Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and one of the nation’s leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body image. She is the founder of Babecamp, a 4-week online course designed to help those who are ready to break up with diet culture, and she started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight. Virgie edited the ground-breaking anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion, and she holds a Master’s degree in Human Sexuality with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, Tech Insider, MTV, NPR, and more, and you can find her online at virgietovar.com. In this episode, Virgie gives us an amazing crash-course in the history of diet culture and goes into detail about how it’s ruining our lives. She share lots of personal stories about her own experiences, we talk about her decision to break up with diet culture, what self love looks like for her, and why it’s so important to practice setting boundaries and saying “no”. I’m totally obsessed with Virgie’s work, and finally talking to her was such a blast. I hope you get as much from this conversation as I did! (more…)