Episode 81 Transcript

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Welcome to the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I'm your host, Victoria Welsby and this is episode 81. Today, we're talking about do you want to be thin or do you want to be healthy? weight gain and health post lockdown.

I'm Victoria Welsby TEDx speaker, Best Selling Author and fat activist. I have transformed my life from hating my body with desperately low self esteem to being a courageous and confident fifth party who loves every inch of this jelly. society teaches us living in a fat body is bad. But what if we spent less time, money and energy on the pursuit of thinness and instead focused on the things that actually matter? Like if pineapple on pizza should be outlawed? Or if the mullet was the greatest haircut of the 20th century? So how do you stop negative beliefs about your fat body controlling your life? It's the first fatty podcast Let's begin.

Hello, welcome to this episode, so glad to talk to you. It's it's i I'm recording an episode actually in two weeks, which is not like me. I was just bananas busy. And I didn't have time to record the podcast, but it's okay. Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry, okay. Doesn't mean you're going to miss out on any episodes. Just. I'm normally a few episodes ahead. Anyway, so yeah, I just had a break. You didn't know about it. I was just very busy.

But now I'm not. Well, I'm still busy. But um, so um, hold on. I'm busy Tony about seven days, you know. Anyway, so I'm very excited because this morning I got an email inviting me to book my vaccine appointment. It gave me that vaccine right into my eyeballs gave me that vaccine into my bumhole they got this new song for you to put in your head. Give me that vaccine into my eyeballs. Giman vaccine into my arm. Whoa, forgot the lyrics. So I'm going to get that in a couple of weeks. Oh, god, wait. Also, I'm in zoom Aziz. Since I last spoke to you. i i bought myself a car off Craigslist. So I've got myself a nice used car. I thought you know, when I first come back to Vancouver, I'm gonna see how it goes. Because I live downtown, right? So everything's pretty easy to talk to. So I'm gonna see how it went. But you know, I just I love having a car so much. And I love being able to go like hiking. That's my big thing I like I like going for a nice walk in the woods. And it's a lot harder when you're when you're when you're relying on either the bus or you can do like, Evo, there's a thing called here called EVO, which is you know, just go and pick up rent a car, pick up a car in the street sort of thing. When I went for a walk around, like a couple of weekends ago. It was very nice. But they cost like 50 bucks. And I was like, Okay, well if I'm doing this, like X amount was not just by car. So anyway, got a car signing, although the guy was the guy was why the whole time the guy was like, a US scammer I'm like, no, because gamma. He's like, I don't want to give you my address to come and view the car until like the night before. Okay, whatever.

And then he talked about me being a scammer when I was test driving it and I was like, I'm not a scammer. And then I said, Okay, I'm going to get the car inspected. And and then we arranged I then I, we came to a price. And then I was like, Okay, well do UK with an E transfer. And he's like, I don't know, I've heard about lots of scams. And he this month, I wanted me to go and get cash. There's all around with like, lump sums of cash, like anyway, I was like, listen, it's gonna take, it's gonna take a week to get out the cash because you know, you have a limited cash machine, you can't take out, you know, millions of dollars every single day.

Anyway, so he's like, okay, fine, you eat transfer. And then we went to went to him, went to the insurance agent to go and transfer the car and whatnot. And I transferred in the money and he's like, did you do it? And I was like, Yeah, look, and I literally, like, let him look at my bank account to see that the money had gone to him. And he like, it didn't arrive immediately. It took about 15 minutes for him to arrive in his bank account the whole time. He was like, Well, I can always call the police. If you try and take the car and I'm like

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a golf review. You know, we're just sorting out the insurance right now when we can do that just wait for it to come through and then he's like, Oh, you better call your bank and sales. Okay, all right, I'm just gonna call my mind. And when that happened, he it came through to his bank account and it was kind of like, I want to be like see a fucking told you so I'm not a fucking scammer dickhead. Like an awesome catalyst. That would be the best scam like if he was a scammer getting me to convince him that I wasn't the scammer. Like because I was I was like, listen, mate, like, if it doesn't go through immediately, I'll just go home and then we can come back tomorrow when you do get it. Like, I could have gone. He could have he could have that in his bank account, and then I could have gone home and then he could have just scarpered. He could have said no, it's not arrived, and then he could have just gone away like that would have been a perfect scam. Yeah, and, and afterwards, and then when I got the car, I driven it and and mechanic had looked at it.

And then I was like, hopefully I'll give it a clean because you know, I like it to be clean, but clean, don't want any other COVID in your mouth. And he was a grubby motherfucker, like the steering wheel. Like, I spent ages just trying to clear the muck off the back of the steering wheel. I swear it was probably about three millimeters thick. And it was so bad. And then had to get a steering wheel cover because no matter what I got, like glue off this fancy stuff to get rid of, like, years of shit. And even that wasn't cutting it. And I was just like, why couldn't you just clean this stuff? But you gave me the car. You don't violate I think but then it wasn't like, properly. It wasn't properly done. It was you know, because it would have taken them 15 years to clean off the shit. So yeah, anyway, I've had to clean every single inch of the thing, you know, the roof and I've even had to even have to take the seatbelt out, as in like pull it out and wash that. Like because you can't take it out of the car unless you unscrew something because I was on a screen share, such as just wash it there in the car. And it was like brown shit coming off this thing. I'm like, Whoa, white. Why? So often that I like my new car. I love my new car. It's very exciting, exciting, and Diggle has been loving it too. So yeah, and Google, as you know, has been having having fun with his dog dog walker, who comes once a week. And finally, last week, after four weeks of being together, Dougal managed to go more than half a block. So he'd go like just around the front of my apartment, just around to the side to see if I was at the bins, and then we'd come back around to the front of the park. That's all he would do for an hour. That's all they would walk because he would refuse to leave without me. And then last week, he went on his walk and the dog walker was like, oh my god, we're at the end of the block. And I was like, no, why. And then he's like, we're here. We're here. We're in it all the all these different, you know, he was like, just off on his own having fun. Not on his own with a dog walker. Without me. I was like, yes, go doggy.

