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Julie Duffy Dillon (00:00)

Hey there, welcome to episode 422 of the Find Your Food Voice podcast. We have Vinny Welsby answering a letter today for someone who is trying really hard to break free from dieting and diet culture. Let’s get to it.

Welcome dear voice finder to the Find Your Food Voice podcast. I am Julie Duffy Dillon, registered dietitian and your host. Today’s episode is a letter episode. And if you’re new to the podcast, welcome. It’s so nice to meet you. A letter episode is my favorite way to connect with you. These are letters that listeners just like you write and they address it to food. And then me and a guest, well, we sort through the letter and hopefully give you some pointers on steps moving ahead. And while this doesn’t replace anything that you’d get from an in-person healthcare provider, we hope that the information helps you just to give you some more pointers to maybe bring to that healthcare provider. But also if you are not the letter writer, you may find yourself really relating to what this letter writer is saying. And that alone is worth it all for me because you are not alone in your struggle with your relationship with food. You’re not alone on how hard recovery is. And I’m excited for you to meet Vinny Welsby if you’ve never met them before. I have loved connecting with Vinny over the years and they were on my podcast at least, gosh, it had to be six or seven years ago. We’ll put a link to the first episode that Vinny was on in the show notes. But they are someone that every so often I hear from people in real life who’ve connected with them and Vinny has helped them with their complicated, like surviving ⁓ diet culture and trying to actually do the work of moving away. And that’s what I love so much about this episode is you’re gonna hear like the logistics, the steps on what it looks like to go from feeling like this really complicated relationship with food to like making the movements forward and how to continue to have that momentum and not get in that shame spiral.

Vinny has really practical insights that I just love so much.

A few other things that we talk about are how to add something called internal family systems to your process of repairing your relationship with food. then also how is diet culture like a cult, but even worse. It’s even harder to get out of and I can’t wait for you to hear how Vinny breaks this down.

Before we hear this episode’s letter and hear from Vinny, I wanna share with you that the Find Your Food Voice book is available for purchase anywhere books are sold. I wrote this book for you if you have a complicated history with food, whether you have been trying to find a new way to eat outside of dieting, whether you are recovering from an eating disorder or that you’ve been taught through your family that you have to look a certain way and eat a certain way.

Find Your Food Voice is the book to read if you’ve tried intuitive eating or other non-diet tools and you just need more. You need more support. You need more in-depth ways and strategies, tools to help you to just continue on with this really important work. I always say it’s hard work, but it’s good work. And this is really important for you to feel at home in your body and to feel like your relationship with food is actually satisfying and pleasurable and adding health to that, you can do those things. Find Your Food Voice is a book again that I wrote for you to help you in this space. You can get to all the details on how to get your own copy at julieduffydillon.com be sure to check out my Substack. If you’re new to Substack, this is basically a place where we can get into the weeds of all the nitty gritty, any topic that you are hoping to talk about. Substack is like blogging in 2025 and I have found a new home there. I’m not on Facebook or Instagram, but I’m on Substack and you can get to it at findyourfoodvoice.substack.com. There you can get free and paid articles that help you to apply the Find Your Food Voice principles with helping you to move away from dieting. If you also struggle with insulin resistance and PCOS, that’s where I do a lot of that work. you can get to it at findyourfoodvoice.substack.com. All right, we are going to take a very quick sponsor break. Then you’re gonna hear this episode’s letter and the interview with Vinny Welsby.

Julie Duffy Dillon (04:40)

Dear food, I’m really leaning into this anti-diet thing and healing my relationship with you, but it feels like my world is on fire. I find myself wanting to get through this phase quicker, to binge information and learning in order to not have to feel every step on this journey. When I make a choice to indulge in my previous off-limits or shamed versions of you, I feel so much excitement and shame and anxiety.

