I am *finally* getting around to posting this informative and wide-ranging conversation with Kelsey Weight, originally recorded as part of the Heartfelt ‘anti-challenge’ back at the start of 2022. Kelsey is an ‘anti-diet’ dietitian whose presence on social media is such a welcome contrast to so much wellness culture BS. I have so much respect for her working within this profession with all its associations with normative ideas of wellbeing, working to shift the narrative and approach away from weight management and external measures of health. Kelsey (and many other anti-diet, ‘Health at Every Size’ practitioners) use many tools, one being ‘Intuitive Eating’, which she takes us through step by step in this pod. Intuitive Eating is an approach to understanding food, nutrition, satiety, pleasure, hunger and so much more, without getting drawn into unnecessary emotion, guilt, fear or judgement about food and our bodies. What I love about Intuitive Eating is that it provides a basic structure and framework to support and facilitate improved self-trust, but it is not prescriptive; it takes the focus off the external and puts it back on the internal allowing us full permission to decide what and how we eat, being true only to ourselves.
We also talk about exactly what ‘diet culture’ is. As the ‘water we swim in’, we may not even realise how much it influences us. Cue getting fired up about feminism, capitalism, consumerism and individualism!
If you are interested in learning more, my favourite resource for Intuitive Eating is a book by Dr Laura Thomas called 'Just Eat It', but the original formulation is also available in the book 'Intuitive Eating' by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.
In terms of books and resources that have been extremely helpful for me regarding anxiety and body image, I would recommend:
- Embrace Yourself (2018), Tarryn Brumfitt
- The Body is not an Apology (2018), Sonya Renee Taylor
- Perfect me: Beauty as an Ethical Idea (2018), Heather Widdows
- First, we make the beast beautiful (2017) , Sarah Wilson
- Don't Salt My Game (a pod by Dr Laura Thomas)
...and many of the blog posts by @thereallife_rd