Food Psych #219: ANTI-DIET Launch Party! Guest Host Evelyn Tribole Interviews Christy About Diet Culture, Intuitive Eating, and Her New Book

Photographer: Khali MacIntyre

Evelyn Tribole (co-author of Intuitive Eating) returns to celebrate the launch of Christy’s first book, Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating. Evelyn interviews Christy about the history of diet culture and The Wellness Diet, diet culture’s role in healthcare and the so-called “obesity epidemic,” why food activism is not as progressive as it seems, intuitive eating as the anti-diet approach to eating, and so much more.

Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD is an award-winning registered dietitian, specializing in eating disorders and Intuitive Eating, with a private practice in Newport Beach, California. She has written nine books, including the bestsellers Healthy Homestyle Cooking and Intuitive Eating (co-author).

Evelyn was the nutrition expert for Good Morning America in 1994-’95, and was a national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association for 6 years. She was contributing editor for Shape magazine where her monthly column, Recipe Makeovers, appeared for 11 years.

She is often sought by the media for her nutritional expertise and has appeared on hundreds of interviews, including: CNN, Today Show, MSNBC, Fox News, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and People magazine.

Evelyn qualified for the Olympic Trials in the first ever women’s marathon in 1984. Although she no longer competes, Evelyn runs for fun and is an avid skier and hiker. She also enjoys surfing, kayaking and white water rafting. Evelyn’s favorite food is chocolate, when it can be savored slowly. Find Evelyn online at EvelynTribole.com, and pre-order her newest book, the 4th edition of Intuitive Eating.

We Discuss:

  • What is diet culture? A system of beliefs that: 

    • Worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue

    • Promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status

    • Demonizes certain foods and ways of eating, while elevating others

  • How is diet culture an epidemic?

    • How diet culture created the supposed “obesity epidemic,” and why that’s not a real epidemic

    • The effects of weight stigma and weight cycling on health

  • How can someone respond to weight stigma from their doctors and other healthcare providers?

    • How weight stigma in healthcare can lead to poorer health

    • Research on how labeling people as “overweight” or “obese” can negatively affect health

    • What to say to your doctor if you don’t want to be weighed

  • What were the series of events that led to the construction of the “obesity epidemic?”

    • Lowering of BMI cutoffs by NIH, and the industry-funded research that led to that decision

    • Maps of “obesity” rates by CDC researchers William Dietz and Ali Mokdad

    • The implications of the “obesity epidemic”

  • What is the history of diet culture and fatphobia?

    • When the idea that “fat is bad” came into cultural conscience

    • The Great Chain of Being, and how it affected evolutionary science at the time

    • Sylvester Graham

    • William Banting

    • How doctors and healthcare became influenced by diet culture

  • Why do doctors continue to prescribe weight loss despite evidence that diets do the opposite of what they claim?

    • The role of diet culture

    • The problem with the “obesity paradox”

    • The role of the weight-loss industry and funding

  • How might the healthcare and weight-loss industries receive the message in Anti-Diet?

    • Pushback versus paradigm shift

    • Current pushback against anti-diet and Health At Every Size® messages

    • Weight-centric assumptions in current research

    • Christy and Evelyn’s experiences in reckoning the harm that they did while practicing with a weight-centric approach, and transitioning to a HAES® approach

  • What is Health At Every Size?

    • A weight-neutral/weight-inclusive philosophy in healthcare

    • The five principles of HAES

    • The role of social justice

    • Why health is not a moral obligation

  • How are food activism and diet culture related?

    • The key figures in food activism

    • How sustainability can be interpreted as a food rule

    • Why food activism is not as progressive as it claims

  • How can someone make food choices based on environmental concerns without getting caught up in diet culture?

    • The role of an individual’s relationship with food

    • How disordered eating disproportionately affects marginalized folks

    • Why messaging around “voting with your fork” can be problematic

    • Policy, and holding corporations accountable for environmental impacts

  • How fear-mongering about the environment and health takes away the joy of eating

    • How spontaneity and unconditional permission to eat contributes to pleasure

    • Pleasure as the hub of intuitive eating

  • How does the food environment affect people who are chronically dieting compared to people who eat intuitively?

    • The main arguments that food activists make against “processed” foods, and the research that debunks this

    • How people who eat intuitively have a greater sense of agency with food

    • The problem with food-addiction research

    • Reframing “food addiction” as an issue of deprivation

    • Why dieting is not really a form of control

  • What is The Wellness Diet?

    • Another form of diet culture promoting perfectionistic, unattainable picture of “health”

    • The factors that led diet culture to shape-shift into The Wellness Diet

    • The history of the “diets don’t work” message

    • Diet mentality

    • The history of low-carb diets

    • The co-opting of intuitive eating and mindful eating

    • Intuitive eating as the anti-diet approach to eating

  • What are the main takeaways from Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating?

    • Diet culture as a system of oppression

    • Why we need to be vigilant around diet culture

    • Intuitive eating and HAES as self-care outside of diet culture

Resources Mentioned

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Christy HarrisonDiet culture, Anti-Diet, epidemic, fatphobia, weight stigma, weight cycling, health, healthcare, medicine, history, science, research, food activism, food environment, The Wellness Diet, intuitive eating, pleasure, Health At Every Size, HAES, S719