Ten Podcasts That Dismantle Diet Culture

It’s that time of year again: Time to start getting assaulted by messages of bikini bodies, fad diets, and fitting into jeans that haven’t fit you in decades. If you’re trying to get healthy (and stay sane), it can be tough to mute all the noise and focus on what feels right for your own body, and not anyone else's. These podcasts challenge all the toxic messages we get about dieting, help explain why your brain might listen to them, and encourage you to laugh through all of it.

Rebel Eaters Club

Join the revolution of Rebel Eaters Club, the podcast that will help you break up with diet culture. Host Virgie Tovar, a writer and activist, tackles intuitive eating, food culture, and enjoying the hell out of meals with friends. She's smart, joyous, real, open, and uplifting, discussing these issues in interviews and dazzling conversations that are as fun as they are informative. This is the place where "pizza" isn’t a bad word. Say yes to the cheese fries. 

Fad Camp

Diet culture is notoriously toxic, but if you think about it, it can be funny, too. Right? I mean how ridiculous are "revenge bodies?" On Fad Camp, comedians Conor Dowling and Grace Mulvey bring humor to their sharp takedowns on the wellness trap, fat camps, the BMI, wedding diets, and more. They’re your friends who will remind you that it’s okay to say F-you to all those messages you get about thigh gaps and bikini bodies—all while laughing about it, too. Fad Camp is a blast to listen to, and is the perfect pick-me-up for anyone experiencing a moment (or entire life) of body doubt.

Food, We Need to Talk

Food, We Need to Talk isn’t just inspiring (it is) and it isn’t just funny (it’s that, too); it’s science based. Juna Gjata, a woman who has struggled with body image, is paired with Dr. Eddie Phillips (Assistant Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard) to take on everything from fiber supplements to artificial sweeteners with lots of info and a little bit of sarcasm. (Ozempic? Eye roll.) It can be fun to talk to funny, relatable friends about diet culture, and that’s why Juna is there. But it’s also nice to have someone like Dr. Eddie there to confirm that your doubts about dieting are correct, and that you can usually trust your gut (no pun intended) when it comes to feeding yourself and caring for your body. Whatever stage you are in when it comes to body acceptance, you’ll find a lot to extract from Juna and Dr. Eddie’s fun, fact-filled conversations. 

This Is (Not) About Your Body

You've heard of body positivity, but have you heard of body neutrality? It emphasizes a neutral and accepting attitude toward one's own body, without placing undue focus on its appearance or societal beauty standards. In the world of body neutrality, your body just…is. It’s great, no matter what. That’s what This Is (Not) About Your Body is about. Body image coach Jessi Kneeland, author of BODY NEUTRAL: A Revolutionary Guide to Overcoming Body Image Issues, explores the deep issues that impact our body images and features interviews with experts on everything it touches—mental health, beauty ideals, sexuality, gender, and more. 

Rethinking Wellness

From Christy Harrison MPH, RD, CEDS, author of The Wellness Trap and Anti-Diet, and host of Food Psych Podcast (another good one! Check it out!), Rethinking Wellness challenges all those things like "clean eating" and alternative medicine that are sold to us as wellness tactics, and gets honest about the truths behind them. It’s the anti-wellness podcast that will help you get closer to wellness, if that makes sense. Christy exposes the wellness industry for what it is, revealing the technically smart but toxic marketing tactics it uses to keep us obsessed with our bodies. Once you learn that so much of wellness is smoke and mirrors, you can’t unlearn it. The genie is out of the seed oil bottle.

Weight For It

Ronald Young Jr. is fat, and on his podcast Weight for It, which was selected in Tribeca’s 2023 Official Audio Storytelling Series, he’s talking about it. Weight for It is part narrative storytelling, part personal memoir—and it gets extremely personal. Every episode is a deep exploration into his own desirability, his shame, and his relationships. He even brings his mic into the doctor’s office, so we can hear the completely absurd ways that doctors often treat fat people.

Maintenance Phase

When Michael Hobbes left You’re Wrong About, he put his energy into Maintenance Phase, the show he co-hosts with Aubrey Gordon that explores and critiques popular health and wellness trends and products. With tons of notes and a lot of rage-laughter, Michael and Aubrey run through the worst diets, exercise trends, supplements, beauty products, and "nutrition" books, evaluating whether they are actually effective or if they are based on misleading or harmful information. (It’s almost always the latter.) If you hate the BMI, were led astray by the food pyramid in the ‘90s, or roll your eyes every time your friend goes on and on about their latest cleanse, you’ll appreciate their myth-busting efforts.

Life After Diets

Diets don’t work. So what does? Once you’ve decided you’re ready to kick the D word to the curb, you might need some help from your new friends, intuitive eating coach Stefanie Michele and psychotherapist Sarah Dosanjh, hosts of Life After Diets. They talk all things disordered eating and bad body image, drawing from their own eating struggles to inform you and make you feel like you’re not alone. And if you feel like you are alone, you’re wrong. I just introduced you to two people who will guide you to a life free from body obsession. 

Go Love Yourself

2020 Great British Bake Off finalist Laura Adlington and her best friend Lauren Smith are the duo behind Go Love Yourself, the bold show that fights back against the messaging that so many of us grew up with in the '90s and '00s—that we should be watching our waistlines, that fat was unhealthy, and that…we should all be wearing skinny jeans? They’re inviting you to unlearn it all with love, confidence, and friendship, covering things like body dysmorphia, "almond moms," cosmetic surgery, and opinionated family members. Go F yourself, diets. And you, go love yourself.

We Can Do Hard Things

We Can Do Hard Things isn’t a podcast specifically about diet culture, it’s about (as you might guess) how to do hard things. But for many of us, one of those things is living in a body. Tamed author and thought leader Glennon Doyle recently came out very publicly about her anorexia, and has been an open book about her process in getting healthy and unlearning the things that got her here. So many stories focus on people who are already recovered, not the messy middle, and that's part of what makes We Can Do Hard Things so great. Along with her sister, Amanda, and wife—Abby Wambach, one of the most accomplished female soccer players in the sport's history—Glennon shares mind-shifting insights and epiphanies about her own recovery, fatphobia, and how to flip the dangerous dieting rhetoric on its head. She also shares other, related tips, like how to maintain friendships, get along with partners, and disable imposter syndrome. Often, all this stuff trickles down into body issues. So if your New Year’s Resolution is to stop caring about dieting, this show will help you on your journey.