From Weight Watchers to Embracing Your Features.

Send us Fan Mail This week,I'm flying solo and I'm so excited to be chatting with the inspirational Christina Testut.  Christina is a fierce body image advocate as well as a published author and Kindergarten teacher, and is passionate about developing confidence and building a strong self esteem within her students.  As she says: "Changing the narrative around body image for our youngest generation and generations to come, has become my purpose." Christina talks honestly about going from being a Weight Watchers Cover Star, where she realised she was very "good" at losing weight, to the realisation that her behaviours had become disordered and that she desperately needed to make a change.  We talk about eating disorder recovery, body changes, the comments people make, and just how incredibly difficult it can be to recover when the world around you is still telling you that smaller is better. We also chatted about parenting, the messages we inevitably pass on to our kids,  and Christina’s wonderful children’s book Embrace Your Features — which invites us to reframe our 'flaws' as 'features'. It’s a really honest conversation about unlearning a lot of the things we’ve been taught about bodies, giving ourselves a LOT of grace, and remembering that there’s so much more to us than what we look like. Resources: Embrace Your Features by Christina Testut Food Isn't Medicine by Dr Joshua Wolrich The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor Unapologetic Aging by Deb Benfield You Are Not a Before Picture by Alex Light More Than A Body:Your Body Is An Instrument, Not An Ornament by @Lexie Kite and Lindsay Kite Fat Talk: Parenting In The Age of Diet Culture by Virginia Sole-Smith Support the show Please reach out if you would like some support with your relationship to food OR movement. Ela currently has limited spaces for Intuitive Eating coaching and if you'd like to reconnect with movement, contact Christine.  If you'd like exclusive access to our supporter-only channel click here. We appreciate you