(Un)Wellness in The Workplace. How toxic diet culture invades your 9-5 with Emily Durham aka Emily The Recruiter

On today’s episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, I am chatting with content creator Emily Durham, also known online as Emily the Recruiter, about diet culture in the workplace. We will be discussing the intersection of sexism, hustle culture and diet culture, fatphobic hiring practices, problematic workplace “wellness culture”, and how women engage disordered eating under the guise of productivity. I will also be leaving you with some sassy responses for diet culture comments in the workplace. Don’t forget to Please subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review! It really helps us out. Check in with today’s amazing guest Emily Durham! Tiktok : @Emily.the.recruiter Instagram: @Emily.the.recruiter Youtube: @emily.durham Podcast: Straight Shooter Recruiter podcast Research links: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hidden-career-cost-of-being-overweight-68f4b8e7 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/573892/employment-outcomes-of-drug-or-alcohol-addiction-and-obesity-print. PDF https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02206/full https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/eat.22966 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-28946-012 Trigger Warning: We briefly mention disordered eating and eating disorders in this episode. If you have heard yourself in our discussion today, and are looking for support, contact the free NEDIC helpline at 1-866-NEDIC-20 or go to eatingdisorderhope.com. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✨ Reach Your Weight & Health Goals — Without Dieting! Pre-order The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, Abbey’s revolutionary additive approach to eating well. Learn how to boost satiety, stabilize blood sugars, reduce disease risk, and improve your relationship with food — all while getting the best nutrient bang for your caloric buck. With 400+ research citations, cheat sheets, evidence-based actionable tips, meal plans, and adaptable recipes, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method is the only nutrition bible you’ll ever need. 👉 Pre-order today! 🛒 Where to Purchase: Amazon Barnes & Noble Amazon Kindle Apple Books Google Play Kobo Apple Books (Audiobook) Audible abbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✉️ Subscribe to My Newsletters: Abbey’s Kitchen Newsletter 📘 Check out my FREE E-Books: Hunger Crushing Combo™ E-Book Protein 101 E-Book 👋 Follow me! Instagram: @abbeyskitchen TikTok: @abbeyskitchen YouTube: @AbbeysKitchen Blog: abbeyskitchen.com Book: The Mindful Glow Cookbook • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — and leave us a review! It really helps support the show ❤️ 💬 If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review — and let me know who you’d love to hear about next! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  The challenge is now what we eat is a spectacle. Everybody gets to see what time we go up for lunch. Are you first in line? How full is that plate? Did you get the low calorie salad or did you go for the noodles?

• 0:48Abbey Sharp?

  Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abby Sharp.

• 0:57Abbey Sharp?

  For most adults, work is the second home. I mean, in this economy, it might be a lot of our first homes. But on average, adults spend a shocking third of our life at work. So the relationships we foster and the messages we receive in those relationships can be incredibly influential. The good, the bad, and the deity. Today's guest is Emily Durham, or Emily the Recruiter, as you may know her on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, where she has combined more than 1 million followers, eating up her advice, tips, and tricks for helping you not only to just survive, but to thrive in your 9 to 5 and well beyond. She's also the host of the Straight Shooter Recruiter Podcast.

• 1:41Abbey Sharp?

  Emily is a longtime executive recruiter, career coach, and speaker, so she is well-versed in the multitude of ways that workplace and diet culture intersect, particularly, of course, for women.

• 1:57Abbey Sharp?

  Well, thank you so much for joining me, Emily. I'm so excited about this. And you know, I've admittedly never worked in the corporate world. I've basically never set foot in an office. So, most of my experience with office life comes from like a lot of my girlfriends and their war stories. And I feel like usually they're telling me about all the sexist experiences that they've had. But I was totally not surprised when I saw your video about diet culture in the workplace. So, you know, obviously this appears in a myriad of ways. Where do we start? But I know you used to kind of work in hiring and HR. So, let's talk about hiring practices for a second. Like, what have you seen? What do you think may be going on behind the scenes in some cases?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Firstly, thank you for having me. Secondly, I'm thrilled you haven't had to work in the corporate setting because I feel it's fantastic. She hurts a little bit.

