In this episode, Nicola and Florence meet Ragen Chastain. Ragen is a HAES Speaker, Writer, Dancer, Marathoner, ACE Certified Health Coach and Functional Fitness Specialist, in Training to be an Iron-Distance Triathlete, Activist, and the brains behind The WeightAndHealthcare Newsletter on Substack.

Ragen starts by telling us about her story with dieting, overexercising, and losing her periods. Having a research and statistics masters, Ragen researched the internet for the best way to lose weight. She was shocked to realise there was not a single study documenting valuable evidence as to weight loss being somehow effective or sustainable.

From there, she started looking into links between body weight and health, and became a well-regarded expert on Health at Every Size (HAES), especially in medical circles.

During this interview, Ragen exposes how to detect and address weight bias in the doctor’s office; what to answer when others comment on your food or body as they are working on recovery and how to tackle internalised fatphobia in each of us while making the world more inclusive.

In this episode, Ragen mentions books on understanding the racist roots of the BMI:
Sabrina Strings, Fearing the black body available here
De'shaun Harrison, The belly of the beast available here

Make sure to subscribe to Ragen's incredible work
- Weight and Healthcare Newsletter: https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/
- HAEShealthsheets.com allowing you to check whether your doctor is suffering from weight bias in the treatment they recommend: https://haeshealthsheets.com/
- Ragen's super funny blog and resourceful website: https://danceswithfat.org/

To find support in yo

To find support in your HA recovery:
Get the "No Period. Now What?" book at noperiod.info/book.
Get the French version "Je n'ai plus mes regles" book at noperiod.info/livre.
Get the German version "Keine periode - was jetzt?" at noperiod.info/buch.

To join our support groups, please visit noperiod.info/support
for English, noperiod.info/communaute for French, and noperiod.info/community for German.

To make an appointment with Dr Sykes and get individual support to get your period back or improve your fertility, please go to noperiod.info/appointments
To make an appointment with Florence Gillet and get help with the body and mind changes happening in recovery please visit www.beyondbodyimage.com

You can find us on social media:
Instagram:
@noperiodnowwhat in English
@jenaiplusmesregles_livre in French
@keineperiodewasjetzt in German

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