We are in the last stretch of the year and it’s business as usual over here at Team YKAL with a brand new episode!. This week on the podcast, speaker, writer, and educator Melissa Toler joins me. Her work encourages people to make the connection between our culture's oppressive beauty standards and our personal struggle with self-acceptance. I’ve been following Melissa and her work online and social media for a while now. I love her message and I was so excited for the chance to speak with her. Today, we talk about challenging the cultural standards of wellness and beauty, plus diet culture and it’s messaging. We also talk about how we all have internalized thoughts around certain body types, including black bodies, brown bodies, or even trans bodies and how it perpetuates harm. Melissa reminds us the work of unpacking and unlearning our internal body biases is lifelong work. In this episode you’ll hear: Melissa’s pivot away from the wellness industry and why she became disillusioned with it (7 minutes and 24 seconds) How Melissa challenges the cultural standards of beauty and wellness (13:10) Questioning the messages we receive about body image, health and fitness (17:04) How health and wellness professionals can shift their education and start to question their current practices and philosophies (24:28) Fatphobia and unpacking internal biases (26:22) Melissa shares her story of her own weight loss obsession and how she overcame it (34:09) http://yourkickasslife.com/259