What I'm Consuming

It’s been a while since I’ve shared a roundup of the content I’m currently consuming, so here you go!

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I’m infuriated and horrified by the American Academy of Pediatrics’ new guidelines for higher-weight children that include prescribing “intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment” for kids as young as two, weight-loss drugs for kids ages 12 and up, and bariatric surgery starting at age 13. Yes, you read that right!

Not only do these guidelines further stigmatize larger-bodied kids and put them at risk for life-threatening complications, they are also potentially setting them up for a lifetime of weight cycling, disordered eating and exercise, eating disorders, body dissatisfaction and more adverse outcomes.

Journalist Virginia Sole-Smith shares her thoughts on this here:

Why the New Obesity Guidelines for Kids Terrify Me [New York Times, gift link]

And, in her Weight and Healthcare newsletter, researcher Ragen Chastain digs deep into the guidelines to reveal undisclosed conflicts of interest, unsupportive claims, inadequate research and more:

Dangerous New American Academy of Pediatrics Guidelines for Higher-Weight Children [Substack]

Serious Issues with the American Academy of Pediatrics Guidelines for Higher-Weight Children and Adolescents [Substack]

Testing the Claim That Pediatric Weight Management Interventions Decrease Eating Disorders [Substack] 

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Every Single Diet (Even When You Don’t Use That Word) is About These 15 Awful Things [Medium]
Writer Savala Nolan nails it in this article regarding many of the ways dieting is so very problematic, including some you may not even be aware of.

“My Weight Watchers memberships didn’t come with a pamphlet explaining that there is no data showing that weight suppression works beyond a brief time except on the rarest of occasions, or that food restriction often leads to binging, or that dieting might cause all types of physical and emotional harm, or that fatness was fine and I was terrific as-is, or that the whole shebang was rooted in anti-Blackness and, hey, being Black myself I might want to think twice about that. Like the dark side of all industries, the dark side of dieting isn’t advertised.”

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It’s a Big Fat Deal: How Schools Teach Contempt for Fat People—and What We Can Do About It [Rethinking Schools]
This article by teacher and writer Katy Alexander is essential reading for anyone who works with kids, has fat kids, was a fat kid, or just plain loves kids. Don’t miss their “For My Fatties” poem at the end.

“Fat kids don’t need you to save them from being fat. They need you to save them from your own feelings about fat and our fatphobic culture.”

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You Just Need to Lose Weight: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People 
Aubrey Gordon’s second book is just as powerful as her first one and both should be required reading for everyone. And if you aren’t listening to her Maintenance Phase podcast yet, I highly recommend you start today.

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Big Girl: A Novel
I’m wrapping up with this tender, hilarious and heartbreaking novel by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan about a fat Black girl coming of age in gentrifying 1990s Harlem who dares to take up space in a world that relentlessly tries to shrink her.

Note: In alliance with the fat-acceptance community, I use fat as a neutral descriptor.

Raising Fat Kids, Diet Foods and More Top Picks

Here’s another roundup of my top content picks to support you on your journey toward a peaceful relationship with food and your body.

There’s some really good stuff here.

I encourage you to check it out then share it with anyone you know who personally struggles with these things—or struggles to understand those who do.

Embodied Podcast: Resolved—Your Anti-Diet New Year [WUNC.org]
This three-part series does an impressive job with covering everything from diet culture’s racist roots, medical fatphobia and weight-loss science to Intuitive Eating and body neutrality.

Part 1: Deconstructing diet culture: Lessons unlearned from a thin-obsessed society

Part 2: Relearning how to eat: How intuitive eating can heal your relationship with food

Part 3: Becoming body neutral: why it’s OK to not always love your body

The Problem with Poodle Science [YouTube]
As mentioned in the above Embodied podcast, despite what diet culture wants us to believe, a mastiff isn't meant to have a poodle's body. This short, animated video illustrates why.

A Guide to Parenting Fat Kids [Today’s Parent]
“How do you raise a fat, healthy, happy child? I’m not a doctor or a psychologist. I’m just a fat kid who grew into a fat adult, and this is what would have been helpful to me.”

From not restricting and moralizing food to celebrating body diversity and working on your own food and body issues, this is a must-read for parents and caregivers of larger-bodied kids.

Diet Foods of the ’80s Are Out. But Has Anything Really Changed? [Bon Appetit]
“From the moment in 1898 when J.H. Kellogg introduced Toasted Corn Flakes to get our digestion on track, we’ve looked to food to make us healthier, more virtuous, and thinner. Has it worked? Not really. So why do we keep expecting it to?"

This very relatable deep dive into the evolution of diet foods and the diet and wellness industries will likely make you cringe, laugh and curse. It definitely brought back memories of all the “better for you” (yet terribly unsatisfying) foods I consumed when I was entrenched in diet/wellness culture (fat-free cream cheese, anyone?).

As always, I hope you find these recommendations to be informative, helpful, and ultimately, liberating. Huge gratitude to all the folks who are creating this much-needed paradigm-shifting content.

Note: In alliance with the fat-acceptance community, I use fat as a neutral descriptor.

What I'm Tuning Into...

From time to time, I like to share what I’m tuning into when it comes to diet culture, body diversity, Intuitive Eating, Health at Every Size and more.

It’s my hope that the following content, which comes from a diverse range of voices, will help support you on your journey toward a more peaceful relationship with food and your body.


>>WATCH

Your Body Has Survived a Pandemic. Don’t Punish It With Diet Fads. [New York Times]
“[The diet industry is] simply preying on our insecurities at a particularly vulnerable time as we re-emerge into society and propagating the age-old myth that weight is the best measure of someone’s health. If there was ever a time that we should be kind to ourselves and to others—especially about our bodies—that would be now.”

All Bodies on Bikes [YouTube]
The stars of this inspiring video are on a mission to change the idea that people in larger bodies can’t ride bikes. To learn more about this empowering duo, head on over to here. [Canadian Cycling Magazine]


>>READ AND LISTEN

The Majority of Women in America Have Disordered Eating [Good Housekeeping]
From counting macros and compensating for your eating to limiting the number of hours you allow yourself to eat, here are some signs that you may have a disordered relationship with food.

Although I’m not a fan of Good Housekeeping’s long history of publishing weight-stigmatizing content, I do appreciate the magazine’s new “Anti-Diet Series” and encourage you to check it out.

A Letter to Anyone Feeling the Pressure to Lose the ‘Quarantine 15’ [Self]
“The changes in your body are not a marker of your failure, but of your survival. Whatever your body looks like now, it is a body that has carried you through a time of tremendous tragedy, now to a point where we might finally be able to see glimmers of hope from the other side. And that matters so much more than weight gain ever could.”

I’m a big fan of all of Aubrey Gordon’s (aka Your Fat Friend) work and highly recommend her book, articles and podcast.

We are All Fragile Creatures: The Manufactured Moral Panic of a Free Krispy Kreme Doughnut [Roxane Gay, The Audacity]
"The real health crisis this country is facing is not fatness or free doughnuts or pandemic weight gain or any such nonsense. The real crisis is that we live in a country where tens of millions of people politicized wearing face masks, and made surviving a modern plague a matter of the survival of the fittest and sheer luck.”

Husky Boy [Vox Populi]
It’s not very often that men openly talk about their experience of living in a fat body. In this touching post, Andrew Reginald Hairston shares his journey towards body acceptance.

How Writing a Comfort Food Cookbook Helped Me Break Free from Diet Culture [Bon Appetit]
Julia Turshen shares how she had limited her range of emotions to just two options. “It hit me one day like a splash of cold water in the face. I had only ever felt two things in my life: happy or fat. Little did I know that ‘fat’ wasn’t even a feeling.”

I also love Turshen’s podcast, especially the episodes with Intuitive Eating Co-Creator Evelyn Tribole (#53), Chef Vivian Howard (#46), and Author Aubrey Gordon (#50).


I hope you find these recommendations to be helpful, insightful and inspiring. May you always remember that your body is a celebration of your survival.