Episode 161 Transcript
Read the transcript alongside the audio.
You're listening to the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I am your host, Vinny Welsby. Episode 161, PE in school and the horrific harm fat kids experience. Let's do it.
Unknown Speaker 0:27
hello, hello, welcome to this episode, dude. So excited to have you here trigger warning for this episode, we're gonna be talking about the stuff that fat kids experience at school. And you can guess the stuff that you might hear. So if you are not in the right place today to hear some anti fat bias happening to kids, then skip this episode because it's going to be it's going to be full of it.
Unknown Speaker 1:01
Okay, so you lot? You. You Excuse me?
Unknown Speaker 1:12
You're awesome. Oh, my goodness, I cannot believe it. Although I can, although I'm surprised. Why are you so awesome? Excuse me? Excuse me Who let you be so awesome. It's you. You did it. Last week. Last episode I told you about
Unknown Speaker 1:34
the goal that I have for kofi. Kofi is the Patreon type thing. But it's better for creators because they get more more money from it. They don't keep Patreon keeps money whereas Kofi doesn't. Anyway.
Unknown Speaker 1:51
And so. Last week, we were at 10 subscriptions. 10 subscriptions for face for a podcast and $65 hairs in a subscription of value. And so I said, Hey, let's make it the goal that next week, we'd be at 15 subscriptions with $85 a month
Unknown Speaker 2:16
in subscription value. And I was like, I don't think that's going to happen, because I think we went up like one from the week before. But you know, dream away, Vinnie, dream away. And what did you do? What did you do your rascals, you got us to 17 app to active subscriptions.
Unknown Speaker 2:38
And the goal was 15 surpassed it by two amazing and the goal was to get to $85 a month, where 110.
Unknown Speaker 2:50
Get out of here. Ah, if you subscribe to have subscribed to Kofi
Unknown Speaker 2:56
it's five bucks a month. Or you can give me more if you want, or you can just not give me anything at all. But if you've subscribed, thank you so much, you are just a superstar. I really, really, really appreciate the support. And it really makes me motivated to keep doing this work. Because sometimes it can feel like you're talking into a void. And that's you know, you've there's three people listening. But you know, I know that's not true, because I look at their stats and how many people are listening.
Unknown Speaker 3:25
And it's 1000s. And so, yeah, I appreciate that. So
Unknown Speaker 3:30
I'm not even going to make a goal for next time. Okay, let's make it a goal. Let's make it to next week. Let's get to
Unknown Speaker 3:38
this Phil's outrageous 25 subscriptions, 25 subscriptions.
Unknown Speaker 3:45
And $150 active subscription value. I know that doesn't make sense. The numbers eight, eight, the numbers eight numbering there. But let's say 25 optics, subscriptions and $150 subscription value. So the reason why I'm doing this is because it costs money to make the podcast and I have never once monetize the podcast. And it costs I can't remember what the figure is around about 656 $700 per month to make the podcast so if we can get to making enough money just to cover my costs for the podcast. Beautiful. Love it. And I've been doing it for years now when I've never
Unknown Speaker 4:25
covered the costs for it.
Unknown Speaker 4:27
I don't know maybe maybe I should start doing this a long time ago.
Unknown Speaker 4:32
Because I think that you appreciate the information that I share. And if you do if you would consider becoming a subscription, a little subscription for me, or a giant subscription for me.
Unknown Speaker 4:46
I don't know what classes are giant subscription like $20 a month I would just ship my pants if someone did to $20 a month. No one's done it $20 A month so far. If you do $20 A month
Unknown Speaker 4:57
I will do a pope okay, I'm just gonna do pu R
Unknown Speaker 5:00
Alright. Anyway, let's talk stop talking about this malarkey. And let's talk about other Malarkey, which is fat stuff. Oh, actually correction on
Unknown Speaker 5:13
correction on an old episode, not an old episode, you know that we go via episodes. Okay, so episode 156.
Unknown Speaker 5:23
Elizabeth sent me an email. Thank you, Elizabeth. Saying hi Minnie, is what you said about Sid starting at one hours 14 of 156, I think means correct to fat, paraphrase fat people who don't smoke have the same health outcomes as a thin person who does. And I was like, Well, did I say that? And so I went back and listened. And I don't exactly say that. And obviously that was a, that was a slip of the tongue. That was a mouth typo. I reply to Elizabeth, you're absolutely right. That was an incorrect word on my part, it shouldn't have been thin people who don't smoke. So just to clarify fat people who don't smoke have pretty much the same outcomes as thin people who don't smoke, not thin, thin people who do smoke, talking about the outcomes of people who are fat. And if they engage in health promoting behaviors, like not smoking.
Unknown Speaker 6:23
There's not that much difference. In fact, it's a teeny tiny little difference between outcomes. And it was mortality.
Unknown Speaker 6:32
Yeah, it was mortality. Yeah. Not morbidity, mortality.
Unknown Speaker 6:37
Yeah. So, correction there. Hopefully, people heard what I was trying to say. With that little couple of letters that I missed out. Do not Don't, don't smoke. Anyway, so today's episode is inspired by fat Doctor UK. Dr. Asha. He is amazing. Love.
Unknown Speaker 7:03
Dr. Asha. Let's go back to the beginning. So Dr. Asha, posted on Dr. Ashes pronouns he they on the Instagrams, I love that Asha posts what they put on Twitter because I'm not on Twitter on Instagram. I really appreciate it when people do that. So I'm gonna read this. And this inspired me I was like, I need to talk about PII at school. Okay, so from Asha, my son just found out that the whole school cross country event is optional. He has been stressing about it for weeks, can anyone relate?
