Thrive at Every Size
with Chelsea! The HAES Babe
Intuitive Eater
Body Liberator
Health at Every Size Warrior
Chelsea Schneider
Anti-Diet Well-Being Coach
I am Health at Every Size (HAES)-informed, which means anti-diet, anti-diet culture, and that changing your body will never be the end goal of our time together. I am passionate about working with people who:
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are sick of diets and want out
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want to be their authentic selves
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are part of marginalized communities: Black, Indigenous, People of Color; Neurodivergent; LGBTQ; larger-bodied; disabled; women; etc.
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believe in equity and dignity for all people
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believe that systemic structures of oppression exist
If applicable, we also work together to manage and cope with the systemic oppression of fat people, as well as other intersectionalities, in order to advocate for proper care and support within existing systems.
your chance to. . .
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Wake up energized
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Believe that it's not your fault
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Tell yourself "I'm doing a good job"
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Look at yourself in the mirror without immediately finding flaws (literally and figuratively)
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wear the dress
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go biking
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cannonball into the pool
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eat the donut
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eat ALLLLL the donuts
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kick diet culture in the butt
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Get the medical care you deserve
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Appreciate your always-changing body
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If you love salad, eat the salad BECAUSE you love salad
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Fight the Patriarchy
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Take no Sh%t
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Give zero F%#$
go from surviving to thriving!
My Philosophy
I've been throwing around a lot of terms and ideas!
Definitions and explanations can be found below and provide the framework within which I operate.
Well-Being Coach
A well-being coach practices in a way that prioritizes an individual's true mental, physical, and emotional balance, without the baggage of the term that "wellness" now carries in our society today, while still helping turn dreams into reality.
Health At Every Size® is a social justice movement and weight-inclusive approach to health. Contrary to popular misconception, it does not mean healthy at every size. It does not say that everyone, no matter their size, is “healthy.”
HAES stands for the right to pursue health in personally meaningful ways, no matter one’s size.
Diet Culture
From Christy Harrison
"Diet culture is a system of beliefs that:
Worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue, which means you can spend your whole life thinking you’re irreparably broken just because you don’t look like the impossibly thin 'ideal.'
Promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status, which means you feel compelled to spend a massive amount of time, energy, and money trying to shrink your body, even though the research is very clear that almost no one can sustain intentional weight loss for more than a few years.
Demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others, which means you’re forced to be hyper-vigilant about your eating, ashamed of making certain food choices, and distracted from your pleasure, your purpose, and your power.
Oppresses people who don't match up with its supposed picture of 'health,' which disproportionately harms women, femmes, trans folks, people in larger bodies, people of color, and people with disabilities, damaging both their mental and physical health."
Intersectionality
Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. The term was conceptualized and coined by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in a paper in 1989. Wikipedia
Fatphobia
An irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against fatness. Fatphobia manifests itself almost everywhere, from the food we eat to the clothes we wear, to the doctors we see. It is one of the main causes of weight stigma, which in turn contributes to some of the most undesirable health outcomes, such as heart disease and high cholesterol.
Body and Fat Liberation
Virgie Tovar said it best. Here is a little snippet, "To me, fat liberation is knowing that my body is not wrong because it is fat; it is the culture that is wrong for discriminating against and stigmatizing my body." Read the rest here
Intuitive Eating
From Evelyn Tribole's website, "Intuitive Eating is an evidenced-based, mind-body health approach, comprised of 10 Principles and created by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in 1995. It is a weight-neutral model with a validated assessment scale and over 90 studies to date (Tribole 2017). It’s thrilling to see all the research and gives me great hope. Intuitive Eating is a dynamic integration between mind and body. The principles work by either cultivating or removing obstacles to body awareness, a process known as interoceptive awareness. Essentially, Intuitive Eating is a personal process of honoring health by listening and responding to the direct messages of the body in order to meet your physical and psychological needs."
Healthism
Healthism is the belief that following certain behaviors is morally "good," while not behaving in those prescribed ways is morally "bad." Moreover, Healthism is used as the gate the separates those who are "deserving" of quality of life-improving and even life-saving procedures and treatments, and those who don't. Lastly, not everyone has the privilege of being healthy. Healthism necessitates, that some will always be left out in the cold through no fault of their own, without access to care.
When I talk with people about why they have spent so much of their lives pursuing weight loss, inevitably they tell me it's because they want to be loved, they want to be seen, they want to be treated with humanity. Everyone wants those things. Everyone deserves those things. I have never met someone who wants to lose weight because it's something they think is fun or interesting or inherently useful.