This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Okay, kids, we've got a provocative one for you today, but provocative in what I really think is going to be a

deeply useful and maybe even for some of you life-changing way. Around the new year a lot of

us make resolutions that have to do with our bodies, we're going to eat a

certain way, exercise a certain way, etc. But have you ever looked at what

exactly is motivating these kinds of resolutions? Are you maybe trying to keep up with some sort of cultural standard

that has little, if anything, to do with your actual underlying health?

Could it maybe be a case of what has been called the subtle aggression of self-improvement.

Virginia Soul-Smith has had quite an evolution on these subjects.

She used to write for women's magazines and was therefore in the belly of the beast when it comes to diet culture.

She now takes a much more subversive and radical tack.

She is the author of a book called The Eating Instinct Food Culture, Body Image, and guilt guilt in America and she also writes a

very popular newsletter called burnt toast and the first part of this interview we talk

big picture stuff about anti-fat bias where where it comes from, etc.

And you're going to hear me ask some skeptical questions

about her current worldview, which she handles well

with answers that are quite well reported.

After about 20 minutes of laying some groundwork, we then turn to much more practical and

strategic issues.

We talk about how, yes, health and body size are connected, but not in the ways you might think.

The severe limitations of many of the most popular approaches to weight loss,

nuanced strategies for disentangling your mind from diet culture,

how to exercise without a hidden agenda of trying to wrench your body into a certain shape.

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