Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - The MASSIVE Problem with #SkinnyTok (Is Extreme 90s-’00s Diet Culture Back?!)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Skinny talk is like the slap in the face that people feel that they need after being convinced that what they see on social media or in movies is real life. Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, where I dismantle die culture rules, call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good. Today, I'm going to be rocking it solo to deep dive into the latest dye culture movement that has regrettably gone mainstream. That's right folks, we're talking Skinny Talk. If you've been blessed by the algorithm sparing you this content, let me do a little recap.

Starting point is 00:00:48 Skinny talk is a content trend and community on social media where thinness is idolized at any and all costs. It's basically the 2025 version of Thinspo and Bonespo weight loss forums of the early 2000s, but with beautiful thin women sharing constant body checks, low calorie what-ayina days, and punishing weight loss tips, all with the call to action that if you just weren't so lazy, you could do it all too. And it's not just the tips that are problematic,

Starting point is 00:01:19 it is the way that they are delivered. There are multiple videos packed with skinny talk mantras like your weight is someone else's fear weight or what you eat in private shows in public or today isn't a cheat day if you look like a cheat day suggesting that you can hate yourself into a smaller body. And while most people would agree that calling yourself a fat pig and only allowing yourself three bites of a food that you love doesn't sound like a diet that you would want to be on, this movement and community continues to grow. So today I'm gonna give you my take on why skinny talk is on the rise, the role of the patriarchy, ozempic and body positivity, and all of the top reasons why skinny talk is damaging and problematic.

Starting point is 00:02:06 And since I am all about actionable tips, we're going to be ending with some practical suggestions for surviving a culture that is obsessed with thinness. Whether you are attracted to skinny talk content or vehemently see it as doing harm, this episode is an absolute must listen. Now a quick note that we will be talking about extreme weight loss, diet tips, and disordered eating behaviors that may be triggering to a lot of folks listening so please feel free to skip this if it is not supportive to your journey. Alright folks let's dive in.

Starting point is 00:02:53 To get into where we are and why skinny talk has become the phenomenon that it now is, we really need to look at where we've been. As a dietitian who has critically analyzed diet culture and body trends over the last decade, here is my take. If you look at the evolution of diet culture and different body shapes and fad diets, we can get some clues as to how we got here. My millennial friends probably remember the messages that we were exposed to in the 90s and 2000s when thinspo poster child Kate Moss said her infamous nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. This era brought us jeans so low your pubic bone would jet out, pro-Anna Tumblr pages and blogs,

Starting point is 00:03:29 tabloid magazines with full spreads of celebrity cellulite, and a massive boom of commercial low-calorie diets and programs. By 2010, we started to see a shift in body trends that emphasized a more hourglass figure, which sure was a welcome departure from hip bones and thigh gaps, we started to see a shift in body trends that emphasized a more hourglass figure, which sure was a welcome departure from hip bones and thigh gaps, but it still wasn't a body shape that most women could achieve without one of those like torturous waist trainers or more realistically, surgery.

Starting point is 00:03:59 The benefit of this shift away from waifness is that it did allow space for the body positivity and intuitive eating movements to go mainstream, while of course changing how we talk about weight loss and our bodies. Over the past decade, we have seen explicit weight loss conversations kind of go out of vogue. As conversations arose about feminism and diet culture, restrictive dieting almost became a sign of weakness, rigidity and insecurity, and it basically became uncool to be like counting out the almonds on your salad.

