Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - EXPOSING Liv Schmidt’s SKINNY SOCIETÉ Disordered Instagram Echochamber with Whistleblowing Journalist EJ Dickson

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

CONTEST INFORMATION!Reminder - there is a special keyword embedded in today’s episode where you can win a $500 gift card to Shoppers Drug Mart. Simply text the keyword plus you’re full name to 925-555. Standard message rates apply. Go to www.seekyoursounds.com/contests for contest rules. Also, if you're a PC optimum member, the Super Redemption Event at Shoppers Drug Mart runs from June 27th until July 2nd, so you can get even more points when you shop in store and online.Here’s a run down of what we discussed in today’s episode on the Skinny Societé and SkinnyTok:00:38 - Introduction to Skinnytok & the Skinny Societé04:08 - Eating Disorder Relapse Triggers07:07 - Underage Girls on SkinnyTok10:48 - Skinny Competition in the Skinny Societé18:33 - Skinny Luxury Lifestyle22:16 - The Culty Intersection between SkinnyTok & Fake Empowerment25:46 - Is SkinnyTok Fighting Obesity?28:08 - TikTok and Instagram Are Failing UsCheck in with today’s amazing guest: EJ DicksonWebsite: ejdickson.comX: @ejdicksonInstagram: @ejdicksonReferences:https://www.thecut.com/article/influencer-liv-schmidt-subscriber-group-chat-weight-loss.htmlhttps://www.thecut.com/article/tiktok-banned-skinnytok-hashtag.htmlhttps://www.med.unc.edu/psych/eatingdisorders/learn-more/about-eating-disorders/statistics/Disclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider.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.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 out my 2-in-1 Plant Based Probiotic Protein Powder, neue theory at www.neuetheory.com or @neuetheory and use my promo code BITEBACK20 to get 20% off your order! 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. ✉️ SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTERS ⤵️Neue Theory newsletterAbbey's Kitchen newsletter 🥞 FREE HUNGER CRUSHING COMBO™ E-BOOK! 💪🏼 FREE PROTEIN 101 E-BOOK! 📱 Follow me! Instagram: @abbeyskitchenTikTok: @abbeyskitchenYouTube: @AbbeysKitchen My blog, Abbey’s Kitchen www.abbeyskitchen.comMy book, The Mindful Glow Cookbook affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3NoHtvf If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review with your thoughts and let me know who you want me to discuss next!

I was constantly waiting for somebody to say, you look like you've lost a lot of weight, like in a very short amount of time. Maybe you should slow down a little bit, or hey, maybe you shouldn't use prunes as a laxative after you have a big meal. But no, I never saw any of that. It was just constantly reinforcing.

Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, where I dismantle dye culture rules, call out the charlatans spitting the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good. Today is going to be a follow-up story on my solo episode about all things Skinny Talk as we dive deeper into Skinny Talk founder Liv Schmitz's quote-unquote cult of skinny. As part of an investigative story for The Cut, top journalist E.J. Dixon infiltrated Schmitz's subscription-only Instagram group called the Skinny Societe. For $20 per month, members were promised Liv's exclusive skinny recipes, workout videos, and personal food diaries, along with access to group DM threads where members could share

their weight loss goals, progress, tips and tricks, and accountability to the skinny life. This article truly had me shook. So I am so excited to have its author E.J. Dixon on the podcast today to unpack what she discovered and to discuss the dangers of these online communities. Now a very quick but important trigger warning here that we will be talking about very specific problematic weight loss tips as seen on Skinny Talk. So if that does not feel supportive to your journey right now, please feel free to skip this one out. Also, I have a very exciting giveaway to tell you about midway through the show, so you've absolutely got to listen carefully so you do not miss out. Alright folks, let's get into it. Well, thank you, EJ, so much for joining me. This is unfortunately a topic that I have kind of become

a bit of an expert in, unfortunately, because I see it as kind of like one of the most dangerous, if not, you know, the most dangerous wellness trends circulating right now. So thank you so much for doing the hard work with that expose for the cut. So amazing. Thank you so much for having me and for your nice words. Of course. Yeah. So, okay. First of all, can you just kind of set the stage for us and just kind of describe what is or I guess like what was the Skinny Societe? So the Skinny Societe was a subscription only group that was run by Liv Schmidt. Liv Schmidt is a very popular Skinny Talk influencer. She initially got famous on TikTok,

but she was banned from TikTok a little less than a year ago, so she gravitated over to Instagram and she started this subscription only service where for about 20 bucks a month, you could get access to recipes, original fitness content, various infographics, weight loss infographics that she made. But the main draw was this group chat. Basically, if you signed up for the Skinny Society, you were grouped into this group chat of about 200 members who would be DMing each other throughout the day to keep each other accountable for their weight

loss goals. And you know I've seen Liv speak to this often that she's suggesting that she's not promoting eating disorders you know whether it's through the skinny society or just the content in general which of course has become very popular. She claims that she's simply there to support one another you know to help hold people accountable for their weight loss goals. Were there any specific problematic posts or like specific tips that you saw in these DM chats between these Skinny Society members that really stood out to you as evidence that that line had gotten crossed? Oh, yeah, there were a ton. And I should also preface this by saying that I, unfortunately, you know, I struggled with needing disorder in my youth, and I spent a lot of time on ED Tumblr

and ProAnna Tumblr, so I was very familiar with sort of the dog whistles that are associated with this community, and there were a lot of very similar ones, mantras like, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels and things, slogans in that vein. But also quote unquote tips and hacks to sort of suppress your hunger cues.

One of them was to use mouth tape before you go to bed at night to avoid snacking. There was somebody else who I saw recommending prunes as a laxative after feeling heavy, I believe was the word that she used. After having a big meal, ice water, filling up on ice water and tea and various fluids so you don't feel hungry

throughout the day, just basically walking an insane amount of steps, like 18,000 to 20,000 steps on very low calorie diets. Basically, just anything that you could possibly do to avoid eating these women were recommending to each other. Oh, yes. And my followers also know that I too struggled with an E.N. disorder in my youth. And yes, I am very, very familiar with all these tips, read them, heard them.

This is, it's terrifying. This is, this is terrifying to hear. And when posts did get particularly problematic at any point, did you ever see members recommend to one another to like seek psychological help? Was there any one saying, hey, this is going too far? Never, not once. Oh, God. Not once. Liv herself would occasionally, in fairness to her on the group chat, she would sort of, because there's one main group chat where Liv posts a couple times a day, where Liv posted a couple times a day and then all these individual group chats that are basically unregulated. But she would go into the main group chat every once in a

while and be like, listen, just a reminder that we're not posting extremely low calorie diets here. We're not posting extremely low calorie diets here. Don't recommend any dangerous eating advice. I am not an eating disorder counselor. Like if you have trouble with binge eating or you have an eating disorder, please seek professional help. Like she would sort of go through the motions of reiterating that type of language publicly,

but on the individual group threads, the unregulated private group chats, I never ever saw that. And they were very young women on these group chats. I was able to confirm that at least a dozen members of the Skinny Societe were still in high school. Wow. So I was constantly waiting for somebody to say, you know, hey, you look like you've lost a lot of weight, like in a very short amount of time. Maybe you should, you know, slow down a little bit.

Or hey, you know, maybe you shouldn't use prunes as a laxative after you have a big meal. But no, I never saw any of that. It was just constantly reinforcing. Wow. Yeah. And like you said, I mean, clearly, I did read that Liv had a quote-unquote rule in the skinny society that you had to be 18 or older, but obviously this was not being reinforced. And I just feel that this underage access to content like this is just generally a big, big issue because most social media platforms require users to be at least 13 years old, which in my opinion is still way too young to be exposed to content like this. But even still, there's no reliable mechanisms to verify or enforce these rules. So people lie about their age. And there could be, like the platforms could

do more because when you think about something like OnlyFans, for example, like they require government ID or an alive selfie or video to match the ID. So I don't see why this couldn't be standard practice for all other social media accounts. And so yeah, as a parent myself, this is something I'm very passionate about. It's terrifying. I think it really speaks to the importance of parents keeping close tabs on what your kids are doing online. And what's shocking to me to hear from you is that, you know, knowing that moms are a huge part of Skinny Talk, there's a huge mom base of Skinny Talk, it's shocking that there was no mom in that group to see a 13-year-old girl, 14-year-old girl or high school student making some of these, you know, suggesting

some of these dangerous diet tips and nobody stepped in to help that child. Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, I'm a mom too and that's how I felt every second I was going through these chats. I was like, I mean, I was sort of like, quote unquote undercover even though it's not really undercover. But I just wanted to be like, what are you doing? That was just my impulse all the time as a parent is to just be protective. You don't need to do this. You look great, stop.

But no, nobody, I never saw any evidence of that. And the thing that was really frightening to me is, this is sort of like getting in the weeds of fat checking and reporting. But when I said I was able to confirm that there were more than a dozen members of the Skinny Society still in high school. These were only women, young women who used their full names on their profile. So I was able to cross check against their other social media profiles

to confirm that they were in fact underage. And in a lot of cases, they were young women who put their like class affiliation on in their bios, but that is not counting what I imagine to be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other anonymous accounts that did not have any of that information. That would have been impossible for me to verify. These were the obvious cases, but I shudder to think of how many young women were using anonymous accounts in those groups that I was not able to verify their ages.

Right. And okay, so speaking of obvious lack of support here, you noted that a lot of these chat rooms were far less about like positive accountability and more just like fierce female competition where like women were trying to like out restrict or like out punish one another. And anyone who's been on like, you know, 2000s pro-Anna Tumblr forums know that this is like textbook eating disorder rivalry, right? Like, so I'm wondering if you can give us any examples

of the type of like competitive interactions that you saw between members when it came to, you know, their diets or their progress. Yeah, it's a bit more complicated than that, though, because, and I would say this was the case on E.D. Twitter and ProAnna Tumblr, you know, when I was on it way back when as well. It is competition, but it's sort of masquerading as solidarity. The environment there is extremely supportive. Nobody is outright saying, you need to be eating fewer calories.

Nobody is outright saying, you need to be losing more weight. Everybody is extremely positive and it's extremely supportive to each other. It's very seductive because it gives this vibe of this being a real support group and a real support system and a community for these women. Yeah.

Actually, when it got shut down, that was what a lot of them complained about. and a real support system and a community for these women. And actually, when it got shut down, that was what a lot of them complained about. I lost my support system. I lost my community. But in reality, this toxic positivity is sort of hiding this very insidious competitive edge, where women are constantly posting increasingly low calorie diets, daily diets, increasing step counts. Somebody would post, I walked 15,000 steps today. Another

person would post, I walked 20,000 steps. Oh, really? Well, I walked 30,000 steps and they would be applauded for it. And these are women who were already doing workouts, leading active lifestyles, and were eating maybe 1,100, 1,200 calories a day. Like, these were not women who were eating like 5,000 calories a day or something where it would be relatively normal to walk a lot of steps. Of course. But it...

And just the constant effect of seeing that over and over and over again, it's not explicit, it's implicit, but it does foster this intensely competitive environment. And I felt it myself. I mean, everything I put in my mouth during the day or every time I checked my step counter, I would think about that threat and I would think about whether or not the skinny society would approve. Wow.

It was like a subconscious thing because I could maintain a distance from it, and I knew that objectively it was an incredibly toxic environment. But the fact that I am 35 years old and that got into my head to the extent that it did, it really frightened me to think about so many young women in there who have less life experience, more vulnerability internalizing that messaging. Absolutely. I mean, comparison is often at the core of a lot of eating disorders, which obviously can become so competitive.

And eating disorders are often very ego-syntonic, so they become a hallmark of our identity. So in this context, being more, quote unquote, successful at the disorder is seen as like an accomplishment for when we are looking at these pro-ANA kind of forums, so like getting hospitalized or reaching a specific low weight. And then in this kind of like more gray area, it's like reaching the 30,000 steps or like eating, you know, getting, making a 700 calorie deficit or whatever. So these online communities that celebrate quote unquote progress and quote unquote success

at restricting or doing 30,000 steps a day. They reinforce in a lot of ways that like sicker is better. Yes. Even though they don't necessarily like see it as sicker because this is such an echo chamber for we're doing what's healthy. And you know, I'll talk about that more in a moment. All right, folks, as promised, huge giveaway here. Byte Back is giving away $500 gift cards to shoppers drug mart.

Each week I give you a different keyword. And this week's keyword is lemon. So text lemon plus your name to 925-555 to enter for your chance to win. Again, text LEMON to 925555 for your chance to win a $500 gift card to shoppers drug marked. Standard data and message rates apply, see contest rules linked in the description of this episode for details. You know, I know that this must have been very hard for you who, you know, you're coming into this with a history of disordered eating. And like, how quick was it to trigger that, like, you know, to kind of go back?

Because we know, you know, we, folks who have struggled with an eating disorder, like we kind of have to guard ourselves. And we're always on guard for like those triggers that could take us back to that dark place. How quickly did this happen? I'm laughing because it was immediate. Yeah. It was less than a day.

Yeah. And I have been in therapy for a very long time. Like I was fairly certain that I could bolster myself against just this constant onslaught of messaging, but I couldn't. Yeah. And I think that's by design. The fact that every five minutes I would get a new message, a new notification, somebody posting a new low calorie diet,

somebody posting a new body calorie diet, somebody posting a new body transformation photo where they'd lost an extreme amount of weight in a very short amount of time. Somebody posting a win that they dropped like three dress sizes in a month. It was just constant and constantly affirming my worst possible basic, basest impulses that in retrospect, it's not surprising to me at all that that happened. And I probably should have sought more extensive therapy before I began reporting this story. Well, I hope that you can get the care that you need now in the aftermath. It's very hard. And I think it really speaks to why places like this

are so dangerous for women. Because over a third of quote unquote, I guess, normal dieters, people who can just pick up a diet and try to lose a couple pounds, will progress to pathological dieters. And then about a quarter of those people will develop a partial or full-blown ED. So chances are that there are a quarter of those people will develop a partial or full-blown ED. So chances are that there are a lot of folks in those groups who already are at huge risk

of an eating disorder or an eating disorder relapse if they're not already kind of like actively struggling in it. And it just feeds one another. If you're not struggling going in, when everyone around you has that mentality, it's so hard to escape and not see it as completely normalized, celebrated, just status quo the way it is. Absolutely. Now, I want to talk about kind of like the broader culture of skinny talk, because in your piece you wrote, in Schmidt's world, thinness isn't just a physical state, but

the basis of an entire luxury lifestyle. Can you just kind of give us some examples of what you meant, you know, of that from what you saw? Yeah, she's very canny about self-branding. She's an extremely savvy self-brander. She knows how she looks. She's a very tall, thin, willowy, conventionally attracted blonde woman. She's a model, she's a working model.

She lives in New York City. You know, she has a very aspirational career to a lot of young women, a very aspirational lifestyle. She's constantly posting photos of herself, sort of adopting the hallmarks of that lifestyle. She'll be going to Polati's class, like wearing very expensive athleisure, sort of adopting the hallmarks of that lifestyle. She'll be going to Polati's class, like, wearing very expensive athleisure,

sipping on it, green juice, or she'll be standing in the middle of SoHo, and Rolls Royce will, like, pull over and try to get her number. She is very good at posting a very specific type of lifestyle that women, young women of a certain age would aspire toward. And she's also constantly posting images of not only herself, but stock images of sleek models enjoying a cappuccino in a piazza in Italy wearing big sunglasses or fanning out on the deck of a billionaire's yacht with all of these slogans that are promoting feeling lightness, that's how she puts it, feeling light, feeling sleek.

