If you’re curious about what it looks like to stop pursuing weight loss, click here for some fabulous freebies that will help guide you in your journey!

Click here to leave me a review on iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!

Find FREE food voice resources here.

Thank you for supporting Find Your Food Voice!

Julie: It’s time to name the neglect from typical food advice. Welcome to the Find Your Food Voice podcast, hosted by me, Julie Duffy Dillon. I’m a registered dietitian with 20 years of experience partnering with folks just like you on their food peace journey. What have we learned? Well, cookie cutter approaches exclude too many people, and you don’t need to be fixed. It’s not you. It’s not me. It’s all of us. Only together we can start a movement and fix diet culture. And we will. Let’s begin with now.

Julie: Hey there, welcome to episode 363 of the Find Your Food Voice podcast. I am Julie Duffy Dillon, registered dietitian and your host. This episode is the last in a series on a recent Washington Post article titled “As Obesity Rates Rise, Big Food and Dietitians Push Anti -Diet Advice.” Of course, just like all the other episodes, we have links in the show notes, so if you need to catch up, and I welcome you to. This last part in the series. This will probably be the shortest episode, but we’ll see how this goes because there’s a lot of nuance to unpack and so far we have gone through three main points that I connected with in this article and the first part discussed weight gain after hearing anti-diet messaging means it doesn’t work and of course that is a big part on why this article just infuriated me and showed the misunderstanding with repairing your history with food. Weight gain is not a measure of health or your worth. And okay, so part two, we discussed big food and how dietitians working with big food, how that must mean that anti-diet techniques are null and void. Deep breath, no. We all are just surviving capitalism. Big food notices how much we humans need this anti diet messaging because of our need for permission to heal. And they are like still selling a product. And as dietitians, it’d be wonderful if the government in the United States paid us to do our jobs but we barely make a livable wage and working with food companies is something that many of us do, myself included, in order to just survive capitalism and its hellscape. Does that mean we love big food? I mean, I can only speak for myself. I mean, I don’t love that, but also it doesn’t mean that anti-diet messaging is wrong just because dietitians will sometimes work with big corporations.

Julie: All right, let’s unpack this last part. But before we get to our sponsor break, a quick note just to let you know that the Find Your Food Voice book pre-order link will be ready very, very soon. You have been so supportive of me this last year. You know I started writing this in August of 2023 and I just turned in my first draft a few weeks ago so thank you for all the support and I am so excited to share this book with you. I can’t wait for you to read it and like I said the pre-order link will be ready very soon so be on the lookout for that. All right let’s get to our quick sponsor break and we’ll be back. 

Julie: Welcome back. So I wanna start this part talking about something that’s really common whenever you read a health article, whether it’s in mainstream media or in scholarly journals, you’ll notice a trend. They always will use research or some kind of stats that talk about the obesity epidemic. And it’s something that as, you know, I’ve been an anti-diet dietitian for over 20 years now, it’s something I’m really used to. It’s, I don’t know, really easy to access that information. And as it names all these stats in this Washington Post article, you know, I was not surprised. And it was really clear by reading it that these journals were trying to discredit  dietitians like myself as, dietitians who don’t use science by citing these stats about people’s body size.

Julie: Again, the stats that we all have heard, we can all name. And it’s saying that like because of this existing, me doing the work and any of my peers doing anti-diet nutrition work that we don’t use science. It’s a really common kind of argument. And it’s one that I hear anytime I speak on this, anytime I open my email, it’s really normal to hear this. And so I would encourage you just to know that that’s you’re going to hear that too, especially if you while you’re finding your food voice, if you become more vocal in being anti-diet you will hear these to and it’s a way to discredit because again saying that like we’re not using science.

Julie: Deb Brigard is a psychologist out of California and I remember hearing her say that this argument is like saying that we think the world is flat like we’re obviously so stupid and it’s not that we’re not using science. And the other part, I’ll go into why I say that in a second, but the other part that I get from this article, and again, anytime that I mention to people, what I do is that helping people to heal the relationship with food and preventing others from getting harmed by diets is just too soft. That’s why I named this podcast series “Are anti-diet dietitians killing us softly?” It’s just too risky to heal. It’s too risky to give people permission to have pleasure, to prioritize their relationships and healing, that we must fight and abstain in order to stay alive. 

