Food Psych #251: Anti-Diet Pregnancy and Body-Image Resources with Summer Innanen, Plus the State of the Science on COVID-19 and Weight

Introduction & Guest Bio:

Body-image coach Summer Innanen returns to the podcast to discuss weight-inclusive pregnancy and postpartum resources; raising socially conscious, anti-diet children; her experiences returning to work from maternity leave; why she rebranded her body-image course; and so much more. Plus, Christy answers a listener question about the current state of the science on COVID-19 and weight. 

Summer Innanen is a professionally trained coach specializing in body image, self-worth and confidence who helps people all over the world to stop living behind the numbers on their scales through her private and group coaching. She is the best-selling author of Body Image Remix, the creator of the flagship You, On Fire – a 3 month online program to help women break free from body shame and live life on their own terms. And, she is the host of Fearless Rebelle Radio - a podcast about body image, anti-dieting, self-help and feminism. Find her online at SummerInnanen.com.

We Discuss:

• What Summer has been up to since her first appearance on Food Psych®

• Her pregnancy and postpartum experience as someone who previously struggled with body-image concerns

• Asking not to be weighed at the doctor’s office, even during pregnancy

• Honoring your hunger during pregnancy and breastfeeding

• Weight-inclusive, body-positive pregnancy and postpartum resources

• Normalizing and embracing all parts of birth

• Unrealistic societal pressures postpartum

• The mental load on new mothers and parents

• The importance of community during the postpartum period

• Making new friends as someone who is anti-diet

• How to respond to fatphobic comments or other pushback against anti-diet work

• Raising children from a social-justice, anti-diet stance

• Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility

• Picky eating as a normal part of childhood development

• Raising an intuitive eater

• Advocating for your child

• Summer’s process of rebranding her course, You, On Fire, and how it’s continued to evolve

• Her experience returning to work from maternity leave

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

• My book, Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating

• Help spread the anti-diet message by subscribing to the podcast

• Summer’s first appearance on Food Psych

• 4th Trimester Bodies Project, and their Instagram account @stopcensoringmotherhood

• Take Back Postpartum (@takebackpostpartum)

• Birth of a Mama (@birthofamama)

• Mid Drift Movement, and their Instagram account @mid.drift.movement

• Plus Size Birth, and their Instagram account @plussizebirth

• The Fourth Trimester by Kimberly Ann Johnson (Bookshop) (Amazon)

• The Conscious Kid, and their Instagram account @theconsciouskid

• Feeding Littles

• Ellyn Satter’s work (TW: Some fatphobic language)

• Summer’s course, You, On Fire

• Kelly Diels’s work, and her Food Psych episode

• Summer’s podcast, Fearless Rebelle Radio

• Summer’s website, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
  

Ask Food Psych

Listener Question:

“How would you respond to media coverage on recent research linking COVID-19 and weight?”

We Discuss: 

• A critical look at the research linking higher weight with worse outcomes from COVID-19

• Why pursuing weight loss is not an effective strategy for preventing COVID-19

• What everyone, regardless of body size, can do to prevent COVID-19

• Weight stigma/bias as a confounding factor in research

• A review of some of the recent research on COVID-19 and weight

• What could potentially be contributing to the correlation between weight and COVID-19

Resources Mentioned: 

• Food Psych episode #236

• "Covid-19 Does Not Discriminate by Body Weight" (Christy’s op-ed in Wired)

• Sabrina Strings’s work, and her Food Psych episode

• “It’s Not Obesity. It’s Slavery.” (Sabrina’s op-ed in the New York Times)

• “Weight and prognosis for influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 infection during the pandemic period between 2009 and 2011: a systematic review of observational studies with meta-analysis” (TW: o-words, BMI numbers, death)

• “[O-word] and Mortality Among Patients Diagnosed with COVID-19: Results From an Integrated Health Care Organization” (TW: o-words, weight-stigmatizing language and images, BMI numbers, death)

• “Racial and ethnic disparities in SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: analysis of a COVID-19 observational registry for a diverse US metropolitan population” (TW: o-words, weight-stigmatizing language, BMI numbers, death)

• “COVID-19 and its severity in bariatric surgery operated patients” (TW: o-words, weight loss surgery, weight-stigmatizing language, BMI numbers, death)