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I try really hard not to get too close to my personal story in this work. We live in a climate full of naysayers, trolls and people who have not-nice things to say and a keyboard with which to do so. I've been told, even by other teachers, to "stay in my lane" and "stick to teaching ELA". I've even been told as much as I shouldn't be teaching because of my size. 

As far as staying in "my lane" (whatever that means) goes, I can't. 

As long as people, especially students, are affected by weight stigma and other forms of oppression, whether or not they affect me personally, I can't "just stick to English." 

I grew up with and still grapple with a tumultuous relationship to food, body image and diet culture. Some of my school memories involve teachers openly body shaming me or commenting on the food I ate. Later memories involve self-imposed food rules to maintain times during track and cross country season, putting calories on spreadsheets, and going to the gym twice a day to stave off the effects of a binge in college. I had a teacher in 10th grade tell us (presumably during a unit on nutrition) in health class that 200 calories per serving of any given thing was the limit and to read the labels and avoid anything that was higher than that in a single serving. This became an arbitrary food rule I carried with me even into adulthood.

At one of my first roles in education, I was beginning my recovery from a long-term relationship with different iterations of eating disorders going back years. I remember sitting in the faculty lounge, reading Lindo Bacon's Body Respect. When someone asked what it was about, I told them, and they literally laughed at me. They laughed at the idea that set point weight exists, and that factors other than a person's food choices are determinants of weight. They laughed at scientific evidence. 

Even as I found another place to spend my free periods, the rhetoric shifted but not by much. I was able to have amiable conversations about diet and weight stigma with colleagues, but the presence of "I'm being good, I can't have what _____ left out from her party this weekend" in response to colleagues bringing in extra or leftover treats was inescapable. 

So, considering that the attitudes and behaviors that we call diet culture have affected my body and my mind personally, silence isn't an option. And it is everyone's job, whether or not they teach health/physical education, to unpack and unlearn these attitudes, because they harm our colleagues and friends and also our students. As we continue to be a collective and individual work in progress in the areas of equity, diversity, inclusion and justice, addressing the harm done by diet culture must be part of this framework.