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Amimodo at dove.com. Hello

1:17

and welcome to another episode of Iway with

1:20

Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame. I thought

1:22

given how incredibly toxic the world is right

1:24

now when it comes to diet culture and

1:26

making us feel guilty for having dared to

1:28

eat something on Christmas day with our loved

1:30

ones, for having dared to just relax and

1:33

enjoy a meal. This

1:35

felt like a good time to bring back this

1:37

episode from Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbs. They

1:40

are the co-host of the excellent podcast The

1:42

Maintenance Phase, which is largely about debunking a

1:44

lot of diet culture myths. And

1:47

I feel like that's what we need right now,

1:49

especially with January right around the corner.

1:51

I just wanted to arm you with

1:53

something that made you feel less gaslit by the

1:55

world, less pressured. And I love the

1:57

way that they tackle everything with just so much

1:59

research. so much information and so much

2:01

deep deep love and empathy and just the

2:04

right amount of total and utter rage. I

2:06

want to warn you we're talking a lot

2:08

about fat phobia and that could be triggering

2:10

to some people especially right now where a

2:12

lot of people feel very bullied at home

2:14

by their own families I'm so sorry but

2:17

maybe this is exactly what you need to hear right now because

2:20

I think it's very very galvanizing

2:22

and just so interesting. I learned so

2:24

much in this episode it really takes

2:26

us through the history of diet culture

2:28

how it works all of the pitfalls

2:30

how it's designed to fail and make

2:33

us feel perpetually just like shit. I

2:35

hope you enjoy this I think they are

2:37

both such a delight I love their podcast

2:40

the maintenance phase so much and Aubrey is

2:42

one of the leading leading world activists against

2:44

fat phobia she's known as your fat friend

2:46

to some on the internet although she now

2:48

goes by her real name I really

2:50

adore them I adored this chat and

2:52

I'm so happy to be bringing it

2:54

back today when I think possibly the

2:56

world needs it the most lots of

2:58

love stay strong we will get

3:00

through this shit together and I'll see you in

3:02

the new year. This

3:05

is Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbs. Aubrey

3:13

and Michael welcome to Iway how are

3:16

you? Good how about you? I'm really

3:18

good Michael are you alive? We're doing

3:20

great. It's

3:22

so nice to be able to meet you

3:24

Michael. Aubrey of course you're the love of

3:27

my life and you've been on this podcast

3:29

before where I think I proposed or I

3:31

meant to but it was an

3:33

astonishing reaction to your episode and

3:35

so I'm really thrilled to have

3:38

you back and you

3:40

had released a book at the

3:42

time and we're starting out the

3:44

podcast that I'm now inviting

3:46

you here both to talk about and

3:49

that's called the maintenance phase. Before

3:51

we start can you please break down what

3:53

your podcast is about and how it

3:56

came to be? I mean this

3:58

mostly came from the fact

4:00

that I was looking at the health

4:02

and wellness charts on one of

4:04

the podcast apps and I don't really know why I

4:07

was doing this but I was looking and I noticed

4:09

that all of the podcasts

4:11

were how to get 10,000 steps,

4:14

how to lose 20 pounds for your

4:16

wedding. It was all things that leaned

4:18

into the health and wellness industry being

4:20

on your side and acting

4:22

in good faith and there was nothing

4:25

there that was pointing out that easily 90% of

4:28

the health messages that we receive as Americans are

4:30

not true and the industry is really shady in

4:33

a lot of ways and it

4:35

just felt like nobody seems to be talking about this

4:37

in any way that anyone's really paying attention to and

4:40

so I called up the smartest lady writer that

4:42

I knew and I asked her if she wanted to do a podcast

4:44

with me. Yeah,

4:47

I mean I feel like we

4:50

sort of dug in on this sort of set

4:52

of ideas around like what would

4:55

it look like to do some long-form

4:57

storytelling about the history of the BMI

4:59

or the President's physical fitness test or

5:01

the history of snake

5:03

oil which was a real thing and

5:05

it worked. Whoops, sorry everybody. Twist,

5:08

twist. Yeah, twist. And

5:12

we recorded six episodes just to see

5:14

how it would go and sort

5:16

of dropped those late

5:18

last year and the

5:20

response was really,

5:22

really significantly larger

5:25

than we thought it was going to be. That's for

5:27

sure, that's for sure. And it's a kind

5:29

of war on disinformation, isn't

5:32

it? This podcast is

5:34

like you bring facts, you bring statistics,

5:36

you bring history. Very,

5:38

very thoroughly and broadly

5:41

researched which I think is incredibly

5:43

helpful because whenever you

5:46

are trying to take

5:48

on the multi-multi-billion dollar evil kind

5:50

of, it's now called the wellness

5:52

industry but really like a lot of that is

5:54

the weight loss industry. People

5:56

are very, very resistant to it being

5:58

criticized. very defensive

6:01

of it. You often in the podcast talk about

6:03

some people like fat phobia

6:06

not being intentional, it's just being something

6:08

a kind of product of what they've absorbed

6:10

from society. It's hard

6:13

to be able

6:15

to fight something that is so

6:17

instilled in our Western culture in

6:19

particular and so you really need

6:21

hard science and facts to be

6:24

able to kill them

6:26

with the facts and I really appreciate the

6:29

fact that you are providing this service. Is

6:31

it a lot of work? Yes.

6:34

Awesome. The burden will be

6:36

bare. There's

6:39

totally a lot of work. I mean, there have been

6:41

a couple of times when we've delayed, I've

6:44

delayed recordings because I'll be like, I

6:46

haven't interviewed enough people, I don't quite

6:48

have this part of this concept totally

6:51

nailed down or Mike will

6:54

delay a release of an episode that

6:56

happened one time because we wanted to

6:58

play it for some more epidemiologists and

7:00

make sure that we were really, really

7:02

getting everything right and including

7:04

their feedback. So

7:07

yeah, it feels really important certainly

7:10

to me to like get it right and

7:12

to say accurate things because there's so much

7:15

inaccurate stuff out there, not because

7:18

anyone is necessarily trying to like,

7:21

you know, lead you down the garden path,

7:23

but because science communications is hard and

7:26

because a lot of what we consider are

7:28

sort of like, you know,

7:30

free floating scientific knowledge out in

7:33

the world really just comes from

7:35

marketing of diets and wellness

7:37

products and that kind of thing. Can

7:40

we just, because I really

7:42

want everyone who listens to this podcast to listen

7:44

to your podcasts because I think it should be

7:46

like mandatory listening. I think it's been school and

7:48

universities and maybe doctor's offices as

7:50

well. It's actually critical race

7:53

theory. We want it in all the schools. It's

7:57

the law actually. And

10:01

when we sort of talk about the quote-unquote obesity

10:03

epidemic, that doesn't necessarily get surfaced. We don't necessarily

10:05

talk about it, but you'll see charts

10:07

that show a big spike in 1998 and you're

10:10

like, oh man, a bunch of people got real fat in 1998. No,

10:13

no, we just changed the definition.

10:16

And the other place is that a

10:19

number of researchers and doctors

10:22

who were working on sort of

10:24

the health of fat people and

10:26

sort of quote-unquote obesity researchers found

10:30

that folks in the general public and

10:32

folks in government were frankly too hard

10:34

on fat people and didn't understand that

10:37

being fat is largely something

10:39

that's not in individuals control,

10:41

right? So they thought that

10:43

reframing being fat as a disease would

10:46

help people understand that it's not necessarily

10:48

an issue of personal behavior or impulse

10:50

control or any of that kind of

10:52

stuff. The

10:54

challenge is when they redefined obesity as a disease,

10:56

that also meant that it paved the way to

10:58

call it an epidemic, which

11:01

is when we got some of our nastiest rhetoric

11:03

around fat people. From

11:07

there, we got some wild numbers and I'm

11:09

going to kick it to Mike to talk

11:11

about the mortality numbers of fat people, which

11:13

is a truly wild story. Well,

11:16

I mean, yeah, unfortunately, this is something that frustrates

11:18

both of us because neither

11:20

one of us are all that interested

11:22

in the individual's health.

11:26

We're not the kind of show that tells you the

11:28

kind of diet you should have or the kind of

11:30

lifestyle that you should have, but if you have a

11:32

show that is like nice to fat people, the first

11:35

question that you get is like, well, what about their

11:37

health? So about a month ago, we're like,

11:39

all right, we have to do it. Like we have to do the

11:41

health episode. The fact is the health

11:43

impacts of obesity are totally irrelevant

11:45

because there's no clinically proven way

11:48

to get people to lose weight. Because

11:50

we've had an obesity epidemic for arguably

11:53

two to three decades now. No

11:56

country in the world has ever reduced its obesity rate.

11:58

No state has reduced its obesity rate. rate. No,

12:00

Citi has done that. We don't know how to

12:02

do this. Damn. The master plan- The master plan-

12:04

The master plan- The master

12:07

plan- The master plan- The master plan- That

12:10

is actually the answer. But we

12:12

don't- it doesn't matter if, you

12:14

know, what the health impacts are because we

12:17

can't actually fix this, right? But

12:19

it's like, okay, we have to talk about the health impact

12:21

anyway. And then you start looking into it and,

12:23

you know, all we're really talking about

12:25

is correlations, right? Fatter people have shorter

12:27

life expectancies like all of the statistics

12:30

that you've heard, all of those links

12:32

are true. Like there is a link

12:34

between higher weight and shorter lifespan. Fine.

12:37

But then when you start looking at the statistics,

12:40

some of the highest mortality rates

12:42

are actually in the skinniest people.

12:45

So if you look at the mortality

12:47

rates among sort of the entire

12:49

spectrum of weights in America, you

12:51

find this huge mortality among really,

12:53

really, really skinny people. And

12:56

it's always really interesting to

12:58

watch people's minds start to process that information

13:00

because they're like, well, why would super duper

13:02

skinny people be more sick? And there's all

13:04

these theories about it. It's like skinny people

13:06

are more likely to be smokers. Maybe

13:09

they're wasting away from some sort of disease that

13:11

ends up killing them shortly afterwards. There's

13:13

all kinds of theories and everybody can

13:15

see that like the fact

13:17

that skinny people are dying younger probably isn't because

13:19

they're skinny. It's probably because of all kinds of

13:21

other things that are going on in their life,

13:23

all these other circumstances. And then you

13:26

look at the other end of the scale and it's

13:28

like, oh, well, they all need to lose weight. Yeah.

13:31

They're like, well, wait a minute. You just said the same

13:33

chart. You said on one end of that chart, you think

13:35

it's probably complicated and we should look into it more.

13:37

But then on the other end of that chart, you're

13:39

looking at the same numbers and you're going, oh, these

13:41

people need to change their weight. One of

13:43

the statistics that you have says that

13:45

slightly overweight people are actually less likely

13:47

to die in a study, 33,000 deaths

13:49

of people in the skinniest category versus

13:51

26,000 deaths in the

13:54

obese category. I could

13:58

have believed that considering the the

14:00

global messaging. That

14:02

really stunned me and I'm like, I'm

14:04

fairly clued up because I'm friends with Aubrey. I

14:08

just call myself fairly clued

14:10

up. But that

14:13

was remarkable to me. And

14:15

so true what you're saying about the lack

14:17

of nuance whenever we talk about that. It's

14:19

just blame, shame and kind

14:22

of demonizing. And what

14:25

we know about fat folks in

14:27

addition to these sort of increased mortality

14:29

risks. Yes. Still often

14:31

lower than people who are in the quote

14:34

unquote underweight category. Is that fat

14:36

people also contend with doctors

14:38

who are less likely to give us the same

14:41

length of office visits as thinner people.

14:43

They're less likely to run tests. They're

14:45

less likely to give us treatments other

14:47

than go away and lose weight and

14:49

come back when you've lost weight. Which

14:51

means that fat people also postpone health

14:54

care because every time we go

14:56

in for some of us, for me included,

14:59

we just get told to lose weight, which is again a thing

15:01

we don't really know how to deliver

15:04

on. Right. So the idea

15:06

that that wouldn't have an impact as

15:08

well on fat folks' mortality is

15:10

really feels sort of willfully

15:13

naive to me. Yeah. We've

15:15

spoken about this before, this kind of

15:17

inability to accept. Like we're just obsessed

15:19

with symptom and never the cause. And

15:22

we're also we're determined to be negligent

15:24

when we look at the emotional

15:27

experience of a fat person living in

15:29

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in the world, even

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they told you to eat more because people

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wouldn't want you if you were too thin.

17:33

You know, where it's like the kind of opposite end of the spectrum

17:35

because then it looks like you're poor, which is a

17:38

whole other classist, elitist nightmare. But

17:42

over here in particular, the experience of living in

17:44

a fat body, I have been fat before. I

17:49

have many friends who are fat or who

17:52

have been fat, and I've seen a complete

17:54

disparity in the ways in which they are

17:56

treated. So I'd like just openly, even by

17:58

motherfucking living in a fat body, even

18:01

by people who fight for

18:03

justice and equality for everyone,

18:05

those people still have a

18:07

kind of exception to the

18:09

rule of everyone deserves complete

18:11

humanity, like freedom and bodily

18:14

autonomy when it comes to

18:16

fat people. They are one of the groups

18:18

who I think it still remains open season on.

18:21

I think that's what I'd say. It also pulls

18:23

the mask off this whole thing of like, oh,

18:25

I'm concerned about your health. It's

18:27

like, okay, do you generally as a universal

18:29

principle think that when you're concerned about someone's health,

18:31

the best way to do that is to

18:33

be really mean to them and like deny them

18:36

health care? Like is that typically

18:38

the way that we deal with people whose health we're concerned

18:40

about? So even if it was

18:42

true, like if every single myth that you've ever

18:44

heard about fat people was 100% true,

18:47

that's not a reason to be mean to them.

18:49

And it's not a reason to marginalize them from the health

18:51

care system, which is what's happening. It's

18:53

also just like so counter, it's so counterintuitive. Who

18:56

has ever benefited from shame or

18:59

blame or feeling ostracized and not

19:01

included? If you stress

19:03

people, if you

19:06

lower their quality of life, if you

19:08

make them feel more depressed, more ostracized,

19:10

surely that's going to contribute to their

19:12

health. We know that there's a direct

19:14

link between emotional well-being and physical well-being.

19:16

And so if you consistently, from the

19:19

moment a child is old enough to

19:21

understand, damage their sense of self-esteem, damage

19:23

their sense of belonging, give

19:26

them mental health issues, push them into

19:28

the shadows, that is surely going to

19:30

influence their lifespan. Right. Well,

19:33

the thing that you always hear whenever you bring this

19:35

up is you always hear, well, what about smoking? Right?

19:38

We shame smokers and like smoking is less acceptable

19:40

in American society than it used to be, which

19:42

first of all isn't really true. There's actually, it's

19:44

a complicated thing and we shame smokers for a

19:46

very long time before smoking rates fell. And

19:48

secondly, the big difference between smoking

19:51

and obesity is that obesity is not

19:53

a behavior. People cannot

19:55

stop being fat the way that

19:57

they can stop smoking. So, right. Once

20:00

you're shaming somebody, you're like, oh, well, we have to shame them

20:02

so that they eat better. Well, do

20:04

you know the diet and exercise and lifestyle of

20:06

the fat person who's next to you at a

20:08

restaurant? Do you know that about them? So

20:11

shut up. You don't like, before

20:13

using this in a way. But Michael,

20:15

they are MRIs, they're human MRIs, so

20:18

they do it in there. They actually

20:20

take your blood as soon as they see

20:22

you and say it has something in their

20:24

bag that immediately reads their

20:26

statistics. So they do actually know exactly

20:28

what they're talking about. And they're all doctors.

20:31

I just know that all the people

20:33

online, they're all specialists. They're

20:35

all the Sarano's memes. They're

20:37

what Elizabeth Holmes said she said. I

20:43

mean, there was a statistic.

20:46

So this is according to the

20:48

National Institutes of Health, someone my

20:50

size, I'm a very fat lady,

20:52

class three, obesity, the fattest category.

20:54

Hello. Someone

20:57

my size has a 0.8% chance

21:00

of becoming a

21:02

sort of quote unquote normal weight or

21:05

healthy weight person in their lifetime. So

21:07

less than 1% chance

21:09

that I will become a thin

21:11

person in my lifetime. That is

21:14

regardless of sort of the social

21:16

treatment that comes along with that.

21:18

That's regardless of anything else, right?

21:21

The chances that I will become

21:23

a thin person are virtually non-existent.

21:25

But that pressure is unceasing, partly

21:28

from health care professionals,

21:30

but mostly socially, right? Like mostly

21:33

from my friends and family, mostly

21:35

from strangers I see on the

21:37

street, mostly from other people at

21:39

restaurants or movie theaters or

21:41

airplanes or whatever who just

21:44

resent the existence of my

21:46

body and are not particularly

21:48

interested in the why.

21:51

Yeah. Or

21:53

the how or any of it. I always feel like

21:55

I'm skating on thin ice whenever I have that conversation.

21:57

You and I talked about it on the podcast last.

22:00

year but we're

22:02

never trying to be like, oh you don't

22:04

understand that's because they're sick or something. That's

22:06

not what you want to say. You should

22:08

be whatever size the fuck you want to

22:10

be and if you are comfortable in your

22:12

body at any size that is amazing. But

22:15

also there are literal reasons that transcend, you

22:17

know, not it goes beyond health. Sometimes it's

22:19

a class issue, sometimes it's a, you know,

22:21

a monetary issue or a product

22:23

of the fact that we have no

22:25

good nutrition accessible any kind of affordable

22:27

cost or polycystic ovarian syndrome or so

22:30

many things that go undiagnosed and when it

22:32

comes to the healthcare system and fat people,

22:34

I mean I have multiple friends who are

22:36

fat and have had broken bones that

22:39

have not been x-rayed because

22:42

they have been blamed that their weight is

22:44

causing too much pressure on their joints and

22:46

that must be what's hurting. So then they

22:48

don't heal properly and you and I also

22:50

had the conversation last time you were on

22:52

about the fact that you and I are

22:55

different sizes but I am way unhealthier than

22:57

you. I'm definitely going

22:59

to die before you.

23:01

And no one is policing me. Well it's

23:04

also it's so frustrating because for so long

23:06

now we've sacrificed health to focus on weight,

23:08

right? Like we do have problems in America

23:10

with like people not getting enough fruits and

23:12

vegetables, people not getting good school lunches, people

23:15

not being able to walk and bike to

23:17

school. Like there's actual things that we can

23:19

do but you can actually have all of

23:21

those conversations without weight in

23:23

them at all. Like if there's mothers who

23:25

are struggling to feed their kids home cooked meals there's

23:27

things we can do about that. Like it would be

23:29

great if we could you know increase food stamps or

23:31

like get rid of food stamps to just give people

23:33

like a ton of money so that they

23:35

can afford all the food that they need and like school supplies.

23:38

There's all kinds of stuff that we can

23:40

actually do if we were concerned about the

23:42

things that we say are like underneath

23:44

fatness, right? Like oh you're fat because you

23:46

like eat badly and you don't exercise enough.

23:48

It's like well let's just skip the proxy

23:50

indicator this in-between thing of weight and

23:53

let's just go straight to like what

23:55

people are eating and how much exercise they're getting and

23:57

like help them do that if they want to do

23:59

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