It feels almost too much to manage. Every ounce of growth feels like fighting with a bear. This weekend, I noticed new freedom and boundaries and can feel a little bit of my own food voice, even when triggered while I was out with some friends, and I was proud. But then for two days, I felt like my mind was dragging me back to the beginning. I could feel every pound, every roll, an ounce of fat, and it felt like my body was screaming that I’m not healthy and that I’m doing this wrong. I woke up this morning with a cold and was scared of the thought of the doctor’s office and the inevitable scale because lots of days I do feel like I’m growing in acceptance of my body. And the last three months, my relationship with you has healed a lot. And I’m seeing so many glimpses of peace and joy. And this excited me. But what if I look down at the scale and all of those feelings go away? I know what you’re thinking, just don’t look.

That only works half the time. I feel like I have worked too hard for this to come crashing down and go back to restricting you. But I’m exhausted and scared. The food and diet noise on the road to recovery feels like kicking a hornet’s nest and I do not know how to get out. But I keep wondering what people think when they look at me, if my body is changing. I think I am scared of this being just another season of waking up one day and finding out that this too was a phase, a diet of sorts or a fast from dieting. And I’m scared that then I’ll realize that health is no longer attainable because I trusted you too much and now I’m too attached and unwilling or unable to make adjustments for long-term bodily health. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m too scared of gaining more weight and I still secretly hope that healing my relationship with you will help me get smaller.

I am scared of what my family thinks and am unsure how to be confident in my new journey with you when it is so counter-cultural. Thanks for listening. I do love you food and I’m so excited to potentially have more peace with you. I just feel estranged.

Love a 29-year-old OCD slash ADHD brain with 16 years of family diet trauma, or a fat woman trying to embrace that word as strength and flexibility and not a curse. All right.

This is our episode’s letter and now we’re gonna go ahead and speak with Vinny Welsby

Julie Duffy Dillon (07:44)

Vinny, how are you?

Vinny (07:47)

of my drink. I’m fantastic. I thought we had more than two seconds. No, no, this is good. I’m fantastic. How are you, Julie?

Julie Duffy Dillon (07:52)

Do you want me to say it again or just keep it in this way? Yeah. No,

I’m glad you’re a little bit more hydrated than you were three seconds ago. And it’s so good to see you. It’s been too long, too, too long.

Vinny (08:07)

Honestly, I need

to get some liquid into my brain. Such a struggle. it has, how long ago do you think I was on the podcast? Maybe like six years ago?

Julie Duffy Dillon (08:11)

Mm-hmm.

A long time ago, it was probably before we knew anything about coronaviruses and stuff like that.

Vinny (08:23)

yeah.

Shit, and that was 2019.

Julie Duffy Dillon (08:28)

Yeah, I think it was

probably 2008, 2019, somewhere in there. Yeah.

Vinny (08:32)

Never, time moves so quickly. my goodness. Well, thank you for having me back. I perish, yeah, yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (08:35)

I know.

I appreciate you too. And I have heard about you over the years since the last time we talked because every once in a while I would be working with someone who was like, do you know Finny? And I was like, yes, yes, yes. That they were part of communities you were hosting and things like that. And you were bringing so much support. So I’m glad that we have a chance to go through this letter. I know you read through it because you showed me your notes before we pushed record. So.

Vinny (08:44)

Tell me.

Stop it! Really? ⁓

⁓ A couple of times. Yeah, got lots of nights.

Julie Duffy Dillon (09:08)

I always like to start with like, what’s the big picture? What is this person going through? Like, what would you say is like the big thing that this person’s struggling with?

Vinny (09:17)

Ta-da!

Yeah, I mean, that letter was so fucking good. ⁓ It was really good. ⁓ It sounds like, so there was so much in there that I kind of pulled a couple of threads and it sounds like they’re struggling with how quickly or slowly the journey is taking and that they’re doing it wrong and that it’s going to fail. They’re going to go back to the old way.

Julie Duffy Dillon (09:24)

So fucking good.

Mm-hmm. They’ve been working so hard, right? Like they’ve been working so hard.

Vinny (09:49)

is what I’m hearing. Sounds like, feels like I’m fighting with a… Yeah, they’ve been working so hard.

Yeah, they said, feels like fighting with a bear. I was like, ⁓ I wrote that quote down. That’s a lot. That’s a lot. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

Julie Duffy Dillon (10:03)

I highlighted that one myself. Any bare reference,

you know, it’s culturally relevant, but, and that’s a probably an appropriate way to refer to this experience. And yeah, like they have worked so hard and I get the sense too that like life keeps like lifeing. It keeps just throwing the same stuff and probably more and heavy hitters and more obstacles and

Vinny (10:10)

Yeah

Mm-hmm.

