Food Psych Podcast with Christy Harrison

Registered dietitian Jackie Silver joins us to discuss nutritional approaches that are helpful for neurodivergence, why neurodivergent people are often the targets of wellness and diet culture, the kinds of wellness-culture messages she’s gotten as a person with a disability, and why the advice to cut out gluten for autism is often harmful. Behind the paywall, we get into why ultraprocessed food consumption doesn’t cause autism and why cutting out these foods doesn’t “cure” it, the harmful discourse around autism and ADHD in the culture right now, why it’s harmful to categorize foods as “good” and “bad,” and more. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.Jackie Silver is a Registered Dietitian and founder of Jackie Silver Nutrition, a virtual private practice specializing in supporting neurodivergent kids, teens, and adults with ADHD, autism (ASD), and intellectual/developmental disabilities (IDD). Her team offers neurodiversity-affirming, nonjudgmental, and weight-inclusive care.Jackie earned her Master of Health Science in Nutrition Communication from Toronto Metropolitan University and has specialized training in mindful eating and sensory-based feeding therapy.She and her team support clients across Ontario, Canada, and several U.S. states, including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, helping with meal planning, selective eating, food aversions, digestive health, chronic disease management, and more.In her free time, Jackie enjoys rock climbing, yoga, pilates, swimming, traveling, visiting museums, and spending time with family and friends. Learn more about her work at jackiesilvernutrition.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!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Eating-disorders dietitian Marci Evans joins us to discuss the current science on “food addiction” (sometimes called “ultraprocessed food addiction”)—and what’s changed since I first interviewed her about this topic for Food Psych back in 2016. We get into how food addiction is defined and measured (and what that definition leaves out), the overlap between disordered eating and high scores on food-addiction scales, how food-addiction discourse perpetuates weight stigma, the nuances behind the research showing that people’s brain scans are different when eating ultraprocessed vs. minimally processed food, and whether it’s really useful to think about food in terms of addiction. In the paid portion, we talk about practical applications: how Marci would help someone who has addictive-like tendencies or thinks of themselves as being addicted to food, what we can learn from this discussion of “food addiction” to help people have a better relationship with food, and more. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.Marci identifies as a Food and Body Imager Healer® practicing from a weight inclusive and anti-oppression lens. She has dedicated her career to counseling, supervising, and teaching in the field of eating disorders. She is a Certified Eating Disorder Registered Dietitian and Supervisor and certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. In addition to her group private practice, in 2015 Marci launched an online eating disorders training platform for clinicians. In 2016 she joined the Simmons nutrition department to co-develop a specialized eating disorder internship and teach graduate level courses on nutrition counseling for eating disorders. She loves books more than just about anything. Find her at marcird.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!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Author and activist Amanda Martinez Beck joins us to discuss her experience of taking Ozempic for diabetes while also working to accept her body and break down anti-fat bias in society. She shares her history of dieting and disordered eating, how chronic conditions including diabetes as well as fibromyalgia and post-Covid syndrome have impacted her relationship with food and her body, why she started taking Ozempic in the first place, how diet culture is a new form of religion, and how her actual religious faith has influenced her eating-disorder recovery. Behind the paywall, we get into the tricky landscape of Ozempic and eating disorders, how Ozempic has fallen short of what the ads and influencers promise, her take on all the GLP-1 hype, and more. This episode previously aired on our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.Amanda Martinez Beck is a fat activist, educator, and the author of More of You: The Fat Girl's Field Guide to the Modern World. She runs the Instagram account @your_body_is_good, where she combines her love of hand lettering with her vision of fat liberation. Amanda lives with her husband and four kids in northeast Texas, and she writes a weekly Substack called The Fat Dispatch. 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! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Journalist Virginia Sole-Smith joins us to discuss how GLP-1 hype has changed the conversation about diet culture, the importance of body autonomy, how “bro” diet culture became public policy, how she handles haters, the “fed is best” approach to parenting, and lots more. Behind the paywall, she shares her experience of weighing herself for the first time in years, what it’s been like to date for the first time in a larger body, how she’s changed her relationship to cardio, and more. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. As a journalist, Virginia Sole-Smith has reported from kitchen tables, graduated from beauty school, and gone swimming in a mermaid’s tail. Virginia's latest book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, is a New York Times bestseller that investigates how the "war on childhood obesity" has caused kids to absorb a daily onslaught of body shame from peers, school, diet culture, and families—and offers research-based strategies to help parents name and navigate the anti-fat bias that infiltrates our schools, doctor’s offices and dinner tables. Virginia began her career in women’s magazines, alternatively challenging beauty standards and gender norms, and upholding diet culture through her health, nutrition and fitness reporting. This work led to her first book, The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America, in which Virginia explored how we can reconnect to our bodies in a culture that’s constantly giving us so many mixed messages about both those things. Virginia’s work appears in the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and many other publications. She writes the newsletter Burnt Toast, where she explores anti-fat bias, diet culture, parenting and health, and also hosts the Burnt Toast Podcast. Virginia lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her two kids, two cats, a dog, and way too many houseplants. 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! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Dietitian and diabetes educator Janice Dada joins us to discuss why there’s so much stigma and blame on people with diabetes, the wellness-culture belief that people can “reverse diabetes” by restricting foods and taking a bunch of supplements, why people don’t “give themselves diabetes” by eating too much sugar, the myth that people with diabetes can’t eat sugar or carbs, her new book on intuitive eating for diabetes, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into the myths about diabetes and body size, the harms of trying to lose weight with diabetes, issues with the “prediabetes” label, the GLP-1 craze, and how to practice intuitive eating with diabetes. This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness. Paid subscribers can hear the extended interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Janice Dada is a weight-inclusive registered dietitian with a private practice in Newport Beach, CA. She is a certified intuitive eating counselor, certified diabetes care and education specialist (CDCES), and certified eating disorders specialist (CEDS). She is passionate about simplifying and destigmatizing the nutrition- and weight-based discourse around diabetes. Intuitive Eating for Diabetes: The No Shame, No Blame, Non-Diet Approach to Managing Your Blood Sugar is her first book. 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! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Dietitian and author Jenna Hollenstein joins us to discuss her experience with alcoholism and recovery, the intersection of disordered eating and disordered drinking, the sobriety trend in wellness culture, Dry January, mindful drinking, “food addiction,” and more. (This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.) Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Jenna Hollenstein, MS, RDN, CDN, is an anti-diet dietitian-nutritionist, certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, speaker, meditation teacher, and author of five books, including Eat to Love and Intuitive Eating for Life. She blends Intuitive Eating with mindfulness to help people transform food and body shame into joyful eating and movement. Jenna received a BS in nutrition from Penn State University and an MS in nutrition from Tufts University. She has trained in numerous integrative modalities, including polyvagal theory, somatic self-compassion, trauma-sensitive mindfulness, and embodied social justice. Jenna has spoken at universities, retreat centers, and extensively online for both consumer and clinician audiences. Her work has been featured in the The New York Times, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Yoga Journal, Health, Self, Lion’s Roar, Mindful, Vogue, Elle, Glamour, and Women’s World. Learn more about her work at jennahollenstein.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! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Registered nutritionist, author, and friend of the pod Laura Thomas joins us to unpack the problematic notion that you need to eat a ridiculously large number of plants per week for gut health, and what we actually know about how plant foods affect the gut microbiome. We also get into how to distinguish good science from hype, how ultra-processed foods have become so demonized despite a lack of strong evidence, how anti-fat bias is baked into the discourse about both gut health and ultra-processed foods, and lots more. (This episode originally aired on Rethinking Wellness in March 2024.) Laura is a Registered Nutritionist who helps people feel less afraid of the food they eat and more comfortable in their bodies. Through her work with individuals and families, as well as in her writing, she challenges dominant ideals about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods and ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bodies. She holds a PhD in Nutritional Sciences from Texas A&M University, and worked as a post-doctoral research associate at Cornell University before starting her private practice. More recently she received a diploma in Clinical Nutrition and Eating Disorders from UCL. She has published two books: Just Eat It and How To Just Eat It, both of which focus on healing our relationship with food and our body through Intuitive Eating. Her clinical work is focussed on supporting families to end the intergenerational transmission of body shame and disordered eating. She writes the newsletter Can I Have Another Snack? 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! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy