Writer and fat activist Caleb Luna joins us to talk about how gender identity intersects with fatness, how to tolerate the desire for weight loss, navigating food choices as a form of self-care rather than deprivation and restriction, why representation matters, the effect of internalized fatphobia within the family, breaking out of the gender binary, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about navigating thin privilege while living in a smaller body.

Caleb Luna is a writer, activist, teacher, performer, fat babe and Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley, where their current project focuses on the relationship between bodies and discourse. They have also explored the intersections of fatness, desire, white supremacy and colonialism from a queer of color lens. You can find more of their writing on Black Girl Dangerous, Everyday Feminism and The Body Is Not An Apology. Find them on Twitter at @tummyfuq.

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We Discuss:

• Caleb’s relationship with food growing up, including learning to associate food with comfort and experiencing anxiety around their body size

• Caleb’s experience visiting a nutritionist at a young age, and learning to equate body size with health

• The effect of internalized fatphobia within the family and the intergenerational transition of fatphobia

• Caleb’s relationship with their father, and how his addiction shaped Caleb’s childhood and understanding of coping skills

• Media representations that expose thin privilege and weight bias

• The evolution of and history of the Food Psych Podcast

• Caleb’s discovery of fat acceptance and fat activism, and how it helped them to strip away the shame around their eating habits

• The stress of eating in public as a person in a large body, the judgment around hunger, and making peace with our basic needs

• The cultural desire to erase fat bodies

• Caleb’s experience dissociating from their body as a form of safety

• Navigating food choices as a form of self-care rather than deprivation and restriction

• The value of community in the recovery process, and the importance of seeing people in fat bodies enjoying their lives

• Why representation matters, especially for non-white, non-cisgender fat folks

• Caleb’s romantic and sexual experience, and discovering that their body was attractive and desirable, rather than something to “settle” for

• Fat discrimination in the queer community

• How higher education enabled Caleb to feel affirmed and validated in their identity

• The healing work of therapy, fostering non-judgmental self-awareness, developing skills to change the way we interact with others, and embracing self-compassion

• How Caleb’s gender identity intersects with their fatness, and breaking out of the gender binary

• Smaller fat bodies vs larger fat bodies, understanding thin privilege as a spectrum, and different intersections with fatness that compound oppression and marginalization

• Caleb’s advice on how to tolerate the desire for weight loss, and the ways in which the desire for weight loss is a response to trauma

• Scrutinizing who benefits from white, cisgender, colonized beauty standards

• How our values can guide us towards self-care

• Caleb’s PhD project, including how categorizing individuals contributes to disconnection between all humans

Resources Mentioned

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

• FAT!SO? by Marilyn Wann

• “The Gender Nonconformity of My Fatness” by Caleb Luna

• “Super Fat Erasure: 4 Ways Smaller Fat Bodies Crowd the Conversation” by Caleb Luna

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

• Join 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

What exactly is “thin privilege?” How do we participate in the fat liberation movement if we’re in smaller bodies? What are the real-life consequences of weight stigma?

(Resources Mentioned: Sarah Harry’s Food Psych Podcast episode and Lisa DuBreuil’s Food Psych Podcast episode)