Episode 10 - Undoing the Harm of Diet Culture with JodiAnn Stevenson

Diet culture harms all bodies. What can we do to prevent harm in the fitness industry and create more inclusive programming? In this weeks episode we talk with JodiAnn Stevenson about diet culture, the harm it does and how to undo diet culture individually and on a larger scale.

JodiAnn Stevenson is a body liberation oriented, HEAS-aligned, weight-neutral certified health coach, personal trainer, yoga instructor, and intuitive eating professional. She currently coaches and teaches out of her online studio, Bad Dog Rebel Fitness & Yoga.

JodiAnn is host of The Real Rebel Health podcast and a founding member of the Rebel Body Collective, a community of body liberation oriented movement professionals. She is also a doctoral student of Transformative Studies exploring the damaging effects of colonized and corporatized approaches to health in mainstream medical and fitness industries.

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Transcript

Christine
I'm excited to have you JodiAnn on the podcast today.

JodiAnn
Thanks for having me, Christine. 

Christine
Sure. And your story is very unique. So why don't we start with that journey that, where it took you from and where you are today. 

JodiAnn
Sure, I think that it's possible that my story is not as unique as, as it might seem, after diving into a lot of body liberation stories and how people have ended up in this direction. I'm realizing that there's a lot of similarities. And so the way that I start telling my story, it just doesn't feel right to, to start it without explaining that body dissatisfaction for me started at a really young age with the sexual abuse that I suffered as a child. I think that, that was sort of the original wound that made me think that there was something inherently wrong with not just my body, but my whole being, you know? And so, like I said, I don't, I honestly don't think that's very unique. I think unfortunately, really pretty common. And when you grow up with that kind of original wound, you go through life trying to figure out how to make yourself acceptable and diet culture just loves stepping right in there and filling that void for a lot of us  and giving us, a really good guide to learning how to earn people's love and earn people's respect and, so sort of fast forward through that and in addition to that my mother, um, My mother was always in a larger body.  She was somebody who was really, really thin over her whole life and then through her adulthood, when I knew her, she had me when she was 35. At that point, she had six children, five of whom she had one year right after the other, so that did a lot to her body. And in the meantime, you have all these, she's just getting the advice to diet, lose weight, lose weight, lose weight. So she weight cycled a lot through her life. And that was my model growing up, was that, that's sort of what you just did as a woman. Especially if you felt like you needed to earn people's respect or love or your value in the world. So dieting was modeled to me at a very early age and I think probably when I look back on it the beginnings of my eating disorder probably showed up as young as 10 or 12, where I started on a big restricting and binging cycle and that was never caught. When I look back and I think about all the doctors I saw and all the things that I was going through that were little signs and little symptoms of that behavior. Uh, and I think how many doctors had no idea that that's what it was because. My body was always bigger for the most part. So they couldn't see that connection. So anyway I was never into sports. I was never an active, super active kid. In fact, I only joined swim team and gymnastics and stuff like that in high school, so I could avoid going home after school. It sounds really bad, but I had a lot of fun and I really loved swimming. But it was definitely a way to not have to go home and see people, particularly my father. So I did do a little bit of sports type stuff.  But I was never good at it, and I was never,  it was never my thing exactly. But when I was in college, I discovered step aerobic and the world of step aerobics. Like now I'm totally dating myself.

Christine
I'm with you there, I'm with you. 

JodiAnn
Well, the stuff in the early nineties was, I mean, I am sure there are instructors that are still like this today. But I had instructors that would literally say things like, Um, you know, you're going to have to work out everything you ate for lunch. We'd have a class after Thanksgiving and I had an instructor once that like gave us, um, the exact amount of calories and pie and how much we were going to have to. Work that day in class too, you know? Anyway,

Christine
I apologize. I was one of those instructors that hosted at Turkey blaster, Turkey burner. Yeah, no, I apologize. I was in that space of doing that.

