Sex Gets Real 296: Christy Harrison on pleasure, happiness, and being anti-diet, Part 1

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tl;dr Christy Harrison of Food Psych is here to talk about pleasure, happiness, weight stigma, what it means to be anti-diet, and why trusting our hungers around food & sex is so important.

I am so excited to share Part 1 of this 2 part conversation with the incredible Christy Harrison!

Christy is an anti-diet dietitian, host of the Food Psych Podcast, and she just published a book that we are exploring here called, “Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating”.

Before we get into my chat with Christy, I have a few important things:

First, at Alex’s suggestion, I turned my answer from last week’s episode about preferences for certain bodies into a blog post… that has as of six days later been read over 31,000 times. HOLY SHIT! There has been so much beautiful input, additional nuance, and depth in all of the things people are saying, and I am so grateful. If you like it, feel free to share it! Let’s keep the conversation going.

Second, Be Nourished’s free online Body Trust Summit is March 11-17 and it is going to be fantastic. If you like my conversation with Christy this week, the summit is 24 talks that will take you even deeper into your relationship with food, body, pleasure, and healing. Register now!

Christy and I talk about my own disordered eating and orthorexia, the part of her book that made me burst into tears, the cost of the performances we do around food and also sex, and where the advent of the “obesity” epidemic came from and why it’s actually really new. Hint: it has to do with money in people’s pockets NOT science.

So back to my chat with Christy:

I expect a lot of you are going to have some big feels come up as you hear Christy and I talk about diet culture, weight stigma, and how dieting and disordered relationships with our hungers impacts our sexual desire and pleasure.

This is a really nuanced conversation, so if you notice yourself constricting or feeling defensive, feel free to take a break, breathe, move, and then return to it later. Seven or eight years ago me would have felt really resistant to a conversation like this, so I get it.

Part 2, which drops next week, continues our exploration of many of the lies we’ve been sold, desirability politics and changing bodies, and why the problem is NOT weight but rather weight stigma and a focus on dieting.

All of this ties so so intimately to the ways we experience sex, the ways we navigate consent, how we set boundaries, and do relationship, so I hope you’ll join me for this delicious 2-part conversation with Christy.

Be sure to send in your questions! I would love to hear from you. Use the contact form at dawnserra.com.

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics, and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing, and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So, welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.

Hey, you! Okay. I am very excited. That’s making me think of a Dwight line. Anyway, I am very excited that you are here for this epic conversation with the amazing, the incredible Christy Harrison. We spent two hours talking, geeking out, diving deep, taking breaks a couple of weeks ago. I’m actually going to be spreading our conversation across two episodes. So this week, part one. Next week, Episode 297 is going to drop with part two, and there is some great stuff in part two that you are not going to want to miss.

Dawn Serra: Christy and I also recorded a 20-minute bonus conversation for Patrons. I was really torn on whether to use that for this week’s bonus or next week’s bonus. I just decided I really didn’t want to wait. Because it’s so good. Next week, there’s going to be a bonus with me, and this week, you get this really ultra personal chat between Christy and I. I talk about my own disordered eating and orthorexia. I share the part of her book that made me burst into tears. Alex had to run over and hug me. Something just cracked open in me that had been needing to be cracked open for a long time. We also talked about the cost of performing and the ways that we perform around food and sex. Also, where the advent of the “obesity epidemic” came from and why it’s actually really new and about profits and not science.

Dawn Serra: There’s also a lot that I want to share that’ll help us kind of settle in for this conversation with Christy. Because so many of us have really complicated relationships with our bodies – myself included – and it’s ongoing. These complications have a significant and painful impact on our experiences of gender, love, desire, libido, sex, and ultimately, what it’s all about, pleasure. Early in my chat with Christy, you’re going to hear us talking about how diet culture indoctrinates us into just trusting ourselves in our bodies. Like, how can we trust our choices? How can we consent to things from a really powerful informed place if we don’t fundamentally trust ourselves and our bodies.

Diet culture robs us of our autonomy. We’re trained to believe people outside of ourselves, to distrust the cues that these bodies of ours give us. So many of us are so concerned with consent. But we’re skipping right past whether we even have the tools or the skills to listen to and trust these bodies of ours. If we can’t trust ourselves with food, then we are fundamentally moving from a distrustful relationship of self. So how can we fully trust hungers and other arenas of our life, including sex? Christy and I talked about how when we cut ourselves off from certain emotions, we’re cutting ourselves off from all of our emotions in a way. It’s the same with our hungers.

Dawn Serra: I’m also going to share some really crucial quotes from Christy’s book as a way to frame our conversation. Because Christy and I already have a shared language and a shared understanding around this topic that I think is going to bring up a lot of really intense feelings for people. I want to share just a couple of– There’s so, so much research Christy did. And she has such a wealth of information. I can’t possibly share it all because it’s thousands of citations in her book and powerful tidbits. But just a couple of things that will help us kind of arrive in a similar place.

But before I do that, I want to just take a moment to say thank you. Really, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart. All of your responses to my answer about desirability politics and body preferences from last week have fucking blown my mind. When Alex heard it last week, he told me that I needed to turn my answer on the podcast into a blog post because he said, “There were some things in there that I have never thought about. And I think a lot of people are going to want to hear it.” So I was a little hesitant to take his advice, but holy fucking shit. The post has been read over 30,000 times in the past couple of days. It’s been shared on Facebook almost 400 times, to my knowledge. There’s probably shares happening now. Because I’ve seen it go into some rather big groups. I’m sure people are sharing it, and I just can’t see it anymore. But I have been getting the most incredible feedback. And I just feel so supported.

