I really enjoyed this chat with today's guest Melissa Toler. Melissa also used to work in the fitness industry and I'd been enjoying her posts on Instagram about challenging the way we think about bodies. That was actually her big truth, how our culture values and devalues bodies.
If you have any history with body image issues or disordered eating, please know before listening we explore a lot of topics in this interview that could be triggering.
We discussed all the things we need to unlearn and relearn, how hard it is to part with our conditioning, "body positivity", the moral imperative of health, the misconstrued relationship between body size and health and diet culture. We also opened up about why we both stopped selling "fitness" and "weight loss".
Enjoy the episode and share if it resonates!
xo,
E
About Melissa Toler:
Melissa Toler is a speaker, writer, and educator. Her work encourages people to make the connection between our culture's oppressive beauty standards and our personal struggle with self-acceptance. She has written extensively on diet culture and the toll it takes on our lives and humanity.
Melissa also has a background as a pharmacist and certified wellness coach. Her goal is to help people unlearn harmful messages and behaviors from years of chronic dieting through writing and truth-telling.