Religious-ethics scholar Liz Bucar, author of Beyond Wellness, joins us to discuss her history with diet and wellness culture, the religious roots of wellness practices, why bringing religion back into “spiritual” wellness spaces might be the key to promoting true well-being (even for non-religious people), and how the very human need for control shows up in rigid diet and wellness behaviors. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

For paid subscribers, we do a deeper dive into how religion has contributed to Americans’ troubled relationship with food and how religious foodways can also help us heal from diet culture, with some detours into the longevity movement, GLP-1s and the thin ideal, and more.

Liz Bucar is a religious ethicist and professor of religion at Northeastern University, as well as a certified intenSati and Kripalu yoga instructor and the author of the new book Beyond Wellness. Her popular writing has appeared in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal, and she is the author of four books, including the award-winning Stealing My Religion and Pious Fashion. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. For more about how religion shapes us all, even if we don't believe, subscribe to Liz’s newsletter at LizBucar.com. 

To hear the full episode including the deep dive, upgrade to paid at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. 

More from Christy:

Books:

• Anti-Diet
• The Wellness Trap
• The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook

Courses:

• Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
• Intro to Intuitive Eating

Newsletters:

• Rethinking Wellness
• Food Psych Weekly

Christy answers an audience question about the “adrenal body type” and unpacks the weight stigma, ageism, and pseudoscience embedded in this twist on the dubious diagnosis of “adrenal fatigue.” This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

The paywall on this episode has been removed! Sign up for a paid subscription to hear lots more like this.

Get full show notes and references here.

Ask a question of your own for a chance to have it answered in a future episode!

Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold. Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. 

If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

In this episode, Christy shares some personal thoughts on how anxiety impacts the gut, and offers a perspective on how to handle digestive distress that’s triggered by stress without getting pulled down wellness-culture rabbit holes—especially if you have a history of disordered eating.

This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

More from Christy:

Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. 

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers!

Filmmaker and podcaster Kelsey Snelling joins us to discuss her new podcast, Camp Shame, which exposes the troubling history of a notorious weight-loss camp. We get into the effects of deprivation and starvation, the cult-like nature of the camp, how it weathered its many scandals, whether it’s possible to run a camp for larger-bodied kids that’s weight-inclusive or ethical, how she made the podcast, and more. 

Kelsey Snelling is a Philadelphia filmmaker whose work centers social and environmental justice. Her dream is to direct music videos for Billie Eilish, hike the Appalachian Trail, and return to her previous residence of Alaska to live on a farm overrun with cats. “Camp Shame” is her first audio project.

Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. 

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers!

Journalist, podcaster, and author Elise Hu joins us to discuss her background with modeling and disordered eating, why beauty culture is a cousin of diet culture, Elise’s experience with intense beauty standards in Korea, and the realities of pushing back against performances of femininity.

Behind the paywall, Christy and Elise discuss the rise of K-Beauty globally, problematic K-Pop body ideals, the lack of mental health support in many Asian countries, and how the technological gaze is reshaping beauty standards online and around the world.

This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

Elise Hu is a journalist, podcaster, author and most recently, a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Currently she’s the host of TED Talks Daily, the flagship podcast from TED conferences. You can also hear her as the co-host of Forever 35 and the host of Raising Us. Her book, FLAWLESS, came out in 2023. It’s a non-fiction exploration of beauty, consumerism, and womanhood.

Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. 

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers!

Therapists and authors Judith Matz and Amy Pershing join us to discuss our new collaboration, The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook; why the typical diet-culture response to emotional eating is unhelpful, and what to do instead; how to know if you’re a chronic dieter (as opposed to just a “healthy eater”); the role of trauma in binge eating; why high body weight isn’t a sign that you’ve suffered trauma; and lots more.  