Dawn Serra: Jet Noir, who is a sex educator and founder of Black Manifest. If you aren’t familiar with Black Manifest, it’s a burlesque celebration of all black, full spectrum masculinity. Anyway, Jet Noir shared the piece and said, “This. Please share this the next time your friend claims they have a ‘preference’ for dating certain people. I give lectures on racial fetishization in sexually charged spacious spaces, usually play parties, and how it keeps people of color away from certain themes. Your words truly resonated with me. Thank you for your work.” Thank you Jet Noir. That was so touching. I’m so glad you found it so impactful. 

So many of my mentors, Andre Shakti yelled in all caps, “Challenge your desirability politics. I dare you.” Honestly, I was really, really scared to share it as a blog post because we all know what it’s like for women on the interwebs, especially fat women. Getting that kind of viral attention is something that I’ve been trying to avoid. As the numbers rose each day, I felt more and more and more fear. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for the threats and the insults and the fragility. Frankly, they’re probably still going to come at some point. But there’s been so much support and excitement that I feel really bolstered and hopeful.

Dawn Serra: I mean, other than one person, almost everyone has been excited about engaging in a really nuanced dialogue. I think part of it is because so much of what we were unpacking together, around preferences and where our preferences come from, wasn’t about whether or not you’re a bad person. It makes sense that so many of these things that feel like preferences feel so inherent to us. But it is about having a responsibility to investigate our stories within the context of the world we live in. And I just have so much hope after this week.

There have been some really challenging discussions. Like people asking for even more nuance, especially around things like trauma. Or, sharing perspectives outside of my own that brought in even more depth and offered me stuff I hadn’t thought about. But seriously, 99.9% of everything that I’ve seen this week has been about deepening into the conversation. And I’m just so here for that. I’m so here for that for all of us – more nuance. 

Dawn Serra: It’s, needless to say, been a really intense and surprising week, to say the least. If you didn’t catch it, you can either hear my response about preferences and bodies in Episode 295 of the podcast. Or, you can check out my blog post, if you prefer sharing that over a podcast. So I’ll link to my blog post at dawnserra.com/ep296 because we’re on episode 296. 

It’s also interesting because Christy and I do a really yummy exploration of desirability politics and preferences for certain kinds of bodies. We also talk about some of the work she’s done with clients whose partners are concerned that their partner’s body is getting bigger or about what they’re eating or how their body is changing. And the impact of that at a health– Like a physical health level. We’re going to go into that in part two, so next week’s episode. But we recorded that a couple of weeks ago. I just think that it’s really, really interesting that so many of us want better conversations about preferences, bodies, diversity and bodies, pleasure… Oh! I’m loving it.

Dawn Serra: Okay, Back to Christy and our bodies. I really wanted to share a couple of bits that I highlighted in Christy’s new book “Anti-Diet.” Because so many of us have so much misinformation about weight and health. In fact, so many of our doctors, who we trust to help us navigate our health to feel better, are operating from a place of deep stigma and false information. And it creates a lot of stigma and anxiety among us collectively. Like our fears, our stigma, our shame, our anxieties, they all separate us from these bodies of ours that are wise and literally built for pleasure and sensation.

One of the things that’s so common in the work that I do with clients one-on-one is discovering that a client who’s feeling really concerned about maybe low libido and feeling cut off from their desire in the erotic is also dieting, restricting, carrying a lot of body shame. Dana Sturtevant, who’s one of my mentors from Be Nourished, is actually quoted in Christy’s book saying, “It’s not possible to heal our relationship with food and body while trying to control the size and shape of our body.” In the feels! It’s so complicated. It’s so, so complicated.

Dawn Serra: So I thought it would be helpful for us to just have a small little snippet of some of the deliciousness that is in Christy’s book. Because Christy and I use that as a springboard for this much deeper conversation. I want to invite you to notice if you feel resistance, anger, defensiveness coming up, as I share these quotes from the book – and also, my chat with Christy – it’s normal for us to feel those things, especially when we start to feel confronted around some core beliefs we’ve carried. If we start to realize that we’ve been lied to at such a fundamental level or when we start realizing how much harm we’ve caused ourselves and other people, that hurts. You might feel some of that come up. 

I also just want to note that if you are in a place where you are very new to eating disorder recovery or you’re still actively in your eating disorder, there might be some things you hear in this episode that are triggering, so please tread really lightly, tend to yourself, and stop if it feels like too much. You can always circle back later. So here are a couple of tidbits from the book. Now, there’s Nine that I pulled out. 

Dawn Serra: The first one– These are all direct quotes. Number one, “The research firm market data reported in early 2019 that the diet industry was worth more than $72 billion, a record high.” $72 billion. So when we think about that, we realize there are a lot of people who have a lot of a financial stake in keeping all of us invested in diet and wellness and stuck in that cycle. 

Number two, “A 2008 survey by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in conjunction with SELF Magazine, found that 65% of American women between the ages of 25 and 45 have some form of disordered eating, and that another 10% would meet the criteria for eating disorders.” 65% of American women between 25 and 45 have some form of disordered eating and 10% would meet the criteria for eating disorders. I think that’s important because eating disorders are the most deadly form of mental illness. They have the highest rate of mortality.

Dawn Serra: Number three, “These issues are on the rise in men as well, and transgender people are actually more likely than cisgender folks to have both diagnosed eating disorders and disordered eating behaviors.” Even though the majority of the research that’s available right now is around cisgender women, specifically white women, as the research field expands, we’re starting to find that disordered eating and eating disorders actually impact trans folks and non-binary folks at much higher rates. That’s important. 

Okay. Number four, “Intentional weight loss efforts have been shown to cause long-term weight gain for up to two-thirds of the people who embark on them. So if the national average weight was creeping up over the years, it’s a good bet that dieting was, at least, partly responsible for the increase.” That’s pretty important. And there are many, many, many, many, many more statistics and studies that back that up that are in the book. 

