From Diet Culture to Self-Acceptance: Real Food Stories on Embracing Body Positivity in Midlife Women

What if the secret to true body positivity lies not in the number on the scale, but in how we nourish our bodies and embrace ourselves as we are? Join host Heather Carey in this thought-provoking episode of Real Food Stories, where she delves into the cultural obsession with thinness, particularly in light of the recent rise of GLP-1 medications that promise effortless weight loss. As a culinary nutritionist, Heather shares her insights on the alarming trend of extreme thinness among celebrities and the societal pressures that fuel this ideal, reminding us that the narrative of body positivity is more vital than ever.

Throughout this episode, Heather candidly reveals her personal food journey, discussing her own struggles with body image and the impact of familial expectations. She emphasizes the importance of developing a healthy relationship with food and challenges the belief that thinness equals worth. Instead of chasing diet fads and quick fixes, Heather encourages listeners—especially women in midlife—to embrace their bodies and prioritize health and well-being over societal standards of beauty.

As we explore the intersection of food and culture, Heather provides practical nutrition advice and healthy eating tips that resonate with women navigating the complexities of midlife and menopause. She highlights the significance of mindful eating practices and sustainable eating habits, inviting listeners to reflect on their own food beliefs and traditions. Whether you’re curious about the Mediterranean diet insights or seeking to overcome diet myths, this episode is packed with empowering discussions that inspire self-acceptance and joy in eating.

With the backdrop of the seven pillars of abundance, Heather shares her expertise on nutrition for perimenopause and the importance of nourishing our bodies through every stage of life. Tune in for a transformative conversation that not only addresses the myths surrounding weight loss and body image but also celebrates the unique journeys of women as they empower themselves through food.

Join us on this enlightening episode of Real Food Stories, where we redefine beauty, embrace midlife body positivity, and cultivate a healthier relationship with food. Let’s embark on this journey together, focusing on empowerment, nourishment, and the joy of real food. </div>

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Real Food Stories podcast. I have been thinking so much lately about our cultural obsession with being skinny. It feels like something is shifting in the universe again, and I suspect a big part of that shift has to do with the explosion of GLP-1 medications. Now, not that long ago, there was so much conversation happening around body positivity and body acceptance. I mean, that was not that long ago that I was having actually people on the podcast interviewing them about body positivity. And it felt like we were at least beginning to question the idea that extreme thinness should be the ultimate goal. But recently, that momentum just seems to have faded into the background. I don’t see anything about body positivity out on the internet and I’m always sort of trolling and looking around because I’m looking for trends of what’s going on in our culture with women, with our nutrition, our food, our body image. Recently, that momentum seems to just have faded into the background. And the message now feels different. The cultural narrative seems to be that if you are overweight, there is really no excuse anymore. All you have to do is inject yourself once a week and the weight will just come off. It’s presented as simple and really almost effortless because you really do have to do it without thought. I mean, it does take away all of the guesswork about what to eat, how much to eat, how many calories, because a GLP-1 will just cut your hunger. And we know now, right, I have been telling this for years that… The way to lose weight is really calories in, calories out. We want to cut our calories and not be hungry in the process. And that is what a GLP-1 does at its basic level. But not everyone wants to lose weight with a medication. Some people just simply can’t take them. I mean, some people have massive side effects or they’re just not a candidate for one of these medications. And even for the people who do choose that route, there are bigger questions that rarely get discussed. A medication might change the number on the scale, but it doesn’t necessarily teach you how to eat well, how to nourish your body, or how to develop a sustainable relationship with food over the long run. These medications take the guesswork out of what to do to lose weight. And if weight loss only is your goal rather than getting healthy and learning to eat right, then a JLP1 is for you. Now, I’m not judging anybody for being on one of these medications. I’m really not. I am just making my observations and just saying that it takes the guesswork out of how to eat well. And when we are women in midlife, any age, we still have to know how to eat our best for our health. Food matters. I’m just going to say that for the last time. Also, I want to add that the reality is that many people who take these medications have to stay on them indefinitely in order to maintain the weight loss. I know more people who have taken them, lost weight, tried to go off of them, and the weight comes back because you are hungry again, right? Your hunger comes back to you, and you are not prepared for how to handle that hunger because you’ve been relying on a medication. Again, no judgment. Just saying that once you’re fully relying on this medication, you have to stay on it probably for the rest of your life. And if that’s OK with you, then that’s fine. But culturally, that part of the conversation often gets lost. Now, instead, there’s this growing sense that fitness has suddenly become super easy, that the solution is available to anyone who wants it badly enough. And as that narrative has grown louder out on… social media and on the internet, I’ve also noticed something else. And what I’ve noticed is that more and more celebrities are looking un- unbearably extremely thin, sometimes almost unrecognizable. I don’t know if you’ve seen Kelly Osbourne lately, Ariana Grande, Demi Moore. There’s so many of them that I honestly had to stop because I did not recognize them for the person that they were. And it’s not just thinness. It’s a particular kind of thinness that can almost feel unsettling when you look at it for more than a moment. Those faces that look just totally hollowed out, bodies that look really fragile, a version of thin that makes you pause and wonder what exactly you’re looking at. It’s hard to figure out why that look has become so desirable again. I mean, back in the 90s, that illusion that extreme thinness was the way to be your happiest. Why would someone want to appear almost unrecognizable? It’s really a question I heaven. just grappling with lately. And it brings me to something that happened to me the other day. So the other day I was on, where was I? On the internet. I was looking through something on social media and I came across a photo of Demi Moore that completely stopped me in my tracks. You might’ve seen it if you’re out on social media as well. She was debuting a new look at the Milan Fashion Week. It was a very short haircut. Demi Moore has always had extremely long hair. So just to see her wearing a very short bob was kind of startling, but not in a bad way. She was very sculpted and she was extremely thin. Bone, skin and bone thin. I also saw her at some movie awards ceremony and some of those photos and thought the same exact thing, that she just looks emaciated. out. I’m certainly used to celebrity plastic surgery and bodies that stretch the limits of what most humans actually look like. I mean, that’s almost their full time job, right, is to just look like otherworldly. And in a way, that’s almost part of what they’re supposed to do, right? They’re just movie stars and they are not like us. They’re supposed to look different from the rest of us, I guess. I’m going to admit, though, that like something surprised me when I first saw her at the. fashion show. But at first, I’m like, wow, she looks incredible. I mean, she looks like not herself. I mean, she looked like an AI version of herself. She didn’t look like a human being. She looked like someone had taken 20 years off of her life and polished up every single edge of her. I mean, I couldn’t stop staring at the photo. But as I kept looking at it, something else started happening in my mind. I felt, I found myself silently criticizing Her body. And when you look at more recent photos of her, like I said, the awards ceremony and just other photos, she does look extremely thin. I mean, the kind of thin that makes you just pause for a moment. And like I said before, she’s definitely not the only one. And I mentioned earlier, there’s several other celebrities like Kelly Osbourne. She looks not like herself at all. Also like an AI version of herself. And that reaction just made me curious about myself. about like, why was I judging? Why do I care? I mean, I immediately went into, oh, she’s so thin. Oh, she’s too thin. There must be something wrong with her. I mean, I just was sort of ruminating on it. Why did I care? Why do I care? And when I started thinking about it, I realized that the part of the answer probably has to do with how I grew up. I really, I talked about this. I journaled about it because I’m like, why do I care so much what other people are doing with their bodies? I mean, part of me, I am a nutritionist. I do care about other women and seeing them thin. But it was really like I gave this a lot of thought. And I know for one, I mean, eating disorders run riot in my family. And I’ve seen firsthand the powerful feeling of control that a very thin body can have for some people. I have witnessed this firsthand, not with myself, but with others in my family. I mean, that was never my story. Like I said, I was always the one. who had like the few pounds to lose. I’ve talked about this a lot on this podcast and in my blogs about just my growing up and how the criticism I would get, you know, in the comments from other adults in my family about weight, the kind of comments that many women remember hearing, you know, that you don’t ever let go. Those, you know, you just might want to lose a couple pounds when I was like a young teenager. Now over the years, I’ve worked really, really hard to make peace with my body. I have come to accept that I’m never going to look like a supermodel. And honestly, I don’t want to. I’ve worked very hard at this. It’s really what I do as part of my career is to help women like myself make peace with their bodies. I like the way I am. I’m not overweight. I am not too skinny. I like it exactly where I am. And my body, I think, feels very comfortable here, too. I like every stretch mark from my twin pregnancies. I mean, they all tell a story. Every scar from a surgery I’ve had tells a story. All the changes that come with living in a a body for decades are part of the picture, and I’m not ashamed of any of it. So when I found myself reacting so strongly to that photo of Demi Moore, I had to ask myself something kind of uncomfortable. Why was I so horrified by what I was seeing? Was there a tiny piece of jealousy in there somewhere? Am I wishing as a woman who is going through midlife and seeing the unbearable pressure. of social media and thinness. Did I have a little bit of envy? I really had to think about this a lot because here’s the truth. Even in the age of body positivity and body acceptance, we are still deeply programmed to believe that skinny is better. Not healthier, but better. We just get a lot out of being thin. Thin means disciplined. Thin means desirable. Thin means you’re doing something. thing right. And when we women who are going through so many changes with our bodies and feeling not as we did in our youth, this is the one thing I think that we can grab onto and control. Now, I grew up in the 80s and 90s, like many of you. And if you’re around my age, you probably remember, like I said before, that era of super thinness. super skinny supermodels at Heroin Chic. Everything was low fat or nonfat. And there was one line I remember that I’ll never forget that just got burned into the brain of me. And I probably think like every generation of women around then. And it is nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. I can still hear that sentence as if skinny is just. the main goal of our lives. And the thing about messages like that is that they don’t just disappear because we intellectually reject them later in life. They get planted somewhere deep inside our nervous system. They sit there quietly, like a bug in your brain. So when we see extreme thinness, all sorts of old conditioning can fire off at once. Messages about discipline and worth our fear about aging in a culture that… glorifies youth. Sadness that even powerful, successful women may feel pressure to maintain a certain look. I don’t know if any of you have seen Pamela Anderson lately. She’s the opposite of what Demi Moore was looking like. She has, I guess, shunned wearing any makeup or doing her face. And it’s aged her. I mean, it definitely, you know, she was the dream of so many men when I was growing up and she looks just like an average, normal woman. I have to believe that she is getting so much criticism for it because she doesn’t go along with that movie star look anymore. And she has shunned that pressure. And she just wants to be herself and stop worrying about it. There’s very few women, I think, who talk like that. And sometimes there’s also that uncomfortable mirror moment, you know, where you wonder, should I be doing more? Or should I be doing like Pam Anderson? Should I just say, screw it? I’m going to stop wearing makeup and I’m just going to grow old, which is such a radical thing to do now. Or should I be doing more? And that’s the fear that drives us. So when you add a GLP-1 medication into that environment, it creates a powerful new dynamic, right? Now you’re in control. Skinny Ideal is no longer just aspirational. It suddenly feels attainable. And when something feels attainable, intensifies. If the cultural narrative says that thinness is now easily achievable, I mean, what? You know, when I was growing up, it just meant when you turn 50s and 60s, no, you’re turning into an old woman. You’re gaining weight. I mean, I saw plenty of people in my family just sort of, that’s what just happened, right? You just turned old. But now we have something that we can do, right, to back up our youth. if it’s achievable now, that anyone who remains in a larger body may start to feel like they’ve somehow failed to take advantage of the solution because the solution feels so easy. Just inject yourself once a week. And that’s… the quiet message that can start to creep in. And that message can be incredibly powerful, especially for women in midlife who are already navigating hormonal changes, 15 body composition, and a culture that places enormous value on youth and appearance. And social media, of course, only amplifies this 1000 fold. I mean, all you have to do, I don’t know what it is with like the gram and stuff. All you have to do is like think a thought in your head. And then suddenly… You’re getting ads and messages on Instagram about it. And I’m telling you, I’m going to record this podcast and then I’ll go on Instagram later and just see a whole bunch of midlife women who are just looking like they’re 20 years old. I mean, you can scroll for five minutes and see that endless like what I eat in a day video featuring women who appear to be surviving on a few hundred calories. You can see influencers selling microdose GLP-1s. Please don’t do that, By the way, please go to see a doctor if you are. going to go and start one of these medications, do not buy something from a wellness influencer on the internet. They’ve got no medical oversight whatsoever. So I just have to say that, side note. And there’s this constant suggestion that if you still carry weight on your body, you simply haven’t figured out the right system yet. Which then brings us back to the bigger question. If midlife is supposed to be the most empowering stage of our lives, right, We’ve heard that message too. Why does so much of the conversation still revolve around shrinking ourselves? Why does empowerment so often become packaged with a product, like a supplement or a protocol or a drug or a program, something that promises to fix your body that you’re supposed to be embracing? When I thought about that photo of Demi Moore again later, I realized something. What unsettled me wasn’t Demi Moore herself. Because I like her. I like her acting. She seems like a nice person. She can do whatever she wants with her body, right? We all can. What unsettled me was the reminder that thinness still holds enormous power over us, even now, even after decades of conversation about body acceptance and freedom from diet culture. I like to think I’ve made peace with my body, and most days I truly have. But every once in a while, something like a photo reminds me that those old voices are still there. They’re quieter now, but they have not completely disappeared. And maybe that’s really actually the real work for us in midlife as midlife women. Maybe it’s not about chasing youth or shrinking ourselves smaller. Maybe it’s about noticing those voices when they show up and deciding again and again not to let them run the show. Because a life well-lived isn’t measured in pounds lost. It’s measured in how fully we inhabit the body we have right now. And that, at least for me, feels much more interesting than just being skinny. Now, I was so intrigued with this topic that I actually wrote about it all on Substack. I wrote a whole article about it. I wanted to just mention too that I am on Substack now and I’m really enjoying it because I love writing and I miss it. I haven’t written a lot in a long time because the podcast took over and just other things, you know, happened and I thought maybe blogging was a little dead, but Substack has been really great. So I’ll post that in the link in the show notes too, and you can read a little bit more about that and then even leave me a comment. I would love that. And that’s where I’m at right now. I’m curious to know what you think about this topic of being skinny and thinness and how you feel about it. So I’d love to see you over on Substack so you can comment on it. And we’ll continue this conversation. This conversation is one that will not go away, I promise. Okay, everyone, have a great day. See you next week. And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get the word out on real eating, our real bodies, and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.