When an Eating Disorder Therapist Opens a Gym, It’s Not Your Typical Gym.
Has movement ever felt complicated, painful, or conditional? If so, I want you to know that you’re not alone. There is a different way to be in relationship with movement. If this resonates with you, maybe my story will too...
Trigger warning: mentions of disordered eating, weight management, weight loss, and traumatic experiences in fitness spaces are in this blog post.
Ever since I started teaching group fitness classes in 2006, something didn’t feel quite right.
I loved the rhythm of step aerobics, the music, the energy, and the people who became my community. Movement felt energetic and connective. It made me feel like a part of something bigger than myself, which I deeply craved.
What didn’t feel right was the constant comparison of bodies and obsession with thinness. People would ask me how to lose weight or get their arms toned. I heard instructors yell at participants in the name of motivation, even when it felt more like pressure than care. To me, all of this felt counter health.
I found myself living in a kind of dissonance because fitness was simultaneously a space where I was expected to “manage my weight” and a space where I genuinely felt happy. I struggled with disordered eating and negative body image since I was a teenager. And yet, I knew that group fitness classes felt better when they weren't focused on shrinking or changing our bodies. Comments about "getting our beach bodies ready" would send a shock through my body that felt harsh and unsafe, even though I was stuck in diet culture at the same time. How could a space that's meant to help people feel better actually make people feel bad about themselves and their body?
The fitness space held both joy and magic for me, while also stirring confusion, guilt, and discomfort. Because of this, I embarked on a journey to explore the dissonance of a fitness space feeling both exciting and icky. I also wanted to see if I could create a new way of approaching fitness that did not involve weight loss and appearance goals. This included becoming an eating disorder therapist in 2019 and opening Current Wellness in 2020.
Reckoning with Fitness being Infiltrated by Weight Loss
It was common for people in fitness spaces to ask what I ate or how much I worked out, often because I was in a thin body and they were chasing thinness themselves. Others would tell me everything they were eating and express frustration about why their bodies wouldn’t change. Because I didn’t want to relate to movement as a tool for weight loss, it often felt like I was swimming in a pool I didn’t want to be in, but didn’t yet know how to leave.
I used to offer personal training at a place where gathering someone’s weight was a part of the intake process (this is unfortunately very typical in fitness spaces). Sidebar: I’m a sensitive person. I can feel other people’s emotions and I try to attune to them as much as I can. I remember sensing that some of my clients were anxious about being weighed (which makes sense given how much this can be a shaming experience). I intuitively said to them “Do you want to be weighed? Because if you don’t, we can skip it.” I felt like a rule breaker and hid it from my supervisor. It felt like treating someone with dignity was worth any potential repercussions.
I share this story not because I’m a perfect size inclusive fitness professional. I definitely made mistakes because I was in the throes of disordered eating and diet culture. However, I had moments like these where I intuitively knew something didn’t quite feel right about the way we focus so much on weight loss in fitness spaces.
Discovering Anti-Diet and Size-Inclusive Fitness
In 2017, I met Kate Sutton, who is an eating disorder therapist in Raleigh, NC. I bravely reached out to her on Instagram and invited her to coffee. At the time, I was in a Master’s program at NC State to become a clinical mental health therapist. I was very interested in what she shared on Instagram about body image and exercise because her posts just made sense to me. During our coffee chat, she recommended that I read the book Health at Every Size by Lindo Bacon. (Thank you, Kate for this rec and your collaboration over all of these years!).
In some ways, everything changed once I read this book and in other ways, everything just started to make sense. This book gave me language and research behind everything that I was feeling intuitively. For example, dieting is one of the strongest predictors of eating disorders. (Source) Through my studies, I became more and more committed to adopting an anti-diet lifestyle and profession.
I started to more intentionally adopt anti-diet culture and size inclusive language in my fitness classes. At the time, there weren’t a lot of resources on how to actually apply a size inclusive framework to a fitness setting, so I taught myself. Folks in my fitness classes started to share that my classes just “felt different” and that they left feeling happy rather than drained. I also learned a lot from Ilya Parker of Decolonizing Fitness, Christy Harrison’s Food Psych podcast, research articles such as this one, and my personal training clients. I would get a lot of referrals from eating disorder dietitians and therapists who were looking for a size inclusive personal trainer (to my knowledge, I was the only one in the Raleigh area at the time).