Unknown Speaker 7:41
I can trace a lot of my body and self esteem issues back to school, be eating teachers are a bit like doctors, I think most of them aren't knowledgeable enough to understand that being able to run long distances or easily managed 20 Press ups, or play a sport well, has literally nothing to do with a person's physical health. They teach kids that lack of sporting ability makes them inferior. And kids pick up on this. I'm no good at sports equal i equals, I'm a less worthy human being. I'm no good at running equals, I'm not healthy. I'm slower than everyone else equals, I'm less deserving of respect, dignity and kindness. My son remembers a time his class were made up made to run to K every few weeks in PE. And his teacher used to tell them that anyone who took longer than 10 minutes was unfit. My son was usually the slowest. And the teacher would use him as an example of what not to be like, true story. Doctors are similar. If you don't look healthy, then you can't be healthy, whatever that means. If you don't look healthy, then you're less worthy or wealthy respect or care, you're to blame for your own symptoms. And then you can be cured by changing the way you look. Because that's all being fat is you get that right. BMI. BMI is literally a measure of body size. It's not even a measure of body fat. It doesn't predict any type of health example 30% People with a BMI of up to 30 are metabolically healthy, and 30% with a BMI of 20 to 25 are not. Whilst the incidence of certain diseases are disproportionately higher in people with larger bodies. This is just as likely to be due to poor medical care and neglect as it is anything else. There's no evidence that fat is inherently bad for you. Please don't embarrass yourselves by mentioning this visceral fat fat around the heart or weight on the joints because I can and if I can be bothered will school you. There's no evidence that weight loss improves morbidity or mortality. Ultimately, this all comes down to bias and discrimination society functions when one group is considered morally physically intellectually superior to another. The superior group gets to hoard the wealth, resources and power by oppressing the
Unknown Speaker 10:00
inferior group. So next time a PE teacher decides to shit on a kid for being slow. Remember, it's just because they wish to continue to benefit from privilege. And in order to do this, they have to play their role in oppressing others. Same goes for doctors. It's a power thing, not a health thing. Yes, times a billion. And then people came into the comments of that post and, and said, yep, yep, yep, this is my experience, blah, buddy, bloop, bloop, I'm gonna put the link for that post in the notes. If you want to share your story, or if you want to say hi to Asher or whatever. Ash is awesome. And I wondered, What are your experiences and so something that I love doing you were doing love doing you I do love doing you are what I love doing is asking you lot you you are a whole lot about what your experiences are. So did some questions, do some polls, and let's talk about that. But also, I want to weave in some other stuff, studies, articles, etc. So let's start with this piece from where is it from the Atlantic, the Atlantic, hey, little tip for you yet, if you ever have an article that's behind a paywall, save this address this web address in your browser and use it, it will bring up that thing from behind the paywall. That address is archive dot p h, archive dot p h, you can archive a WebPart page and also you can bring up archived and if if the posts
Unknown Speaker 11:51
if they are from a well known source, they're going to be archived multiple times over so if someone has made a change to an article, you know, four Oh 10, then they would have the three o'clock and they'll have the five o'clock version, etc. For some smaller sites, it's more like every few days, but it's like an automatic thing. They're scraping the web as some might not be on there because there might be some really
Unknown Speaker 12:18
obscure sources. But anyway, things like the Atlantic,
Unknown Speaker 12:23
which I had reached my maximum free articles archive.ph Thank me later. Okay, so from the Atlantic gym class is so bad kids are skipping school to avoid it.
Unknown Speaker 12:36
Not only just PE do little to improve physical fitness, but it can also lead to truancy and other disciplinary problems. So here's a quote from the article. I'm gonna read it. I'm gonna read it. I'm gonna read. I'm gonna read it. I'm gonna read by the way, trigger warning. A lot of the sources I mentioning will have the Oh words. A lot of them are like,
Unknown Speaker 12:56
PS bad, but I mean, we have to make the fat kids thin. So
Unknown Speaker 13:02
walking away, can we do it to shame them?
Unknown Speaker 13:06
So just Just a warning about those. So not only does PE do let it away? Yeah, I've already read that. But it's almost too easy to satirize physical education better known by its eye roll inducing abbreviation PE, from clueless to Superbad to Spider Man homecoming, parodies of gym class Class class are a pop culture, darling. Perhaps that's because they speak to one of America's fundamental truths. For many kids. Pe is terrible. I think this is really talking about I think PE can be terrible for kids of all sizes, right? Obviously, I'm speaking as a fat person, but I'm sure I remember. Yes, I remember my so I hang out when I was in secondary school. My my, my group were three other people, three of a three other people, three of the girls. And they were all thin, and they were all bad at PE and they didn't like it. So you know, like we were the quote nerds because we will build up a ye. Anyway. So a recent working paper focused on a massive PN PE initiative in Texas captures this reality analyzing data out of the states Texas fitness now program. So there's a program that was a program called Texas fitness now sounds horrific, a $37 million endeavor to improve middle schoolers fitness, academic achievement and behavior by requiring them to participate in PE every day.
Unknown Speaker 14:43
The researchers concluded that the daily mandate didn't have any positive impact on kids health or educational outcome. On the contrary, they found that the program which ran from 2007 to 2011 actually had detrimental effects correlating with
Unknown Speaker 15:00
uptick in discipline and absence rates.
Unknown Speaker 15:04
As for why this particular PE program was counterproductive, and Lisa Peckham, an economics professor at professor at Miami University in Ohio, who co authored a study points to bullying as one potential reason, students are more likely to be bullied in middle school than at any other point in their academic careers and PE presents a particular right opportunity for abuse whether because the class forces them to use a locker room whether we're adult supervision is limited because it facilitates a teasing of fats or unathletic kids, they're using the O word, I'm going to add them as I speak. The paper posits that by subjecting participants namely low income kids as the fitness now grants targeted campuses serving disadvantaged populations to the circumstances on a daily basis, the PE requirements made students less inclined to go to school. Quote, these adolescents were not enjoying the daily PE requirements no shit Sherlock, and would have rather skipped school or high IQ suggests packer who as an econ Economist has focused her research on the outcomes of health programs. The fitness now program required that students participate in at least 30 minutes of physical education every school day, schools that took part in the in the grant received $10,000 on average to help improve their PE programs by adding classes, for example, or hiring coaches and fitness instructors. They also use the money to purchase equipment such as stop watches, jump ropes and free weights. According to the study, the program resulted in a roughly 16% increase in the number of disciplinary actions for each student. The study also found that the proportion of misbehaving students went up by more than 7%. The findings of the study which has yet to be published in an academic journal it has been now are limited in scope. Still, the new paper adds much needed nuance to the body of research that has evaluated the effectiveness of various approaches to PE complicating the findings of studies that generally assert the importance of school policies that encourage regular opportunities for fraudulent physical education. Justin Cahill, a veteran PE educator who's taught at an Atlanta area private school for the past decade or so stresses that is the typical application of Physical Education rather than the fundamental concept that results in bad outcomes. Until the past few years PE classes tended to focus on kids acquisition of skills such as dribbling a ball and the fulfillment of universal benchmarks, such as the ability to run around a track three times within some specific amount of time. This approach he says breed stagnation and disinterest the kids are like yeah, this is ridiculous. I can also as Peckham, Peckham study suggest breed resentment. After all, in this old school version of PE kids, certain kids are struggle are bound to struggle. Cahill maintains that many PE programs are high caliber success successful in both engaging students and producing positive health and wellness outcomes. Echoing the findings outlined in Cole's book he says that positive results are contingent on multifaceted and holistic design, what he defines as programs that inspire kids to exercise without realizing that exercising that simply ensure they're constantly moving during recess frequent brain checks to get out the sillies morning jobs and yes, regular PE class positive results are also contingent on experienced empathetic PE teachers, those who know how know to modify a curriculum to meet certain students needs, and to give kudos to that child who can't run around the track. After all, research shows that people can get a good workout even when walking. And the more important thing is to create a healthy relationship with exercise that can last for decades. So what are your experiences? I asked the question on the Instagrams. Tell me your experiences as a fat kid was PE fun, or for sometimes good, sometimes bad. Did you experience anti fat bias? So this is what you said My experience is a fat kid doing PE at school. You got the little question box and then you got the longer one. So I'm just going to read the little question box. short answers then the longer one so
Unknown Speaker 19:28
my experience is a fat kid doing PE at school. These are your responses. First one awful, I dreaded it. Presidential physical fitness award. mandatory participation. I sucked at all of it scarring. I wonder if it's the president. Is there anything in America the president fit physical fitness award?
