Hi everyone! Welcome back to another episode of The Chai on Life Podcast. I’m Alex Segal, and today I am so excited to be speaking with Alyssa Goldwater, a self-proclaimed plus-size advocate who also refers to herself as “your Orthodox Jewish friend.” She creates content for social media that gives followers an inside look into an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle and is open about her journey with eating disorder recovery and how she has grown and continues to grow to love and accept her body as it is.

This conversation is a powerful one. As I said in an episode on eating before this, if you are a woman in this world you have most likely experienced some sort of thoughts on your body and the food you’re putting into it. It’s something we can’t avoid. Even if you had parents who spoke about everything in the healthiest way, there is diet culture messaging that is pervasive elsewhere and it seeps into our brains, often at an early age.

I’m so passionate about this topic because often, it’s something we still need to work on in our day-to-day lives and Alyssa really helps with that and also, if you are a parent and raising the next generation it’s something that we’re thinking about in terms of how to teach it and we can do that so much more effectively when we feel good about it ourselves.

In the episode, we speak about:

-How she got to this place in her social media career where she shares so openly about her struggles

-Why and how she’s reclaiming the word “fat”

-Why dressing for her body is so important to show online AND how it’s so much more than just clothing

-The difference between accepting your body and loving your body and why you don’t have to love every single thing about it

-How she deals with mean comments on her social media posts

-How she practices self-care and maintains her mental health on a day to day basis

-How she speaks to her kids about food so they can develop a healthy relationship with it — I loved her messaging here

-How her relationship with Hashem has helped her throughout her eating and health journey

…and SO MUCH MORE

This conversation was so meaningful, so profound in a lot of ways and honestly, very cathartic for me. I hope you get a lot out of it and can’t wait to hear your thoughts. 

More about Alyssa:

Alyssa Goldwater is a wife, mom and the Digital Influencer behind the lifestyle brand, A Glass of Goldwater (@alyssagoldwater). Merging motherhood with humor, A Glass of Goldwater has become a community and support network of more than 200,000 women across the world. By having hard conversations about difficult topics such as mental health, the dangers of diet culture, and the unspoken struggles of motherhood, Alyssa not only keeps people laughing with her sarcastic take on life, but also helps women feel part of something bigger - that they aren’t alone in this crazy world.

Alyssa has made it her life’s mission to “take back the word fat.” Society has turned, what is a regular descriptor word, into an insult that incites feelings of ugly, bad, unhealthy, unlovable, unworthy, etc. Diet culture and the anti-fat bias have demonized every body that doesn’t fit the perfect, “thin is best” mold. It has turned unrealistic beauty standards, and unscientific health standards, into a multi-billion dollar industry that preys on the insecurities and vulnerabilities of people who believe their bodies aren’t acceptable.

For as long as someone cannot accept, and learn to respect, the body they live in, they will never be able to live a truly fulfilling life. Alyssa is breaking down the walls of diet culture by helping women live confidently in their bodies, as they learn to love themselves again.

Along with other movers and shakers in the Anti-Diet Culture and Eating Disorder Recovery movements, Alyssa is helping to redefine beauty standards and pushing the boundaries of what society deems as “acceptable”.

Every body is worthy, lovable, acceptable and houses a holy soul inside. Through education, plus size fashion and advocacy, Alyssa helps women internalize and access those feelings of self acceptance and love, as they work to live full and meaningful lives.

If there is someone you want to see on The Chai on Life Podcast, email me at alex@chaionlifemag.com or send me a DM @chaionlifemag. Thanks again, see you next week!