Starting point is 00:04:36 The problem was that at the end of the day, women still did want to be thin. It's basically what America Ferrera said in her famous Barbie monologue. You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you wanna be thin. You have to say you wanna be healthy, but also you have to be thin. Dye culture became replaced with wellness culture, which basically offered a more covert

Starting point is 00:05:03 and aesthetic way to diet. So instead of counting points or calories, you would just do a juice cleanse, eat quote unquote clean, and scream about toxic seed oils in the grocery aisle. And we saw a lot of popular archetypes and trends emerge out of this online. Most notably was the That Girl lifestyle trend, which centered around aspirational self-improvement and productivity. The That Girl has her shit together in the name of self-care. She wakes up early, goes to Pilates, spends 20 minutes journaling, eats bountiful, colorful, clean meals, and generally radiates effortless wellness, ambition, and aesthetic perfection. This has really been the dominant wellness influencer trend for the past several years,

Starting point is 00:05:50 with people like Kayleigh Stewart, Sainte-Louis, and Sammy Clark. I mean, even Gwyneth Paltrow fits somewhere in here as well. Wellness culture also made non-diet movements like intuitive eating a bit of a buzzword. So our feeds have been packed with like carefully curated What I Eat in a Day videos that kick off with a body check of a thin flat stomach followed by highly stylized unrealistically elaborate bountiful vegan gluten-free and sugar-free meals and end with the hashtag food freedom. Not only are a lot of these examples often co-opting the true meaning of intuitive eating

Starting point is 00:06:30 and food freedom, but in many cases they might not even be honest. Now I'm not suggesting that every thin fit influencer sharing their piled high avocado toast and fully loaded smoothie bowls with like half a cup of nuts and seeds on top aren't actually eating it, but there's no way of knowing that they actually do or if that overflowing power bowl is more of just a prop for an image they're trying to portray. Adjacent to the that girl is another female trope, the cool girl. If you haven't listened to my episode with Dr. Emily Contois on gendered eating expectations

Starting point is 00:07:07 where I introduced this concept, definitely, definitely check that out. But in short, the cool girl doesn't obsess over calories or weight gain. She can mow down on burgers, pizza, and beer with the guys, but still remain effortlessly thin. So her slim figure is just natural. Or at least so it seems.

Starting point is 00:07:28 She's basically the easy, breezy, beautiful cover girl. The girl that guys want to hang out with and the girl that we all want to be. And again, we've got plenty of cool girls to look up to online. Think people like Jennifer Lawrence, Alex Cooper, Emma Chamberlain, and Tinks. We also see this in our fascination with watching thin women share their quote-unquote cheat days or mukbangs or junk food eating challenges, even if they are ultimately a bit of a facade. In an age where folks are begging for greater transparency in what they see online, a lot of these popular influencers are now coming clean on what actually goes

Starting point is 00:08:06 on behind the scenes. One popular food creator, Carissa Eats, recently confessed that on days that she shoots her massive food tours, she skips eating other meals and simply tastes the food and packs up the rest of the food that she films. And TikTok mukbanger Babydumpling recently spilled her secret that she films. And TikTok mukbanger Baby Dumpling recently spilled her secret that she doesn't actually swallow anything in her mukbangs. It's basically just edited to show the bite before she goes and spits it out. Both of these tropes, along with the many iterations and offshoots that they've produced, reflect modern femininity filtered through a performative lens.

Starting point is 00:08:45 And I think that people are waking up to the truth behind the performance. They're realizing that there is no way that that cool girl does a McDonald's mukbang every day and maintains her slim figure. Or that that 800 calorie smoothie bowl might be styled to look pretty, but maybe not eaten. And since most wellness content online is positioned if, quote, quote, if you eat like this,

Starting point is 00:09:09 you can look like this, people are feeling gaslit when they can't achieve the life goal trifecta of eating the pizza, respecting your body and maintaining a size two. And this is partially why Skinny Talk has become so alluring. It's cool girl meets that girl without the lies. Skinny Talk is like the slap in the face that people feel that they need after being convinced that what they see on social media or in movies is real life. It's the girl who's telling it the way that it is, not the way you want to hear it. It's saying, no, you can't eat the whole dessert. Yes, you need to go to bed hungry. No, you cannot take a day off just because you are tired.

