About Ragen Chastain
Ragen Chastain is a Certified Health Coach, three-time National Champion dancer, and two-time marathoner who holds the Guinness World Record for Heaviest Woman to Complete a Marathon. She writes and speaks full-time about Body Image, Health at Every Size, Athletes at Every Size, Fat Acceptance, and Corporate Wellness. Ragen is the author of the blogs DancesWithFat and IronFat, and the book Fat: The Owner's Manual. She has been featured as an expert in media including the Associated Press, the New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, FITNESS, Women's Running, and the Chicago Tribune. She is the editor of the two-volume anthology The Politics of Size - Perspectives from the Fat Acceptance Movement, published by Praeger, co-editor of the work in progress "Throwing Our Weight Around: Real Stories of Fat People in the Fitness World,” and a former Editorial Board Member of the Fat Studies Journal.
Her work is regularly translated into multiple languages and her blog has readers on all seven continents. She was the body image and women’s health blogger for NBC's iVillage (now Today.com) and a columnist for Ms. Fit Magazine, and her freelance work is published in venues including espnW, Everyday Feminism, Jezebel, and Ravishly. Ragen is a featured interviewee in the documentaries Fattitude, America the Beautiful 2, A Stage for Size, and the PBS Independent Lens short Ragen's More Cabaret.
A leading activist and thought leader in the Health at Every Size and Size Acceptance movements, Ragen is an internationally sought after speaker, having brought her captivating combination of humor and hard facts to stages including CalTech, Dartmouth, Amherst, Google Headquarters, the Multi-Service Eating Disorders (MEDA) National Conference, and a European Speaking Tour. She co-founded (with fellow activist Jeanette DePatie) the Fat Activism Conference, and Fit Fatties - a online community for people of all sizes who want to discuss fitness from a weight-neutral perspective, that currently has over 4,500 members. She led the campaign that raised over $20,000 in 8 days and put up 6 billboards and 10 bus shelter ads in Atlanta to counter a billboard campaign that fat-shamed children, and the Skinny Minnie petition which garnered over 140,000 signatures and resulted in substantial changes to a promotion by Barney's and Disney.
Ragen lives in Los Angeles, and she is training for her first (and only!) Iron-distance triathlon.
