Welcome to Food Psych, a weekly podcast about intuitive eating, health at every size, and body liberation.

I'm your host, Kristi Harrison, and I'm a registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor.

Join me as I talk with interesting people from all walks of life about their relationships with food and their bodies.

Hey there, welcome to episode 114 of Food Psych. I'm your host, Kristi Harrison, and today I'm talking with Louise Adams, who is clinical psychologist from Australia, and she is also an author, podcaster, and speaker.

She owns Treat Yourself Well, Sydney, a specialist psychology clinic for weight-inclusive health and well-being, and she's about to launch her own podcast called All Fire It Up,

where she meets with experts from around the world to debrief, rage, and unpack the often misguided messages were given about weight, food, exercise, and health.

Not only that, but she's also launching an online course in community called Untrapped, so she's got a lot of great stuff going on, and she's a super powerful anti-diet speaker and warrior.

I know you're going to love her too, so I can't wait to share that episode in just a moment.

Before we get to that, I just wanted to clarify a few things from the episode with Jess Baker a few weeks ago, episode 112.

I record these intros pretty far ahead of time, so I'm recording this actually the week that the Jess Baker episode dropped, and I love that episode, and a lot of folks do too.

People have really been excited about this, and some people have expressed that this is their favorite episode of the podcast by far, and it's one of my favorites too.

But a few people have expressed feeling confused over some of the messages in it, so I just wanted to clarify that because we got into some really nuanced points about body liberation, and just to clarify, I don't ever recommend intentional weight loss to anyone because it doesn't actually work, and it causes more harm than help.

So for health purposes, it doesn't work, and it actually can be counterproductive because as we know, 95% of diets are more fail, right, up to maybe 98%, and the people who do quote-unquote succeed on diets really do so at the expense of their lives because they're just organizing their lives around maintaining that weight loss, around food and exercise, and it really looks a lot like the picture of clinical anorexia.

When you look at the people who are long-term maintainers of weight loss from intentional weight loss or dieting, intentional weight loss doesn't actually work, and it causes more harm than good because when diets do fail as they inevitably do, people end up weight cycling, putting back the weight they lost, and then some usually, and over time people can go through multiple cycles of this, and that actually causes more stress and inflammation on the body that can cause chronic health conditions, or contribute to chronic health.

Or contribute to chronic health conditions developing that would never have developed or might never have developed if they never pursued weight loss in the first place.

So it's both ineffective and unhelpful, and in many cases even unsafe, like I don't recommend bariatric surgery for anyone either because it's super dangerous and doesn't work.

So again, we see people regaining the lost weight after it's longer than dieting usually, but it does happen after years, people end up regaining the weight they lost and often more, and it also has really dangerous complications like chronic diarrhea, nutrient malabsorption, malnutrition, and even death.

It's a pretty scary picture when you think about the complications of bariatric surgery.

And so when Jess and I were talking about body autonomy in that episode, I want to make it clear that I support people's choice to do whatever they choose with their bodies, because of course everyone is allowed to make their own decisions, and body autonomy is a really essential part of body liberation, and that I caution anyone who wants to lose weight or get bariatric surgery not to do it because it's not safe or effective.

So that's a really nuanced point, and I just wanted to highlight that because I think some folks might not have picked up that second part about it not being safe or effective, and just heard me and Jess talking about body autonomy and thinking like, wait, does body positivity then mean I can pursue intentional weight loss? What's, you know, what does this all really mean?

And we were having gray area conversations in that episode, like we discussed, but I want to be very clear and precise and not so gray or shadowy on this point that it's actually not good for your health.

And so as a health professional, I just have to say like I don't recommend weight loss for anyone. I don't recommend bariatric surgery for anyone. That's it from a medical perspective.

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