Starting point is 00:09:53 If you are not willing to put in the work and suffer a little, you are going to stay fat. After so many years of feeling like they've been lied to or deceived, women are craving these cold hard truths. And this brings me to another potential trigger for the virality of skinny talk. And that is Ozempic. If you don't immediately understand how a medication that makes weight loss easier for many people who have struggled with their weight could possibly lead to young women

Starting point is 00:10:22 making sure their journey is really fucking hard? Let me break it down. Since the late 19th century, thinness has been a key cultural value and status symbol. It's often been seen as a sign of control, wealth, discipline, femininity, and desirability. But with widespread access to weight loss injections like Ozempic, thinness becomes even more explicitly transactional. So as long as you have a doctor who is willing to prescribe, you can essentially pay to become thin.

Starting point is 00:10:56 And that has abruptly destabilized a key narrative in weight loss culture of the virtuous grind. And it threatens those who have built identity capital around achieving or maintaining thinness the quote unquote hard way. The result is of course a moral counter movement like skinny talk. In the skinny talk kingdom, quote unquote no pain, no gain isn't just about abs,

Starting point is 00:11:21 it is proof of moral superiority. So now we know how we perhaps got ourselves to skinny talk. And when you go online, you'll see skinny talk advocates claiming that this community changed their life. It healed their relationship with food. And of course, it helped them drop that last 10 pounds. So how problematic can it really be? Well, as a dietitian, I want to share with you some of the key issues that I see. Number one, skinny talk often co-ops the language of food freedom, tricking a lot of folks into

Starting point is 00:11:57 thinking it's a psychologically safe choice. I think in many ways, skinny talk may appeal to women who have been burned by the clean-eating wellness culture and orthorexic food messaging that gluten is bad, dairy is bad, sugar is bad, cut them all out. And some skinny talk creators even explicitly suggest that their approach will help people heal their relationship with food and achieve food freedom. And sure, it may seem really refreshing to see a content creator eat processed cheese or white bread, even if it's just a few bites, when those foods have been demonized by wellness

Starting point is 00:12:36 culture for so long. But I do worry that this is just transferring one disordered eating mentality for another. Because even if skinny talk doesn't necessarily say explicitly that sugar or gluten is toxic, if you are only allowed three bites of it, despite being hungry, physically hungry, for much much more, are you actually free? Moving on to problem number two is that the skinny at all cost mentality can have serious health consequences. I want to make it super clear that I have nothing against intentional weight loss.

Starting point is 00:13:13 For so many people, losing excess body fat can improve metabolic markers, reduce the risk of chronic disease, and ultimately improve quality of life. But at the end of the day, most women's bodies are not designed to function optimally with a six-pack or a size zero dress. Everyone's going to have their own unique set point range, and when we push ourselves way below our genetically determined parameters, we typically see an increased risk of hormonal dysfunction, hair loss, amenorrhea, and we start to dig deep into our muscle and bone mass. And these changes when you are young can have dangerously enduring effects like significantly increasing your risk of early onset osteoporosis and fractures.

Starting point is 00:13:59 So good luck going for your hot girl walks after that. Moving on to problem number three, a lot of Skinny Talk's tips are actually not even grounded in best practices. So for example, Skinny Talk loves to glorify portion control as the gold standard for weight loss, with many influencers using the phrase, eat small to be small, eat big to be big. But top researchers in weight loss and obesity medicine suggest that the physical amount of food that we consume per day actually stays relatively consistent. So if you're used to eating two cups of cereal in the morning, you're going to have a really really hard time maintaining a diet where you can eat half of that. All of the best research we have on sustainable weight loss points to the fact that appetite

Starting point is 00:14:48 management is the number one factor in weight loss success. And if we want to be able to manage our appetite, we need to be thinking about choosing lower calorie density foods in amounts or portions that feel comfortable and familiar to us. That means choosing foods with the greatest volume and nutrient bang for the caloric buck. Yes, portion control does fit in here in some ways, in that we want to ideally pair smaller portions of low-nutrition and high-calorie-dense foods with larger portions of lower-calorie-dense foods that are rich in hunger-crushing compounds protein, fiber and healthy fats. Because a calorie deficit is a lot easier to maintain, eating a bountiful salad with grilled chicken and sweet potato and

Starting point is 00:15:34 veggies versus like five bites of mac and cheese. Obviously in an ideal world we would work out somewhere in the middle where you can have your cake and eat it too just in different proportions and hopefully with more realistic healthy weight loss timelines. But if anything I would argue that we may want to eat big to get small because we have to feel satiated and full to keep it up. Eating quote-unquote big when it comes to those nutrient-dense foods also ensures that you're getting the micronutrients and macronutrients that your body needs to thrive and maintain muscle and bone even while you're in a calorie deficit. But if every choice you make has zero consideration

Starting point is 00:16:19 for the actual nutrient quality and is simply a math game of calories where you're determined to have like three bites of a meal or snack, it is almost impossible to meet your base nutrition needs. Moving on to problem number four, Skinny Talk's unintended impact on kids. Skinny Talk isn't just for 20-year-olds looking to go to the club every few nights and look snatched. There is a massive mom community here that for various reasons does not surprise me at all. A lot of the Skin-talk tenants of discipline,

Starting point is 00:17:06 deprivation, and self-surveillance are already built into our shared language as moms. Many women may even feel some sense of righteousness or pride by leaning into these expectations because vocally denying ourselves our needs serves as evidence to the world that we are good wives, moms, and women. Motherhood is also a time of rapid body and identity changes, which can then get

Starting point is 00:17:30 us sweeped up in the weight loss algorithm without much effort. Plus we're all fucking lonely and Skinny Talk provides this safe female community to discuss a shared female struggle of wanting to be thin. And a lot of Skinny Talk mom creators have been rewriting the typical mom trope of being like disheveled and all sacrificing for our kids to one where we invest in a better us. As a mom who obviously struggles to prioritize self-care,

Starting point is 00:17:58 I think this is a very important message. Moms deserve to feel beautiful and invest in themselves, even if the traditional narrative is self-sacrifice. The problem is when the bottom line goal of encouraging women to prioritize themselves is not actually as a form of identity preservation or self-care. When it becomes about changing your body at any or all costs, including your mental health and sense of self-worth, it actually serves to reinforce the patriarchal systems that force us into self-servitude in the first place.

Starting point is 00:18:33 Thinner is best, eating less shows your moral goodness, and fat folks are lazy and unmotivated. It's not empowering, it's not accepting, it is not kind. And in a lot of ways, it may actually rob us of our autonomy to truly put ourselves first. And if moms are actively engaging in these communities, their kids will pick these things up. Now, I want to make it very clear that I'm not mom shaming anyone on Skinny Talk. I know that we are all just doing the best job that we can with the information that we've been given and every choice that we make is a risk benefit analysis that you have to do for yourself and your family. And I've seen a lot of Skinny Talk creators try to call out that the

Starting point is 00:19:16 content is not for kids or people with histories of an ED. So they're basically saying, hey, if you're a vulnerable person, tap out now. Of course, I appreciate the disclaimer and sensitivity, but ultimately that is going to do shit to stop young girls from emulating this content. Not to mention, even if our kids are not directly exposed or we are not forcing them to eat the skinny talk way, our own relationship with our bodies and foods as moms will be picked up. We know from research that when kids see their parents diet or when they see their moms place a lot of value in thinness, they are significantly more likely to experience negative body image, poor self-esteem, disordered eating, and

Starting point is 00:19:58 become chronic dieters themselves. Parental dieting can even increase our kids risk of obesity later on in life because growing up in an environment of restrictive messaging and modeling increases their preoccupation with food. So even if your kids are free to eat whatever they want, they're still listening to you criticize your body in the background and only like pick at your meal when you eat out as a family. We might think that we are being subtle or covert, but ultimately our kids internalize much more from us than we may think. My last pain point with skinny talk is the no pain no gain pro shame approach to weight loss motivation.

