My Innermission
My Innermission
Un-Learning Diet Culture and Building Body Trust with Jess Wood
In this episode, I talk with Jess Wood, emerging coach with Body Trust, who faced her own struggles with diet culture and disordered eating. Jess is currently working on certification through Body Trust to help others unlearn the rules of diet culture, reawaken connection with their bodies, to embrace empowerment and body liberation. In our conversation we defined what is meant by diet culture, how diet culture limits and restricts our potential, how to embrace body liberation, and what unlearning diet culture means and what it can yield.
Some highlights (with timestamps) from our conversation:
5:30--What do we mean by diet culture?
9:50--What does body liberation mean?
20:09--What is the importance of community in unlearning diet culture?
20:48--What does unlearning look like?
23:40--What are the costs of diet culture?
If you want to learn more about Jess' work, you can follow her on Instagram at jessicawood.1
Welcome to My Intermission, a podcast conversation about the transitions and changes we face in life and the strategies and approaches that support us in taking the next step in our journey. I'm your host, Colleen Stanovich. Somatics invites us to get into our bodies, our full selves, and really listen to what it holds, what it's longing for, and what it wants to reveal to us. However, in our dominant society, there is a message that our bodies are something to work against, or even a sense that they are not a part of us. Fear of aging, diet, culture, beauty standards all set a message that our bodies need to be changed and altered, that they are imperfect and they're meant to be controlled. How do we challenge these societal messages in order to remember the wisdom and potential of our bodies? Today I get to talk to Jess Wood, a helping professional, lifelong educator, mentor, and coach who's stepping into a new chapter on her way to certification with Body Trust, an intersectional social justice-oriented path to healing. Jess is cisgender, straight-sized, middle-aged white woman, able-bodied and straight, born the eldest of three daughters to middle school sweethearts who've been married for 55 years. Jess names that her body carries generational threads of addiction, mental illness, diabetes, and weight-biased medical care. She herself struggled with binging and purging for a decade. She's also spent 30 years as a performer, event planner, educator, and mentor who finds joy in knitting, crocheting, creating, painting, reading, dancing, and swimming. She's been with her partner, Randy, for over 25 years and is raising two teenagers. Hi, Jess. Thanks for joining me today. It's so great to see you. Thanks for having me here. I'm excited. So with the Minor Mission Podcast, it's all about the changes in our lives and the transitions that we go through. Can you start with your own story of transition that brought you to where you are today?
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. If I think to really the beginning, I would say that my break with diet culture that happened roughly 30 years ago was preceded by a pretty devastating experience of of disordered eating myself personally, as so many of us do, felt like it was my individual suffering. It was unique unto me. There was no one else who was going through it. I was really kind of wandering through that by myself. And I found my way out of that suffering through sharing my story and finding a group of people who really understood what I was going through and could shed light on how I came to find myself there. And so I think that unlearning diet culture was really crucial to how, um, I came into this work. I would say professionally, I loved theater, I loved performance, I loved dance. I had done a lot of theater and directing all through college and just afterward. I can remember a very good friend of mine who, when I kind of shared what I was going through in terms of recovery from my own disordered eating, saying to me, oh my gosh, I work at a program and we work with young people and so much of what you're talking about resonates with that. Come see what it's all about. I did. I ended up working there. And that's kind of how I found my way into education. And so I was an educator for a really long time. I have worked in the nonprofit sector with education. And I think, you know, body trust work for me, my transition into body trust work and, you know, my decision to pursue certification and really feeling committed to that comes from just wanting to help others unlearn harmful narratives that I believed so deeply myself. And so currently, I feel like I've professionally done a lot of work in building community and creating safe spaces or brave spaces. And I want to kind of shift that lens for the people that I work with and really focus on body liberation, embodiment. And so as I look forward in spring 2026, I am hoping to launch a series of small group practices and hopefully retreats as well with practitioners that I've come into contact with who are working on all of the different kind of connected ways of healing and unlearning together.
