Episode 158 Transcript

Read the transcript alongside the audio.

You're listening to the Fierce Fatty Podcast episode 158 fatness as a disease and oh word medicines giant flaws. Let's do it

Unknown Speaker 0:25

Hello, welcome to our episode today I'm your host Vinny Welsby. My pronouns are they them? I mean Vancouver which is the traditional ancestral and ceded territory of the Coast Salish people, Squamish, slaver tooth and Musqueam nations Welcome to the show. I feeling like I have a vulnerability hangover from the last episode where we had mummy on. Especially because I was watching Blackbird on Apple TV. It's about a presumed serial killer. And someone who is serving a long sentence who's who's been sent to the prison, the presumed serial killer is in and tries to get him to reveal where he's buried bodies. Anyway, and so he's pretending to be his friend, even though he's totally creeped out by him. It's really good. It's only six episodes. But yeah, I'd recommend checking it out anyway.

Unknown Speaker 1:32

It's called Blackbird. The serial killer was like, Do you want to have sex with your mummy? And the guy was, like, disgusted and was like, mother.

Unknown Speaker 1:50

Like, hang on, it's even more discussed the days and money or the more disgusted about the other thing. And I was like, Oh, God. That's it. You know? Because I'm because I call Mummy mummy. And I know, I know. So for some people that might be really weird. And so I'm just like, Oh, God, everyone thinks I'm really weird. Everyone thinks this that and whatever. Why is my brain like this? No, I'm not a serial killer. Just because I call my mom mummy. Many people land isn't it so funny where our brains go? Like, people are so creeped out by you that basically you're a serial killer. It's my brain is like, and the other side of my brain is like, nothing at all. And then that brain is shaming me is like, yes, they are. Oh my god, did you it will. Anyway, so yeah, fun times. So hey, in the last few episodes, I've been telling you about cofee, which is kind of like Patreon. But better because they don't take as much money from the creators. And I said that to create the podcast, it takes 690 bucks a month basically, roughly it cost me 170 bucks per episode to produce the show. And that doesn't factor in my time or labor. And so shoot four shows a month. That's an average of 680. And so to sustain the podcast with no adverts, if you can subscribe on Ko, Fi that would be incredible. And so far, we have had $235 Come in. However, most of those are one offs. And so that means like you can either just buy me a coffee, which is five bucks, or you can subscribe which is five bucks. You also get if you subscribe, the size diversity Resource Guide, which is a 37 page guide with all the fat positive people to follow or the books to read where to shop, secret fat community Facebook groups to join science, Ted Talks, everything podcasts that I say that and it's wind is one big resource guide that I have been taking years to create. You literally may me and my my virtual assistant together. Anytime I see any type of resource, I send it to her and she updates the spreadsheet. It is a labor of love and so literally years of resources has been poured into this and you can have it for five bucks. Amazing. Go to Koh fi.com forward slash First party. And then there's the option to just do the $5 one time or $5 ongoing and so so where we're at so far is I've got 185 one off, and 50 bucks subscriptions and so 50 bucks ongoing every month I got the one off a lot because I think a lot of people liked the we go views and pick post. And so they sent sent coffee filat, which is a wonderful honestly, like, in the little notes that people are sending is just so nice. Love it. Oh, I love it. Love it. Also, I'm thinking about adding other perks. There are other perks actually, like get shout on social media and get a card from me in the post, things like that. But even more and I'm thinking of releasing the podcast on cofee a week early. And then everyone else can have it a week later. I don't know, blah, blah, blah. Who knows if you want to support me? And that's something that that's available for you wonderful. If not, and you're just like, shut up. I just want you to free content. That's fine, too. But it would be it would mean a lot to me. If if if we could make it so that the podcasts supported itself and get to 680 bucks a month and that is we're at 50 recurring. So let's do it. I'll give you another update in a month. Okay, so I won't talk about it for a month. Okay. Aha, okay. Okay. So, as I mentioned, my I did a couple of posts, we had the two part episode on we go V slashes Empik slash semaglutide. Slash, or the other weight loss drugs, whatever, two part episode. So I put two posts out on Instagram, if you didn't see those posts, and you've just listened to the episode and you want a roundup of everything that I was talking about, not everything because it was like three hours of content, but you know, a roundup of the key concepts, then go to my Instagram, first dot fatti. And you will see that there. So we got a lot of responses from people being like, oh my god, this is fucked up. And oh my god, this happened to me. Lalalalala and a someone from the Pittsburgh Gazette. Let's see, is it Pittsburgh post the episode Pittsburgh Post Gazette, a science journalist reached out to and who was doing an article on as Empik we go V. Lola. So she reached out, she reached out, I said, Send me the questions. Because I don't I don't necessarily like doing interviews, voice interviews, because I have less control with people I don't have a relationship with or, you know, especially a journalist, because sometimes I'm worried because of my experience with the baby show that I could say something that could be taken out of context, and then twisted and used to harm the fat lib community. And so I really want every single word to be thought about. So that it can't be, you know, like, I mean, I was gonna say something like you say something ridiculous. And then in which is, you know, not even something that you're saying, but they pieced together words. And it's like this, this is what this is they that person has said. And it just you're like, Well, hang on. I didn't say that. But then. Yeah, anyway, so I wrote a response to her to the questions. I really appreciate the questions. And I appreciate the chance for this for a fat activist to be in the Pittsburgh Gazette, or to be in any media when people are talking about ozempic because what we found out in an episode a few episodes ago was that fat bias is are rampant in the media. And so when people are talking about things to do with fat people, they go to quote, unquote, oh, word medicine experts, experts, who are thin people who want to erase fat people from the planet because they think that they are diseased and terrible. And they don't talk to fat people and they don't talk to fat activists. And so this is a journalist doing it right. Hopefully, I don't know what the article is gonna say the journalist is a straight sides person, and is a science writer and so that obviously there's everyone has bias and so I don't know the amount of her bias but I'm hoping that an hoping it's like a critical piece. This is my dreams. These are my dreams. I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming and dreaming. Who knows, you know, the peas might come out and they say, Fuck fat people. Let's, let's kill them all with with we govi. Anyway, so I'm going to share with you the questions and answers because I mean, I don't want to brag, but I felt really good about the clear communication and break down of these big topics into kind of smaller sound bites. And she's not going to quote it all. Obviously, it's like three pages of Jesus. six pages Jesus. six pages. Obviously not it's not always her questions as well. of things around the idea that fatness is a disease and Oh, word medicine and the floors around that. In case your gorgeous noggin is thinking But hang on a minute, this is what I've seen. And I've seen doctors say that it's not fat people's fault that they're fat and use liberatory language and so should I then learn from them? Or should I then follow what they're saying? Because it's kind of confusing. It's really confusing and some, some people have like fallen into that whole year. fatness is a disease because if we say fatness is a disease, and it's really helpful in the law. So anyway, I'm gonna read the questions. And then I'm going to read you my answers and then give you some links to science and talk about some some extra things and blabbity Bloop, bloop. Okay, so

Unknown Speaker 11:51

first question, talk to me about your work with educating employees on implicit bias and weight based discrimination. What is the main message you hope to get across? What are people's typical responses starting out versus when they finish the training? So in case you don't know, something I do, aside from talking to myself on a podcast is I go into companies I don't go in, it's all virtual, I'll pretend to go in and talk about anti fat bias. I love it. I also talk to, you know, organizations or groups of people or, you know, like, say a group of dieticians, or whatever. And so this is my response, the responses are generally positive, some people struggle to come to terms with the idea that the weight centric health paradigm is deeply flawed, whereas others realize how much bias they hold, and are excited at creating more positive experiences and interactions with fat folks. People are asking for this training more and more as organizations now better understand that anti fat bias is a huge problem. And something that has not been addressed before in meaningful ways, and actually been encouraged. Imagine this is me talking? Well, it was me talking before but imagine you're, you know, the average company, where everyone is, you know, around the corner being like, Oh, my God, have you tried this diet? Lala, I guess I fat or whatever. And then you have a trainer that comes in that talks about anti fat bias. A lot of the people are going to be like, what, what are they talking about, of course, diets work. And that's going to be difficult for people. Like remember when you were in diet culture. And if someone came to you and said, Hey, by the way, there's no way to make yourself smaller. You'd be like, fuck off. Galloway, don't be silly. Of course, there is glossaries. I mean, I've tried 50 times in my life, and I've managed to make myself temporary, temporarily thinner all of those times. So don't be silly. And then the idea that you can be fat and just live your life that is very, very difficult. Whereas, you know, a few years ago, I felt like people were more kind of like, fuck you. Whereas now people are more like, make sense to the people who were kind of on the fence and more like, Okay, makes sense, because I feel like we're being exposed to the message more and more that diets don't work. It's not as wildly radical it is still is wildly radical, but as as you know, like five years ago, which is great. And so now, we're seeing a lot of people being like, well, this is fucked up. We should stop doing this, which is awesome. So my main message with trading is basically it depends. Everyone's training is different, like some people want to focus on this about, you know, different things. But my message is, there's 100 years worth of data showing us that there is no reliable way to lose weight long term. You cannot tell a person's health status from their body size. Even if fat people could lose weight and I All of them are unhealthy, they still deserve access rights and belonging. So that's the thing is, is I will say that, you know, listen, I know, some people cannot absolutely 100% Doesn't matter, but what the evidence say they can't get behind the idea that it's not possible to lose weight, and that fat people can be healthy. And so that's, that's wrong, say it's fine. It's not fine, but, you know, whatever they can't get by on that, but but the, even if fat people could easily lose weight, and they're choosing not to because they're like, you know, some evil person who's like, Ah, I'm gonna drain the world of resources in order to be fatter need everyone and raw, you know, even if fat people were like that. By the way, for happy we don't have some master plan to drain the resources of the world. Even if we were like that fat people still deserve belonging, access rights, etc, right? Because when people anti fat bias stems from anti black racism, ableism and health ism or so. Protestant Reformation make your workplace welcoming for fat people because a huge population of the workforce is fat, alone your own fat phobia, because we all have it. And finally, anti fat bias is say 9097 Let's do better. Sir. 1997 It's so old school. It's so I just I'm just like, it's are we still talking about this? Like, are we still are people still talking about this? And I know like, I felt like I might be a little bit out of out of touch with the realities of, of the day to day world because I live in my own bubble of fat positivity. And I don't have co workers who, you know, because it's just me and Dougal Duggal doesn't talk about going on diets. He just says can I want? How can I have a cuddle? Give me some treats, whatever. He never talks about diets. I love him for that. So, you know, I feel like it's really just, I mean, it is old school. But of course, it's still so many people talking about it, because it's simple, but pervasive. So okay, so the next question from the journalist, what led you to do a deep dive into the Olympic study, and I said, people are asking me about it. And I love digging into the details behind flashy headlines. I also saw a lot of influencers talking about it. And I worried that people consuming that content would feel pressurized by anti fat buyers, and social media and doctors to take something without understanding the risks or outcomes. So something that I saw I thought that was really alarming is fat influences who many people presumed was fat were fat positive, taking as Empik or weak, Ovie further weight loss. And that was, to me, people felt like it was a breach of trust. For me, I mentioned this before, unless someone that explicitly states they are fat, positive, fat, liberation, you know? How for every size even then, you know, you don't know, unless they explicitly say, I think that people deserve equal access rights, etc. I know that diets don't work the Lella then you don't know that reverse and is really what they think even if they are fat. And so we can't be surprised, then if someone then starts saying, Hey, let's go on a diet or whatever. Unless they explicitly say that they are fat positive. Unfortunately, and and I think that's really difficult for people if we're following someone, and we think we presume we know them and know what they are thinking. And then they do something, which is the opposite of what we presume that they are thinking it can be very distressing. And that we see that a lot when fat celebs lose weight. It's very difficult. And again, people can do what they want, right that people use their bodies. But there's that sadness, and also being like more they're doing it maybe she lie. So anyway. Okay, so then, her name was Hannah, the interviewer Hannah asks, I have some specific study questions in your Instagram post on the drug. You mentioned that it was ineffective because participants gained weight back after stopping as Empik. I asked a few doctors who work with patients with Oh word about this. And their response was that this evidence helps support the notion that oh word is a complex and chronic disease similar to any other chronic chronic disease like high blood pressure, or cancer, patients who stopped taking blood pressure medication also find that their BP climbs back up. Okay, so that's that sentence, that paragraph, you would potentially hear that and be like, Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, well, these o word doctors, they're looking out for me. They're not blaming me. They're saying there's something wrong with fatness as a disease mechanism happening. And it's not that I'm great, greedy, and lazy and an awful person. So I can understand how someone could read that and be an absolutely be like, okay, because it's not like, Hey, Fatty, you're a piece of shit. That would be like, Oh, fuck you. This is offering a sense of kindness, almost right. And it comes from a doctor. Oh, my goodness. So they must know about what is the disease? So it's beginning to make sense. But how would you hold them horses? So in my response, this evidence shows exactly what we know about weight loss in interventions for the last 100 years. manipulating your body size does not work long term. Even if you keep taking we go V for weight loss, the weight begins to come back on at week 60, which is exactly what the weego V study showed. So notice how