Julie Duffy Dillon (10:32)

So yeah, they’re afraid of losing it all.

Vinny (10:33)

Yep.

Vinny Welsby (10:34)

something I’m thinking about when reading that letter is that I did a podcast episode about diet culture. Is diet culture a cult? And in our society, if you’re in a cult, you leave a cult, people are like, fuck yeah, you left the cult. This is amazing. With diet culture, know, debates if it’s a cult or not, ⁓ but diet culture, when you leave diet culture, you’re not going to get the same reaction. People are going to say, go back into the cult, go keep doing it.

even though it was harming you and all sorts of things. So it makes it really, really difficult to not jump back in because everyone’s telling you your decision is wrong, apart from a small minority of people who are saying, maybe there’s a different route.

Julie Duffy Dillon (11:17)

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s part of why like having people who are either going through the same thing or have been there a little bit longer, who have ditched the cult, know, ⁓ have similar like identities, like that’s so powerful to help you stay, I don’t know, grounded in what you know to be true. So, okay, let’s think about what this letter writer can do.

Vinny Welsby (11:32)

Right.

So…

Julie Duffy Dillon (11:44)

What comes to

mind for you that this person could do in this place?

Vinny Welsby (11:48)

is a first off is, is, is, is two things. ⁓ knowing the process of unlearning this, the unlearning journey and to, ⁓ internal family systems. don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that. ⁓ so first the unlearning journey, I’ve got a post on my Instagram, ⁓ where it goes over the kind of six stages of unlearning, ⁓ and learning, ⁓ anti-fat bias and, and

Julie Duffy Dillon (12:02)

Sure. Yeah.

Vinny Welsby (12:18)

body hate type thing ⁓ and ⁓ diet culture. So most people are at the stage where they believe that ⁓ dieting is good, fat bodies are bad. ⁓ And if you are in a bigger body, then you’re unattractive, unhealthy, et cetera, et cetera. That’s the first stage. ⁓ Next, something will happen. Next stage number two, there’s some sort of catalyst. Maybe you’ve been dieting for 20 years and finally you’re like, this is not working. Something happens when you begin to explore.

Julie Duffy Dillon (12:20)

Mm-hmm.

Vinny Welsby (12:48)

Three, that exploration is happening and you intellectually understand that dieting isn’t working for you, that you can be fat ⁓ and healthy or attractive, you’re unlearning those biases. ⁓ But you’ve got a lot of bias around it. Like intellectually you know it, but in your brain, no. Number four is people will say,

Julie Duffy Dillon (13:14)

Mm-hmm.

Vinny Welsby (13:17)

Listen, I find fat people attractive. I am really not into engaging with diet culture, but for me, I know I am unhealthy if I put on weight. I know I should really be watching what I eat. So it’s okay for others, but not me. ⁓ The next stage, number five, begins to appreciate their body and accept ⁓

Julie Duffy Dillon (13:37)

Mm-hmm

Vinny Welsby (13:45)

the changes in their relationship to food. And then number six is really embodying the reality that the issue was never to do with your body, but it was to do with power and oppression. So this person, sounds like they’re between four, five, six, which says, yeah, they’ve done so much work. They’ve done so much work. No.

Julie Duffy Dillon (13:59)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

That’s what I was wondering. Okay, yes, yeah. So much. And no one can take that away. That work can

never be erased. That’s the thing that I hear them being so scared about. Like no one can take that away from you. No matter what diet you go on next, know, even if like that happens, like you can’t take away the work you’ve done. I don’t want them to diet again. No.

Vinny Welsby (14:15)

No!

I don’t know.

Yeah, yeah, you can’t unlearn. Yeah,

you can’t unlearn. It’s like, you know, for me and learning, learning diet culture and anti-fatness is, is, you know, ⁓ gambling, the house always wins. You know, you can still gamble and, you know, ⁓ know that the house always wins, but you can’t unlearn that the house always wins. You always know it’s not going to work if you engage in dieting, et cetera. ⁓ The other side of things is, it sounded like,

Julie Duffy Dillon (14:38)

Yeah, yes.

