Episode 112 Transcript

Welcome to the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I'm your host, Victoria Welsby and this is episode 112. Today, we're talking about auto immune disease nonsense.

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.

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Hello, fatty knows how deep mobile is. I'm sick. I'm sick. I've got the sniffles. I've got a sore throat. So today is going to be a short episode because I probably can't make it through that long. Yesterday I had three calls, three hour long calls and by the end of the day, I was like, Oh my goodness.

And then the podcast a day so I'm going to hopefully it's not too annoying hearing my voice or maybe you're just like, Oh my god. Oh my god, Vinnie. That voice is super sexy, which obviously, obviously is super sexy. Yesterday, what do you want? When anytime I come sit at my desk and start recording diggy diggy the dog comes and sleeps next to me. He's such a good boy. Now he's doing a little stretch. Such a good boy. For those watching on video, you might notice a difference my hire, I went to a went to the barbers I went to the trans barbers place big big Bros. in Vancouver. If you're in Vancouver, close to Vancouver, and you are trans non binary gender fluid, gender queer person, then I definitely recommend going in. Oh, so nice to walk in and not have knowing that no one was presuming my agenda. And I sat down and I said oh yeah, it's my first time and and they said, Oh, why? Why? Why? Why are you here? And I was like, you know, I've just fed up with hairdressers just being like, yes, you're a brand new woman or ma'am, or you know, giving me a haircut that they think is feminine enough, I guess. I don't know. I don't know. And the hairdresser said, Yeah, you're the second today that said the exact same thing. And I was like, yeah, it was really cool was just really cool. Very, very queer very trends and very affordable. Like, normally I pay for a haircut in a Vancouver salon. So for a short, you know, quote unquote, man's haircut, quote, unquote, ManTech, or, you know, a short short haircut, that would be 80 bucks. Yeah, that'd be a black box. This one was it was a sliding scale, you could pay 2030 or 40. So I paid 40 plus a 25% tip. So you're paid 50. So pretty much half price of what I paid. And a gender affirming experience is great. I love it.

And then I came home and I bleached my hair twice. Because it was it was a natural color. And I bleached it twice and it's kind of gone. Yellow at the roots. And I put some lavender in and so it's like bluey at the end. And so anyway, it looks a bit shit but whatever. Oh, I have to go and actually get it. Probably bleached. Yeah, anyway and me way. In today's episode, I am answering a question that I got. And I thought you know what, this is a great question. Right little question. Erin, who were messaging me on Instagram and said that I was okay to answer this question on on the Pascal podcast asks, Aaron asks, Hi, Vinny. Congrats on coming out and feeling yourself. I have a couple of questions for you. No need to answer if it's weird or too much or something. One, do you think when the pan dough ends, you might do some speaking I might do a speaking tour or something. I totally I totally pay money to listen, I RL love it. No, let me just ask that question. No, no No, no, you know why speaking tours are really, they can be really expensive. And I mean, I would love if someone was to pay for me to do a speaking tour, and gave me money, so that I would make money doing it. Oh, totally, I would fucking love to do that.

But I think, you know, I think you need to be like a big comedian and whatever to make it worthwhile, you know, when you're filling out an auditorium or something, you know, whereas, you know, if you're traveling around, and there'll be, you know, my mom in the hallway, like, I'm proud of you. So it's a probably from you wouldn't work naturally for me and Aaron and Aaron would be wherever Aaron is saying, Hi. So yeah, I don't think like financially, I don't think it's, it's a good idea. You know, a lot of times, things like this, like, things that would be really cool and fun to do. It's just not financially viable. Like, I wanted to go on vacation and do like a fifth family vacation. And, and this is what I was thinking, like, years ago, and I know it's changed now. There's companies that will help will arrange everything for you. So I might be eating my words at one point, but things like that. It's like,

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is it just something I want to do? Or is this a good business decision? And yeah, there's lots of different things I would love to do, but they're not good business decisions, like making merch is another one, like, making merch to be able to find someplace that I would, like, agree, ethically, politically with that would that carried sizes like, I wouldn't want to do merch if I couldn't have up to like 15x. And then like, how much you would make on selling one thing, and then having to price it to make any type of money means that it would be cost prohibitive, and you wouldn't want to price it that anyway. It's just so but then, you know, you'd like it'd be just fun to have merch. And so like, a part of me is like, oh, maybe I'll get some fears emerge. And then I'm like, No, you know, you know, it's probably not going to be the best decision, I think, Okay, fine. Thank you. business minded, Vinny. Rude. Hey, well, I'm actually I'm halfway through this question.

But it's on my mind, I was gonna I was gonna plan to talk tell you about it anyways, if anyone is planning on doing something, doing something similar to me, I as in like having a business or whatnot, I have thought it might be helpful if I shared my my expenses like how much it costs me to run a business my business is very lean in regards to I don't have lots of fancy outgoings like, you know, I don't have a personal drive I drive me around in a Porsche that is, is encrusted with diamonds like that.

