Every Body | Reclaiming Body Talk

Shilo George is Southern Cheyenne-Arapaho and Scottish international speaker, trainer, and owner of Łush Kumtux Tumtum Consulting, which means “a great awakening of the heart and spirit” in the Chinuk Wawa trade language. She has lived her life in a body that transgresses and violates Western standards of beauty, size, sexuality, and health. Shilo interweaves cultural traditions and spirituality with an anti-oppressive and decolonizing lenses to promote healing and empowerment in herself and others in the communities she is a part of. Her workshops and presentations explore the intersections of race, sexuality, body size, and trauma (both individual and inter-generational). Shilo trains others on systems of oppression, trauma informed care, and proactive ways that businesses and organizations can create policies and environments that that promote diversity, equity, and healing.

Shilo received her Bachelor of Science in Art Practices in 2012 and a Masters of Science in Educational Leadership and Policy with a specialization in Postsecondary Adult and Continuing Education in 2017, both from Portland State University. She was named Higher Education Student of the Year by the Oregon Indian Education Association in 2013 and in 2015 was honored with the Queer Indigenous Scholar Activist & Alumni Award by the Indigenous Nations Studies Department at Portland State University. In addition to her consulting business, Shilo works as a Parent Advocate at the Native American Youth and Family Center and is an Affiliated Adjunct Instructor of the Indigenous Nations Studies at Portland State University. She can be contacted at [email protected].

Health and Wellness Philosophy Document

Aaron Flores is a registered dietitian nutritionist based out of Los Angeles, California. With nearly 10 years of experience, Aaron has worked with eating disorders in a variety of settings.

A large part of his career was spent working at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System where he helped develop and launch one of the first Binge Eating

Disorder programs to help Veterans struggling with this disorder. Since leaving the VA, Aaron has continued to work in the eating disorder community helping run groups and providing individual counseling to adolescents and adults. He currently works part-time at Center for Discovery and part-time in his private practice in Calabasas, CA. He is a Certified Body Trust® provider, and his main areas of focus are Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size®. In his work, Aaron helps individuals learn how to make peace with food and develop body-positive behaviors. His work has been featured during Weight Stigma Awareness Week, in blogs for the National Eating Disorder Information Centre and National Eating Disorder Association. Aaron is a frequent speaker and has presented at the 2016 and 2017 Binge Eating Disorder Awareness Annual Conference and the upcoming 2018 International Conference on Eating Disorders. Along with his work with eating disorders, he also is a co-host of the podcast, Dietitians Unplugged.

Aaron Flores’s private practice is in Calabasas, CA. He uses Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size® in his work to help individuals learn how to make peace with food and their bodies. He is a Certified Body Trust® provider and he also the co-host of the popular podcast, Dietitians Unplugged.

Sarah Vance (@sarevance) began focusing on the body when she began walking in her parents' footsteps by competitively body-building. After spiraling with restriction, disordered eating and body dysmorphia, she decided she needed to realign her relationship with her body. She created #effyourfitspo and challenges ideas of "health" and "strength" that are simply diet culture with a new name. Now, as a health care professional, she keeps a vigilant eye out for fat-phobia in the health care industry. We covered a lot of ground, but there's always room to share more and ask more. Take a listen and join the conversation with us on instagram!

"[Body positivity is] becoming more problematic because now fitspo culture and diet companies and diet culture are now co-opting body positivity... then you have a system in a culture that has now utilized something that was in the first place-- body positivity-- that was actually trying to dismantle the system that is now using it."

Sarah Vance

This Week on the Every Body Podcast:

• Sarah's first exposure to body consciousness with her body-building family.
• The internalization of body dysmorphia as our bodies naturally change with age and experience.
• How ideas of health are tainted with fat-phobia.
• Sarah's experience with restriction and dieting beginning with her decision to hire a "fitness coach" for competitive body building.
• A look at diet culture in "healthism" and fitspo culture.
• The ways increased exposure to social media amplifies fitspo culture.
• How "fitspo" started as a reaction to "thinspo," but still propels diet culture.
• Sarah's #effyourfitspo passion and realigning our priorities toward respecting our bodies.
• How Sarah began identifying as a "health nut" and the challenges with letting that go and rediscovering her relationship with her body.
• The sneaky layers behind diet culture that Sarah had to work through to overcome her disordered eating.
• How Sarah became and advocate for body positivity.
• The steps Sarah took to step away from her superficial body obsession.
• What it's like being in the health care industry as an advocate for HAES.
• The merits of asking "why" to challenge peoples' biases and stigmas.
• Our westernized relationship with death and how that feeds into the flawed health and wellness industry.

Additional Resources:

• Sarah's website: www.sarahvance.com
• Sarah's podcast "Reclaiming You": www.sarahvance.com/category/reclaiming-you-podcast-sarah-vance
• Sarah's instagram: @SareVance
• Facebook
• Patreon

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Thank you for joining me this week on the Every Body podcast. If you enjoyed this week’s episode, head over to iTunes , subscribe to the show and leave a review to help us grow the podcast. Don’t forget to visit our website , follow us on Facebook , Twitter, and Instagram so you never miss an episode!

Kai was first cast into the spotlight through her participation in, and subsequent denunciation of the weight loss game show The Biggest Loser. Going through the program, she realized the negative impact the show had, not only on her own life, but on society in general. Vowing to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, Kai has fought, often as the lone voice, against unrealistic and damaging message in the media regarding our bodies in general. Over time that struggle has been featured in countless magazines and newscasts, both domestically and internationally, ranging from The Huffington Post, Time Magazine, Good Morning America, ABC News, CBS News, E!, Star Magazine, US Weekly, People, TMZ, The NY Times, The NY Post, Inside Edition, Redbook, Access Hollywood, FoxNews,The Globe, Jezebel, Huffington Post Live and Upworthy, where Kai’s honest, straight forward approach to her own story never fails to shine through.

Most of Kai’s time is spent juggling family and professional life. When not writing for publications like xoJane, working on her books, speaking, chiming in on body shaming as a contributor for CNN, being interviewed for various outlets or keeping people encouraged on social media, she is reading studies, finishing on her MSW at UNE, preparing new presentations, starting a new podcast, planning the opening of her private psychotherapy practice with telecounseling services, and plotting ways to keep her kiddo in bed at bedtime.

In addition she is adjusting to life with chronic illnesses, rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. She is also very tired.

https://kaihibbard.com/about/

Studies Mentioned:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/27136388/

http://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol22/iss3/2/

Rate & Share

Thank you for joining me this week on the Every Body podcast. If you enjoyed this week’s episode, head over to iTunes , subscribe to the show and leave a review to help us grow the podcast. Don’t forget to visit our website , follow us on Facebook , Twitter, and Instagram so you never miss an episode!

Dr. Natalie Boero is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at San Jose State University. She joins Every Body this week to discuss the ways our society pigeon holes obesity as a personal problem for the individual rather than examining the wider socioeconomic scope (access to good health care, food deserts, safe places to play and be active) and its effects on public health. Dr. Boero discusses how she began in the field with her first book, Killer Fat: Media, Medicine and Morals in the American Obesity Epidemic. She explains the problem with medicalizing non-medical instances such as weight or violence with words like "epidemic" which cause panic and risky preventative measures. It was such a pleasure to hear Dr. Boero's thoughts and research on everything from obesity myths to the privilege of "the good fatty." Take a listen and join us in the conversation with us!

"My being the 'good fatty' probably has a lot to do with my class and race privilege in the sense that I have the resources to do certain things or I have the absence of other privileges that sort of blunt some of the other stigmas that I have experienced... we shouldn't judge moral worth based on health."

Dr. Natalie Boero

This Week on the Every Body Podcast:

• How Dr. Boero began her study into the "obesity epidemic" with her dissertation.
• How the term "obesity epidemic" was coined.
• The ways that weight bias has become a scapegoat in blaming minority groups for their own disadvantages.
• The effects of socioeconomics on weight and health.
• The correlation between chronic dieting and food restriction in the last 70 years with the general increase in the weight of Americans.
• The problematic ways we produce and distribute food globally.
• How focusing on fatness distracts from the larger public interest (i.e. psychological effects of fat stigma, access to safe places to play/be active, etc).
• The extremes that our culture falls into ("epidemic," "cleanse," "addict," etc) in the name of "health."
• "The good fatty" and myths about "human value being predicated on health."

Additional Resources:

• College of Social Sciences
• Department of Sociology
• The New Yorker, "Why Are Americans Fat?"
• More information about "Killer Fat" just published by Rutgers University Press in August 2012!!
• "Killer Fat" on Amazon.com

Studies Mentioned:

• The Care Plus Study
• Race, socioeconomic status and health. The added effects of racism and discrimination.
• Socioeconomic factor, health behaviors, and mortality: results from a nationally representative prospective study of US adults.
• Busting the Sugar-Hyperactivity Myth

Rate & Share

Thank you for joining me this week on the Every Body podcast. If you enjoyed this week’s episode, head over to iTunes , subscribe to the show and leave a review to help us grow the podcast. Don’t forget to visit our website , follow us on Facebook , Twitter, and Instagram so you never miss an episode!