Episode 3 Transcript

You're listening to the Fierce Fatty Podcast. 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 Fierce Fatty 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 a negative beliefs about your fat body controlling your life? It's the Fierce Fatty Podcast. Let's begin.

Hello and welcome to episode three of the Fierce Fatty Podcast. And in today's episode, I am sharing with you the five reasons why diets are 100% fucked. Let's get into it.

Chances are you've been on more than one diet in your life. I know I have. And uh, at one point lost a quite a lot of weight on, um, I won't tell you the diet, but guess what? Diets are fucked and uh, they don't work. So I want to talk about that today. Um, so just in case, make sure we're on the same page about what a diet is. A diet is any type of restrictive eating, so whether it be a juice cleanse, um, and cleanses are bullshit by the way, or a detox detox her shit, by the way, you have liver and kidneys to detox yourself or telling yourself you won't eat carbs until you get a date with Channing Tatum. Hands off his mind. Or it could be full-on restriction of calories in order to starve yourself and reduce your body so that you can look like a supermodel.

And along the times, we're not actually officially on a diet, but we are from where the untrained eye, you're just going about your life. But when you go deep into understanding diet, culture and all the different ways that it gets his claws into you, you're actually behaving in, um, really restrictive ways that a lot of the times around food and you don't realize it. So you might not have officially been on a diet for years or maybe you've never been on a diet, but there may be behaviors and ways of thinking, which are so 100% of diets. So, um, so let's not go on a tie anymore because they don't work. So that is my first point is diets don't work. So imagine this, imagine this, you go to your doctor with some serious medical problem and your doctor tells you to take this pill that could work in the short term, but there's a 95% chance that in the long term will make you even more sick than you are today. Would you take it?

No, no. You tell that doctor, just stop smoking the wacky baccy. Right. So in medicine, if a prescription doesn't work, 95% of the time, doctors would work to create something better, not tell the patient to try harder at taking the prescription. Right? And that is what diets are. So best chance, best chance they have a 5% efficacy rates. So that's the, that's us being generous with, with the Diet Industry. Um, depending on your size is, you know, can go to a north 0.8% chance or basically it's a 0% chance, right? So best chances is that a diet or work 5% of the time, and so not only do they not work, they make you fatter. And of course there's nothing wrong with being fatter, but if you're going on a diet to be less fat than it's literally doing the opposite. Um, and the best thing about this, I say best being sarcastic, is that once you fail your diet, die companies and our society, diet, culture has you believing the, you are the failure and not the Diet.

So you try again and again and again and again and again, and you're like, oh my God, why is this not working? I'm so bad at this, but it's not you, right? It's not. You think about any other product that you ever buy, okay. Because diets are a product and only 5% of the time it worked. So he bought a car in the morning. You go out and you put the key in, you're going to drive to work and 95% of the time it doesn't start. In fact, that's a good statistic. And then you go back to the, uh, the, the car dealership and you're like, this thing doesn't fucking work. And they're like, well, have you tried hard enough? But where you really turning the key, did you wake up earlier enough and turn the key or before 6:00 AM? Because that's when you have to do it.

I don't think that you're, uh, you, you, you're already trying, you know that hard with this. So you cheating with other cars. No, you, but like, this is fucking bullshit. Give me my money back. Right? But the die entry has been so fucking clever and blaming us for it's failure. So my next point, number two, number two reason why diets are fucked. So let's, let's say diets did work. Let's say they did, they don't make you healthier. And now a lot of people say, I'm not losing weight because I want to look a certain way. I want to be healthy. I call bullshit on that because really if someone could wave a magic wand over your head and say, you can be fat and healthy or thin, quote unquote, stereotypically attractive and unhealthy, how many people would hesitate a lot, right? So it's not about health, it's about assets.

But even if deep down people are like, okay, it's about health. So as we know, there's about a 5% chance that going on a diet will succeed. So why not try, right? When a try see what happens. Yes. Great idea. And that's something that I thought plenty, right? I presumed that the 95% of people who failed at dieting were just, they weren't trying hard enough, not like me. They were lazy. They cheated and girls or down gallons of liquid lard and had like 50 deep fried Mars bars for breakfast every day. Right? That's what I presumed. I presume the people who didn't do well at diets, it was their fault and it's not that weren't doing well, it dies. It's diets weren't doing well with them. But you know, I had that fit. The sort of, I'm not like them, I'm disciplined and dedicated. But here's the thing, there's negative consequences of putting yourself on a diet even if you do lose weight.

So these negative consequences get this. Okay, listen here. These negative consequences of going on a diet, just go on a diet include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, depression and cardiovascular disease worse. So self, kind of similar to the things that they tell us that we're going to get if we stay fat. And we've talked about success, you know, like a 5% success rate and that's the generous number. What does success actually mean? So for a diet to be quote unquote successful, you need to lose 10% of your body weight and keep it off for two years. Okay. So what does that mean number wise? Okay, so as an example, someone who is 350 pounds, if they lose 17.5 pounds and kept it off for two years, they would be in that top 5% the absolute most successful success story from the Diet Industry. Here's another version, a 200 pound person, they would lose 10 pounds and keep it off over two years to be seen as the most successful version because most people don't ever get that.

That is the best case scenario, right? That doesn't seem like that much to lose in return for all that mental anguish and all that money spent on stupid subscriptions and you know, crappy food. My is like no fat, no, no fat, no sugar, no air, no carbohydrates, no anything inside this food. It's just oxygen finishes the, you know, all that stuff. Hey, for losing 10 20 pounds, is that going to have any type of benefit to you? So, but what if, okay, what if you do lose weight, won't less fat on your body mean that you're healthier, won't losing that 10 or 20 or 30 or whatever. If you're going to be in like the miraculous percentage of losing, um, any type of way from a diet. Won't that make you healthier though? Surely weighing less means you're healthier. Sorry to break it to you, but no, no.

Having more fat on your body does not automatically mean you're not healthy. Having less fat on your body does not mean that you're a walking health guru, right? Indicators of health, just FYI. Things like good blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, triglycerides, that type of stuff. Your mental health. So can you get good health, quote unquote good health? I'll do an episode about health and why that is a fucked up binary. Just all sorts of stuff I have to say on that in a different episode. But let's say, you know, can you get good health if you weigh the same? Yeah. Yeah, you can. You can affect those, those types of things by weighing exactly what you weigh right now. So you could even look at how much time you spend moving your body or making healthy quote unquote healthy eating choices or working on your strength or stamina.

For example, if you want to be healthy, um, and a fat person can display all of these qualities of health despite having more fat on their body. Fat doesn't equal sickness. Okay. And by the way, you don't owe being healthy to anyone ever. You're not a better person if you're healthy or you know, a worse person if you're not healthy. So next, my next point is diets actually make you less healthy. You might be thinking, oh for fuck sake. Really, really? Yeah. So Yo yo dieting. So Yo, Yo dieting is also known as weight cycling. It's going on a diet, losing weight, putting it back on. Remember, it's not your fault that you put it back on and repeat, which is what most humans do, uh, during their lives. So Yo, Yo dieting damages your long term health and many studies show Yoyo dieting is less healthy than being, I'm gonna use an o word here, by the way, I'm gonna do another episode about why the o words obese and overweight are totally fucked up, should be taken from our language and basically need to be burned in a fire somewhere.

So, but this is quoting research. Oh, I just hate it. Anyway. Um, so many studies show that, um, Yo, yo dieting is less healthy than being obese and leads to numerous health problems and a potentially shorter life. Um, and you might be thinking about Victoria Fair people are going to have a shorter life anyway from all the fatness. Aren't they going to die when they're like [inaudible] like, you know, 30 years old or whatever? Uh, no, no. Statistically another word is coming up. Obese people live longer than quote unquote normal weight people. [inaudible] Yep. Shut the fuck up. Right. Uh, now you might be thinking, what the fuck? It's science. It's science. Honestly. Um, no one really knows why, but the suggestion is that um, quote unquote overweight and quote quote, obese people are less prone to disease, the normal quote unquote normal and quote unquote underweight people.

Um, so yeah, if you have fat in your older, then you've got a better chance of, of, uh, overcoming and not getting certain types of diseases. Okay. My next point is the diet industry is proper profiting from fat shaming you with scam products. So if dieting doesn't work, then why are so many people on diets and anyway, we all know, my aunts, friends, brothers, dog's friend knew someone who lost like our, found some pounds on this keen wall, die and won the lottery and fell in love and grew wings. So dieting must work. Hmm. Think about this. If dieting worked, there would be no dieting industry. Everyone would be [inaudible] then every on, right? We just would go on that diet. You'd be like, okay, time for me to get. Then go on that diet. You'd be like, oh, then dumb. That's it for me the rest of my life.

I'm thin. Right, but this is going to blow your mind because when I found this out, this, I was just like, what? This cannot be true, but it's true. There is not one single study that exists in the world, a legitimate study peer reviewed that shows weight loss products or diets work in the longterm. Not One. Let me repeat that. TIF to you, just in case you missed it. There is not one single study that exists that shows weight loss products or diets work in the long term. Isn't that wild? Instead the Diet industry is worth in 2017, $64 billion a year every year and it's growing, right? So the Diet, the Diet industry is like, Hey, do this time, you'll become thin and super sexy. You're disgusting right now. You should really change that your slob and then that like that diet didn't work because it didn't include things like seaweed detox and parents toenails and also you're a fat lose a try this one instead maybe you work harder this time and stop being so hideous.

So I think we should tell the Diet industry to get fucked to go and do one. Um, I'd rather give my money to a company who isn't praying on my low self esteem with Hocus pocus queues. The biggest thing, like the biggest, you know, look diets don't work is you know, Oprah bought into weight watchers like eww and no Oprah, y, um, and she's been on diets all of her life. Okay. Oprah is really fucking rich. She has unlimited resources. She has definitely has like a private chef. She, um, can have someone come out and do workouts with her. All of the things, okay. She has the most access of human could need to become thin yet Oprah is not thin. If that is not an indicator that diets don't work and Holy Shit, I don't know what is right. It's just Oprah. It just happens to be a bigger person.

I wish. Oh my God. I want Oprah to listen to this episode. And so I listen, come on now listen, you're great. The way you are. Look, how much more evidence do you need? The eye ties don't work. I mean you fabulous jeans. Oh my God, I'm so, you know, it was Oprah with endless money. Can't force her body to be smaller. Do you think that the average person can? No. No they can't. I have. My next point is that losing weight won't make you happy. It's not going to give you better self esteem. So I had this fantasy in my mind that once I become thin that I would shit glitter rainbows would appear from my bum hole. I wouldn't be able to get George Clooney to stop calling me and obviously money is going to be a pairing on my doorstep, you know? Oh God, it's just going, life is gonna be amazing once I'm thin. And at one point I got thin, I became straight sized. Was I shooting glitter? Did rainbows come out of my bum hole?

No. No they didn't. No, it didn't happen. What didn't happen? Because what I was seeking was self love and acceptance and no matter how, no matter how thin I was, there was always someone who was sinner and therefore more beautiful and therefore I still wasn't worthy. Right. Ah. And it took, it took me going, oh, deep in with dieting to get to the point where I realized, yeah, okay. You know, being thin, being thinner affords many benefits. Things like not experiencing fat phobia, being able to go and buy clothes, um, not have people be judging me in certain ways. But the thing I really wanted was too, not be thinking about how awful I was all of the time and not comparing my body to others and thinking, well, I'm thinner than her. I'm fat than her and [inaudible] what does my boyfriend think? And you know, all that type of shit.

Um, and it didn't happen. So I have come and pissed all over your, your dieting parade, maybe taken your hope away that you will one day be Beyonce. Um, you can be Beyonce with our losing way, by the way. Well, that's not true. Beyonce's the only Beyonce. But you can be your own version of Beyonce. All right? Without losing weight. Um, but how about you think of it like this? Okay. So diets don't work. You might have to let go of dieting and that's kind of sad, right? Because really what you're letting go of is the hope that one day you're going to feel all right, but you're not letting go with the hope really, because you can still one day feel all right, you can still one day feel better, feel healthy, whatever, whatever it is you're trying to achieve through dieting, you can get there without dieting, okay?

You can do things like you can start to forgive yourself and not ever sticking to a diet. And I say that with a big quotes around sticking to a diet because the reason why you can't stick to a diet is because your body is like, what the fuck is going on? We are literally starving. We're going to do a ton of things to make sure that you stop this behavior because this is bad. I'm going to do an episode on what is actually happening, happening within your body when you're on a diet. But basically your body is being your best friend and making sure that you're not gonna lose weight and dime basically, right? And you can come to terms with where you're at right now. So, by the way, if you don't know that we all have a natural weight set points that our body likes to be out, have you noticed that most people are generally around the same way their whole lives? And we have a 10 to 20 pound range that our body's like, yeah, this is pretty good. This is where I like to be. This is what I weigh. And when you move out of that, then your body's like, hmm, let's make some changes. And so when you're losing weight and you lose, you know, 10 plus pounds, then your body's like, what the fuck is going on? Right? Um, so you can come to terms. It was like, okay, this is maybe where my body wants to be.

Okay?

You can also begin to embrace the awesome body you have today. And your body does say, oh my lord this, think about this. The amount of Shit your body does to you does for you. And you've, you've done too, where you're like, you need to get thin. You're worse F's worthless sack of Shit. And you're what? He's like, hi, I'm just trying to get us wrong when the world and no, I'm sorry. And you know your body does some pretty amazing things for you, like sleeping and blinking and high kicking and go foraging and all the stuff that your brain does for you and your ears are listening to this. Or maybe you're reading a transcript or you know, Holy Shit, think of all the great things that your body does for you versus focusing on its outside appearance.

You can spend less money on diet bullshit. I know so much of those like detoxes, you know where they send you, they send you packets of like, they're like, oh hey, I put some cinnamon and some water and you're going to drink this and then you're going to, you know, detox and then you know, you're going to grow some like horns and then you're going to be gray and all that type of bullshit is really expensive. And I remember ships for, you know, going to get weighed and stuff. It's expensive. What can you use that money on doing something fabulous, buying yourself some cool shit. Like, um, you know, t shirts that say riots, not diets or I don't give a fuck about your diet, Susan. I really want one of those ones. I've got the first one rise on days. Uh, you can get a, you can get the second one.

I don't give a fuck about your diet, Susan from fat mermaids. Um, amazing one set. Um, so you can spend your money, um, on coal shit, shit that makes you feel good versus stuff that makes you uh, mentally and physically unwell. You'll also going to have way more brain space to think about core things instead of instead of spending about 29 hours a day dreaming of when you can eat next and have to sex up that salary stag. Ah, right. When you're on a diet, you literally, your brain has to focus on, make you focus on getting food because you will, you are actually starving. That is what's happening. Your brain like, bitch, stop doing that thing you're doing right now and go and eat something. We are dying. Hello, get on the page. We're dying here. And when your body and your brain is relaxed and it knows, oh, she's going to feed me, it's going to be fine.

Then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I don't actually need to think about, um, salary. I can think about, oh, I'm going to go on a date with this guy, or, oh, well maybe I want to ask for a promotion at work, or Oh, there's a new series on Netflix, et Cetera, et Cetera, et cetera. And another positive thing about this is you can buy clothes that fit you instead of a size down, hoping that you'll slim into them. You can clear your overstuffed wardrobe of all of these clothes that would only fit a toddler version of yourself and fill it with new, awesome, Super Sassy outfits, right? Just you can just get rid of all of that, that stuff, you know, hanging onto this quote unquote dream of when you're, you know, when you're going to get thin and all of the things that are going to happen. All right, so I know this might have made you a bit sad. Maybe you were like, Oh yeah, yeah, I know.

Maybe you were like, Oh yeah, yeah, I know about this stuff already and this has been like a call refresher of this information. Maybe you had really fucking angry. Now maybe you're like, what the hell? This whole time I've believed that if only I tried harder than I would finally be thin. Maybe you feel relieved that you realize that it's not. Your fault is not your fault. Honestly, you have worked so hard at losing weight. Oh my God, we all have worked so hard at this stuff. I mean, if it was just about willpower, fuck, we'd all be thin, but that would be really boring, right? I'm glad that we're not all thin. I think it's beautiful that we have a different, a variety of bodies and your body is perfect just the way it is. All right, so let's tell diets to get fucked.

We're done with them. This is a relationship that is ovie are for good. And if this is a new concept to you, then you will still get lured into thinking, oh, but this new time where you just rub banana peels on your bum hole, I've heard it makes you lose like 75 pounds in 12 seconds. Maybe I'll look into that one. You'll see things like that and you'll be like, mm, okay. And you'll see people be like, oh, well this one's not a diet though, right? This banana peeling on your bum whole thing. This not diet. This is about wellness. This is about health. If it's about losing weight, it's a diet. It's a diet, okay? Every is about you stringing the size of your body, then it is a diet, okay? But you just, you know, FYI, you're going to get good. And you might even go on some more diets being like, well, I just one last try.