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expenses like that might be his biggest expenses is his one software that I pay $270 a month for. But my total expenses for last year, I just did them a couple of weeks ago, my total expenses for last year was $29,000. So it's about a couple of grand plus a month to run my business to run my business. And you think, Well, what if surely isn't like, you know, having an email system, isn't it like 10 bucks and isn't having like this, and now five bucks, and, yeah, you know, a lot of other systems that we think, you know, like a social media messaging tool, you know, so like, when you can send out all your social media posts on one thing, that's like 30 bucks, and like a calendar management thing, that's like 10 bucks.

And then, you know, the software that I was saying that hosts my course and sends my emails, that's $270, etc, etc, and all adds up, right? And so, anyway, I just wanted to be transparent in regards to this type of stuff. Because you see, I've spoken about this before, a lot of online business people being like, am I going to go back and I'm a millionaire in like, 13 seconds, all you need to do is buy my course. And you'll be a millionaire so quick, and that's not the reality. The reality is that it costs it costs a lot of money. You won't make money for a long time. And and you have to be able to be in a situation that can support you like that. And so a lot of people if they've got a partner that might help them with finances, me to begin with, I had savings from my corporate job to get me up and going and a lot of like a year's worth of savings. So anyway, anyway, anyway, sidetrack, totally sidetrack and if someone is having a business if someone is listening in the habit, this They're like, Well, I'm rubbish at my business. I'm not making money and dah dah, dah, dah, dah. I bet you're not rubbish at your business. I bet that it's just just takes time on myth. And I've been doing this for many years now.

And it literally that is the secret ingredient is time is time is just keep doing it. Keep doing it, keep doing it, and keep doing it. And it's okay, if that's not what you want to do as well. Anyway, back to Aaron's question. So Aaron says, I'm not gonna go until I say 10 minutes later, no. Number two, when a person me has an autoimmune disease, and they're my numbers keep going up blood, glucose, liver enzymes, and the only thing their doctor says is to take metformin and lose weight. And then it puts them in a spiral of like, Shit, I need to only eat kale and beef and lemon juice or whatever, what the heck is a person to do? I'm just having a real mess in the head about it. Oh, you know, fear of disease and also hating on the body loathing and just eating disorder a restriction? It's a lot. Sorry, and thanks. Also, I undeleted Instagram to ask you deleted because too much before and after a shit Haha. Yeah, so I'm so so sorry that you're going through that air in that sucks my big swinging tits that you're having to experience that and, and just to start, you know, let's start on what an autoimmune disorder is. So Aaron doesn't share what auto immune disease disorder that that they have. So let me just go over a few.

So just in case you fall into any of these categories. And you know what we're talking about? I'm just going to go to this. The good WebMD tells me rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, inflammatory bowel, multiple sclerosis type one diabetes. Guillain Barre Syndrome or Julian Barre Syndrome depending how you might pronounce it. chronic inflammatory D My LeighAnn the knighting poly neuropathy, which is similar to golembo psoriasis Graves disease Hashimotos thyroiditis. My is the NIA Gravis Oh vasculitis Okay, so that's the list of ultimate immune disorders. So could be any of those one of those more of those.

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So I have one I guess I have IBD fun fun. I wonder though as well or to immune diseases diseases things like asthma and with that be one an eczema would that be one because it's the body attacking itself right. So let me just read a little bit from this WebMD immune system disorders course abnormally low activity or over or over activity of the immune system. In cases of immune system over activity the body attacks and damages its own tissues, autoimmune diseases, immune deficiency diseases decrease the body's ability to invite invaders causing vulnerable vulnerability to infections in response to an unknown trigger the immune system may begin producing antibodies that instead of in fighting infections attack the body's own tissues treatment for autoimmune diseases generally focus on reducing immune system activity Hmm Okay, so no it's in there in somewhere where they could very happily easily crowbar is caused by people being fat they did turn because Yeah.

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Whoo. Good science here.

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Unknown trigger. We don't know right? We don't know. We don't know the body isn't Mr. Ricci know that we don't even know how paracetamol works. You know, like a headache tablet. We don't even know how it works. We know it works that people have. It's been around for like 50 years. We know that it stops somehow we think it stops pain receptors. No one actually knows. It's works. That's all you know, whatever. There's a lot of things that we don't know. Anyway. And so depending on what autoimmune disease you have, basically, none of these things are caused by you, your fault your actions. None of these things are because you ate too much. You ate the wrong things, etc. It's not your fault that your body is experiencing this. Okay? So I just want you to to really sit with that no matter what even if it's not an autoimmune disorder or disease. No matter what your body is doing, even if it's a traditionally kind of illness or disease, disease or disorder that's associated with fatness, even if it's type two diabetes, even if it's high blood pressure, you know, the things that, you know, people say you're going to get diabetes, if you don't stop being so fat. Even if you have those types of things, it's not your fault.

And when a doctor prescribes weight loss, they you're not giving you evidence based care. They are not giving you evidence based care, they are literally putting up their sleeves up to their elbow, or rumbling, rummaging around in their assholes and pulling out a piece of shit a piece of bullshit, because there is not one single study ever to show, any diet ever works. And there's not the information that shows that having a smaller body will mean that you are not going to have this illness or condition. And what we do know about intentional weight loss is it's not good for your health. So also doctors, you know, how much work how much training they get on on nutrition and food. Like hardly anything, Harvey anything in a huge, huge gash training that they do. I think they get like an hour class. So they are not a trained dietician, nutritionist. You know, they don't know stuff about food, what you know what to eat or not eat, if you want to manage certain conditions that might involve food. And we're not even saying that these conditions, these auto meat, autoimmune disorders are managed by food, you know.

So when I say that, I mean things like people who have celiac disease, who are confirmed gluten intolerant. And so a doctor in that case, would could confidently say, Listen, gluten is gonna make you feel sick, you know, then then then they'd have the education to talk about that. But they don't have the education to say this. Eating like this is going to help you lose weight, because that doesn't, it doesn't exist, it's a law and you doesn't exist, right. So the they're not a trained nutrition nutritionist or dietitian, they're not giving you evidence based care. And even if whatever or to Amin immune disorder can be helped with food, if there is a haze dietitian is more often than not, not going to be telling you, you need to lose weight, even if a condition can be helped with changing your diet, which is we're not even saying that that is what the case is, chances are a haze, dietitian or nutritionist is going to say, let's add in stuff, not takeaway stuff. Unless you know, you have something where you're deathly allergic to something, you know, you know, your celiac, you know, again, then they might say, Yeah, you know, removing gluten might feel good for you. But you still have that choice, if you want to go ahead and eat gluten and deal with the consequences, you still have that choice, right? So even if even this is a little bit a lots of hypothesis, even if your autoimmune disorder can be managed by the things that you eat, which is a big, a big, even if

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And primarily, the way to manage is through drugs, like you mentioned. So it would still be a secondary thing right? Or even further down the list of things to help you with your health in regards to ring in regards to whatever it is that you've got going on. So I would be curious as to what treatment straight size folks get for the same thing that you have. Are you in a Facebook group? Can you go into a Facebook group is is there a group where it's Health at Every Size aligned and they talk about disorders and how people are treating Health at Every Size, hitting certain disorders or illnesses or whatever? With a Health at Every Size lens? There are resources I was looking at. Obviously I've speak about it all the all the time. Hayes health sheets, hate health sheets has like 10 Different things on there that could be a common quote, quote, fat things that get blamed on fatness and being told to lose weight. So even just checking out Hayes health sheets, so that's H A E. S. health sheets.com May enlighten you because you know what, you know, reading those, you know, what causes what causes this disease? What causes this condition? And it's like, Oh, it doesn't it's not caused because you are a big greedy loser. Oh, well, that's what society tells us, you know, even just reading it, even if it's not a related, related to what you're going through is really cathartic and enjoyable. So yeah, what does straight sides folks get? Do they get drugs? And no body shame, then yeah, we'll have some of those drugs, and then of that body shame. Thank you very much. Also, I want you to know that a lot of these conditions associated with fatness are not caused by having fat on your body. We don't have that evidence. We don't know. Right? We can actually link the issue causing someone to be a higher weight. So someone who has type two diabetes, whatever is happening in their body that could be causing them to be fat. And then they get the fat blamed on it causing the diabetes.

When it's, it's it that's not what is happening. It's like, it's like, it's like, let me let me symbolize simplify it. It's like you have a cold. And one of the cold. One of the symptoms of the cold like I've got one of my symptoms is sneezing. And the doctor said to me, imagine if the doctor said to me, because you started sneezing. You got a cold. And if you stop sneezing, then your cold will go away. We see you know, everyone who's got a cold, they sneeze, so sneezing, people are just more prone to getting colds. Well, no sees sneezing is a symptom of a cold. You know, fatness can be a symptom of certain illnesses, diseases.

