What does it mean to live in a body that doesn’t always do what you wish it would? A body that’s unpredictable, maybe in pain, maybe exhausted — a body shaped by chronic illness, disability, or medical trauma?

This week on the podcast, I’m revisiting an episode with the deeply compassionate Dr. Jennifer Caspari, a psychologist who specializes in health psychology and lives with cerebral palsy. Her personal and professional wisdom come together in such a powerful way — this conversation felt like a breath of fresh air in a world that so often asks us to override, fix, or fight our bodies.

We talk about what it means to be in relationship with your body when it doesn’t feel like it’s on your side — and how to cultivate self-compassion, presence, and joy even in the midst of that. (Her new book is a beautiful read, by the way).

Jen shares her own story — how she came into therapy, what it’s like navigating the world in a disabled body, and the mindset shifts that have helped her most during painful or difficult seasons.

We explore:

* How societal body image pressure intersects with disability and illness

* Why we don’t have to wait for symptoms to go away in order to start living

* The role of values-based living and gentle courage in hard moments

* Practical strategies for coping with chronic pain

* What it really means to practice radical acceptance

* Why chronic illness often involves grief — of function, identity, possibility

* Navigating relationships and communicating needs with loved ones

* Finding agency, even when so much feels out of your control

* Living fully with a body that’s chronically ill — and maybe always will be

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Today's episode is a bit different than usual. I'm sharing (solo) a bit about where I've been, what's been going on with my health, and what it all means for this podcast.

To listen, upgrade to paid right here. Paid subscribers get access to all bonus content -- including the full archive of paywalled podcast episodes and newsletters.

In the episode, I get into:

- what happened (the heart attack, the hospital stay, and how my husband and family played a role)

- trusting your body even in the middle of a crisis

- the ways a medical condition overlaps with diet culture

- holding space for how unique everyone's experience with a health condition is, even when it's the same diagnosis

- the emotional impact of a life-threatening experience

- leaning into rest as a radical act of self-care, and how hard that can be in our culture

- where I'm finding the capacity for understanding and patience with my body, and where I'm not

- what this means for the podcast and my business

Thank you so muxh for supporting me -- both as a person, and as an independent writer / producer. It means the world.

Abbie is joined by the incredible Monika Ostroff, executive director of MEDA, clinician, author, and person with lived experience of both anorexia and DID — for one of the most illuminating conversations the show has ever had. This one will change the way you think about survival, the body, and what healing actually asks of us.

In this episode:

- What dissociative identity disorder (DID) actually is — and how it's almost nothing like what you've seen in media

- Why DID is far more common than most people realize, and why diagnosis takes so long

- The striking overlap between DID and eating disorders, and what that tells us about both

- How eating disorders function as a trauma response — and why that framing matters for recovery

- What it means to approach an eating disorder with compassion rather than shame

- The clinical and personal complexity of treating multiple eating disorder presentations within one system

- Why the "control freak" narrative around eating disorders misses the point entirely

- Monica's own lived experience with anorexia, DID, and what recovery has looked like

- The single piece of wisdom that reoriented Monica's entire relationship with herself

About Monika: Monika Ostroff, LICSW, CEDS-S is the Executive Director of the Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association, Inc (MEDA). She has over 25 years of experience in the field of eating disorders. Prior to leading MEDA, she directed several residential, partial hospital and intensive outpatient eating disorder programs in addition to having owned a thriving private practice. 

Practicing from a trauma informed, social justice and staunchly HAES® aligned lens, Monika is a dedicated ally and strong advocate working to ensure access to equitable, compassionate, and affirming care for all. Find Monika: Healing My Parts on Substack, Instagram, and podcast

Support the show: Enjoying this podcast? Please support the show on Substack for bonus episodes, community engagement, and access to "Ask Abbie" at abbieattwoodwellness.substack.com/subscribe

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Already been at this anti-diet culture thing for a while, but want community and continued learning? Apply for Abbie's monthly membership: https://www.abbieattwoodwellness.com/circle-monthly-group

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I'm joined by DK Ciccone — comprehensively certified Pilates instructor, pain reprocessing therapy practitioner, and author of You're Meant to Move — for a conversation that is both deeply personal and clinically rich. We talk about what chronic pain actually is, why so many people have been dismissed or mislabeled, and what it looks like to rebuild a relationship with movement that isn't driven by fear, punishment, or diet culture.

This was originally a paid episode. Consider upgrading to a paid subscription to keep Full Plate going: https://abbieattwoodwellness.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode:

DK's journey with chronic pain and her past as a dancerHow chronic pain forms and why the pain is real even in the absence of ongoing tissue damage

The nervous system science behind pain sensitization — and why catastrophizing physically amplifies pain

Kinesiophobia: the fear of movement that develops after chronic pain, and how to work through it

Somatic tracking and pain reprocessing therapy as tools for understanding pain signalsHow to explore the difference between pain and discomfort

DK's "refuge and reach" framework for rebuilding a movement practice incrementally

Exploring functional movement versus "exercise"The research debunking weight loss as a solution for chronic pain

Why restriction and dieting actually increase chronic pain risk — and the clinical evidence behind it

How trauma and disconnection from the body compound the chronic pain experience

What embodied movement looks like when you're coming back from years of diet culture messaging

About DK Ciccone: Dana Karen ("DK") Ciccone is a comprehensively certified Pilates instructor who helps people in pain improve strength, mobility, and well-being in a weight-neutral environment. She is trained in pain reprocessing therapy through the Pain Psychology Center and is the founder of Movement Remedies, a chronic pain–focused Pilates studio and movement coaching business. Her book, You're Meant to Move: A Guide to Conquering Chronic Pain, Increasing Stress Resilience, and Reclaiming an Active Life, was released in December 2023.

Support the show: Enjoying this podcast? Please support the show on Substack for bonus episodes, community engagement, and access to "Ask Abbie" at abbieattwoodwellness.substack.com/subscribe

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Social media:

Find the show on Instagram: @fullplate.podcast

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This week's episode is one I have been so excited to share. I'm joined by two brilliant, generous, and deeply thoughtful guests — writer, educator, and body liberation advocate Chrissy King, and creative and founder Claire — who have co-created the Child-Free Coven, a community and mutual aid space for people who are child-free, by choice or by circumstance.

In this episode:

*What the word “childfree” actually means — and why Chrissy and Claire are actively reclaiming it

*Why being childfree is not anti-child, and the James Baldwin quote at the center of their community

*Chrissy’s story: ending a marriage, being the first woman in her lineage to have this choice, and what liberation actually feels like

*Claire’s story: knowing from her early teens, navigating a partner’s uncertainty, and how 25 years of undiagnosed endometriosis is inextricably linked to her childfree journey

*The things people say to childfree women and what to make of them

*The connection between body liberation and the childfree experience

*Race, reproductive justice, and how this conversation is profoundly different depending on who you are

*The political moment we’re in — bodily autonomy, forced birth, and what history tells us about these tactics

*What it means to pour your love, attention, and energy into the world without motherhood as the vehicle

*The difference between grief and regret

*What Chrissy means when she says she wanted more than “fine”

Resources:

Find The Childfree Coven on Substack and Instagram

Chrissy’s book: The Body Liberation Project

Claire on Instagram and Chrissy on Instagram

Rachel Cargill / Rich Auntie Supreme

Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands

Tricia Hersey / Rest is Resistance

Support the show: Enjoying this podcast? Please support the show on Substack for bonus episodes, community engagement, and access to "Ask Abbie" at abbieattwoodwellness.substack.com/subscribe

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This is part two of my conversation with Kate Zigrang, founder of Viva Voce — and this is where everything shifts.

To hear it: abbieattwoodwellness.substack.com/subscribe

We left off last week with Kate at a turning point: an OCD diagnosis, a doctor who finally told her the truth about her health, and something beginning to loosen. This episode is about what came next — the harder, slower, more relational work of actually stepping out of diet culture after a lifetime inside it.

We cover:

* Going no contact with her parents — the decision, the grief, and what space it created

* The complicated dynamic with her mom: over-apologizing, enmeshment, and why leaving felt both impossible and necessary

* The slow, specific work of separating her own body from her mother's — learning to look at herself without dread

* Religious deconstruction happening simultaneously with the body acceptance work and the mental health work — all three threads unraveling at once

* The Manhattan pants incident — eighteen months of traveling the world, unable to find a single pair of pants in her size anywhere in New York City, and the rage that became a turning point

* What Viva Voce actually is — a marketplace vetting brands for ethics, sustainability, and genuine size inclusivity

* Why she insists on carrying straight and plus sizes in the same space

* The pop-up strategy — and why she's bringing it to smaller cities on purpose

* A data project collecting real body measurements to understand how clothes could actually be made better

* Why belonging is at the center of every decision she makes — and what that looks like in practice

