Food Psych #264: How to Handle Holiday Diet Talk and Body Comments, and Healing from Weight Stigma with Meg Boggs

Photographer: Khali MacIntyre

Introduction & Guest Bio:

Plus-size fitness influencer and author Meg Boggs joins us to discuss how she made peace with food and her body after decades of disordered eating and weight stigma; how her relationship with social media has evolved from documenting her “weight-loss journey” to body positivity; how pregnancy and motherhood helped spark her healing from diet culture; why “thin shaming” and fat shaming are not the same; her forthcoming book, Fitness for Every Body; and so much more. Plus, in “Ask Food Psych,” Christy answers a listener question about how to handle diet talk and body comments during the holidays. 

Meg Boggs is a mother, athlete, and self-empowerment advocate who has made it her mission to help women embrace their insecurities. Meg first took to her blog and Instagram to share her journey through motherhood, revealing her postpartum body through a series of emotionally raw posts that earned attention from moms and global media including CNN, Good Morning America, People, and more. With advocacy from mental health awareness to fitness inclusivity promoted alongside body-positive imagery, Meg continues to spark discourse about fat bodies and the experiences of plus size women. In her debut book, Fitness For Every Body, set to release in April 2021, Meg shares what it’s like to navigate life as a fat athlete, while encouraging those like her to confidently take up space and embrace life unapologetically. Find her online at MegBoggs.com.

We Discuss:

  • How weight-related bullying and Meg’s mother’s dieting affected her relationship with food and her body growing up

  • The fatphobic comments she received even after losing weight 

  • Her experiences as a patient in an adolescent mental health unit, including the lack of attention to eating-disorder symptoms

  • The Minnesota Starvation Study, and the mental-health effects of starvation

  • The feelings of doubt that Meg continues to have about her body, and how she navigates it

  • How food served as an escape for her during college

  • What sparked her last dieting attempt as an adult, and how she tried to use fear as a motivator

  • How pregnancy and motherhood started to shift Meg’s relationship with food and her body

  • Diabetes and disordered eating

  • Healthism, and how it plays out on social media

  • Why she started to shift her social media platforms toward promoting body positivity, and how her work has evolved

  • How she responds to difficult moments

  • Letting ourselves feel our feelings

  • Christy and Meg’s relationships with social media

  • Why “thin shaming” is not equivalent to fat shaming

  • Meg’s forthcoming book, Fitness for Every Body (Simon & Schuster) (Bookshop) (Amazon)

Resources Mentioned

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Ask Food Psych

Listener Question:

“How can we respond to, and dissociate from, diet talk and/or comments about bodies and weight changes during the holidays?”—Melissa

We Discuss: 

  • Setting and reinforcing boundaries

  • Enmeshment and boundary trampling

  • Examples of how to respond to different forms of diet talk

  • How boundaries can inspire others

  • Why it’s usually not helpful to simply share anti-diet or intuitive eating information

  • Self care during the holiday season

Resources Discussed:

 
Christy HarrisonBullying, dieting, mental health, starvation, restriction, disordered eating, eating disorders, pregnancy, motherhood, diabetes, healthism, social media, body positivity, plus-size, Health At Every Size, HAES, feelings, emotions, thin shaming, fat shaming, fatphobia, weight stigma, representation, fitness, movement, boundaries, holidays, anti-diet, S820