0:11

Am I tagging us in or are you tagging us in?

0:13

I'm tagging us in because it's your it's your book.

0:15

Mhmm. Here we

0:16

go. It's my tag line.

0:19

Welcome to maintenance phase.

0:22

The podcast that doesn't

0:25

talk about myths when we talk

0:27

about fat. Oh, okay. I'm

0:29

trying to blend your first book

0:31

and your second book. My two mouthfuls

0:35

of titles. Nineteen

0:39

when we myth about fat. I'm Aubrey

0:42

Gordon. I'm Michael Hobbs. If you

0:44

would like to support a show, you can do that at patreon

0:46

dot com slash maintenance phase. You can also

0:48

subscribe on Apple podcasts if

0:50

that's easier for you and you prefer. You

0:53

should also listen to Mike's new show if books

0:55

could kill. And today, Michael,

0:58

we are talking about a book that

1:00

I wrote. Yeah. Usually, when you

1:02

say that about my little podcast, I'm

1:04

like, and you should preorder Aubrey's book.

1:07

But we're approaching the stage where you can just

1:09

like order order Aubrey's book. Yeah.

1:11

We're releasing this week before it comes out

1:13

into the world. So if

1:15

you are so inclined,

1:18

you can preorder it for folks who are

1:20

unfamiliar, preorders matter a

1:22

great deal to the success

1:24

of a given book. So you're looking forward to a

1:26

book, I would strongly recommend preordering it

1:28

just in general. You guys, if Aubrey's on

1:30

the New York Times bestseller list, she gets

1:32

to put that in her LinkedIn bio for the rest of her

1:34

life. So I'm acutely

1:36

aware that poor Aubrey has spent

1:38

the last month doing press for the book.

1:41

So she has been asked

1:43

every fucking question about it like

1:45

three hundred times and she's been

1:47

telling me how sick she is of

1:50

answering all the same questions and giving

1:52

the same spiel. So I'm gonna try really

1:54

hard, like, not to pitch

1:56

you any, like, softball

1:59

questions that you've answered a billion times. But

2:01

I will say I spent the Christmas

2:03

holiday reading Opry's book

2:06

and really enjoying it actually.

2:09

I say, actually, as if I was, like, surprise, but

2:11

like, no, of course. It's like,

2:13

wow. Her book is actually pretty good. And this

2:15

lady actually knows how to string together

2:17

a sentence. But it's it's just a really

2:20

good primer of a lot of the stuff that we

2:22

talk about on the show. It's a great

2:24

overview of sort of where we are on

2:26

this issue. It's obviously extremely

2:28

well written, extremely well researched. People

2:30

had this idea that it's like you're just gonna have to feel

2:32

guilty when you read books like this, but it's actually like

2:34

super fun to read, super easy, great

2:36

airplane, read. I don't mean that

2:38

in a mean way. I was gonna say future

2:42

topic on if looks could kill. But given the

2:44

rest of my career, I do not mean that meaning.

2:46

I think on this episode, we're not gonna go through

2:48

the entire book because a lot of it is stuff that

2:50

you've covered on the show before. There's

2:52

a chapter about why the BMI sucks.

2:54

And there's a chapter about why calories and calories

2:56

out sucks. And various

2:58

other things that we've already covered in the show. So for this

3:00

episode, we pulled out

3:02

a couple of the myths that

3:05

we kind of haven't covered on the show

3:07

to, like, dig deeper into them.

3:09

Yeah. Absolutely. And I will say,

3:11

I think that you know,

3:13

a bunch of the sort of chapters in this

3:15

book. It's twenty short chapters are

3:18

things that our listeners have requested of us

3:20

a number of times. Right? Yes. That

3:22

people have said, okay, I know

3:24

you made this whole, like, whatever, three

3:26

hour arc about the BMI and

3:28

the obesity epidemic, but can you give

3:30

me five pages that I can hand to my

3:33

doc. Yeah. Or can you give

3:35

me, you know, like, a little

3:37

packet that I can give to my family

3:39

to tell them why they need to lay my little brother

3:41

about his size. Right. This is all

3:43

that. This is the, like, short

3:46

form. Here's the research. Here's what you

3:48

need to know. And here's sort of some

3:50

ways to either fully debunk

3:52

some of these myths or to add some much

3:55

needed nuance and complexity --

3:57

Yeah. -- and like history to them. It's

3:59

equivalent to like sending your dad a link

4:01

in the group chat. Be like, I don't have a different time

4:03

to explain this to you. I'm

4:07

done. Here's the BMI stuff. It

4:09

occurs to me that we haven't actually said the title of the

4:11

book yet. The title of the book is you

4:13

just need to lose weight and nineteen other

4:15

myths about fat people. Yes. It

4:17

sure is. You can preorder it

4:19

wherever you get books. You can

4:21

also find a compilation of

4:23

links at obry gordon dot net.

4:26

Slash myths. Although considering it's

4:28

your second book, I'm livid that it wasn't called

4:30

too fat, too furious. So

4:34

we have chosen a couple of

4:36

these specific myths to pull out and

4:38

unpack. Let's start

4:41

with the emotional eating

4:44

myth. This is myth number

4:46

nine. Fat people are emotionally

4:48

damaged and coped by eating their

4:50

feelings. Yeah. This tends to

4:52

be one of the explanations for

4:54

fatness that is, like, one step

4:57

better than, like, they're

4:59

all lazy and that's why they're fat. Right?

5:01

It's, like, no, no, no. It's not that

5:03

they're lazy. It's that, like, something

5:05

fucked up happened in their past. Totally. So

5:07

it sort of sounds sympathetic.

5:09

Yeah. But it's like an inch below the surface.

5:11

It's like, oh, they're all like wretched creatures

5:14

who who are eating because they have

5:16

to. Totally. It seems quote

5:18

unquote better and nicer But

5:20

what it is is pity. Right. Based

5:22

on your appearance, I can tell you're

5:24

emotionally broken. Yeah. Yeah.

5:26

This one, emotional eating was like a big

5:28

one. In my upbringing

5:30

in the eighties and nineties, it

5:32

was like a really sort of prevailing model.

5:35

It has weirdly come back. It's a

5:37

big deal on TikTok these days. Oh.

5:39

Sort of the idea that

5:41

fat is, quote, unquote, like, trauma

5:43

trapped in your body, and you need to

5:45

release the trauma. I'm

5:47

curious about for you this like emotional

5:50

eating stuff. Have

5:52

you heard this before? Where have you heard it the

5:54

most? Are there sort of like common sources

5:56

of it in your life? Actually, the main source of it

5:58

is my mom. Mhmm. One of her main

6:00

struggles was emotional eating.

6:02

So for me, that actually became like one of

6:04

the templates that I use to understand?

6:06

Fatness when I was younger and, like, my mom

6:08

was the only person who I had ever heard talk

6:10

about fatness. Mhmm. So I was,

6:12

like, okay, some people do

6:14

this. And I also I

6:16

I've never been an emotional eater, but I'm a bored

6:19

eater -- Mhmm. -- when there's nothing else going

6:21

on, and there's something in the fridge, like, I will

6:23

fucking eat it whether I'm hungry or

6:25

not. Mhmm. And so the idea always

6:27

sort of felt true to

6:29

me that there's some connection between

6:32

your mental state and

6:34

your eating habits because I was

6:36

using two people as

6:38

as example example, this must be true. An

6:40

end of two. And they're not even the same

6:42

thing, but two people do a different thing. I mean, I think

6:44

you're touching on something that feels really important

6:46

here, which is there are lots of

6:48

reasons that people eat. Right? Sometimes

6:50

you eat because you're hungry, sometimes you eat because

6:52

you're at a birthday party, and there's cake, and what you

6:54

do at a birthday party is you eat cake.

6:56

Sometimes you're bored, sometimes you're sad,

6:59

Sometimes you wanna feel connected to

7:01

home if you're far away from home, so you wanna eat

7:03

some comfort food that reminds you of your

7:05

home. Yeah. There are lots of reasons

7:07

to eat food and we have decided

7:09

because we are so hung up on this idea

7:12

of people not getting fat, we have

7:14

decided that only some of those reasons

7:16

are okay, Right? Even the ones that are

7:18

okay are like a little suspect. Even

7:20

if you're really, really hungry, you should be really

7:22

careful about what you eat and how much and blah blah

7:24

blah. Right? Right. I appreciate using

7:26

it's your mom is sort of a

7:28

major source of it. I feel like my mom and

7:30

her friends are also a major source of it for

7:32

me. Yeah. And I think Some of

7:34

this stuff is a little bit generational because

7:37

one of the biggest champions was

7:39

the founder of Weight Watchers, Gene

7:42

Night Edge, who we've talked about in the show a

7:44

little bit. Yeah. And you have a great section in your book about

7:46

her too. She essentially said

7:48

when she was a kid, if she

7:50

had a fight with one of her friends

7:52

or if she couldn't go outside

7:54

because it was raining or she didn't get invited

7:56

to a birthday party or she was

7:58

upset with someone in her family. Her

8:01

mother gave her a piece of candy

8:03

to make her feel better. And she

8:05

talked about that sort of

8:07

growing into a

8:09

broader set of behaviors like

8:12

buying malomars to

8:14

eat in secret, right, to

8:16

to eat sort of in private away from other

8:18

people. She was talking about that

8:20

in the sixties and seventies. Which

8:22

is long before any

8:24

eating disorders were really in the diagnostic

8:26

and statistical manual, which is the

8:28

sort of like manual of, you

8:31

know, mental health disorders as

8:33

determined by the American Psychiatric

8:35

Association. Right. I was really surprised

8:37

to learn were only added to the

8:39

DSM in nineteen eighty. Yeah,

8:41

absolutely. And binge eating disorder, which I would

8:43

say is like some of the behavior

8:45

she's describing. Yeah. That sense of

8:47

shame around eating, that sense of eating and

8:49

secret, all of that kind of stuff.

8:51

This was the most widely

8:53

available framework at the

8:55

time when frameworks around eating

8:57

disorders were not really present.

8:59

Right? Mhmm. There was another

9:01

boost for this sort of framework

9:03

around emotional eating in the

9:05

medical world in

9:07

the nineteen eighties. Around

9:10

the adverse childhood

9:12

experiences study. Yeah. I was gonna

9:14

ask you about this. Yeah. Yeah. Have we talked about the ACE

9:16

study? The most detailed description of

9:18

it I've ever read was in your book. Mhmm.

9:20

So have you explain

9:22

it? So,

9:24

basically, there was a doctor named Vincent

9:26

Filiidi who was working for Kaiser

9:28

Permenente in San Diego in the

9:30

nineteen eighties. He was running a weight loss

9:32

clinic for Kaiser Permenente.

9:34

That clinic used what they

9:37

called supplemented absolute

9:39

fasting, which is basically just

9:41

OpTAVIA or OpTAFAST. You know,

9:43

it's like one of those diets that is an

9:45

extremely calorie restricted

9:47

diet. We're talking starting

9:49

people on between four hundred and eight hundred

9:51

calories. Tremases! Fat

9:54

people who went to his clinic lost a lot

9:56

of weight in the short term, but

9:59

shocker The

10:01

only stories that I was able to find

10:03

from people who went to that clinic are stories of

10:05

people who regained significant amounts of weight.

10:07

Right. So at one point in the eighties

10:09

This doctor famously ran

10:12

into one of his patients

10:14

and saw that she had regained

10:16

a real considerable amount of weight

10:18

in very short period of time. In a matter of months,

10:20

she had regained quite a bit of weight.

10:22

And he sort of asked her what happened.

10:24

There's not a lot of detail on this

10:26

conversation. So when I read about

10:28

it, I'm like, this is

10:30

probably a terrible

10:32

conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Your

10:34

doctor who was of in charge of your

10:36

weight loss, sees you, and

10:38

has some expression on his face

10:40

or says something awful. And then and then

10:42

you've gotta explain that, like, Oh,

10:45

right. I wasn't starving myself

10:46

anymore. Yeah. Yeah.

10:48

I started eating food

10:50

like a human. I was eating

10:53

So I I with these fucking

10:55

programs, I never know. Like,

10:57

what did you expect --

10:59

Yeah. -- to happen? Of

11:01

course, when somebody

11:03

eats, like one fifth of what you

11:05

need to live, they lose weight.

11:07

And of course, when they go back to

11:09

eating normal amounts of food they return to

11:11

their previous size. I don't

11:14

everyone is like, oh, it's just colors and colors

11:16

out. Like, oh, it's the second law of motion

11:18

or whatever. Yeah. Okay. Then what the fuck

11:20

did you think was gonna happen? Well, so

11:22

here's the interesting thing. That feels like

11:24

a pretty good obvious conclusion

11:26

to me. That did not feel that way

11:28

to Dr. Felini. It's so

11:30

weird to me. He asked

11:32

this patient sort of what happened.

11:34

As they were talking, she

11:36

said that a coworker had

11:38

expressed interest in sleeping with her

11:40

and that really flipped

11:42

her out. She disclosed also that she

11:44

had a long history of childhood

11:46

sexual abuse. Mhmm. For

11:49

doctor Filiidi, this was not evidence of

11:51

like, hey, maybe my clinic is

11:53

Built on a foundation of sand. Right? Like, maybe this lady

11:55

doesn't need to lose weight. Maybe losing weight is

11:57

not the thing. Maybe doesn't know what we should focus

11:59

on. He took that as, you know what, actually,

12:01

I haven't taken trauma histories from my

12:03

patients at my clinic. So he went back to

12:05

his clinic and took trauma

12:07

histories from all of the

12:09

patients who were there at the time -- Mhmm.

12:11

-- most of them had experienced

12:13

major traumas and for fifty

12:15

five percent of them, that included

12:17

histories of childhood sexual abuse.

12:19

That prompted him to start work on

12:21

the adverse childhood experiences

12:24

study It is one of the

12:26

largest scale trauma studies in the

12:28

United States to date. Mhmm. And

12:30

the core, the sort of

12:32

origin story of that

12:34

study is it's

12:36

because all these fat people couldn't lose

12:38

weight, and that's why we need to figure out what's going

12:40

on with people's trauma. I'm like, boy, oh,

12:43

boy, oh, boy. Wouldn't it be great if we

12:45

found another road to giving a

12:47

shit about what happened to people? Right.

12:49

As kids. Yeah. That has made

12:51

them like have like a bunch of really tricky life

12:53

experiences and and make things harder than it

12:55

needs to be like, would it be great if we could just care

12:57

about people for the sake of caring about them and not being

12:59

like, that person looks real

13:00

fat? How do we make them unfit? Oh, I guess they

13:02

have some emotional stuff. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

13:04

Yeah. But also, this

13:06

sort of extremely

13:08

anecdotal Glorifying story

13:11

becomes sort of a

13:13

real bolster to this

13:15

idea that fat people are fat because we

13:17

are emotionally damaged.

13:18

Right? Do you have a sense of what actually

13:20

explains such a high percentage

13:22

of the patients had sexual

13:24

abuse in their past? Here's my guess,

13:26

and this is genuinely a guess.

13:28

Mhmm. For folks who

13:30

experience childhood abuse,

13:32

It is much easier to believe that there is something fundamentally

13:35

wrong with you that you need to fix in order

13:37

to be accepted by other people.

13:39

And my guess is that that includes weight loss.

13:42

Right? Whether or

13:44

not trauma makes

13:46

people fat I would argue there

13:48

are lots of fat people for lots of

13:50

reasons. Some of whom have experienced major

13:52

life trauma, some of whom haven't. Just

13:54

like thin people. Imagine. Yeah.

13:57

Right? But to tell you the honest truth, I don't know and

13:59

I don't know that anybody does. What's weird is it

14:01

like this this seems like a

14:03

relatively easy thing

14:06

to, I guess, debunk of just,

14:08

like, you could do long, like,

14:10

detailed qualitative surveys of fat people

14:12

and thin people and then compare the

14:15

percentages. Like, it didn't It just seems

14:17

like this explanation is like

14:19

galloping forward on like pretty

14:21

thin data. I think you're right that the

14:23

data that this is riding on is very

14:25

thin. And I think this is a case

14:27

of the Michael Hobbs

14:30

checkpoint question of, like, what do we

14:32

not need evidence to believe? Right. And

14:34

we don't need a lot of evidence to believe this

14:36

one because most of

14:38

us are already pretty biased

14:40

against fat people. So

14:42

if you say, that fat person is fat

14:44

because there's something deeply wrong with

14:46

them. A lot of people are like,

14:48

yeah, that checks out. Yeah. There are also ways

14:50

to complicate this one. Right? Like, if we're

14:52

talking about, like, the role of

14:54

trauma in fat people's

14:56

experiences, we gotta

14:58

be talking about the experiences of anti

15:00

fatness, which is traumatic as

15:02

hell. But if you

15:04

urgently need medical

15:06

care and you try to seek it out and a

15:08

doctor won't provide it to you or

15:10

tells you to come back when

15:12

you've lost weight. That is

15:14

a pretty traumatic experience.

15:17

Family rejection on the basis of

15:19

your body size, starting from

15:21

really young ages, including forced

15:23

dieting, is traumatic as

15:24

hell. We have heard from a number of

15:27

listeners who at very

15:29

young ages, like 567

15:32

their parents would place padlocks on

15:34

the refrigerator or cupboard

15:36

doors. So that they could not

15:38

access food. Yeah. That's abuse. So the

15:40

idea that there is some trauma

15:42

outside of anti

15:44

fatness that needs tending to but

15:47

we definitely don't need to talk about the

15:49

trauma of anti fatness is a

15:51

place where we culturally really tip our

15:52

hand. Right? We don't really care

15:55

about the trauma part. We care about the

15:57

fatness part. Well, there's also this this sort of

15:59

weird instrumentalizing too because the idea

16:01

is that, like, Okay. They're not fat because they're

16:03

lazy. They're fat because they're emotionally

16:05

eating fine. So what we need to

16:07

do is we need to deal with the emotional

16:09

eating and then they'll lose all the weight. Yeah.

16:11

But even when people change their eating habits, they

16:14

oftentimes don't lose that much weight. Right? Because their

16:16

bodies have this kind of higher set point.

16:18

So what happens then? Yeah. Totally. Like,

16:20

there are people that struggle with emotional eating and there are

16:22

people that sort of get it under control

16:25

and they don't become thin and

16:27

that's also fine. Right. The core

16:29

problem that this is seeking to solve is that there are too

16:31

many fat people in the world. So people

16:33

who opt into this frame

16:35

as a worldview. Right? I'm not gonna

16:37

take away from anyone their own

16:39

diagnosis of their own relationship to

16:41

food or to their own body or whatever.

16:43

If this resonates with you, totally, that's

16:46

fine. The trick is this has

16:48

become our predominant way

16:50

of viewing fat people

16:52

and I would say it is one of

16:54

the most overtly judgmental myths

16:57

addressed in this book. Right. Right. Right. It is

16:59

the belief that you are fat

17:01

that needs to be fixed and it's your own

17:03

fault. Right? Right. It's not just that your body

17:05

is wrong. It's also your brain and

17:07

heart. Right. It also doesn't

17:09

do anything for people who are struggling with

17:12

emotional eating. Mhmm. I mean, this is a framework that

17:14

really resonates for some people, right, including

17:16

my mom. Mhmm. But also, it's like

17:18

applying it to every single fat person is

17:20

just so reductive and

17:22

like, I'm just gonna assume that you were

17:24

abused as a trial because of

17:26

your size. Right.

17:26

It's like, oh. It's so

17:29

reductive and so gross and also, like,

17:31

deeply invasive. Right.

17:33

Deeply invasive. If you're wrong,

17:35

it's garbage. Right? And you're revealing a bunch

17:37

of assumptions about that person. If you're

17:39

right, it is so

17:41

mean. It's also garbage. Right?

17:43

And I think, like, look, I think here this is a place where we

17:45

get into, like, really tricky territory because

17:47

there are people for

17:49

whom this resonates And those are also

17:51

people who learned to see fat people

17:54

as failed emotional

17:56

eaters who didn't get it under control. Right? Right.

17:58

So, like, even for the people for whom

18:00

it resonates, it is worth interrogating

18:02

where that comes

18:03

from, what it allows you to believe

18:06

about your yourself and what it allows you to believe about people who are

18:08

fatter than you. Like, this is what I honestly think my

18:10

mom is like quite good at. Yeah. Hopefully,

18:12

because she listens to the fucking show.

18:14

She's like, struggled with emotional eating my

18:16

entire life. Some other people haven't, and

18:18

like some people are fat because of medications and some people

18:20

have been fat their whole lives and like total some

18:22

percentage of fat people do struggle with emotional

18:24

eating, but like I have no fucking idea what that percentage

18:27

is. Mhmm. Don't go around

18:29

assuming that about fat people. Totally. But

18:31

also, I always try to affirm my mom's,

18:33

like, ex planation for herself just

18:35

because it doesn't seem like it's my place to, like,

18:37

first take it away from her. Yeah. For

18:39

sure. I mean, I think, like, listen, what

18:41

you're talking about is the kind of behavioral

18:43

stuff that I'm like, that's really useful to

18:45

check-in with yourself and go, right,

18:47

this is my experience. It's not other people's

18:49

experience. And reminding yourself

18:51

of that frequently feels like

18:53

a really helpful tool for this kind of

18:55

stuff. Right? Mhmm. The trick

18:57

is most people take this

18:59

position and treat it as accuracy. And

19:01

therefore, think this means my behavior

19:03

is unassailable because I know what's going on

19:05

with me. Yeah. That's a really good point. To me,

19:07

that's, like, a big part of the take home

19:09

point here is like for any

19:11

of this stuff, for a diet,

19:13

for a an exercise practice,

19:15

for an emotional framework for

19:18

understanding this stuff, reminding

19:20

yourself in a really constant way that

19:22

your own experience could be really

19:24

different from someone else's and you've

19:26

gotta create the space for them

19:28

to speak from their own experience while

19:30

you speak from yours -- Yeah. -- is

19:32

really important stuff

19:34

and not doing the

19:36

deeply human thing that most of

19:38

us do most of the time, which

19:40

is assuming that the thing that

19:42

we're doing and the thing that makes sense to us is

19:44

that the center of other people's world too. Yeah.

19:46

It is funny to me that, like, one at least

19:48

one third of the show is us just

19:51

reminding people that, like, is

19:53

happening with you and your body is not

19:55

what is happening for other people and their

19:57

bodies. For sure. For sure. Well and

20:00

also, like, There is an expectation

20:02

that fat people owe everyone

20:04

else an explanation for why we are the size

20:06

that we are. Oh, yeah. That's a really good point. And if your

20:08

explanation meets must which it

20:10

won't, then I'll leave you alone. Right?

20:12

Like, that's sort of the cultural script

20:13

here. And for thin folks, when they're asked

20:16

for an explanation of their body, it's

20:18

always What's your secret?

20:20

How did you do it? Yeah. God.

20:22

I don't know, man. It's a grim fucking

20:24

place to live where Even the people

20:26

who think they're doing you a favor want

20:28

you to explain why you look the way

20:30

you do. Dude, yep. Okay. I'm gonna

20:33

move us on to I don't like weight, but I don't

20:35

treat fat people differently because it feels like we're already sort of

20:36

there. And then I'm gonna take us back to

20:39

glorifying obesity to close on. Is that

20:41

okay?

20:41

Transition us. Do do a

20:43

do a death transition. Leave

20:47

that

20:47

in. But where you would do a different

20:49

transition? Get us get us there

20:52

somehow. So we've been talking about sort of this

20:54

idea of emotional eating and the frameworks that we

20:56

use for ourselves. And I

20:58

think there is sort of a

21:00

kingpin version of this. There's like

21:02

the mega version of this, which

21:04

is the phrase, I don't like

21:06

gaining weight, but I don't treat fat

21:08

people different. Right. this a phrase that you've heard

21:10

before? I mostly heard it

21:12

from you. This is like your

21:14

biggest pet peeve. I hate

21:16

it. I feel so much

21:18

of the show is, like,

21:20

me subtweeting specific people and

21:22

you subtweeting specific people.

21:24

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I

21:26

feel like This is one like, this must

21:28

be one that you have heard from actual

21:30

people numerous times. I have definitely

21:32

had multiple friendships in

21:34

my life where I realize partway

21:36

through that I am actually

21:38

a project to the person that I'm talking

21:40

to. Yeah. Dude.

21:42

People will try and slightly

21:44

sneak in things like Do you

21:46

ever think about going to the gym?

21:49

They are viewing me as like a fixer upper.

21:51

Like, I'm a house they can flip.

21:54

Right. And that makes them feel like a

21:56

good person who's doing something

21:58

good for a person -- Right.

22:00

-- who they fundamentally see as, like, kind

22:02

of retched. Do you know what I mean? Like, a

22:04

hard luck

22:05

case? Almost all of the people who have

22:08

been that person in my life

22:10

would say with a great deal of certainty

22:12

that they treat fat people

22:15

no differently than than people. Now I just feel sad.

22:17

Like, I wanna give you a hug, but we're not

22:19

gonna say Citi. The part

22:21

of this one that I really wanna

22:24

push on is the But

22:26

I don't treat fat people differently. Parts. Yeah.

22:28

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you don't wanna be a fat person,

22:30

it's worth unpacking. much

22:33

of that is socially determined. Right?

22:35

And how much of that is a result of how fat

22:37

people are treated? Yeah. If you don't like

22:40

gaining weight, Why? If you say it's because your clothes fit better,

22:42

what if people made clothes that fit you at a

22:44

different size? Right? Yeah. Where you

22:46

feel more accepted, or

22:48

you feel you're gonna have better

22:50

career success. Why do you think a

22:52

thinner person would have better career

22:54

success than a fat person? Right? It's

22:56

worth looking at the ways in which bias

22:58

is baked into some of those

23:00

assumptions as well, but I'm

23:02

not gonna get between you and

23:04

your relationship to your own body and your

23:06

own size,

23:06

that's you stuff, you get to manage it. I do

23:08

feel like, I mean, we live in a fucking wildly

23:11

phagphobic society. So the idea that

23:13

somebody would be, like, you know, whatever,

23:15

I'm a corporate lawyer. To be a corporate

23:17

lawyer in America in twenty twenty

23:19

two, I have to stay thin. Part

23:21

of me feels like, okay.

23:23

Like that's fucking true. Like the

23:25

sort of the the fundamental challenge of living

23:27

in America right now like, how do you live

23:30

within a, like, super broken and

23:32

unjust country? Like, what do you

23:34

do about it? Totally. Like, I have had a

23:36

number of people who have had weight surgery

23:38

or gone through major diets who have said,

23:40

I went to pick up my kid from school

23:42

and other kids were making fun of him for having

23:44

a fat mom and I'm not gonna do that to my

23:47

kid. Or My boss told me that he doesn't think I can

23:49

physically do this job unless

23:51

I prove to him that I can physically do

23:53

that

23:53

job. And for him, that means me being

23:56

thinner. I'm gonna go do that thing. Right?

23:58

Like, now at least we're talking about

24:00

some kind of concrete external thing -- Right.

24:02

-- and you can go, hey, those kids shouldn't have

24:04

been making fun of your kid for having

24:06

a fat mom. Yeah. Like, can I support

24:08

you in this moment? Right? Like, that calls for

24:10

a different thing than just being like, I'm just

24:12

talking about me and I just don't like gaining weight and just

24:14

leave me alone. Right. Right. But listen, the part

24:16

of this that I wanna talk about is the I

24:18

don't treat fat people differently. Part --

24:21

Yeah. -- because in

24:23

my own experience with this stuff, and

24:25

also according to quite a bit of data,

24:28

most of us are bad judges of

24:30

our own biases. Most

24:32

of us wanna think of ourselves

24:34

as egalitarian, as justice minded

24:36

as fair people, you know,

24:39

And the idea that we might be acting in a

24:41

biased way feels like not

24:43

only revisiting of

24:45

that action. Right? But it

24:47

feels like potentially an

24:49

assault on our idea of who we

24:51

are. Right? Like, I wouldn't do that. A

24:53

bad person does that, and I'm a good person. people

24:55

don't have biases. Right? Yeah. And

24:57

what that means is any kind of feedback about

24:59

this stuff then gets pushed through

25:01

the filter of are you calling me

25:03

a bad person? Right. Right. Rather

25:06

than you're giving me feedback on an

25:08

action, what can I take from that

25:10

feedback? And what do I wanna do differently or not

25:12

next time? Right? Well, to me,

25:14

the weirdest thing about this is the confidence.

25:15

Yeah. Like, I host

25:18

a podcast pretty substantially

25:20

dedicated to this issue I

25:22

do not go around telling people like I don't treat

25:24

fat people any differently. That's

25:26

not really for me to say. I

25:28

can say that I try. I can say

25:30

that I think about this issue a lot. I can say that I

25:32

talk to my fat friends, I check-in.

25:34

But like part of living in

25:36

a structurally unjust

25:39

society feels like it requires the

25:41

acknowledgment that, like, yeah, there's probably some

25:43

weird toxic shit rattling around in

25:45

my brain And, like,

25:47

walking around as if, you

25:49

know, everyone in society is

25:51

bad, but not me just seems

25:53

like the kind of attitude that

25:55

is going to make you incapable of

25:57

addressing that stuff when it does come up. And

25:59

there is some research that is

26:02

like specific to this question, right, that

26:04

seems worth digging into. There's

26:06

a twenty fourteen study in the

26:08

Journal Body Image that

26:11

looked at white women who

26:13

participated in this practice that they call body

26:15

surveillance, which is essentially, like,

26:17

close monitoring of the appearance of

26:19

your own Okay. And what they

26:21

found was that those white

26:23

women who engaged in body

26:25

surveillance who were hyper focused on the look of

26:27

their own body. Who

26:29

held anti fat stereotypes,

26:31

who held anti fat beliefs,

26:35

experienced less body dissatisfaction in

26:37

themselves. They were literally looking at fat

26:39

people and going, I feel better because

26:41

I'm not that fat. So it's such

26:43

like self soothing -- Uh-huh. being

26:46

around people bigger than you and be like, at least I'm not

26:48

longer? Absolutely. Yeah. Come

26:50

on. This is all coming from emotionally,

26:52

like, a pretty similar wellspring.

26:55

Right? just like when I look

26:57

at people who are fatter than me, I feel

26:59

better about myself. And the

27:01

idea that you could then look at

27:03

that person with such revulsion, disgust,

27:06

maybe some pity, and

27:09

then treat them identically

27:11

to a person who you view as being

27:13

part of the beauty standard. We're

27:15

kidding ourselves. Yeah. It's not borne out by the

27:17

data. It's not borne out by what we know about people and

27:19

how they Yeah. And it's also highly unlikely because

27:22

most of us treat fat people

27:24

differently. Fat people get paid less for

27:26

the same jobs. We don't get

27:28

the same health care that thin people get. Right? Like,

27:31

we aren't believed in,

27:33

like, very baseline ways

27:35

when we come forward with stories about

27:37

you

27:37

know, sexual assault because the response

27:40

is no one would want to sexually

27:42

assault you. Yeah. So when someone says,

27:44

uh-uh, that's everybody else but not

27:46

me. Right. Feels like really self

27:48

protective thinking to me rather

27:50

than let's solve the problem of anti

27:52

fatness kind of

27:52

thinking. This is one that we have to dig

27:55

into because one of the main

27:57

accusations of this

27:59

show and of like fat

28:01

activist writ large.

28:03

Is this thing that always comes up that

28:05

is like fat activists think it's

28:07

fat phobic to work out. They think

28:09

it's fat phobic to lose weight. This

28:11

is something this is one of the main arguments

28:14

that is used to discredit

28:16

people who are trying to build a better

28:18

world for fact This one I have

28:21

encountered way less than you have. Oh,

28:23

god. I people will not shut the

28:25

fuck up about this to me. What was

28:27

it? You live on, like, reply guy Twitter.

28:29

Yay. You know,

28:31

you dare you? You're absolutely

28:34

correct. I have

28:37

studiously walled myself off from

28:39

reply guys. I'm like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

28:41

Most of the fat

28:43

activists that I know are deep

28:45

believers in body sovereignty. Right?

28:47

Which is the idea that your own body is

28:49

yours above all else and it

28:51

is your decision how you want to interact

28:53

with that body. Period. So

28:55

when someone says they all

28:57

think it's fat phobic to lose weight.

28:59

That is shadow boxing with a

29:01

made up idea in their own

29:03

brains -- Right. -- or more

29:05

likely hearing a thin person go.

29:07

I heard they think it's fat phobic to live. You

29:09

know what I mean? Like, it's like a game of

29:11

telephone with no source code. It's

29:13

like, total peak simulacra. To copy

29:15

with no master. I think it's like this this

29:17

fear among members of the

29:20

majority, kind of like how people freak out about

29:22

like word choice. Like, you can't even say

29:24

this anymore. Yeah. Instead of thinking

29:26

about how acceptance would affect

29:28

members of the minority, they

29:30

think about how acceptance would affect members

29:32

of the majority. Right? And if we're nicer to

29:34

fat people, I'm not gonna be able to go to

29:36

the gym anymore. We're gonna have to be meaner.

29:39

But also, I think it's deeper

29:41

than that. Like, related. But, like, I'm

29:43

gonna take a like, if we're getting in an elevator, we're

29:45

going down a level or two, which

29:47

is they are afraid that people

29:49

will stop thinking of their

29:51

bodies as an accomplishment. Yeah.

29:53

Yeah. Quite a bit of this body image

29:55

research includes sort of this

29:57

idea that thin people

29:59

feel like they need space to, like, speak

30:01

negatively about their own bodies and talk

30:03

about how fat they feel And

30:05

overwhelmingly in that research when fat people are

30:07

included, they overwhelmingly return

30:09

to this one phrase, which is, shit,

30:11

if you're fat, then what do you think of me? Right. So

30:13

I think it's also worth like thinking about

30:15

this stuff through that lens of

30:17

like whether you mean to or

30:19

not, the social introduction

30:21

of this set of conversations about how

30:23

you're trying to make your body smaller

30:25

at every turn, sends a lot

30:27

of messages to a lot of people.

30:29

And that constitutes treating

30:32

fat people differently. Do you

30:34

remember like me and you have done a

30:36

number of press interviews together -- Mhmm. --

30:38

where people will like almost explicitly

30:40

ask us for permission to

30:42

be, like, trying to lose weight. It's fascinating.

30:44

We've done a number of interviews like this

30:46

there's one in particular where afterwards, I

30:49

remember it with sort of chilling clarity.

30:51

We were both like,

30:53

that felt weird. You

30:55

felt so bad. And after the

30:57

interview, I just, like, put my head

30:59

down on my desk. Yeah. And just,

31:02

like, laid it there for a while. And then I got

31:04

the little, like, notification that you were

31:06

calling and you were like, what the fuck was

31:07

that? And I was like,

31:08

I don't know. It was fascinating. It was

31:10

so rough. But it comes up like a lot.

31:12

Right? Yeah. Which is sort of

31:15

this belief that if we're

31:17

going to talk about the dignity of fat

31:19

people, someone's gonna

31:21

tell you at some point that your

31:23

desire to lose weight is

31:25

messed up and anti fat. And actually,

31:27

you can't do that anymore. Right? Yeah.

31:29

One of the first places that

31:31

some folks brain goes is, like,

31:33

don't take my diet get from me. It's like, you're

31:35

gonna tell me I can't do cross fit anymore.

31:38

Totally. I I will also say neither

31:40

one of us gives any shit

31:42

whatsoever whether you do cross the

31:45

Michael, I would like to talk to you

31:47

about a phrase

31:49

that is the bane of my

31:51

Internet existence. Is it

31:52

retweet if you agree? I

31:55

hate that. I mean, you hate

31:57

that. Should

31:59

we talk a little bit about

32:01

glorifying

32:01

obesity? Yes. It's the glory. Let's talk

32:04

about the Glorifying obesity

32:06

is one of those things that shows

32:08

up largely in Internet

32:11

comments. Right? That's sort of where it

32:13

lives the most in my

32:15

own experience. And there is

32:17

one year where

32:19

glorifying obesity had a

32:21

real banner year

32:23

and that was twenty nineteen.

32:25

There were three big splashes on

32:27

the Internet, all distinct from

32:29

one another, all of which sort of

32:31

culminated in this big crescendo of

32:34

accusations of fat person

32:36

glorifying obesity. Yeah. And it

32:38

was usually for things like

32:40

being photographed in

32:42

a place. Right? There was one of the

32:44

examples in your book is is

32:46

Lizzo appearing on the

32:48

jumbotron at like a Lakers game. something?

32:50

Yep. She wasn't glorified promoting

32:52

literally anything. She she went

32:54

to sports. She

32:55

was glorifying and promoting the Lakers.

32:58

Yeah. Like, listen,

33:01

this is also one that will be

33:03

recognizable to any fat person

33:05

with any social media

33:07

presence. Right? If you have ever

33:09

posted a picture of yourself as a

33:11

fat person eating a meal going to

33:13

the

33:13

beach, working out wearing

33:17

clothes liking the way that you look. Right.

33:19

There's a decent chance that

33:21

either you have been accused of glorifying

33:24

obesity or you're a strong candidate to be

33:26

accused of clarifying obesity. Right?

33:28

Right. Right. Usually a pretty in

33:30

curious, freaked out, and

33:32

angry place. Let me read your life story.

33:34

Okay. This was this is

33:36

something that you included in this chapter. Actually, do

33:39

you wanna do it? Sure.

33:41

If you have the paragraph handy, if you have the excerpt, let

33:43

me text it to you. Sure. Sure. Sure. It's funny

33:45

to be texting you a paragraph of yourself.

33:47

It's really weird on the show.

33:50

Very weird territory. As a

33:52

fat person, I have repeatedly

33:54

been accused of glorifying obesity

33:57

even before my life as a minor public figure.

33:59

Early on in my life on

34:01

the Internet, I posted a picture of myself

34:03

in a new bathing suit on

34:06

Live Journal, I was eighteen years old and had

34:08

found a swimsuit I liked. It had a

34:10

halter with a sweetheart neckline and

34:12

a short

34:14

roosted skirt. Compared to my thinner peers'

34:16

bikinis, my one piece was conservative

34:18

bordering on dowdy. But for

34:20

once, I

34:22

felt comfortable. I took my photograph

34:24

in the full length mirror in my dimly lit bathroom, then posted

34:26

it to live journal. My

34:28

account was public, not because

34:31

of any desire for attention, but because it did

34:33

not occur to me that a teenager with under

34:35

a hundred followers would draw

34:38

to tractors. But in the

34:40

days that followed, faceless commenters descended. One described

34:42

in detail their revulsion at

34:44

having to see my thighs and upper

34:48

arms. Another commented scornfully about how a

34:50

whale could think she looked

34:52

cute, but most elevated their

34:54

complaints to

34:56

social issues. Accusing me

34:58

of glorifying obesity.

35:00

I was confused. It was confusing.

