Sarah Thompson, founder of Resilient Fat Goddess, writes about body positivity, body liberation, and fat liberation at the intersections of gender, sexuality, and eating disorders.
I know you are working your hardest to provide the best care possible. I know you are working to improve people’s health, so that they can enjoy their lives longer. I know that you have to work within a rather broken system with short appointment times, insurance requirements, and have to work with the resources that you have available. I know that not every clinic, agency, hospital, or practice has the same resources as others.
Read MoreLet’s talk about Intuitive Eating. How do you navigate honoring your hunger or respecting your fullness, when you can’t afford to buy enough food? How do you enjoy the pleasure of eating, when you can’t buy food that sounds good to you? How do you enjoy the pleasure of eating, when you are worried about if you will be evicted from your home?
Read MoreOur relationship with the people that raised us often forms how we relate to food and body as we grow and become adults. I’ve heard that the way we are spoken to as children is what becomes our inner voice/inner critic as we become more independent from our caregivers. I don’t know if this is exactly true. What I do know is that my parents had a major influence on my relationship with food and body. Do I think they caused my eating disorder? Nope. They were doing the best they knew how with the resources they had. Plus genetics, culture, finances, and all that. There are lots of factors.
Read MoreIn my graduate school classes, sizeism is mentioned once in the entire five years I’m a graduate student. Every single class is required to talk about marginalized identities and how whatever topic the class is focused on impacts those who are more marginalized or oppressed. Fat people are never mentioned except in the one class one time. I know from my lived experience that fat people are oppressed and I began studying feminism and learning about the history of size oppression in college. Eating disorders are covered one day in my “abnormal psychology” class and never mentioned again. Even in my “psychology of women” class eating disorders were never mentioned and diet culture wasn’t talked about.
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I did not always believe that fat people had a right to eat regularly and enough food, every day.
Nope. I had so much internalized fatphobia, weight stigma and bias that I very much bought into the idea that my fat body was a problem. A BIG problem.
Which meant that I shouldn't (read: didn't deserve to) eat regularly and enough food, every day.
It was impossible for me to feel much joy or pleasure, take up space, or gasp. . .feel sexy.
Read MoreGreat question! It’s really interesting to experience people’s reactions when they hear my business name. Some stare blankly at me. Some seem to look confused. Once while giving my elevator speech in a room full of networking professionals, a man couldn’t contain his laughter. I don’t know if it was out of awkwardness or actually thinking it was laughable. Someone once asked me why I used the word “fat” in my business name. And then. . .there those who get it. They really get it. And I am met with a huge, knowing smile and/or some version of “what a great name!”
Eating disorders are not addictions. While this statement is supported by many in the eating disorder (ED) community, it seems like a fairly fringe idea to assert for those outside the ED community. In this essay, I will provide a critique of research commonly used to equate eating disorders with addictions, particularly food and/or sugar addiction. What many people who research food addiction and those who support the food addiction model actually are referring to is the effect of semi-starvation and starvation on the body, not food addiction.
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