• 2:47Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  So, I think from a hiring perspective, I mean, the issue with bias in hiring is that bias isn't what people think it is in the movies. It's not someone saying, "I'm not hiring you because of this and I'm explicitly telling you." It's all of these little things that happen behind the scenes, right? And that's for all intersections of identity. I think one we don't talk about a lot is the intersections of like fat phobia and our relationship to food and exercise and our bodies and how that actually can largely inform hiring practices. So, you're very rarely going to hear someone explicitly say, "Not hiring this person because they're 20," or "Not hiring this person because they're 60."

• 3:21Abbey Sharp?

  Of course, because it's illegal.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  It's because it do be illegal. So, I think what's interesting about it is when it comes to how we look at health and wellness and how that's packaged in corporate America and corporate Canada, is we often talk about taking care of your body, you know, exercising, going to the gym, eating well. All of those things mean you're going to take less sick days. So, better for bottom line, businesses love that.

• 3:42Abbey Sharp?

  Of course.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  We'll surely have to get into how businesses feed into this. But when we look at hiring practices, it's not uncommon for people to ask questions like, "What do you do for fun? Oh, are you into sports? Oh, long walks? Do you like to walk?" It's almost like a lot of these organizations start to poke and prod about how much are you investing into "my perception of your wellness and health," quote unquote, as if you have a straightforward answer. To that because they're automatically tying that to, okay, this is a person who has a body that I perceive to be fit. Who has a lifestyle that I perceive to be healthy. Why don't I move forward with them? This person's not a liability from like a sick days and taking time off perspective. By the way, which is nuts. That's not how things work.

• 4:21Abbey Sharp?

  Right, for sure. And you know, it's interesting because there is some research on this, like you said, like. We don't talk about it, like people aren't asking these questions explicitly, but they're kind of asking about it in a roundabout way. And there's a study that I read that suggested that 11% of HR execs. Have said that an applicant's weight, which I assume they can actually see in an interview. Has been a factor in their decision to hire them. And then another study found that larger body folks earned 9% lower wages than normal body folks. So this thing, this is happening. And like you said, there's often this perception that, you know, somebody's weight. Automatically equals their health, which, you know, sick days, but then people get sick too.

• 5:06Abbey Sharp?

  And I'm not suggesting that, you know, these things are not correlated, weight and, you know, health and, and, and illness. But then people get sick too. And I think that there's also this ongoing stereotype of fat people being lazy, unmotivated, incompetent. These are longstanding stereotypes and assumptions that are very dangerous ultimately.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  100%. And I think what is like largely informing this is we have to look at who makes hiring decisions. You've got companies that are like young and fresh and you've got folks who have had access to studies like this. And I've had access to conversations like the ones that you have online. But you've got a really large demographic of key decision makers. Who don't have access to that information or choose not to have access to that information. And they're largely being informed by ultimately was what was stereotypical education practices. Like for them BMI is still Bible, like all of these things that are not like we know based on modern studies and science. We know better. So you look at who's making those hiring calls and it's not surprising, but it still is really disappointing.

• 6:10Abbey Sharp?

  Right, 100%. So lots of intersections here, obviously. So, you know.

• 6:15Abbey Sharp?

  Speaking of intersections, what do you think it is about the workplace that allows diet culture to flourish so easily?

• 6:22Speaker 01

  How much time do we have? Because I, oh my goodness, I could talk for hours. I think the first is, and I talk about this all the time, is we have a perceived level of closeness with people that we work with, right? So you're 40 hours a week and you have a lot of trust in the context of work. And people end up spilling over that workplace trust into the real life trust. That's why you come in from that bad date and you go, Suzie, you're not gonna believe it took me for coffee, it was horrible. You start talking about that brother-in-law that drives you nuts. And then I think people get a little bit too comfortable making comments about their bodies and the bodies of people around them. It's almost like this perceived closeness. So you've kind of got this like weird closeness factor that's happening. The other thing is, I don't think we talk enough about how closely intersected or closely intertwined hustle culture and diet culture is.

• 7:07Abbey Sharp?