JodiAnn
I was into it a hundred percent. I was into it a hundred percent and I felt like I had, I felt like I had been given some kind of golden key, like, Oh, this is the thing that I've been waiting for, you know, my whole life to make my body acceptable, to make my body lovable. And I got through doing  and all the restrictions that was encouraged by fitness professionals at that time. I probably entered into my first period of really, the lower weight that is accompanied with my eating disorder and all the praise came with it, all the love and all the validation. And then what's what's, I want to say it was beautiful, but what's beautiful to me now that I recognize is that underneath that layer of validation, there's this layer of just utter fear of that weight coming back and that validation being taken away and that love being taken away and that rejection coming back to you to me. Um, so anyway, I went through cycles of that. I just continued this like over that, but I also continued to love group fitness and I continued to just get more and more into it. And I think I was lucky because. I always felt a different connection to the movement than just the restriction life that I led in order to control my, the size of my body. So I also always felt the mental health bonuses of moving my body. And I think that was very lucky for me because I never gave up on moving my body because I had that. And I was always able to divorce the two from one another, not always, there were moments where I had to purposely extract them from one another, but I was able to, because I found that joy and movement for a long time. So. Sort of fast forward. I was an English professor for 20 years. And during that time I just became really disillusioned with teaching at the particular community college that I was at. I am a huge proponent of the community college dream and goal, but my particular community college is having a lot of problems and I got, I think that I went into, I went to take the health, fitness degree there as a way to escape, a way to escape my dissatisfaction with my work. And it was a great and fun, a distraction. And in the meantime, I also became a triathlete.  I was a recreational triathlete, but I dis sprint level tri's. But I did that over several years and I got really involved with the triathlon community there. And that was sort of the moment that really took hold of my disorder and just drew me down and really made the whole thing about what my body looked like and how what size my body was. And so I just began, I went into this restriction spiral, that was really finally very frightening for me and in the meantime, I've become a personal trainer. I've become a group fitness instructor. I'm measuring and weighing in people and telling them what they need to do and how much weight they need to lose. And then I'm diagnosed with an eating disorder. And, I need to start healing from that. Through my healing I found a health at every size therapist who introduced me to intuitive eating. And then I heard the words, joyful movement. And I discovered the whole entire health at every size movement. And that sort of, that whole journey is sort of its own fascinating story. But, um, but yeah, so now I find myself trying to do that work and trying to essentially just overthrow the main stream fitness industry and, um, and even the mainstream, just the whole mainstream health, industrial complex..

Christine
And I think that a lot of people would be, uh, maybe they won't be surprised, I feel like are listening to this podcast, they're not going to be surprised because almost everyone I interview, whether they're a fitness professional or a dietician or they're doing work in this space, It all came from struggling with diet culture, struggling with body image, struggling. And you're lucky that you were able to kind of find that you had a little twinge of that joyful movement in group fitness. And it all goes back to the instructor. And if the instructors struggling, like we both were teaching and not in healthy places ourselves. Then like you said with your mom, you pass on this from mom to child, we pass it on as group fitness leaders to our clients and it just keeps that cycle going. So it's good that you could disconnect that food and exercise. Because if we could disconnect those two things like exercise is not an exchange for our food and vice versa, that's one step. But let's get into the diet culture stuff. Let's get into how diet culture harms us. 

JodiAnn
Yes. I talk about this a little bit in the first season of my real rebel health podcast.  I think you just reminded me on episode six, I dug a little bit about this. I'm not sure I'm going to cover all those same bases, but the most egregious, I think maybe not even the most egregious, but maybe someone just the most obvious, is that it does directly cause eating disorders to develop. It directly encourages eating disorders to develop and maybe more egregious, but more hidden is the fact that it causes disordered eating. So not eating disorders, but disordered eating and disordered eating is so common that we just think it's normal. 

Christine
Oh, for sure. 