Dawn Serra: Another study that’s being cited and talked about here, in number five… This quote says, “The practice of going gluten-free to “heal” the gut can in fact mask disordered eating – a much more likely cause of digestive troubles than gluten. Given that as many as 98% of people with eating disorders have gastrointestinal disorders and up to 44% of general patients seeking help for gastrointestinal problems have disordered eating behaviors.” There’s a lot in the book that Christy unpacks around food sensitivities, elimination diets, and the harm that a lot of those can cause us. I thought that was a really interesting one.

Number six, the quote, “A robust body of evidence shows that intentional weight loss efforts don’t work, with a failure rate that many researchers agree as north of 95%.” Then quote number seven builds on that. “A large-scale 2015 study of more than 278,000 people found that within five years, the proportion of people who’ve regained their lost weight or more weight is somewhere between 95 and 98%.” Now, these numbers are repeated over and over and over again in the first half of the book. The book is cut into two different parts – so Part One and Part Two – with multiple chapters inside of each of the parts.

Dawn Serra: In part one, there are so many studies that Christy cites over and over and over and over and over again with huge numbers. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, that for decades since the 50s, have consistently shown this. There have been panels by the NIH. So many things showing that between 95 and 98% of people who try to lose weight, not only regain on the lost weight, but they often gain more at the five year mark. And that’s important. Because what that means is it’s not you. It is not your failure. It is not your fault. It’s the system that’s the problem. It’s the system, the stories, the lies. This is not our failure individually. But diet culture wants us to believe that because $72 billion is an awful lot of money for people to lose if suddenly all of us woke up and realized our bodies aren’t the problem.

The eighth quote – this one’s a little bit longer – on the science of inflammation and health– Now, these are my words. On the science of inflammation and health, Christy writes, “In other words, having bad shit happen to you – especially experiences of social injustice – is a risk factor for both increased inflammation and chronic disease. Another risk factor for chronic inflammation is weight cycling – repeatedly losing and regaining weight, which is what almost inevitably happens when people embark on weight-loss efforts. And when the true cause of inflammation is psychological distress, injustice, and yo-yo dieting, is eating kale really going to help?” 

Dawn Serra: I love that because there’s a little bit of sass in that. But Christy also breaks down a whole bunch of the science around inflammation. Because there’s such Fear right now around chronic inflammation and going on anti-inflammatory diets. There’s some really interesting science, pretty significant studies showing how little we actually know about it, but the things that actually contribute to inflammation are more tied to weight cycling, which is losing weight, and then feeling sad about the regain, and then trying to lose again and going up and down and up and down. Which I did for many, many years, probably decades. And also weight stigma, so important. 

Then the final quote that I want to share from the book because frankly, you just really, really, really, really need to get yourself this book. There’s 10,000 more statistics and factoids that I underlined. This book has probably more ink from me than from the publisher because there was so much I was getting so excited about. But I wanted to share this – “What you may not know is that abundant scientific evidence shows that weight stigma is an independent risk factor for an array of negative physical health conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease, regardless of people’s actual body size. A person in a smaller body with a lot of weight-based self-loathing may actually be at greater risk for poor health outcomes than a person in a much larger body who’s learned to accept their size and fight back against weight stigma.” Kind of a huge deal. It flies in the face of so much of what we see being sold to us in magazines and on posters, in our doctors offices and so many other things. 

Dawn Serra: So Christy and I are going to spend a lot of time in Part One of our conversation, which is this week’s episode talking about our desire for love, acceptance, pleasure, joy, and how so many of us sacrifice these things in our quest to control our bodies. Because we’ve been told that it’s only after our bodies change that we can achieve those things or deserve those things. We also talk about how our bodies are just so fucking wise. And that they are going to do everything in their power to avoid famine. And restriction does really fucked up things to the ways that we think about both sex and food. We’ve talked about that a lot on the show over the years around shame and stigma, around porn and masturbation, and how when we try to not do the things, when we try to lock it away in a closet and shut ourselves down, it actually creates more compulsion. 

You’re also going to hear lots of parallels between the ways we talk about abstinence and food and abstinence and sex, the ways that we become compulsive around both food and sex, when we feel shame or when we can’t own our hungers and desires. Christy shares this really personal sweet story about sexual fantasies that she had during her period of disordered eating. 

Dawn Serra: Then in part two of our chat, which drops next Sunday, you’re going to hear more about how pleasure not only increases our mental health, but also how eating for pleasure improves our physical health and the nutrients that our bodies get. Eating for pleasure! Wouldn’t that be an extraordinary way for all of us to move through the world? You’re going to hear about why we think we can’t control ourselves around certain foods, like sugar, or cake, or chips and what’s actually behind that. Then we’re also again going to talk about desirability and the harm we caused when we start doing that concerned-trolling around the people in our lives, around what they’re eating, how they are or are not moving, which is to say there’s a lot to unpack here. 

One other thing that I just want to make really clear before we jump in, all of us have been indoctrinated into diet culture. We did not consent to this. We didn’t choose this. It was forced upon us from the youngest of ages. And when we start to realize the depth of the harm that we might have caused ourselves in our bodies, the harm that we might have caused people we love – like if we’re parents and we put our kids on nonconsensual diets – it can bring up really big ugly feelings. Which is normal. I have been there many times. Christy has been there many times. You’ll hear us talk about that. So many of our colleagues and loved ones have been there. But don’t be surprised if you feel some of that constriction and shrinking and rigidity sneaking in as you listen to this episode and next week’s episode. If you notice that, maybe pause, take some deep breaths, look at the space around you, look out a window, go for a walk. Come back and try and listen from a place of curiosity. Because what’s on the other side of those feelings is so much more freedom and choice and pleasure and desire and agency. I want more pleasure and agency for all of us. 