  Yes.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Because those two are, those two are besties.

• 7:10Abbey Sharp?

  Oh god.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Those are two peas in a pod. You've got old-school hustle culture that tells us, work your overtime, be the first in, last out, work through lunch. Because that's how the big boys get promoted. You've got that kind of stress hanging over you. But then you've got this culture of people who perceive to be, are, you know, perceived to be very close, aren't in reality very close, who start to project their own insecurities strictly out of comfort and access to the people around them. And then suddenly you've got this hustle culture plus diet culture of, oh, I'm gonna work through lunch. You know, I've got a big project, I'll just skip it, or I was bad last night at the team dinner, so I'm gonna skip lunch. And it becomes this really scary hodgepodge.

• 7:46Abbey Sharp?

  Yep. And I can see that 100%. I actually did a video on my YouTube channel about hustle culture and my own experience with hustle culture. And as somebody who suffered from an eating disorder, you know, several years ago, I can admit that I probably used that as a tactic in order to kind of, you know, get around going to dinner. I would say, oh, I gotta work late, or I gotta study, and you know, you use that as an excuse, and it's so easily. And I also think that the, the, the belief system underlying hustle culture and diet culture is often very much similar, right? This no pain, no gain, kind of, we equate.

• 8:25Abbey Sharp?

  You know, how our willpower with moral superiority and you know, our worth and our value. So yeah, I absolutely see how easy that is to happen.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  It's crushing. And then you also think about, like, I remember starting in the corporate world, former employer, if you're listening, torn it off. Like, you are a 19-year-old young girl on a team of people you respect and perceive to be very successful and have all of these things you're aiming for. And you're watching them absorb those same really unhealthy habits they learned from the generations before them. And it's at what point, you know, do we start having these conversations to break that cycle? Because I would be devastated if the 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds today in their internships are having those same conversations.

• 9:06Abbey Sharp?

  For sure. And you know, I'm just thinking about the hustle culture thing and this grindset, this, this.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  I've never heard that before.

• 9:13Abbey Sharp?

  The grindset, like the mindset of grindset, yeah. So it's like, obviously productivity is our top concern in that situation. The ironic thing about this intersection here is it's not good for productivity, right? Like, our brain needs fuel to function, not to mention like all of the mental energy in gymnastics that goes on when you're thinking about that meal or you're feeling guilty about that meal. You know, that energy could be put towards work, right?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  And also the whole working through lunch of it all, even forgetting like impacts to body, which we shouldn't be forgetting for skipping lunch. Studies show that you are actually the most productive when you take your breaks.

• 9:54Abbey Sharp?

  Hundred percent.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  If you're true, and this is where like you have to poke the holes in the like the hustle culture of it all. The like, I'm doing this to be a star employee, truly, truly star employees. Like, the people who are getting to the top value their rest, value fueling their body. Because there's no other way to do it all well without doing that. And I think that's kind of like the veil that we tend to hide behind.

• 10:14Abbey Sharp?

  Hundred percent. And you know, I know that the workplace has obviously changed so much in the past year, a few years, especially post-COVID, right? So now, from what I've been told, like, food is very much part of the compensation package, right? We think about Apple, we think about Google. I think that's great. I'm like, what a perk.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Sign me up.

• 10:33Abbey Sharp?

  Right? Like, free food in this economy? Yes, please. But let's talk about how this perk is perceived for a generation who are deeply engrossed in diet culture. Like, talk to me about the conversations that surround that kind of communal meal.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, the lunchroom is kind of a spectacle, right? So the reason that food is now seen as part of your compensation package is employers had to get us back to the office, right? They had to get us back in the room. And if you want Gen Z back in a room, there better be butter croissants.

• 11:06Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  You better feed me. So that becomes part of the incentive. It becomes an element of community in the office. I think that inherently is really positive.