Unknown Speaker 19:51
In year seven, my PE teacher pulled me aside and said I was fat and needed to lose weight. That sounds nice surprise by everyone, including two
Unknown Speaker 20:00
He was when I was good at stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna talk about later but there's a survey. And they they surveyed study they surveyed PE teachers and they PE teachers presumed that fat kids would not could not be physically fit or active. I mean, no surprise that hate laughed at when changing, running coming last. Just awful. I adore PE it didn't even occur to me or others about being fat until teenage years, then I hated it. Yeah, that's interesting to think about because I feel like up until secondary school, I guess, high school is what North American say. When you're 1111 to 16.
Unknown Speaker 20:48
Up until that point, we didn't have like PE lessons. And I was really physically active. I would roller skate everywhere. I would bike everywhere I would bike with my roller skates on with a rope around the with a skipping rope around the handlebars to pretend it was a horse. You know how you would steer a horse
Unknown Speaker 21:17
to think what was doing quite the sight. And it wasn't I had like a one pedal bike so so this
Unknown Speaker 21:25
little fat kid cycling around one pedal bike with roller skates on with a rope around
Unknown Speaker 21:31
the front, like an old recliner, I would recline in the seat like you would if you were on a horse, like cycling around the council estate.
Unknown Speaker 21:44
And we'd have like skating competitions with the other kids and like literally I'd go to roller where my roller skates to church. I remember having lots of fun in
Unknown Speaker 21:56
break time recess,
Unknown Speaker 22:00
playing games with all of the other kids and playing imaginary horses with my friend Frankie. It was fun. And I would just be just having fun, whatever, you know, just as a kid, and then it was pee in the bed and you went to secondary school, and then all of a sudden, all of that stopped, there was no fun. It was you were doing this shit. And then you better be good at it. And if not, then you're a bad person. And all of a sudden it was like, Oh, I'm not good at sport. When I was I was athletic. I was fat. And I was a great roller skater, a great cyclist. And because we didn't have a family car, we'd go grocery shopping and carry the groceries back on our handlebars between my mum and my sister. And so I was probably strong too. But none of that counted because then you know, could I run the 1500? D? Do you have the bet? Yeah, many people will shudder at that phrase, the 1500. Or you might you might have called it something else. But 1500 meters run that around the track, I think it was 3.4 or five times around the track. And it just became awful until sixth form. So in the UK, Sixth Form is when you are 17 and 18. So in sixth form,
Unknown Speaker 23:18
pe changed unless you took it as a subject, you only take three subjects. And then then they're like, Oh, well, you can do PE if you want and so the PE was you can choose what you want to do. And so you can either go bowling at the local bowling alley in the city center, or you can there's a gym, you can go to the gym, like a gym at some gym in the city center, which was really cool. And then you could go swimming and I think there's something else. But I chose bowling, guess what I became a really good bowler and we'd have a lovely, we'd have a lovely afternoon out we'd go downtown from our school, it'd be like a half an hour walk or something maybe less. And then we'd go and get a McDonald's I'd get a happy meal from McDonald's and I'd get chicken nuggets and then we'd go bowling for a couple of hours and then we'd go home and that was our PE wasn't that nice?
Unknown Speaker 24:08
And you know, we have fun. Like that's what P should be like and I know that you know this. I don't know if you can do that in all places, but that's when we were technically adults. And so we're allowed to go you know, leave the school and all that type of stuff.
Unknown Speaker 24:23
Anyway, let me carry on with your stories. That's just my experience. And you bet you bet your bottom dollar I was scarred from that five years of of brutal awful shit. Yeah. Okay, so the freakin PE government testing we do in the US is the worst. I presume that some type of thing that you have to make. In that article I was reading you have to run around a track in a certain amount of time. Like I bet you there's other things whereas we we had to run distances. Why was it running? That's so weird, like this random thing that humans don't really do.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
Do run like we don't need to unless we're gonna go fucking catch prey we don't you know
Unknown Speaker 25:08
we don't need to run as a dang is so bizarre
Unknown Speaker 25:14
yeah like how good are you at running like what's its
Unknown Speaker 25:21
anyway
Unknown Speaker 25:23
I brought it was my least favorite class because it was my hardest subject sometimes good sometimes bad I think that's the thing is sometimes like if there was a sport that was something that you enjoyed then it could be okay like I really like badminton. But there was obviously other sports I didn't like. And so badminton would be could be, you know, fun. I really want to play badminton now as an adult, because I was good as it good at it as a kid anyway, I broke my foot and got out of gymnastics and my PE teacher told everyone I was faking how fun even with a doctor's note, he said I just wanted to get out of the course that was too hard for me. What an absolute bellend horrific. It one person just said. Yeah. And next person said number one, absolutely horrific. Yes. From getting changed in the communal changing rooms to teachers shouting you at you all the time. Honestly, I have hated exercise ever since it sucked. fitness tests were the worst, especially the body fat pinch measurements, made us run laps for 10 minutes and grade was based on how many you did fit kids set the curve. Yeah, remember the beep test? Do you remember the beep test that test where you would it would start a beep and you'd have to run to the other side of the hall. And then by the end of the beep and then the beep will slowly get faster and faster and faster. And it was literally like you were watching. You know who was the first one to get out? And you desperately did not want to be the first one to get out. But guess what? For me I'm probably was one of the first if not the first.
Unknown Speaker 27:02
It was traumatic bullied and mocked relentlessly while the PE teacher did nothing awful. When drama games was added to sports day I was thrilled drama games. What the heck is I don't know what it is. But it sounds like it might be fun.
Unknown Speaker 27:18
Always picked last just confirmed the sense of being the other and isolated. I was picked up I was picked last on teams. It was humiliating even more than the movies show it to be why the fuck are we letting kids pick the teams? Why is the teacher not just saying Okay everyone, one to 10 is Team One everyone you know what?
Unknown Speaker 27:45
I mean, it would make good TV show you know when you watch it on ripples drag race and they're picking teams and you know, it's scandalous and Oh, who's picked laws? And obviously it's not very nice. But why are we doing it to kids? What the heck is so outrageous and yes, I experienced that too awful humiliating, dreaded each time. The gym teacher making all of the other kids clap when I finally finished the mile run. Or worse, making the fast kid run the last few laps with me. Oh, yeah, yes, I remember that too. That happened in my school to like being like calm give a hand for the people who were who were last like they're really trying like fuck off. Let's let's make a focus on the people who are not as fast, though. Great idea. Presidential Fitness fitness testing BS thing. He was the worst.
Unknown Speaker 28:39
I have I also have a physical disability. So it was doubly awful.
Unknown Speaker 28:44
Oh my god, did I ever have the worst experience I could go on and on and on about that all the anti fat bias and overall feelings of shame. But the worst part was when we would do lap runs, I would usually be the last because I felt uncomfortable reading in front of others and would go slow. And all the thinner kids would watch me and cheer and clap for me as I did the final lap. It was extremely embarrassing. I feel so uncomfortable just thinking about it. Whoo hoo. You fat bitch way to take forever is all I can imagine them thinking I still have poor relationship with physical activity because of my experiences. Here's the other thing that I think about it that this person is saying they'll feel uncomfortable and didn't want to run fast. That was my experience too. I didn't want to run fast because I had giant old big old Teddy's TIG ol bitties I had some TIG ol bitties and I had did not have a bra that was supportive. I had a bra that was fished out of some bargain bin at a charity shop. That was not an appropriate for anything, you know.
