Health at Every Size® Healthcare Provider Listing

The short version of how I got into the field of dietetics is that food is delicious, and bodies are cool! The longer story is that I jumped over to nutrition after deciding the pre-med path wasn’t for me. Around that time, someone gave me a copy of “Salt, Sugar, Fat” by Michael Moss, which is an exposé of the deceptive marketing practices used by food and beverage companies. From my current vantage point I see how it plays into the moral panic surrounding the “o*****y epidemic,” but my main takeaway then (which I still stand by) was that our food environment is complicated, and maybe I could help people navigate it. It was after that that I decided to become a registered dietitian. During grad school and my training as a dietitian, I encountered many antifat ideas and practices: for example, the idea that every deviation from a stereotypically “healthy” plate was an opportunity to educate the patient, regardless of interest or ability; that reports of low intake from larger-bodied individuals were clear underestimates and proof that they couldn’t properly account for their eating; that weight management was easily achieved by a few food swaps and a modicum self-denial. There was a mention of Health at Every Size®, but it was only presented as a radical peculiarity. There were parts of my education that felt icky, but it wasn’t until I took a job at an eating disorder treatment center that I started to understand why.