• 11:15Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  That's a shared space. That's like, let's grab our coffee, let's grab our snack, let's chit chat. And we tend to be more productive when we work in those spaces. All of that is fine. The challenge is now what we eat is a spectacle. Everybody gets to see what time we go up for lunch. Are you first in line? How full is that plate? Did you get the low calorie salad or did you go for the noodles? There's so many different things that are now ultimately like we're animals in a zoo. You go up to the lunchroom and you get to observe. And I think a lot of the pressure, especially that the younger generation feels is twofold. One, there is a culture of social media at work now. If you look up eat lunch with me at Google, you will get thousands of videos on TikTok. And it's people showing off what they're eating. And again, inherently that is fantastic.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  But there's also this fear of people are very aware of what's happening on their plate and around their plate. So how do people perceive how I'm ingesting food? The second part is now that it's a social element, people are talking about, oh, I can't have that. Or, oh, I shouldn't do that. And it really starts to spark these conversations. Like all roads lead back to the perceived closeness that we have with our teams.

• 12:19Abbey Sharp?

  Gosh. Yeah, I can, I can, I can't even imagine that. I feel like that can be so triggering for a lot of folks. And like you said, when, when the meal is served communally and everyone's being offered the same options. You know, you're not bringing your own meal in to lunch. It breeds comparison and surveillance, you know, especially for women. You're, you're, you're bound to be looking at the thin woman's, you know, your thin colleague's plate and think, oh, you know, I really should be eating what she's having. Or, or, you know, cut back on my portions. Or you're comparing yourself to your male colleagues and you're chastising yourself because you took a little bit more rice or potatoes than a man, right?

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:58Abbey Sharp?

  You know, unfortunately, food choices today are still very much quite. And obviously, the workplace is still very much quite gendered. And so when your options, when your food is the same and the options are the same, all you can really do as a woman to kind of differentiate yourself, to to claim that femininity is to eat less or to not eat. And there's also that social piece, like, you know, you mentioned of, you know, the discussions that are happening around it, where a lot of women kind of make decisions about what they're going to eat based on the decisions of others. You're not just like thinking, oh, you know what? Today I feel like a salad. And so that's what I'm going to go for. You're going to ask your girlfriends, are we being bad today? Are we getting the pizza? Or we went out last night, like, everyone's just going to skip lunch and go grab a coffee and get some steps.

• 13:44Abbey Sharp?

  Right, where we've become so out of touch with our own needs as women that we are just collectively deciding what it is, what is appropriate to eat and what's not appropriate.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think the scary part, too, is even though we don't talk about the implications of how our perceived health, like emphasis on the air quotes, impacts our careers, ability to be promoted, and how much people perceive us to be competent in the workplace. We know that inherently, that our small body gets rewarded. You never get the compliment, oh, you've put on weight, you look so healthy. It's always, oh, my gosh, what did you do? You look like you lost a full pant size. You don't get rewarded by society for taking up more space. And I think that tends to like trickle into how we think about career and work. And all that pressure at lunch, like, whether we realize it or not, it's all coming from that same place.

• 14:28Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 14:41Abbey Sharp?

  You know, you mentioned earlier the kind of the commentary that's kind of always happening, whether, you know, it is you lost weight. You know, normally, we don't say anything if you've gained weight. But there's a lot of danger also in kind of commenting on people's weight loss as well. Like, we don't know if that happened because of tragedy, from sickness, from an eating disorder, especially when we kind of came back into the office after not seeing our bodies, because we've been on Zoom for so long. There was that, of course, temptation to jump on. Someone be like, you look different, right? You've lost weight and to compliment them automatically. And then the kind of the insults are kind of served as like backhanded compliments about like, oh,

• 15:24Abbey Sharp?

  you're having the donut, oh, you know, like that, like I could never, I could never, I wish I could do that.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:30Abbey Sharp?

  Obviously, that's also gonna stir up some insecurities and trigger folks. So you just can't win, right?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  You can't. And this is where, if you're an employer and you're listening, girl, can we stick to work from home?

• 15:44Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, please.

• 15:45Abbey Sharp?

  So much easier.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  So much easier. And you think about the safety folks who have like challenging relationships with food can have. You get to decide when your lunch is. Nobody is observing what you're eating. Maybe you're having, you know, breakfast for lunch and you love that. Whatever that looks like for you, you get to decide. It's no longer a spectacle. But I think there was so much added pressure coming back into the office where we haven't seen people and there's this like excitement and anxiety and need to perform that we've done well over the last however many years. And for a lot of us, that means, yeah, yeah, I did the health kick over COVID.