Even if she's not saying thin, she's sort of dancing around it and diluting to it. So the combination of that visual iconography, which again I was pretty familiar with from Edie Tumbler, nothing that she does is particularly like new or inventive, but the combination of that visual iconography with her messaging is extremely seductive to young women. Absolutely, yeah. I mean if we just think about the past century plus, thinness has been used as like a signal of wealth and privilege. Like you can afford to, you know, buy the low calorie, low calorie, $18, Erewhon smoothie

and take the boutique Pilates classes and go to cryotherapy and have the luxury time to walk for like three hours a day to get those 30,000 steps a day. You can afford to restrict and not because of scarcity, but because of choice and control, which are obviously, you know, very clear upper class value. So yeah, in this context, thinness kind of becomes a form of like social capital and it just perpetuates this illusion that being thin unlocks this hugely better, more successful, more desirable, more aesthetic life. So you're right, her branding is on point. She knows her audience, she knows what's gonna kind of rope people in and it is so seductive. Another theme that you talk about that really riles me up about Skinny Talk in general is

that it seems to kind of mask its harmful messages in the language of empowerment and self-care and feminism and investing in yourself. And in your article, you quoted another Skinny Talk influencer, Amanda Dobler, who said that Skinny Talk isn't about promoting eating disorders, but about showing women they are allowed to want more for themselves. I have thoughts, but from your perspective, why is why is seeing skinny talk as self care so problematic? Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about this as well. I was actually saying on another

podcast, like, if I were to sort of, this is so pretentious, but like pick a unifying theme of like the stories that I'm drawn to or the types of pieces that I write. It's organizations that use the language of female empowerment to further restrict women and to further subjugate women. Yep. The thing that I kept thinking about in reporting on this story was the NXIVM trial. NXIVM was this. It was known in the media as the sex cult.

But that was sort of an inaccurate characterization of it. It was that only like referred to like a very small sliver of the organization. For the most part, it was an empowerment, a self-empowerment wellness organization. And it primarily attracted very successful upper middle class women who were drawn to the language of empowerment,

of being a badass bitch, of taking your fate in your own hands. And the leader of that cult, Keith Raniere, some of the things that he suggested in order for women to achieve that sense of empowerment was to have sex with him, to, again, with thinness, restrict their diets, very low-calorie diets, constantly exercise, blend themselves with his initials. So I found it fascinating that this guy was able to so successfully sell female empowerment to an audience of very intelligent,

very well-equipped socially women, but package it and also suggest, well, you should brand yourself with my initials. Well, you should starve yourself. And I think it's a very similar dynamic going on here. I think that people like Liv, influencers like Liv have figured out that this language of self-empowerment is very attractive to women who might feel burnt out

on mainstream feminism and the body positivity movement and this girl bossy idea that women can have it all. I think that a lot of women are burnt out on it. I think justifiably so. And I think that women like Liv are sort of moving into the vacuum left by women's frustration with mainstream feminism and saying no that's that's not that's not how you achieve self-fulfillment that's not how you achieve empowerment it's actually by starving yourself. Starving yourself yeah no agree. And I actually, I have an episode with one of

the ex cult members of Nexium here on the channel where we did talk in more detail about those, the restrictive and, and this article actually that you published, you kind of refer to this as the cult of skinniness. So there are so many intersections here. And I think that's a really fascinating parallel. But also, yeah, like this constant narrative, oh, this is about self-care, it's about showing up for yourself, it's about infesting yourself. It really weaponizes the language of mental health, and it really blurs this line between actual self-care, which includes fueling your body and aesthetics, and it turns kind of punishment into this

like twisted, you know, empowerment and pathologizes rest, pathologizes fullness. Like these are kind of important things for, you know, not just women, but for everyone. And it just reinforces all these toxic values under this guise of personal growth, which really is no different than, than Nexium or really any other popular cult. And it's not just about personal growth, but really is no different than than Nexium or really any other popular cult. And it's not just about personal growth, but also health, right? Because I was on Liv Schmidt's IG the other day, and I noticed that she had posted the obesity action coalition as her new charitable partner in her bio. And not only does this like scream virtual signaling to me, but it also makes it seem like her mission here is to help people who are obese get healthy.