Dawn Serra: Christy and I both really firmly believe that each and every one of us gets to choose what we do with our body. We are not condemning individuals who are doing their very best, even if that means you aren’t quite ready to break up with diet culture right now. We live in a world that’s very violent towards bodies that don’t conform to a certain ideal. Sometimes the ways to survive that violence is to collude with it. But we are condemning those who profit off of the diet industry and the sneakier version of diet culture, which has become wellness culture these days. When you read about how diet culture morphed into wellness culture in this book and the specific marketing firm that helps that happen, you’re going to be fucking enraged. But anyway– We are condemning the people who build personal brands off of pushing certain kinds of movement and food and body ideals that don’t also take into account things like the harm, the stigma, the anti-black, racist and colonial roots of diet culture, the classism and the sexism that’s baked into it all, or condemning the industry, the system, the institution and the culture. 

I am really excited for more of us to feel like we can honor our hungers, our hunger for food, our hunger for sex and pleasure, connection. I’m so hopeful that more of us are waking up to the insidiousness and the lies about health that we’ve been sold, so we can actually start existing in these bodies of ours and working on healing the distrust There’s so much possible on the other side of that. It has to be where we start our conversations about consent and the erotic, too. So for everyone who’s listening who’s a sex educator, who’s sex positive, who moves in kink circles and polyamory circles and all the other things that are adjacent to this, we have to be able to talk about the body and the ways that were indoctrinated to distrusting and leaving this body. 

Dawn Serra: Let me tell you a little bit about Christy, her official bio, and then we will jump in. Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, CDN, is an anti-diet registered dietitian, nutritionist, certified intuitive eating counselor, and author of the book “Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating.” She offers online courses and private intuitive eating coaching to help people all over the world make peace with food and their bodies. Since 2013, Christy has hosted “Food Psych,” a weekly podcast exploring people’s relationships with food and paths to body liberation. I was actually on “Food Psych” about two years ago. Christy and I had a lot of fun. We talked all about pleasure. So if you want to check that out, our conversation on her show was Episode 141. I’m going to link to that. So dawnserra.com/ep296 for links to my episode plus Christy’s podcast, her website, her book, and everything else that I’ve mentioned. 

Also, quickly, be sure to sign up for the Body Trust Summit. It starts March 11. It’s free. It’s entirely online. It’s seven days of conversations, just like this, about diet culture, eating disorder recovery, intuitive eating, pleasure, joy and movement, the power of community, and learning to trust and come home to these bodies of ours. Alex and I produced it on the back end for Hilary and Dana at Be Nourished. I’m speaking at it too, all about using pleasure as a way to return to the body and to experience embodiment. A link to register is in the show notes. So be sure to sign up for that because it’s right around the corner. Here is me and Christy.

Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Christy! To say I’m excited about today would be the understatement of the week.

Christy Harrison: Thank you so much for having me, Dawn. I’m so excited, too. I love your show. I love everything you’re about. So really excited to talk.

Dawn Serra: Well, the feeling is mutual. I sent so many people to your podcast, “Food Psych.” So much of the work that you do and so many people have found me because of our chat on your podcast. Hopefully, we’re going to have some really nice cross pollination happening.

Christy Harrison: Yes, I love it. 

Dawn Serra: Okay. The reason that we’re talking today, besides the fact that I just love you and think you’re amazing, is that you have a new book out that is amazing. I want everyone listening to go get a copy, and it’s called “Anti-Diet.” You’re talking about why obsessing over what you eat is bad for your health and reclaiming your time, money well being and happiness through intuitive eating. So congratulations on putting out a whole book.

Christy Harrison: Thank you. Yes, it was quite a labor of love and a long process to get there, for sure.

Dawn Serra: The research that you put into this is extraordinary. 

Christy Harrison: Thank you. 

Dawn Serra: People know I’ve been through Be Nourished’s Body Trust Provider Certification. I’m certified as a Body Trust provider. I’ve done all kinds of conferences and research. I’ve read all kinds of papers. There was a significant amount of research and numbers in your book that were new to me and/or that really deepened some of the things that I had already learned. I just appreciate so much the depth and the care that you put into helping to kind of lay out why we should be moving away from diet culture.

Christy Harrison: Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, I really wanted it to be comprehensive, as comprehensive as possible. Obviously, nothing is entirely comprehensive. But I wanted to have as much data and as much scientific evidence in there as possible, so that people could see this as a foundation for moving away from diet culture. Also, give this to their doctor, give this to their skeptical partner, give this to their mother, or whoever in your life is needing some convincing. This book can hopefully help speak to them as well.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. So where I would love to start… As I mentioned to you before we started recording, I could probably talk to you for three hours about this stuff. We don’t have that kind of time. And I’m sure people don’t want to listen quite that long. There’s a lot of places we’re going to go today. But I would love to just start by anchoring us in how the desire to shrink our bodies, our desire to diet to be seen as healthy is really about our desire to be loved, to be good, to belong. And it’s about this desire for connection that has been twisted and really made ugly by diet culture as a whole. 

So I’d love to just hear a little bit more about the things that in all of your work around eating disorders and diets and wellness culture, we are actually seeking, and that diet culture and wellness are promising us, but actually can’t deliver on. What is that desire underneath? What are more of us really wanting that we aren’t getting?

Christy Harrison: Such a good question. I love that we’re starting there, too, because I think it’s a really important foundation to think about. Like what we’re promised and what we think this stuff is going to give us, what we think following diet cultures rules is going to give us. That we can actually get elsewhere and that we’re looking in the wrong place. Not that we are doing anything wrong by that, but that the culture has conditioned us to look in this place where we’re not actually going to find what we’re looking for. Yeah. 

I think it really comes out of this belief system – and I traced the history of it in the book – that diet culture emerged out of racism and xenophobia and misogyny. The fatphobic ideas that underpin diet culture didn’t really come along until that root system of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia was there, was in place. Fatphobia grew out of that. From there, diet culture’s belief system was developed in the main tenets of that belief system – that we worship fitness. we equate it to health and moral virtue, we promote weight loss as a means of attaining higher status, whether that’s health, moral, social, all of the above types of status. That our society oppresses people who don’t match up with a supposed picture of health and well-being. And that we demonize some foods and elevate others – that food is good and bad, food has moral value. 

Christy Harrison: So that belief system, I think, has been very rooted into Western culture since the turn of the 20th century, the early 1900s, really going strong, going gangbusters for about 100 years now. And we all grow up in this culture. We all grow up in this belief system that says, “Larger bodies are bad. Smaller bodies are good,” “Some foods are bad. Some foods are good.” By implication, you’re good or bad for eating those foods. “Pleasure and food is dirty.” “Pleasure and food and your body is bad.” That’s like this overarching, puritanical belief system that we live in. 

From that place, I think it’s so understandable that we would all grow up with this notion that in order to be accepted, in order to be good in the eyes of our society, in order to be a morally correct person, we need to be thin, we need to eat the right foods and avoid the wrong ones. That if our bodies are “too large” by societal standards, that we need to shrink them in order to meet those standards. Really, those standards are the gateway. There’s this gatekeeping of, “You’re not allowed to have connection. You’re not allowed to have relationships and love and acceptance and success – whatever that looks like to you – unless you meet these qualifications, unless you’re in a thin enough body, unless you eat ”perfectly.” 

Christy Harrison: And health, when we talk about the picture of health being distorted, we’re not allowed to be seen as “healthy” unless we’re in the “right-sized body” or eating the “right food” – heavy air quotes on all of these things. I think it’s only natural that we would feel the pursuit of thinness and the pursuit of health. This particularly oppressive way that diet culture sells it to us is the key to all these things that we really want and all these deeper things that all human beings deserve – connection, pleasure, love, being able to feed our families, being able to be in the world in a way that feels good to us, having our needs met, having our desires fulfilled. All that stuff feels like it’s contingent on having a certain kind of body.

Dawn Serra: I think one of the things that’s so interesting is slavery, particularly the slavery that really fed the United States specifically, really started around 1620. We’ve got the colonizers coming over from Europe in the 1400 and the 1500s. That’s when some of the “You are what you eat,” and “We want to really distinguish ourselves as the ones who have power and privilege. So we’re going to bring our European diets over. We’re going to separate ourselves from indigenous diets because we don’t want to be like them.” But then it was really about 100 years ago, that you named, that this particular kind of moralizing around food and diet culture really took root with this mix of industrialization and diet culture and capitalism and colonization, all kind of swirling together with white supremacy. And that means it’s not very old. When we think about the history of human beings on this planet – being tens of thousands of years old, if not longer – that it’s really only been about a hundred years that this particular iteration of diet culture that seems immovable, that seems to be normal is rather new for humans. And yet, it’s got such deep roots to these massive systems of oppression. 

Christy Harrison: Yeah. I feel like that naming the connections to the other systems of oppression was really important to me in writing this book. Because I think that when I discovered that and when I started doing that research and seeing how deep those roots go, it just made me so angry. I think it makes everyone angry. Anyone who has a social justice orientation and cares about the world and cares about equality and justice, I think is really upset when they hear about this. Because nobody wants to be enacting racist stereotypes or misogynistic beliefs on themselves or other people in everyday life. And yet, that’s kind of what we’re doing when we’re participating in diet culture without knowing it and without intending harm. We are doing harm to ourselves, and we’re perpetuating a system that harms people. I think it’s so important to pull back the curtain on where this belief system came from. 

I also think it’s really interesting to talk about the history because just shedding light on the fact that it really is so new in the grand scheme of human history and that up until 150 years ago, larger bodies were seen, generally speaking, most of the world over, as a positive thing and as desirable and as something that indicated health and wealth and lovability and all the stuff that we seek. And the shift only happened so recently. That doesn’t change the fact that we are growing up today. That we only can live in the time we live. We only know the culture we know. But I think it helps just give some perspective as to this really is a cultural thing. This really is a cultural moment. It’s not just like the “Truth” – capital T. It’s not just how things are forever and ever.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think, too, one of the things that’s really powerful about really looking at the history and the ways that it’s morphed and changed, it helps to reveal, one, that the ways that diet culture continues to thrive is because it’s this ever changing beast. Right now, we’re seeing a particular iteration of diet culture that’s known as health and wellness. This constant chasing of health and nutrients and being seen as healthy and well and how sinister it is underneath a lot of those claims and quests. 

But also, when we’re talking about these bodies of ours, so much of what you write to in the book points to the ways that diet culture moves us away from autonomy and agency. When we are talking about pleasure, relationships, sex, consent, autonomy and agency are the foundation that we have to build from. So often, we don’t even start from that place. We start from a place of not knowing these bodies, of just trusting these bodies, of not knowing what we want, of not knowing how to choose. And that makes us much easier to control and manipulate. And much easier for us to feel disempowered and to not ask for the things that we want to set boundaries. I mean, it’s all tied together in these really interesting and messy ways.

Christy Harrison: Oh, yes. It’s so interesting. When you really dig into it, it does feel like a giant conspiracy–

Dawn Serra: Yes!

Christy Harrison: To prop up rape culture and patriarchy and white supremacy and all the rest because it keeps us so fixated. I say “us.” I mean, oftentimes, people assigned female at birth, but increasingly people of all genders as well, are experiencing this. That we’re so caught up in the minutiae of our food and our eating. That’s wellness moment that we’re having, I call the wellness diet. It’s diet culture’s new guise as wellness. But really, it’s just another diet. It’s just another face of the same head of the same Hydra. It’s always there. But it keeps us so fixated on food and so at war with our bodies, that we’re not able to show up in the world. We’re not able to consent and really know what we want. We’re not able to take our power and fight back against systems of oppression. We don’t have the mental bandwidth to even think about what we’re interested in, what our causes are, what we want to devote our lives to, and how we want to change the world. So yeah, I think it really just wormed its way into every aspect of your being. 