And apparently he didn't want to come home. Yeah, so only takes four weeks for that motherfucker to betray me. No, I want I want him to I want him to have all the friends in the world. But it just takes time right for people for him to get used to people. So that was really cool. There's all my life updates. I've probably got more because you know, I'm so amazing. There's so many things going on in my life. Not really. But yeah. Now what are we talking about today? Now, there is let me tell you a story. Let me tell you a story. Okay. So there is a famous body positive influencer, who shared that she is struggling with her eating disorder. So this is this is not I'm not talking about Tess holiday here. So if you don't know, Tess holiday, shared that she has anorexia, which is it's so great that she shared that obviously, it'd be better if she didn't have to experience an eating disorder. But it's so cool that she did because

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now we get to see more often the real face of of anorexia being shown because most people who display anorexia symptoms are not actually straight size. They're not thin. Most people who have anorexia Are Fat People are, quote unquote, mid size people. And that's actually classed as a typical anorexia, which is it's the most common form. But yeah, the diagnosis of anorexia is the only mental illness that has a weight limit, right? Like I said, you have to be you have to be very thin before it's a quote unquote problem. Doesn't matter that you're starving yourself if you're fat because for the families, but If you take it and then that is a problem, which is, you know, is it's a it's a mental illness, right? It's, it's to do with our brain, it's not to do with our bodies. And obviously, you know, if you're very, very, very thin and there's a, you could die more easily, but you can, you can start off, you can experience malnutrition and also be fat. So, anyway, so the whole thing about, you know, atypical anorexia is ridiculous.

And the more we have that, the face of anorexia not being just what we think it is, it will help people realize that just because they live in a bigger body, and they're experiencing disordered eating doesn't mean that it's not valid, you know, you don't have to be very, very small to be experiencing mental health issues. Right. So anyway, I'm not talking about Tess Holliday in this episode I'm talking about an unnamed body positive influence and I'm not going to name them or describe them or anything because I don't want folks to go when this is not really about them. This episode is not about them, but it's about how we interpret things and more how how we're feeling around going back to work or seeing more people after the pandemic and and how this influences actions could make that a little bit more difficult for some people so yeah, I don't want people to go and harass him or anything and be like you're doing it wrong or because it's not this is not about them. Not that you do that because my listeners are not trolls and as you are a troll then fuck off don't listen actually fuck it listen, you give me more stats listen keep listening trolls the the wonderful fierce bounties that are listening, I'm not going to go do this I know that your your wonderful, caring kind human being so So anyway, I got started thinking about this thanks to Rene at sensibly you. So that's a an account on Instagram. So I all linked to Rene's account sensibly, you and Renee started talking about this thing.

And then we had a conversation about it and how what we thought about what was going on and so I'm going to read you Rene's post in a little bit, but this is where this whole thing is coming from is is read I noticed this income and this thing happening and she was like home full developers and shared with me what was going on. Anyway, so the influencer let me describe the situation what what it tell me the construct to work on when you get teasing. So alright, so this influencer has has hundreds of 1000s of followers. There their audiences is largely people who are fat and trying to love their body and their message is you can be fat and love your body. Right? So it's a body positivity account. And she mentioned that she was struggling with her eating disorder, which is binge eating disorder.

And then she said that she had, she is really unhealthy and being unhealthy has made her fat and she needs accountability to not be unhealthy and so started another page about her health journey. Okay, so body positive influencer, hundreds of 1000s of followers have started a health account. And so she did this and people criticized her saying that it's a things by account, things bow like things by in case you're not familiar with that word. It's like inspiration to be thin account. And so people who are in our in eating disorders often will be like, I need thin SPIRATION or I've got a thin smoke account. And so it will be pictures of people in smaller bodies.

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basically helping people to have a disordered relationship with a body or have an eating disorder sort of thing. Okay, so some people criticized her and most people encouraged her and celebrated her and said congratulations, well done. So the types of things she has posted so far, because this is a new thing is about how she is a quote unquote bad fatty. I'm using the words bad, fatty. But what she's saying is that it's her fault. She's made herself like this because of the foods that she eats and the lack of movement in her body. and that she says she's not like the quote unquote good fatties. This is me saying, you know, me interpreting what she's saying, Good, Fatty, bad, Fatty, I did a whole episode on it basically, basically, it is a dichotomy of what is a palatable fatty, a palatable fatty is someone who is fat and is like, Oh, I don't like being, you know, palatable to the general population, I'm fat, and I know I'm disgusting, I'm going to try and stop being fat and I, I, I am going to do everything I can in my power to not be like this and become thin, that is a good fatty so like a well behaved fatty. And so these these aren't, these aren't perfect tropes sort of thing. But it's kind of a representation of what what we see often. And then a bad fatty is is a fatty, who is not adhering to what society says and so will love their body will eat food will

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move their body in a way that feels good to them versus in a way to lose weight. Or maybe they don't move their body.

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So that basically that's just a fat person who, who is not hating themselves. But she is saying, when I say she's saying, Oh, she's a bad, fatty as in, I have caused this to myself, it's my fault that I'm fat, because I'm so greedy and lazy, which is, you know, that's the way that we view bad fatties is, they did this to themselves, whereas a good Fatty Fatty that is more palatable. Will, will be like, Well, I had a, I have a condition that makes me fat. Or, or, you know, there's some reason why I'm fat. And so people people are more generous in society, generally speaking towards fat people who have a quote unquote, reason. There's no and this whole thing is just, you know, just just just fucked up. Because whatever you whatever reason you're fat, it's valid, and it's fine. And it doesn't make you worse or better, because you have a quote unquote, reason, or you're fat because you perceive your your fatness to be that you ate more food or didn't move your body, which is, which is debatable, right? We don't actually know.

