Tough Cookie Talks

Chelsea Clarke is here today! Our conversation was inspired by something she posted in her Instagram stories a few weeks ago that hit a little too close to home for me. The very real struggle that happens when Western medicine isn't helping you but wholistic wellness feels like a scam. Chelsea is here to help us navigate the gray area in between.

Chelsea Clarke is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, Personal Trainer, and owner of Balance Chaos Nutrition + Fitness. She's based in San Diego, California, and works with clients virtually across many states in the U.S. Chelsea holds a Master’s degree in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition from Tufts University and completed her dietetics training at Simmons University. Her fitness career started over 14 years ago at Equinox luxury gyms, where she gained extensive experience as a personal trainer. She's been a registered dietitian for over six years, and loves combining her knowledge of nutrition and fitness to help clients thrive. Now, as a dietitian specializing in sports performance, she helps athletes of all ages navigate nutrition in a way that supports their health, prevents RED-S, and fosters recovery from eating disorders or disordered eating. When she's not working as a nutrition & fitness coach, you can find her strolling the beach with her dog, Waldo, training Olympic lifts in the gym, practicing aerial ropes, and expressing herself through her nail art!

On this episode we talk about:

• Chelsea's backstory and how she got into the work she's doing today.
• Her personal experience seeking medical care and what led her to seek out more wholistic wellness options.
• How Western medicine sometimes fails us AND how alternative medicine options can also be scammy.
• Red flags to watch out for when it comes to grifty things in wholistic wellness and how to not get scammed.
• How this stuff gets dismissed by people in our anti-diet community and why we need to approach this stuff with more nuance as providers.
• How we can prevent disordered eating when using some of these approaches.
• How to navigate the gray area between both worlds.
• So many other important things!

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If you haven't already heard of today's guest, it's about time you did! I've been singing Damali Fraiser's praises as one of the wisest and most thorough kettlebell coaches I've had the privilege of learning from. Today she's sharing all that goodness with us!

Meet Coach Damali, pronouns she/her. Damali is a compassionate Kettlebell Expert, author, speaker, fitness / nutrition coach and founder of Lift off Strength & Wellness. Damali is known for her unapologetic opposition to diet culture in the kettlebell community and as a passionate educator who will help you learn to train with kettlebells safely. Through her Inclusive Kettlebell Coach course and certification programs, you learn to teach kettlebells from an intersectional lens that's size-inclusive, trauma-informed, judgement-free and for every BODY (emphasis on the body because humanity has always had body diversity)You can connect with Damali on her website liftoffstrength.ca, on Instagram @‌Damali.Fraiser, TikTok and on YouTube @‌liftoffstrength or through her retreats for Black Women and women of colour (WOC) in Kettlebells @‌kettlebellsinblack.

On this episode we talk about:

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Today I am thrilled to be talking to Dr. Jen Hosler--a genius of a physical therapist and strength coach whose work I am constantly referring my clients to. What she has to share about pain science is absolutely mind blowing.

Dr. Jen is a physical therapist and strength coach dedicated to bridging the gap between fitness and rehab. With degrees in exercise science and physical therapy, combined with her own experience of chronic pain and injuries, Jen’s mission is to help people move better, build resilience, and achieve their goals without pain or limitations. She works with everyday gym-goers to overcome nagging injuries and movement restrictions while mentoring fitness & movement professionals to confidently do the same for their clients.

On this episode we talk about:

• What Jen learned from her experience as a teenager with scoliosis, knee injuries, and chronic pain.
• What physical therapy school missed and how she filled those gaps to help her clients healing better.
• Bridging the gap between rehabbing injuries & getting back to high level activities.
• How lifestyle factors and mindset affect our experience of pain.
• Why we both hate the phrase "be careful".
• Things to consider before you resort to surgery or settle for a lifetime of braces and orthotics.
• How mobility work (different than stretching) can benefit just about everyone.
• Why you can't "Amazon Prime" your recovery from injury.
• Why your chronic pain isn't hopeless.
• So many other good things!

