Anna Sweeney, MS, RD, LDN, CEDRD-S is a Certified Eating Disorder Registered Dietitian and Supervisor, Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, and owner of Whole Life Nutrition Counseling, a weight inclusive nutrition therapy practice dedicated to the thoughtful treatment of eating disorders, disordered eating, and body image concerns. She practices nutrition care from a Health at Every Size, social justice forward lens and is dedicated to empowering her clients to notice and refute the influence of diet culture in their lives. Anna is a full-time disabled person living with MS and one of my absolute favourite people to follow and learn from on social media.

In this episode, Anna talks about some of the impact diet culture has had on her whilst living with MS, including some of the nonsense that goes around such as the Wahls protocols that are often sold as a supposed cure. She also talks about her work with eating disorders and why we urgently need to stop attributing them to a certain body size.

Anna can be found on social media @dietitiananna and online at wholeliferd.com.
-

My Sunday Times Bestselling debut book, Food Isn't Medicine: Challenge Nutribollocks & Escape The Diet Trap, is now available to order online (Amazon, Book Depository, and elsewhere). Do come and join me on social media @drjoshuawolrich.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave a review!

In this episode, I get to have a conversation with the wonderful Zoe Pearce, a 28-year-old mother of two from the north of England who was diagnosed with Lipoedema at the age of 24, although it was something she recognises as having had since her teenage years. For the last few years, she’s been trying to do as much as possible to spread awareness about the chronic condition, whilst at the same time learning to accept her body. In this episode, we talk about what Lipoedema actually is and how it affects her, and why it’s a condition that so many people (including medical professionals) treat as something that isn't real.

Zoe can be found on social media @thickthighs.positivevibes. If you want to learn more about Lipoedema please check out the charities Lipoedema UK and Talk Lipoedema if you're from the UK, or the Lipedema Foundation if you're based in the US.

-

My Sunday Times Bestselling debut book, Food Isn't Medicine: Challenge Nutribollocks & Escape The Diet Trap, is now available to order online (Amazon, Book Depository, and elsewhere). Do come and join me on social media @drjoshuawolrich.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave a review!

In this episode, I get to have a conversation with the fantastic Sarah Nicole Landry who is a body confidence advocate, speaker, writer, model, weekly podcast host, and mother to 4 kids (the youngest of which is only a few months old). We talk about the hashtag #PassTheMic, and why it's so crucial not just to 'sit down and shut up' on topics such as body image, but to pass the mic to content creators with less privilege than ourselves.

We then go on to talk about a range of other things, from ice baths to detoxing... but the most crucial coming right at the end when we set the world to rights about which is better: cupcakes or cake.

Sarah can be found both on social media @thebirdspapaya and also hosting The Papaya Podcast.

-

My debut book, Food Isn't Medicine: Challenge Nutribollocks & Escape The Diet Trap, is now available for pre-order online (Amazon, Book Depository, and elsewhere). Do come and join me on social media @drjoshuawolrich.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave a review!

In this episode, I get to talk with the brilliant Stephanie Yeboah. She is an author, journalist, fat acceptance advocate, and content creator who is passionate about fat liberation and centering plus size people of colour in discussions around body positivity.

The body positivity movement is one commonly misrepresented online, especially on social media. Steph starts by describing how it was created and then explains why the body positivity movement no longer represents those it was created for (including herself). We then talk about why the medicalisation of body size has such potential for harm, and touch on some of the oft-ignored nuance when it comes to the association seen between BMI and COVID mortality.

Steph can be found on social media @stephanieyeboah and her website. For more, do check out her book 'Fattily Ever After'.

-

My debut book, Food Isn't Medicine: Challenge Nutribollocks & Escape The Diet Trap, is now available for pre-order online (Amazon, Book Depository, and elsewhere). Do come and join me on social media @drjoshuawolrich.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave a review!

Teddy Okechukwu is a final-year medical student in the UK who creates content online in relation to her studies and mental health. When I first came across her a couple of years ago she was one of the very few UK medical students actually using social media identifiably. She was thrust into the public eye a couple of months ago after winning a massive jackpot on Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel (feel free to click the link if you want to know how much!), but that’s more just some fun trivia for you rather than relevant to this episode 😉.

When I was at medical school I had absolutely zero appreciation as to what weight stigma was. and even less understanding of just how complex the relationship between weight and health was. The weight-centric teaching I received made it seem incredibly black and white, and I wanted to speak to someone about whether much has changed in the last decade, especially in the context of the increased prominence of these conversations online recently.

Teddy can be found on social media @teddybearmedic.

-

My debut book, Food Isn't Medicine: Challenge Nutribollocks & Escape The Diet Trap, is now available for pre-order online (Amazon, Book Depository, and elsewhere). Do come and join me on social media @drjoshuawolrich.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave a review!

In this episode, I get to have a conversation with the fantastic Pixie Turner, who is a registered nutritionist, trainee psychotherapist, science communicator and author of several brilliant nutrition books. This dual training gives her incredible insight into such topics as emotional eating. A quick google search might convince you that it's the worst thing in the world, but she explains why it's not only completely normal but also pretty amazing! Like any emotional coping mechanism, it has the potential to become maladaptive; Pixie gives some general, practical advice in this situation as well.

In the vein of 'Willing To Be Wrong', she also discusses her wellness wanker period (when she used to juice cleanse and believe that dairy leeched calcium from your bones) and what prompted her to escape the dangerous community she found herself in.

Pixie can be found both on social media @pixienutrition and co-hosting the podcast, In Bad Taste.

-

My debut book, Food Isn't Medicine: Challenge Nutribollocks & Escape The Diet Trap, is now available for pre-order online (Amazon, Book Depository, and elsewhere). Do come and join me on social media @drjoshuawolrich.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave a review!

TW: weight stigma

In this episode, I get to have a conversation with Amanda Lee, who is an actress, singer and photographer who went viral last month after she posted an incredibly emotional video online about her experience of medical weight stigma. After telling her doctor that she hadn't been able to eat because of how much pain she'd been experiencing, he turned to her and said, "maybe that's not such a bad thing". She has since been able to find a doctor who's been investigating her symptoms properly and found them to be a result of colon cancer. This was an unknown diagnosis at the time of recording.

I want to thank Amanda for being so generous with her time and talking to me at what was 6am for her (!). Please do send her messages of support on social media (@mandapaints) over the coming weeks as she prepares to (in her words) kick the ass out of her ass cancer!

p.s. private healthcare is ridiculously expensive, do help her out if you can: https://www.gofundme.com/f/rhktx-help-amanda-kick-cancers-ass

-

My debut book, Food Isn't Medicine: Challenge Nutribollocks & Escape The Diet Trap, is now available for pre-order online (Amazon, Book Depository, and elsewhere). Do come and join me on social media @drjoshuawolrich.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave a review!

TW: weight stigma

In this episode, I get to talk with the incredible Callie Thorpe, who is a speaker, writer and model who most recently featured on the cover of the February 2021 issue of Cosmopolitan. You may have seen one of the many stigmatising news articles, television segments and concern trolling social media posts made about why the cover was supposedly 'promoting ob*sity' (spoiler alert: that's not a thing), but did you notice that almost none of the discussions actually involved any of the individuals who were featured in the article? Better still, did you notice that most of the people giving the discriminatory 'hot takes' hadn't actually read the article but just seen the cover picture? Funny that eh?

I want to thank Callie for being so candid with what was a difficult and emotional topic to cover. Please do look her up on social media (@calliethorpe) - positive messages of support and encouragement mean more than you might think.

-

My debut book, Food Isn't Medicine: Challenge Nutribollocks & Escape The Diet Trap, is now available for pre-order online (Amazon, Book Depository and elsewhere). Do come and join me on social media @drjoshuawolrich.