Currently, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) work rarely provides training and support for the weight-based discrimination, bias, and stigma that happens frequently in the workplace. Miriam Chiasson (she/her/elle/la) shares details of the workshop she’s created to change that. And she offers practical actions that individuals and organizations can take to create a more inclusive workplace.

Miriam Chiasson is a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion professional working for a leading DEI charity in Canada. She has delivered numerous training sessions in various workplaces and for the public on topics such as gender diversity, the inclusion of folks with disabilities, and inclusive language in English and in French. As a fat person, she also delivers on the topics of fatphobia, body diversity, and fat inclusion, areas that are relatively new to the DEI profession. Miriam has a background in history, anthropology, and library science. She worked as a public librarian for 5 years before finding a new outlet for her passion for social justice in DEI work. In her free time, she loves to knit and crochet, and volunteers for a cat rescue.

Please connect with Miriam on LinkedIn and her organization's page.

This episode’s poem is “A Certain Kind of Eden” by Kay Ryan.

After recording the interview, Sophia asks each guest 10 unexpected, unrehearsed questions designed to go even deeper. Check it out by subscribing through Apple Podcast Subscriptions or Patreon for as little as $2.

You can connect with Fat Joy on our website, Instagram, and YouTube (full video episodes here!). Want to share the fat love? Please rate this podcast and give it a joyful review.

Our thanks to Chris Jones and AR Media for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful.

We are taught early in our lives to not trust our bodies, to ignore their signals, and to turn away from pleasure. Dawn Serra (she/her), a therapist and coach, believes we can live more joyful and fulfilled lives by returning to our bodies by building body trust, embracing unconditional permission, and developing pleasure practices.

Dawn Serra has dedicated her life to unraveling the cultural stories that impact our relationship to our pleasure, our bodies, and how we relate with each other. Dawn is considered a leader in the field of sexuality and relationships, with a focus on pleasure for people recovering from eating disorders and those in fat bodies. She is a counsellor in British Columbia, a sex & relationship coach working with clients from around the world, a Certified Body Trust® Provider, speaker, podcaster, facilitator, consultant, and entrepreneur. She is also the co-founder of Tend and Cultivate Counselling, Inc, which is the first group therapeutic practice in Canada specifically dedicated to providing non-stigmatizing mental health care to people in larger bodies.

Mentioned in this episode: “Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls,” Body Trust, “The Art of Receiving and Giving,” Kai Cheng Thom, and “Pleasure Activism.”

Please connect with Dawn on her website.

This episode’s poem is “Other Body Prayer” by Dominik Parisien.

After recording the interview, Sophia asks each guest 10 unexpected, unrehearsed questions designed to go even deeper. Check it out by subscribing through Apple Podcast Subscriptions or Patreon for as little as $2.

You can connect with Fat Joy on our website, Instagram, and YouTube (full video episodes here!). Want to share the fat love? Please rate this podcast and give it a joyful review.

Our thanks to Chris Jones and AR Media for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful.

Chrissy King (she/her) recently published the book “The Body Liberation Project: How Understanding Racism and Diet Culture Helps Cultivate Joy and Build Collective Freedom.” Chrissy shares how a series of small, brave steps led to her own body liberation and how threatened the systems of white supremacy, racism, and diet culture are by her being a free, Black woman in the world. Also, we explore if there is liberation without body liberation.

Chrissy King writer, speaker, educator, and former strength coach with a passion for creating a diverse and inclusive wellness industry. She is also the author of “The Body Liberation Project.” Through her work, Chrissy empowers individuals to stop shrinking, start taking up space, and use their energy to create their specific magic in the world. With degrees in social justice and sociology from Marquette University, Chrissy merges her passion for social justice with her passion for wellness to inspire members of the fitness industry to create spaces that allow individuals from all backgrounds to feel seen, welcomed, affirmed, and celebrated.

Mentioned in this episode: Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey and Luvvie Ajayi Jones.

Please connect with Chrissy through her website, Instagram, and TikTok.

This episode’s poem is called “Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limon.

After recording the interview, Sophia asks each guest 10 unexpected, unrehearsed questions designed to go even deeper. Check it out by subscribing through Apple Podcast Subscriptions or Patreon for as little as $2.

You can connect with Fat Joy on our website, Instagram, and YouTube (full video episodes here!). Want to share the fat love? Please rate this podcast and give it a joyful review.

Our thanks to Chris Jones and AR Media for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful.

After a radical shift in life circumstances, Carissa Grace (she/her) realized she was done getting her happiness and sense of worthiness from external factors and people. She dedicated herself to creating her own joy and began sharing that joy through social media. Quickly, she became known for her cheeky “What I eat in a day as a fat person promoting obesity” videos as well as her fashion-focused “Get ready with me” videos.

