Fellow anti-diet dietitian, certified intuitive eating counselor, and journalist Carrie Dennett joins us to discuss her experiences with “successful” dieting and being part of the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), why she ultimately stopped dieting and embraced Health At Every Size®, the many problems with the NWCR, why the vast majority of intentional weight-loss efforts fail, how weight stigma affects people of all sizes, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about whether to expect weight loss with intuitive eating.

Carrie Dennett is a Pacific Northwest-based registered dietitian, Certified Intuitive Eating counselor, journalist, author and blogger. She writes a weekly nutrition column for The Seattle Times and contributes regularly to The Washington Post. Carrie is the author of Healthy For (Your) Life: A Holistic Approach to Optimal Wellness, which blends intuitive and mindful eating with a non-diet approach, current nutrition science, and a lot of nutrition myth-busting—principles she also brings to her virtual private practice. She is a second-career dietitian who worked as a newspaper journalist for many years before earning her Master of Public Health in nutritional sciences from the University of Washington. Find her online at NutritionByCarrie.com.

We Discuss:

• The positive and negative aspects of Carrie’s relationship with food, body, and physical activity growing up

• How easily children can pick up on diet-culture messaging

• The harmful effects of weight shaming

• Carrie’s early experiences with dieting, and how that led to years of yo-yo dieting

• What made her decide to become a dietitian

• Her experience with, and criticisms of, the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR)

• The history of the NWCR

• The research on the failure rate of diets

• The problem with the siloing of research

• What motivated Carrie to give up on dieting

• Paradigm straddling in the dietetics field

• How learning about the social determinants of health helped to shift Carrie and Christy’s thinking about health

• How Health At Every Size® is becoming more incorporated in dietetics training and practice

• Self-compassion, and its role in examining our own biases and dietetics practice

• Why it’s important to fight against societal weight stigma, not just internalized weight stigma

• Why social justice is an important but overlooked part of dietetics practice

• Privilege, and how it can affect our relationship with diet culture

• How privilege doesn’t provide complete protection from diet culture and body hatred

• Weight stigma, and how it affects people of all sizes

Resources Mentioned

Some of the links below are affiliate links. Affiliates or not, we only recommend products and services that align with our values.

• Submit your questions for a chance to have them answered on the podcast!

• My online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals

• Help spread the anti-diet message by subscribing to the podcast

• Niva Piran’s work

• Glenys Oyston’s work and her Food Psych® episode

• The Results of Treatment for [O-word]: A Review of the Literature and Report of a Series (CW: As with all scientific research, use of o-words, specific numbers and possibly other fatphobic language)

• Probability of an [O-word] Person Attaining Normal Body Weight: Cohort Study Using Electronic Health Records (CW: As with all scientific research, use of o-words, specific numbers and possibly other fatphobic language)

• Weight Loss Diet Studies: We Need Help, Not Hype (CW: Written by two weight-centric doctors/researchers. Use of o-words, specific numbers, fatphobic language)

• Medicare’s Search for Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not the Answer (CW: fatphobic language, calorie/weight numbers)

• Long-term Effects of Dieting: Is Weight Loss Related to Health? (CW: As with all scientific research, use of o-words, mentions specific numbers and diets, possibly other fatphobic language)

• The Biology of Human Starvation: Volume 1 (of 2) by Ancel Keys, Josef Brozek, and Austin Henschel (CW: Report from the Minnesota Starvation Study; includes specific numbers and descriptions of disordered behaviors)

• Secrets from the Eating Lab by Traci Mann (CW: Specific numbers, some healthist language)

• Health At Every Size by Linda Bacon, and their Food Psych episode (CW: Dr. Bacon no longer recommends this book and prefers that people read Body Respect instead)

• Erin Harrop’s Food Psych episode

• Christy’s slides from HAES vs. Weight Management debate at FNCE 2018 (CW: one specific weight number mentioned; research papers mentioned in references section contain potentially triggering content)

• Fiona Sutherland’s work and her Food Psych episode

• Janell Mensinger’s work

• Shrill by Lindy West, and her Food Psych episode

• Carrie’s website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram 

Listener Question of the Week

Is weight loss possible with intuitive eating? How does diet culture condition us to desire a smaller body? Why do some people have a smaller body than others? What is “thin privilege”? Why is it important to acknowledge size diversity? Why is diet culture a Life Thief?