Body image scientist and researcher Charlotte Markey, PhD joins us to discuss the many factors that impact body image and how parents can help their kids develop a positive sense of self.

Christy and Charlotte both share examples from their own parenting, including how to handle tricky conversations about body size, gender, and more. They also unpack the difference between body positivity and body neutrality—and why the popular definitions of those terms are different from their use in research.

Behind the paywall, Charlotte explains how she thinks about makeup for girls, adaptive vs maladaptive grooming routines, ways to tell if a kid is struggling with body dysmorphia, and a six-step process for helping young people develop media literacy.

This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

Charlotte Markey, Ph.D., is a body image scientist and researcher, having studied all things body image and eating behaviors for nearly 30 years! She is passionate about understanding what makes us feel good about our bodies and helping people to develop a healthy body image and relationship with food. Charlotte is a psychology professor at Rutgers University and has published over 100 scholarly articles and chapters about health issues.

Dr. Markey also an author, having most recently published The Body Image Book series (The Body Image Book for Girls in 2020; The Body Image Book for Boys in 2022, Adultish: The Body Image Book for Life in 2024, The 2nd edition of The Body Image Book for Girls will publish in 2026, The Body Image Book for Women will be published in 2027). She also recently co-edited the 3-volume Encyclopedia of Mental Health (2023). She writes regularly for news outlets such as Psychology Today and is often interviewed for TV, news articles, and podcasts.

More from Christy:

Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod.

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers!

New York Times bestselling author and former CNN political analyst Kirsten Powers joins us to discuss her history of chronic fatigue and her experience with dubious diagnoses and wild wellness treatments.

She also shares what she discovered about the true causes of her issues, how disordered eating helped mask and exacerbate her symptoms, how she’s rethought her relationship with work in general (and her own past work in particular), her viral post “The way we live in the United States is not normal,” her decision to move to Italy, and more.

This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

Kirsten Powers is a New York Times bestselling author and writes the bestselling Substack newsletter Changing the Channel. Kirsten served as a CNN senior political analyst for seven years, providing on-air analysis for major political and cultural events. The Columbia Journalism Review called her "an outspoken liberal journalist" in a sea of opposition at Fox News, where she previously served as a political analyst. She was a columnist for USA Today for more than a decade and, before that, for the Daily Beast and the New York Post.

More from Christy:

Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod.

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers!

Pharmacist and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor Sarah-Jane Garcia joins us to discuss how smart people get caught up in wellness culture.

She shares her path from the realities of being a pharmacist experimenting with elimination diets to how getting certified in integrative medicine exacerbated her orthorexia to why becoming a parent finally opened her eyes to the fear-mongering happening in wellness communities.

Behind the paywall, Christy and Sarah-Jane discuss what it actually took for Sarah-Jane to break free from diet culture, as well as how she returned to conventional medicine through Intuitive Eating.

This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

Sarah-Jane Garcia is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor with personal experience navigating binge eating, restriction, and obsessive clean eating. Discovering Intuitive Eating freed her from intense struggle with food—and inspired her to become a counselor, so she could help other women do the same.

Sarah-Jane offers 1:1 coaching as well as a 12-week group program focused on the Principles of Intuitive Eating. She’s also a Specialty Pharmacist, and her approach blends science, psychology, and lived experience to guide you toward a healthier, more peaceful relationship with food.

More from Christy:

Check out Christy’s three books, Anti-Diet, The Wellness Trap, and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook for a deeper dive into the topics covered on the pod.

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and make peace with food, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

For more critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, check out Christy’s Rethinking Wellness podcast! You can also sign up to get it in your inbox every week at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Ask a question about diet and wellness culture, disordered-eating recovery, and the anti-diet approach for a chance to have it answered on Rethinking Wellness. You can also subscribe to the Food Psych Weekly newsletter to check out previous answers!