Julie: I hope you can connect those dots. It goes outside of food. It is a very political kind of argument. It just creeps into other areas besides just food. And it also is about food because our relationship with food does help us fuel our body. It helps us stay alive. And it also connects us to other people and allows us pleasure. That’s one reason why diets don’t work long term is because it diets are the it, diets tend to try to make you and I believe that we are robots, that we don’t need pleasure, that we don’t need these relationships. And that’s what this Washington Post article is communicating to me is that we are just getting too soft, that we dietitians that do anti-diet work are too soft. This is too risky and we’re not using science. And then it also doubles down on that belief that individual choices only cause disease. There’s a little sprinkling of social determinants of health, but I think what they say about social determinants of health in this article is just totally neglected by citing the same stats that we all hear about the obesity epidemic and how individual choices are the only cause of disease. That’s not true. That’s something that we have known for decades now. And the anti-diet space is one of the places where social determinants where if that’s a new kind of phrase for you, it basically like the way we capture how much power you and I have in this world. And social determinants of health include things like poverty, racism. It includes like whether or not you have access to a home and whether you have access to healthcare. Those are bigger contributors to disease and shorter life spans than how much vegetables you eat. And this Washington Post article just continues to uplift individual choices and neglect systems of oppression. And, as I say this, something to keep in mind is we do have research that eating more fruits and vegetables can help prevent disease, and improve lifespan. It’s not saying that that research is wrong, it’s just saying that there’s a relationship there. And to also throw in there like, so people who have access to eating more fruits and vegetables, what else is going on with their life besides eating more kale, you know, are they living in a zip code that has more safety, more grocery store choices, higher income? Are they not experiencing racism or transphobia? There’s other elements to it and the kale could be a symbol of, huh, so people who eat more kale, poor kale, right? I’m always trashing kale, but people who eat more kale, it may be just a way to have a window into their safety and how much power they have in the world. It’s not really the kale. Kale maybe have a part. Yes, it has great sources of some vitamins and minerals that otherwise are harder to get. And it’s not the end be all. And that’s what this article does us dirty on, it really continues to uplift the individual choices. and for me as an anti-diet dietician I can appreciate the individual choices and how they have a relationship with disease and don’t want to neglect social determinants of health and so that’s where it’s important to just name anti- diet dietitians we’re not like ignoring science we’re actually using it we’re using all of it and we’re including it all into the picture of health. I am not against increasing fruit and vegetables or lower sugar options. I am against the notion that you can only save yourself and your food choices are the only way to save yourself. It’s like fuck off to everyone else, save yourself with this kale salad and sugar-free cereal. 

Julie: And something that is not said in the article, but you better believe the food industry is also promoting this trope that’s covered in the Washington Booster article,  like they play both sides of the fence, of course. This is a big part of marketing for the food industry is like diet messaging or quote healthy foods. So dietitians who are in the anti-diet space like myself, we are not denying science. And here is the part of the article that is, it was really easy to miss, but it really shined a light on discrediting the, I don’t know how to say this besides like, dietitians in general, because we are mostly women. We are often discredited and minimized as a bunch of people who are just cooking. Again, just cooking. There’s a lot of the work just as modifiers and dietitians that just can grate on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard. But anyway, it’s just because there’s so much misogyny within the way that the world sees dietitians. And I think it’s because we are mostly women.

Julie: But okay, here is the quote from the Washington Post article. “Dietitians who deny the connection between excess body fat and chronic disease have made up stuff that is a fantasy and a fairytale.” Immediately what I thought about reading this and I will tell you this quote is from someone else I didn’t write down in my notes who actually said this in the article but what I very clearly was getting from it is that this person and the Washington Post were trying to say that we are just stupid young girls in our fantasyland, we’re like playing with dolls and playing with make-believe because we don’t use science. We’re really soft and it’s hurting us. Like we need to fight and abstain in order to promote health, trusting these weak little girls is hurting us. 

Julie: Something that is really important to keep in mind is sharing different points of view from people with different perspectives only gives us more information and the diet industry and all the oppressive systems connected to it are a part of this argument to discredit your right to heal your complicated history with food. Just because there is a connection with certain foods, being a part of disease, or adding certain foods can help prevent disease, that doesn’t mean it’s a cause. This is very basic science. Most nutrition research is correlational. It just means that a relationship there and what I refuse to accept is the direct causation for everyone with a BMI over 25 now has this like death sentence especially if we’re eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes. It’s like, really, what I also know is for people at the highest and lowest statistical kind of extremes of BMI, the very highest and the very lowest, we do have causational data that weight impacts health. No one’s denying that. We’re not denying that food has a role in disease prevention and promotion, but it’s correlational. And for people outside of the statistical extremes with BMI, it’s correlational, not causational. And then for people who have the highest BMI’s, we still don’t have a diet that is going to have no risk factors added to your risk factors. There’s no diet that we know of, or medication either, that we know will help you long term without adding more risk factors. So you still deserve to also repair your relationship with food. You still deserve to experience pleasure and eating enough. So I can go on and on on this topic, but I hope going through each of these in the series helps you to apply it in your life and when it comes up again, because it will, with every step that you take to repair your relationship with food, every single step, you are going to hear something similar to this Washington Post article. And the more repetition you have, whether you speak your truth or not, but the more repetition you have with practicing naming where the errors are or the assumptions or how systems of oppression are contributing to the argument, the more repair work you will do. I am rooting for you. I am rooting for you. You are worth your recovery with your relationship with food. You are worth having pleasure with food and connection with relationships around food. 

Julie: Alright, so I’m going to end. I probably will be back in the podcast feed for another couple weeks because it is May and I have school-aged children and it is just bananas. But I have some really great episodes planned for June. They’re probably gonna be more episodes that are just like mini episodes with a little less fluff. But you know, I just can’t not record. I don’t think I said that right I cannot not record. Anyway I’m gonna sign off but I look forward to being in your feed in a few weeks. Until then, take care