Food Psych #272: Rebuilding Body Trust, the Importance of Unlearning, and Why Body Liberation Is for Everyone with Hilary Kinavey and Dana Sturtevant

Photographer: Khali MacIntyre

Introduction & Guest Bio:

Be Nourished co-founders Hilary Kinavey and Dana Sturtevant return to discuss the process of unlearning, including/especially for healthcare providers; wanting body liberation for others while thinking it doesn’t apply to ourselves; how diet culture reinforces perfectionism; how the wellness industry hasn’t actually improved wellness; rebuilding trust in our relationship with food and our bodies; and so much more. 

In 2005, Hilary Kinavey, MS, LPC and Dana Sturtevant, MS, RD co-founded Be Nourished, a community based outpatient clinic and professional training institute that created Body Trust®—a strength-based, trauma-informed, scientifically grounded healing modality that encourages movement toward a compassionate, weight-inclusive model of radical self-care to address body oppression, heal body shame and associated patterns of chronic dieting and disordered eating. The Be Nourished Training Institute offers programs for helping professionals and educators interested in adopting client-centered, trauma-informed, justice-based approaches to healing—including an intensive cohort-based six-month training to become a Certified Body Trust Provider. Their work has been featured in The New York Times, Self, Real Simple, Huffington Post, and the TEDx stage. Learn more at BeNourished.org.

We Discuss:

  • What Hilary and Dana have been up to since their previous appearances on Food Psych

  • The difference between “all are welcome here,” and “this was made with you in mind”

  • The Body Trust model, and how it integrates social-justice work

  • The problem with the focus on eating-disorder behaviors in eating-disorder treatment

  • Healthcare providers being in process with their own healing

  • Wanting body liberation for others while thinking it “doesn’t apply” to ourselves

  • Rebuilding trust in our relationship with food and our bodies

  • The isolating nature of diet culture and weight stigma

  • Grief and reckoning as part of the recovery process

  • How diet culture reinforces perfectionism, and divesting from it as part of recovery

  • Dana and Hilary’s latest program, The School of Unlearning, and their thoughts on the concept of unlearning

  • Why it’s important for healthcare providers to engage in unlearning

  • The history of dietetics, particularly as a vehicle for diet culture

  • Hilary’s views on the current state of the field of psychology, and where she would like to see it evolve

  • Healthism and the COVID-19 pandemic

  • How the wellness industry has grown significantly, yet our wellness hasn’t improved

  • Trauma, its causes, and its effects on health

  • Other forms of knowing

  • The long process of unlearning

  • Being OK with not knowing

  • Moving away from the “expert” role as healthcare providers

Resources Mentioned

Some of the links below are affiliate links. Affiliates or not, we only recommend products and services that align with our values.

 
Christy HarrisonBe Nourished, body trust, social justice, anti-oppression, eating disorders, healthcare, trust, diet culture, weight stigma, fatphobia, grief, reckoning, eating-disorder recovery, perfectionism, unlearning, dietetics, psychology, healthism, wellness, trauma, knowledge, knowing, anti-diet, S821