• 16:18Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  You also survived a global pandemic. You didn't have to be doing a health kick. You had to just be getting up and getting through the day. And you did that. So we're good. I think work from home provides a really safe cushion for folks to tune in with their bodies and what they need and less about the spectacle of how I'm perceived in the lunchroom.

• 16:35Abbey Sharp?

  And do you ever feel or see these conversations amongst your male colleagues? Or is this predominantly female, you know?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  It's hard. I think occasionally I hear about the relationship to food and how much men eat at work through the lens of their fitness goals. Oh, fellas, I'm grabbing a bit more about this. It's bulking season. And that may be true. For women, we also are allowed to have that. Like, there's so many complexities with how, you know, you want to fuel your body. But men speak about it through the lens of positivity and health and I have goals. I have never heard a man speak in a self-deprecating way at work when it comes to getting that donut beyond a, oof, little full, maybe. Maybe we shouldn't have reached for that one. But it's not typically coming from a place of, and not to say it doesn't, but most commonly, I'm hearing women making it a moral reflection of themselves versus men will say, little extra full.

• 17:27Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, maybe next time I'll do something different.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. And but it's very rarely coming from a place of, I've let myself down. It's just a, it's a statement of fact.

• 17:37Abbey Sharp?

  And obviously, men do suffer from eating disorders and body dysmorphia and have these struggles as well. So we don't want to, I don't want to, you know, that's a, that's a whole episode for another day. Super important, but you're right, there isn't that, that internalization to the same degree when it comes to those food choices, or they don't vocalize it. And I think that's the difference. It's become just socially acceptable, normalized for women to talk about this, about their bodies, about their food choices in a self-deprecating way. And perhaps less so when it comes to men. So that's very interesting.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  One hundred percent.

• 18:13Abbey Sharp?

  Talk to me about kind of corporate wellness programs, right? Must we? What does this look like? What does this look like these days?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  You know what? I, I will start off by saying fundamentally, I don't think corporate wellness programs are bad. I think a lot of them are built with great intention.

• 18:30Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Bottom line wise, yeah, it makes sense. When we are healthy and taking care of ourselves, less sick days, that's good for everybody. Like, we love that for you. I love that you're incentivizing your teams to invest in their health and wellness. What I don't love is how some of y'all are putting it together, right? There is a right and a wrong way. So I would say the most common ways of companies presenting these wellness programs is through like incentivized platforms. So they'll partner with an organization where they will say, okay, your team can sign up for a 10,000 step challenge. When your team gets that, everybody gets a gift card to a given, you know, organization. You know, there's a fitness challenge. If you log that you worked out and drank your water, your team gets a number of points that's related to cash. So there's all of these kind of incentivized ways to move your body, track your water,

• 19:15Speaker 01

  and sometimes, but much more rarely, track your food. I think that at its core, when you say it, it's like, okay, cool. You get to opt in or opt out. The other thing that tends to happen is this more like ad hoc team challenges. I think, again, fundamentally, both are totally fine, but it's how they're socialized from organizations. Sometimes you'll get employee resource groups or, you know, teams coming together on Slack or Microsoft, whatever it is, and they're saying, all right, team, we're gonna lose 15 pounds this month. We're gonna lose 30 pounds this month. Shout out to that one episode of The Office. You know, where they they were all doing this.

• 19:48Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  But that's real.

• 19:49Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  People really do do that. And I think where the good intention turns into really crummy outcome is the conversations around it.

• 19:56Abbey Sharp?

  Of course.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  So when organizations are presenting, hey, get your 10,000 steps in, what's the why behind that?

• 20:01Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Are you sending out Slack messages that are encouraging competition, encouraging open discourse? Or is this a personal decision where I can opt out without being asked why? And I think that's where a lot of these companies drop the ball is it's assumed you're opting in. It's assumed that you're interested in this. And when you're not, suddenly it's a conversation about, oh, you don't wanna take 10,000 steps today?

• 20:21Abbey Sharp?