Unknown Speaker 29:48
It did not and so if you ran your tests would be jumping all over the place. And so you'd have to just like slowly jog. Because of that because you know as a child, there's no
Unknown Speaker 30:00
worry, you would run in front of a class with your tits like flopping into your face. Would you know? And I'm presuming a lot of the smaller kids, smaller body kids didn't have those Tigo biddies tag our bad eight, right?
Unknown Speaker 30:20
PE was horrible starting in grade four when they made us change our clothes. And dressing in front of peers is where it all started. As I got older, I was slower than all my other kids, all the other kids so I was picked last for teams and I stopped trying it was better to barely pass and to humiliate myself. I remember in grade 12 explaining to a friend hockey player. Why some kids in class don't participate when they're forced to do team sports and it never occurred to him that people would rather be seen as lazy than humiliate themselves and team sports. Yeah, yeah. It's like a way to protect yourself. Honestly, I'm not sure if I was considered to be fat by my classmates, I was most definitely taller because I grew earlier. And I was much heavier than most girls in my school, let alone my class I excelled and B. I was always picked early in choosing teams because I was known for being skilled athletically. Overall, it was fun for me and my favorite class. The only bad thing was when I did distance running, I was always one of the last to finish the mile. It's easy to run when you're 13 years old. I was about what I actually experienced more discrimination now than I did when I was a kid. But when it comes to any kind of athletic anything, I could talk about this topic for days, I went to a very expensive Catholic school. Our Jim tree teacher treated any of the plus size girls terribly. He would call us chirps or chubby instead of our names. If he called us by our name, it would be the name of one or the other plus size girls and when we corrected him he'd say all you chubby girls look the same. He would make a stand in the middle of this of a circle while doing warm up. So our entire class would make sure we weren't slacking off. Jesus Christ. We used to play this game similar to dodgeball, if you were hit by the ball, you had to sit on the line in the middle of the gym, then any member from either team could risk it by grabbing your hand and pulling you off the line. Then you'd be on that team. No one ever grabbed my hand. One time someone hit me so hard in the face that my with a bomb my glasses broke. I can't see without them. I was crying and asked the teacher. If I could go to the nurse. He told me no. I said I wasn't hit on purpose. I just take it up. I just take up so much space like couldn't be missed. During physical fitness tests he would have the most popular boys and girls help him write down everyone's height and weight that he could loudly call across the gym to them. Jesus fucking when it when it was any of the plus size girls weights, he would shout it out extra loud and ask if they needed help writing a number that Hi. My mom used to complain to the school and he'd say he wasn't a bully. I always had Jim first or last period so my mom started bringing me into school late or pulling me out early so I'd miss Jim. This was seventh and eighth grade. I'm 39 now and people I went to elementary school still talk about the trauma that teacher caused us
Unknown Speaker 33:20
wow that is straight up abuse. That's abuse.
Unknown Speaker 33:26
Okay, last story. My experience was mixed I was always the slowest last but I was enthusiastic and like team sports my PE teacher loved me but this led to me being put been put in the top set for PE with another teacher which I hated for can completely humiliated when I told the teacher I didn't want to be in the class because it made me feel bad. She said I just need to try harder. Also, I just think PE and sport are taught so badly and affected my relationship with exercise for so long. I just left school thinking I was bad at everything and the only people who looked who looked good
Unknown Speaker 34:01
at sport carried on as that were good at sport carried on as adults. Now I do
Unknown Speaker 34:07
martial arts and lift weights and look an over lockdown. I did a running out which I never thought I do. But I still have a real lingering insecurity around it all that I think could have been lessened if I was taught better in school. Yeah, that's my thoughts. Exactly. Is that that clearly? We?
Unknown Speaker 34:28
Clearly a lot of people enjoy games and fun and doing you know, right in there right riding their bike with roller skates in a an A thing to like a horse. You know, clearly a lot of people do that. Some people don't some people just is not just another thing. That's fine too. But it's the same with the way that we talk about food. And the way that we fuck goods up around food being like you eat you will eat a motherfucking vegetable or you're not going to get
Unknown Speaker 35:00
The quote, good food you're gonna eat the, quote disgusting food, which is apparently good for you. And it's like Way to ruin vegetables.
Unknown Speaker 35:10
When you know, we could adjust,
Unknown Speaker 35:14
just being chill about it and let people eat the variety of foods that naturally they probably inclined to, obviously, that's not everyone's experience, because we have neurodiversity and you know, access and blah, blah, blah, but, you know, on the whole
Unknown Speaker 35:32
they're just making a thing because they're so terrified about fatness, you know, they're so terrified that if we don't have PE, then the O word epidemic is just gonna get out of control. And, and the fitness is this, this thing that
Unknown Speaker 35:49
has to be so, like, so stringent and so
Unknown Speaker 35:56
not fun?
Unknown Speaker 35:59
Why is it that the other teachers can get creative? And you know, you can have different ways to be taught? Not all, you know, not all other teachers, there's probably lots of teachers that are not great teachers, obviously. But the good teachers were the ones that made, you know, different subjects fun and thought outside the box. And yeah, teachers are not paid enough. But I would think, wouldn't it just be more fun to have engaged students? Instead of being like, Oh, we're doing the 1500 Rand a day and all the students being like, oh,
Unknown Speaker 36:30
you know, versus we're gonna play a game. We're gonna do this thing and see how it goes. Let's have some fun. Or when I think about, you know, I go roller skating, right? We're gonna roller skating and we play games. We play games.
Unknown Speaker 36:48
So when I go on, runners get in. Last time I went, we played games. We did this obstacle course when I say obstacle course, it's not that it's not this bad, scary things. It was literally, like, roll around on the floor, like, weave in and out of these things. And, you know, have fun. And then then we played a kick in a kick in a empty milk carton around. And then we played a game where we we closed our eyes, and then we
Unknown Speaker 37:19
we tried to catch the other people where their eyes closed. And if you caught someone, they you held hands and it made like one big long snake thing.
Unknown Speaker 37:30
I mean,
Unknown Speaker 37:32
versus okay, you're on roller skates. Now you have to like run and do 50 laps in 10 seconds. And if you don't, you're a piece of shit. I mean, hello, well, who would ever want to go roller skating if that was the case, but because we're all just getting it is fun for a lot of people because it's not done in a PE class.
Unknown Speaker 37:47
People have nicer fonder memories of Roller Skating, right? Because you probably did roller skating just at home, and you probably weren't traumatized by a PE teacher say, Hey, you're fat loser. You're too slow. You just trundled around the neighborhood and fell over and maybe that traumatized you but probably you weren't traumatized by an educator.
Unknown Speaker 38:11
Okay, so look at let's look at this piece from Katie German who says food education programs that focus on fatness do more harm than good.
Unknown Speaker 38:21
And so I'm talking about
Unknown Speaker 38:25
what else we've learned from school. And a lot of what people learn is that they need to eat vegetables and if they vegetables and they'll magically be thin as well as running around.
