The Approach

Embody Lib is not a health coaching business, nor do we offer one-on-one nutrition/health counseling for individuals. Our background and expertise is best utilized when working towards systemic, policy, and environmental changes. Organizations, institutions, and other collective entities should be accountable for the culture, policies, and practices contributing to poor health outcomes in historically marginalized communities.

While Embody Lib encourages individuals to incorporate the framework in their daily practice, our services best suit providers, organizations, and institutions that want to apply a body liberation approach to their policies, procedures, and programs. By working on an organizational and institutional level, Embody Lib can offer more targeted expertise in navigating the challenges marginalized communities face in achieving optimal health and wellbeing.

Embody Lib wants to shift the current system into one that embraces a integrates an interdisciplinary, multi-dimensional, and weight-inclusive health paradigm, which supports systemically marginalized communities in establishing a solid foundation for working towards liberation, justice, and equity.

Embody Lib partners with:

  • Medical, Healthcare, and Wellness Providers

  • Educational Institutions (Universities, Certification, and Accreditation Programs, Continuing Education)

  • Public Health and Nutrition Professionals

  • Nonprofit organizations or community-based organizations that do work around social justice and/or health equity

  • Companies and Businesses ( including Employee Resource Groups) looking to address health and wellness through a justice, equity, and inclusion lens

to improve health outcomes and quality of life for:

  • Those living in higher weight bodies

  • BBIPOC (Black, Brown, Indigenous People of Color), otherwise known as People of the Global Majority (POGM)

  • Children & families

  • People of marginalized genders, including women, non-binary and gender nonconforming individuals, and trans men

  • Lifelong activists and advocates

the Framework

DECONSTRUCt & Examine

Cultural narratives dictate many of the thoughts, beliefs, and choices individuals make regarding their health and wellbeing, whether for their benefit or detriment. Dominant power structures shape this narrative as they navigate gender identity, health practices, and their relationship to food and bodies. Deconstructing this narrative allows for a close examination of the current system and its connection to colonization, modern colonialism, and supremacist ideology, such as anti-Black racism. Gaining context and understanding of the past and present is vital in helping people of the global majority reclaim health and rebuild their future, the first step in body liberation.

Reclaim & Rebuild

While personal behaviors account for about 30% of our total health outcomes, genetics, biology, socio-economic factors, the physical environment, and access to quality healthcare, all impact our health greater than what we eat or how much we move. That is why we believe in combining lived experiences with evidence-informed practice and scholarship to improve the health and wellbeing of historically marginalized communities. Embody Lib understands that the pursuit of health is not a moral obligation, but the opportunity to access and reclaim our health equitably is a right.

Strengthen & Nurture

 

Body liberation is not new. This framework has roots in liberatory ideology and justice movements such as Fat Liberation, Black Feminist Thought (including Intersectionality), Decolonization, Racial Justice, Food Sovereignty, Modern Abolitionism, Reproductive Justice, Queer Liberation, Indigenous Reclamation, Mutual Aid, and more. We seek to credit and honor those deeply embedded in this work before us. We rely on their lived experiences and expertise to further inform our body liberation journey. We know that we don’t have all of the answers, but we know that leaning on each other builds community and that a strong community is a catalyst for systemic change.