The Body Myth Podcast with Ronit Plank & Guests
From coast-to-coast women grow up with their bodies being watched and, almost without fail, learning to watch their own bodies. This self-surveillance begins young and for many women feels impossible to stop. It permeates our relationships and decisions, negatively impacts our physical wellbeing, mental health, and overall quality of life. The Body Myth podcast features conversations with women about when they first began judging themselves, how that has impacted their lives, and what they’ve come to understand about their bodies and the world. Each episode explores how we got here, why our size and shape has nothing to do with happiness, and what we can do to find body peace.
Body Myth Episodes
Finally Free From Diet Culture ft. Maureen Schiller
Ronit’s mom Maureen joins The Body Myth for a conversation about being thrust into dieting by her mother at age 15 with doctor-prescribed pills and how from that point on her relationship with food and her body would forever be painful and complicated. From Weight Watchers to calorie counting to compulsive and binge eating, decades of yo-yo dieting took their toll on her self-worth and ability to eat intuitively. Now, after years trapped on the diet culture roller coaster she shares what she’s learned and how it feels to be free.
About The Host
Ronit’s essays and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in both the 2021 Best Book Awards and the 2021 Book of the Year Award and a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2022. She is host and producer of the podcasts And Then Everything Changed and The Body Myth.
Other Episodes
The Body Myth – Misogyny, Fatphobia, and the Morality of Size ft. Dr. Kate Manne
Dr. Kate Manne joins the Body Myth for a Conversation about the material, social, and political costs of living in a larger body, how health concerns have been weaponized against fat people, the moral degradation anyone whose body strays from Western and racist ideals...
The Body Myth – Finally Free From Diet Culture ft. Maureen Schiller
Ronit’s mom Maureen joins The Body Myth for a conversation about being thrust into dieting by her mother at age 15 with doctor-prescribed pills and how from that point on her relationship with food and her body would forever be painful and complicated. From Weight...
The Body Myth – Loving Our Bodies When They’ve Been a Source of Pain ft. Stephanie Weaver
Stephanie Weaver, author of the Migraine Relief Plan Cookbook joins The Body Myth for a conversation about the toll of chronic illness on her feelings of peace with her body, having undiagnosed disordered eating for 40 years, how being riddled with insecurity about...
The Body Myth – 14-Years Recovered from Binge-Eating Disorder ft. Ronni Robinson
Ronni Robinson joins The Body Myth for a conversation about being 14-years recovered from binge eating disorder and how she came to understand that the love she was missing during her childhood was what she was for decades trying to replace with food, her passion for...
The Body Myth – Coming Back to Your Body Ft. Natalie Serianni
Natalie Serianni joins The Body Myth for a conversation about being a college athlete and losing herself in perfectionism and performance, society’s messages about our size, the effect dissociating from her body had on her well-being, and how she’s learned to...
The Body Myth – More Body Peace ft. Lisa Garpestad
Lisa Garpestad joins The Body Myth for a conversation about the messages we get from loved ones about our size and appetites, overcoming a life of dieting, and finding a way to live without the noise of body judgment....
The Body Myth – Raising Body Positive Teens ft. Signe Darpinian
Signe Darpinian joins the Body Myth for a conversation about catching changes in behavior before they become eating full blown eating disorders, how body image is contextual, the social media-parent-peer effect on teens, helping kids become critical viewers of the...
The Body Myth – Recovering from Anorexia Nervosa and Setting Boundaries ft. Kimmie Gilbert
Kimmie Gilbert joins The Body Myth for a conversation about the effect growing up with a malignant narcissist had on her sense of self, her Anorexia Nervosa journey and recovery, and the difference between body neutrality, body acceptance, and body love/positivity....
The Body Myth – Body Liberation for All ft. Dalia Kinsey
Dalia Kinsey joins The Body Myth for a conversation about looking at the body in a holistic way, how health intersects with racial identity in the US, systemic LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC oppression and how allies in a lot of spaces tend to take center stage, why we don’t need...
The Body Myth – Mixed Messages: When Food Is Love in Your Family But Your Body is a Problem Ft. Michelle Wang
Michelle Yang joins The Body Myth for a conversation about immigrating to the US as a child and feeling she didn’t conform to Western expectations about how she was supposed to look, growing up in a home where food was love but her father monitored her body size, and...
The Body Myth – From Childhood Gymnastics to Puberty to Motherhood: A Body Judgment Story ft. Alyson Shelton
Alyson Shelton joins The Body Myth for a conversation about growing up in a household hyper-focused on body size with a father who objectified women, how gymnastics shaped her childhood until puberty disrupted it, and what she has done in recent years to quiet the...
The Body Myth – Healing From Family Body Shame ft. Meg Weber
Meg Weber joins The Body Myth for a conversation about growing up in the shadow of her mother’s fixation on size, negative messages about food, and childhood visits to dieticians. Also in this episode, how body dissatisfaction strongly influenced her sister’s death by...