And then and then we go in and say, Aha, I noticed that a lot of people who have this condition are fat, therefore, it must be the fatness that has caused this disease. Let's look at the evidence. Oh, there is no evidence to support that. Hmm, sounds fishy. Let's just say it is anyway. You know, that's like the the quote unquote, obesity paradox. Like, why is it when we we all know fat people are about to spontaneously combust? Because they're so greedy. But hang on, why are they living longer than straight sides before? Why did they survive certain diseases and conditions better than straight size people? It's a paradox. It just doesn't make any sense. Is it? Because fatness doesn't mean someone's unhealthy? Now I will just call it a paradox we'll just say is we're really weird. It's really weird. It's not actually. Yeah. So So Aaron, what to do what to do, I would say get advice from a Health at Every Size align dietitian to see if there are actually any dietary things that you need to add. Again, you you are not going to be told, unless you were really you know, something else is going on, that you're having a really bad reaction to a food you're not going to be told to take things away, or to stop being so greedy, or whatever it is.

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Or the dietitian is going to say, just take the medicine because that's what helps this this illness. And then you'll realize that oh yeah, I've just been prescribed a shit ton of fatphobia. And as well, like, the doctor could be saying lose weight, but we might be needing to kind of decipher what the doctor mean. What do you mean when you mean lose weight? Like, what? What do you want me to actually do? And the doctor can say, well, I want you to do some exercise. Ah, okay, so it's not lose weight. It's you want me to do exercise? Okay, great. And at that point, the doctor will say how much do you exercise? No, they won't because they will just praise you that you never exercise if you have But bigger body

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Yeah, so, so so so you know, what is really going on here when they say when you lose weight? If there is something going on around that what what do they mean? And also Aaron, give yourself some sense of empathy. And I can see why this would be triggering this is this is triggering for so many people. No, no, no, no, Matt No, no, you know, and that's without having an eating disorder, and recovering from an eating disorder. And then having a doctor saying, oh, loosen way, like, holy shit, this is a really, really, really big trigger for a lot of people because doctors are in a position of authority, right? It's scary to go to the doctor. I don't know about you.

But as you know, in Canada, it's a lot easier for me to go to a doctor because they, they like talk to you and ask a few questions. It's not the best. But in England growing up, you'd be in the doctor, you'd be like, it'd be like a some type of, you know, factory line type of thing, where it's kind of like, in out what you hear for, okay, get out his prescription, go need like, Okay, say as little words as possible, don't make eye contact, just get in and out. Don't Don't mess about with, with any useless information, you know, I've got a sore throat, oh, I've got that, you know, I've got I need to get this, I need to get it out. No probing questions, you know, appointments lasting less than one minute, you know, that type of thing. And so when I came to Canada, and the doctor would be kind of like writing out notes and typing things I was like, that's weird. But you know, it could be just a doctor's, I've been to here. And I know a lot of doctors everywhere are the same, right? Because they were under pressure to to get patients in and out. But anyway, a lot of us are trained. And a lot of us have that, you know, recognition of that part power dynamic, where we're just like, I'm gonna go on. So if a doctor says, lose weight, most people will just say, okay, yeah. Okay. And then afterwards have to kind of deal with the fallout. Which is, which is to be expected, right? You're not an inadequate person, if you can't, you know, when the doctor says, Have you thought about losing weight, you're not an inadequate person, if you don't, you know, flip the table and start a fistfight with them. Because most people aren't going to be able to do that. You know? So another thing is, is, can you come up with a plan to protect yourself the next time you go to the doctor's, because we don't want you to not go to the doctor's, that's, that's, that's why a lot of people fat people struggle with healthcare, because rightly, so. We don't want to go to doctors, because we know we're gonna get shamed.

And that means the doctors are winning. That means that we are suffering because we're not getting the health care that we deserve. And so what can you do to help yourself, advocate for yourself, it could be that you're sending a letter before you go sending an email saying, Hey, I'm recovering from an eating disorder. And any mention of my weight actively harms me, it could be that you bring in a little card that says I'm not up for be talking about weight. It could be that you bring in a patient advocate for you, whether it's like someone officially or it is a fat friend who, like if I lived in cities with people who were, you know, struggling with this stuff, I would come along and be like, listen, I tell the doctor where to go. Or it could be that you just learn, like, know that the doctor might say something bad. And so I'm going to give myself some self care afterwards. The doctor is gonna tell me to lose weight.

And so afterwards, I've got a bath bomb from lush, ready, and the new season of my favorite TV show ready to go on Netflix, you know? So, all righty, I'm going to leave it here. Maybe this is the shortest episode that I've ever had. 28 minutes ish. With one one pause for a single solitary cough. Yeah, so when I go mate with them none. And hope this has helped. And I will see you all next week when hopefully I'm going to be feeling better. Hopefully, hopefully, I'm going to have yours for the rest of the afternoon for the rest of the afternoon. It's 209 Now I'm gonna just have a fucking downtime. Yes, I'm not gonna do anything. So all right, boy. Thanks for listening to the episode and if you feel ready to get serious about this work and want to know when the doors open to fears fattie Academy which is my signature program, where I teach all about how to overcome your fat phobic beliefs and learn to love You're fat

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body, then go to phase fatty.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