Introduction & Guest Bio:

Anti-diet social worker Noel Ramirez joins us to discuss the parallels between disordered eating and dysfunctional relationships, the intersection of eating disorders and substance abuse, creating a sense of home in our bodies, how diet culture shows up in queer male culture, and so much more. Plus, in Ask Food Psych, Christy answers a listener question about whether there’s truly such a thing as “diet-related illness.”  

Dr. Noel Ramirez is a Philly-based licensed clinical social worker and public health professional. Informed by Immigrant-Filipino parents who love through a sense of home, a chosen Queer family who resist subjugation, and a public health community that seeks to honor social and environmental context, his approach is relational, inter-subjective and grounded in love, honor and respect. Dr. Ramirez received his graduate training in social work from the University of Pennsylvania and his graduate public health training from Drexel University. He recently completed his Doctorate in Behavioral Health from Arizona State University and focused his academic work in developing programing in patient-centered medical homes, integrated-health, recovery oriented primary care and body-positive behavioral interventions. He is a licensed anger management treatment professional, compassion fatigue educational professional, and has a certificate in Clinical Social Work supervision. Currently, Dr. Ramirez teaches a wide range of graduate courses that invite an intersectional approach to social work practice at Columbia University and West Chester University. He is also a project director for medicated assisted recovery initiatives across a network of federally qualified health centers and is a behavioral health consultant for patients in primary care. He is deeply honored to be doing this work and to be in community with caring and compassionate colleagues and social workers. Find him online at NoelBRamirez.com.

We Discuss:

• The many roles that food played for Noel, his family, and his community growing up

• How growing up in the US affected his relationship with food and body, compared with others in the Filipino community

• The lack of representation of diverse queer bodies, particularly in television

• How fatphobic narratives in the queer community contributed to his disordered eating

• How his negative relationship with food and body intensified in college and beyond, despite being in gender studies and starting to find community

• The politic of the unapologetic, embodiment, and their roles in Noel’s recovery

• The parallels between disordered eating and dysfunctional relationships

• Decolonizing and reclaiming a sense of home in our bodies

• Diet culture in primary care, and how Noel is bringing Health At Every Size® and body positivity to his work in the field

• Making HAES® more accessible to marginalized communities

• The intersection of eating disorders and substance abuse

• Noel’s experiences with the abstinence model for eating-disorder recovery

• His initial reactions to Intuitive Eating, and how he eventually embraced body positivity and HAES

• The challenges of dating for gay and bisexual men

• Love, honor, and respect as guiding values

• Redefining masculinity

• The importance of community, belonging, and connection in fighting oppression

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

• Intuitive Eating, 4th edition by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch (Bookshop) (Amazon)

• Dr. Elliot Goodenough’s work

• Rachel Fox’s work

• Lindo Bacon’s work, and their Food Psych® episode

• Recovery Warriors podcast

• Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH)

• Sonalee Rashatwar’s work, and their Food Psych episode

• Noel’s website

Ask Food Psych

Listener Question:

“Is there really such a thing as ‘diet-related illness’?”—Laetitia

We Discuss: 

• How the evidence doesn’t line up with the rhetoric of “diet-related illness”

• The role of genetics and other factors in conditions often attributed to diet

• The potential harms of managing chronic disease with diet alone

• Social determinants of health

• The Wellness Diet and the food justice movement

• Advocating for food justice without a side of diet culture

• The financial implications of health-related vs. justice-related causes

Resources Mentioned: 

• Food Psych episode #224 with Lauren Newman

• “Weight Cycling and its Cardiometabolic Impacts” (TW: weight-stigmatizing language, o-words)

• “Relative Contributions of a Set of Health Factors to Selected Health Outcomes”

• “County Health Rankings: Relationships Between Determinant Factors and Health Outcomes”