Listen Here!I hope you enjoy this episode of RadLove Radio with special guest Jenn Radke of the Fat Girl Book Club podcast. We are talking all things body image! Links Resources Mentioned and Guest and Host Contact and Offers
Transcript after the jump! Amy Rapone: Hello there I'm Amy Rapone, your host and trusted tour guide toward body liberation. I'm an anti diet dietitian who helps my clients find nourishing ways to live their lives. And a mom who's hoping she's not messing her kids up too much. I hope you'll join me in conversations with my guests about building on apologetic, joy, liberating fat bodies, and bringing diet culture to its knees. Welcome To RadLove Radio. Amy Rapone: Welcome to episode three of RadLove Radio. I am so excited to have y'all back. I hope you enjoyed the first two episodes, episode one and two of our inaugural episodes of our podcast. I heard great things about Jerry's episode in particular that y'all love our banter. So let me know, he's willing to come back if you'd would like to have him come back for anything. So you guys let me know if you want him back. He'll come back. Also, I wanted to remind you of the Patreon. So Patreon is how we are supporting our guests here at RadLove love Radio. So if you got anything out of the conversations with my guests or. Just want to support the podcast and therefore supporting our guests definitely feel free to pop over there. There are three different tiers that you're able to support us on. And the guest gets to decide where that money goes at the end of their month, that their podcast is live. Definitely check out Patreon. We're at patreon.com/radloveRadio, and you can check it all out. You get some special perks, like a zoom party every month with me, a little RadLove zoom party and, , early access to the podcast with tier two or a little shout out on the podcast. So if those are things that you in. Beautiful. If there's something else that you'd like to see on Patreon as kind of like a little perk, let me know. I'd love to put it together for you and get you guys what you want while my guests are getting paid. That's what my goal is here. So let me know if you have any questions. Definitely reach out to me on Instagram at RadLove Radio, all one word, R A D L O V E R A D I O. And I guess we'll jp in. Now to the episode with Jennn. Enjoy! Amy Rapone: Well, welcome so much to Jenn! Jenn, welcome to RadLove Radio. I'm so happy to have you. Jennn Radke: Thank you so much for having me. This is so exciting. Amy Rapone: is exciting. All right. So I've been on Jenn's podcast once, maybe twice by the time this comes out. I'm not sure. We'll see. , but this is Jenn coming on my podcast. So that's really exciting. Jenn, would you like to introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners? Jennn Radke: Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So my name is Jenn and I'm a body image coach is what I do, but, , I think the thing I always get the most excited about is my podcast is called Fat Girl Book Club. And I talk to really cool people doing things in the body liberation world about a body acceptance book. They're not the author. It is always a book that they are not the author of. And we kind of try to, you know, get into some of the takeaways, some of the major themes and. Give the listener something for them to listen to. I have other things going on. I've got an online course and I've got a few other things that are about to happen, but we'll talk about that a little later. That is just a basic intro of who I am Amy Rapone: All right, well, welcome so much. I'm so happy to have met you. We met on clubhouse of all things, which I don't even go on anymore so much, but, it was wonderful to get to meet you there. That was wonderful. It was a great connection. All right. So the first question that I ask everybody coming on the podcast is what does body liberation mean to you? Jennn Radke: Oh, this is such a good question. And it actually made me think. And the first thing that I thought of was that I know it's not body positivity or even body acceptance. Really. I think body liberation is really about breaking free of diet culture and. I really relate to Christy Harrison's definition of diet culture. And if anyone is interested in kind of a deeper dive on that, Anti Diet by Christy Harrison, she goes into it in a lot of details. She’s got like six or seven points about what diet culture is. But essentially for me, I boil it down to this whole mentality that we have within our culture. That dinner is better and that there's some sort of morality attached to being center. And so when I think about body liberation and how that actually kind of comes out in my life, I actually think that I kind of follow Virgie Tovar’s framework for fatphobia. I don't know if you've ever, if you've read You Have The Right to Remain Fat. Amy Rapone: I have not yet. It’s in my pile. Jennn Radke: It's a really good read, but it's really good, but she also does talk about it and pretty much any talk she does. She talks about these three levels of fatphobia, this kind of personal level, the interpersonal level, and