So this influencer is saying, I'm fat, not like people who are naturally fat. I'm fat because I eat too much food. Now, we don't actually know that. We don't actually know that. I'm going to get into that a little bit more in a second. But let me just tell you some of the kind of other things that that that there's influencers posting. So she's sharing images of of her meals. So she's sharing images of meals that are quote unquote, healthy, and the quote unquote, unhealthy thing that she hinged upon, and the more healthy alternative that she chose, and I'm saying healthy in big quotes, like big. Yeah, so she's sharing images of her meals. She has shared how she's trying to not eat certain things, and wait, X amount of hours before eating. And then, because of that, trying to stop herself from eating, she will then binge, which is totally normal and natural and to be expected. She shared that being addicted to food is definitely a thing. And if you don't think that you are addicted to food, or that food addiction is a thing, then that's kind of silly. sharing images of her Fitbit after working out. So basically, she is sharing her eating disorder, her active eating disorder or disordered eating behaviors, and a desorb disordered way to view her body and working out so she's she's kind of going on very long walks. And doing that regularly. And it it seems to be coming from a place of I need to become better versus this is one sort of thing. So it seems to be coming from a disordered place. So massive compassion going out to this person. This is a person who from what we're seeing on the outside, it appears to be in their eating disorder. And it's, it appears that Free know from an outsider's point of view that they are struggling with shame and a fear of ill health. And they are really, really difficult things to deal with. So I just wanted to share kind of what what was happening. And this is not about the influencer.

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I'm not mentioning I'm not talking about this to talk about her, but to talk about how this is affecting you. Or the people who are seeing this. Because we are always gonna have celebs or influences do things that we maybe don't like, or don't support. I did a whole episode on this, like when your favorite fat celeb loses weight. And it can be so you can feel it can it can be so disappointing, right? But on the other hand, their bodies don't belong to worse, and they don't owe us to behave in any type of way. And if someone is unwell, that's not their fault, right? That's not their fault. So no shaming the influencer foot for being in this, you know, it's really difficult, it's really difficult. And then when you have a public platform, it's even harder. And when you are dealing with any other intersections, if if whoever celeb is losing weight, or on a diet or whatever it is, it's it's just complicated. To be in the public eye and have to deal with fat phobia and deal with your own mental health stuff. And all of that all of that stuff is difficult. Okay, so compassion goes out to this person. But I also want to talk about how we can support ourselves in this difficult content, there's difficult content being that is this is this disordered. Is this disordered? Or is this health is this is this harmless? Is is a because you see a lot of comments on this account being like, you know, she's living her best life, or she's doing this because of her health. And it's it. And it's about, it's about health.

And even if it is about health, that's still such a complicated topic. And there's so many different layers to that. So when someone in the, when someone in the body positive or fat positive world does stuff like this, it can be really confusing, especially if you are new on the journey. And even if you have been doing this for a long time, it can wobble and shake your foundations, it can lead you to thinking, Oh, maybe I should be doing this. And a lot of people I saw in the comments, were saying, I feel like this to about my body, that after the quarantine, I feel uncomfortable in my body because it is bigger. I am stressing out about seeing people again, seeing my colleagues going to work. I don't feel as healthy. I know I'm not as physically active. And I can see how that has had an impact. And so this is this is kind of where a lot of people are right now. And so the solution that's being presented here by a body positive account is let's look to lose weight, eat this stuff, certain food, restrict and monitor how much physical activity you do. So I want to clear some things up so that when you see this this type of behavior, you can protect yourself and feel solid in your own journey, and be able to extend that empathy towards others who may be in in disordered eating in a full blown eating disorder and extend empathy, but they're not get swept up into maybe I should do that too. And it would be so much easier. Like if Gillian what's her name? Jillian Michaels? Jillian Michaels from The Biggest Loser that that absolute piece of shit human being, like if Jillian Michaels was like, Do you know why after the pandemic, you know, I feel kind of blur in my body. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to not eat until this time and I'm going to do this and now You'd be like, yeah, Julian, that's a diet. Whoo, like red flags. But when a, someone who is kind of on your side is doing it, then it's like, oh, this is okay. It is, it's okay, right. And you could do anything you want with your money, right?

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You can go on a diet if you want, obviously, like you could do anything you want as your body is your choice, right? Same as we don't, we don't own the bodies of celebrities. No one else owns your body. And so you can do what you want. But I think that having a relationship with your food and with your body and with food that is more peaceful, is probably better for most people. I think that that is true that having a peaceful relationship with your body and with food is probably something that we would like to move towards, if at all possible. So the first thing that I want to talk about is that idea of good, Fatty, bad, fatty the idea that over influence, I said, I'm summarizing, I'm fat, because I don't because I eat too much. And I don't exercise. So we don't actually, we don't actually know that, right? We don't know, if we think about our own bodies, we can see correlations so we can say, Okay, well, I got fat and well, that's when I was eating more food. And that's when I stopped working out I'm, that's when I got fat.

And then you can say, I got fat because of of me was my behave my fault. But we don't know that a straight sized person could do have been doing the exact same amount of exercises you the exact same food as someone who straight size could maybe not put on weight. And that has nothing to do with how much food that we're eating or how much exercise they're doing. It's just that that's just who they are. Right? And it's their genetics. And we know that we know, you know, this is an old thing of that thin person over there can eat as much as they want and never put on weight in the fat person card. You know, they they look at, they look at a piece of sand and all of a sudden they've put on loads away. Right? This is you know, but another thing. Another really important thing here is I shared this last week, and that was the determinants of health. And individual behavior makes up only 36% of what makes up health, on the individual level. And inside that individual behavior. There are six different things. And one of them is your diet. And one of them is how much you exercise. There are four other things that are also included in that 36%. And so how much can we break this down to what percentage of our health is affected by what we eat and how we move? Not that much, right? It's not as much as we think because we think it's 100% 100% if I eat this thing, if I don't move my body, I will be unhealthy. And I have 100% control over my health outcomes and that's not true.

So, there are six that are in there as a reminder, so psychological assets. So that is conscientiousness level, self efficacy, optimism level, life satisfaction, level, cognitive function in later life. Next one is negative moods and effects. So stress level, hopelessness level, anxiety level, and depression level. Next one other risk related behavior, gun behavior, sexual activity, motor vehicle, motor motor vehicle behavior, then we have physical activities, we have seep sleep patterns. And lastly, we have diet patterns. So, for example, you've put on way over the pandemic, and, you know, as a as a, here's an example, you anyone has put on weight. And they're saying it's because of my behavior. And even in even if you do say it's because of my behavior, in the behavior, determinants of health, there's so many different things. So your optimism level is going to affect your health. How optimistic have we all been feeling? Oh, the world's coming to an end? Not so much on life satisfaction level? Hmm, interesting. Are you satisfied being in the pandemic? Not really, your stress level, our hopelessness level, our anxiety level, our depression level? And so if you're experiencing thing, these things, it's going to affect your health, your sleep patterns? How has that been disrupted during the pandemic? And so we're so quick to say Oh, It's because it's me. And these are these are the things that are individual behavior, right? individual behavior, but how, how much do we have?

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over how much? How much control? Do we have over these things, a stress level, anxiety, hopelessness, sometimes these are things that we can't actually control, right? I mean, I have depression, anxiety. And it's not like I'm like, had, you know, I'm gonna really fuck up my Christmas break by going into a bout of depression, it's got to be, you know, it just happens, and then you deal with it, right? And it's not, you know, you can take actions to negate that, like, so. So taking drugs, and so I take antidepressants, and so I have, you know, my depression seems pretty much under control. And so that's a behavior I've taken.

And then I've noticed, you know, if I, if I do feel sad, or whatever, then I can take certain actions. But that's because I'm really fucking privileged, I have access to be able to go to the doctor and talk about this. And I have access to a therapist, and I can buy the drugs, with with money, like it's affordable for me. And then I can take action because of the way that my life is set up to look after my mental health. Not everyone can do that. I mean, like, if someone else's. Yeah, honestly, I just think like, How does anyone else like survive, like, if they have kids, if they have, if they work in a nine to five type job? It's hard. It's hard. And so anyway, so we're not even we're not even thinking about just these things. Never mind. All the other factors that make up health and so this, this, this influencer, who said, I eat too much food, and I don't exercise by exercise, therefore, I am unhealthy. And it's so easy for us to say that. And for us, I saw so many comments of people saying me to other fat people, they're fat, because you know, that's just their genetics, but not me. And that is a big amount of shame and blame to be putting on yourself, when you don't deserve it. Even if you did, you know, you are like you legitimately, but how do you know, know that you're fat? Because you you ate food and you didn't exercise? You? Like, how can we know that unless you do genetic testing unless you unless there's, you know, independent studies that involve you, and we just don't really know. So it makes me think about remember when I was on the BBC show, I don't know if you saw it. But we did. We had a doctor in that was a specialist in in fatness. And we did a genetic testing, and I did the genetic testing and he was looking for, there's lots of different traits that that mean that you're more likely to be fat.

And so I think he was looking about at about six different things. I asked to not be shared the results. And the reason why I didn't want to know the results is because it doesn't really matter. In regards to my outcomes. I'm fat, there's not any reliable way to lose weight. Knowing that I'm fat, because I have these genetic dispositions doesn't mean that I'm a better fat person versus if the doctor said, Actually you've gotten, there's nothing here. Theoretically, you should be straight sized. The doctor did say, oh, everyone here has got this thing. And then I said, Hey, don't tell me any more. And when he was going around the table, sharing everyone the results, the people who were the biggest body people tended to have more of a different things in their DNA to show that they're more likely to be fat. And the people got a lot of comfort from that naturally. Right? It's so it's natural to feel like that, obviously, to have someone to say it's not your fault, but it's not your fault. Either way, you know?

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Yeah. So unless someone is doing like genetic testing, and then they're able to go through all of their life and, you know, look at their stress levels and be able to pick apart okay, what about does me being a woman have anything to do with this versus being a man? What about if I'm non binary or transgender? What if I'm queer? What if I am a person of color? What if my back black person and indigenous person what if I disabled or able bodied? Are we able to pick out that stuff? And that's not even everything that's that's held, like am I experiencing ill health at the moment? Because I live in a society that kills black people, and I'm a black person, you know, that is legitimate. But then if you if you know, it'd be, it's so much easier to be like, Aha, I can see the direct link between me eating and my body size increasing. But correlation is not causation. Okay, correlation is not causation. We we don't have enough evidence to say, yes, 100%, no doubt about it.

And even if you noticed, you were eating more food, and it made you made you fatter. We are not taking into account all of the other things that are going on in your life. Like, why are you eating more food? Is it because you were deprived of food? Probably? Is it because you you have an eating disorder? Is it because you need more comfort? Because your life is absolutely so difficult at the moment, you know, therefore, stress is playing a factor like we just, we just don't know. So anyway, just putting that out there. So in response to this potentially faulty conclusion, that she quote, unquote, brought this on herself there my words. She wants to take steps to correct it. Okay, so I'm one of the bad fat people, and I need to do something about it. So people listening, you know, from the people in the comments on her posts are like, Yes, me too.