SPEAKER_00:That is an amazing trajectory. All those pieces that fell into place to get you where you are today. You mentioned a lot about diet culture. Can you just explain how you would define diet culture and how that showed up for you in terms of your journey too? Yeah, absolutely. I mean,
SPEAKER_02:I would define diet culture as not an amorphous thing, but a very targeted, systemic, broadly funded, multi-trillion dollar industry that includes everyone who is encouraging people to look at their weight as the usually primary, but really singular definition of their health, wellness, status, worth as a human. I think the diet industry has its tendrils in so much of our lives culturally that for me, when I say diet culture, I mean, I find it in some of my closest friends. You know, we're constantly unearthing it in each other. We're unlearning together in spaces. And I think that when we aren't aware of it, it is this like foundational bias that intentionally sets us against ourselves and teaches us to hate the bodies that we live in and to hold them to really unrealistic Eurocentric beauty standards.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I hear that. That resonates with me in terms of the world of somatics as well, of how we are trained to not be in our bodies for a variety of reasons. I also heard you link the work that you do to liberation. And so can you draw that out more too in terms of the societal messages around dieting and diet culture and why unlearning can lead to liberation?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think, you know, One of the visuals that has been really grounding for me in body trust work is the visual of a tree. And that tree has roots. And the deeper the roots, the better that you as an individual and then collectively as a community, we can withstand when the winds of body shaming blow, the deeper your roots, the better you can withstand that. Because those winds are going to continue to blow. I mean... Maybe not forever. What do I know? But certainly, you know, for my lifetime, I think that some of those roots that have been most transformative to me are really like finding community, finding other people, like-minded people, an idea of kindness and curiosity, of self-preservation. you know, this idea of doing C minus work, which I mean, I'll just be real. Like as the, as the child of two lifelong educators, as an educator myself, like that was just really transformational for me. I was like, C minus work. And we're striving for that. Amazing. Like, it just like takes that perfectionism out of the, out of the equation in a way that has been so helpful for me in my own learning and unlearning. Other roots are like, you know, locating yourself with as a cisgender, straight, like person identified as female at birth, solidly middle class, like knowing all of those things, being able to identify my privilege and bias and how I come into spaces, how I show up with all of that is incredibly important just as a root and as being a good community member. And then I think like knowing that like we all have a comfort zone and finding the edge of those, that, that comfort zone, all of those roots that like, that's where you can like really ground yourself is incredible help, incredibly helpful. And then, and this is not my like, um, work of this tree, by the way, this is like firmly from like body trust work, Dana Sturdivant and Hillary Knavey, who like wrote the book on body trust. Like they came up with this. it was when I came upon their work that I was like, yes, those are all the words and ideas for all the things that helped me come through into myself. And so body liberation is really about finding your way out, not only as an individual, but as a collective, as a member of a community, knowing that grief is a part of that, that you have to grieve all of the time energy, money spent chasing this ideal. You have to grieve the fact that you believed all these things that told you that you weren't enough. I could continue on. These are like the ideas that really fuel this idea of body liberation, which I think for a lot of people, when they hear that, you know, it can be linked to this sort of happy woo-woo like body positivity, which is I don't mean to say that with such a note of mocking. It's just, for me, it doesn't go far enough. For me, being positive... or being accepting doesn't go far enough. For me, it's been more about like digging into the systems and finding the community and learning and unlearning together.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and that idea of unlearning coupled with intersectionality that you named, that it is about when you think about body trust and unlearning our relationship with our bodies and that diet culture piece. The intersections that you named, whether it is like having curiosity instead of shame or finding community instead of living in isolation, stepping into grief instead of denying our emotions, like all those things are also such strong messages. And you can see how they they work in collaboration to keep system structures that are oppressive to individuals and communities. people in our society and cultures, they keep them in place. And so when you think about the intersectionality there, like what is the goal, if you will? What are we striving for in terms of body trust?
SPEAKER_02:I mean, I think like foundationally, it's just this idea that you can trust your body to sort out the weight, which is like... to the vast majority of people who've been raised in our culture. I think it's that you can reconnect with your own desires and needs, one of those being around food, but not all of them around food, and that you can trust yourself to really honor those boundaries and desires and that you won't completely go off the rails. I think one of the things that I learned really early on is that folks who struggle with disordered eating, which by the way, the whole part of diagnosis in and of itself is a really kind of like, I don't know, thorny issue. It's very expensive to get diagnosed. It's very expensive to have official treatment. It's really a privilege to access all of those systems. And a white cisgender woman in the mid-90s, the mid-1990s, early 2000s, that system was... And as a straight-sized person, that system was... Yes. Okay. You may come in. We accept you. We see you. We honor what you're going through. What I learned early on was that a lot of my community members who didn't live in straight-sized bodies, who lived in fat bodies, were denied that care, were never asked if they had disordered eating, any type of struggles around food. The assumption was that if you're coming into the doctor for whatever type of, of ailment or issue that like, we're going to talk about your weight first and foremost, and that's going to be something that you're going to need to solve. And then we'll go on from there. And so like this, like tacit agreement that thin is healthy, you know, it's, it's really all wrapped up in that same, like sort of diet mentality that like, weight stigma that so many, especially in the healthcare industry, people carry around. So that was really important. As I continue to learn to divest from diet culture, to recognize that the community of humans who are really working on this, that it benefits all of us, that we all look different, and that that is just a part of Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:the merits of diversity and why that isn't just a nice thing, but it's actually an essential thing and how that benefits all of us. I was thinking of something that you said, oh, in terms of getting support for disordered eating too. You know, in somatics, I talk with people about how our brain is one thinking center, our emotional center of our hearts is another thinking center. operating center for us. And then our guts hold a lot in terms of intuition. And it's another operating center. When I think of disordered eating, I think a lot of people, obviously, they think about how it shows up in a person's body. But then there's also that connection to mental health. And so through your work with body trust, and some of the work that you've done with people, how do you describe or unravel that relationship between mental health, physical health?
