Food Psych #217: The Life Thief, Part 3: How Diet Culture Steals Your Well-Being with Kendrin Sonneville

Photographer: Khali MacIntyre

Weight-stigma and eating-disorders researcher Kendrin Sonneville joins us to discuss how diet culture steals our well-being by perpetuating fatphobia, why even seemingly subtle forms of weight stigma can lead to poorer health, the role of science in the paradigm shift toward Health At Every Size®, why weight stigma is more than just a health issue, and so much more. Plus, Christy answers a listener question about intuitive eating and fears around weight loss. 

Kendrin Sonneville, ScD, RD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Dr. Sonneville also holds an adjunct appointment at Harvard Medical School and is a Collaborating Mentor for the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED) at Boston Children's Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Sonneville is a registered dietitian, behavioral scientist, and public health researcher whose research focuses on the prevention of eating disorders among children, adolescents, and young adults. Dr. Sonneville uses a weight-inclusive framework to study how to promote health and well-being without inadvertently increasing body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and weight stigma. Find her online at KendrinS.sph.umich.edu.

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We Discuss:

  • How Kendrin’s mother helped her to foster a positive relationship with food and body growing up

  • Her experiences with dieting as a teenager

  • The Wellness Diet, and how it’s still about calorie restriction

  • How dieting can set people up for shame

  • Why diets recommended by doctors can cause additional harm

  • What motivated Kendrin to study nutrition, and her current career as an eating-disorder researcher

  • How she was introduced to Health At Every Size (HAES®)

  • The trickle-down effect of “obesity epidemic” rhetoric in regards to HAES research and knowledge

  • Science as an “authority,” compared to lived experience

  • The lack of fat representation in “obesity” research

  • Kendrin’s research on weight perception and its effect on health

  • How weight stigma, including subtler forms, can lead to poorer health

  • How our healthcare system upholds weight stigma

  • The lack of funding for weight-stigma and eating-disorder research

  • How weight management continues to be touted by healthcare professionals and researchers, despite the lack of evidence for benefit and growing evidence for harm

  • Why the source of research funding is important

  • The double-edged sword of the democratization of media and “thinking outside the box”

  • How Kendrin is talking about weight-stigma with her students

  • Weight bias as a diversity issue, not just a health concern

Resources Mentioned

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Listener Question of the Week

How can a person manage their fear of being in a smaller body? Is weight gain really a subconscious form of protection? How is focusing on weight a form of deprivation? How can a person stop focusing on their weight? Why is the term “overeating” problematic? What is the difference between true intuitive eating and treating intuitive eating as a diet?

 
Christy HarrisonThe Life Thief, Weight stigma, weight bias, research, public health, dieting, The Wellness Diet, dietitian, Health At Every Size, HAES, eating disorder, science, representation, weight perception, healthcare, medicine, funding, diversity, intuitive eating, weight loss, deprivation, S719