It's Just a Cookie

This week I'm talking to Lily Sloane, MFT, a San Francisco-based psychotherapist with a background in treating eating disorders, disordered eating, and body image issues. She is also a composer/independent audio producer and creator of the podcast A Therapist Walks Into a Bar and the community radio show Radical Advice on BFF.fm. 

Listen to Lily discuss the role the inner critic plays in disordered and the lure of dieting as a means to fixing life's more complicated problems.

Show Highlights

• What it was like to grow up in a religious environment focused on health food
• All the compliments that come with weight-loss assume you are doing great
• Working on the inner critic was helpful in healing disordered eating but wasn't radical enough
• How the inner critic can take over mindful or intuitive eating
• Chronic dieting dovetails with capitalist ideas of always having to be fixing yourself
• Veiling talk about weight in talk about "health"
• The difference between correlation and causation
• How she is open with her clients about her own struggles so they know they are not alone
• Declining getting weighed at the doctor's office
• One can work on their health without focusing on their weight
• Learning to accept that we go through different seasons of life which will impact how we eat and move
• How loving your body all the time is unrealistic
• The impact of being single on how she eats
• How she has to try to not solve life's problems by going on a diet
• Popular wellness models such as "clean eating" are very puritanical
• French fries fried in beef drippings are delicious!

Links & Resources

• Lily Sloane, MFT Therapy Website
• Radical Advice on BFF.fm
• Ellyn Satter's "What Is Normal Eating"
• "Eat Up" by Ruby Tandoh

Today I'm talking with Angelina Moles, a Critical Fat Studies theorist and performance artist with a Master of Art's degree in Communication Studies. They use both she/her/ hers and they/them/theirs pronouns when being referred to. Angelina is a fat activist whose work is centered in critiquing/unpacking white supremacy, thin privilege, and the medical industry for their creation and contribution to fatphobia and anti-fat stigma. 

She is currently working on creating a website dedicated to discussing fat liberation and is dipping their toes into burlesque dancing. Angelina is a performance artist who creates pieces that discuss and focus on the fat body and the way it is policed in a thin society. They have performed all over the Bay Area and the country.

Listen in as Angelina gives us a crash course in fat studies exploring how fat bodies are medicalized and feared, the racist roots of fatphobia, and how the medium of performance communicates complex ideas in novel ways.

Show Highlights: 

• Often fatness gets looked at as a choice.
• Fatness is not like other oppressions because of the narrative that people can permanently change.
• We blame fat people for not fitting into public spaces when the problem is structural.
• Fat studies takes fatness out of the medicalized lens.
• Unpacking all the connotations that are associated with the word "fat"
• Body size, race, and gender are often not talked about in the classroom.
• Internalized fatphobia can impact fat students and make them uncomfortable.
• How the "obesity epidemic" isn't real.
• Explains the history of BMI which is rife with racism and misogyny.
• Fatphobia is directly connected to racism.
• Explaining that having thin privilege doesn't mean you never struggled.
• How troubling it is to call fat people "brave" or "courageous" when they wear crop tops.
• How she had to learn how to save energy by not arguing with those who don't get it.
• Body positivity is a lot different than fat positivity.
• How she thought she was being a good fat person by trying not to be fat.

Links & Resources

• FAT!SO? : Because You Don't Have to Apologize for Your Size by Marilyn Wann
• You Have the Right to Remain Fat by Virgie Tovar
• Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings
• Fat Studies Reader 
• The Fat Sex Therapist
• @nataliemeansnice - Natalie Hodge
• Roxane Gay
• The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor 
• Fat Lip Podcast
• Fierce Fat Femme on Instagram and YouTube 
• Fatty Goes Oink

Our guest today is Glenys Oyston, registered dietitian, and food therapist who co-hosts the podcast, "Dietitians Unplugged", with fellow anti-diet dietitian, Aaron Flores. 

Listen in as Glenys and Marielle talk about fat-positivity, body acceptance and eating intuitively instead of dieting. While we are all born with the ability to sense our internal hunger and fullness signals if you have a history of chronic dieting or disordered eating you may have lost touch with these signals. There is a way back and it involves patience, putting aside the desire to lose weight and connecting with others who are on a non-diet path. 

Show Highlights:

• Fat isn't inherently unhealthy, despite what we've been told
• We come in all shapes and sizes. Body diversity is a real thing!
• Trying to fix larger bodies is detrimental
• How disordered eating habits have become the norm
• Reclaiming the word "fat" as a neutral descriptor of a body size
• The words "overweight" and "obese" pathologize and medicalize larger bodies 
• Addressing eating concerns without a focus on weight
• The HAES (Health At Every Size) philosophy
• Intuitive Eating principles
• Eating disorders happen in folks of all sizes
• The myth that people put on weight as a protective factor
• How the fear of weight gain makes it harder to eat intuitively 
• The misconceptions of "Body Acceptance"
• Dealing with fat-shaming doctors and setting boundaries
• The risks of weight-cycling
• The importance of connecting to the robust fat-acceptance community online
• It's actually ok to be fat

Links & Resources: 

https://cookierevolution.org

https://daretonotdiet.wordpress.com

https://www.facebook.com/DareToNotDiet

https://www.facebook.com/glenys.oyston

http://dietitiansunplugged.libsyn.com Aaron Flores & Glenys Oyston Podcasts

https://lindabacon.org/health-at-every-size-book/ - Linda Bacon

https://benourished.org - offers programs, workshops, retreats, and e-courses for individuals looking to reclaim Body Trust®

https://danceswithfat.org/blog/ - Ragen Chastain

http://www.secretsfromtheeatinglab.com - Traci Mann

Welcome to Episode 2 of It's Just a Cookie! Marielle talks with Abby Thompson MFT who specializes in helping people heal their relationship to their body. Like most people, Abby grew up surrounded by dieters. Eventually, Abby was exposed to the ideas of Health at Every Size and Intuitive Eating and learned that she could move her body and eat foods that made her feel good for the sake of it instead of for the sake of getting smaller. 

While researching body image for her Master's thesis, Abby realized that our relationship with food often mirrors our relationships with other people. Listen in as Marielle and Abby discuss food, body image, and relationships.

Show Highlights:

• How Abby stumbled upon the book "Health at Every Size" in a bookstore
• Healing your relationship to food can support healing in all areas of your life
• Our relationship with food affects our relationships with other people
• Complications in the use of the word "fat" – how it can be used both to uplift and empower and to harm
• Rejecting the diet mentality
• Body Positivity
• Health is not a static state
• The error in assigning moral value to weight
• True "holistic" health includes much more than what you eat and a number on the scale
• How women, in particular, are taught from an early age that they cannot trust their bodies and the ripple effects of this mistrust
• Joyful movement as opposed to exercising for weight loss
• Defining external and internal boundaries and how riding public transportation is a great metaphor for how to approach internal boundaries.

Links & Resources: 

Abby's Website

Health at Every Size:https://lindabacon.org/health-at-every-size-book/

https://cookierevolution.org

Welcome to this introductory episode of "It's Just a Cookie" a podcast exploring all things related to food and body image.

I'm your host, Marielle Berg, and this podcast will take a critical look at issues related to food, weight, eating disorders, disordered eating, chronic dieting, and healthism. I'll talk with healers and activists regarding food and body image issues from a Health at Every Size and Intuitive Eating perspective, so you can learn to have a cookie be just a cookie.

Links & Resources: 

https://cookierevolution.org