JodiAnn
Yeah. And I think, you know, so it also tells this big lie that we are in control of the size of our bodies, which means that there are so many people living with thin privilege who just kind of won the lottery. Um, and were born into a system where their body was considered the goal or the superior way of being. And those people are walking around every day and those of us who have restricted down to this, that, you know, that good goal weight or that acceptable weight, those of us who have restricted down to that have experienced this as well. We are given a sense of superiority. We are told we are the one, and we're the ones who are right in the world. And I think it's really, it's really sick. When you think about it, how many people are walking around, within diet culture, not realizing, of course they're walking around in diet culture with this really superior feeling of well. If I could do it, if my body looks like this,  and then it gives them this ability to look at other people and make these judgements about other people's bodies and in a moment, just looking at someone they've decided what they eat. They've decided how much they eat. They've decided how much they moved their bodies, so I think the, I think one of the biggest damages that diet culture does is actually is that it separates people and creates a hierarchical system of body size and that hierarchical system destroys relationships among people and leads to massive discrimination and massive dysfunction. It leads to self hatred among people whose bodies don't comply with those standards.  And interestingly, I've come to this newer realization, even since that episode six of my podcast, where, you know, the people who think they're winning, the people who are living with thin privilege, they're living with a constant, underlying fear of their own bodies being policed as well. And the fact of their bodies being policed as well. So they're winning, they've got all the things going for them in terms of complying, with their body automatically complies with what diet culture wants from people. And yet, because they see all these other bodies being policed, they see all of these other bodies being seen as unacceptable. They know they live on this edge of, but if I gain the weight and if my body changes and they live on that constant, like neurotic edge of, I have to maintain this or I'm not acceptable. And it's interesting because I was just telling somebody the other day that I chose my name, bad dog rebel. And it just sounds like a cute, you know, gym named bad dog rebel, but really it's sort of a deeper concept of, uh, it's the idea that I felt as a, as a person who had restricted my doubt, myself, my, besides my buddy down to what was, uh, complicit with that culture. What was acceptable within that culture? I felt that, uh, now that I look back at it, that I was a good dog, that I was, I was sitting still, I was, I was told what my place was and I accepted my place and I got the pat on the head every time. Somebody said you look great, or I don't even know if I want to go into some of the inappropriate things that people said to me, um, to validate my eating disorder, but you know, you get the pat on the head and you're the good dog in that situation. And the name, the very name of my fitness and yoga studio is actually Uh, no, I want to be a bad dog. I don't, I don't need to be anybody's good dog anymore. I need to be, and maybe, you know, the problem is like, I don't want to be a dog at all at all, but, but for the time being I'm, I'm comfortable to say no, I'm I, I'm not going to live by those rules anymore. So. I dunno, I'm going back to my story instead of what the damage that diet culture does. 

Christine
But your story, your story is so relevant though. I mean, we all go back to, because it's how we view the world, our lens, our, everything we experienced. So we could only draw on our own experiences. So your experiences are so helpful in this. 

JodiAnn
Thank you. Yeah. And I mean, I think what I was just trying to get at is just that we think. We often think that diet culture is most damaging to people whose bodies don't comply with the norms, the acceptable norms, but it's really damaging to every single person who lived within it. Even people who think they're winning the game. 

Christine
Yeah. Yeah, that that's,  very, very true. And I loved what you said about living on that edge. So if you are in the body accepted by society, I can talk from my experience. I lived on that edge. It's scary. And then you do very unhealthy things to stay there and listen, I didn't have a love life at that time, I had no partner. I had, really during the darkest times, I had no friends because I was obsessed and I was so afraid. I never even thought about that. About being on that edge of, I think in my head, I thought. I'm going to be looked that I'm a failure and I've, and the funny thing is I had failed a few times cause we do that weight cycling, but I'm like this, this has got to be the one that works. I put everything into this one, this time around. If I fail, I put on weight, like you said, I connected it to my worthiness.  People are gonna think that I don't have, I've been told you don't have willpower. You don't have, you don't have what it takes to. Yeah, again, all that connection. That's powerful stuff there. So how do we undo it? 