Yeah.

Vinny Welsby (14:55)

a lot of shame was happening. ⁓ And shame and blame, I’m not doing it right. ⁓ You know, what if, what if I fail and what, you know, the environment that they’re in with other people, ⁓ a lot of shame is happening. And so offering self-compassion and thinking about that, they said,

Julie Duffy Dillon (15:00)

Mm-hmm.

Vinny Welsby (15:23)

feels like fighting with a bear. Thinking about that bear, internal family systems ⁓ is a framework that ⁓ people use in therapy, but you can, there’s a book on it. ⁓

no bad parts. It’s on my bookshelf. was like, no bad parts. So fucking good. The, the, case people aren’t familiar with it, the idea is that in our brains, there are all these different parts of us. ⁓ none of them are good or bad. They’re just who you are. ⁓ and you might need to tend to them because now you’re an adult, you’re the, the, like the highest version of yourself. And that part that’s saying, my God, what if, ⁓ and that,

Julie Duffy Dillon (15:42)

Yes, yes. So good.

Vinny Welsby (16:10)

⁓ kind of hangover from eating food and then feeling guilt is that potentially younger version of ourselves who’s so fucking scared, who sees you doing things that’s outside of their zone of comfort and is doing everything in their power to, ⁓ alert you to the fact that you’re in danger, that you’re going to be judged, et cetera.

Julie Duffy Dillon (16:34)

Hmm.

Vinny Welsby (16:35)

And now as an adult, you can look to that young child version of you and instead of saying like, fuck you, shut up, whatever, what would you do to that younger version of you? You would say, ⁓ my goodness, I understand it so much that you’re really worried that we are, you know, whatever it is that you’re worrying about, but don’t worry, I got this. Come on, take my hand. I’ll show you. And it’s just compassion versus shaming yourself.

Julie Duffy Dillon (16:43)

Hmm.

Yes. Yes.

Vinny Welsby (17:01)

⁓ and I find that personally in my own life to be so powerful because whenever I have these thoughts come up, I’m just like, thank you brain. I get it. I listen, I understand what you’re saying and don’t worry. I’m driving the bus. You can sit down, put your seatbelt on and relax. I’ve got this and I love you.

Julie Duffy Dillon (17:21)

Yes. In my parts work that I’ve been doing with my individual therapists this past year, I find myself doing a lot of like, if you’re not watching on YouTube, you can’t see this, my therapist taught me just to like bring them in, just bring them in, like just give them a hug, you know, because that process of like acknowledging this part with all this information that’s scared or, you know, not able to appreciate that.

Vinny Welsby (17:34)

Hmm.

Julie Duffy Dillon (17:50)

We don’t need that kind of warning system because we were driving the bus, you know? But like that arguing and the shaming of it, yeah, it just pushes it further away. But so just, you know, come here. Let me just give you a hug. So if you see me walking down the street and I’m doing this, I’m just doing my parts work.

Vinny Welsby (17:56)

No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

the thing is about that part is because they’re a young person, and it could be different for everyone, the young, don’t have the emotional capacity to understand that eating food is probably not going to mean that you’re going to put on 75,000 pounds in three seconds, you know. ⁓ And even if you did put on 75 pounds in three seconds.

Julie Duffy Dillon (18:19)

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Vinny Welsby (18:31)

You know, can you survive that? Can you thrive with a bigger body, et cetera? You know, that nuance, don’t, they’re not able to do that. And then if we’re getting in an argument with them saying, you know, no, and, and, being unkind to them, we are not, ⁓ talking to them in a way that they can learn and understand and feel safe. They’re not going to feel safe. So helping them feel safe and sit down.

Julie Duffy Dillon (19:00)

Yeah.

Vinny Welsby (19:01)

is the idea, which can be difficult, right? To recognize that that voice is present.

