If you’ve ever felt exhausted by the endless cycle of dieting, body monitoring, and self-criticism, this episode of the Body Peace podcast is for you. In this episode, we welcome Dr. Rachel Millner, a psychologist and fat activist who has spent two decades helping people untangle their relationships with food, movement, and body image. Her work sits at the intersection of individual therapy, group therapy, and body image counseling, and she brings a weight-inclusive, HAES-informed therapist’s perspective to every conversation she has about healing.Rachel shares her powerful personal journey of healing from an eating disorder and learning to navigate life in a culture obsessed with thinness. Her story is a candid look at what eating disorder recovery actually looks like once the clinical language falls away — the day-to-day work of noticing disordered eating patterns, emotional eating urges, and the pull of chronic dieting, and choosing something gentler instead.Together, we dive into the systemic realities of weight stigma, the heavy emotional cost of chronic dieting, and how modern trends like GLP-1 medications impact our collective body peace. This part of the conversation is especially timely, as more and more clients bring questions about body image and GLP-1 medications into session, and therapists are being asked to think carefully about GLP-1 and disordered eating risk alongside nutrition counseling and medical care. Rachel also opens up about her viral Peloton campaign and the beautiful, complex process of reclaiming the pure joy of body movement — a process that, for many, is just as central to body image healing as any conversation happening in the therapy room.

Whether you are navigating medical weight stigma or trying to protect your children from diet culture, this conversation is a profound reminder of what it means to step off the battlefield, take up space, and fully claim your authentic self. It’s a conversation that speaks directly to anyone considering eating disorder treatment or eating disorder therapy, anyone exploring intuitive eating therapy or intuitive eating counseling, and anyone simply looking for a compassionate voice on the long road toward body acceptance therapy and binge eating treatment.

Key Takeaways

• Chronic dieting carries a heavy cost, consuming the mental energy needed for joy and connection.
• Weight stigma pathologizes normal bodily functions like sweating in larger bodies while normalizing them in smaller ones.
• Taking a temporary break from movement can help disentangle it from punitive, compensatory diet mindsets.
• Parents can protect children by eliminating negative body talk about themselves and other people at home.
• Navigating medical weight stigma requires asking providers how they treat identical symptoms in thin patients.

Resources

<p”>Dr. Rachel Millner’s Website – https://rachelmillnertherapy.com/

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Jennie Kramer LCSW-R,CEDS

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