Journalist and author Virginia Sole-Smith joins us to discuss why The Wellness Diet is really diet culture in disguise, how journalists like her and Christy played unwitting roles in creating this new manifestation of diet culture, how her daughter’s experience with significant medical issues affected her relationship with food, how to help kids navigate diet-culture messaging in different stages of life, how to teach children about nutrition and health in a non-diet way, and so much more! Plus, Christy shares an excerpt from her "HAES vs. weight management" debate at FNCE (the national dietitians’ conference).

Virginia Sole-Smith is the author of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America. She's also a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Slate, and Elle, as well as a contributing editor with Parents Magazine. She lives with her husband and two daughters in the Hudson Valley. Find her online at VirginiaSoleSmith.com.

This episode is brought to you by Zero. If you’re a smoker who is trying to quit, get the support you need through a unique, three-pronged approach with a Zero Quit Kit. Save $50 on your first month by visiting QuitWithZero.com/FoodPsych.

Next Tuesday, November 6 is Election Day! This could be one of the most important midterms in our lifetime, so make sure you have a plan on when and how you’re going to get out and vote. Visit Vote.org for general election information, including registering to vote, and VoteSaveAmerica.com to find out about events and rallies in your area.

We Discuss:

• Growing up as a picky eater, and what motivated her to try more foods

• How her relationship with food and with her body shifted in college

• The subtle ways fatphobia showed up in Virginia’s childhood

• Third-wave feminism, and trying to marry feminist values with societal expectations of femininity

• Virginia’s career in the magazine industry, and what sparked her interest in reporting on health and nutrition

• Being a part of the cultural shift toward The Wellness Diet, and not realizing at the time that it is still a form of diet culture

• How the so-called “obesity epidemic” was invented in the late ’90s

• Privilege, and its role in spreading diet messaging in our society

• How being a mother helped Virginia to see that The Wellness Diet and the alternative food movement are really diet culture in disguise

• The trauma of having a young child with major health concerns

• Virginia’s daughter Violet’s journey with a congenital heart condition and its required medical interventions, including being fed with a feeding tube and being on a medically required diet

• The available research on treating feeding disorders in children: the behavioral approach versus the child-led approach

• How current feeding therapies mirror diet culture

• Our society’s reliance on external experts to tell us what and how to eat

• Using Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibilities (DOR) model to help rebuild Violet’s relationship with food and her feeding cues

• Diet-culture messaging in schools and elsewhere outside the home

• Violet’s current relationship with food, and how she is sharing that with her younger sister

• How parenting advice often reinforces diet culture

• Sharing the anti-diet message with other parents

• Accepting kids’ eating habits and helping them attune to their own cues in a helpful way

• The demonization of sugar amongst parents and kids

• Helping kids navigate diet culture at different stages in life

• How to talk to children about food and health in a non-diet way

• Having compassion for people who are still stuck in diet culture

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

• Weight stigma is stressful. A review of evidence for the Cyclic Obesity/Weight-Based Stigma model

• Weight Bias and Stigma: Public Health Implications and Structural Solutions

• Confronting and Coping with Weight Stigma: An Investigation of Overweight and Obese Adults

• The weight-inclusive versus weight-normative approach to health: evaluating the evidence for prioritizing well-being over weight loss

• Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong

• Perceived Weight Discrimination and 10-Year Risk of Allostatic Load Among US Adults

• The Weight of Stigma: Cortisol Reactivity to Manipulated Weight Stigma

• Impact of weight stigma on physiological and psychological health outcomes for overweight and obese adults: A systematic review

• Impact of Weight Bias and Stigma on Quality of Care and Outcomes for Patients with Obesity

• Association between perceived weight discrimination and physical activity: a population-based study among English middle-aged and older adults

• I Think Therefore I Am: Perceived Ideal Weight as a Determinant of Health.

• Ragen Chastain’s Food Psych® Podcast episode

• Medicare’s Search for Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not the Answer

• Meta-analysis: the effect of dietary counseling for weight loss.

• Association of weight change, weight control practices and weight cycling among women in the Nurses’ Health Study II

• Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift

• Associations of Variability in Blood Pressure, Glucose and Cholesterol Concentrations, and Body Mass Index With Mortality and Cardiovascular Outcomes in the General Population

• Effects of competing news media frames of weight on antifat stigma, beliefs about weight and support for obesity-related public policies

• Virginia’s book, The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America (TW: weight numbers, the “O-words”)

• Ellyn Satter’s work

• Amy Palanjian’s blog, Yummy Toddler Food

• Virginia and Amy’s podcast, Comfort Food Podcast

• Kimberly Dark’s Food Psych® Podcast episode

• Heidi Schauster’s Food Psych® Podcast episode

• Virginia’s website, and on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

• This episode is brought to you by Zero. If you’re a smoker who is trying to quit, get the support you need through a unique, three-pronged approach with a Zero Quit Kit. Save $50 on your first month by visiting QuitWithZero.com/FoodPsych.

• Next Tuesday, November 6 is Election Day! This could be one of the most important midterms in our lifetime, so make sure you have a plan on when and how you’re going to get out and vote. Visit Vote.org for general election information, including registering to vote, and VoteSaveAmerica.com to find out about events and rallies in your area.