Julie Duffy Dillon (19:05)

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that I’m appreciating hearing what you’re saying is like a big part of this is because this person is doing a ton of work. Like this letter alone, I was like, this person is doing a ton of work. Like this is hard shit that they have been unpacking for a while now. And that’s very impressive. And as they’re acknowledging all these different pieces to be bring compassion forward instead of like, let me just try to ignore it. Let me shame it or blame it away.

The other thing that I, I’m so glad you brought up the family systems, because I wasn’t reading it through that lens at all. And I love like, now my brain is going in those directions. So something that ⁓ really spoke to me in this letter was the fear of never, of like losing it all. And I think I brought that up at the beginning, like there’s this, and I can’t see exactly where it is, but like mentioning something about like doing all this work.

Vinny Welsby (19:45)

Mmm.

Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (20:04)

and then just so scared. yeah, I think I’m most scared of this being just another season of waking up one day and finding out that this too was a phase. I’m now looking at through a family systems lens, I’m thinking about that part that was thought dieting was the only way. that was it didn’t have that any other option yet. And maybe that’s the part that’s coming through in some of this letter.

Vinny Welsby (20:24)

Mmm.

I know.

Julie Duffy Dillon (20:34)

that and that’s again to say to you, let a writer like you’ve done so much work. No one can take that away from you. Your learning is there. And there seems to be, I don’t know if you see this too, but like there seems to be almost like this point of no return that I see some people experiencing and they’re moving away from dieting or like they just like learn too much and they see too much and they feel too much that like

Vinny Welsby (21:02)

Yeah

Julie Duffy Dillon (21:03)

They may relapse or whatever word you want to use, but there’s just a point of no return. It’s just not going to go to the same place ever again because especially when you do start to see the oppressive systems as a part of it, you can only go so far before you’re like, wait, no, this does not feel good.

Vinny Welsby (21:15)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like

you might half-heartedly do a diet and then you’re like, ⁓ this is no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the other thing that I thought when reading this is that, like I mentioned about the cult thing, ⁓ that the difference between my life when I first came out of diet culture versus now, I…

Julie Duffy Dillon (21:24)

Half hearted, yes, yes, Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Vinny Welsby (21:46)

I’m not sure that I would be able to survive as effectively in the life I had when I had just left diet culture, because I was surrounded by people who were like, my God, how many calories is in that packet of ketchup? Or, you know, I didn’t have any fat friends. didn’t have it. I didn’t know anyone that was doing this. ⁓ I was just in the waters of anti-fatness and diet culture. Now it’s totally the opposite. And that’s not going to change overnight. It’s like a slow…

Julie Duffy Dillon (22:06)

Yeah.

Vinny Welsby (22:15)

⁓ shifting away to liberation, ⁓ away from oppression. just being, ⁓ one study has shown that just being in the ⁓ quote fat group, the in group of fat people, fat society, fat culture, just being in that group surrounded by other people, not saying that this person is fat, but you can do it with diets, but ⁓ it helps. ⁓

Julie Duffy Dillon (22:15)

Yeah.

Vinny Welsby (22:43)

protect you from anti-fat bias, external and internal. ⁓ And so being in community, whether it’s a Facebook group, ⁓ following people on Instagram, whatever, or in person, just that act is gonna help you survive ⁓ anti-fatness and diet culture when it comes up. ⁓ And this person is already probably doing a lot. ⁓ The other thing of it, other side of it is,

Julie Duffy Dillon (22:46)

Mm-hmm.

Vinny Welsby (23:12)

I have another post on my Instagram, which talks about how to protect yourself, remove, reduce, and protect. So at that stage in my life, it wasn’t possible for me to say to all my friends, you’re dead to me now because you talk about the calories in ketchup. that’s just, that’s not how it works most of the time, right? And so removing, if possible, the amount of time that you spend talking about diets or,

Julie Duffy Dillon (23:32)

Yeah.

Vinny Welsby (23:41)

you know, watching that TV show, bikini babes dating show instead of watching 10 hours, watching eight hours. ⁓ if you can remove people or things, ⁓ then that feels good for you, then do it. If not, that reduction can be really helpful. And if you can’t reduce it, say for example, your boss is always like, my God, know, diets love whatever, ⁓ protecting yourself. And so that looks like, you know, maybe listening to your podcast. ⁓

going on Instagram and finding those fat people that you love. ⁓ And that type of support of meeting yourself where you’re at right now can be really helpful.