Starting point is 00:20:38 Listen, I get it. Everyone's communication styles are different, and some people may respond better to little tough love. But there is no love whatsoever in calling yourself a quote-unquote fat pig. Trying to hate yourself thin by using shame, self-criticism, or militant tough love tactics is not only psychologically harmful, but it also is ineffective for sustainable long-term change. And when we look at the research, it suggests that shame, guilt, and self-loathing tactics

Starting point is 00:21:10 not only exacerbate fat phobia and weight stigma, but they also result in poor weight loss outcomes and increased disordered eating. And there are a number of possible reasons for this, but it could be related to the release of cortisol from the self-criticism-induced stress response, the heightened risk of binging or quitting altogether when you slip up, and of course how the human brain responds with declines in executive dysfunction to punishment-based approaches. Berating yourself or others' biggest loser style is just not a good strategy because you come to associate the healthy behaviors

Starting point is 00:21:45 with pain, embarrassment, resentment, and self-loathing rather than with self-care and compassion. And you might be able to live in that pit of shame for a few weeks, but humans are just not designed to'm not a fan of skinny talk. I also hope that I provided some insight into why it might not be a safe place for you either, whether you are in recovery, a fellow anti-diet warrior, or pursuing weight loss that you hope to maintain without losing your mental health in the process. So let me just walk you through some quick practical tips

Starting point is 00:22:36 to help you reject this movement online. Number one, set some social media boundaries. If the algorithm is showing you content that you do not want to see, block and scroll and even report if necessary. And if you didn't know, you can actually filter out keywords that you don't want to see in your content. So you could absolutely filter out skinny talk in various spellings so that content doesn't come up in your feed.

Starting point is 00:23:02 Number two, flood your algorithm with creators whose content aligns with your values. Though it can seem like social media is really going downhill, there's still tons of awesome creators out there fighting the good fight. And I'm gonna leave some faves in my show notes but please drop more in the comments so that we can all benefit. Number three, for my friends who are looking to lose weight, first of all know that I fully support you. I believe wholeheartedly in body autonomy and I'm absolutely here to promote sustainable health promoting behaviours that have evidence to support their role in weight management.

Starting point is 00:23:37 So if you want to get serious about your health or body composition journey, I would absolutely avoid taking tips from random influencers online and ideally work one on one with a dietitian who can find the most evidence-based strategies for you. And I can promise you, none of us RDs will be using terms like quote-unquote big back. Lastly, this might be unexpected, but pick up a new hobby. Try something totally different, and ultimately something that has nothing to do with weight loss goals.

Starting point is 00:24:08 So maybe it's watercoloring or crocheting or baking, I don't care. But spending too much time online in the world of skinny talk can convince us that our bodies and the pursuit of thinness are the only things that can make life gratifying and enjoyable. And that is simply just not true. There's so much more to life than our weight, and by reconnecting with people

Starting point is 00:24:31 and our passions in the real world, we can recognize that people of all shapes and sizes can pursue a joyful life. Skinny talk is no doubt a growing problem, and unfortunately I feel like it's going to grow until those creators or disciples either burn out or decide like if you can't beat them, join them and go on AG1 Agonist themselves to be more momentary acceptance of body diversity, but the velocity at which we have traveled back to the dark days does leave me a little less optimistic. All we can do right now is to stay vigilant as individuals in acknowledging and speaking out about the harms of skinny talk culture and protecting ourselves with gentle boundaries and safeguards when we are exposed. And with that folks, we've come to the end of this episode. I do hope that I've opened up this discussion to be a little more nuanced, but I would love

Starting point is 00:25:33 to hear your thoughts in the comments. Also, we will be taking a week off next week to allow you to all enjoy your long weekend, and we will be back in June for Season 3. As always, I would love if you would leave me a five-star review and share with someone that you think would find this helpful. It is truly the best way to support this podcast and help share my very important message. Signing off with Science and Sass, I'm Thanks for listening.

Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - The MASSIVE Problem with #SkinnyTok (Is Extreme 90s-’00s Diet Culture Back?!)

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