Unknown Speaker 38:39
Okay, so Katie says I work for a food food security organization. And not long ago, I was invited to the launch of it in initiative meant to get kids excited about growing and eating fresh fruits and veggies. I sat in a room with 50 other community leaders eager to talk about food literacy programs for students. When the facilitator ASEAN inevitable how do we work together to address the Oh word epidemic in our city? I let out a sigh. As a so called Oh, fat person. I found myself again sitting with people strategizing ways to prevent kids from having a body that looks like mine. As though a fat body is a tragedy, a societal burden, a source of shame. In the field of food security, we are constantly asked to frame what we do as an as fat prevention work. grant applications include requests that applicants collect biometric data as part of their food program, cooking workshops require participants to weigh themselves.
Unknown Speaker 39:43
Shops required petitioners to weigh themselves. Jesus
Unknown Speaker 39:51
can you imagine?
Unknown Speaker 39:54
When I say good
Unknown Speaker 39:59
I'm good.
Unknown Speaker 40:02
because if you learn to cook and you've learned to cook and you don't become magically thin then the cooking lesson was a failure. What what
Unknown Speaker 40:14
students are asked to clarify their family's favorite foods is quote bad or good
Unknown Speaker 40:20
as part of food literacy education oh you know that that's affecting people of color more than it is white kids because you know that the foods that are seen as quote ethnic are labeled bad this fucking array says, Oh, wow, this is fucked.
Unknown Speaker 40:42
When a food program is built around Oh, word prevention is likely doing more harm than good. There is a dangerous assumption that fat people just need to learn more about the risks of being fat and then they will make their body smaller. Yeah, that's the thing is all of this like food education. It's it's so patronizing. Is like high fat people. Have you ever heard of spinach? Who you Oh thank God I'm here if you eat this spinach you'll be fin sloppy in blocks of Lord Oh you didn't know that blocks have lied about like oh, did you ever hear that? It's bad to be fat. You have to thank God I'm is 30 person to save you?
Unknown Speaker 41:33
Yea yea yea.
Unknown Speaker 41:40
Growing up fat people talked about my body all the time my portion sizes were monitored and I was encouraged to skip meals. One teacher asked us to measure our BMI and proceeded to plot our body sizes and our class chart.
Unknown Speaker 41:56
What
Unknown Speaker 41:57
constant conversations about fatness did not shrink my body. But the experience was devastating to my mental health. I was not alone. According to a US study canvassing 14,000 high school students, those who have classroom sizes classified themselves as Oh word were at a greater risk for depression and suicide attempts than teens who didn't consider themselves heavy.
Unknown Speaker 42:25
That's the thing I was reading this.
Unknown Speaker 42:28
So people are doing work in Ireland to try and stop this, this program. This this program in Ireland where it's like Let's expose kids to to to vegetables. Because if we expose them to vegetables, then they're going to love vegetables. And so I can't remember the name of the program. But basically what they do is they like boil vegetables within an inch of their life and then put them in this nasty packaging and then send cold slimy, boiled within an inch of the life vegetables to school kids. And then the kids have to do this program where they're forced to eat those packages of slimy overcooked mushy, cold food. I mean, you might as well put a fucking bag of cockroaches out and be like, here it is. It's gonna have the same amount of traumatising. Do you think kids are gonna be like, Oh,
Unknown Speaker 43:30
give me some fuckin spinach that time I had it at school. Oh, change my world? No, they're gonna be like that shit is nasty.
Unknown Speaker 43:42
But I if I don't eat it, I'm a bad person. I know. Now I'm on Alvie. Like,
Unknown Speaker 43:49
the people who are creating these programs not like
Unknown Speaker 43:53
do they not? I don't understand how their brain doesn't recognize that. It doesn't make sense to me. I'm like trying to compute it. I'm just thinking, like,
Unknown Speaker 44:04
what do they think is going to happen? So I had an experience in primary school where things were a lot better around like being exposed to different types of fruits and vegetables that I hadn't seen before. So we've got like passion fruit, and I think there was like mango and things like that. I remember that passion fruit so clearly because first the teacher cut these things in half, then put them on the table and then asked us to draw them. I was showing his passion for your fruit and I was just salivate Tang, looking at it, smelling it talking about making it a tease. Oh my god that teacher was
Unknown Speaker 44:44
like and so we drew the fruits. And then I took I took that passion fruit and I held it in my hand. And I smelt it. And I knew that I shouldn't because you know,
Unknown Speaker 44:56
the kids were drawing it and I shouldn't be touching it yet. I stopped
Unknown Speaker 45:00
My finger in the seeds, I licked it, and the teacher saw and was like, oh, not yet. We're gonna taste in a minute. Obviously, they don't want some snotty nose. Kids stick their finger in the frickin fruit. But she wasn't telling me off or doing it. She was telling me, you know, like, oh, let's wait in a second. And do you think that I think that passionfruit is discussions could disgusting.
Unknown Speaker 45:22
No, no. What about the other things that I tried that day? I can't remember. But what are the chances that that stuff is is scarred onto my brain as these disgusting things? No, because I don't remember them. It was just a curious thing. You know, it was just a no shame, just a curious thing. Like, that's how you teach about food. That's how you know I was low income. I wasn't exposed to a passion for it before. And so that was how an education moment around these things
Unknown Speaker 45:54
can be done versus I'm a good person to eat that passion fruit. There was none of that around what we were doing. It was just like, here's some weird looking things you might not have seen before.
Unknown Speaker 46:07
I think that's the way that's the way to do it and making it fun and making a cute like, and drawing the thing that was really cool.
Unknown Speaker 46:15
And I don't remember anyone
Unknown Speaker 46:19
being forced to eat anything. And I was a picky eater, and I had been forced to eat things. I had a very dominant dad. I remember him forcing me to eat brussel sprouts and vomiting from it and him just being like, you're going to eat that Brussel sprout. And do you like brussel sprouts? I mean, no, not for me. Thank you. You know, I had brussel sprouts. And there were I had brussel sprouts in a restaurant where they were fried with parmesan cheese, lemon and something else. Other time I was vegetarian, but they also had bacon, but I didn't eat the bacon bits. And it was like this delicious snack. Mm hmm. Anyway, question, what other anti fat experiences did you have at school specifically school sponsored? So from teachers or educators? Did you learn that fat bodies were cool? What did you learn the opposite? Were you told to eat vegetables in a way that cause you to start dieting? What did you learn about your bodies and other fat bodies from your education as a kid
Unknown Speaker 47:24
I used to go dancing. I was good. Then I kept then I kept being told that I was too fat and should lose weight. At that point. They humiliated me in front of the class saying I was huge and I had to leave or lose weight. I left I left the exercise I loved because I was shamed, humiliated and told I was less than yes to dancing. I've heard so many dancers tell me that that was a big part of when they started become disordered around food and body. My friend she just saying he thought that fat people were lazy and didn't kick take care of themselves
Unknown Speaker 47:58
was always sent with a much sent with a much healthier lunch and the other kids because my parents slash I wanted to lose weight weight which led to a lot of surprised comments from peers and also lots of Binging at night and
Unknown Speaker 48:12
having a head of year in a super fat body did actually help nobody did in dead in her earshot I think they probably were saying dare to say anything.