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Today's conversation is with one of the most interesting humans I've ever met: my longtime friend Maria Tate! Our personal history goes way back to when we met working with the same Chicago dance company in 2009. I'll let their professional bio speak for itself!

Maria recently returned to the US  after spending two years with the internationally recognized Phare Ponleu Selpak Association, home of Phare The Cambodian Circus. During their time in Cambodia Maria directed, produced and choreographed a world premiere circus for Phare, toured Cambodia with Circo Inzir, led a tour and performed with Spark! Circus in Thailand, and served on the board of Caravan Circus Network based in Brussels, Belgium. Maria is a member of the Professional Training Program at Aloft Circus Arts, where they also coach kids classes. Once an elementary music teacher, Maria has been teaching music, dance, circus and theatre to kids since they were 13 and assisted with their little sister's ballet class, dressed up as a baby elephant. Maria's other skills include clowning, choreography, opera, ballet, contemporary dance and reading too way many books at the same time. Maria also REALLY loves tacos. 

On this episode we talk about:

• Their "Eat Pray Love" style journey of getting divorced and running off to join the circus.
• Their adventures performing overseas and how it's shifted their perspective and worldview around so many things.
• How she got into circus and how it compares to their previous experience as a professional dancer.
• Breaking age and body standard barriers in the circus.
• Discovering your true gender identity and living as your most authentic self.
• So many other good things!



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If you're anything like me, your nervous system needs some serious help right now, because it's January 2025. (Need I say more?!) Kate Zanoni is here to help us get outside to calm the fuck down.

Kate Zanoni is a movement coach for outdoor athletes, specializing in injury reduction, rehabilitation, mobility, and strength training for return to sport. With more than a decade of experience in orthopedics and sports medicine, she teaches sustainable habits to help you train for longevity so you can continue enjoying your favorite activities for years to come. She finds joy in connecting with nature and building community through a love for wild and beautiful places. Kate is also a writer and author. Her debut children’s book will be released in late 2025. 

On this episode we talk about:

The science behind spending time in nature for nervous system regulation. The power of grounding & what it's all about. The benefits of going barefoot/barefoot training. How to find nature in an urban area. How to get yourself out in nature & what to wear in the winter when you live someplace cold. So many other good things!

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Christina is back with another crossover/collab episode after a long hiatus! I wanted to share a convo that I've been having a lot behind the scenes: what happens when you get bored with consuming all the anti-diet content out there? You just BE.

On this episode we talk about:

• How hard it can be to live your life and truly embody anti-diet culture when you have to perform it on the internet as a part of your business.
• The full circle journey of going from diet culture, to anti-diet, to incorporating what you've learned into other areas of your life as a whole human.
• All the random things we've both been into lately.
• The parallels between different kinds of creative expression and having an intuitive movement practice.
• So many other deep AND frivolous things!

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This week Jo Piazza is here, and if you don't know her, you need to!! I discovered her podcast, Under the Influence last year, and was drawn in by the way she exposes social media bullshit in the same way I call out the fitness industry. She introduced me to mind blowing stories about tradwives, the wellness to right wing conspiracy theory pipeline, and all the ways social media makes women feel like garbage.

My hope is that it will help you become a more critical consumer of social media and avoid going down conspiracy theory rabbit holes the next time you're just looking for a banana bread recipe.

Jo Piazza is the international bestselling author of The Sicilian Inheritance and twelve other books. She is also the creator of the wildly popular Under the Influence podcast. She lives in Philly with her husband and three feral children.

On this episode we talk about:

• The work Jo is doing and who she is as a whole human (because that matters too!)
• What exactly a "tradwife" is, in case you didn't know.
• The wellness to right-wing conspiracy theory pipeline, and the path that people typically follow to get there.
• How content like this can suck women into believing disinformation that can cause them to act/vote against their own best interests.
• Red flags to watch out for when you want to make sure you don't get scammed into weird shit on the internet.
• How the broken U.S. medical system and lack of support for women and moms can cause us to turn to internet grifters for advice.
• How trad-wife and wellness content makes us feel about ourselves as regular ass women in the world.