Julie Duffy Dillon (24:22)

Hmm. So when they’re in that space of fear, and you you mentioned the stages, and this person is probably in the four, five, six zone, or like in the four to five trying to make it to six zone. ⁓ Yeah, it kind of, it’s probably a blurry thing, but like there’s some things you may be able to reduce. And then there may be times where you have to add, like that’s what I’m hearing you say from all that. Like, and hearing that, I’m like,

Vinny Welsby (24:35)

Yeah, maybe sometimes six and yeah

Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (24:51)

There’s so much gray in this. And what we know about oppressive systems is they love the black and white. They like to have the all or nothing, neat and tidy. And that’s bullshit. Like that’s the trap. Because that doesn’t exist. None of us are there, no matter what we do. And so it’ll always feel like we’re failing. So if we think that’s the only way to know we’re doing it right, well, that doesn’t exist. So like the way you describe that, feel like it makes it accessible. And I have a feeling, letter writer, you’re probably doing a lot of that.

Vinny Welsby (24:52)

Mm.

looks like.

No. No. No.

Mm-hmm.

Julie Duffy Dillon (25:19)

So like, if you are doing further along than you’re giving yourself like acknowledging, you know? ⁓

Vinny Welsby (25:19)

to the

I think so, yeah. I think so,

yeah. Because if you think about people at the first stage, which is where most people are, is that like diets are good and fat people are not so great. They’ve already done so much work to get out of that. And the other thing that I thought that was important was ⁓ something I talk about is unpacking your suitcase. And so I like to visualize beliefs as suitcases. And if we open them, that’s where we’ve collected all the evidence. And so you can pick up a pair of socks and it’ll be like,

Julie Duffy Dillon (25:34)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Vinny Welsby (25:54)

There’s that time that my mum told me that I was ugly because my body was big or whatever. Lots of evidence. And so we have lots of evidence that dieting is good, fat is bad. And from time to time, those pieces of evidence in that suitcase will slip out and will pop into our brain. And ⁓ instead of thinking, ⁓ my God, it’s so annoying that I can’t stop thinking, I wish I could be thin, which is one thing that they also said. I secretly wish I could be smaller.

Julie Duffy Dillon (26:22)

Mm-hmm, yes.

Vinny Welsby (26:24)

So many people have got that exact same, but what if my body is a one that happens to go become thin from an intuitive eating? It could happen. Hopefully it’s me. Anyway, and so if those thoughts come up, grab them and thank them, because that is evidence. That is, ⁓ that’s something that you can explore. Your brain is letting you open that suitcase and see what’s inside. And when we know what’s inside,

Julie Duffy Dillon (26:27)

Yeah.

Ha ha ha.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Vinny Welsby (26:54)

We can lift up that pair of socks, give it a smell and be like, oh God, that’s old, chuck it away. know? So, you know, yeah, we don’t need them stinky socks in there. And then you can do things to fill up the other suitcase that says it’s okay to not die. It’s okay to be fat, whatever. So instead of, again, shaming yourself for when those thoughts come up, just, you know, thank your brain for supplying you with the evidence of where you could next focus.

Julie Duffy Dillon (27:00)

Yes, nothing like some stinky socks.

Yeah.

Yes. ⁓

Vinny Welsby (27:23)

when you’re in your next stage of the journey.

Julie Duffy Dillon (27:27)

Yeah, that sounds like so, I mean, I know this is the work. It also sounds so exhausting. Is there anything that you encourage folks to do to like, just keep going? Because yeah, that sounds.

Vinny Welsby (27:42)

Hmm.

Julie Duffy Dillon (27:43)

Like a lot of like mental like, just, I don’t know, it’s just, there’s a lot of, ⁓ especially in certain phases where it’s going to be a lot of like taking in different messages.

Vinny Welsby (27:57)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think one thing that people forget is that ⁓ this person, I think they said something like a couple of decades that they’ve been dieting. Many of us have been living our whole lives in a society that values thin bodies. ⁓ So, and I think they said that they’ve been doing this for three months. Three months will not erase decades.