Judith Matz, LCSW, ACSW, is a therapist, nationally recognized speaker, and consultant on the topics of diet culture, binge eating, emotional eating, body image, and weight stigma. She is co-author of the new Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook, as well as The Diet Survivor’s Handbook, Beyond a Shadow of a Diet, The Making Peace with Food Card Deck, The Body Positivity Card Deck, and author of Amanda’s Big Dream. Judith offers continuing education and training for professionals through PESI as well as customized presentations for a variety of companies and organizations. Judith’s work has been featured in the media including NPR, The New York Times, Good Housekeeping and Psychotherapy Networker. She has a private practice via telehealth in Illinois where she meets with clients seeking to heal their relationship with food and their bodies. Find her at judithmatz.com and on Instagram @judmatz.

Amy is an internationally known leader in the development of treatment paradigms for BED, and one of the first clinicians to specialize in BED treatment. Based on 35 years of clinical experience, Amy has pioneered an approach to BED recovery that is strengths-based and trauma informed, incorporating Internal Family Systems (IFS) and body-based techniques to heal the deeper issues that drive binge behaviors. Her approach integrates a non-diet body autonomy philosophy, helping clients create lasting change with food and body image. She is the author of the book Binge Eating Disorder: The Journey to Recovery and Beyond (Taylor and Francis, 2018) and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook, with co-authors Judith Matz and Christy Harrison (PESI Publishing, 2024). She also offers a variety of trainings on BED treatment through PESI. Amy maintains her clinical practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Learn more about her work at thebodywiseprogram.com.

Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. 

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers!

In this episode, Christy answers an audience question about organic food. She explains what the science really says about the health impacts of organic food and the environmental impacts of organic farming. Then she shares some important things to consider if you’re eating organic while working to heal from disordered eating.

This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

More from Christy:

Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. 

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers!

In this episode, Christy answers an audience question about disordered eating and food rules. She shares two food rules that she used to follow and four eating principles that she now tries to live by.

This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

More from Christy:

Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. 

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers!

Body image scientist and researcher Charlotte Markey, PhD joins us to discuss the many factors that impact body image and how parents can help their kids develop a positive sense of self.

Christy and Charlotte both share examples from their own parenting, including how to handle tricky conversations about body size, gender, and more. They also unpack the difference between body positivity and body neutrality—and why the popular definitions of those terms are different from their use in research.

Behind the paywall, Charlotte explains how she thinks about makeup for girls, adaptive vs maladaptive grooming routines, ways to tell if a kid is struggling with body dysmorphia, and a six-step process for helping young people develop media literacy.

This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

Charlotte Markey, Ph.D., is a body image scientist and researcher, having studied all things body image and eating behaviors for nearly 30 years! She is passionate about understanding what makes us feel good about our bodies and helping people to develop a healthy body image and relationship with food. Charlotte is a psychology professor at Rutgers University and has published over 100 scholarly articles and chapters about health issues.

Dr. Markey also an author, having most recently published The Body Image Book series (The Body Image Book for Girls in 2020; The Body Image Book for Boys in 2022, Adultish: The Body Image Book for Life in 2024, The 2nd edition of The Body Image Book for Girls will publish in 2026, The Body Image Book for Women will be published in 2027). She also recently co-edited the 3-volume Encyclopedia of Mental Health (2023). She writes regularly for news outlets such as Psychology Today and is often interviewed for TV, news articles, and podcasts.

More from Christy:

Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. 

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers!

New York Times bestselling author and former CNN political analyst Kirsten Powers joins us to discuss her history of chronic fatigue and her experience with dubious diagnoses and wild wellness treatments.

She also shares what she discovered about the true causes of her issues, how disordered eating helped mask and exacerbate her symptoms, how she’s rethought her relationship with work in general (and her own past work in particular), her viral post “The way we live in the United States is not normal,” her decision to move to Italy, and more.  

This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

Kirsten Powers is a New York Times bestselling author and writes the bestselling Substack newsletter Changing the Channel. Kirsten served as a CNN senior political analyst for seven years, providing on-air analysis for major political and cultural events. The Columbia Journalism Review called her "an outspoken liberal journalist" in a sea of opposition at Fox News, where she previously served as a political analyst. She was a columnist for USA Today for more than a decade and, before that, for the Daily Beast and the New York Post.

More from Christy:

Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod. 

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers!