SSP 52. Krista Scott-Dixon on Power vs. Empowerment in the Fitness Industry - a podcast by Scott Abel, Mike Forest

Today we were joined by Krista Scott-Dixon, who shared her wisdom, advice, and expertise regarding food, body image issues, and fitness, especially as it relates to women’s issues and gender. Discussions got pretty theory-heavy, but it was all excellent, relevant stuff if you’re involved in body or physique transformation in any way.



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?ABOUT KRISTA ?

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Krista is Program Developer and Coaching Coordinator for Precision Nutrition. She also has a PhD in Women’s Studies, and taught at York University until 2008, when she left academia altogether. She is published both inside and outside of academia; for instance, you can read lots of really good stuff over at stumptuous.com, where you can find articles with titles like, “Stop being a dick to yourself,” and “F*** exercise, try this instead.”



You can also check out her book Consumed: A Memoir, which chronicles a peanut butter binge, but also addresses body image, dieting, Krista’s choice to leave academia, and more.



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? POWER AND BEAUTY ?

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What began our discussion going was a quotation from Krista’s book, Consumed:



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Because here is the big lie: that beauty brings power. The truth is that beauty attracts power, but only as the smell of week-old squirrel carcass invariably attracts the family dog, who rolls in it and then covered in the stink, consumes it with its canine teeth and front-facing eyes before forgetting about its ex-squirrelly existence.



Real power is hidden. The less you need to display it, the more you have.



[...]



So you think you are winning by doing power’s bidding. By getting beautiful. By steeling your buns and raspberry-swirling your lips.



But the illusory “choice” that real power offers us, like a bone to a begging dog, is still bullshit.

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? “EMPOWERMENT” IN FITNESS ?

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Once you realize that the choice between Coke or Pepsi isn’t really much of a choice, you can realize you’re in a story, and that is itself a form of power.



If you want to find where the power is, take a look at who’s making the money and who’s cleaning the toilets.



Sometimes “taking control” of your body is marketed as a form of empowerment, but in many ways, it can be an exact opposite kind of situation, where you actually relinquish control: you lose touch with hunger, with what satisfaction is, with having “full energy” is.



In terms of self-connection, Krista really likes George Beinhorn’s book, The Joyful Athlete.



One of the dangers is that these things really do feel empowering at first, and they give us access to stories we can tell ourselves about ourselves (e.g., “I am a badass,” “I am super committed,” etc.) but it’s only much further on that you realize what’s really going on, and the toll its taking.



In Scott’s parlance, ask the question: really, deep down, what is fitness doing for my life, and what is it doing to my life?



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? DISORDERED EATING AND UNHEALTHY THINKING ?

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How do you move past it? Part of it is accepting that there is some kind of secondary gain, somewhere.



This doesn’t happen in an instant; it’s a process.



You don’t diet your way out of it. More nutritional knowledge doesn’t help, and it often makes it worse.



Look for instances where your story doesn’t allow you to be a whole,

Further episodes of The Smarter Sculpted Physique: Training | Nutrition | Muscle Gain | Fat Loss

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