These clients were amazing and vocalized their preferences and limitations, teaching me how to adapt programming to their bodies and lived experiences. A lot of them came in with stories of being pushed so hard by another trainer that they got injured, being fat-shamed, being told they are lying about what they are eating, and so much more. It was an absolute gift to work with these clients because we got to create a movement experience that was attuned to their needs. They felt listened to and heard by a fitness professional for the first time in their life. I remain so humbled by their bravery to try movement with me, and honored to have been a part of their journey.
Building Current Wellness
While I was in grad school, I was seeing these clients out of my house. My wheels began turning about what my next steps would be after grad school. I knew I wanted to go into private practice and also knew that I wanted to stay active as a fitness professional. I also knew that I couldn’t be the only fitness professional offering size inclusive services in the area. This work felt so desperately needed and fueled my motivation to open Current Wellness in December 2020. (Yes, we opened during the pandemic and that’s another story…).
One of the first things that I did was write our Mission, Visions, and Values (with my amazing business partner, Nathan Williams), and then our Movement Studio Guiding Principles. I integrated my fitness background with my knowledge as an eating disorder therapist. These principles included things like:
- The application of Health at Every Size™ for movement programming
- Sharing the benefits of movement that have nothing to do with weight loss and measurements
- Inclusive and trauma-informed language and best practices
- Anti-diet movement for eating disorder prevention
These are part of our onboarding process for fitness and yoga instructors so that there is consistency across classes. Because so many people come to movement spaces with past harm, I wanted our values to be clear, consistent, and felt in every class, no matter who was teaching. I was committed to not just saying “we are size inclusive” but for folks to experience us as size inclusive through our language, programming, and facilities. That was, and continues to be our goal.
Our movement studio guiding principles evolved as we co-created them as a team in 2022 with the help of our retreat facilitator, Ericka Hines of Black Women Thriving. Our guiding principles are as follows:
- We teach our students how to be in their bodies, rather than teach them what to look like.
- We believe that our students have agency, choice, and options in their practice, rather than strict rules for “perfect” alignment.
- We believe feeling at home in your body is way more healing and beneficial than doing a fancy yoga pose or exercise.
- We strive to help clients of all identities feel welcome, affirmed, and safe.
- We believe that you are your own best teacher.
As both a mental health therapist and a fitness professional, I know that safety and trust aren’t created by good intentions alone. They’re built through shared, embodied principles that evolve over time.
Current Wellness turned 5 in December 2025. In the past 5 years, we’ve welcomed over 2,500 folks in our doors for fitness and yoga classes, workshops, massage, personal training, and more dedicated to freeing people from diet culture. We have an amazing team and an incredible community of like-minded members who move their bodies for reasons like strength, mobility, sustainability, joy, and their mental health. As a person who has healed their relationship with food and body, I believe in this work wholeheartedly and am honored to share it.
My hope is that when you walk through our doors, you can exhale and feel your shoulders soften. Rather than feeling the ick that I have felt in movement spaces, I want your body to sense that it doesn’t have to perform or prove anything to belong here. Nothing will ever be perfect, but this is our forever mission, for as long as we are able to exist. We strive to create a space where you can exist just as you are, and where movement can feel like a relationship rooted in care rather than control.
I hope to see you soon. With love and from my heart, Brit
Are you ready for movement to feel free of diet culture?
Check out our free guide: 5 Ways to Rebuild Trust with Movement After Diet Culture
About the author:
Brit Guerin (they/she) is one of the owners of Current Wellness as well as the owner of Guerin Therapy Group. Their day is filled with seeing clients for mental health therapy, teaching classes, mentoring the Current's movement team, as well as management and marketing. Having taught fitness programming and education courses for about 20 years, they are grateful to have a space that feels more inclusive and compassionate.
Their education includes a Bachelor's and Master's Degree in Kinesiology, as well as a Master's Degree in Clinical Mental Health. They are a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LCMHC-QS), an Applied Health and Human Performance Specialist for IoM, a Size Inclusive Fitness Specialist, and previously an ACSM Exercise Physiologist. They are trained in ViPR, TRX, cycling, yoga, pilates, strength and interval training, kickboxing, aqua fitness, dance fitness, and more. They love integrating their fitness background with their mental health background in the movement studio.