This episode is for paid subscribers. If you'd like access to this conversation and the full archive, you can subscribe here:

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Find Kate and Viva Voce at vivavoce.live and on Instagram @vivavoce.live

Support the show: Enjoying this podcast? Please support the show on Substack for bonus episodes, community engagement, and access to "Ask Abbie" at abbieattwoodwellness.substack.com/subscribe

Apply for Abbie’s Group Membership:

Already been at this anti-diet culture thing for a while, but want community and continued learning? Apply for Abbie's monthly membership: https://www.abbieattwoodwellness.com/circle-monthly-group

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Podcast Cover Photography by Anya McInroy

Podcast Editing by Brian Walters

Kate Zigrang is an advocate, entrepreneur, impact investor, and the founder of Viva Voce — a size-inclusive fashion marketplace and community rooted in body justice. But before we get to what she's built, we go back to where it all started.

In this first part of a two-episode conversation, Kate takes us through her personal history with her body — from watching her mom navigate the world in a larger body and absorbing the shame that surrounded her, to puberty changing her own body in ways she wasn't prepared for, to a disordered relationship with food that developed in her late teens and went unnamed for years. We also get into her OCD diagnosis at 31 — more than a decade after onset — and what it meant to finally have language for what her brain had been doing all along.

This is a conversation about the things diet culture teaches us before we're old enough to question them, and what it actually takes to unlearn them.

We talk about:

*Growing up watching her mom be treated as a problem to be fixed, and inheriting that shame before she had words for it

*How her body changed at puberty while she was already carrying that inherited weight

*The food rules in her home growing up, the restriction and binge cycle they created, and how it planted seeds for a disordered relationship with food

*Moving away from home at 21, marriage, pregnancy, and her body changing again in ways that felt out of her control

*The wellness journey — naturopathic doctors, juice cleanses, a month-long juice fast, and crying in the shower

*Getting an OCD diagnosis at 31 and finally understanding what her brain had been doing since she was a teenager

*A doctor who told her, simply, that she was healthy — and how much that cracked open

*Finding Maintenance Phase, Aubrey Gordon, and Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings, and what it meant to finally have the research match what she'd lived

Find Kate and Viva Voce at vivavoce.live and on Instagram @vivavoce.live.

Books mentioned: What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon; Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings

Get 40% off of your Hungryroot order with code abbie40

Support the show: Enjoying this podcast? Please support the show on Substack for bonus episodes, community engagement, and access to "Ask Abbie" at abbieattwoodwellness.substack.com/subscribe

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Already been at this anti-diet culture thing for a while, but want community and continued learning? Apply for Abbie's monthly membership: https://www.abbieattwoodwellness.com/circle-monthly-group

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Podcast Cover Photography by Anya McInroy

Podcast Editing by Brian Walters

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Abbie sits down with Dana Colthart, LCSW, a therapist specializing in OCD and eating disorders, to explore one of the most under-diagnosed and misunderstood overlaps in mental health. From intrusive thoughts to diet culture to why you can’t logic your way into recovery, this conversation explores what's truly driving our fears, our coping strategies, and the compulsions holding us back.

The first part of this episode is free for everyone. Paid subscribers can hear the entire conversation. You can upgrade here: https://abbieattwoodwellness.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode:

* Why OCD is so much more than hand-washing and organization — and what it actually looks like

* The key difference between OCD and generalized anxiety disorder, and why misdiagnosis is so common

* How the OCD cycle works: the obsession, the compulsion, the temporary relief, and why that relief is the trap

* What reassurance-seeking is, why it counts as a compulsion, and how it shows up in relationships with food and body image

* Pure-O OCD — when the compulsions are entirely mental, and why this goes undiagnosed so often

* Taboo and shameful intrusive thoughts: why the people most disturbed by a thought are almost never the ones who’d act on it

* What ego-dystonic versus ego-syntonic means, and why that distinction matters in disentangling OCD from eating disorders

* How diet culture functions like a mass OCD delivery system — rules, rituals, fear, and relief that never quite arrives

* Why clinicians treating eating disorders are often the only voice in a client’s life saying “you don’t have to do this” — and how hard that is

* The particular cruelty of food and body-related intrusive thoughts in a world that confirms them everywhere

* How OCD and eating disorders mimic each other, overlap, and take turns — and what that seesaw can look like in recovery

* What ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) actually is and why the discomfort is the point

* Why your brain watches your actions, not your words — and what that means for recovery

* The systemic piece: how disordered behaviors get praised in some bodies and diagnosed in others

* What to do if you’re recognizing yourself in this episode but aren’t ready to call a therapist yet

About Dana: Dana Colthart, LCSW, is the clinical director of Clear Light Therapy, a boutique practice based in Englewood, New Jersey. She provides evidence based treatment for OCD, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders, blending Exposure and Response Prevention, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and integrative mind body approaches. Dana is also a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist.

