessamyn Stanley, acclaimed yoga teacher and body-acceptance advocate, joins us to discuss overcoming decades of dieting, healing from oppressive beauty standards, learning to accept her size and stop pursuing weight loss, the "yoga-industrial complex" vs. real yoga, her new book Every Body Yoga, being an Instagram sensation, navigating people's expectations of her as a yoga teacher, a...

Psychotherapist and author Anita Johnston shares how learning to feel and honor your feelings can help you heal from food issues, why she had a very unusual relationship with food growing up, how beauty ideals for women have remained oppressive over time even if they change slightly, why being intuitive and able to read people is both a liability and a gift, why it's important to have both bou...

Body-acceptance activist Gloria Lucas (Nalgona Positivity Pride) shares why she created an organization devoted to helping people of color heal from diet culture, why the traditional medical model of eating disorder recovery didn't work for her, the role of trauma in her disordered eating, how intersectional feminism helped in her healing, why the mainstream body-positive movement isn't me...

Health At Every Size® dietitian Lindsay Stenovec shares why different life stages can be so triggering for food and body issues, how pregnancy and the postpartum period can affect our relationships with food, why we need to prioritize self-care for its own sake, why reflecting on your values and what you want out of life is so important for recovery from dieting and disordered eating, how she came...

Size-acceptance speaker and yoga teacher Rachel Estapa (More to Love®) discusses how being a larger-bodied child led to early experiences of shame and dieting, why a lack of plus-size clothing options exacerbated her body hatred, why diet culture's promise to "fix" us is so alluring, how an acute illness led to an unexpected truce with her body, why rediscovering her loves and desires...

Virgie Tovar returns for our 100th episode! The inimitable fat-acceptance activist shares what she's been up to in the 2 years since she first appeared on Food Psych (episode #45), why you can't be body-positive and actively pursue weight loss at the same time, how the history of the body-positive movement left it open for misinterpretation, why fat acceptance and body liberation are bette...

Lindy West, author of the book Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman , shares how she became a fat-acceptance activist, the roles that feminism and body-positive imagery played in helping her reject diet culture, her experience of finding love in a larger body, how thin allies to the fat-acceptance movement can help, how she's improved her relationship with food and what she's still working on,...

Food blogger and fellow anti-diet dietitian Kylie Mitchell shares how she overcame dieting, disordered eating, and compulsive exercise; why she wanted to start a food blog that celebrates food and eschews the orthorexic messages of other "wellness" blogs; the insidious ways in which diet culture is woven into the fabric of how we talk about food and health; why non-diet approaches like Hea...