Talking with Emma: Stop fighting food & weight
Talking with Emma is the podcast for women who are tired of obsessive food thinking, struggling with body image and feeling like food and weight is the one thing they can’t get sorted.
I’m Emma Wright — feminist health coach, author, and someone who knows exactly how exhausting it is to live like not matter how much you try, your health is never quite “good enough.”
After years of controlling my weight, focusing on food, exercising harder, and constantly feeling like a failure, I discovered something different — and more powerful:
Coaching tools that help you trust yourself again - and take charge of your health the way you want to.
Each episode, I’ll share the tools I use with clients who want relief health feeling so confusing — and who are ready end emotional eating, stop thinking about food all the time and improve their body image.
If you’re ready for those things, this podcast is for you.
📥 Want to go deeper?
Download the Self-Assessment — a free tool to evaluate what’s really going on beneath the food and body thinking.
Curious about working together?
I’m currently welcoming new 1:1 clients. Book a no-cost consultation where we’ll talk about how to achieve the health goals you have and what kind of support you need to do that, and of course, whether coaching with me feels like the right fit.
Talking with Emma: Stop fighting food & weight
64: Weight Neutral Approach in ED Peer Support with Meg Vardy
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[This episode is part of the Weight-Neutral Health Care In Aotearoa NZ Series]
This week I'm talking with Dr. Meg Vardy, founding chair of JourneyED, about why taking weight off the table is central to eating disorder peer support, and what it actually means to rebuild trust with your own body. In this episode:
- What peer support actually is, how it's different from clinical treatment and recovery coaching, and why "fixing" or diagnosing isn't the job
- Why a weight-neutral approach to peer support matters, and how eating disorders that don't fit the "underweight" stereotype get missed
- The U-shaped relationship between weight and health, why BMI doesn't hold up, and how framing obesity as a disease creates its own harm
- Why moralising food and bodies (even well-meaning tools like Health Star Ratings) keeps people stuck
On rebuilding trust with your body: "My body is for me, my body is safe, and my body is home." Meg's words on what it's taken to get there — and why it's still very much an ongoing practice, not a switch you flip.
About Meg Vardy: Meg grew up in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) and now lives in Ōtepoti (Dunedin) with her whānau. She has a background as an academic researcher, including time in London researching psilocybin-assisted treatment for anorexia (recently published). Meg has lived experience of anorexia and is the founding chair of JourneyED, Aotearoa New Zealand's eating disorder peer support organisation.
Connect with JourneyED: Website [link]
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Unshrinking by Kate Manne: https://www.katemanne.net/unshrinking.html
- Mrs D is not on a Diet: https://www.unitybooks.co.nz/products/mrs-d-is-not-on-a-diet
- Bite Back by Genevieve Mora: https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/bite-back-9781776950447
- Body Confident by Emma Wright: https://www.harpercollins.co.nz/9781775542421/body-confident/
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