Show Notes
Link to Pre Order: Tackling Gender Bias in The Healthcare System. What Patient stories Teach Us About Implementing Systemic Change: https://uk.jkp.com/products/tackling-gender-bias-in-the-healthcare-system Discount Code: THOMSHEER15
We are back for series 17, and our guest today is a dear friend of ours, Elle Mace. Elle is an ILM Level 5 Coach and Mentor, a Master Practitioner in eating disorders, obesity and body dysmorphia, a nutrition and weight management therapist, and a life and positive psychology coach. Elle says she's "always been passionate about health and fitness,” but for years, that passion sat alongside an unhealthy relationship with food that started when she was just ten years old. She's spent the years since learning to free herself from what she calls her "food demons," and falling back in love with her body. That journey is now a book, Food Freedom: How to Find Peace from Food Anxiety and Reclaim Your Body Confidence, an empowering guide for women rebuilding their relationship with food, body image and self-worth. Grounded in positive psychology and Elle's own experience as a qualified Eating Disorders Practitioner, it looks at how diet culture harms all of us, the different faces of disordered eating, and how to trade self-criticism for self-compassion. The book is brilliant, we went along to her book launch, where Elle spoke about her own journey and the power of positive psychology, and we knew you would want to hear this conversation. We chat about how Food Freedom actually came about, and what it was like for Elle writing it, digging back into her own story, including the book's subtitle, How to Find Peace from Food Anxiety and Reclaim Your Body Confidence. Elle takes us into her chapter on Body Dysmorphia and seeing yourself clearly, timed with the first ever Body Dysmorphia Disorder Awareness Day, unpacking what BDD actually is and what it isn't. We talk about diet culture and where "healthy eating" tips into disordered thinking, including whether something like fasting can become disordered when taken too seriously, especially with so many conflicting expert opinions out there. Elle also opens up about swapping self-criticism for self-compassion, including how she came to name her own inner critic, and shares tips for anyone struggling with theirs. We can't ignore what's happening right now with GLP-1s either, so we ask Elle, someone who has spent years untangling this stuff, what she makes of a moment where women are shrinking and even Hollywood stars are starting to look frail rather than "healthy." She tells us the one thing she wishes someone had said to ten-year-old her, and shares the smallest first step she'd want anyone to take today if they recognise themselves in her story.
We also chat about our summer, there's a new Weekly Invitation, and stick around for some beautiful inspiration to carry you through the week. ☕ SUBSCRIBE for honest chats on women's health, feminist issues, sisterhood & smashing the patriarchy, one cuppa at a time. 💛 Enjoying the podcast? Please share, leave us a review or comment! If you would like to, you can buy us a coffee at Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/womenkindcollectivepodcast 💬 We love hearing from you, email us your ideas here — Jinty & Lou: [email protected] 👀 Join us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womenkindcollective?igsh=ZmxmbGs2d3BjcXA1&utm_source=qr 🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/womenkind-collective/id1557937820 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/42KniEtc5WGQhNvREsN1WP?si=e14a83c93a304bb3 And all your favourite podcast platforms. Thank you for listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Elle Mace Book: Food Freedom. How To Find Peace From Food Anxiety and Reclaim Your Body Confidence. Elle Mace. Vermilion. 2026 Website: https://www.ellemace.com/ LinkedIn: @Elle Mace Instagram: @iamellemace ☕ SUBSCRIBE for honest chats on women’s health, feminist issue
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Link to Order Our Best Selling Book: Tackling Gender Bias in The Healthcare System. What Patient stories Teach Us About Implementing Systemic Change: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tackling-Gender-Bias-Healthcare-System/dp/1805018817
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Link to Order Our Best Selling Book: Tackling Gender Bias in The Healthcare System. What Patient stories Teach Us About Implementing Systemic Change: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tackling-Gender-Bias-Healthcare-System/dp/1805018817 Today we are Spilling the Tea with Dr. Ravi Gill, a health psychologist who has spent over 15 years helping people navigate anxiety, depression and the mental load of physical health conditions, from early intervention services to older adult NHS care. She also trains organisations on mental health awareness and crisis management, and volunteers supporting people in emotional distress. Today we're talking anxiety: what it is, what it feels like, and why perimenopause can turn the volume up. In this episode: 1. What anxiety actually is: generalised anxiety vs "normal" worry, and the line between everyday stress and something that needs support. 2. What anxiety feels like in the body and where people notice it first. Many women are thought to have cardiac or gut issues when it's anxiety (or vice versa), so how can we tell the difference? 3. What’s happening in the brain when we're anxious, and why anxiety latches onto specific worries like health, money and relationships even when it's really about something broader. 4. Perimenopause and anxiety: why anxiety can appear for the first time, or come back with a vengeance. 5. What to do in the moment when anxiety spikes, plus the go-to grounding techniques Ravi actually recommends. 6. What does real progress looks like, whether anxiety can be managed long term, and when to see your GP rather than self-manage.
Today we're spilling the tea on how AI is affecting women, work, and happiness. Our guest is Giselle Goodwin, a self-help author, former business owner, and the woman behind Can Women Really Have It All? A Happiness Handbook for Working Mothers. But don't let the "self-help" label fool you, Giselle's approach isn't about "finding your inner goddess." It's honest, it's grounded in research, and it's backed by a PhD in women, work and wellbeing that she went back to university to complete after twenty years of running her own businesses. She's spent years asking one deceptively simple question: how can life actually be better for women? In this episode we talk about: • The "having it all" myth, the promise the 1980s sold women, and whether it ever delivered • How flexibility, hybrid working and micro-shifting can quietly become a trap for women at work • The basics of how AI is already affecting women's jobs, and which sectors are most at risk • Why AI's gender bias matters from AI safety and regulation to non-consensual AI-generated images of women and girls • Why Giselle calls the impact of AI on women the next "she-demic," and how worried we should be • The domestic gap nobody talks about and the research showing that when men do more at home, women are less depressed, arguments drop, and divorce risk halves • The three things Giselle would change tomorrow in policy, culture and technology to make work genuinely work for women
Link to Pre Order: Tackling Gender Bias in The Healthcare System. What Patient stories Teach Us About Implementing Systemic Change: https://uk.jkp.com/products/tackling-gender-bias-in-the-healthcare-system Discount Code: THOMSHEER15