JodiAnn
That's a really great question. And I'm actually going there right now. I was already headed in that direction because you still see like those things that you just said about, um, You know, you just don't have enough willpower. You're just not trying. I still see this in the fitness world, in the mainstream fitness industry, I see trainers and fitness instructors saying this all the time, to people that they're just not, they're just not committed enough. They're just not trying hard enough, if they would just have not let themselves go. It's just so damaging. So damaging. And I think that my answer to, how do we get rid of it? Um, I think there's like layers. There's, there's the sort of micro layer of every individual person who is living within diet culture, waking up to it. And it's just like waking up to any abusive system of use of paradigm, you know? We have to wake up to white supremacy. If we're not awake to it yet we have to do that in this country, uh, in this culture and this world, we have to wake up to white supremacy. We have to wake up to, um, to the way, uh, LGBTQ folks are treated in this country. If you're, if that's not your experience, you have to wake up to that, you know, and. And, um, and even if, even if you're living inside of it, you just have never thought of it, even if it is your experience often where we're not awake to it. So individually we have to awake, awake into it. And we have individually, people have to awaken to the ways in which that culture is harming them. They have to start to question why they think they're winning that game. And I think that honestly, a lot of the onus should be on the people who are, you know, quote unquote, winning that game, you know, who are, who are fairing well in diet culture, like ask yourself why you think that is. And those edges like discover those edges that you're living on and figure out how it might be harming you, but also think about who you have harmed. You know, through living this like superior life of, of having the body that complies with the standard. And individual work, individual work is absolutely essential, but what I'm really hoping to be a part of, uh, at some level is a larger just enormous shifts within the health industry, within the mainstream health, industrial complex, I've called it a million different things and people call it different things, um, in the body of the ration community. But you know, the damage that I'm just, there are a lot of great medical doctors, a lot of great ODs out there, a lot of health professionals who are doing a lot of great things, but diet culture is just pervasive in the medical field and within, you know, the advice that doctors give their patients and people, I think about my mother and my mother, just, she thought of doctors as little gods, you know, just whatever they told her had to be true. And if they said lose weight, And that was the advice she was sent away with. Okay. She's going to lose weight and then she's going to go where? She's going to go to diet culture. That's just going to give her crash diet after crash diet or give her restriction, give her things that ultimately, they're never going to work. They're never going to, that's not how that's not longterm. You know? Um, that's not a long-term healthy goal anyway. So, too many doctors are still just saying lose weight. You have to lose weight. You have to lose weight. That doesn't mean to say that it's all doctor's fault certainly is not, they're a product of their culture. But I think we need to get more and more and more health professionals to understand the damage they're doing when they live within diet culture unchecked. And they're not thinking it through and looking at all the data and fitness professionals. Absolutely.  Yoga professionals. Absolutely. I mean, all of these people do damage when they concentrate on the size of people's bodies. So yeah, I think there's, there's the individual level and then there's that bigger work that has to be done. And, you know, I'm not even going to guess as to how long that work is going to take, but it's a big cultural shift, you know? I mean, it's probably not in my lifetime, you know, is that shift going to happen? But it's gotta happen. It's gotta happen.

Christine
Yeah. I think there has to be a lot of shifts. Like you mentioned, the health field, and then in fitness industry,  it is like you said, pervasive, it's bad as a fitness professional. When I attend fitness conferences, because I'm more aware, like you said, when you awaken and you're aware of this, you see it and you're like, Oh my God, it's everywhere. Oh my gosh. So it's hard to undo. And like our mindsets, it's a lot of work. You're doing a lot of work in this field, but then in this with just people like, as a fitness professional, it's a responsibility that we have to, we're affecting so many people. So you're doing doctoral work in this area. Talk to me, share with us like what you're exploring. This is why, you know a lot about this. What are some of the things you're exploring in this area?

JodiAnn
Yeah, I am just, I'm really at the beginning, I'm still within my first year of coursework of my doctoral studies. So, I want to preface everything I'm about to say with that because I have literally just started, started putting my toe in the world of fat studies. And I don't think that my dissertation and my work is actually gonna end up in the realm of that study, which is, I don't think it necessarily is going to stay there. So I don't know if just in case listeners aren't familiar with that studies, it's an academic discipline area, right? So just like, it's another form of, you have queer studies, you have, You know, when I was in school, we had African-American studies. I think, hopefully that, that has all evolved in, um, in new ways. So you have different, you have different identities, sort of, um, having, having their own disciplines, their own study around what the inequalities and B justice issues are for those different bodies. And so fat studies is a relatively new area of study, and it's fascinating to me, and it's definitely part of this whole thing, but it's not the, it's not the whole thing because I'm really interested in the health studies aspect too. And where the disconnect is between these and ultimately, So where I'm looking for, like this I'm really interested in as a, as a health and fitness professional. How do I, How can I help? How can I make a difference and how can I help my colleagues in this field? Understand what the hell is going on? Right. So they have the data. If they want to look at the data, it's that diets don't work. Most fitness professionals will tell you diets don't work right before they put you on a diet. Yeah. You know, so they know that 95% of the time, when you put somebody on a restrictive diet, 95% of the times, people gain that weight back, they know that weight cycling is as bad for your heart as smoking. And yet they encourage people to continue to do it. You know? So we are not health oriented. We're body size oriented in this industry. Just like what I said about, you know, the medical field is body size oriented, that the fitness field is body sides oriented. I would argue that the American westernized white yoga world is body size oriented. What we need is people to understand. I feel because they have the data and they don't want to believe it. So I feel I have a unique position where I can help people feel what it feels like to live within a culture that makes you earn your value and your worth by controlling the size of your body. I'm just going to come back to this metaphor of the dog, you know? He keeps getting kicked. He's getting thrown out into the yard and kicked and abused over and over by a medical industry and a fitness industry that just says, lose weight, lose weight, lose weight, lose weight. What does that feel like for the individual? So my doctoral work, I hope to explore how capitalism is sort of at the core of why we can't get over this, why we can't get beyond it. Because we have fitness professionals who have to make a living and the way that fitness professionals for the most part making living is to sell validation. I can make you a lovable person. Finally, here's the thing. Here's the golden key. I will make you a valuable person, with my restrictive dieting suggestions. And that sells, it just sells and I think that's, that's the reality of what we live in today. But if we go back in history, like if you look at Sabrina Strings work, and her book. Fearing the Black Body. I'm just interested in that from the perspective of the, I mean, I'm interested in it in all respects, but specifically the way she goes back into the history of how medical professionals response to body size was sort of born out of this desire to sell products. It wasn't based in health. It wasn't based in how to help people live a longer, healthier life or a better life. It was based on how to sell products. And so I think if we look at capitalism and capitalism as an extension of colonization. I think if we go back and we see how the very concept of health was colonized was created into this capital capitalized product, we might find some interesting things there at the same time. I am uniquely positioned as somebody who has two master degrees in poetry to engage in what's called poetic inquiry and poetic inquiry the way at least that I'm envisioning it for my project would be something along the lines of collecting interviews, collecting stories of people, and then distilling those into language into a poetic language that would help people and specifically fitness professionals and health professionals feel what people are feeling on a gut level feel what diet culture does to people on the level of how it destroys my life and the effect it had  on my emotional wellbeing and my mental health and even my physical health, over long periods of time. So. Yeah, it's really convoluted and complex because I'm right at the beginning and anybody who's like done a PhD or in working on a PhD is probably laughing at me right now, going this girl doesn't know what she's doing yet.

Christine
Um, no, no, not at all. 

JodiAnn
I do have a fair direction for the level, for the amount of time I've been in the program. And, and ultimately just the goal is going to be to try to get people to understand. Why diet culture is harmful. Like really feel it and feel why something has to be done about it because the data is all there and it's being ignored. It's being just trampled over.

Christine
It's just so fascinating. And I find that no matter where you in your learning, we can all continue to learn. So the fact that you, you're at a different, in a different stage of your learning, I mean, you're pursuing the doctoral work. So even though you think you don't know enough, you know so much. And it's just so fascinating. And even that connection with the billion dollar industry in the selling, it is so true because I know for myself as a studio owner, Oh, I could sell a lot more memberships if I do before and after pictures and sell that, sell that body goal. No, not, not going to do that. So the does do so much harm, so I cannot wait to learn more from you about all the capital, all that connection. It's just, it's so important and very important work. And I think, I just think it's going to happen and it better happen in our lifetime. We're going to shift the industry and you're already doing some shifts, progression. But you're doing work with the rebel body collective share with our listeners what you do. We want to be a part of it at Pop Fit Studio. We want to be involved with that because I love, I think collaborations and connections or what raises all of our voices. So share more about your collective.