SPEAKER_02:I think that the ways that you're naming it are really helpful for a lot of people working through body trust as well, because I think that thinking is so loud. It's just so loud, especially because so many of us were taught at a very young age that thinking is more important than And so reading of labels, you know, orthorexia being for anyone listening who doesn't know, just like an obsession with how healthy and clean food is, is orthorexia, you know, um, That's my layperson's definition. I'm sure there's a much more scientific one. But that idea that you have a running commentary in your mind that is constant, like that ticker tape that runs below anything you see on the news, just about everything. not only the nutritional values of different foods, but the morality of different foods as well. And so I think it's really important for people who are finding their way back from that to be supported in knowing that when things bubble up from wherever in your body you feel them, that you can first learn to hear it then learn to value it, then learn to act on it versus just only listening to this complex warning over and over and over. Like, no, that's bad for this reason. Or like, all fat is bad. All carbs are bad. Whatever it is that has been assigned this moral value of... bad or bad for you or you know most of that under the guise of going to make you
SPEAKER_00:fat those words that you just said to to hear it in your body to value it and then to act on it
SPEAKER_01:one
SPEAKER_00:of the things that's striking to me about those words too is it's about going in
SPEAKER_01:and I
SPEAKER_00:think there is this relationship you talked about the multi-million dollar industry around diet culture that feels like a very different mindset and so is there part of your body trust work that that makes that adjustment. I mean, you talked about the unlearning piece, but how do you begin that unlearning process, I guess, is my big question.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I mean, I can speak to my own journey. I began with the roots, with really leaning into finding community, with really letting go of trying to be perfect, even about the unlearning journey, of really giving myself time and space to figure out where What is it that I desire? What is it that I need? What are my own boundaries? That kind of work, I think, is crucial because at the end of the day, it's not about the food. And people say that, and I remember hearing that, you know, 30 years ago, I had a mentor who just talked about like, okay, if there was some magical gas that like permeated the entire planet and meant that no one could ever lose or gain a single pound again, that their body would remain exactly as it was, how would that change what you wanted from your life? How would that change how you moved through the world? And, you know, I never forgot that because I think to your previous question around body liberation, there is a reclaiming of your own lived experience when you're actually able to be in your body and not have that ticker tape, not have the constant berating voice in your mind. that promises that life will be different once you achieve this thing that says, oh, no, you need to go back to the plan. Like, let's have a project. And that project is your body. Let's do it. You know, like, because we are sold that over and over and over again. And so I think like, the liberation, knowing that And again, for me personally, it has come down to community. Being able to interact with people who have found their way out showed me that that was actually possible. And
SPEAKER_00:that made all the difference. So that idea of showing people who have shown you the way out, can you give some examples of what it means to leave diet culture behind? How does that show up in day-to-day practices?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I think there's some that are interactive and then there's some that are individual and then there's some that are systemic. So I would say on the individual level, that shows up as for me personally, as my first thought in the morning is not reviewing everything I ate the day before and planning everything I'm going to eat that day. And there were years of my life where that was absolutely the first thing that I thought about for absolutely for sure. Um, and I think, you know, on an individual level, I'm a big reader. I love books, like books, like shaped my childhood. I spent an inordinate amount of time reading and, uh, as I became like an adolescent and then certainly like my twenties, I was just fascinated by like, but this can't actually be real because none of these people are obsessing about food all the time. Like this is like the narrative in their life, but like, where is that undercurrent of like the ticker tape or like the constant playing like of that? So like recognizing that that had become such a part of my experience, like I now realize that it's not there all the time. And when it pops up, I know that there's something else happening that I need to address in my own life. I think that that's how I can say it shows up on the individual. Collectively, part of the work that we do in Body Trust is writing and sharing body stories. And figuring out how to actually write the narrative of your body from the beginning, from as far back as you can possibly remember, all the way through your life. Hearing those stories of other people, it is one of the most moving parts of my work because everyone has a part where that relationship with their body is ruptured. In some way, shape, or form. And for some, that's trauma, yes. For others, it's just diet industry coming through. For a lot of people, it's like, how did you learn that? And it's from people we love. It's watching our own mothers. So like hearing body stories in the collective, I think is really powerful for liberation. And then I think like systemically knowing that, I mean, there's a lot at stake there. People