dealing with other people and the institutionalized. And I feel like for me, body liberation follows that pattern in that framework, in that, you know, I need to liberate myself from my own thoughts and actions and, and get myself out of a mentality of diet culture. So when we have these negative body thoughts, it's about being able to kind of isolate them and be able to start to bring yourself out of them. Actions. Being able to recognize that my actions are for my body. Making my body feel good as opposed to aligning to a diet culture mentality. It's about being able to liberate other people too, in a lot of ways with my own boundaries. It's about being able to say, you know, to another person. “Okay. You're talking about. The diet that you're doing, and I'm just not interested in diets anymore. Like I actually really feel like diets are harmful. So if you don't mind, please don't talk about that around me anymore.” And then that gives them a safe space for them to begin to recognize what some of these things are doing for them. And then being able to liberate ourselves from institutionalized ideas around anti-fatness. So, you know, being prepared when we go into the doctor's office to maybe be able to have to advocate for ourselves, or, you know, if I'm going to travel, thinking about whether or not I would need a seatbelt extender, you know, these types of things and being able to liberate ourselves from what diet culture tells us that thinner is better. Therefore we should diet because then that would help us to be able to move around the world in a different way. I think body liberation is about being able to break all that. Amy Rapone: Absolutely. I, 100% agree. I actually, that the way that you had kind of outlined Virgie’s body liberation thing, fatphobia steps, there is essentially how I see body liberation as well. It really starts with ourselves and then kind of branches off from there. Jennn Radke: So much, so much. And I think so many of us come to this work that way, you know, we come through body positivity, we come through this idea that we're each valuable in our own way. And then we begin to realize how much these thoughts have kind of pushed themselves into culture. It changed everything about the way we're moving around in the world. I, I agree. She and Virgie, that, that particular framework is like, you have to listen to her, talk about it because she's so good. She's so wonderful. Amy Rapone: I'll have to find it. And if I, when I find it, I will link it in the show notes so that everybody else can hear it too, for sure. Jennn Radke: Yeah. Amy Rapone: And of course, read her book. If, if you can do that, too. Jennn Radke: Please. Yes. It's not a big book. It packs a punch, but not a big book. Yeah. Amy Rapone: All right. Why do you feel like this work is so crucial to us being able to move forward? Jennn Radke: Well, I mean, I guess really what it comes down to is we shouldn't have to feel like shit about ourselves. Like I just feel like, you know, we all walk around in this world in a body. I mean, if we didn't, we wouldn't be alive. Right. So why should we have to walk around and feel shitty about something that we don't have a lot of control over? You know, I feel like it's a social justice issue. I feel like if people are, you know, worried about the way that we're oppressing and discriminating against people of different colors, different religions, different sexualities. We should be concerned about this too. And, and that's really why the work I do. That's what I am trying to fight for is the fact that, you know, we shouldn't have to feel shitty about what we do. I mean, on a personal level, this stuff almost killed me. Like yeah. You know, being in diet culture, and a lot of people probably relate to the story. I was a chronic dieter. I went to the extremes. I actually did a couple bodybuilding shows and landed myself in the hospital at one point and was diagnosed with an eating disorder. So at the end of the day, being so sucked into diet culture that I thought thinner was better. Really, really, almost killed me. Amy Rapone: Yeah. And especially with the it's, so opposite of what is often told to us is that thinner is better and thinner is “healthier.” You know, and that's sometimes the complete opposite of what's really going on. Jennn Radke: Yeah. Yeah. It's the, and it's so, I mean, we believe these hook, line and sinker, and if you have grown up with the messages since you were young and really absorbed them, it's going to cause a lot of damage. It's going to cause a lot of damage. So, yeah. Amy Rapone: And I think that the discomfort around being in that in a fat body or in a larger body, you know, I hear that from my clients all the time. I hear it. Not even just my clients, just being out in the world, everywhere. Why do you think that dieting or intentional weight loss is not the thing that's going to get us more comfortable with ourselves? Jennn Radke: Oh, I have so many thoughts on this one, so many thoughts. Amy Rapone: All right. Give them to me. I’m ready. Jennn Radke: Well, I think a lot of us have heard of this whole diet cycle, right? So in Intuitive Eating, she talks the authors of Intuitive Eating, talk a lot about the dieting cycle. So a lot of us are familiar with it and if you're not familiar with it, you're familiar with it on a personal level. You've done it. But I think the diet cycle starts before the diet cycle starts. We walk around in day-to-day life getting very, very conscious messages about what it means to diet. You know, why dieting is a really good idea, how easy it is to diet, how much more confidence you're going to get and what your life is going to look like when you diet. Right. So, You're sitting there in front of the TV, you're scrolling through social media. You know, you're hearing about all of these different diets that come up, right? Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Noom, all the rest of it. It's all coming up. So you get these really conscious messages, but we also get some really subconscious messages, some really subtle messages that percolated the back of our brain that are just there. So, you know, you're watching TV and you're looking at these TV shows or these movies and the main love interest, the main woman in them, very small spectrum of sizes. Some may be shorter, some may be taller, but we're talking about a really small spectrum of sizes. So when you look at that, what that is called, when you're looking at, you know, these media messages, and you're not seeing any fat bodies, you're not seeing any, you know, different religion in terms of, you know, not just Christian, not just heterosexual, not just white bodies. This is called symbolic annihilation. So we're taking out anyone who kind of doesn't fit into this small spectrum. What that does, two things, first of all, back of your mind, you're going, oh, that's what I should look like. The other thing is that other people walking around go, that's what people look like. So if they see somebody who doesn't fit into that narrow spectrum, well, then they're not “normal,” “not normal”. Amy Rapone: Right. Jennn Radke: And it gives them an opportunity and an opening for them to, you know, we've had some really terrible stories about what happens walking around in a fat body. Not to mention any other oppression walking around in those bodies, just because people don't see a lot of representation of them, they think it's not normal. So we get those messages. We get those messages from friends and families and coworkers, you know, where they're talking to us about the diet that they're doing, or “I'm so fat” when they're three sizes smaller than you are. You know what I mean? Like, and all of these messages, they may not be overt. It might. “You're in too large of a body.” “You need to get smaller,” but they are messages coming at us about what it means to be in a larger body. Amy Rapone: Right. Jennn Radke: If we don't have boundaries, if we're not even aware that these messages are happening, all that stuff sits in the back of our brain. And then something happens, some type of a, what I call a triggering event. So you get a picture of yourself. You see yourself in a mirror and you don't like what you see. You have to step onto the scale. You don't like the number you go to try on some clothes and it doesn't fit well, when that happens. I mean, why wouldn't you think to diet, right? I mean, it's just a logical decision with all the messages that had been bombarding you about why your body is wrong. So once we get this message, Why would you not realize that there is a plan B? But there is another way to handle this discomfort because you've not been told that there's any other way to handle this discomfort. Amy Rapone: Right? We don't see that anywhere because when we do see people in larger bodies and oftentimes not even that larger, larger bodies on, in media as well, and what we take in they’re often torn up about the other tropes. They're either only the sidekick. They’re battling with their own weight and how unhappy they are and they have to have a glow up to be anyone, and it always includes weight loss, to become the one. Right? Jennn Radke: Exactly. They're making fun of themselves. Amy Rapone: Oh gosh. The the deprecation is awful. Jennn Radke: Terrible. It's terrible. It's terrible. So why we're not getting any messages that it's okay to be fat unless you're seeking them out, you know, so. These are the types of things that, that really impact us as we walk around. And then that starts the diet cycle. Right. And we all, you jump onto the diet. , you go a little while. I know for me, when I jumped onto the diet, you know, I would jump into the good fatty stereotype. And if they, if your listeners don't know, the good fatty is, you know, the fat person who does all the health behaviors, because they're trying to be good and fit into this morality idea of what it means to be in a fat body. So I would walk by a mirror and not like what I see, never liked what I saw, even when I was at my thinnest. And I'd be like, “it's okay, you're working on it. It's fine.” Like, I have all these positive encouraging, keep going messages for myself. And then, like in the book, you and I just read, they were talking about how four months is the average that someone spends on a diet. And then something happens, you know, you, for whatever reason you give into your restrictions and you start eating the things that you're not supposed to you, you do maybe hit your goal weight. I know I did a few times. So the diet ends for whatever reason that the diet ends. And then you begin to binge, that's when you start to gain weight and this is your body's response to weight gain. And we begin to feel shame around that because those are also messages we get, because the messages that we get that are very overt about dieting, make it sound like it's simple. That it's easy. So if you begin to gain weight, then there's something wrong with you that it's your fault. You know, and those are the messages that we get. So, so essentially, you know, that is kind of the dieting cycle and then it starts all over again. And if you've allowed those messages to continue to come into your brain and you've allowed them to come without creating any kind of boundaries or without actually becoming aware of them, then we're going to continue this cycle until something changes. Amy Rapone: Right. Jennn Radke: And if anybody's listening and is looking kind of for a starting point on how to get out of this kind of dieting cycle, my suggestion is to start with the triggering event because these triggering events, they're normally something that's very specific and there's normally something we can do that will allow us to take care of our needs without actually having to give into this idea of a diet. So if you are trying on clothes and something doesn't fit, get rid of it. If you, if you have the privilege and you are able to buy something that feels comfortable to replace it. Amy Rapone: Reframe that and be like, Ooh, I get to go buy new clothes. Jennn Radke: Exactly. If, if you have that privilege, now you're able to do it. Then that will make you feel so much better. You know, if you have to get onto the scale, if you're at the doctor's office, there's lots of talk of this and body liberation circles, ask if you can turn around and not see it; get rid of your own personal scale, you know, begin to begin to actually take charge of those moments of discomfort and do something that meets your needs. And then sit with that discomfort. Sit with, and this is the hard part, sit with that feeling of not feeling like your body's good enough and just notice it and be aware of it and just give yourself a lot of compassion around it. And that's kind of a primer that's just kind of the starting steps around dealing with that discomfort. Amy Rapone: Yeah. Curiosity and compassion are always the two things that I go back to in this work, in that when we're really trying to identify what's going on, we need to stop being angry with ourselves about it, or the fear that can come up around it and really start to build on that curiosity. Why is this coming up? And then when we figure out maybe why, what that coming up is, having compassion for yourself in that moment, because most of the time, it's not your fault. And there's a lot of other things going on. And that's why I love talking about this because I think it gives people the language to be able to understand what's going on. Jennn Radke: Yeah, yeah. No, totally. That's great. Curiosity and compassion. Easy to remember. Amy Rapone: Absolutely. Yeah. I love double Cs. I like it a lot. I like when things start with the same letter, hence the RadLove Radio. I just love it. Jennn Radke: Yes. The alliteration. Just rolls off the tongue. Amy Rapone: Yes. Favorite, favorite thing. To the point where my kids go is that rhyming and I go, no, that's alliteration. Jennn Radke: Yes. Yes. Wonderful teaching moment. Amy Rapone: Yes. All right. So, so many people get the body liberation and anti-diet as a philosophy itself and can usually apply it to others pretty easily. For the most part. Not always depends on where we're coming at. We could be pretty deep in, but when it comes to ourselves, sometimes it is hard to think that we are not the exception to the rule. We love being special. We love to know that we're the ones who are going to be different this time and not fall like everybody else did. What would you want those people to know? Jennn Radke: Oh, man, I have this conversation over and over again on the podcast because it's so true. Like, I mean, the work that I'm doing with my podcast is all around books. And obviously, as you can tell, I speak in the language of books and Amy Rapone: and I love that about you. Jennn Radke: Here, read this book for that, read this book for that. So I really struggled with this for a really long time. Kind of reading all of these books and going yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Also having a hard time trying to talk to others about it. I don't know if you ever had this, but when I first started, I can remember being so excited about everything and trying to go talk to other people and then getting it so messed up that they were looking at me, like, “I have no idea what you're talking about.” And I would just get so