#147: Health Anxiety, Coping with Uncertainty, and How Diet Culture Impacts Our Mental Health with Dr. Diana Gordon

The Full Plate Podcast with Abbie Attwood, MS

We're revisiting this conversation with Dr. Diana Gordon, and it's everything. Big picture, Abbie and Diana discuss how to approach mental health in a sea of diet and wellness misinformation -- including whether or not movement and nutrition have a meaningful impact on anxiety and depression. They get into what it's like to ping pong back and forth between dieting and intuitive eating, how diet culture seizes on our fear of uncertainty to sell us a faulty product, and how to sit with and process our collective health anxiety.

Topics discussed...

• Being an empath in the midst of overwhelming global events
• How to affect positive change in your own community
• Diana's story & her passion for helping people who have struggled to eat intuitively
• How the diet industry makes money off of our shame
• What it looks like to have dieting take over all aspects of your life
• Developing and overcoming health anxiety
• How we can practice true self-care
• Actively undoing our core beliefs about food and our bodies
• Weight stigma in therapy and psychotherapy spaces
• The truth about exercise and mental health
• Why we latch onto diets when we're going through a health challenge
• Healthism and assumptions based on appearance
• How much control we actually have over our health
• Embracing the messy and often chaotic experience of food freedom

Dr. Diana Gordon is a licensed psychologist, coach, and content creator specializing in Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size (HAES). She combines evidence-based skills, such as mindfulness, cognitive behavioral skills, and other coping tools with Intuitive Eating principles. As both a psychologist and an IE-certified provider, she offers evaluation and treatment for both eating-related concerns as well as other mental health concerns. As a person of size, she draws on both her personal and professional experience to dismantle fatphobia and to help people live a life free from dieting. You can find Diana on her website or Instagram.

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Transcripts: If you’re looking for transcripts, you can find those at www.abbieattwoodwellness.com/podcast

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Group program:

Looking for more support and concrete steps to take to heal your relationship with food and your body? Apply for Abbie's next 10-week group program: https://www.abbieattwoodwellness.com/group-coaching

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Already been at this anti-diet culture thing for a while, but want community and continued learning? Apply for Abbie's monthly membership: https://www.abbieattwoodwellness.com/circle-monthly-group

Podcast Cover Photography by Anya McInroy

Podcast Editing by Brian Walters

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