SPEAKER_00:financially benefit. One of my favorite questions in the realm of somatics is like, what would that make possible? And I think that's the other piece. Like you're talking about how much money people make off this as well, but there's also the mental toll Like you said, waking up in the morning, tracking your food or considering, will you wear this or that based on how big your thighs are? Or how do you compare to other people? When our brains get busy with that, there's a cost benefit there. Like it comes at the cost, not just of dollar signs and time, but it's also like, what else aren't we doing with that? And that idea of like really living into our true selves. I think diet culture also is, is really good at suppressing creativity, curiosity, individuality, passion, purpose, like all those, all those pieces that can feel very vulnerable when you're so focused on the shell of your body and what size it is and how it shows up in the world. And so I'm just thinking about like who benefits from that as well when we're not living into our full purpose as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, it's definitely not us. political times that we are living in, you see an increase in pedestalling the anorexic. You see an increase in diet culture coming out. And that is just historically under authoritarian regime. That's what happens. You get that more. So it makes perfect sense, I think, that people are feeling that, I think we get pulled away from the truth of what it means to be fully embodied and fully in community with one another. And I think that is intentional.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, the more we can other each other, whether it is by language or culture or size or age or gender, the or sexual orientation, like all those things, if we can other each other, then we are much easier to control. And so I think the body piece is a huge part of that as well. Okay, you talked about your background in education. You are also a parent. And so if we think about shifting this paradigm about our bodies, trusting our bodies and the wisdom that they hold, What are the implications for those realms of education and parenting if we really want to shift this paradigm?
SPEAKER_02:I would say both as parents and as educators, we can't do the work until we look at our own bias, until we look at ourselves. So it is... absolutely, 100% for certain that you will recreate and repeat all the mistakes that got you and others to a place of suffering if you don't look at your own stuff and heal it in some way, shape, or form. And so I think as parents, I know when things get really hard, it can be tempting to turn away and think, oh, this is a teenager or this is a middle school age child. And like, yeah, it's really hard and sticky and I'm not quite sure what to say. So I'm just going to not. And I'm going to trust that it's a phase and I'm going to trust that we're going to come out the other side. And I promise you in my experience and the experience of all the people that I have worked with, that is the way to find yourself in the same place of suffering. And so I think that like one, recognizing that it really is something that you can unlearn and that you can unlearn at the same time you're teaching. or the same time you're parenting and that it's messy and sticky. And it's just not cute. It's just not cute. I remember sitting at the mall with my daughter, having a whole conversation about my past with disordered eating and my whole body was like hot. And I just want, I did not want to do it. And I knew it was imperfect, but I had to just be honest. honest about how hard that had been for me just to like open the door to the narrative so that we could have more frank, honest conversation. And I really wanted to pretend that I had it all figured out and it was totally easy. And I could hand her this like neat package that would save her from suffering. And that's just not how it goes with teaching or parenting in my experience.
SPEAKER_00:Jess, if people want to learn more about body trust, and you mentioned some of those offerings coming up in 2026, but if they wanted to learn more about your work, what are the opportunities to do that?
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. So I would say if you are interested in body trust, I would highly recommend getting the book reclaiming body trust and digging into tons of offerings. They have short courses, longer courses, the year long certification that I am now loving and in the middle of. So I would just really recommend their body of work. I think it's an incredible intersection of, you know, like a social lens and an individual lens as well, which is what drew me to it. For me, you can find me at jessicawood1 on Instagram. I hope to be offering both local small groups and then possibly being involved with larger retreats in 2026 and they will all be there. Instagram's the best and the easiest for me.
SPEAKER_00:Great. Well, I will add your Instagram link to the bio, the show bio notes so people can find you there. Thank you so much, Jess, for your time today and for the work you're doing in the world.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I loved being here. I could talk forever. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad.
SPEAKER_00:If you want to learn more about previous podcasts or explore somatic coaching for yourself, check out www.myintermission.com. This month, I'm featuring a define your direction five session coaching package featuring somatic practices and intentional reflections that will help you gain clarity, get unstuck and move forward with purpose. Thanks for listening.