By Kim Brassor

One Voice Evolving

Trouble with 12-Step

Fat Phobia = Racism in Yoga Pants

How diet culture keeps us broke, hungry, and hustling for approval.

Let’s cut the crap. Whether they call it “lifestyle,” “weight management,” “wellness,” or “healthy eating”—it’s all the same tired script. It’s fat phobia. It’s weight stigma. It’s racism in yoga pants.

And while we’re out here counting calories and apologizing for our thighs, diet culture is laughing all the way to the bank—raking in billions off our socially enforced pain and powerlessness.

Racism in a Salad Bowl

Fat phobia didn’t start because doctors cared about health. It started because Europeans tied fatness to Blackness during slavery. Larger Black bodies were framed as lazy, immoral, “uncivilized.” Thin white bodies were painted as pure, disciplined, superior.

Medicine, public health, and diet culture carried the torch forward. Fast-forward, and we’re still choking down kale like it’s penance.

So when someone says “clean eating”? That’s not neutral. That’s a racist script dressed up like a detox.

If It Doesn’t Taste Good, Spit It Out

Because food is not supposed to be a punishment. Your body doesn’t need suffering to prove its worth.

Circling the Drain (and Paying for the Privilege)

Here’s how the trap works:

• Every “failure” on a diet gets blamed on you.

• Every “success” gets credited to the program.

• And no matter what, you’re told to try again—with your wallet open.

Meanwhile, the system keeps women exhausted, ashamed, and broke. Because if you’re too busy hating your body, you’re not storming boardrooms, marching in streets, or taking your damn nap.

You Can’t Hate Your Way Into a Body You Love

And yet, that’s the sales pitch. “Discipline yourself now, love yourself later.” It never works—because self-loathing is not a nutrition plan.

Waiting for a Hero?

Do we need Prince Charming? A miracle juice cleanse?
Baby, ain’t nobody coming to save you.

These lies are sewn into our DNA, passed down like family heirlooms. My grandma had them. My mom had them. And I got the Costco-sized sampler pack.

But the ache of being “too much” or “not enough” was never mine. It was the system’s script. And I’m done performing it.

Dieting Is a Drug Wrapped in Food Police

That’s the truth: it’s a cycle of highs, shame, and relapse. It hooks you, blames you when it fails, then sells you the next hit.

Renovation, Not Reset

This isn’t about pressing reset. The foundation itself is rotten. What we need is a full renovation: rip out the drywall of lies, bulldoze the shame kitchen, rebuild the house on truth.

Steps to Take Back the Wheel (because diet culture sure as hell won’t):

1. Side-eye every “health” trend. Ask who’s profiting and who’s being controlled. (Spoiler: it’s not your pancreas, it’s a billion-dollar industry selling sadness in a shaker bottle.)

2. Read Sabrina Strings’ Fearing the Black Body. Once you see how fat phobia was literally built on racism, you’ll never look at a BMI chart the same way again. (And that’s the point.)

3. Take the wheel. Your body isn’t the problem. The system is. (So move over diet culture—you’re not just a bad backseat driver, you’re not even invited on this road trip.)

What’s Next

Diet culture was never about health. It was about control. And when we call it out, we start to build something freer—where bodies aren’t ranked, shamed, or sold like commodities.

🎙️ Heads up: Evelyn Tribole, coauthor of Intuitive Eating, is joining us on the One Voice Evolving podcast HERE. We’re going to roast diet culture so hard it won’t recover—and then toast to imagining what real freedom tastes like when we spit the poison out.

About Kim

These two spaces—One Voice Evolving and Trouble With 12-Step—are really one project with two doors. Same voice, same mission: to call out the systems that keep us small, silent, and stuck.

On One Voice Evolving, I take on fat phobia, wellness culture, and the tangled lies of systemic racism that live in our bodies and our families. On Trouble With 12-Step, I shine the light on process addiction, recovery culture, and the ways dependency gets repackaged as discipline.

Different topics, same truth: your body was never the problem. The system is.

We’re not here for resets—we’re here for full renovations. Rip out the lies, bulldoze the shame, rebuild on truth. And we’re doing it together, with no heroes required.