Good food, fasting, and new a podcast
January is a tough month when you're trying to avoid diet culture - this can help.
I cannot tell you how many friends, colleagues, and social acquaintances have reached out to me this week. They have truly (and sadly) been seeing diet culture show up in all the safe places.
From churches and schools to homes and medical offices, the harmful reach of diet culture leaves no place unscathed.
One of my dietitian colleagues sent me a post about a fast her friend’s church was participating in. When I took a deeper look, it seemed dangerous. Fasting is a spiritual practice, but it is very tricky to participate in when we’ve grown up in diet culture and elevated a thin ideal. I talk a lot more about this in our digital snack (which happens to be a five-part podcast series!).
The bottom line is that fasting from food is not a safe practice for everyone. It just might bring you closer to an eating disorder than God. We must be aware of potential harm and intentional about suggesting someone engage in fasting, particularly if you’re a spiritual leader.
I even spent some time on the socials chatting about this. Luckily, there are many health professionals and spiritual leaders who agree (thank the Lord!) that we must be very careful when we’re talking about and promoting fasting in diet culture.
So, be on the lookout. This is a hard time of year in general because of the diet culture of the Olympics. Feeling unsafe in our sacred places can make it a lot worse. Just know that you don’t have to engage in these practices to be worthy - you are already worthy. Now, let’s talk food!
Dinner Menus
When I was reviewing and updating the menus - which I do every week - I got excited about our meals. There are many ways to use leftovers to save you time and, hopefully, money. For those who don’t like the word leftovers, you can call it multi-purposing ingredients. If you haven’t tried the omelet muffin cups, and you like eggs, these are delish and a wonderful time-saver during the week. And, yes, this was on my menu WAY before Starbucks started selling them ;). I also can’t wait to whip up the peanut ginger noodles. Whatever meals you try this week, tweak them however it works best for you, and enjoy!
Get your January Week 4 Menu HERE
Digital Snacks
This has been a very busy week. Before Christmas, I worked on a podcast series with an amazing author and pastor, Bianca Oltholf. You may know her from her latest book, Grit Don’t Quit, or her podcast, We’re Going There.
Before my book launched in the summer, I was fortunate to work with a PR team to help get the word out for my book. Since then, I’ve learned that launching a book during the summer and back-to-school season is tricky. Podcasters, show producers, and many others take vacations and put their shows on pause or repeat for the summer months. Although Feed Yourself had a wonderful launch, we ran into this issue.
Bianca and her team had a summer break, but the amazing thing is they followed up with my team when they returned. And Bianca was ready to talk about diet culture in the safe places on We’re Going There. When we started recording in November, we hit the pause button ten minutes in when we realized it was too big of a topic for just one episode. So, we planned for five! You can catch them all below.
If you want to watch them on YouTube, start here with episode one. If you want to see my face when she cuts back to our first conversation and I think she’s done with the topic, this is the episode to watch. She was not done - we were just getting started!
I hope you enjoy all five podcast episodes and that you find some freedom in diet culture. I’m rooting for you!
Behind the Scenes
From time to time, I’ll be answering questions, taking deeper dives into certain topics, and giving a glimpse of what it’s like behind the scenes for paid subscribers (think the Daniel Fast, how Christian social platforms respond to feedback, addressing weight stigma in safe places, etc…). This week, I’m talking more about The Weighting Game Series. This podcast series was a lot of work for Bianca and me. There was even a mini freak-out on my end! I wanted to share more about all the work and planning that brought this series to life. I’m beyond grateful to have Bianca address this issue - she was also willing to see how she could pivot from allowing diet culture in her work.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Scales are for Fish to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.