Connect
In this episode, we dig into two topics that can provoke feelings of shame: sex and food. Listen to our latest Read. Talk. Grow. episode: “Examining diet culture, shame and desire” wherever you get your podcasts.
Episode summary
In Chana Porter’s speculative, fictional world in her book THE THICK AND THE LEAN, the roles of sex and food are flipped — eating, not sex, is the cultural taboo. Mayo Clinic expert Dr. Lesley Williams joins us as we discuss disordered eating and the dynamics of restraint, pleasure, shame and desire.
In this episode, Dr. Millstine and her guests discussed:
- The similarities between food and sex. Chana’s book creates a world where sex is not at all taboo or secretive but eating and enjoying food is. While her world is dystopic, it probably won’t feel entirely unfamiliar. Chana and Dr. Williams explore the complex connections between shame and food.
- Disordered eating in a spectrum. We all live in diet culture; it’s the water we swim in every day. Many people struggle with some degree of disordered eating. Dr. Williams helps us understand the spectrum that includes disordered eating and eating disorders.
- Being one juice cleanse away from perfection. Chana talks about the cultural obsession with perfecting our bodies (and our whole selves) with just one more cleanse, juice, tonic, you-name-it — and how this can become an unhealthy obsession.
More resources:
- What is disordered eating and when does it become an eating disorder?
- How do I spot disordered eating? All about adolescent eating disorders
- Taking shame out of the equation: Addressing binge eating disorder
Questions for discussion:
- What has influenced your attitudes toward food and your body throughout your life?
Share your thoughts, questions and opinions below!
Like
Helpful
Hug
Connect
Everything we do, what we eat, where we go, who we love. how we love, the medications we take.
Who gets care and who doesn’t.
Where we live even where we’re buried.
Everything is controlled by one thing capitalism, and the profit motive.
Try to find one thing in your life that is not influenced by capitalism and the profit motive, and you’ll understand how in insidious the beast has become.
The scorpion sits, on the back of the frog.
The scorpion has forgotten, but the frog can adapt.
The scorpion cannot we are the frogs, the scorpion is capitalism it is time we sting back.
Enough already it’s time for us to Thrive.
We are the frogs that sting back, and we will force capitalism to join in our quest to thrive and be subsumed by abundance.
It is going to happen. It’s just a question of how hard those at the top going fight back.
I know we are that frog.
You will live in peace in good health soon.
Thank you.
dfb -
If you've read The Thick and the Lean, you will also see this theme (though we didn't focus on it in our podcast episode)
Dr. Denise Millstine