You're listening to Well Now Slate's podcast on health and wellness. I'm Dr. Kavita Patel.

And I'm Maya Feller. This week we're tackling one of the biggest debates in the wellness space, diet culture.

Diet culture is all around us, and it's a reflection of so many of our social struggles around class,

gender, and race. In a moment, we're going to talk to someone who's made it her mission to

dismantle diet culture and seek out body liberation for both herself and all of us.

But before we do that, Maya, let's just talk you and me about the different ways diet culture has shown up in our lives.

And I think that it would be fair to say that when I think of my first experience of diet culture, it was, honestly, I couldn't help it concentrate on the word die.

Because that's how it felt.

Every time I thought about a diet, which I, from the moment I think I went

through puberty, I had always kind of felt like I should be on a diet because that's what society

expects of many, especially people who identify as women. And every time I would engage in a diet,

whether it was to go to prom and try to fit into a prom dress, I always came back to like, I felt like a part of me just would die a little bit.

So my experience, the word culture didn't even enter into it because it just felt like torture, felt like denying myself something.

And it really now I've grown to understand, it felt like I had to override just, I would say, generations of eating patterns instead of

trying to understand, like, what can I do around me to just make better choices and not see it as a diet?

What about you, Maya?

I mean, Kavita, that resonates with me so much.

But I think when I was younger, I never even thought about the word culture.

And I think the diet part was just so implicit.

It was everywhere.

It was like all around us. And I think

about being 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and that every single one of my girlfriends was on a diet,

...