  You don't wanna lose weight?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  You don't wanna lose weight? You don't wanna shrink? You're not not interested in shrinking this holiday season? It's bizarre to me. And I think that's where we we drop the ball.

• 20:29Abbey Sharp?

  Right. I I can see how that can become so dangerous because A, it really does reinforce this idea again that like your health is, you know, equal to weight.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  And it's all a show. Everything gets to be a show and on display.

• 20:44Abbey Sharp?

  And then, you know, when you look at the research too, there is actual data that shows a lot of these kind of wellness programs do in fact increase fat phobia. And they also kind of just reinforce diet culture in the workplace because they're making this assumption that weight or obesity is a completely individual choice. And it ignores all the systemic and organizational factors going into this, right? Like, there are a multitude of reasons why, you know, your admin assistant on the fourth floor is weighs something different than the admin assistant on the sixth floor, right? And that makes these competitions grossly unfair. And it really becomes this kind of moral superiority competition between those who

• 21:27Abbey Sharp?

  can invest the time and the money and the mental energy in making the healthiest meals and doing the most workout classes and kind of squeezing all of this in in the name of, you know, winning and making this competition gamifying fitness. Not to mention it completely throws a lot of folks under the bus who may struggle with their relationship with food and eating for whom these, you know, could be very, very triggering for.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  100%. And I think some of the things companies do or have seen do really well is you get to decide what your wellness programs look like.

• 22:00Abbey Sharp?

  Love that.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  I think, like, I get goosebumps thinking about it. I've worked for companies where they've done these flexible wellness programs, where they say, "Here's X amount of money you get to spend." Instead of us telling you where that benefit goes, you can use that on your gym membership. You could also use that on a counselor for your relationship to food, because we don't define what your wellness looks like. And I think that's the game changer. Is a lot of these companies still see wellness as your 10,000 steps, you're losing five pounds. For a lot of people, to your point, A, that's not feasible. B, that's not what wellness is. That's what your perception of wellness is. Because somebody didn't read a book, right? It's not the same.

• 22:35Abbey Sharp?

  I know. And I've talked about the kind of fitness trackers in the past as well, because obviously, they're used rampantly in a lot of these kinds of programs. And my own experience with my Fitbit was that it actually kind of made me less fit, because it created such obsession around this idea, just like getting steps at any year old cost, like, oh, you know, just like running on the spot kind of stuff. Like, that's fucked up.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  It's not normal.

• 23:02Abbey Sharp?

  It's not normal.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  It's not normal.

• 23:03Abbey Sharp?

  And there's plenty of data that now shows that it can, these fitness trackers can increase a disordered relationship with exercise and food, and also make exercise less enjoyable. Like, shouldn't our goal here not just be to win the challenge and then go back to whatever we were doing before, but rather to help people find, you know, activities and, you know, solutions for them that actually feel good to their body and they enjoy doing? So that this is a long-term, you know, investment in their health.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Yes, I think too, this is what makes me fall out of my chair, is that a lot of large tech companies actually gift their employees Fitbits or similar trackers on day one. And I understand the intention of that. Like, I believe your heart's in the right place, as much as capitalism can have anyone's heart in the right place. I believe that the intention there is solid. But ultimately, what you're telling people is how much you move your body, regardless of how able it may be or not, regardless of your other health goals and wellness goals, this is what we're going to help, you know, with from an incentive perspective. And I think that is absolutely bonkers. And not to say, like, 10,000 steps a day, I love that. Tell that to a single mother who is struggling with other elements of their health, who is working a job realistically that isn't eight hours a day, it's probably closer to 11.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  And now you're going to reward me or out me for not hitting this step goal. How does that create a space of inclusion? That's not what wellness looks like for everybody.

• 24:26Abbey Sharp?

  How is that an act of self-care when you are now kind of choosing to do steps or sleep?

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:33Abbey Sharp?