So a lot of people feel exactly the way that she feels. And being in lockdown, people have put on way, and they have moved their body less, because we're in lockdown. And so it's really simple in their minds, I need to lose weight, and move my body more. And I will feel like I did, before the pandemic, I will feel like I did before the penny. So it's simple. And isn't it nice when when our bright brains come to these conclusions of it's simple, I just need to lose weight, I need to exercise more, I need to eat quote unquote, healthy foods and eat less. So we are we are assigning these changes in our body solely to our individual behavior. But like a big reminder, hello, we have been in probably one of the most stressful times in all of our lives for the last 18 months. And you know, the thing is with stress, a lot of times you know, if you have a it's a tough week at work or a tough month at work or your relationships going through difficulties, that is sometimes a lot less permanent than it has been this pandemic has been, you know, going on for 18 months. And that is a long time to be under stress to be under uncertainty to be under financial issues to be under actually is the world going to collapse to be under I'm scared that my parents are going to die. I'm scared that my that I'm going to get it like what if I do get it and I'm fat. And I and I and I die. And I'm just like, another statistic about a fat person dies and they die because they're fat. And you know, even just say it, it's just like it's overwhelming. And, you know, why are we then saying, Oh, it's all down to me. It's all down to me and what I did and didn't do so.

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So we have this quote unquote problem, which is how we're feeling about our body. And we have concluded is just down to our individual behavior. And to fix it, we're going to restrict our food and make sure that we stay accountable and exercise lots. So this is what's happening with this influencer. Right. And this is what some people might take from following this influencers new account. So what's the issue with this? Well, you can do what you want in your body. Like if you don't feel good, if you feel like dieting is going to really help you out then you know, you do you do you right. But let's look at what we know. What we know is it's really well established diets don't work. And when we exercise when when exercise is engaged in with the goal of weight loss, it is not a sustainable habit versus versus if you engage in health promoting habits without the goal of weight loss, then it's more likely that you can keep doing that because you're doing it just because it's Nice and it's fun. And it's and it makes you feel good versus, you know, tied to a weight loss goal. Because when it's tied to a lightweight weight loss goal, first you'll lose weight, then you then you'll plateau, and then you'll gain weight.

And then you'll be like, Fuck this, I'm not doing this anymore. It's not working. So, so both of these things are temporary, right? So temporarily, we can eat in a certain way, move our body in a certain way and lose weight temporarily. Right? And actually, as we know, just the act of dieting is bad for our health. So, so. So the, the, the reaction to this perceived problem is to ignore science and strive for weight loss, when we know it's just not possible. It's not possible, right? And the evidence says that she hopes that she loses weight. But she wants to do it without counting calories, or macros, or weighing herself or measuring herself. And, and so people are like, okay, cool. That's not a diet. It is a diet. So because there's not the classic signs of weighing and measuring, if the goal of your change in behavior is to lose weight, that is a diet. And it could be that you're not even changing your diet, you're just changing, like, I'm just going to work out 57 times a day. I say diet, as in, you know, diet culture mentality, right. So if you are intentionally trying to lose weight, with behavior change, that is a diet doesn't matter. If you're not weighing and measuring. It's a diet, and the outcome will be the same as any of the diets 95 to 97 98% of people will fail. And studies have shown that the people who are quote unquote, successful at losing weight and what success losing weight looks like is, is losing, can't remember what the percentage is a very small percent, like basically a few pounds, and being able to keep it off for more than two years, between two and five years.

And so, you know, if someone knew that going into a diet being like, maybe you might lose three pounds. But there's like a 2% chance of that happening. People are like, is it worth my effort? Anyway, and so a lot of studies show that the people who are successful at a diet show a lot of eating disorder behaviors. And so it's either you found the diet, or you're going to fall into disordered eating and eating disorder, probably. And obviously, there's going to be some unicorns out there. But that is what's happening for the mass vast majority of people.

43:21

And when I say about intentionally losing weight, by the way, our bodies lose and gain weight all the time. It's just, it's just called being a human being. And so if you just happen to sometimes lose weight, for whatever reason, and sometimes gain weight for whatever reason, that's just called being human, right, as I'm talking about the intention behind it. So if you if if you are engaging in acts to intentionally reduce your body size, then that is a diet and it is probably not going to be successful. So the influencer, the influencer, said she's doing these things for health. And yeah, to lose weight to, and this will confuse so many people. Because the angle, the initial angle of this is, I'm doing this for my health, and yet to lose weight to but you know, you know, that's just less and less less not lead with a weight loss, because that is, that's obviously not something that we want to be following. But let's lead with health.

And we've spoken about it on the podcast many times before about health ism and how leading with health can be really problematic in of itself. So, if we heard this from a diet Schleper, like Jillian Michaels, then it'd be really easy to see how this is harmful. But when it comes from a fat person or body positive person, then it's harder tea to de code? Because who can argue with health? You know, of course we want to be healthy. Of course, health, pursuing health is a good thing. Of course. Of course, of course. Well, is it question mark? And what is health? And yes, you know, we most people want to live a long healthy life and not die sooner than then is necessary. But to get to that is, is mostly out of our controls. And it's complicated and, and we forget about things like mental health and about social justice, justice issues, and all that type of stuff. When we think health we think about food and exercise. And we don't think when we think health, we don't think, Okay, let's try and end racism, right, because that is how that is health too. And that is that that's health ism, focusing on on health to the detriment of our health. So the influencer has said she wants to lose lose weight because her body is hurting. It doesn't matter the reasons why you want to lose weight, if you want to lose weight, because you want to look really hot and sexy, if you want to lose weight, because you're scared for your health, if you want to lose weight, because you want to run around and chase your kids, it doesn't matter if it's a noble reason, science, you know, our bodies don't care. It doesn't matter to our bodies, they're going to do what they're going to do. And so the outcome is going to be the same. So it doesn't matter if you want to lose weight for health reasons, or because you want to look like a supermodel, the outcome will be the same.

Also, do we know that your body is hurting because you are fat? Or is it more likely that it's actually a super complex thing, and then it may not be one thing that's causing it. It may be lots of different things. And it may be a big accumulation of stress over the last 18 plus months. And blaming it on your fatness just happens to be the most logical choice. And why is it that if we feel bad in our body, the solution seems to be eat more, you know, eat different foods, less of certain foods, more of certain foods and move our body. Like why does that seem to be the first thing that people go to? Well, you know, it's a rhetorical question. We know why because diet culture, but we still can get confused in our brains of, well, my body feels bad. It's because I'm fat. And because of that, I need to do this and that. And it's more complex, it's more complex.

48:08

Also, this account from this influencer is proposing that the way to solve binge eating disorder is to restrict, and to try to not eat the foods that you crave. And I hope you can see the issue with that. This is exactly how we get into eating disorders is restricting. And why so many diets are mimicking disordered eating and eating disorders. And having binge eating disorder is a very strong indicator that you've already not fed yourself enough and have spent way too long restricting. So more restriction isn't helpful. One of the posts that the influencer put out there talks about not eating till a certain time and then trying to wait another five hours to eat again and then then this leading to a binge. And in my mind, I'm like, Well, yeah, like if you try and restrict, then your brain is going to fixate on the thing and it's okay to binge. It's okay to binge. You may like say if you do have binge eating disorder, you may get to a point where you want to incorporate other ways other coping mechanisms and and you know, do that to slowly help your your mental health and increase different a variety of coping skills and, and then slowly, binging won't be your primary, soothing or coping mechanism But you can't just say I'm not, I'm going to just restrict so that I don't binge, because restriction does. The answer to restriction is binging. So it's like if you're, if you have binging eating disorder, or you think you might, I used I used to have undiagnosed binge eating disorder. And I just thought is because I ate too much. I was obsessed with food, but I wasn't eating enough, I was restricting myself.

And then I had to burst, burst and eat food and eat more food than my body wanted in those moments. But also, I've mentioned this in another episode where I talked about B Ed, it was really, really helpful for me at the time to have that as a coping mechanism. Because I didn't have anything else. I didn't have anything else in my life. If I didn't have B Ed, then what would have happened to me and I really shudder to think because that was a way for me to, to cope. And so, yeah. So, also there is talk in this account that, of course, people can be addicted to food. So there is simply no scientific evidence to support this, that that, that people are addicted to food. With actual addictions, they worsen when people are exposed to that substance. And so, if you, if someone is addicted to whatever substance, if you give them more of the substance, and you gave them an abundance of the substance, their addiction, behaviors would increase, not decrease. Whereas with food, the more access you have to food in a way that is non judgmental, and you've got that abundance of regular food, then those feelings of addiction subside. So you're not addicted to food. You are rarely fixated on food. When I was in BDD, I was c'est with food, it was the only thing I could think of, because I was so deprived. Like, obviously, if I imagine if I say to you, right, okay. You're not allowed to weed for the for 24 hours? Would you start fixating on? Immediately, you probably thought about how full your bladder was? Well, maybe I should get in a quick way now, you know? Or what would that feel like by hour? 20? I would probably piss myself, you know? Because you can't you can't not go do away, you know? And that's the same that we're doing with our bodies. Don't you think about it don't? Don't you think it builds and builds and builds, and you need a release. So if you need if I told you, you can't wait, it'll build and build and build. And towards the end of it,

53:07

you would be absolutely, like, in pain, and it's the only thing that you could think about. And then you would finally do away, and then you'd like, you'd get that relief. And it would feel good. But then imagine if you had guilt associated with it. And I was like, I told you not to wait for 24 hours. Look at you just waiting willy nilly just whenever you want to. Couldn't you just control yourself and hold it in? You should feel ashamed of yourself. And then you would start to question like, why couldn't I just hold it in? Because you couldn't you were gonna piss yourself? Like, why couldn't I just not eat the food? Because you're fixated on it, because your body's like, please believe another God, let me eat that thing. So you know, yeah. So all of this can be so confusing to the person who is newer to fat positivity and anti diets and even to a person who's been in it longer. And, you know, you can be like, well, people can do what they want with their body. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And so should we just let her do what she wants in her body? Yes. Yes. You know, unless someone is, you know, those around them want to take them into medical care because they can't look after themselves or whatever, in situations like that.

But, you know, the question here is like, what do we what do we make of all this like, is that influencer a bad person? Should they not be doing this? Well, no, they're not a bad person at all. Not at all. They are they are in their eating disorder, which is what they mentioned is that they're struggling with their eating disorder. So they're really struggling right now. And the question comes up here of what level of responsibility do influencers have to their audience? And I don't know the perfect answer to that. But I do know, in this situation here, this is not something that that influencer can help this is, you know, they're going through something something, what level of responsibility would I have to you? If I was going through a mental health crisis? Well, I wouldn't be I wouldn't, it wouldn't be my fault if that was happening. And would I then be at blame for what I put out into the world? Well, no, no, I wouldn't be.