frustrated. Amy Rapone: I know. And it's so out of left field for so many people. It’s just a concept they've never heard before. So when we try to use terminology that they've never heard before either, but that's how we know to speak to it. And then we kind of get it all muddled up sometimes. And, oh, I get what you mean. I still do it. Jennn Radke: So much, so much. Me too. Me too. So, I mean, I guess, I guess for me and on my journey, and this is kind of how I'll frame this, it wasn't just the reading of the. That made a difference for me. And obviously I'm a reader, obviously I'm a podcast listener. So getting that learning into my brain was really important for me to be able to begin to take things from my brain, to my belief system and my values of being able to actually apply it to my life. And being able to actually apply to my body was about doing the exercises in the books. Even the ones that I looked at and went, oh, well, I know what's going to come out of that. No, actually sitting down, taking the time, taking my journal, writing it out, that has helped me immensely on this journey to be able to connect to myself. I mean, if you have access and you have privilege to work with someone, if you can work with someone like Amy, then I mean that's even better because then she can begin to cater those exercises to your needs. But if you are doing this through books and podcasts; that's my biggest recommendation is to do the exercises in the books. Take the time. And do it. I mean, obviously there's, you know, you need to have compassion for yourself. You need to have to be able to, to, to create a sense of commitment, because the reality is that whole dieting cycle that I just talked about, you might go back to that even after listening to all of this stuff and reading a few books. It's possible, you know, you're going to have bad body image days. It's going to happen. So you need to be able to have some patience and a little bit of commitment in order to say, you know, I recognize that it's not helping me to be on a diet. I need to maybe commit to this a little bit and see what can happen when I actually sit with myself for a bit. Amy Rapone: Yeah. Because when you're, when you're a chronic dieter or that's just where your mind goes and it's encouraged everywhere around you to do it, you know? And so when we can reframe what's really going on there and saying, okay, so. Things maybe are “I’m not liking what's happening” wherever that feeling may be. Whether that's looking in the mirror or clothes feeling a little bit too tight, you know? Okay. This doesn't feel okay, but that doesn't mean that there's anything intrinsically wrong with me because of it. Jennn Radke: Yes, that's it too. That's it and it, again, like you said before, it's very easy to apply that to someone else, very difficult to apply to yourself and it doesn't go away. I talk about this a lot on my podcast. It doesn't matter how many years you're in this. Every now and then you're going to have the fleeting thought that maybe I should diet, you know. You are going to have the fleeting thought. Luckily, it's going to last for like a millisecond, whereas before it used to last for like a week. Amy Rapone: Yeah. And you might fluctuate through different emotions with that as we go through this grief in a very similar way. You know, I, I tend to go to anger very often. I think when I not, and then in turn, not getting angry with myself because of that, and then starting a whole nother spiral going on. But absolutely you gotta be kind of prepared for those moments and have those go to things that you can go to in your head and go, okay, this is okay, Amy and Jenn told me it was okay. This is going to happen. And I can move past this. Jennn Radke: Thank you so much. If your first thought is Amy and Jenn, told me it’s OK. I love you. I love you for that! Amy Rapone: You know, that's just where it goes because you know, why wouldn't you think of us, seriously? Jennn Radke: Yes. Amy Rapone: Absolutely. All right. So going back to your book club and podcast, being the things that you kind of go to. Being able to gather so many different perspectives. Cause how long have you been doing the podcast now? Jennn Radke: In November, it'll be two years. Amy Rapone: Two years. And you have an episode come out every two weeks? Jennn Radke: Two weeks. Amy Rapone: That's a whole heck of a lot of books and a whole lot of heck of people to talk to. Jennn Radke: It is, it is. Amy Rapone:So you're getting a lot from a lot of different people, especially around body image and fat liberation. What do you think your biggest takeaways are from speaking to so many different people with different paths? Jennn Radke: I think the first thing that has, and part of this is my perspective, because like I was telling you, before I come, I came at this work from eating disorder recovery work, eating disorder recovery work is pretty, white girl-ish. Amy Rapone: Oh, I know that. Jennn Radke: So, so the first thing that I learned and that came at me by doing this podcast was privilege and understanding intersectionality, being able to recognize that, hey, yeah, I'm, I'm being discriminated against in a lot of ways because I'm a fat, but I'm a small fat, and not everybody has that experience. Other people are being oppressed for other reasons on top of being fat. I hate to say how much of an eye-opener that was for me. I really do, because that is not, you know, like, I want to say that I was woke from the beginning, but I really wasn't. Amy Rapone: We, we tend to not really be. Jennn Radke: I really wasn't and honestly, this, this work doing this work, having that podcast, allowing other people to come on and I'm still doing this work, about being able to understand my own privileges, understanding other people's experiences and being able to allow them to speak about their experiences. And intersectionality was something that I, like I said, I thought everybody else had the same experience I did. Oh, whoa. Jenn. No, that's not true. So that was a big one. That was a big one. The other thing that I learned from other people is about boundaries. I mean for me, boundaries were, I'm very, very, very lucky in that I had a pretty decent support network when I started this work and most people were fairly open to what I was saying and were kind of willing to go along with me with what I was saying, but not everybody has that experience either. Boundaries are very hard and they're very fluid and being able to, to be able to talk to other people about boundaries. That was definitely something that came up again and again, in these conversations was talking about how other people were able to do it and, and how they were able to, you know, begin to put their mental health as a priority. And I think too many of us don't don't do that. And boundaries are really important for that. One thing that I am learning, that's barely recent. And that's coming out in all of these conversations is about activism. I know, to be honest with you. I never really, I was definitely one of these people who very quickly move past the phase of body positivity, but that's how I came to all this. And all of a sudden I began to recognize, Hey, this is not just a me issue. This is. This is really big. Oh my gosh. This is like everywhere. And all of a sudden it was like, I want to do something. And so being able to not just come to terms with the fact that I want to be as active as I possibly can, but recognizing other people come onto the show and talk about the things that they're doing for the activism and the work that they are doing, because we all contribute to this mosaic. We all actually are beginning to break down these systems, little bit by little bit by little bit. And that doesn't matter if somebody is just setting a boundary with another person or going and talking to their retail clothing store about maybe moving their plus sized clothes into a different area of the store or whether this is something big, like, you know, doing a fat-in like they did in the sixties, you know, like there's different levels and there's different, , kind of places on this spectrum and they're all valid and they're all important than they're so wonderful. And I just love it. Amy Rapone: I love that. I love that. That you framed it as we're just all at mosaic working on different aspects of this work. Jennn Radke: Hey, I'm a Canadian. We talk about mosaics all the time. Amy Rapone: Do you? I didn’t know that was a Canadian thing. See, I've learned something today. I appreciate that. Oh, I didn't know. But yeah, it's, it's so stunning. That's, I love that visual. Yeah, because it all comes together. Jennn Radke: It does. It does. And it's all chipping away. We're all chipping away at it. No matter the little bit you're doing or the lots that you're doing, they're all important. They're all validated and not one is better than the other. Amy Rapone: And it can ebb and flow. It doesn't always have to be the same thing because this work can be really exhausting and really lead to burnout. And you have to preserve your, again, going back to our own mental health and boundaries, you know, we have to be able to do that in activism work as well. Jennn Radke: So much. And in this modern world of everyone always being connected all the time. Yeah we do. Amy Rapone: You just can't always be on. Sometimes you have to be off. And that’s OK. Jennn Radke: Totally agree. Yeah, totally agree. Amy Rapone: Yeah. And if anybody calls you out, I'm going to tell them to kick dirt. Jennn Radke: Well, exactly as well. And honestly, honestly, I've been, I'm moved about a year ago and I framed it always that I didn't have the money and I didn't have this, and I didn't have that, but I was like, I don't have time to take a vacation. I just don't have time. And last month I was kind of forced to take a vacation. I want to say. But it was, you know, I had to, I had to go deal with something, but I had to take myself out of the place where I was at and go somewhere else into a new place and, you know, interact with friends and allow myself some time off and not be as around the computer or the social media as much. I cannot believe the difference coming back to everything. I mean, just, it's