Welcome to Food Psych, a podcast about intuitive eating, health at every size, and taking down diet culture.

I'm your host, Kristi Harrison, and I'm an anti-diet registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor,

offering online courses and programs to help people all over the world make peace with food.

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

Hey there, welcome to episode 147 of Food Psych. I'm your host, Kristi Harrison, and today I'm talking with Jennifer Rollin, a health at every size therapist and writer.

We talked about why weight stigma and the eating disorder field is so harmful, how health at every size contributed to her own healing, of her body image, and breaking down her learned fat phobia,

problem with using the term weight management, and so much more. It's a great conversation, and I can't wait to share it with you in just a moment.

But first I'm going to answer this week's listener question, which is from a listener named Danny, who writes,

I've always had a difficult relationship with food, and my family, all the women are thin except for the males.

To the members of my family, especially for my father, I would have had a more difficult life just due to the fact that I was a bit bigger than the other girls.

I always gave in, practice sports, went to the gym, and restricted and binged, and that was never enough.

After some time I managed to just let it go, and talk to my father, and let him know that my weight should not be equal to my worth, and that I was still attractive, and had a great heart even though I was a bit bigger than the other girls out there.

Now after a couple of years, these feelings and pressures came back thanks to my boyfriend's parents, who have criticized my weight since the first time they met me.

I guess just to sum up, how do I not let these feelings come back and take over my life? They've always been in the back of my mind, and now that some other people poke to them, I'm feeling very lost.

So thanks Danny for that great question, and before I answer just my standard disclaimer that these answers are for informational and educational purposes only, and aren't a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.

So this is a great question, and first of all I want to say kudos to you for speaking up to your father, because that is hard to do.

It takes a lot of courage to set boundaries with family members, and we talked about that a lot on the podcast before we talked about it a few weeks ago with Rachel Milner, and boundary setting is really tough.

So it's super great that you did that, and it sounds like it really helped you to feel more self confident, and to have a better relationship with food in your body, which is awesome.

In terms of dealing with your boyfriend's parents, I want to say it's completely not okay for them to criticize your weight or anything to do with your body, or you in general.

It's terrible for them to do that. You deserve so much more respect than that, and it's completely out of line for them to make those kinds of comments.

It's bad enough for your own family members to do that, but when it's someone else's family, it's just completely beyond the pale.

I mean, it's never okay really, but I think our own family members think that they're allowed or permitted a certain amount of intimacy in criticizing us and saying things to us about our bodies or whatever, and you have to set those boundaries there, just like you did with your father.

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