But I would hope that everything that I, I've spoken about over 80 plus episodes, and everything I talk about, on on Instagram, and all the other places that I talk about this stuff would set you up to recognize that there's something going on with me, like if I came on the podcast next week, and I was like, guess Wha, I've decided that arts decided that I'm gonna be eating this, and not eating that, and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, I would hope that the education that you you, you've gone out and got around this subject, would help you realize that something was going on. And to, to, you know, if you had the if you had the ability or wanted to, to reach out, or, more importantly, for you to protect your own mental health and your own journey, that's what that is what I would want, because, you know, we're all human beings with human brains, and I've had suffered from mental health issues in the past, and that could happen, who knows, I don't think it's gonna happen. But you never know. And so and so this is where I want to talk about Rene's posts the thing that started all of this Rene's post is really interesting, because she's talking about the ones around this influencer. So who on the surface level seem it seems like they're encouraging her supporting the intentional weight loss versus being more nuanced in their response. That's how it appears.

Obviously, we don't actually know what's going on behind the scenes, these these people who are responding people who have very, very, very big accounts who are responding saying, like, good for you, or whatever, or other things, we don't know what's going on behind the scenes, whether they are reaching out to this influencer or not, or what so but on the surface level, from from quick glances, it seems like they're not.

58:20

You know, it seems like that they're supporting the behaviors, that's what it appears. So the question here is, what responsibility do these people have to their audiences? Because it you know, a lot of very well known accounts. On our then responding to the person who is struggling, in a way that seems appears to be supporting the disordered behaviors. If they are obviously I'm not saying this person. I can't say oh, yeah, yeah, they have an eating disorder, whatever is only them to know and whatnot, but from what it seems like, you know, disordered behaviors. And what if your favorite thin white anti diet account seems to be supporting disordered behaviors? What's what's their responsibility? What's what is what is yeah, like, I think about myself to what is my level of responsibility in responding to things like this in a a clear way, where people people understand what I think about it. I don't have an artist I don't think there's a perfect answer to that. But it's just something that I think that there's there are people on the on there that are really disappointed in their, in other accounts, who are who are commenting, encouraging things, and saying, hang on a minute. Why are you supporting this pursuit of weight loss when your whole brand is anti weight loss? It's confusing. And it kind of is, right? So when we see like the first influencer saying I'm going to do these things, and then we see the second one who is apparently not in an eating disorder, although we don't know, saying yes, good for you.

So now we have two people who have influenced saying, you know, from on the surface level looks like they're saying we should lose weight. If we feel bad in our bodies, well, then it becomes even more difficult for the average person to untangle this whole thing and say, hmm, maybe restricting food is not the way to make my body feel better. Maybe I'm not a bad fat person. Maybe my body doesn't feel good for a million different reasons. And it's not necessarily because I'm fat. It gets really hard when you have two influences in there. And then it's not even stopping at two. It's, you know, there's more in there too. So, saying all this, what do you do? If you if you feel we're in your body at the moment, which is so many people are feeling feeling lots of different negative emotions around their body?

Well, my first question is the title of this. This podcast. Do you want to be thin? Or do you want to be healthy? Let's have a ponder. Have a ponder. If you say, Yeah, I want to be thin. Absolutely. 200%. Okay. And that's normal. Of course, you want to be thin? Why the fuck would you not want to be thin when we live in a society that tells us being thin? means that you can spray rainbows out of your badge, because you're so electrifyingly sexy? For those who have urges. It would be weird if you didn't want to be thin. So if you want to be thin, don't feel bad. Just think, Oh, I'm a human and I live in society? Well, well, well, isn't that surprising? So it's normal. And holding that I would like to be thin with the other side of things of, is it possible for me? Is it likely that I can ever get there? Maybe we can explore that feeling? And what is behind it?

1:02:40

What does it mean? What is behind wanting to be thin? What does that mean? If you worth in? Would you be healthy? Would you be loved? Would you be worshiped excepted? Would you be able to fit in seats, and not have to squish your body into a world that's not made for you? Would you experience less weight stigma? And all of these are so valid. So of course, you want your life to be easier. Of course, you want everyone to think you're that you're amazing, and you're beautiful, and all that type of stuff. And also, you know, can we achieve that without trying to lose weight? And can we work towards health without focusing on weight? So if you're feeling unfit or or weak, or less flexible, or you notice that your your cardio ability is decreased? Well, are there ways if you want to, to support any changes that you want to make outside of engaging in disordered behaviors? Can you just move your body in ways that feel good? Like not wear a Fitbit, you know, do something like join? Join Joy en is free. It's like workouts for that home workouts with loads of diverse bodies. Yeah, not wear your Fitbit. Increase your confidence in moving don't track how far you walked just by how you feel. And this is this is a practice it feels like honestly, it feels like a lot of what we're doing is, is we're having to relearn things and I was talking about this on a call for first party Academy how when I got first got back to Vancouver I felt anxious about going outside and I was like what the heck Victoria? Like this is a new feeling. Why do you feel anxious and it was like Well, this is new thing and it's in, I haven't done it in like a while. And so of course, I feel a little bit anxious and honoring that and being like, you know, this is normal. And so, you know, going back to increasing your confidence about the things that you used to do, like, for example, this week, I went on a hike to a place called Lighthouse Park in North Vancouver. And it's, there's various different trails that you can go on. And you know, there's longer ones and shorter ones. And, and I haven't been there in while I'm been in Vancouver for a couple of years.