Julie Duffy Dillon (28:06)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Vinny Welsby (28:25)

It’s not going to take decades though to, you know, unlearn that stuff, but we have to break it down and not look at the whole thing. Like if you were to climb Kilimanjaro, you’re not going to be like, ⁓ getting to base camp one and then looking at the top and being like, for fuck’s sake, why am I not at the top yet? I can’t believe it. I’m a piece of shit. You’re going to hopefully say, yes, I made it to base camp one. I’m a fucking badass.

Julie Duffy Dillon (28:29)

Mm-hmm.

Yes, yes.

You

Mm-hmm.

Vinny Welsby (28:54)

and then tomorrow think about Basecamp two So taking stock in what you’ve already achieved and know that getting to the mount up to the top of the mount is gonna be hard, but if we take it one step at a time, we can do it. A way that you can measure that is through setting goals, setting smart goals. so, because a lot of this, this is very…

We can’t touch it. We don’t know how to measure how much work we’ve done. But if there are things in your life that you want to do or are not doing because of the way that you feel about your body or around food, setting yourself really ⁓ doable but still a little bit challenging goals and seeing if you can work towards achieving them. And not goals like, want to love my body because that’s ⁓ not a smart goal. A goal could be

I want to wear a bathing suit with a cover up at the beach for three minutes with my kids. Literally like that. And then if you achieve it, fuck yeah, base camp one, I’m a badass, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Julie Duffy Dillon (29:56)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. So break it down so much. Instead of like the, again, the all or nothing thing, I think there’s like parts to ⁓ making it smaller. And I hear so much of like harm reductive kind of like terminology too, that we’re talking about, that again, I think is important that is not usually offered in the medical model, or especially with diet culture, you know? Yeah. Excuse me. So

Vinny Welsby (30:27)

Hmm.

Julie Duffy Dillon (30:31)

I appreciate that. Before we move on, away from the letter, is there anything else you want to mention about the letter?

Vinny Welsby (30:37)

Just that I just wanna give this person a huge hug and a huge high five and just be like, you fucking got it. You’re gonna do it. You’re doing everything right. You are awesome. ⁓ Just big fatty high fives and hugs.

Julie Duffy Dillon (30:37)

different.

Yes. Total badass, yes.

Awesome. Okay, so I want to know about what you’re working on these days. Because it has been so long. Is there anything that’s like in your wheelhouse or like in your neck of the woods that you’re working on that’s like you want to tell the audience about?

Vinny Welsby (30:57)

⁓ Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, yeah. So, uh,

a couple of things. So I’ve got fierce fatty, is helping individuals, but I also have now weight inclusive consulting, which is where I go in and train organizations. Um, and so if you want a part of, it could be a part of the diversity world. Um, or, um, like if you work in healthcare or whatever, if you want someone like me to come in, I do that type of stuff. Also.

Julie Duffy Dillon (31:19)

fabulous.

Mm-hmm.

Vinny Welsby (31:34)

I’ve done a couple of surveys, which were pretty cool, which one talks about fat at work and the other is fat in healthcare, where I’ve surveyed hundreds of fat people. We’ve got stats and we’ve got stories and they are pretty…

awful as you can imagine and so both of those reports you can get for free and they are don’t want to toot my own horn but they’re really fucking good ⁓ yeah so you can go check those out if you’d like some stats and information on what it’s like being a fat person in the world TLDR on it is it’s pretty shit but also there’s hope that ⁓

Julie Duffy Dillon (31:55)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

I’m sure they are. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Vinny Welsby (32:19)

Many healthcare providers and some workplaces are now finally on board. There’s been a huge shift in the last five years of how we think about this stuff. ⁓ And you’ve probably seen it, Julie, ⁓ in the difference in things. I’ve been doing this work for 12 years. The difference between the way that we view dieting and bodies is just so different now from then.