Unknown Speaker 48:23
My sixth grade teacher talking about her Jean size and that she will never let herself get above double digits gave me an eating disorder because being fat is bad UK size 12 But my teens and I was told I was Oh word constantly ridicule from boys. I teach I didn't even have classes with gave my mum a diet book at the parent teacher conference.
Unknown Speaker 48:50
Ah
Unknown Speaker 48:53
chin that you were so rapidly anti fat and pro diet that you go out of your way as a busy job to go and give another
Unknown Speaker 49:04
kid that is not even your kid. Their parents attire puck.
Unknown Speaker 49:11
I hope that teacher has seen the error of their ways. And is now like oh I fucked up. That is fucked up.
Unknown Speaker 49:21
Dance unit teacher always paired me with one of the Fat Boys cool but no coincidence.
Unknown Speaker 49:28
costumes for plays always bad if we had to match fat shame and needing longer sash. Yeah, once without any consent and 11 some older students came and randomly selected us to get weighed.
Unknown Speaker 49:41
I was asked it was asked to see if we could buy clothes at the store or whether we're handmade based on were handmade based on way. We were 11 can consent to participate or not. We were forced parents were not informed trauma. So I think the kids were doing some project about color
Unknown Speaker 50:00
Those are the older kids were doing a project on clothes and they just came and weighed these 11 year olds. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 50:06
wait.
Unknown Speaker 50:08
First of all, it's got to do with clothes. I mean measurements, but still then you shouldn't be doing that. That's fucked up.
Unknown Speaker 50:15
A 40 Hour Famine was encouraged for fundraising. My Edie loved it. Right?
Unknown Speaker 50:23
Fuck. I bet you that was a religious school
Unknown Speaker 50:27
for our family in cheese fought the fuck.
Unknown Speaker 50:33
I went to a uniform school and the schools schools buttoned down did not fit me. Yeah, I had we, you know, the in the UK or the schools a uniform. I think almost all of them I don't think any would not be uniform.
Unknown Speaker 50:45
And luckily, what they did is that you would by the school would have a color of the blazer. And so your blazer would be black or, or blue or maybe like a ready brown color, you know, normal things. And then you would just sew the logo on to the pocket. But still, you had to find children dress sizes, and I sized out of the children's sizes and had to get adult suits and my mum was very pressed about it because we were poor.
Unknown Speaker 51:14
I kept getting to detention for wearing the same color shirt. My parents got me. That's the person whose uniform didn't fit for fuck sake. Yeah, I remember I remember. I remember there was there was one girl who was he was fatter than me and she was wearing a shirt which wasn't uniform. It was still a white shirt, but she would get in trouble for it. But it was a shirt that fucking fit her. Oh.
Unknown Speaker 51:40
When I tried wearing the uniform shirt, and it had a gap button gap and I got detention for exposing my bra.
Unknown Speaker 51:46
My grade depended on another kid using calipers to measure my waist fat funks sake.
Unknown Speaker 51:54
Talked about diets with my teachers. My Ed reader cold in high school. I was approached by a fourth grade teacher, school nurse about curriculum telling kids processed foods cause fatness heart disease and diabetes. And would this upset a student in the class with diabetes? I was asked not to ask her not to teach it at all but was not heard. Oh, okay. I was just approach okay. Are they are okay, so this person is a school nurse. And then a fourth grade teacher asked about curriculum about telling kids that processed food is bad. But she taught it anyway.
Unknown Speaker 52:35
My health class in high school taught me how to make a food journal. Okay. That's no good. I had to write down everything in a week including the calories Oh, and then the health gym teacher looked over it and talk to each kid about it. I felt extreme guilt for eating food because I was bigger. So I lied and surprising my Ed. I obsessively tracked everything i that is now in my middle school, they had some specialists come in and do a whole presentation on EDS I suppose they were trying, but they only talked about the main kinds not the Restrict binge cycle. And this person said main kinds in quotation marks the main the main kinds, quote, main kinds the most prevalent eating disorders happen in fat people. So
Unknown Speaker 53:25
okay, so I suppose they were trying but they only talk about the main kinds, not the Restrict binge cycle. This is in the 90s when they talked about body dysmorphia. They talked about how, quote girls were starving would look in the mirror and see a fat girl so they they keep on not eating. Isn't that awful? And I remember thinking, Well, I'm fat. So that doesn't apply to me guess I don't have any eating disorder. Spoiler alert. I hated my body and was definitely restricting by that point. I developed a full blown ed by the time I left high school. Yeah, that's the thing is when we were growing up as a we like we're all the same age. But when I was growing up, the eating disorder was always typical. Anorexia, right, anorexia nervosa, you'd think eating disorder is a thin person. And no way would a fat person have an eating disorder. But if they did, I mean, a restrictive eating disorder. They had an eating disorder, you know that they had a binge eating disorder. That was the only way a fat person can have an eating disorder. And obviously, there's nothing wrong if you I mean, if you have an eating disorder, obviously, it's not helpful for you for you, but there's nothing wrong, like you're not a better eating disorder person. However, if you have a restrictive one, or if you have
Unknown Speaker 54:39
a binging disorder, by the way, binge eating is actually a restrictive eating disorder because that's what you're doing is restricting and then the natural consequences binging
Unknown Speaker 54:49
Yeah, so a restricted fully just restrictive eating disorder is not quote better, or you're not doing better at the IDI or, or it doesn't
Unknown Speaker 55:00
mean that you're not as sick if you don't have a restrictive eating disorder, or if you're in a big body are Alright, so let's look at this, this this study, okay? It's called anti fat bias in secondary school teachers are physical education teachers more biased than mathematics, mathematics teachers. So this was done in I think 2020. So I'm gonna give you the introduction here of what they're looking at. So basically our maths teachers, or as you'd say, North America math with no s. Now it's not wrong, it's maths,
Unknown Speaker 55:37
math, maths teachers,
Unknown Speaker 55:41
are they more biased than
Unknown Speaker 55:43
PE teachers?
Unknown Speaker 55:49
In spite of the increase in incidence of fatness in children and adolescents,
Unknown Speaker 55:56
there does not appear to be an increase in social acceptance of young people who are fat.
Unknown Speaker 56:04
See how see how
Unknown Speaker 56:08
a study who is trying to do well starts with something which is stigmatizing.
Unknown Speaker 56:17
On the contrary, these young people are frequently subjected to situations of discrimination due to their appearance. So So almost all of these state statements that that I'm reading are linked to then two studies. I'm not going to read out this name of the study because if you want to go and see name of all of these studies, because there's like a 50 billion, if you want to go see all the links to all of these statements, then you can go to the one study, which is what I'm reading. While the stigmatization of young people who are fat is common in many environments. This is particularly prevalent in schools. In fact, both students and teachers believe that bullying for weight reasons is the most common form of bullying experienced by young people in schools, students, peers and the most frequent perpetrator or perpetrators of weight based teasing and bullying at school. However, teachers are not exempt from involvement in these processes of victimization.
