Food Psych #209: Giving Up the Weight-Loss Fantasy with Amee Severson

Fellow anti-diet dietitian Amee Severson joins us to discuss why intuitive eating is NOT a weight-loss plan, her experiences as a fat dietitian, how she moved from the weight-management paradigm to Health At Every Size®, the social-justice side of HAES and intuitive eating, how social media can be helpful and harmful in recovering from diet culture, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about what to do if your hunger cues are absent. 

Amee Severson is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist in Bellingham WA whose work focuses on body positivity, fat acceptance, and intuitive eating through a social-justice lens. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Food and Nutrition from Montana State University, is completing her Master's in Professional Practice in Dietetics from Iowa State University, is a dietitian registered in the State of Washington, and is currently working toward becoming a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor and a Certified Body Trust Provider. Find her online at ProsperNutritionAndWellness.com.

We Discuss:

• Growing up in a family where dieting was normalized

• Why weighing children can be harmful

• Amee’s experiences with dieting and disordered eating

• What motivated her to start on the path of recovery and give up the fantasy of weight loss 

• How she was introduced to Health At Every Size® and intuitive eating

• Why intuitive eating is NOT a weight-loss plan

• Straddling the line between HAES® and diet culture, and moving past it versus staying there

• The learning that can come from being called out

• The difference between being called out and being oppressed

• Her experiences as a fat dietetic technician and dietitian

• Why she doesn’t like talking about nutrition

• How health insurance can affect the type of care a person receives

• Social media, and how it can be meaningful in recovery

• The social justice side of HAES and intuitive eating

• The importance of advocacy work in individual recovery

• How Amee and Christy use social media as an advocacy tool

• Social media as a source of representation

• Why it’s not safe to follow HAES hashtags on social media

• Why offering both HAES and weight management as a health professional is harmful

• Body autonomy, and why we can’t fault people who choose to diet

Resources Mentioned

Some of the links below are affiliate links. Affiliates or not, we only recommend products and services that align with our values.

• Submit your questions for a chance to have them answered on the podcast!

• My online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals

• Pre-order my forthcoming book, Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating

• Help spread the anti-diet message by subscribing to the podcast

• Health At Every Size by Linda Bacon (CW: Linda Bacon no longer stands behind parts of this book and recommends that people read Body Respect instead)

• Body Respect by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor

• Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

• Sonya Renee Taylor’s work, and her Food Psych® episode

• Be Nourished, co-founder Dana Sturtevant’s Food Psych episode, and co-founder Hilary Kinavey’s Food Psych episode

• Poodle Science video

• Alison Harmon’s work

• Amee’s website, Instagram, Medium, and Twitter

Listener Question of the Week

How can someone eat intuitively when their hunger cues are absent? What are some subtle examples of lingering diet mentality? What are examples of signs of hunger outside of stomach sensations?

Resources Mentioned:

• Isabel Foxen Duke’s work, and her Food Psych episodes #36, #74, #118