Creating spaces of safety, dignity, and belonging for all bodies is what Jenn Hicks (she/her/hers) excels at. From Nia fitness, to personal training, to the work she does within the dementia community, Jenn shares how she brings a social justice lens into her whole life. She also shares some wisdom on how we can remain connected and embodied in a world that actively tries to disconnect us, and she helps shift Sophia’s mindset to be more generous with her 78-year-old mother-in-law’s adherence to diet culture.

Jenn Hicks is a Black Belt level Nia Instructor and a member of the Nia Training Faculty, and Nia forms an important part of her body neutrality journey and supports her in living with Bipolar Disorder. As part of her DEI efforts, Jenn is proud to be training brand new Nia teachers using an Embodied Social Justice framework. Jenn is also a Certified Personal Trainer and a Size Inclusive Fitness Specialist and Health At Every Size (HAES) informed instructor and is a proud member of the Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) and the HAES Community.

Spurned on by the Maintenance Phase podcast episode about the horror of fat camps, besties Alison Rampa (she/her/hers) and Erica Chiseck (she/her/hers) decided to redesign the experience of a fat camp into an actual fat-positive camp. Trophy’s for biggest cannonballs, gourmet s’mores, midriff-baring clothing, and telling anti-diet ghost stories around the campfire are all part of the experience of inviting women and women-identifying to take up space and reclaim the camp experience at Camp Roundup.

A $2 bargain book on intuitive eating dropped into Dr. Kerri Fullerton’s (she/her/hers) life as she was quickly becoming disenchanted after a year and a half of attending Overeaters Anonymous. Now, her practice centers around intuitive eating support, and she’s debunking the myths you’ve heard about what intuitive eating actually is.

Dr. Kerri Fullerton ND is a HAES-friendly naturopathic doctor (2003) and certified intuitive eating counsellor (2018). She believes that everybody deserves compassionate, competent, weight-neutral care. Through her own recovery from disordered eating and body image challenges, Kerri learned that you can’t hate yourself healthy. Food interventions are NOT low-risk and restrictions are very rarely necessary for good health (yep, including sugar). Using humour and compassion, she helps her patients develop body respect, reconcile their food rules, and reclaim their lives. Her greatest passion is raising a generation that doesn’t look to their body for happiness, confidence or self-worth.

Vicky Bellman (she/her/hers) embodies the thing that most of her clients are scared of- being fat. Her work with people across the weight spectrum calls into question all aspects of therapeutic support and how we talk about living and eating within diet culture. Also, Sophia becomes a Fat Elder.

Vicky is a therapist working in online private practice at Concentric Counselling - she's based in the UK with clients worldwide. She has particular areas of experience in trauma, and in working with disordered eating and eating disorders from a non diet, fat positive perspective. As a fat woman, many of her clients appreciate her lived experience of navigating the world in a bigger body. Joyful in her own fat identity, Vicky is passionate about supporting clients to embody this liberation, and create a more sustainable, fulfilling and affirming life. Vicky also works as a consultant with fellow therapists and healing pros who want to re-energise their practice or incorporate fat positivity into their practice.

Setting boundaries with people can be deeply scary, so Kami Orange (she/her/hers) is here to guide us through what to say and how to say it. As a recovering(?) people-pleaser, Sophia gets Kami’s advice on specific scenarios where fat & plus-size people often feel like they need to set a boundary but struggle to do so. And then Kami gives Sophia a huge a-ha moment with a few brilliant coaching questions.

Kami Orange is a fat queer autistic white cis woman. Raised in a small cult subset of Mormonism in Utah by religious extremists and leaving home at age 17, she has an eclectic background. Having been everything from a psychic medium to a business consultant, Kami learned through doing how to set kind but direct boundaries as she moved 27x across the United States. After years of getting boundary scripting requests from friends...then friends-of-friends...then friends-of-friends-of-friends, she became a Boundary Coach in February 2020. Almost two years later, Kami has 250k followers on TikTok @kami_orange, clients in 8 countries, and a book on the way!

Eating disorder treatment comes in many forms, and Alejandra Porta (she/her/hers) is sharing her 2-month inpatient treatment experience where she learned, much to her own surprise, how fatphobic she was towards herself. This deeply candid conversation explores the impact of emotionally abusive relationships, how being surrounded by diet culture complicated her recovery, how she learned to set boundaries and embrace self compassion and confidence.

Alejandra is a Nicaraguan designer, creator of “A Little Time for Your Journal” and “A Hug for You” affirmation deck, and co-creator of Shine Bootcamp, a speaker and confidence accelerator for women who believe design thinking can be applied to any discipline. Alejandra specializes in brand and communication design for startups and is currently living her dream by being her own boss as a freelancer. A champion for body positivity and health at any size, Alejandra was recently named of of eighty women and non-binary people to follow in tech by betakit, as well as being nominated for the “Women of Influence” award sponsored by RBC. In her spare time, she writes about mental health, radical self-acceptance and self compassion.

Dr. Rachel Millner (she/her/hers) spends most of her day talking to folks who are struggling with eating disorders and who want to heal their relationship with food and body. She’s taking us through how to handle it when our kids are deeply influenced by diet culture and anti-fat bias using impactful conversations and opting out.

Rachel Millner, Psy.D. is a psychologist and activist in private practice in PA. Rachel has been working with those with eating disorders, disordered eating, and those wanting to heal their relationship with food and body since 2005. Rachel is a fat positive provider and works from a Health at Every Size(r) and Body Trust(r) framework. In addition to her clinical work, Rachel frequently gives talks on topics such as eating disorders in higher weight people and providing fat positive therapy. Rachel has been interviewed for numerous publications about eating disorders and has been interviewed on many podcasts about her work. Rachel also supervises therapists wanting to learn how to provide HAES therapy. Rachel identifies as a fat activist and works to counter anti-fat bias in the culture and eating disorder communities.

Continually unpacking internalized fatphobia is part of Trevia Woods’ (she/her/hers) intergenerational trauma practice. Her years spent figuring out how to live with PCOS, experiences living in China and Saudi Arabia, and then becoming a mom were key stepping stones on her body acceptance journey. And Trevia’s expertise in supporting people to connect to their lineage helps Sophia soften some hard feelings towards her late grandmother.

Vivienne McMaster (she/her) helps people find their way into a more compassionate, connected, and accepting relationship with the person looking back at them in selfies. She speaks to how photos aren’t just a product but can be a way into conversation with a body healing process. Sophia explores how her own safety boundaries in photoshoots have changed and contemplates her next ‘danger zone.’

Vivienne McMaster is a Body Acceptance Photographer, Trauma Informed Coach and Certified Body Trust Provider. She works with folks through online classes, coaching and photo sessions to shift how they feel about the person looking back at them in photos. The camera and self-portraiture helped her heal her own negative body image. She's now on a mission to share these tools and help folks choose compassion over critique and return to body trust, one photo at a time.

Meg Elison (she/they), author extraordinaire and lover of fat fashion, is here to talk about her latest book Number One Fan (that Sophia read in 24 hours), what it’s like to navigate the publishing industry as a fat person, and how fashion forms her rebellion against societal body standards. She also takes us back to her experience with her mom’s bariatric surgery and how that radically realigned how she felt about her fat body as a young person.