Unknown Speaker 21:49

it in that question, we're ignoring the fact that you keep taking the drug and then you you stop, your weight begins to come back on. And then then they're referred then referring to there was a follow up study, that people who stopped taking it two thirds of their weight was back on within a year. And so there's the doctor saying, well, well, we you need to keep taking it forever, because this shows that it's a disease. And what I'm saying is it just shows that our bodies do not want to be artificially manipulated to to be smaller, and will fight back he even when they're taking the drug. He even if you continue with the diet, even if right. We go read of Novo Nordisk the manufacturers own study showed this. And then they're like, so at 60 weeks, people started gaining weight 68 weeks, I cut it off, because then the club was going up, and they need to cut that shirt off, because presumably, it would keep going up, up, up, up up, and it would show that their medicine is ineffective. And also a lot of people don't lose any weight at all. Okay, so this exact same pattern we have seen over and over again, it doesn't prove that fatness is a disease, it proves that human bodies do not like to be starved, and have their weights artificially manipulated. So, Hannah highlighted that last sentence. And I think that's probably the the only sentence in all of this that's going to be quoted. Who knows? So does the fact that people fail to lose weight. On we go V rather, they said, Does the fact that people gain weight when they stop taking we go we prove that fatness is disease, my answer is no. Also, another thing to think about with diseases that need long term management. So number one, so another thing to think about with diseases that need long term management, number one, there are long there is long term data on the interventions for real diseases. And it has been designed or decided that the potential harm does not outweigh the benefits. So for any for any condition. You can say, Okay, well, here's a medicine, here's an intervention, here's whatever, that will help you with that. Okay, and so what is the harm of that? So say, if I have had a headache, and someone came along and said, Have you heard of the guillotine, actually, we could chop that head off, and you would no longer feel that pain of the headache. So I would say that intervention seems like the benefits don't outweigh the harm, because I would be going around without my head. I don't need my head. I mean, I'm very amazing with my head. And so then, you know, people would decide, okay, the guillotine is not a good solution for headache, he'll break out we take a paracetamol Uh huh. Okay seems like the, the, the risks don't outweigh the benefits. So, too, we don't have long term data on weego V, or ozempic. In high doses for weight loss in non-diabetics. Three, we're also making the presumption that the side effects of we go V are worth it for the low temporary weight loss. I don't believe it is, especially when we know it does little to improve health and a lot to risk health. So as I mentioned, in my we go the episode that in Canada, as an example, it has not been approved for public health plans, because they said that there is no indication that it improves health. Okay, so there is no indication that has any type of meaningful improvement to health. Also, an eight I love that they separated health and weight, there is that low weight loss amount. And then so that's if we need to think about a pair of scales, you know, like the old scales with one weight on one side and weight another. And so we have, on one side, we have low weight loss, and no real improvement to health. Okay, so that's weighing that one side down. On the other scale, we have all the side effects, and so well, okay, well, there might be a teeny, tiny improvement to health. And people might be happy with that low weight loss. So that's the quote, benefits. And so on the other side, we have 95% of people experiencing side effects 10% of people experiencing severe side effects, a blackbox warning, and so all of that stuff, and you know, I'm just summarizing. And so now, you put that stuff on the other side of the scale, that's bone all the way down. And so there's not that balance to say, Okay, it's worth the risk. Because we've seen good outcomes, many people say it is worth the risk, because being fat is so abhorrent that it's worth risking the life of that fat person to make them temporarily, slightly smaller. And that's because the person operating those scales has fat bias in their brain. And so on that on that other side with the the suppose it benefits add on another piece, which is fat bias, then in their mind it levels out. And they're like, Okay, well, it's fine to go ahead. So number four in this point is, do other interventions for real diseases start failing at 60 weeks, even when you keep taking them. And then after that, what is the solution? So you know, obviously not every medicine is perfect and not, you know, you might try something if you have a high blood pressure, and it might work for a little bit and then might not work and you try something else with this, like what what do we just say that, you know, you say if you have a pacemaker at six a week, sorry, it's not going to work anymore. What's the solution? You know,

Unknown Speaker 28:29

there's no other pacemakers, you know, what's the solution? Number five, how can that then be justifiable? How does that support the idea that fatness is a disease and not just a normal way to have a body?

Unknown Speaker 28:48

Okay, so then Part B of her question here is she says, They also said thinking of Oh word as a chronic disease, instead of quote, a character flaw helps reduce stigma and discrimination based on Wait, what are your thoughts on this? So I said, as something to be a disease, there needs to be a set of symptoms and signs in order to diagnose and treat the disease. For people with high blood pressure. For example, there needs to be evidence of blood pressure being elevated. If it is an if it's not treated. Quote, this is from the Mayo Clinic, it can lead to disability, a poor quality of life or even a deadly heart attack or stroke. Okay. For fat people, the only thing we have in common with each other is that we are fat. If we do not, if we do not have the set of symptoms that we all share, how can we treat treat this quote, disease What is the outcome, if we don't make fat people thin, every single fat person has a different outcome. Some fat people may die from diseases associated, and I'll come back to that associated in a minute with being in a bigger body, and others may never have any conditions or diseases associated with being in a bigger body. So with this, we're saying the only common characteristic is body size. And if we go back to the high blood pressure, so to diagnose high blood pressure, there has to be high blood pressure. And then the high blood pressure will cause these other symptoms, right. Something else that people in common who have high blood pressure have with each other is that they all have a heart. Right? So it's like saying, everyone with a heart has high blood pressure. Therefore, we should treat every person with a heart for the disease of having a heart, which could cause high blood pressure, or heart attack or stroke or whatever. And the only common thing is that they have a heart. Now, we don't do that. Because, of course, we wait to see if everyone who has a heart, if they have issues with that heart, some people who own a heart may never have issues with a heart. Some people own a heart might go on to have issues with their heart. But we don't preemptively put someone on medication for the condition of having a heart in case one day their heart is sick. And Regan Chasteen talks about this as in with sis men who are bought. And so I talked about this, if we are talking about if we're taking arbitrary characteristics of people's bodies and making them a disease, why don't we make baldness a disease? And so I linked to Reagan talking about this idea that the bald men have a higher risk of cardiac incidence, it would be absolutely silly and hilarious to say okay, well bald men have a higher risk of cardiac incidents, therefore, it's because of their bald head, let's make it make let's make baldness, a disease and we could give all the bald people wigs or hats. And then that would reduce their risk of cardiac incidents. Right? Of course, not, of course, there's correlation at play. So it turns out whatever makes sis men bald as the same thing that increases their their risk of cardiac incidents. I can't remember what it is, but there's something and so they've they, you know, scientists were able to to say, this is a characteristic of someone, and therefore, it's not the baldness is causing the cardiac incidents, something else is going on. Whereas with fat people, we say, we don't have evidence that fatness is causing this stuff. We don't we don't have that. We're not able to say A plus B equals C. We don't know that fatness that adipose tissue causes XYZ. And so fuck it, we're just gonna blame them. We're just gonna say it's it is we're just gonna get Okay. Let's not let's not look into what also causes fatness that could cause you know, adverse health outcomes. People have been doing that work, obviously, because we have data around that but what we know is that yo yo dieting aka dieting, marginalization, stigma, shame, and subpar health care or lack of access to health care, because when fat people go to the doctor, they totally lose weight can be attributed to poor health outcomes for fat people. But with fatness people are just like A plus B equals C if you disagree, then you will say Lee I did a little rhyme. So anyway, so I said before I'm gonna talk about associated so associated is really important. We don't have the evidence to show The adipose tissue causes poor outcomes for fat people. What we know is that dieting non evidence based care and stigma have clear connections to poor health outcomes. We also know that, quote, overweight people have reduced mortality compared to quote, normal weight people. And that is known as the obesity paradox, a paradox being hmm, turns out fat people don't die at these tremendous rates and naturally live longer than, quote, normal white people. This must be witchcraft. And then just to kind of quick thing on on mortality versus more mobility, you might have seen those two things and what they are and I just want to just I'm quoting here from Healthline more bility more bid ditzy is a state of having a specific illness or condition. While morbidity can refer to an acute condition, such as respiratory infection, it often refers to a condition that's chronic or long lasting, some examples could be diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, cancer, etc, etc. And so, you can have more than one morbidity at a time. And mortality refers to the number of deaths that have occurred due to a specific illness or condition. So number of deaths, mortality, mortality is deaths, morbidity is having a sufficient specific illness or condition. So you'd say comorbidity so this patient has three comorbidities, comorbidity, so they have asthma, they have cancer, they have high blood pressure, which increases their mortality rates. We can't say that about an individual patient, but let's say as a as a group. So someone who has the CO morbidities cancer, asthma and high blood pressure, have a more Tality rate because we've looked at the data I'm making this up. This is not true. I'm just giving an example we looked at the data that their mortality rates are x per 1000 Okay, so just in case that comes up and there's a big Houhai if you haven't, if you don't know this story already about the CDC came out with so you know, how are people are like, Oh, the leading risk of death is is now fatness, or the number one cause of cancer is fatness or the number two or whatever and then we're in it oh word epidemic and all this type of stuff. So this came out from a CDC report that said that we have 400,000 people dead a year because of fatness. And how did they get this number? How many people died? who happened to be fat? Oh fat person got hit by a bus? They died while fat therefore they died of fatness it wasn't the bus the bus had nothing to do with it. It was the fact that they were fat.

Unknown Speaker 38:42

A year later the CDC came out with a another study and said actually we fucked up we had some errors in our statistical analysis the number was wrong the number was really wrong. Um so in the next one it says that thus four Oh word overweight and obesity combined are estimates was 25,814 excess deaths. Big difference from the 400,000. Right. But the what's the phrase the horses left the car the the horse bolted from the car. The dog ran from the the horse whatever. It was out. It was a splashy headline. 400,000 people die every year is draining our economy fat people are awful. A year later 28,000 I will fuck that. That doesn't sound exciting and sexy and something that we can write papers. We can write and sell new newspapers luck that we did. Even today this perpetuates isn't it so hilarious not hilarious terrible awful, but you know, funny to think about these things that we know we can live with fatness is a leading cause of death Oh where did it come from? Oh a debunk study but it was corrected you know it's like the Popeye thing was spinach and Popeye would eat loads of spinach and and it just it just it just it just pervasive you know Spanish is filled with iron. Spanish Spanish does have iron but there was a mathematical error and they had the decimal point in the wrong place came out and they were like spinach is this food is gonna make you fucking Popeye and it just stuck you know, they came out later saying Oh, era the decimal point of the wrong blows. But people are like yeah, whatever spirit isn't spinach isn't magical. Of course it's nothing wrong with spinach but you know it's these these these these myths that that get the interesting or you know real no and then actually when we look into it like Oh Huh what and that one study buy it from the CDC CDC with all the terrible errors has caused so much so much hot links to these all of this stuff in the show notes by the way, what are we on what are we on we are what we are on 158 So facebook.com forward slash 158 for that stuff, okay, anyway, I think she I can talk about this stuff forever right all of these every single one of these points here is has a whole big thing that you can go off on. Okay, so baba, baba, BAM Bella, Bella and Bella Bella. Also also also also a disease is defined as, quote, any harmful deviation from the normal structure or functional state? That's a quote from Britannica. Dictionary. fatness This is me now is a normal way to have a body fat people have been around since the beginning of time. The earliest figurines found are often off fat people fatness is not a harmful deviation from the normal fatness is normal and what harms fat people is a rampant anti fat attitudes and quote treatments. Making fat bodies a problem that needs to be fixed, as they are presumed to be inherently in a disease state categorically does not reduce stigma. It does the complete opposite. So what the doc what the our doctors are saying is, if we make it a disease, if we all culturally know it as a disease, then people will not experience stigma because we will think it's not their fault. Those poor fatties. Bless them, it's not their fault that they're so horrible, will not reduce stigma, my opinions, it does a complete opposite. It means that fat people will still have their weight talked about as an issue. It means that we will be denied evidence based treatments, it means we will be subjected to harmful interventions like we go V and stomach amputation surgery and your wiring and whatever awful thing that is going to be introduced to the market moving forward. Jaw wiring. I linked to that that was the University of Otago in New Zealand collaborating with some British folks who made the dental ism device which was wiring fat people's jaw shut with magnets. And they they were like this is the best thing that's ever happened and they did a study on like three people for like three weeks or something. It was ridiculous and and it turns out the study authors

