The Unbearable Whiteness and Fatphobia of “Anti-Diet” Dietitians
These white female dietitians have helped steal and monetize the body positive movement. And I’m sick of it.
In the midst of working on this essay, a fellow member of a Health At Every Size Facebook group posted about an encounter with a popular dietitian on Instagram. This dietitian has branded herself as an anti-diet dietitian and body positivity advocate. She has over 50k followers. She sells courses on how to kick one’s dieting habit that cost $250.
This group member politely commented on this dietitian’s post to explain that their frequent posting of “before and afters”, complaints about being unable to celebrate her own weight loss, and pictures with “stomach rolls” (like in the image above) contributes to the falsehood of fat bodies being “before” bodies and exacerbates the hypervisibility of privileged, straight-sized people in the body liberation movement.
Her comments were deleted and she was blocked.
She then attempted to engage this dietitian through a private message from her main account in hopes that that would be more effective. She was sympathetic to the difficult task of owning up to one’s privilege, but emphasized that one cannot be “anti-diet” without engaging with…
