All Fired Up

Michelle Bridges. Personal trainer on the Aussie version of The Biggest Loser, fervent cult leader of wildly popular online starvation program the 12WBT, and media darling of Aussie diet culture. We all know she sucks, but this week on All Fired Up! I speak to an incredible woman who has literally WRITTEN A BOOK ABOUT WHY SHE SUCKS! Author and feminist warrior Natalie Jovanovski hasn't just got mad - she got even. By dissecting EXACTLY what's wrong with the Bridges of this world, in her amazing book Natalie unpacks the way our food culture is spreading toxic messages of female oppression, and making women police themselves! This is a not to be missed episode! 

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This week I spoke with Courtney Pharoah, dietitian from No Green Smoothies, who absolutely HAD to get Pete Evans off her chest. Courtney was in dire need of debriefing after reading a news article where Pete was saying that eating 3 meals a day is a conspiracy created by Big Food to keep us all fat and unhealthy. Oh give me strength!! Courtney cuts through the cultish bulls**t and introduces some much needed rational thought! The fact is, cults like this are doing much more harm than good. Modern wellness is just the diet industry rebranded, and the obsession with health is making us much sicker. 

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This week my guest is Nicole McDermid, social worker, eating disorder survivor, awesome person, and unapologetically living in a larger body. We met at the Australian & New Zealand Association for Eating Disorders (ANZAED) conference in Sydney a few weeks ago, and immediately bonded. In this episode we chat about weight bias in the eating disorders treatment community. You'd think that of all places, an eating disorders conference would be a safe place for people of all shapes and sizes, with an absence of weight focus. But the reality is the opposite! The worst part of the conference was the inclusion of Obesity Inc - literally, people who want to erase fat people entirely - and the apparent trend of firstly, treating people in larger bodies for eating disorders, and then promptly putting them straight back on a diet. What the hell?

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The beauty industry is literally aiming below the belt, introducing a whole new line of beauty products called "The Perfect V." This week I chat with the incredibly funny Shelley Lask from Body Positive Health & Fitness about this utterly ludicrous, unnecessary and condescending offering from diet culture. Do we need sparkly vulvas in order to empower ourselves and discover body freedom? Um, nope. We can love ourselves, feel free in our bodies, and generally do a hell of a lot without ever having a vanicure. Next! 

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Without a doubt the WORST board game ever invented, YiYo teaches 5 YEAR OLD KIDS HOW TO CALORIE COUNT! This week on All Fired Up, Susan Williams, dietitian and eating disorders expert, became justifiably livid about the potential harms of ‘games’ like these.  It’s yet another example of diet culture at work: in the panic fuelled by (unsubstantiated) cataclysmic portents of fat-doom, we literally lose our minds, and become willing to do just about anything to ‘fight obesity’ - even when there’s no evidence to show it’ll even work. And the worst part is, the people who developed this game did not even consider that teaching kids to calorie count, and to learn to exercise to ‘work off’ the calories, might put them at risk of developing eating disorders. Seriously: none of the developers EVER ASKED THIS QUESTION! This is not ok.

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This week on All Fired Up I spoke with Jodie Meichelsen, exercise physiologist and Doctoral candidate (as well as one of our fierce UNTRAPPED guides) about the rage inducing world of Fitspiration. Kayla Itsines, queen of the Fitspo world, is wanting IN to the world of body positivity! She's sniffed out that feeling good about your body is the 'next big thing' and is now pretending that she's all about that. Sorry Kayla but NO. Body positivity exists to push BACK against messages like yours. Jodie and I talk about how statements like this from people who are still busily peddling images of physical perfection is gaslighting and confusing. Money is the motivation here, not social justice. In this enlightening episode, Jodie talks sense about the research on Fitspo and how it impacts our attitudes towards exercise and how it affects our mental health. We also talk about what genuine body positivity is, and how to find inspiration that genuinely supports our wellbeing.

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This week on All Fired Up, we waded into the media sh**storm which erupted after a Sports Illustrated bikini show dared to put models who looked like MOST WOMEN on the catwalk. Hysterical headlines urged the madness to stop, as seeing actual people is apparently GLORIFYING OBESITY, according to the head of the Australian Medical Association. I spoke to the incredible Sarah Harry, fat activist and owner of one of these unglorified bodies, to get her take on the situation. Our take? - Glorify, Glorify, CELEBRATE, and push back on ridiculous messages like these!

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Our guest this week is none other than the fabulous Fiona Sutherland from Body Positive Australia and The Mindful Dietitian. Fiona is also one of our amazing UNTRAPPED guides! In this episode we talk about weight-inclusive health care, and why all bodies deserve to be treated respectfully at the doctor no matter what size! We talk about how weight bias gets in the way of seeing the true complexity of people's health, and how terms such as 'atypical anorexia' (meaning, anorexia in a larger body) are totally screwed up. We then talk about how to EMPOWER yourself and stand up for better treatment.

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For our very first All Fired Up podcast, I'm chatting to the incredible Fiona Willer, dietitian, educator, and anti-diet researcher. We came across an article written in Time Magazine called "The Weight Loss Trap: Why Your Diet Isn't Working." As anti-diet health professionals we KNOW that trying to lose weight is a trap for the vast majority, so initially we were SO excited to see Time magazine admitting it! But then we read the article...and we got angry!! Because once again, the media is falling into the trap of calling weight loss a trap, and then pretending that it's not a trap in the very next breath. Fiona and I take you through why this article is mostly bulls**t, and how to protect yourself from further media bulls**t about weight science. UNTRAPPING from the weight loss trap means thinking critically and looking underneath the assumptions of weight science. Fiona talks sense about the relationship between health and weight, and dissects this constant message that the only way we can be healthy is to lose weight.

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