5 Questions With Leslie Jordan Garcia, MBA, MPH, CEDRS, PT, Body Liberation Coach

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If you are a regular reader, you know about the 5 Questions With… series where we learn a bit about experts in the field. Previous interviewees include Dr. Lesley Williams, Mikey Mercedes, Aaron Flores, Dr. Gregory Dodell, Lisa Du Breuil, Dr. Asher Larmie, and members of Medical Students for Size Inclusivity, Chrissy King, and Jessica Jones.

This month’s interview is with the incredible Leslie Jordan-Garcia. I had the the distinct privilege of hearing her give a keynote at the Central Texas Eating Disorders Conference and she was incredible!

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your work

I'm Leslie Jordan-Garcia, and I am, to succinctly put it, I'm a body liberation coach, so I'm coming to this work from experience in community health. I have an MPH, and then I went on to get some certifications to help people with eating disorder recovery and as a holistic wellness professional. So that's what I do. That's how I came to the work. A lot of it has been informed by my own recovery, which will be 20 years this year from binge eating disorder. So that's what I do. And how I help people is that I really partner with people to help them explore their own identities at every intersection, accept those identities and move forward with good, strong coping strategies and skills as they tease out what they want their life to look at. If they could just get out of the external validation and the external voice that systems of oppression give us.

2.  How did you learn about the concepts of weight neutral and body affirming care

As I've never been, well, I was a young adult before I started. My body started changing in a way that made me slide over from straight size, if that's a thing, to plus size. And I was in the army at that time. And so really battling with trying to keep my body small in a very oppressive, very aesthetic-facing industry and really trying to figure out, is my body that bad? I'm able to do this, really dealing with some of the commodification that larger bodies have if they're athletic or strong or able like that. And I just came to the conclusion that this doesn't feel like it's going to work for me across my lifespan. So I really started following people like Shelby Gordon, Ragen Chastain, and Fat Marquisele. Somehow I stumbled across the Health at Every Size(tm) principles back in the earlier iterations and really started learning about what it looked like to be weight inclusive, what it meant.

And it was really nice because as I finished up grad school and started working with people managing diabetes, I saw how important that was. Because I saw that not being accepting of all of our identities and how we inherently exist is inherently bad. Like you're fat, you're this, you're that. Those things are called inherently bad,  and recognizing how prevalent weight bias was. It was sad, scary at times, but also activating.

3.  How Have You and Do You Apply These Concepts To Your Work?

So a lot of my work deals with movement, education, reclaiming fun, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, focused movement - I'm always about that P word. And so really knowing that your body is capable and deserving of being accepted, being loved, being adored in its form and every form because our bodies are going to change, is really important to me. So if you come and work with me, even in movement, I'm embracing your body as it is. We're going to make goals that aren't related to shrinking. Because I feel, I honestly believe that when you try to shrink your body, you shrink your voice, you shrink your thoughts, you shrink your existence to a point to where you just don't recognize yourself or the life that you are building. And we deserve to take up space. So it's very much about big, fun, luscious movements.

It's about embracing the sensations of movement. It's about embracing the satisfaction of a full tummy, a satisfying meal. It's about all of that with me. And so weight just does not come into that process. We talk about other things, other mind-body, heart, fulfillment that really shape our lives. I always tell my clients, no one has ever put on anyone's headstone “Well, you know what? She didn't eat carbs.” No one says that at the end. So we need to live fully - full of joy and just know that the science has been wrong because it's been terrible science that we've all been indoctrinated into believing. So we really do some education pieces also around that work to let you know that you're just fine the way you exist.

4. What's one thing that you wish people who are still working from a weight focused paradigm could learn or know

I think the one thing I would hope that people who are still working in a weight focused paradigm would just realize or even question is - who is this information serving? Who does intentional weight loss serve? Who does, or how does me working to shrink my body, help me help those? Really when we talk about health, it's a very narrow thing. When people talk about health, they're not considering psychological, emotional, mental health at all. They're talking about an aesthetic. So if we took that off of the plate, what would we have to gain? And I think that if they start to challenge and think critically, they will find that the things that are actually related to health, there are numbers that are related to health, A1C, blood pressure, even a resting heart rate if you want to look at it like that. But you can get changes to those without shrinking your body, without focusing on that. So I would really like to see them start to think critically about what it really means to have holistic health, like all of our areas, to be good, strong, and healthy. And then they would have to consider the effects of weight focused work on those other aspects, which they don't.

5. How and where do we find you and your work?

So I'm most readily or easily visible on the Instagram, I’m @Liberatewellness on Instagram, so that's probably the easiest place to find me. And I also have a Ko-Fi page. It's a support page, but I put information out there too.

Bonus Question: Is There Anything Else You'd Like To Say?

I think I would like people to know that there's so much information, so conflicting and so much information that it's really nice to have a partner that will accept you the way you are in that journey. And I just don't think that journey or any journey like that is meant to be taken alone. So even if you don't invest in working with me, find community. You can join us on Instagram where there's lots of us there talking, commiserating, supporting and being shown, and we put out a lot of good valuable stuff that may be just enough if you're really do it yourself or a self-starter to really try to find some community. I think that's really the first step to reclaiming your life, your agency, and your autonomy over what you want to do with your body.

Massive thanks to Leslie for the interview and for everything that she does. If you’re in the Austin area on June 13th, you can catch us both along with Amy Denton-Luke of Disabled in the Wild, Dr. Demekia Biscoe, Director of Education at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and Syren Nagakyrie, Founder of Disabled Hikers for a panel discussion on “Accessibility in the Outdoors: Changing the Narrative”. It’s free to attend, you can find full information and RSVP here!

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More research and resources:
https://haeshealthsheets.com/resources/

*Note on language: I use “fat” as a neutral descriptor as used by the fat activist community, I use “ob*se” and “overw*ight” to acknowledge that these are terms that were created to medicalize and pathologize fat bodies, with roots in racism and specifically anti-Blackness. Please read Sabrina Strings’ Fearing the Black Body – the Racial Origins of Fat Phobia and Da’Shaun Harrison’s Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness for more on this.