incredible. Not only do I feel more like I'm ready to tackle things more, I'm also being more productive. I'm also more relaxed. It really does help. So if you need a break. I mean, take a break. It will do nothing but help you. Amy Rapone: You're talking me into taking another vacation, Jenn. Jennn Radke: I think you should, without a doubt. Amy Rapone: I always prioritize rest. That's kind of my thing. I'd never, you know, if I need it, I'd take it because I'll fall apart, but. Jennn Radke: Honestly, this is something that kind of doesn't get taught, like, because I read all these books, right. There's certain areas that I can, and I was talking to someone else yesterday, there are certain areas where I can tell that we need more information. We need more books to be written and rest and beginning to prioritize, rest along with exercise and food habits as healthy and I'm air quoting here, healthy behaviors, is not something that we're seeing a lot of in the body liberation. World in the body liberation, lexicon of books. And I think that that's an area where we really need to see more. And I know Caroline Dooner from The Fuck It Diet, she's writing one. It should be out fairly soon and it's all about rest. And I cannot wait to read it because I think that this is so important and we need to, we, we definitely do need to, if we're going to do activism work and we're going to work on our bodies in a, in a counter-cultural way, which is what we're doing, no matter what we're doing in the body liberation space. We need to take rest. We need to understand what our bodies need for rest, and we need to start tuning into it. I think it's really important. Amy Rapone: Yeah, you know, this hustle culture thing needs to kind of take a beat. We all got too much time on our hands as it is, but rest really needs to be a big, a big part of it. Jennn Radke: So much, so much. Amy Rapone: Yeah. All right. So you've opened up a course recently called How to Stop Hating What You See in the Mirror, for those who are kind of starting to step into this work. So share with us, what is that all about? Jennn Radke: Isn't the name wonderful? It was like a brainstorm. I was like, he asked how to start eating what you see in the mirror. Cause it's totally what I want to talk about. So this is, is really for, people who are already living in a larger body and have been chronic dieters. So that's kind of the people that this is catering to, and yes, it's for people who maybe are starting to step into the work, because we really do kind of take it from all that stuff I was talking about with the triggering event that comes up in here. So that's kind of, kind of where we're at. So the course is an online course. I have three objectives with it, which is to help people to step away from dieting. To move towards body acceptance as kind of a starting stepping stone and to give people really, really practical tools that they can use again and again and again on their journeys. So that's kind of what the point of the course is. I have three sections in the course. So the first one is about creating space. And this is where we talk about all those messages that we get, creating boundaries, talking about negative body image thoughts, maybe coming to our head. Comparing and judging ourselves to others, these types of things, and being able to become aware of them, create boundaries around them. Being able to kind of separate ourselves from them. Then we have kind of a space where we go into introspection and this is around like those triggering events that I was talking about before, but also, finding patterns within our dieting timeline, seeing whether or not there were certain things that, we were using dieting as a coping mechanism maybe, or we were using it in order to mask something else that was going on in our life. We kind of look at those types of things in introspection. And we talk about the word fat. Like we actually really kind of dig into some, some meatier issues there, where we have to sit with ourselves and then lastly interaction. Amy Rapone: The fun stuff. Jennn Radke: Yeah, the fun stuff. We prepare with some more practical things like curating your social media, and then we get into what do you think about the word fat? And then we get into interactions. So this is about values. This is about moving around in the world and being able to kind of keep up with all the things that we've just talked about in the course. So, the course is online. It is online, but you get a 30 plus page booklet with different exercises in it. And 14 core videos, which go through all kind of mirror all of the different exercises in the booklet, but then there's also extra videos, extra blog posts, extra reading lists, journaling prompts. The extras with this course, there's quite a bit of extras. You get a lot. And then there's six zoom calls that we do together a group. Amy Rapone:Oh, nice. Jennn Radke: That kind of pull everything together. So and it's lifetime access and those zoom calls or lifetime access, which, you know, the people that did the course already are kind of, they're excited to be able to come