Support the show: Enjoying this podcast? Please support the show on Substack for bonus episodes, community engagement, and access to "Ask Abbie" at abbieattwoodwellness.substack.com/subscribe

Apply for Abbie’s Group Membership:

Already been at this anti-diet culture thing for a while, but want community and continued learning? Apply for Abbie's monthly membership: https://www.abbieattwoodwellness.com/circle-monthly-group

Find the show on Instagram: @fullplate.podcast

Find Abbie on Instagram: @abbieattwoodwellness

Podcast Cover Photography by Anya McInroy

Podcast Editing by Brian Walters

This podcast is ad-free and support comes from your support on Substack. Subscribe HERE.

Abbie speaks with Anna Maltby — health journalist, personal trainer, and author of the How to Move newsletter — for a conversation that pulls back the curtain on the fitness industry. At the heart of this episode is: what does look like to rebuild a relationship with movement that isn’t rooted in shrinking, earning food, or “fixing” your body?

They talk about how fitness media manufactures insecurity to sell us solutions, what people are unlearning when they come to weight-neutral movement, why decoupling exercise from aesthetics can temporarily leave people unmotivated (and what to do about that), and why your squat is probably fine.

Tune in for more on:

* The “body as business card” problem in fitness and nutrition

* How magazine cover lines were engineered to exploit seasonal body insecurities

* Anna’s origin story: from Eat This Not That to anti-diet fitness journalism

* The Refinery29 moment that changed everything (shoutout to Kelsey Miller’s Anti-Diet Project column)

* What people are unlearning: trusting their bodies, eating before workouts, modifications that aren’t lesser

* Why losing aesthetic motivation can feel like losing all motivation, and how to find intrinsic intentions

* The importance of where you are in recovery before reintroducing movement

* How to experiment with movement without judging yourself on the first try

* The “you’re doing it wrong” trend and why it’s harmful even in anti-diet spaces

* Body diversity and squat mechanics (yes, really)

For more from Anna:

https://howtomove.substack.com/

https://www.instagram.com/howannamoves/

Support the show: Enjoying this podcast? Please support the show on Substack for bonus episodes, community engagement, and access to "Ask Abbie" at abbieattwoodwellness.substack.com/subscribe

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Already been at this anti-diet culture thing for a while, but want community and continued learning? Apply for Abbie's monthly membership: https://www.abbieattwoodwellness.com/circle-monthly-group

Social media:

Find the show on Instagram: @fullplate.podcast

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Body image researcher and Rutgers University psychology professor Dr. Charlotte Markey is back for a second time on the podcast. She has spent nearly three decades researching body image, and has written books for tweens, teens, boys, girls, and adults.

We get into so much…including:

* Body image as relational: how environment and relationships shape how we feel in our bodies

* The father dynamic, achievement culture, and how a critical home environment affects girls

* Biohacking and wellness culture as diet culture in disguise

* What happens when food gets moralized into good and bad

* Parents disparaging their own bodies and how it lands on daughters

* Body dissatisfaction across racial, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds

* Puberty: why normalizing it matters and why the conversation needs to extend beyond adolescence

* How diet culture exploits women’s hormonal life stages

* Whether there is a critical window for body image intervention

* Social media’s impact on body shame and how to learn media literacy for critical thinking and protection

* Body diversity and why the bodies we’re sold are not achievable for most people

* The protein obsession in wellness culture and why it’s concerning in adolescents

* What to do when your daughter is already struggling

* How parents can audit their own relationship with food and body in service of their kids

Charlotte Markey, Ph.D., is a world-leading expert in body image research, having studied body image and eating behavior for nearly three decades. 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 an experienced book author, research scientist, clinician, speaker, and psychology professor at Rutgers University, Camden.Her books: https://www.thebodyimagebook.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/char_markeySubstack: https://drcharlottemarkey.substack.com/Find Full Plate on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fullplate.podcast/Find Abbie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abbieattwoodwellness/Subscribe to the newsletter: https://abbieattwoodwellness.substack.com/Listen to the first episode with Dr. Charlotte Markey

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