Carissa is a content creator and public speaker who created @beyourjoy on Instagram and TikTok. She posts on her platforms about being confident in a plus size body and living a life free of diet culture. Carissa is offering discount codes to Fat Joy listeners for Pennington’s (code: beyourjoy) and Bloomchic (code: beyourjoy15).

Please connect with Carissa through Instagram and TikTok.This episode’s poem is called “So Much Happiness” by Naomi Shihab Nye.

After recording the interview, Sophia asks each guest 10 unexpected, unrehearsed questions designed to go even deeper. Check it out by subscribing through Apple Podcast Subscriptions or Patreon for as little as $2.

You can connect with Fat Joy on our website, Instagram, and YouTube (full video episodes here!). Want to share the fat love? Please rate this podcast and give it a joyful review.

Our thanks to Chris Jones and AR Media for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful.

Tired of going into a new spaces filled with anxiety about if her body would fit, Rebecca Alexander (she/her) decided to create an app that’s like Yelp for fat folks. Even though over 60% of the U.S. population is plus-size, restaurants, offices, chairs, theaters, and other public spaces are not designed with larger bodies in mind. But this entrepreneurial journey didn’t go as planned, and Rebecca shares her biggest challenges and sweetest joys.

Rebecca Alexander is the founder of AllGo, the first review platform designed with fat people’s needs in mind. Rebecca founded AllGo because, as a fat woman, she has spent countless hours scouring the internet to reduce her anxiety about going to new places. Rebecca is also the author of A Kids Book About Body Image, which debuted in 2020 and is now in its second printing. Rebecca lives on a small farm in Vernonia, Oregon.

Please connect with Rebecca through Instagram and be sure to check out AllGo.

This episode’s poem is called “Yes” by William Stafford.After recording the interview,

Sophia asks each guest 10 unexpected, unrehearsed questions designed to go even deeper. Check it out by subscribing through Apple Podcast Subscriptions or Patreon for as little as $2.

You can connect with Fat Joy on our website, Instagram, and YouTube (full video episodes here!). Want to share the fat love? Please rate this podcast and give it a joyful review.

Our thanks to Chris Jones and AR Media for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful.

Tamara Walcott (she/her) knew she ‘wasn’t born big for nothing.’ In only four years, she went from not working out at all to breaking two(!!!) Guinness World Records (check out the video here) and becoming the strongest woman in the world. Tamara shares what it was like growing up fat, how it felt walking into the gym for the first time, and the way she uses her personal growth journey to better support her kids. Plus, her favourite affirmations and biggest dreams!

Tamara Walcott is a multi world-record holding powerlifter, mompreneur, and speaker hailing from the small island of St. Croix. Tamara's story of mental reset, perseverance, and triumph is an inspiration. Tamara Walcott has claimed the title for the heaviest raw deadlift and most weight moved in the world by a woman after deadlifting 636 in September 2021, moving 1620 pounds in July 2022 and breaking her record again on the Strongwoman stage in March 2023 by lifting 651 pounds. She has been featured on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, Oprah Magazine, ESPNW, Sports Illustrated, Barbend, and more.

Please connect with Tamara through her website and Instagram.This episode’s poem is called “Belonging” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

After recording the interview, Sophia asks each guest 10 unexpected, unrehearsed questions designed to go even deeper. Check it out by subscribing through Apple Podcast Subscriptions or Patreon for as little as $2.

You can connect with Fat Joy on our website, Instagram, and YouTube (full video episodes here!). Want to share the fat love? Please rate this podcast and give it a joyful review.

Our thanks to Chris Jones and AR Media for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful.

Tracey Lindeman’s (she/her) experience with decades of period pain and the complicated, frustrating, and futile-feeling process of getting an endometriosis diagnosis led her to writing “Bleed: Destroying the Myths and Misogyny in Endometriosis Care.” Tracey and Sophia share their own unique experiences of moving through the medical system’s anti-fat bias and misogyny, and Tracey offers two suggestions for how we can better advocate for ourselves in any medical situation.

Tracey Lindeman is a longtime freelance journalist and the author of the bestselling book, “BLEED: Destroying Myths and Misogyny in Endometriosis Care” (ECW Press, 2023). She is from Montreal and currently lives in western Quebec with her partner and her cat, Toast. Mentioned in this episode: therebelliousuterus and “What we don’t talk about when we talk about fat” by Aubrey Gordon.

Please connect with Tracey through Instagram (http://instagram.com/bleed_thebook) and her website (http://bleedthebook.com/).