Conversely, though too, I think one of the hopeful things that I wanted to highlight in the second part of this book– The first part is basically like, get really angry at everything deeply wrong in the world. I don’t know. Am I allowed to swear on this? I think I am. 

Dawn Serra: Oh, yes. 

Christy Harrison: Here’s how it’s also fucked up, basically. How the world is a giant dumpster fire. The second half is like, “And here’s how we can navigate that. Here’s how we can be resilient to that. Here’s how we can change that world and change our own ways of being within it.” I think it’s been really helpful for me, in my own experience of healing my relationship with food and working with clients who are healing their relationships with food, to see that once we are able to make peace with food in our bodies in this very day-to-day way of, “Okay. Now, I’m not constantly counting my macros,” or “I’m not doing this fasting thing that has me obsessed with food for half the day,” or “I’m not doing XYZ diet thing,” that you do have so much more mental space and capacity to figure out what it is you really want. And that intuition really comes very easily, I think, on the heels of doing the work to reconnect with your intuition around food and body stuff. So that–

I’ve seen a lot of people be like, “Oh, wow. My job is really not conducive to self-care. I think I need to make a change,” or “Wow, this relationship I’m in really isn’t satisfying, and I hadn’t looked at that because I was blaming it on my body size. I was thinking that that was the problem.” I think it really does– I mean, that’s also hard work is making those changes. But I think it gives us the capacity to come closer in alignment with who we really are. And to know who that is, too.

Dawn Serra: Yes. I think that’s one of the things that I appreciate very much. You’ve touch on it at several points in the book, of really talking about the ways that diet culture and our relationship with food has a really significant impact on our experience of sex and pleasure inside of our relationships and with our bodies. I think that that’s a connection that a lot of people struggle to make. If I’m not allowing myself to want in one arena, that’s going to impact my ability to want in all arenas. It’s like we know when, “I don’t allow myself to feel certain feelings. I’m cutting myself off from all feelings in a lot of ways” When I open myself up to pleasure, I open myself up to grief. I’m feeling more and being more present. 

And the same is true for our desire. You really talk about that. Well, one, it’s difficult to really feel present and to feel excited when we’re underfed and undernourished because we’re restricting. But just at a more basic level, if I’m afraid of the things that I want when it comes to food, it makes sense that it’s going to be so difficult for me to feel into the things that I want, and then to advocate for that when it comes to something as intimate and high stakes as sex.

Christy Harrison: Right. Food and sex are so connected in a lot of ways in our culture in terms of how we talk about them, the sort of dual dichotomous relationships we have with them, where it’s like guilty pleasure, or naughty, sinful. It’s bad, but we want it. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Christy Harrison: This kind of push pull. So, yeah. I think not being able to open up to our desires for food definitely curtails our desires for sex and exploring all aspects of pleasure really in our lives.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. You told this really tender story about yourself, of a period when you were restricting and in your eating disorder and how that impacted your own sex life and fantasies. I’d love to hear just a little bit more about what was going on for you. Because I’m sure some listeners are going to be able to relate.

Christy Harrison: Yeah, this was so interesting. I’d be curious if other people have had this experience, too, because I’ve never seen it written about in the literature. But I just feel like it has to be common or it has to be one way that this disordered eating manifests for people. So this period for me was really not, I guess, the worst depths of my eating disorder, but I was definitely still very disordered with food, was restricting a lot during the day, bingeing at night, overexercising to try to compensate with this really toxic cycle in my relationship with food, and was dating a guy who was also actually pretty disordered with food as well, but in some ways, was less disordered than I was and was helping me come out of it one little step at a time. 

He and I were in a long distance relationship. So there was a lot of solo sex in there as well. It’s so funny because this had never been a thing for me. I had never had food as a fetish object. I know some people do, and that’s kind of a constant for them. But that had never been anything on my radar. During this period when I was restricting my eating– There’s specific disordered eating that kind of morphs and shape shifts over time. There were specific foods that I was restricting myself of at that particular point in time, mostly around sweets and sugar. I was also paradoxically/understandably becoming really interested in writing about these kinds of foods and doing food adventures, like finding the best cupcakes in New York and the best black and white cookies. Sort of turning it into a project. 

Christy Harrison: I was a journal– You know my first career was as a journalist. I was starting out my journalism career, so I was taking it on as a beat. Food is going to be my beat and doing all this research on different kinds of foods that I also had this very push-pull relationship with. Like, “Oh. I’m so bad for eating this. I need to make up for it in some way,” or whatever. So these sweets, but particularly, these particular cupcakes from a bakery near where I was living at the time, became this fetish object that I would just– They would pop into my head during sex or solo sex. I’ll just be like, “That would be the thing that would bring me over the edge – these cupcakes.” I was like, “What is going on with me?” 

After I was able to recover more and stop restricting as heavily and eventually got into a place of really solid recovery and intuitive eating, I looked back on that and thought, “Wow. What a weird blip.” It was there for a while, and then it went away. I never had any fantasies about food before since, but I was just so obsessed with this particular kind of food and so restricted and deprived of food that it makes a lot of sense that they would turn into this fetish object for just a brief period.

Dawn Serra: It makes total sense to me. So many people have written into the show over the years around these things that they are feeling ashamed of. They feel like they’re not allowed to want or to fantasize about. And it becomes this place of constriction, which leads to shame and guilt, which then leads to thinking about it a lot and obsessing about it a lot, and it becomes compulsive. So often, we talk about allowing ourselves to want the things that we want. Now, we may not be able to act on them. It may not be in our best interest. It may not be a good thing for our relationship. We just might not have the resources. But we’re allowed to fantasize about being spanked, or we’re allowed to enjoy porn, or whatever it is. Allowing ourselves to just say, “Yeah, I want these things. They interest me. They turn me on. And I can have some choice about it,” versus “I’m not going to think about it. I’m not going to think about it. I’m not going to think about it.” Then that’s all you think about. We do that exact same thing with food of, “I’m not going to eat the thing. I’m not going to eat the thing. I’m not going to eat the thing.” All I’m thinking about is the thing that I’m not eating. And that really drives a lot of compulsive behaviors.

Christy Harrison: Totally. It’s so interesting how it crosses over and how, in my experience, it really did fully crossover – the thing that I was like, “No, no. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” Guilty pleasure then invaded my sex life.

Dawn Serra: It’s the cupcake that did it!

Christy Harrison: It’s like, “Sorry, you’re going to have to think about me now.”

Dawn Serra: “I’m going to find a way. Damn it.”

Christy Harrison: “Oh, yeah. I’m in.” But it’s so interesting too, when you think about how our culture treats compulsion around sex or food, where it’s, for the most part, sort of abstinence philosophy and this idea, especially with food of, “These are your binge foods, so you have to stay away from them.” Even if there’s not this– Because I think that is in a certain school of thought – that philosophy. But even if there’s not this idea of stay away from certain foods, it’s like, “Resist the binge. Don’t do it. Find other things to do, so that you’re not bingeing.” Basically these replacement behaviors that you’re trying to do in order to stop yourself from wanting the thing. 

When it comes to food, a lot of that is there’s the psychological piece and there’s the biological piece. And they’re so intertwined, where there’s a natural drive that we have to eat. It perpetuates our species. It keeps us going. It helps us survive. It’s all these good things. And that’s why food gives us pleasure. When we restrict our access to it, we cut ourselves off from it, at a physical level, we are starving. Our bodies are pumping out all these hormones to try to get us to eat because they don’t want us to starve. At a psychological level, it’s this forbidden fruit thing, or it looks like, “Don’t think about a white bear,” or whatever. Then that’s all you can think about.

Dawn Serra: Yes.

Christy Harrison: Like polar bear right in my head right now. I think it’s similar with sex in a lot of ways, too. Like you said, sometimes there are things that we may want that are not feasible or in our best interest or whatever, which is totally fine, and having it live in our fantasy life is totally an option. But when we don’t let ourselves want it, or let ourselves embrace it as part of our fantasy life or as part of our actual life, if we want to go down that road, then we are just thinking about it again and again and again. It can become compulsive and all these ways that are hurtful to us. But the solution is not, “Stop having sex. Don’t want sex.” Sex is that same– We have those same urges for sex, most of us. I mean, definitely there are some folks who don’t. But I think a lot of us have natural urges for sex that are very human and very understandable.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I really appreciate so much of the work you do around intuitive eating is about finding joy and satisfaction. You talk about the restriction pendulum in your book, which a lot of us know for many different reasons, and at different levels, of like, “I’m not going to eat sugar. I’m not going to eat gluten. I’m only going to eat vegan. I’m only going to eat a full meal at night because I’m doing smoothies the rest of the day.” Then because we’re literally starving ourselves and our bodies are trying to survive and because we’ve been obsessing, we swing the other way, and then do all the things.

I think that can happen often too, when it comes to other forms of pleasure. When we’re talking about sex like, “I’m not going to do the thing,” “I’m not going to masturbate,” “I’m not going to watch the porn.” Then it becomes too much, and then we find ourselves spending four hours going down the porn rabbit hole of this hedonistic response. When we have the maximum amount of choice and permission, we really can just make decisions based on, “What do we want?” and “How do we want our day to go?” and “What serves the kinds of relationships that I want to cultivate in my life?” “Maybe I want to masturbate, but my kids got a soccer game. So, okay. Well, I can walk the thing, and that’s not going to happen right now.” It doesn’t feel like this intense denial, but instead, “How do I find ways to build in pleasure, that increased satisfaction and joy and connection and give me more choice?” 

Christy Harrison: Right. Yeah. It’s so interesting how parallel those things are. Because it really– I mean, people often say, “Intuitive eating means you can just eat whatever you want. How can you literally eat whatever you want? I would just die. My health would suffer.” Oftentimes, it’s like, “I would gain so much weight,” or whatever. The thing is that we really can trust our bodies. We really can trust ourselves to make those choices about what we want and to eat for pleasure and satisfaction and to know that it’s not going to harm our health. That actually pleasure and satisfaction are positive, beneficial things to our health and well-being. Also, having pleasure and satisfaction in our lives helps us not feel compulsive, not feel out of control. 

I think a lot of people who think, “If I just ate whatever I want, I would eat nothing but cake all day,” – or whatever – are thinking of it from the place where they feel restricted and deprived and compulsive because of that. So, of course, they’re going to go for all the cake because they’ve been restricted. It’s like pulling a pendulum over to one side. Just the restriction pendulum analogy, you can’t just let go of a pendulum that has been pulled over to one side and have it stopped peacefully in the middle. It’s just physically impossible.

Dawn Serra: That is not how physics works.

Christy Harrison: Nope. Sorry. It has to swing to the other side. I think there’s an equal and opposite reaction somewhere. Maybe it’s something like that. There’s maybe some drag from the air. I don’t know. But it’s going to swing over to the other side. It’s going to feel, with food, when you’ve been restricted and you swing to the other side, you’re going to feel kind of out of control. It’s going to feel like a bit of a free fall. Diet culture comes in and wants to tell us, “Well, see. You can’t control yourself. You do get out of control when you stop restricting. So you need me. You need my rules to follow in order to keep you in check.” That’s just missing the bigger picture, which is diet culture cause the restriction, and diet culture cause that pendulum swing because you can’t stay over on the side of restriction forever. 

Most bodies will fight it tooth and nail by bingeing or by making– Even if you’re staying on the same restrictive diet, reverting back to the weight that you started at or gaining more weight to protect yourself because your body wants you to survive. Then that tiny percentage of people who can stay in a restrictive state are people with anorexia, no matter what size body they’re in. Anorexia can happen for all sizes of bodies, and that has its own whole set of horrible consequences for your well-being. 

Christy Harrison: Really, no matter how you slice it, you can’t stay in that restrictive state forever without it having some negative repercussions. Even as much as death, really. Eating disorders and restrictive eating are the most deadly forms of mental illness. The body naturally wants to swing you over to that side of abundance. But if you look at it in the bigger picture and see, “Okay. This is the pattern. I know this is going to happen,” and you can give some space and grace for the feeling of swinging over to that side of abundance, knowing that eventually, will settle in a place of peace. That you’re not going to keep swinging forever. And that when you do, those foods that you had restricted yourself of and deprive yourself of are just going to be one among many foods that give you pleasure and joy, and not have this outsize place in your mind, or this pull on you. 

I mean, I know for myself when I was in this place – this disordered place – the cupcakes were calling to me. Even in sex they were calling to me. Or if I had cookies leftover from a party in the pantry, I could not think about anything else and wouldn’t stop until I had finished the bag of cookies.

Dawn Serra: Yup.

Christy Harrison: That happened with chips, that happened with cereal. They’re all these different foods that I thought I just could not control myself around. Now, I have those foods in the pantry all the time. There’s foods that I eat– I love those foods and I eat them – some of them – every day. But I’m not eating in the compulsive way that I used to. So they’ve just taken their place in the repertoire of foods that I eat. I also eat lots of other foods that I enjoy. 

And all the other foods that I enjoy, it’s because I’m also letting myself have pleasure in the other moments of eating, too. It’s not like these austere– Everything is austere up until the cookies. It’s like, “No, everything has pleasure, has its own unique flavors and textures and brings me joy in some way.” I’m not eating foods I don’t like, if I can help it. Obviously, there’s some privilege in that, too. Also, there’s convenience and time. Sometimes I’m stuck with a weird sandwich from a vending machine that I don’t like or whatever. But most of the time, I’m enjoying and taking pleasure in food when I can to the extent that it’s available to me. 

Christy Harrison: So pleasure is available always in these other ways, which I feel like is kind of what you were saying about this idea of, “I’m not going to masturbate. I’m not going to masturbate,” or “I’m not going to watch porn. I’m not going to watch porn,” and then it builds up so much that it’s that’s all you can do, that’s all you think about, versus if you have access to that at other times and you know it’s not going to be taken away from you. You know that it’s always going to be there. Like, “Okay. Well, I want to masturbate now, but I got to take my kid to a soccer game. So I’ll do it later once they’re in bed.” Easy.

Dawn Serra: Yes. Yeah. I think a big part of that, too, is knowing we’re not going to be shamed for the wanting. And that’s true of food. It’s like, “I can start doing some of this healing work around food for myself, but I’m deeply impacted by the people around me. If the people around me are going to judge me or shame me or make comments about the food choices I’m making, of course, that’s going to drive me back into hiding and secrets and trying to sneak things because I don’t want that kind of experience.” It doesn’t feel good. And it’s the same with sex. If my partner shames me every time I masturbate or watch porn, it’s going to make it feel like I don’t have the support that I need to be able to just be in the wanting.

Christy Harrison: Yeah. Then it’s going to keep you on that pendulum. It’s keeping you on that restriction pendulum because someone, even if it’s not you, yourself, is sort of putting the kibosh on your wants.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. It makes me think… There’s two quotes from the book. One is from Dana Sturteivant, who is from Be Nourished. We love Dana. She said, “It’s not possible to heal our relationship with food and body while trying to control the size and shape of our body.” I think that’s really confronting for people. Because there’s so many of us who think, “Maybe I’ve given up diets, but I’m still trying to fit in a certain size,” or “I’m still trying to feel ready for beach weather,” whatever the languages that we use to try and control our bodies. 

Then you have this other quote that just hit me so deeply because I had never seen it really phrase this way. I think it speaks so beautifully to this, too. Because so much of the reason that we’re afraid to move in the direction of our pleasure is because we think it’s going to make us unhealthy, or prove we’re out of control, or that we have no willpower – whatever it is. The quote was, “Pleasure and nutrition are highly correlated. The people who let themselves eat whatever they want, take pleasure in food and care less about nutrition, tend to have improved nutrient intake and consume a greater variety of foods, which is a positive nutritional indicator than dieters.” That’s like the antithesis of the story we get from all the magazines and all the health websites and all the bloggers and influencers, of like, if we’re just allowed to take pleasure and to be present and not worry about all the numbers and the amounts and the quantities and the servings, we actually end up making choices that really truly nourish us and serve our bodies. 

Christy Harrison: I know. Isn’t that wild? It’s mind blowing when you think about it. That everything our culture is telling us, everything the medical community is telling us and the media -the health media and wellness media – is telling us is so antithetical to what actually brings us true well-being.

Dawn Serra: Ahh! Wasn’t that so amazing? Oh, it’s so hard for me to wait a week for Part Two to drop. But in the meantime, sign up for the Body Trust Summit. It’s totally free. Again, the link is in the show notes. It’s way more conversations like this from a rich variety of voices. Head to Patreon. You can hear this bonus chat with Christy and I. There’s 20 minutes waiting for your ears – patreon.com/sgrpodcast. Then tune in next Sunday for more about desirability, feeling out of control around food, and doing repair work with our bodies. Until next week. Bye!

A huge thanks to The Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured in this week’s intro and outro. Find them a vocalfew.com. Head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and get awesome weekly bonuses.

As you look towards the next week, I wonder, what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?