But like her content is never even directed at people who need to like lose 150 pounds to reduce their diabetes medication or improve their mobility or whatever. It's directed at already thin young women who want to get more thin or stay thin. So again, like you mentioned, folks may come to her page and see this and think, oh wow, yeah, like obesity, it's such a big problem. I'm so glad she's, you know, fighting the good fight and promoting people get healthy. But it's not about health, right? This was never about health. And I think that you really do a fantastic job at highlighting that in your piece. So yeah, I don't think the sag is over. I don't know what you're kind of digging up now, but I don't think the sag is over. So I do hope you can continue to bring to light the damages that this trend has done as it evolves. So yeah, it's scary.

It is. It's really scary. It's made me very frightened for the future of young women. It is. It's really scary. It's made me very frightened for the future of young women. Yeah, me as well. It seems to just be getting worse and worse and worse, and especially with AI and just the proliferation of misinformation and dangerous content online. It's a very scary time to have to be a mom and to be thinking about our kids being on social media, but also for ourselves. Adults who have incredible critical thinking skills, like you mentioned, even with the Nexium calls, these were educated people, these were successful people, and they still get drawn into these incredibly problematic communities. So thank you again, EJ, for chatting and fighting the good fight. I'm definitely going to be leaving a link to the full article in the show notes.

So thank you again for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. Such a fascinating but also pretty terrifying story, but ultimately a very good reminder of why we need to be so vigilant about what we come across online, but ultimately a very good reminder of why we need to be so vigilant about what we come across online, because ultimately the protections that we have in these spaces is just so subpar. Since EJ's article was first published, Mena did end up putting an age limit on the group, which as we established, isn't necessarily that helpful if people are lying about their age to get on the

app in the first place, but they also barred Liz from the subscription monetization tool. And then over on TikTok, we just saw them finally ban the word Skinny Talk, following heavy scrutiny from digital watchdogs in France and the EU. So basically, if you now search for the hashtag skinny talk, you are taking to e-disorder and mental health resources. So I see this as a huge, huge win, but unfortunately this is not going to be enough on YouTube. Liv's channel has amassed almost a hundred thousand subscribers,

posting videos with titles like Understand This and You'll Be Skinny, the No Fail Way to Be Skinny, and How to Create a Skinny Body on a Budget. Over on Instagram, you can still search the hashtag Skinny Talk and find plenty of problematic tips. And even though Liv can't make money off her community on IG, she does have a link in bio for a July 1st entry application to her skinny society, so I'm assuming she's just going to take her monetized pro-ED forum somewhere else. As a dietitian who speaks out against these harmful trends on the regular, I believe there needs to be far better protections in place beyond just flagging specific hashtags, because these creators will just come up with another code word that their followers understand, no different

than celebrities calling drones Dior bags. With all the advances in AI, we should be seeing platforms take greater initiatives to train AI models specifically on pro-ana language and restrictive content. And they need to find a way to differentiate content promoting disordered eating versus content from professionals like myself who are speaking out against it. And if that is so difficult, then they could easily use AI to identify science communicators and healthcare professionals and amplify our voices in the algorithm while throttling the visibility of content that normalizes harmful body standards, extreme diets, and body checking.

But these platforms are not going to make a change unless we ask for it. So I urge you to visit the platform support portals to submit recommendations for improvements and advocate for them to take greater accountability for the content that they spread afar. So I will be leaving links in the show notes for where you can submit your recommendations and requests so we can all hopefully build a better, safer online community for generations to come. And on that note, that is all that I have for you guys today. Thank you again to EJ Dixon for helping me fight back against diet culture. And a reminder that the Shoppers Drug Mart contest is three weeks long for up to three

entries to win a $500 gift card to Shoppers Drug Mart. So there will be another keyword in next week's episode for you to listen for. Signing off with Science and Sass, I'm Abhi Sharpe. Thanks for listening.