#253: Diet Culture in Black Communities and in the Church with Joy Cox, Author of FAT GIRLS IN BLACK BODIES

Food Psych Podcast with Christy Harrison

Researcher and author Joy Cox returns to the podcast to discuss her new book, Fat Girls in Black Bodies; diet culture in Black communities and in the church; her evolving relationship with movement, and how it inspired her to co-create the Jabbie app; how to respond to internalized weight stigma and bias; and so much more. Plus, Christy answers a listener question about how to deal with your disordered-eating past following you around the internet.

Joy Arlene Renee Cox is an ordinary person who has been given an ordinary opportunity to share stories about people much more fabulous than herself. She is a Philadelphia native, born on the blessed thirty-first day of December. Joy is a claircognizant Capricorn that thrives through connection and love, rooting for the underdogs in life to take their rightful place as overcomers. She is also a doctor, receiving her PhD from Rutgers University–New Brunswick in 2018. Her field of work is centered on fatness, identity, and social change.

Reflective of the name she bears, Joy has the cheeks to out smile her detractors. Reflective of her work in print, she has the research to back up her claims. While the spotlight has never been a position she’d prefer to stand in, Joy does believe in speaking up and advocating for what’s right. She is the author of Fat Girls in Black Bodies: Creating Communities of Our Own, published through North Atlantic Books, and the host of the pro-fat, pro-Black podcast Fresh Out the Cocoon.

Joy has been featured in articles by the Huffington Post and SELF magazine. Joy has also been on several podcasts, such as Positive Nutrition with Paige Smathers and Food Psych with Christy Harrison. Dr. Cox is simply a conduit through which love, wisdom, and justice flow. Her pride is in her people and her values. Her strength is in her disposition and her intuition. Find her online at DrJoyCox.com.

For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, go to christyharrison.com/foodpsych.

Ask your own question about intuitive eating, Health at Every Size, or eating disorder recovery at christyharrison.com/questions.

Christy's book, Anti-Diet, is available wherever you get your books. Order online at christyharrison.com/book, or at local bookstores across North America, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Grab Christy's free guide, 7 simple strategies for finding peace and freedom with food, for some ideas of how to get started on the anti-diet path.

If you're ready to break free from diet culture once and for all, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.