Food Psych #132: Diet-Culture Recovery, Body Trust, and Plus-Size Representation with Meredith Noble
Certified Body Trust Provider and life coach Meredith Noble comes on the show this week to talk about how intuitive eating becomes intuitive living, the importance of finding a Health at Every Size, fat-positive community for finding body acceptance, the problem with diet culture and how it’s embedded within the medical community, giving ourselves space to feel our feelings, and much more! PLUS, Christy answers a listener question about how to get started with this podcast.
Meredith Noble is a Certified Body Trust® Provider and life coach who helps plus-size people find food and body peace. Her practice combines Health at Every Size®, Body Trust® and intuitive eating philosophies with feminism and fat acceptance. With her compassion and expertise, her clients learn how to feel more comfortable in their skin, be at ease around food, and leave toxic diet culture behind. Find her online at GenerousPlan.com.
Grab Christy's free guide, 7 simple strategies for finding peace and freedom with food, to start your intuitive eating journey. You can also text "7STRATEGIES" to the phone number 44222 to get it on the go :)
Get Christy's BRAND NEW online course for fellow health & wellness pros, Master Your Anti-Diet Message, at christyharrison.com/message.
We Discuss:
Meredith’s relationship with food growing up, including the limitations put on candy and learning about dieting and food restriction from a young age
Bingeing and overeating in response to the scarcity mentality
Puberty, weight gain, and how Meredith’s relationship with her body was integrated into her relationship with food
The social experience of shopping, the struggles of being plus size at a young age, and burgeoning body dissatisfaction
How the endorsement of weight loss efforts and restrictive diets from medical professionals feeds into disordered eating
Meredith’s experience with Weight Watchers, including the idea of community and support around dieting
The effect of doctor authority, and remembering that medical professionals are influenced by diet culture as much as the rest of us
Shame and isolation around bingeing and emotional eating
Feeling out of control around food
How effective the victim blaming of the diet industry is
The investments we make into diet culture
How important community is in the Health at Every Size, body acceptance, disordered-eating recovery journey
Meredith’s transition into the “clean eating” world
Meredith’s stepping stones to the Health at Every Size paradigm
The importance of mental readiness to integrate the Health at Every Size, size acceptance movement
Food insecurity as a risk factor for eating disorders
Acknowledging our privilege and embracing intersectionality
Learning about emotional restriction, giving up on the pursuit of weight loss, and embracing intuitive eating
Finding body acceptance through finding a fat-positive community
The parallels between compassion and body respect
Meredith’s experience of being hyperaware of her body, and how being surrounded by other people in larger bodies allowed her to no longer by hyper-vigilant
Creating diet-culture-free spaces, both online and in-person
Balancing being aware of your body in order to heal it with forgetting about your body in order to embody healing
Intuitive eating, how the mental effort required to tap into your inner wisdom decreases over time, rooting out the diet mentality with our food behaviors, and how body image factors into healing our relationship with food
Giving yourself space to feel your feelings and grieve the thin ideal
Somatic experiencing techniques, feeling emotions through the body, and working with a therapist to find healing
Meredith and Christy’s professional transitions into Health at Every Size work
How intuitive eating spills into intuitive living
Resources Mentioned
Some of the links below are affiliate links. Affiliates or not, we only recommend products and services that align with our values.
“Dear Non-Fat People” by Meredith Noble
Intuitive Eating, 3rd ed. by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
“Body acceptance begins with grieving the thin ideal” by Meredith Noble
Submit your questions for a chance to have them answered on the podcast!
My online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals, which includes monthly listener Q&A podcasts and access to my private Facebook support group
Listener Question of the Week
Where does a Food-Psych-Podcast newbie start? Are there some Food Psych episodes that are helpful to return to in order to give us an anti-diet refresher and to remind us how diet culture embodies “The Life Thief” role? How has the podcast evolved since its inception in 2013?
(Resources Mentioned: Food Psych Podcast Episode #127 with Ashley Seruya, Food Psych Podcast Episode #106 with Ijeoma Oluo, Food Psych Podcast Episode #121 with Emily Contois, Food Psych Podcast Episode #99 with Lindy West, Food Psych Podcast Episode #94 with Alan Levinovitz, Isabel Foxen Duke’s first Food Psych episode, Katie Dalebout’s first Food Psych episode, and gain access to Season One of Food Psych Podcast with a Food Psych Premium Membership here!)