And then maybe before that I hadn't been, you know, maybe in the year before that, or whatever. So I hadn't been there in a little while. And so I was I felt a little bit of anxiety of, will I know where it is? And will I be able to find somewhere to park? And if I can't find somewhere to park? Will I be able to find parking in this industry? And will I accidentally go on a route? That's really, really difficult. And, you know, Will I have an asthma attack and die? Yeah. So you know, it wasn't like a big anxiety thing. But you know, just like a quick kind of like, thought of, what if, because I had lost that little bit of confidence in going on a hike to Lighthouse Park. Now, it's a nice easy one. It's not it's not a long hike, you can make it more difficult with different routes and stuff. And I just thought, yeah, we're just gonna go and see, I'm just, I'll just drive there and see what's what. And I went, and I had a really nice, nice hike, and Dougal played in the water. And we explored different things. And at some points, it was a little bit difficult. And at the end, I felt great. And I felt way more confident. And it's just that I hadn't done it in a minute. That made it a little bit harder. And so if you're feeling like that, like if you normally moved your body before pandemic in a certain way, and you're feeling oh, I must, you know, get back into doing loads of exercise or whatever. Just take it easy on yourself and see how it feels. And let me go to the posts that Renee actually did. Which is really, really interesting. So let me read this post. So this is sensibly you.

1:07:03

On Instagram, I will link the account in the shownotes. So this is a post. This post is very much in the moment, but a person that has a large following built off, quote unquote self love and healing has created an quote unquote, accountability page. This person has also stated they are struggling with their eating disorder. This post is not about them. This post is to address some of people, some of people I've seen from this community that advocate for Hayes, body positivity, Ed, recovery, etc. But are condoning and praising disordered behavior. If you are one of those people, I believe you are contributing harm. You can love and support a friend without giving off the impression that you are condoning it condoning disordered behavior. Instead of praising the behavior in public considered to support them by reaching out letting them know you love them.

And if they want, you can share resources or direct them to Hayes anti diet eating disorder therapist and or Registered Dietitian. I also have to say most of the support is coming from people who are thin, which is in capitals, really and then bolted making me question how you truly feel about fat bodies and fat bodies in eating disorder recovery. So that's, that's the the post and then the caption that goes with it is please do not mention this person in the comments. They have the right to do what they want, this post is not about them. It was bit disappointing to see how many large IG accounts especially those that advocate for quote unquote, all the right things show up in the comments with praise for someone displaying disordered thoughts and behaviors, especially after they stated they are unwell. The posts include things about restriction, food, moralizing, weight loss, food addiction, and things related to eating disorders. Why is this being praised? Is this because this is this person is fat? Would these same people show praise? If this person was thin and struggling with an eating disorder? My trust in those people around fat bodies has gone down if I'm being honest, I was speaking to a good friend of mine, Caroline at one hot fat baby one hot underscore fat baby, and how oftentimes we can be friends with people that we love, and we want to support that we can love and support them without supporting their disordered behavior. Because then it isn't support it's enabling. This is exactly that. Why are people enabling someone with an eating disorder? It's one thing for someone to genuinely focus on health and for us to support them but another to praise that Ed and then we've got hurt here note following someone doesn't always mean something. I follow people who I don't share views with because I want to read their point of view. It's what we say in the comments, that means something.

So, and then I wanted to read this one comment on this post. One of the comments said this, I found myself on the fence at first, but after thinking about the popular argument I was reading, I decided I wasn't on the fence. I dislike the argument that we can create space in the BoPo fat positive community for opposing beliefs. We literally cannot there isn't room in the LG BT q plus community for outright homophobia, there isn't room in the trans community for transphobia. Why does this seems to differ for so many people? I don't think we should be handing out passes, because it's more socially acceptable to engage with diet culture. I just don't there's room for nuance in the conversation. But we have to draw a line at supporting literal literal behavior and content content that is contrary to the movement. If we really stand for it. Yeah, so yeah. It's really, it is really interesting to see it is. Rene hit the nail on the head, if this was a thin person, in an eating disorder doing these things, I think the response would have been very different. But because it's a fat person, it kind of feels like, Oh, good. She's finally getting her shit together. She's healed herself. She's healed herself so much that she's finally gonna become thin and lose weight. Yeah. And it just it just it. It just is just.

1:11:56

Yeah. What am I feeling right now? It's just it's just, it is interesting, isn't it? How, how it's so programmed in us to to, you know, when a fat person, quote, takes control of their health, that will we feel a way about it. We're like, that's good. Whereas if a straight sized person were to say, I'm going to take control of my health, we would be a bit more curious about what does that mean? Is there any disorder by height behind that? Is that something that I want to engage in? Maybe not, whereas if it's a fat person, it's more like, oh, well, that it's a good thing. And this is probably what I should be doing. Maybe let's look into it. It seems like a good idea. Oh, other BoPo accounts are given the thumbs up on it. Okay. All right. So body positivity, fat positivity does include weight loss, disordered eating, food, moralizing, blah, blah, blah. And it's kind of, it's like, Oh, so close, close. But I want to I want to extend big empathy and love and support to anyone who is struggling with with with an eating disorder. Who anyone is, is has realized, oh, shit, I didn't realize maybe I'm engaging in some disordered things. Because it's so it's not black and white, right? It's not it's kind of nefarious and diet culture. And fatphobia sneaks in, in, in lots of different ways. And, and so, yeah, if that's you, then be gloved here.

And again, if you think you know who this person is, that I've been talking about in this episode, please, you know, keep that to yourself. Because it's not about this person. It's about how we can learn how to react when things like this happen, because they will continually happen, this is not going to be the first or last, you're gonna you're gonna come across people that struggle with all of the things we've been talking about, and it's going to be confusing because they are a leader in the space talking about the opposite thing. And so if we can get that resilience for when things do happen, we can hopefully struggle less when when things like this happen, so Alright, well I hope this episode is harmful for your and I'll see you next time CLA crocodile. Thanks for listening to the episode. So if you feel ready to get serious about this work and want to know when the doors open to fears fatti Academy which is my signature program, where I teach all about how to overcome your fat phobic beliefs and learn to love your fat body, then go to first party.com forward slash waitlist again that is phase fatty.com. Forward slash waitlist to get your name on the waitlist. For when first party Academy my signature program opens