  So I totally agree. I think there can be a lot of challenges with using those kinds of trackers. And like you said, depending on how these programs are laid out, could be very problematic and triggering for a lot of folks.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Well, you hear even too, I mean, I remember this vividly early in my career. Like some of the women on my team who had a bit more experience than me would pop by and they're like, "We need to hit our 10,000 steps. We're gonna get our gift cards to wherever. Let's go walk around the concourse for an hour." And I'm like, okay, if I say no, they think, A, I'm not socializing, because we also know socializing with your team is one of the number one ways people get promoted.

• 25:11Abbey Sharp?

  Wow.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Tough pill to swallow, but it's not the most qualified, it's the most well-liked. So the more you play the game, the more likely you are to earn. So you're a 20-year-old kid, first week on the job, Suzie from accounting says, "Let's take a stroll and get those steps." You're not saying no, because you know the value of networking. And suddenly, networking is synonymous with, "I don't feel my body, and I trolley around a concourse in my six-inch heels in order to feel like I have some space here."

• 25:35Abbey Sharp?

  I kind of forgot about the heels part.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  My toes haven't. Toes are still recovering. I might not be 19. These toes are feeling 80. Yeah, it's bad news.

• 25:43Abbey Sharp?

  That's bad, that's bad.

• 25:56Abbey Sharp?

  So, last question here. I know you kind of touched on this a moment ago, but for folks who are in leadership roles, I think it's very important that they have some really good takeaways here, because they are the ones kind of calling a lot of the shots here. What tips do you have for helping them create a diet-free, like an anti-diet safe space for all of their employees? Whether it comes down to these wellness programs or other initiatives that you've... Seen kind of be, you know, useful and helpful for folks.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the first is, we just need to redefine what wellness is. And we need to operate under the assumption that we don't know what wellness means for person A versus person B. Your, you know, step incentive is not necessarily a bad thing. The fact that you're offering a variety of lunch foods, where sometimes I'm leaning greens and sometimes I'm leaning pizza. Fundamentally, that's great.

• 26:43Abbey Sharp?

  That's great.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  The challenge is, how are we talking about wellness in a way that doesn't prescribe what wellness is to each individual person? When you get your teams together, be mindful of the language that you're using for yourself. Because how we speak to ourselves impacts how other people start to think you perceive them. So that's the first thing. The next is, let's not make judgments or comments about what someone did or didn't eat. Sometimes that person skipped that meal from pure anxiety in a bad day. Other times, they need that hearty meal because that's, that's comfort and that feels good. Both at times are okay, we're all human.

• 27:15Abbey Sharp?

  Hundred percent.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  I think the, the biggest takeaway for folks who are listening is wellness is not just about your steps and what you're putting into your body. If your organization's goal is true wellness, that needs to be the intersection of body movement, how you fuel, and your relationship to self and mental health. And I would almost argue, shifting a lot of this energy in these programs from weight loss and shrinking to positive relationship, positive self-talk, I guarantee you will see much higher results than you're looking for. From a bottom line, but also like a, a team energy perspective.

• 27:47Abbey Sharp?

  Hundred percent. It becomes a safe place for everybody to kind of enact their own ideas of wellness and what's helpful and useful for them. Like you said earlier, like for one person, taking more breaks during the day or, you know, not taking their vacation without feeling judged that they now are kind of like being knocked, knocked to the bottom of the, of the pole for a promotion would be an act of self-care. That would help them in their journey. Or for somebody else, it might be like access to physiotherapy so that they can engage in exercise that is meaningful to them. You know, it's, you're, you're absolutely, you're hitting on, on the, the nail on the head that we all see wellness differently. And also differently at different times in our life, right? That's a, it's a moving target.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:32Abbey Sharp?

  And getting a finite amount of steps in is not wellness in any of my books, basically. It's one teeny tiny component that may be helpful for a small subset of the population. I understand that we, you know, for simplicity, that's just kind of what they go for. It really doesn't hit on any of the other important aspects of health and well-being.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. And honestly, like, it doesn't have to be complicated. It's as simple as being in a one-on-one with someone and saying, question for you, and answer as much or as little as you'd like. What does workplace wellness feel like for you? You might have someone that says, for me, it's getting off at 3 o'clock, so I can go pick up the kids, the rest, please mind your business. Fantastic. Look at how that employee shows up differently when you give them space to get what they need because you asked, versus the prescription of, here's what we're gonna, pizza lunch, but also 10,000 steps a day.