Unknown Speaker 57:06
This study, for example, found that approximately a quarter of high school teachers of surveyed held the belief that fat people were more impulsive, less organized, and had more family problems than non fat people. In the same study, 28% of teachers felt that becoming fat is a worst thing that could happen to a person. When the person of the when the perspective or the potential victims of these discriminatory acts was investigated, it was found that 27% of the sample of adolescents undergoing treatment to lose weight claimed to have been victimized by their own teachers. The cognitive component of explicit anti fat bias has been assessed through the measurements of PE teacher stereotypical beliefs. Most of the studies have shown that PE teachers endorse stereotypes that represent fatness fat individuals as lazy, incompetent and weak willed. For example, this study surveyed 105 PE teachers and found that they had lower expectations of fat students than healthy than straight size students, both in terms of the physical abilities and by their reasoning, cooperative, and social interaction skills. Similar findings have been reported by this study using an experiment experimental task in which P teachers had to rate the expected abilities and important performance of fat and nonfat students depicted in photographs. Applying a modified version of the fat stereotypes questionnaire to a sample of trainee P teachers discovered that fat children in comparison with nonfat children were thought to be lazier and less socially adept among other common stereotypes.
Unknown Speaker 58:45
They also found that PE teachers thought that fat kids lacked the willpower to control their weight. 42% have a sample of 307 61 Adolescents enrolled in a weight loss camp reported that they had been bullied or teased about their weight by PE teachers, or sports coaches 42% had been bullied by adults.
Unknown Speaker 59:12
There's another study interviewed 12 Fat high school students about their experiences in PE including questions about how they were treated by PE teachers. Most of them described inappropriate teaching practices such as encouraging fat students to sit out certain activities or punishing the whole class when fat students failed.
Unknown Speaker 59:32
Fun time so the study goes on. So the results is kind of mixed like do maths teachers. Are they less biased than PE teachers?
Unknown Speaker 59:45
In some ways, yes. In some ways, they are just as biased.
Unknown Speaker 59:51
And so what they found is that what they guessed is that PE teachers so the PE teachers were like yeah, fat people love for him disgusting.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
Whatever. I'm paraphrasing, they didn't say disgusting, but you know they're fat people are bad, but
Unknown Speaker 1:00:06
I feel sorry for them.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:09
And so what the researchers have have question is is, are the fat? Are the PE teachers saying that because they know that this is not socially acceptable to shame fat kids
Unknown Speaker 1:00:23
is what they're guessing. But you can go read the whole thing. link in the show notes
Unknown Speaker 1:00:33
where we are aware episode Lillooet do to but a leper 161 So if you want to find that all the links for everything that I'm talking about face for a forward slash 161.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:48
Let us continue.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:53
Okay, so, questions how this is what I've asked the audience, how would you have liked to experience school so that it was a positive experience for you? And your dream world? What would it look like? So this is what you've said, my dream school experiences when I was a kid. desks that accommodate large bodies, teachers that are trained to combat anti fatness
Unknown Speaker 1:01:16
holding bullies accountable students and teachers.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:20
Having us a feeling of safety being heard and accepted. Body neutrality, no fitness testing, just learning for the mind and joyful movement movement for the body. Just bodies weren't discussed at all that health wasn't discussed from about that health was discussed from a balanced Intuitive Eating standpoint.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:40
kind of remember the name body happy club or something. But they do work with the schools schools to help them do this. And I wish I had that. Yeah. So Molly Forbes,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:50
wrote the kid body that wrote the book, body happy kids, I'm quoting her.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:56
And Molly is doing incredible work with schools. And imagine if we had that when we were little, when we were little babies.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:05
I did have a relative good experience in school. As in I had good friends and I was a relatively confident teenager. But one of the fattest in my year, if not the school, I did experience school differently from my friends to teachers comments, and being slightly bullied by other kids.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:21
It was, it wasn't a nice time, I'd like I'd have liked teachers to have more of an understanding of what a fat teenager was going through, and maybe use that language that isn't shaming in front of other people.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:34
I wouldn't have loved to have a PE class that had any actual information in it at all. If they would have taught us things like this is how you should lift heavy things without hurting yourself. Yeah, that's a good idea. Or this is the proper way to breathe while exercising. Yeah, or these are the muscles you should work on to counteract how much you sit in class that your background hurt when you're older. Or any gentle nutrition focus on giving your body what it needs instead of the bullshit that we've got focused on like not drinking soda, it would also be so much more useful than finding out I can't run a mile because I've had zero training for it or following the other kids around on a soccer field because somehow they know how to play even though I've I've never had one less lesson. Of course body positivity would have been ideal but not actively harming my relationship with my body and in every health class would have been a good start focus on self love and acceptance that's really all that matters everything grows from there. teachers taught by Molly from body happy org yes acceptance of all bodies. them some things are beyond control diversity in images and books. Yeah, so
Unknown Speaker 1:03:46
there is so much overhaul for for kids to be in a positive environment I mean shit it's almost impossible like that that
Unknown Speaker 1:03:59
episode I did fat bias and kids media from from the beginning when they're babies. Coco melon. Other fucking cartoons are like vegetables are good sugar is bad. Haha look there's a fat person. Oh, look at Fat Daddy Pig. He's a fat loser. You know all of that shit. I mean, it's from the from the beginning and so
Unknown Speaker 1:04:24
it's so it's so hard. And so if you have a kid trying to counteract that message, don't get that book body having kids by by Molly for Zoo.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:38
It's a great start. But more more love dogs. Orcs. org has some things to say more love.org Is that is that place where you can get the free. Don't weigh me cards. There's also don't weigh me don't weigh my kid cards. And the person who runs it is that
Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
actually
Unknown Speaker 1:05:01
specializes in kids stuff kid education or something like that.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:07
So there's a blog post here from more love.org teachers please stop teaching children dieting to children years. She goes over the she goes over the reasons why we shouldn't be teaching tired dieting to children. And the number number two thing that she says is that fat children face no more risks of disease.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:29
What she's saying is backed by links to studies. So if you want those, even if we were facing a quote, epidemic of weight gain and a review of 17 studies, children who remain fat from childhood to adulthood now had no more risk than adults who had never been fat. In fact, women who maintained high weights from childhood to adulthood actually enjoyed lower levels of triglycerides and total cholesterol. Surprise, surprise, yeah. And people and it's like, oh, kids are gonna get type two diabetes. I can't remember what the fact is, but it's something like it's in the hundreds, let's just say the minimum of the hundreds 100 Kids are 100 times more likely to get an eating disorder than they are to get type two diabetes.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:09
We're focusing on the wrong things.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:14