That's fine, that's fine. Right? We all spent so many years in living in this diet culture, a culture that is obsessed with, um, quote unquote health and smaller body sizes as being held up as the most desirable. So that's absolutely normal. And even years and years after you stopped dieting, you still might be like, oh, maybe, maybe diets, I've got better. I saw this one where it's, you know, you just take this one pill and right, there's always something because diet companies, they are expert marketers. They have to be, they have to be very, very intelligent marketers because, um, diets are not a new product. And so this is like marketing theory. When a new product comes onto the market, the, the marketing doesn't have to be that sophisticated. So think about like, when the iPhone came out, the marketing, they didn't have to be like, this is, um, here are all the features and benefits and this is why our phone is the best.

And, um, here's some data and stuff. They, they did, they had that stuff, but really it was just like, this is the iPhone. This is the only one you want it. Right? And we all knew, whereas now, like years later, now we have lots of different options that are really, really cool and stuff. And so the marketing us are getting more sophisticated. And so when it comes to dieting, dieting has been around for years and years and there is like literally a good Giulia bajillion diets. And so they have to become very, very smart. And so what they do is they will attach to your identity and they will align their identity with your identity. And so you've really feel like it's a part of you. Um, they have to become sophisticated. And so don't feel like you're weak because you're falling for the bullshit. Because you know, people have degrees and masters and PhDs in learning how to market diets to you.

Um, and you're just like, I'm just, you know, I'm just trying to be no, go around, be fabulous. And you know, and then you'll have people trying to mess with your brain. So yeah, so that is why diets are fucked. The five reasons. So let me just, let me just round it up for you. Number one reason why diets are fucked, they don't work. Number two, even if they did, they won't make you healthier. Number three, in fact, they make you less healthy. Number, the Diet industry is profiting from fat shaming you with scam products. And number five, losing weight won't make you happy or improve your self esteem. Weren't, weren't, weren't, weren't. Okay. So, um, I wanted to end our episodes with a little fact about me so you can get to know me and I want to get to know you all as well.

So you tell me, you tell me, I'm going to share something with you and you can tell me your version. All right? So a little fact about me is that I can play the trumpet. Oh my God, no problem. That's not really what it sounds like, but you get the picture. Um, I learned for about six years when I was a kid, so I learned in primary school and Secondary School for those, those Brits out there. Uh, I can also not as well play the piano. So I studied the piano as an adult for a couple of years and I like singing. And so I like going to um, acquire and I just love singing in my house a little bit of, you know, show tunes, love a bit of that, you know. Um, do you play an instrument? Can you sing? What's your favorite song to sing? Share with me, tell me.

And um, if you would like to show notes to this episode so you can follow along, then go to fierce fatty.com forward slash zero zero three because it's episode three again, that is fierce fatty.com forward slash zero zero three because it's episode three and I know that you're the type of person who is digging this stuff because you are right at the end of our episode here. And so I know it's important for you to support fat positivity and um, confidence. And so why not share this podcast? Um, why not leave a review that is really, really, really helpful. The reason why it's so helpful is because on iTunes, if you leave reviews, it tells the iTunes algorithm that this podcast is something that's worth sharing on their side of things. And so they will then make sure that it is a new and noteworthy podcast.

The more reviews the better. So even if you just leave like a five star and you're just like, "Yo, good, great." "Victoria's sexy" obviously you're gonna write that. Um, anything you want, just leave a five star review and subscribe so that you know when the next episode is out and you don't miss a single second of this juicy, juicy stuff that, uh, I'm sharing on the first Friday podcast. So thank you so much for being here. I so appreciate you really, you don't know how much I appreciate you, um, for being here and for tuning in, listening to me. Um, it's a real privilege privilege that I can talk about this stuff. Um, and people listen. So thank you for being you for being here. I'm so excited to continue to share all of this stuff, and I know what I'm talking about this episode, like, Oh, I'm going to share this on another episode because there's so many things. Right. Uh, so I'm so excited, excited to share even more with you. Um, so yeah, I shall see you on the next episode. All right. See you then.