Unknown Speaker 44:15

owned the device. Yeah, and that was chi that was a couple of years ago. So

Unknown Speaker 44:21

these people I mean, they're still coming up with ways if we think fatness is a disease, it means that we can then get governments to pay for these devices to cure the disease. We do not need any module wiring we do not need any more stomach amputation. We do not need any more injections and pills and spells to make fat people thin. Because fatness is just a normal way to have a body. Health care providers who have zero lived experience and or no anti fat bias training from fat activists are telling other health care providers as long as they say it with a smile, and don't blame fat people about their bodies, then their patients won't experience stigma. How can that be possible when the whole premise of fat being a disease is based on fat stigma, and being pushed by drug companies and weight loss companies who want to sell the cure? I'm just impressed by my words. Like yesterday, you said that that was good. Hannah then asks, You brought up a good point in the study. In the post about the participant breakdown, I read the study and found a majority of the participants were white women, which the authors disclosed as a limitation in the discussion section. Why is it important to have diversity in trials like these? What are the consequences of not doing so my response, it's not going to be just white women taking the drug bipoc folks have a higher incidence of being in larger bodies. And alongside anti fat bias I also experienced racism and all the consequences of being violently marginalized in our society. It is theorized that bipoc votes have higher weights because of the stigma and oppression they experience. How is giving them non evidence based interventions which have not been thoroughly tested on people like them to treat a made up disease going to reduce that marginalization? Also, what about folks of other genders? What about trans and gender non conforming people? Who I didn't say what's the consequences? I've I've not done the research. And I didn't feel like doing research for the consequences. Because I mean, they can't be good. Right. Next question. Doctors I spoke to noted a shift in the past few years regarding language around weight in the clinical setting, for instance, shifting from quote, oh, word patient to patient with our word. Do you see a subtle change like this as effective in combating weight stigma? Why or why not? If not, what more could be done? Where are you seeing gaps in fat folks being heard and seen by medical providers? Likewise, in what ways? Does the media get this wrong or right? My answer, absolutely, it is not effective in combating anti fat bias. I'm just, I think I just need a moment for the Tom fuckery of this. Imagine a slur a stigmatizing word. And then people saying, ha ha, ha, it's gonna cause less stigma because we're going to put person with in front of that stigmatizing word. And it means that there are a person above the slur. Here's an here's an idea is an idea. How about we just removed that slot? Oh. And the reason is when we don't remove that slur is because if we were in medical settings, if we remove that slam, we say that obesity is not the right word to use. We are saying that obesity is an inappropriate way to talk about fat people because the BMI is flawed and fucked up and you are eugenicist tool. And the obesity is not a disease. And so those motherfuckers that the drug companies do not want people to have that realization. And so they are meeting them in the middle and being like, you know, just just saying, just saying outright that they have a word, that's mean, tell them that they're a person before the slur. And then they're gonna be like, thank you. Anyway, so that was just me going on around. This is what this is continuing on what what I said to Hannah, we have seen a shift in recent years because pharmaceutical companies have spent tons of money to market the idea of fatness as a disease. If being fat is not the fault of fat people, then they can make more money getting their interventions in the hands of unwitting healthcare providers who think they are doing best for their patients. They have co opted fat liberation language and messaging in their marketing. But, but one key word they don't want to lose is obesity. That would mean admitting fatness is not a disease and so they are leaning into using person first language which comes from the disability rights community. person first language is controversial in that community as many folks don't see their disability Here's something bad, and so prefer plain language, there is not a similar split in the fat liberation community. However, around the O words, for almost everyone, they are seen as powerfully harmful as they pathologize bigger bodies. The use of the O words has historically cause tremendous trauma to fat folks, they are so painful that we don't write them out and put them in quotation marks with Asterix. Of course, some people don't like to use the word fat as it has also been used to harm them. But those in the fat lib community have reclaimed it as a neutral descriptor. We should be listening to the activists with lived experience about what language to use, and not companies who are committed to making money harming us making us repeat customers, and at times killing us. If healthcare providers learned about weight bias from actual fat people in the fat liberation world, versus pharma companies or astroturf, obesity, advocate advocacy groups, which are just mouthpieces for pharma, then they would realize they are causing terrific harm to fat folks, when I'm sure that they are trying to do the opposite. Healthcare providers have biases too. And as soon as they understand that trying to solve weight bias by trying to erase fat bodies is violent, the quicker we can get to giving people in bigger bodies, the evidence based care they deserve. And just a pause here, if you're not familiar with astroturf advertigo advocacy groups, I want to give you a quote from my favorite reading Justine. Her piece on substack substack substract sub stack is substack when doctors education is really Pharmaceutical Industry Marketing Part One quote in the obesity summit lineup because so they had an obesity summit at this hospital. And some of the people who were there emailed Reagan was like you look at the people who were on the lineup, and they were all being paid by Novo Nordisk or some other drug manufacturing company anyway, so in the obesity summit lineup, in addition to taking a ton of money from industries whose products the summit promotes the speakers, who are physicians, have all pinned their careers to the body size as disease framework, including several who own weight loss clinics. One speaker was the president of the obesity Action Coalition. This is an astroturf organization that purports to be an advocacy group for higher weight people, but is in fact funded by an acting as a lobbying arm for the diet industry. Novo Nordisk is that Chief funder, so astroturf and so you know what we like to you know, the term grassroots grassroots organization and so they will position themselves as a grassroots but so astroturf turf is fake grass right in case you're not familiar with it. It's fake grass. So it's a fake organization. It might it's a real organization but the the it's not a grass roots you know, local communities coming together. It is something that's funded by the pharmaceutical companies to act as a lobbying arm because it's harder for Novo Nordisk is what Novo Nordisk be able to have someone on the panel have this presentation, people would say,

Unknown Speaker 53:59

that's probably conflict of interest. We hope people would say that conflict of interest, but we can have a quote, advocacy group on there, because they are, quote, advocating for fat people. We don't need to look up and look where they're getting their money from. Oh, it's 100%. No, we don't notice. Oh, so it's just a lobbying arm. And a little thing like that really helps companies to get in the door to so people people's suspicions are not aroused. Because they say, Well, it's an avid avid advocacy group, right? They just want to help the fat people. No, they just want to sell their shit and pretend that they don't have anything to do with each other. Okay, continuing. Not all healthcare providers are committed to anti fat bias. However, there are many who are fiercely fighting for the rights and health care of their fat patients and every day they do incredible work. work to reduce the harm that colleagues have caused, there will be a day when we look back at what we have done to fat people, and be ashamed and embarrassed for an overview on how the media gets it wrong. Check out this post. And so I had made a post which is, which was a summary of the bias and in in media because she said, How does media get it wrong? And basically, in a nutshell, they talk about they talk only to thin people who are advocating for the erasure of fat people, and people with credentials who are dedicated to that too. And they use stigmatizing language like the O word. And they talk about it in the context of health, versus the fact that fat people just do other shit versus, you know, need help for health? Next question. In your post, you mentioned that patients could not give informed consent. What did you mean by this? So I reply, because we only have 68 weeks worth of data on we go via and so we have no idea what the outcomes are long term, we can't fully consent when we don't have all the sufficient information. Also, from my anecdotal knowledge, most people are not being told the risk factors. Next, generally, what do you hope for in this sphere? What should the common reader know about anti fat bias? I said listen to actual fat activists from the fat liberation community, we have an incredible array of people to learn from fat doctors, fat dieticians, for athletes, and people who educate on the harms of anti fat stigma, who are not being paid by weight loss companies or manufacturers to name just a few. We all hold biases, even people who mean well, anti fat bias is not okay, but declaring fatness as a disease is not the way to go. Give fat people evidence based care instead of trying to shrink them. Anti fat bias hurts everyone no matter their size and learning it will help everyone. Fat liberation does not mean we want everyone to be fat and unhealthy. It just means we want fat people to have equal rights, belonging and access to get evidence based treatment when we need it to be free from bias and judgment to be treated like valuable humans because we are. And I'm sure that the common reader would think that is a fair ask. And then I've linked to a post I have made on Instagram that's quite popular, which is I need to change the wording on it. Actually, I say fat acceptance. I don't like that word anymore. Because acceptance is just saying, fine, we'll accept you versus liberation is more liberal Toru. And so what fat acceptance will it isn't believing everyone should be fat hating strict size people forcing everyone to find fat people are attractive, and quote, excuse to be quote, greedy, lazy or unhealthy, and, quote, a method to teach people to love their body, anti quote, health. What it is, is a social justice movement created to increase the acceptance of fat bodies and seeks to understand seeks to ensure fat people have equal rights and access as straight sides people so nefarious, right? Because I guarantee that people will read anytime anyone reads anything that talks about, maybe let's not hate the fat people, you know, you know, there's going to be motherfuckers up in these comments saying they're just glorifying I basically, they just want everyone to have sex with them. They just, they just want everyone to be unhealthy like them, they just want everyone to die. Just like we just want to get we just want to go to the doctor and be able to get treatment, you know, we just want to be able to live be alive and not be harassed. Like what just leave us alone. You know, basically, like people think that they hear fat liberation or hit or they hear a fat person have the audacity to try and say that they might be an equal human to a straight sized person. They imagine like what is it Ghostbusters? You remember Ghostbusters, and that was it like the Michelin man. Like they imagine this huge fat person stomping through the city and innocent thin people at the feet being crushed under the soul of this evil monster. As the fat chubby hands come down and grab up a handful of innocent thin people stuffing them into their mouths laughing and Probably lasers shooting from their eyes. And you know, there's a thin child crying mummy don't let the fat person get us. And then the fat Michelin person's like, Oh, I'm going to eat you and then swipes down and eats the poor child who said, And the sad thing people are just like, please a disclaimer, that's what these motherfuckers imagine right like that, you know, the world is going to be overrun with fat people who are who are not living in shape. And as the thing is that they're terrified that fat people don't know their place any more fat people need to be definitely ashamed of themselves. They need to know their place is underneath the good thin people who have their shit together because you are pathetic, a loser, greedy, Lella all that type of stuff. That's not true. But How dare a fat person say, Hey, can I get the same things that you're getting? thin person? How dare they say that? So we need to shame them back down. And that is what's going to happen to a lot of people reading this is like we need to shame those motherfuckers down how dare they ask for a quality? How dare they ask us not to hate them and torture them and kill them and tell them while that's happening, that they are an awful human piece of shit. Like that's very triggering for a lot of straight size people and of course, not every straight size person and a lot of people are going to read this and be like read the article whenever it comes out if I'm even quoted in it and be like, Huh, okay, you know, yeah. And hopefully I mean I don't think that line about hey, this is what this is what fat liberation is, is is gonna go into the piece but hopefully people have critical thinking capabilities if this is a new concept to them. Some people will some people won't Yeah, so finally Hannah says anything to add and so I say if someone chooses to take as Olympic we go V to lose weight, I want them to know this living in the world as a fat person is really hard, even harder depending on your level of privilege. And so it makes sense to take something that will maybe be temporary maybe that will maybe temporarily make you a little bit smaller for some relief. You were a victim of anti fat hate you are not a bad person. This is a systemic issue and you deserve evidence based treatment free from bias and then I said if you want an overview of lots of studies go here I don't know why the fuck I haven't spoken about this more than sure you know what I'm going to make this I'm going to make this a bonus in Patreon Yeah, wait science. So I'm going to make this is a huge spreadsheet of wage sweet science. I am going to make that a bonus in Patreon. Not Patreon fucking cofee. You know I mean, however. And so it has like links to the studies when they're released and and an excerpt you know, like what does the study talk about? And it has everything to do with like diets don't work. weight neutral healthcare does work. And all sorts of other stuff. It's fucking juiciest shet. So I'm going to make that a little thing of cofee. I'm going to do it before this episode comes out. So it's going to be on there. So go check that out. And that was all of the questions that she asked.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:56