This episode’s poem is called “From the First Water is the Body” by Natalie Diaz.

Read the Fat Joy book review for Tracey Lindeman's book “Bleed: Destroying the Myths and Misogyny in Endometriosis Care.”

After recording the interview, Sophia asks each guest 10 unexpected, unrehearsed questions designed to go even deeper. Check it out by subscribing through Apple Podcast Subscriptions or Patreon for as little as $2.

You can connect with Fat Joy on our website, Instagram, and YouTube (full video episodes here!). Want to share the fat love? Please rate this podcast and give it a joyful review.

Our thanks to Chris Jones and AR Media for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful.

Content Warning: mention of child abuse and death by suicide.

Angela Braxton-Johnson (her/she) shares her journey through dieting, 12-step programs, eating disorder out-patient treatment, and finally to Body Trust and liberation in her 50s. Using poetry to put her experiences into words, Angela reads two of her poems, gifting us with their raw beauty and power.

Angela Braxton-Johnson is the owner of Poetically Inspiring Change and Abundant Fatness. She is a poetess, professional life/liberation coach, Certified Body Trust provider, and a self-published author of Black Fury: Fierce Recovery and Abundant Fatness ebooks with visual art, and a stoetry novel called, Who’s Watchin’ Me?: Season One. Her books can be purchased on her website. She is also published in Unchaste Anthologies, 2nd & 3rd volumes and two of her original poems are featured in the of BeNourished.org, Reclaiming Body Trust: A Path to Healing and Liberation by Dana Sturtevant and Hilary Kinavey. She’s been married for 36 years, has 3 children, 6 grands and 2 mini poodles.

Mentioned in this episode: Body Trust and Renee Watson. Please connect with Angela through her website and Instagram.

After recording the interview, Sophia asks each guest 10 unexpected, unrehearsed questions designed to go even deeper. Check it out by subscribing through Apple Podcast Subscriptions or Patreon for as little as $2.

You can connect with Fat Joy on our website, Instagram, and YouTube (full video episodes here!). Want to share the fat love? Please rate this podcast and give it a joyful review.

Our thanks to Chris Jones and AR Media for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful.

A counter-culture thinker since childhood, Amanda Laird (she/her) shares the journey she’s taken to follow a different path. From sewing her own period pads as a teen to hosting the popular podcast “Heavy Flow” to building her new business venture, slow & steady studio, Amanda is committed to advancing the feminine economy and exploring the question, ‘what is enough?’

Amanda Laird is the founder and principal strategist of slow & steady. As a former holistic nutritionist, Amanda is an advocate for reproductive health and wellness. She was the host of the Heavy Flow Podcast from 2017 to 2020 and is the author of “Heavy Flow: Breaking the Curse of Menstruation” published by Dundurn Press and nominated for the 2019 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Non-Fiction. In her work at slow & steady, Amanda draws on her 15 years as a creative communicator, writer and holistic wellness practitioner, as well as feminist marketing and business frameworks from Kelly Diels, Jennifer Armbrust and CV Harquail.

In the episode, Amanda mentions the book “Toxic Shock,” “Proposals for the Feminine Economy,” and her Spotify playlist.

Please connect with Amanda on her website.

This episode’s poem is by Tony Hoagland and is called “Birdhouse.”

Bonus content with Amanda through Apple Podcast Subscriptions and on Patreon.

Please connect with Fat Joy on our website, Instagram, and YouTube (full video episodes here!).

Want to share the love? Please rate this podcast and give it a review.

Our thanks to AR Media and Emily MacInnis for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful

Kelly Diels (she/her) makes it her mission to support culture makers. She’s disrupting the norms of extractive capitalism by shining a light on the harms caused by traditional sales & marketing tactics. She offers an alternative where we can focus on vision, consent, and deepening relationships. And how we can make both money and justice. Recently diagnosed with lipedema, Kelly shares how health is connected to culture-making, too.

Kelly Diels is a feminist educator, writer, and coach. She specializes in feminist marketing for culture-makers. She’s here to raise awareness about how the business-as-usual formulas we learn everywhere actually reproduce oppression. She develops and teaches alternate feminist marketing tools to help us do it differently (and better).

Please connect with Kelly on her website, Instagram, Facebook, and subscribe to her Sunday Love Letter.

This episode’s poem is by Alison Luterman and is called “Some Girls.”

Bonus content with Kelly through Apple Podcast Subscriptions and on Patreon.

Please connect with Fat Joy on our website, Instagram, and YouTube (full video episodes here!). Want to share the love? Please rate this podcast and give it a review.

Our thanks to AR Media and Emily MacInnis for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful