Food Psych #260: Redefining Health and Wellness, Hearing Your Own Voice, and Why Fear Isn't a Good Motivator with Melissa Toler

Introduction & Guest Bio:

Anti-diet writer, speaker, and podcaster Melissa Toler returns to discuss her new podcast, Hearing Our Own Voice; redefining health and wellness to be more inclusive; why fear is not a motivator for behavior change; finding intrinsic motivation for movement; and so much more. Plus, in “Ask Food Psych,” Christy answers a listener question about what to do if you find yourself consistently bingeing on the weekends. 

Melissa Toler is a writer and speaker. Her work encourages people to make the connection between our culture's oppressive health and beauty standards and our personal struggle with self-acceptance. Her goal is to help people use expressive writing to unlearn harmful messages and behaviors from years of chronic dieting. Melissa also has a background as a pharmacist and certified wellness coach. Find her online at MelissaToler.com.

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We Discuss:

• What Melissa has been up to since her last appearance on Food Psych

• How Melissa and Christy’s writing have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic

• The uptick in healthist and fatphobic content during COVID-19

• Melissa’s new podcast, Hearing Our Own Voice, and why she chose that name

• Redefining health and wellness, and how current definitions are often exclusionary

• Harmful health messages that Black people often receive

• Why fear is not a good motivator for change

• Health-related factors that are often missed in traditional healthcare settings

• Motivational interviewing and behavior change

• How Melissa’s training and work as a pharmacist informs her anti-diet work

• How her relationship with exercise and movement continues to evolve

• Finding intrinsic motivation for movement

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

• Melissa’s previous Food Psych® episodes, #75 and #130

• Melissa’s podcast, Hearing Our Own Voice

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

• “What happens when we don’t tell the truth about ‘health’” (blog post by Melissa)

• Courtney Marshall’s work

• "Sixty years of fear appeal research: Current state of the evidence"

• "Ignoring theory and misinterpreting evidence: the false belief in fear appeals"

• “Self‐perception of [o-words]: A review of mental and physical health outcomes” (TW: weight-stigmatizing language, o-words, BMI numbers)

• Ayana Habtemariam’s work, and her Food Psych episode

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

Ask Food Psych

Listener Question:

“How can I stop bingeing when I know it’s out of habit and not a response to restriction?”—J

We Discuss: 

• Physical and mental restriction of food, and how they can lead to binge eating

• How to manage binge eating

• Working with an eating-disorder treatment team

Resources Mentioned: 

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

• Food Psych episode #151

• christyharrison.com/providers