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The season 3 finale is here!

On this episode we talk about:

• A recap of season 3 of this podcast + life lessons I've learned along the way.
• Where my head's been at and why there's been such an uptick in political content this season.
• The surrealness and joy of being able to talk to cool people and record the conversations for you all.
• When we're coming back for season 4 and what you can expect while you wait.

• So many other good things!

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I am so thrilled to be able to share this conversation with Tia Levings with you today because if you don't know her and her work, you need to!

Tia Levings is the New York Times Bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife, her memoir of escape from Christian Patriarchy. She writes about the realities of religious trauma and the Trad wife life, decoding the fundamentalist influences in our news and culture. Her work and quotes have appeared in Teen Vogue, Salon, the Huffington Post, and Newsweek. She also appeared in the hit Amazon docu-series, Shiny Happy People. Based in North Carolina, she is mom to four incredible adults and likes to travel, hike, paint, and daydream. Find her on social media @TiaLevingsWriter and Substack at DeconstructingFundamentalism.com. Her second book releases with St. Martin’s Essentials May 5, 2026.

On this episode we talk about:

• Tia's incredible life story that led her to be doing the work she does today.
• How we see it playing out in religion, in our homes, in our own lives, in our country as a whole.

• What could cause a person to gravitate to fundamentalist thinking and things we can do in our lives to push back against and avoid that.
• Parallels between what she experienced in her religion and home and what we sometimes get sucked into in fitness and wellness spaces.
• The pipeline from wellness to getting red pilled and how it happens.
• How to embrace more both/and thinking when our own experiences (a religion, dieting, our identity, life in general) have impacted us so profoundly that we just want to scream "NO YOU'RE WRONG!".
• How to reconcile doing that when some people are just terrible people with harmful ideas.
• Simple daily practices to keep ourselves grounded in a both/and sort of reality in a world that is increasingly polarized.
• How to we show up in our relationships when our loved ones see things so differently than we do.

• Insider info she wants to share with people as someone who was in a high control religion and marriage and got out.
• What to do if you see yourself in her story.

• So many other important things!

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This week we are diving deep into the world of eating disorders and recovery, and much like all of the work I do here, Mallary Tenore Tarpley is here to help us embrace the gray area between being sick and fully recovered. She's here to normalize living in the in between place when you're trying to heal, and share some things that you may not have known about eating disorders. This topic is hard to talk about without dipping into some potentially triggering topics, so honor yourself and your own journey as you listen, especially if you are in early eating disorder recovery.

Mallary Tenore is an assistant professor of practice at The University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism and Media and McCombs School of Business, where she teaches writing and reporting courses for undergraduate and graduate students. Mallary specializes in a variety of topics, including longform feature writing, creative nonfiction, solutions journalism and nonprofit journalism.A longtime journalist, Mallary's articles and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Tampa Bay Times, Harvard University’s Nieman Storyboard and more. She also maintains a weekly newsletter, Write at the Edge, where she shares writing tips and best practices. Mallary’s debut nonfiction book, “SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery,” will be published by Simon & Schuster's Simon Element imprint and is now available for pre-order. The book blends immersive reporting, emerging science and social history around eating disorders alongside Mallary’s own harrowing journey from a childhood with anorexia to her present-day reality as a mother in recovery. While working on the book, Mallary received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support her reporting and writing.

On this episode we talk about:

• Mallary's experience developing an eating disorder as a child that led her to write this book.
•  The most surprising discoveries she made about eating disorders while researching for her book?
• The social history of eating disorders. (And the wild parallels to what's happening today.)
• How anorexia can reduce your brain size, specifically gray matter.
• Things is life that can cause "slips" in recovery.
• How she hopes to redefine how we see slips and eating disorder recovery as a whole.
• The biggest things that are perpetuating eating disorders today.
• Getting treatment for your eating disorder when you don't fit the traditional mold of what we think an eating disorder looks like.
• What she wishes society knew and did differently when it comes to eating disorders.
• So many other important things!

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Watch Mallary's TV interview

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