Diet culture isn’t inside us when we come into this world. We aren’t born with judgment of our bodies or the bodies around us. And we don’t experience food as anything other than love, safety, comfort, and energy. Until, of course, we begin absorbing the messages—and more often than not, it starts in our own home.
Body shame is like a family heirloom.
It’s passed down through caregivers, not because they wanted to harm us, but because they were handed the same set of fears, rules, and “shoulds.”
Thinness as safety.
Control as care.
Body monitoring as love.
Like many of us, therapists Ashley Wilfore and Sarah Louer inherited diet culture from their mothers. In today’s conversation, we talk about this as intergenerational trauma—not in a dramatic, abstract way, but in the everyday ways it shows up: comments made in passing, diets framed as concern, bodies talked about like projects that need managing. Messages that started early and lived in us quietly for decades.
I’m re-sharing this episode now for two reasons:
First, because I went in for emergency surgery last week and needed to practice some self-compassion with the podcast schedule. (yesss, I’m patting myself on the back!)
Second, because we’re in a moment where body control is being aggressively rebranded as neutral, responsible, and even inevitable. Weight loss is once again framed as the obvious solution, the compassionate choice, the thing you’re supposed to want. And that has a way of waking up old patterns—especially for people who have spent years trying to untangle their worth from their body, and especially for parents who are terrified of passing the same harm down another generation.
Ashley and Sarah and speak with honesty, compassion, and humor about their experiences letting go of the pursuit of thinness, and the real, messy, imperfect ways they’re raising their own children while being cycle-breakers.
Tune in to hear more about:
What’s on their plates (hint: foods to eat when you’re sick, and an ode to eggplant...)
A clinical and personal definition of “intergenerational trauma”
What it was like to grow up absorbing dieting and body shame as “normal”
Why thinness became equated with power in families full of otherwise strong, independent women
Specific childhood moments that shaped beliefs they carried into adulthood
Overhearing the women they looked up to talking about their own bodies
The moments they realized they couldn’t keep dieting and over-exercising
The intentional decisions they made as mothers to protect their kids from diet and body talk
How they handle their parents’ anti-fat bias today
One gentle note before you listen: if you’re reading this as a mom and feeling that familiar ache—the awareness that this was handed to you, alongside the fear of handing it down—please hear this. This conversation is for you, not about you. It’s an invitation to sit together in the complexity, to hold compassion without denying harm, and to imagine what it could look like to loosen this grip, one generation at a time.
If this episode brought anything up for you—memories, discomfort, clarity, or questions—I’d really love to hear about it.
Feel free to share in the comments what resonated, what felt familiar, or what you’re still thinking about. I value your thoughts, your questions, and your feedback so much.
