Food Psych #177: Intuitive Eating, Chronic Illness, and Breaking Free from The Wellness Diet with Linda Tucker
Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio
Health At Every Size® health coach and certified intuitive eating counselor Linda Tucker joins us to discuss how dieting causes health problems even while purporting to solve them, how diet culture and its new guise as the Wellness Diet twist the definition of self-care and health, how intuitive eating can help with managing a chronic illness, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about how to handle the feeling that things were just *easier* in a smaller body.
Linda is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor who incorporates Health at Every Size, body liberation, and intuitive living into her private coaching practice. Linda works through a truly holistic lens, meaning that ALL aspects of someones lived experience are examined. She has her own history of disordered eating and chronic illness and wants to raise awareness and release shame around both. Find her online at LindaTuckerCoaching.com.
Registration for my Master Your Anti-Diet Message course is open for a few more days! If you’re a fellow Health At Every Size practitioner who would like to learn how to refine your marketing messages so that they are aligned with HAES philosophy, sign up at christyharrison.com/message.
This episode is brought to you by Poshmark, the fun and simple way to buy and sell fashion (including many plus-sized options!) Get $5 off your first purchase when you sign up with the invite code FOODPSYCH.
We Discuss:
The different factors that affected Linda’s relationship with food and her body growing up
Scarcity mentality, and how it played into her relationship with food
Struggling with body image despite having lots of privilege
Men and dieting
How fatphobia shows up in people with thin privilege
The toxicity of complimenting weight loss
Linda’s experience with diet pills and their side effects
Her personal journey with dieting, weight loss, and “wellness”
The tendency to give dieting the credit for weight loss and deny the harm that it can cause
Clean eating, and how it worsened her health and triggered or exacerbated chronic illness
Having compassion for people who are stuck in diet mentality
How diet culture and The Wellness Diet twist the definition of self-care and push us to blame ourselves for poor health
Isolation, and how it can make us susceptible to perfectionism and performing
Social media, and how it can perpetuate disordered thoughts and behaviors
Praising productivity, and how that can be problematic
What inspired Linda to start doing the work that she does today
How we sometimes use health and wellness goals to hide our true desire to lose weight
Diving into the meaning behind our wellness and weight goals
The contradictory messages from popular diet programs
Why intuitive eating alone isn’t enough for full recovery
Using the principles of intuitive eating, HAES®, and body liberation together
How Linda’s health concerns helped to solidify her belief in body liberation
Ableism, and its damaging messaging
The intersection of body liberation and chronic illness
The healing qualities of holding space versus offering solutions
How she uses self-care to manage her chronic health conditions
How our digestive system can carry a lot of tension
Why it’s important to oppose healthism
Acceptance and letting go, and how they can improve health
Being our “own client” first
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, which includes monthly listener Q&A podcasts and access to my private Facebook support group
Help spread the anti-diet message by subscribing to the podcast
This episode is brought to you by Poshmark, the fun and simple way to buy and sell fashion (including many plus-sized options!) Get $5 off your first purchase when you sign up with the invite code FOODPSYCH.
Food Psych® Podcast episode with Alan Levinovitz on diet culture and religion
Brené Brown’s work (TW: Though a lot of her work is brilliant, she is not 100% HAES-aligned and has shared some fatphobic messaging and dieting behaviors in the past)
Isabel Foxen Duke’s work
Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works, 3rd ed. by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
Food Psych® Podcast episode with Marci Evans on digestive health
Linda’s website, and her Instagram and Facebook pages
Listener Question of the Week
What if being in a smaller body was easier? How can a person reconcile the freedom of intuitive eating with mourning a thinner body? Any advice to make peace with my body and its limitations today? Can changes in body size be seen as neutral? Can we manage the changes associated with weight gain without losing weight? How do diet culture and weight stigma make it difficult to live in a larger body? How can we harness our anger in mourning a smaller body? What are some ways to help reframe the discomfort that is associated with a larger body, and practice self-care and self-compassion?
(Resources Mentioned: Food Psych® episodes #113 with Sonya Renée Taylor, #119 with Ragen Chastain, and #62)