• 29:20Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Let me know how that feels.

• 29:22Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Not good. Doesn't feel good.

• 29:24Abbey Sharp?

  I am so glad that you came in today. This was so insightful and I'm just so grateful. I don't work in an office. I love it.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  It was so much fun being here. And honestly, eat the pizza, eat the salad, get your steps. Do what you gotta do.

• 29:38Abbey Sharp?

  Do what feels good to you.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Don't let some CEO tell you what your health looks like. How about that?

• 29:42Abbey Sharp?

  And absolutely, you know, listen to your own body, your own needs, and do that deep dive because if your girlfriends are taking, you know, coffee breaks for lunch, that might not be what's best for you. And vice versa. If your girlfriends are having pizza and you're feeling like the salad, do that too. You know, I think that's something that we often forget, how important it is to do the work to understand our own true needs. Because as a society, diet culture has made, basically, made us just erase all of that.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  100%.

• 30:14Abbey Sharp?

  Thank you again.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Thank you. Amazing.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Diet culture manifests itself in the workplace in a myriad of ways, some of which are structural and some are more subtle and relational. But none of them are particularly helpful or supportive to one's health. And while we can't necessarily change the system overnight, we can change how

• 30:40Abbey Sharp?

  We interpret and react to all the little diet culture microaggressions that we may have to face day to day. So if you're experiencing unwanted diet culture commentary in the workplace, whether related to your body, your meal choices, or your ranking in these problematic competitions, I wanted to share a few ideas for setting up some boundaries. Option one is pretty straightforward. You can just simply walk away when your coworker starts waxing poetic about their keto diet or cellulite. Give a quick like, oops, I got a meeting to get to, and then just duck off. Option two, you could basically ignore the statement and then politely redirect the conversation

• 31:24Abbey Sharp?

  into something related to work, or polite small talk about holidays, or families, or whatever. So for example, if a colleague makes a comment about how bad they were during Christmas break and how they now are doing some crazy cleanse, rather than feed into that thought process, maybe just ask, hey, like, what kind of things did you do on your holiday? How was the weather? You may be tempted to tell them, oh no, you look great. But this just reinforces that that constant negative self-talk about bodies and food is welcome, when in reality, it's just a big downer. And option three, you can pre-craft a more direct and honest response in the hopes that I might shut down future commentary.

• 32:08Abbey Sharp?

  So if someone were to say, oh, we're doing the step challenge. I really think it would be a great idea for you to get a watch and join in. You could reply, I love that for you. But you know what? Worrying about every step I take isn't really fun for me, and I'm actually trying to make movement enjoyable. If someone says, oh, you've got way better willpower than I do to resist those donuts. I'm so bad. You might say, I love donuts. But because I know I can have one when I actually want one, I don't really need to rely on willpower or think about them all day. That sounds like it would be super distracting from work. I don't know how you do it. Or you could go full out sassy when somebody notices.

• 32:50Abbey Sharp?

  You're like eating a salad and they say, "Oh wow, are you trying to lose weight? Good for you." You could say, "You know what? I was just feeling like a salad today. I didn't realize that people were looking at my body so closely." Trust me, this one will shut them down real quick. I know that dealing with diet culture in the workplace can be incredibly triggering and upsetting, but one way of getting through the day is to really approach these colleagues with empathy. These folks are victims of diet culture themselves and they're likely struggling a lot right now. So keep in mind that any of their comments are probably coming from a

• 33:31Abbey Sharp?

  place of their own insecurities and distrust in their own relationship with food than it has anything to do with you. And that's all that we have today, folks. I hope this episode was helpful, especially for those of you who have experienced discrimination or diet culture statements in the office. And a big thank you again to Emily today for joining me and for sharing a lot of great ideas on how to bite back against diet culture at work. And remember, this is a new podcast, so I would love if you would leave Bite Back a review and share it with friends. It really does help me get the word out so that I can continue to bring on the best guests and the most useful content. Signing off with Science and SaaS, I'm Abbey Sharp. Thanks for listening.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m. We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.