JodiAnn
Yeah. So this is like still a bit of a tiny dream of mine. Um, and I partnered, I've been partnering with a couple of different instructors, Jess Brockpits, out of enlightened wellness and Daniella Lucida out of Danny outfit.  They both have studios similar to mine, similar size. Similar offerings. So we got together and they're both from a very body liberation oriented perspective. And it was important to me to find people who are from the body liberation oriented perspective, as opposed to the more popular sort of term of body positive fitness. Because I feel like body positive fitness has been co-opted in a lot of ways. And you can't always, I'm just going to say you can't always trust that body positive fitness isn't going to be all up in diet culture and coming from that perspective. So I looked for body liberation oriented professionals to sort of start partnering with and I had a dream to grow really, really fast. But we've been taking our time kind of talking about it and thinking about what the next right move is. But my dream for this collective is, is mainly to bring together body liberation oriented, profess fitness professionals and movement professionals, just so that. We can think about what the possibilities even are for what we can offer people. I think there needs to be, and I'm not alone in this many people think that many businesses that I started off thinking this right now, there needs to be more inclusivity in all ways in the fitness and yoga world and offerings but even reaching out to people who, you know, reaching out to people for whom fitness and yoga is not even on the table as a possibility for them, because it's seen as this thing that only is available to rich white women, if I'm being honest,  so how do we, how do we figure that whole thing out, you know, and can we as a collective, can we do anything about that? Um, but also just like, how do we support each other in this battle against this. Diet culture, this huge behemoth of a, of a landscape that really on a really individual and personal level will knock an instructor down over and over and over. I know I'm not alone as an instructor when I, you know, you just mentioned if I just use before and after pictures, if I just, you know, offered weight loss, I know I'm not alone as a body liberation oriented instructor. When I get so downhearted seen program after program, after program being offered and all the comments and all the women that are just going crazy for this new program. And you just I'm as a body liberation oriented professional, I just want to say, what are you doing? Look at what we have over here. Come here. We want to hold you up and give you something that you can actually use for the rest of your life in a really positive and beautiful way. And those people are just going to give you more diet culture. Bullshit. So as a collective, and I didn't ask you if I could swear on this, I guess my hope, I guess you can.

Christine
It's fine. But just know we don't, we don't like the numbers. 

JodiAnn
Right, right.  

Christine
Well, it's amazing. It's amazing work because I, I am a hundred percent I'm on board with it. I kind of related to, I'm not a religious person all, but the story of David and Goliath and I feel, we feel like, like we can build up our army and listeners, you're part of that army and we can really grow. And I think it's going to be really powerful. The work that you're doing, JodiAnn has a podcast, the Real Rebel Health podcast. It's definitely something you can go and learn and listen, because some of the topics we talked about today, you JodiAnn, you go into much deeper content. Like we would be here all day. So definitely go and listen to that. Is there anything else that you want to share?

JodiAnn
I try to go into all that detail and really bite-sized pieces. So it's so much at any one time for, for people. Anything else I want to share? I think that, I just want to say one of the things that I get on about on social media is that more people need to be supporting body liberation oriented fitness programs, and I don't want to put the onus on, you know, on people,  on just like our, our potential clients. But look, if you're interested in shifting the paradigm, if you're interested in a world that does not value people by the size of their bodies, and if you're interested in helping shift all of that harm, that diet culture is doing, a really basic thing that people can do that your listeners can do that anybody looking for fitness and yoga can do is refuse, refuse to give a cent a more, a moment more to diet culture oriented fitness professionals. Just stop listening to them and tune them out. And stop giving them money and look for body liberation oriented professionals, because we are out here and since COVID, um, since COVID came on, so many of us are online and available at all hours, you know, and doing all kinds of great work and that's what the rebel body collective I want. The rebel body collective to be about is highlighting the great work that so many body liberation oriented movement professionals are doing. Um, but please seek us out and support us,  and I don't mean me and the two people I work with, but like, All of us, there are so many of us, and you can find us. 

Christine
Well, thank you so much. This has been amazing. I feel like we could just be here all day and the work that you're doing is just so amazing and I feel like there's going to be so much progress and I'm going to put all of JodiAnns information, her website and social media, and her podcast in the show notes. And I just thank you so much for your time today. 

JodiAnn
Thank you, Christine. Thank you for having me. It's been fun.