into a community and meet more people. So, yeah, so that is my online course that I’m super super excited about launching and I'll make sure that the website is, iwishiwereme.com and you'll see that there's an online course tab on there and you can go and take a look at all the different things that are in there. You can take a look at the curriculum, you can take a look at all of it and then sign up. Amy Rapone: Awesome. Awesome. And I will make sure that we link the link in the show notes for sure everybody can check it out because that sounds really, really awesome. And I think it's going to be useful for a lot of people. Jennn Radke: It’s going to be really fun. It's super excited. Yeah. Amy Rapone: So tell us a little bit about the other offerings that you have and how people can find you. Jennn Radke: Oh boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, the podcast is my favorite and it was only my favorite because I love talking to other people. I just think podcasting is so much fun. So it’s Fat Girl Book Club Pod and you can find that on any podcast app that you're listening to this one on. I also do have a membership site, so I'll give you the link for that, Amy. And, and if people want to check that out, that'd be awesome. And I'm also on Instagram, @fatgirlbookclubpod. So they can link up with me there. The other thing that we'll be launching, which I'm really excited about should be right around the time that this comes out. So do check out the website for this too, is I am going to be starting a group of people who are interested in starting to podcast and using podcasting as a way to get their voice back because I really found for me, I went through some, some pretty big struggles and I kind of seem to have lost myself a little bit. And podcasting really, really helped me to find my voice again. And I really feel like it's a useful tool to help people. I mean, even if people don't use podcasting as a way to get their voice out and learn, you know, throw their business out there or whatever, if they're just using it as the way to almost like talk therapy, it's a wonderful tool for that. And this is going to be kind of exploring how to get somebody started on podcasting and how to use it as a tool to find. Amy Rapone: Well, I know I appreciate your guidance in getting my podcast started. I know I was like, Jenn talked to me about all the things I have to get this started because I want to make it happen. I am so appreciative of that. And I can't imagine how much good that's going to do for a lot of people. Jennn Radke: It's super fun. And are you loving it? You're loving it. Amy Rapone: I’m loving it. I love to talk to people too. It's, you know, and, these conversations I think, are so needed and fun and serious at times, but you know, to put it all out there and then to share it with people too, that you wouldn't even know would find it useful or not. Absolutely. But I'm so excited. I'm very excited to be doing this for sure. Jennn Radke: I think it's a wonderful, so congratulations again on, on starting the podcast. It's really great. Amy Rapone: Thank you. And thank you so much for being here. It's an honor to have you on my podcast and I love chatting with you. Jennn Radke: So this was lovely. Thank you so much. Amy Rapone: Oh, I loved that episode so much with Jenn. I hope that you all enjoyed it too. Her course will be coming out later on this month in October. So definitely check that out. I'll have all the links to everything in the show notes so that you guys can access Jenn. Whether you want to join her book club, listen to her podcast, do her course. She's got a lot of wonderful offerings and she's also now on Patreon. So if you want to go ahead and support her on Patreon, head on over. You know, I am so excited for the things that she has coming up too around supporting other podcasters. I maybe a little biased with that one, but very, very excited. And also I wanted to let y'all know about an opportunity if you'd like to work with me, I will be offering body image coaching for about four rad folks who are looking to dive a little bit deeper into their body image or body liberation journeys. If you have a specific goal in mind, that's lovely. If you just want to feel a little less weird around your body, especially after figuring out that BMI's bullshit. diets suck and you know, movements cool, but only when there's not a site of guilt or shame, let me know. I'll leave my links in the show notes as well so that you can let me know if you want to work with me. We'll set up a discovery call and see if we'd be a great fit. I know I'd love to work with you! Thank you all so much for listening, and I appreciate you so much being in this community and I'll see you next time on RadLove Radio. Comments are closed.
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Who am I?I'm your host and trusted body liberation tour guide, Amy Rapone. I'm an anti-diet dietitian who helps my clients find nourishing ways to live their lives, and a mom hoping I'm not messing my kids up too much. Archives
March 2022
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