And I think that was really fucking good. Okay, that was a that was a really good info in that. Yes, pat on the back there Vinnie. Yes, I feel good about that. Oh, hello, Seamus popping up. Oh, shame being like where you're gonna come back later and realize that there was a typo. There was an Aaron, you sent a word around. Okay, shame. Thank you. I appreciate you trying to keep me safe. But I've got this. It's all good. Shame. So if you do want to the size of as a resource guide, and also the huge fat science thing, then go to Code K, oh, dash f phi.com. Forward slash, fears. fatti forward slash tears. Or you can just go to the show notes. facebook.com forward slash 158. Or probably whatever you're listening on. If you scroll down, it's probably right there. I mean, I probably I don't know. I don't know where this shit goes. But it goes somewhere who knows? You can do it. You can find the links and links to everything else that I've spoken about today to share. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I appreciate ate it and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day I'm really fucking hungry so I'm gonna go eat something and then go pick up my neighbor's dogs next door on this Oh cute oh my god get so yesterday right I had finished work and then I was went to the front door and to put diggers leash on and I hear scratching and I'm like what the fuck is there a rat the door open the door. My neighbor's two dogs they're they're knocking these motherfuckers and knocking on the door they let me in. I'm like, What? What were your parents so open? Not no one no one in sight so I go in there all excited one of them goes runs to the food bowl he eats like he's never been fed before like I'm huge getting your mouth open around everything's I am pick pick that pick the food up so we picked the food bowl up because Dougie Dougie is a an intuitive eater, Dougie will just grace you know, at random times. Yeah, and so then I went to and I knocked on my knee, went to my neighbor's door and it was it was open. And I knocked and he was like, What the hell, they're at your house. And he had opened the door to let the grocery delivery and and the door hadn't shut and so these motherfuckers are just just decided to take them off self off and come knock on my door because I look after them right from like, whenever they're, whenever their parents are off somewhere, I'll look after them and they get a lot of belly rubs and treats and you know, kisses and all that type of stuff around mine. So they like coming round. They just went out my jaw and knocked knocked on my door and opened open the door but like they weren't out there for long I think because I couldn't I couldn't hear them before because I was not at the door because they were scratching quietly and they apparently the door was only open for a few minutes. And so they were safe and everything. And the door was open so they could have gone back home but they decided they wanted to go on a little jolly to my house. So So anyway, I wanted to pick them up now because they've been they've been walking because the parents are out now. So the good thing about working from home is like we live in a dog friendly building and so I can you know, keep an eye on everyone's dogs and make sure that they're okay. And but we ret we think that Jackson and Bella are the names they have worked out that if they bought a lot, I will come and rescue them. And so we think on the days that they are alone because they're not constantly alone, that they're just like, Okay, we're done Bob blows and get get get them around so we can go and get some treats and some belly rubs because we're bored. Like I don't think they're upset or anything. I think they're just they're just very clever. Anyway, all right. Well, thanks for hanging out with me today. Stay face fatty and see you in a while alligator dog.