Continuing but isn't it good advice to quote eat healthy, many educators may agree that children should not diet yet they still poorly understand concepts of healthy eating healthy in quotations. For example, many educators tell children that they should limit sugar however, there was very little evidence that sugar intake is linked to fatness even sugary sodas commonly believed to be nothing but quote bad have no direct link to weight gain. And in fact, one study even found that teenagers who drank the most soda were thinner than peers who avoided soda Yeah. Similarly, similarly, similar really similar. Similarly similar. Similarly, whoa, the heart. Similarly, fast food has not been associated with greater fatness. Some of the heaviest populations in the world have no access to fast food. What children eat certainly plays a role in their health. However, blaming weight on particular foods and food groups is simply not supported by scientific evidence. Yeah, so what the saying what your meat plays that role in the health and when we're thinking about that. It's not saying don't ever eat a burger it's Do I have enough food? Do I have a variety of foods to participate my growth as a child? Right Thinking about it like that? Many teachers think that saying things like eat healthy is at best positive and at worst neutral. However, they are incorrect. Quote, negative messages such as sugar and fries are bad and the use of the term junk food contributes to the understanding of fear of food dietary fat and weight gain which precedes body image concerns and eating problems end quote and with a link to a study should schools fight Oh word an alarming number of schools have decided to take on preventing childhood Oh word as part of their mission fun times. However, the data shows is not helpful. The childhood adolescent trial or the for cardiovascular health ca t ch sponsored by the National Institutes of Health is one of the largest school based prevention programs. In catch that's the acronym schools modified the school food service increased physical education programs and introduced health credit curriculum and family nutritional education. Despite three years of well intentioned efforts, participating schools did not reduce the rate of fatness nor did they achieve decreased blood pressure or cholesterol levels. Quote, there is little evidence so far that school based programs have had a major major or lasting impact on BMI or body adipose adiposity that's body fatness. That's an that's a quote from a study. Many studies over the last few decades show that when adults tried to regulate or control what children eat, their children ate more, not less, and are likely to end up with weight, body image and eating related problems. That's another quote from a study. controlled experiments have shown that quote trying to encourage pressure even reward children to eat certain foods actually turns them off to those foods and makes it less likely that they will eat them conserve conversely, if children are deprived of certain foods, they become more interested in those foods and are more likely to overeat them when they get the opportunity.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:22
So the answer prevent weight stigma not fatness? It would be great if teachers could stop teaching dieting. But what about health? Well, the good news is that teaching students Health at Every Size. This approach focuses on self acceptance, positive body image and intuitive eating and movement. Anti fatness programs has shown no success in improving health or making people thinner. Yet Health at Every Size has shown statistically and clinically relevant improvements in physiological method measures example blood pressure blood lipids, health behaviors example eating an active activity habits dietary quality and
Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
psychosocial outcomes such as self esteem and body image, and that Hayes achieves these out health outcomes more successfully than weight loss treatment and without the country contra indications associated with weight forget.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:13
Yeah. So some quick quick polls to see where people are at some polls did you experience this is from my IG stories? Did you experience anti fat bias from educators at school? 65% said yes. 11% said no. 12% said sometimes 11% said not sure. So 60 of 65 plus
Unknown Speaker 1:10:40
problem. So 77. So 77% said yes, or sometimes that they experienced anti fat bias from an educator. These adults are meant to be teaching us. Did you experience anti fat bias from other kids at school?
Unknown Speaker 1:10:58
86% said yes. 5% said no. Nine said sometimes and one said no. 1% said Maybe so 95% of fat kids experienced fat bias. Yes. Or sometimes from other kids? 95% Did you leave school feeling empowered about your body? Yes. 0%?
Unknown Speaker 1:11:28
Not at all. 97%? Wow. A little bit 3% a moderate amount. 0%? So 97% of people
Unknown Speaker 1:11:43
did not leave school feeling empowered about their body? Did educators teach you disordered behaviors and beliefs? 8%? Yes. around food? 5%? Yes. Around body?
Unknown Speaker 1:11:59
59%? Yes, around body and food? And 27% said no. So 73% of people were taught disordered behaviors and beliefs by educators, either around food around their body, or their food, food and their body? 77% I think the most the most shocking statistic is that 0% of people said that they left school feeling empowered about their body. And numbers wise, we don't have it. I don't have it right here. How many people took this survey, but it was minimum 100 People probably closer to 200. So this is not just you know, one or two people who are saying this. So what's the answer?
Unknown Speaker 1:13:04
Big Science the answer.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:09
Oh, I mean,
Unknown Speaker 1:13:13
I'm not an educator, I'm a teacher. I'm like, I educate people about anti anti fat bias. I'm not a school teacher. So I don't I don't know. I don't know. I know what is not helpful.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:25
And that's forcing kids to do things.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:30
And taking the fun out of things. And I think the way that we were the way that I was taught in, in Junior School, which is we weren't taught PE we would, we would just have break time, you know, we'd have what, 15 minutes at the morning, and then hour ish, or 15 minutes at dinner. And we were just running around and stuff. And I think that if we have, if we have things available, you know, like climbing frames, and, you know,
Unknown Speaker 1:14:02
people would always because we're opening we'll play football, not American football, you know, football.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:09
And, you know, kids would spend a lot of kids would spend the whole lunch break playing games,
Unknown Speaker 1:14:17
and others didn't and that was fine and anything is moving, your body can be health promoting. And also moving your body can do the opposite. And not everyone can move their body.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:32
And moving your body doesn't mean that you'll necessarily be automatically healthy. It is a health promoting behavior.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:40
But if you don't move your body, you're not going to automatically spontaneously combust your eyeballs aren't going to fall out you're not going to be
Unknown Speaker 1:14:48
automatically unhealthy. It's just one of many different things that can contribute to better health outcomes alongside any other things that we don't think about or like it's
Unknown Speaker 1:15:00
hammered into us, if you move your body, you'll live forever. You know, obviously, that's less hyperbole, but, you know, we're not thinking about, Oh, if you don't experience racism, oh, if you have secure housing, oh, if you have connections with your community, you know, etc, etc. Oh, if you drive, not too much over the speed limit, oh, if you engage in safer sex, we're not constantly like, shaming ourselves or thinking that we're a better human and being like, me.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:36
I have an apartment to live, you know, we don't think about that in regards to like, I mean, ship. Yeah, we do. We do. We do. Because we look down upon people who are houseless. But I mean, when we, when we think about health, we're not like, I have chosen to be healthy in regards to I face less hardships due to XYZ and therefore I'm a better person because of it. And obviously, that comes with a black, you know, it's not black and white. There's lots of shades of gray around that. But, you know, you know what I'm trying to say, you know, what I'm trying to say is that we're so focused on these things, to the point where we're fucking up kids and we've all been fucked up. You know, we as in people my age who had the same experiences as me, or people older and younger,
Unknown Speaker 1:16:25
who are fat at school, you know, there are there handfuls of people who you know, who have had good experiences because they were lucky to have positive teachers. But you know, most people are have left school with terrible experiences. So anyway, if you enjoyed this episode, go to cofee and chuck me a few dollars. Buy me a coffee, subscribe. That would make my fat heart pitter patter.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:55
If you can do that, and if you can't, then that's absolutely fine as well. I'm happy to have you here listening to my dulcet tones. dulcet what does that mean? Let's do a little bit of googling dough.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:09
So that probably means like, smooth
Unknown Speaker 1:17:15
sweet or soothing? My dulcet tones. It's nice word isn't it? dulcet.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:23
Anyway, thanks for hanging out. I'm gonna stop talking and Googling fucking words.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:29
You were the best. No, you were the best you are you were the best. And I'll see you in the next episode. tatoeba Oh boy.