Julie Duffy Dillon (32:28)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes,

especially from a clinical kind of perspective because I think like culturally we kind of like a step forward, step back. like I still see sometimes there’s like, especially in the US where I am, you but 15 years ago, I started working with a new professor at a college near me who does like the last part of training for dietitians. We do like a year internship and

Vinny Welsby (32:50)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (33:09)

So I had been coming to them for a while and teaching a class, but she’s like, no, I want to redo the internship to make it only weight inclusive. And I was like, yes. And so, it took time though. didn’t just overnight, right? And so I just spoke to the class this past week and 15 years ago, no one knew about weight inclusive care, intuitive eating, maybe one student who had gone through like eating disorder treatment.

Vinny Welsby (33:18)

Well, this was 15 years ago. What?

one.

Yeah

Julie Duffy Dillon (33:38)

would know about it, but it wasn’t the norm. So now by the time people come into the internship now, everyone knows what it is. mean, so like right there, it’s already easier for like clinicians to get it, because then we can get to the meat of it. Okay. Let’s instead of like convincing or like informing that this exists, they already know. And so, and they have questions. They’re like, but wait, how do I know? Like, these are good questions. Like they’re like, what do we actually do when

Vinny Welsby (33:46)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly!

Yeah

Yeah

Julie Duffy Dillon (34:06)

You know, people come in, they’re worried about their health, but their weight and blah, blah, you know, like, and so we can get right into it. And so, yeah, like things are moving forward. So your work, yes, I love it. That just sounds so great. ⁓ thank you.

Vinny Welsby (34:13)

Bye.

You’ll work too. You’ll work too. All of

1. All of it. All of our work.

Julie Duffy Dillon (34:24)

Well,

really think there’s lots of people in the university system that have done amazing things to like, and put things and taking risks to like bring people like me in just to say some of those things. I appreciate them. But yeah, it’s nice to see, nice to see change. And you let a writer will see the change too. Yeah. Yes.

Vinny Welsby (34:31)

Where?

Yeah, yeah, So that yeah, yes, let’s write we’ll see the change to let right in 10 years time

we’ll be like, my god, this is what I thought. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (34:51)

Or like, look at me, look at my little

me from a long ago who was, I don’t mean little in like a insulting way, but just like a younger version of me who hadn’t seen the whole thing yet. But now, yeah, you’re gonna look back and be like, wow, I’ve come far and I already was so brave. mean, that’s the point of this letter so much for me. was like, this person is so brave. They’re doing the hard things, like keep going. And anyway, we gotta go, but it was so nice to chat with you. Thank you for coming on.

Vinny Welsby (35:02)

Yeah.

Really?

Julie Duffy Dillon (35:20)

We’ll put all the links in the show notes, but someone listening, driving the car, they can’t write right now. Where can they find you?

Vinny Welsby (35:28)

Fierce fatty. Fierce fatty. You can find me everywhere on that.

Julie Duffy Dillon (35:30)

Okay.

Okay, love it. Thanks for making it easy for us. Thank you so much. Bye.

Vinny Welsby (35:36)

Yeah, you’re welcome. Thanks, Julie

Julie Duffy Dillon (35:42)

So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Vinny Welsby. And thank you so much, LetterWriter, for submitting this letter. listener, do you have a Dear Food letter within you that just needs to come out? I would love to share it on an episode. Head over to my website. It’s julieduffydillon.com. Go to the contact section, and that’s where you can submit a letter. I’m looking forward to hanging out with you in October.

It’s the end of September as you’re listening to this and I’m looking at my spreadsheet here and what’s coming up next in the Find Your Food Voice podcast. We have a great discussion with Dr. Jen Huber. She is someone who has an expertise in midlife and menopause. And also we are going to be hearing an interview with Bonnie Roney from the Diet Culture Rebel podcast. And of course, I’m sure there’s going to be a chat with my team in there.

And in October in Substack, I’m going to be sharing with you this ⁓ really intense research deep dive that I’m doing right now, the whole month of September on PCOS and GLP-1s. I’m gonna be sharing with you the research that I’ve learned so far, things I’m hearing on the street, putting it all together in a handy document. And that is just for paid subscribers. And I hope you can check it out. So you can get to my Substack where I have free and paid

post on there, you can get to it at findyourfoodvoice.substack.com. All right, that’s enough for me today. I look forward to being in your ears in two weeks with another episode of Find Your Food Voice. Until then, take care.