35:02

I was a recent high school graduate

35:05

Writing regularly about my life,

35:07

my crushes, school, my mental

35:09

health. The only people who reliably read

35:11

what I wrote were close friends.

35:13

How could I be glorifying anything? So

35:16

first of all, I need the live journal

35:18

archives to read your film fiction.

35:21

Dude,

35:21

I want your I want your thoughts. I think

35:23

it was, like, two days ago that I got.

35:25

I've had the same Gmail account

35:28

since time and memorial -- Okay. -- all my

35:30

personal stuff. And I got an email from Live Journal that

35:32

was like, it's your

35:34

anniversary and it was there was, like,

35:36

big multicolored letters

35:38

being, like, twenty.

35:40

Oh, that's been a joy

35:42

since you started your goddamn life

35:44

journal. What what happened to it after?

35:46

Did, like, I I imagine this made you start, like,

35:49

posting differently or just, like, it it's

35:51

like the first experience of realizing that you're,

35:53

like, public on this platform and that, like,

35:55

the public is watching. I mean, I just

35:57

locked my account after that. And Oh, really? Yeah. I just I put

35:59

it on private. And I think on

36:01

live journals called

36:04

Friends Only. Thank you. It should have

36:06

been friend zone. Like, I don't I

36:08

don't

36:10

know how long it was before I posted

36:12

another picture, but it was a long time. To me, this is like the whole

36:14

thing where it's like what people are

36:16

getting mad at. They're they're mad at having

36:18

to see a fat person who's not, like, apologizing

36:20

to them for the way that they look.

36:22

Mhmm. But, like, people's brains don't

36:24

let them realize what's going on. Right? They're like, no. No. It doesn't

36:27

bother me that somebody else looks a way

36:29

that I don't approve It's

36:32

like, no, no, this is her motivation. This is what she's trying to do. Like, this

36:34

is this is the impact that she's gonna have on

36:36

the world. And the whole thing is basically

36:39

just like reaching for any reason for you to

36:41

justify your really gross emotional response.

36:44

Yeah. It's totally an

36:46

emotional response. And it is an

36:48

emotional response that gets elevated

36:50

to a level of, like,

36:52

this needs to be a

36:54

societal concern And it

36:56

elevates a picture of, like, a fat

36:58

person at a pizza parlor into

37:00

some level of, like, political

37:02

agenda. Right. Even if that

37:04

fat person is not espousing any political agenda at

37:06

all. Right? Right. It's the

37:08

fact of a photograph of a

37:10

fat person who's

37:12

not like inside a Weight Watchers meeting

37:14

center -- Right. -- or running

37:16

around a track and crying, I

37:18

guess. Right? Like, I don't

37:20

know what. It also feels

37:22

like really weird on

37:24

a couple of fronts.

37:26

One, nobody really defines

37:28

at any point what it means to

37:30

glorify obesity. Right? Is

37:32

this total floating signifier

37:34

that sounds really damning and

37:36

people can just reach up into the ether

37:38

and grab it and pull it down

37:41

and apply to whatever they want, slap that on

37:43

whatever they want. Glorifying something

37:46

means publicly

37:48

praising it. Right? I would fucking love if we

37:50

publicly praise some fat people some

37:52

more. And I think there is this

37:54

little, like,

37:56

Rube Goldberg machine that kicks off in the brains of people

37:58

who have this level of discomfort, which

38:01

is if there

38:03

are images of fat

38:06

people not actively trying

38:08

to lose weight or suffering

38:10

in the world, then

38:12

people who are not currently fat,

38:15

will think it's okay to get fat and

38:17

will start getting fat. Right. And people

38:19

who are fat will

38:21

never get thin. As a result

38:23

of this one photograph on

38:26

Instagram, I guess the idea is that, like,

38:28

the reason fatness became

38:30

more prominent in the nineteen

38:32

eighties is that, like, there there started to be

38:34

photos of fat people. Yeah. We've glorified it too

38:36

much. Michael the eighties is when we got

38:38

Dom Deloise.

38:40

Bob Hopkins. I'm legit. This is also why I always feel a

38:42

little bit weird about debunking the health

38:44

stuff on this podcast because

38:46

it's so obvious that the health

38:48

stuff is

38:50

a cover. For people's feelings. Right? Because

38:52

even if it was one hundred percent

38:54

true, every single fat person is

38:56

unhealthy. Fine.

38:58

Everyone, regardless of their health status, gets to post a photo on

39:00

Instagram and be like, I felt cute. Yeah. Everyone

39:03

gets to do that without people

39:06

being ghouls in their mentions. And also, like, listen,

39:08

then let's ask the underlying question,

39:10

which is, I'm sorry, you think it's

39:13

okay to treat people like garbage,

39:16

if you think they're not healthy. Right. Right. You're

39:18

just gonna go around, bling people

39:20

with chronic illnesses and disability,

39:22

like, that's your stance. Like,

39:25

it's okay that I'm doing this because

39:27

I think this person is

39:30

unwell in some way. Like,

39:32

Jesus, Christmas, get a hold

39:34

of your self. The funny thing is like the the best

39:36

counterargument to this is all of the ways

39:38

that society does in fact

39:40

glorify Glorifying Yeah, totally. I

39:42

mean, listen, this goes back to our,

39:44

like, no one should be

39:46

drawing any conclusions about

39:48

anyone else's health based on the way that

39:50

they look. Yeah. And no

39:52

one should be basing their treatment of strangers on

39:54

their perception of that stranger's

39:57

health. Right? Period. That

40:00

includes people of all sizes. That includes people of all abilities.

40:03

That includes like across the board.

40:05

I mean, I think the other thing

40:07

that I would say about

40:09

all of this is like, spot the fuck on about

40:11

us glorifying thinness all the time. We got

40:14

an email from a listener at one point who

40:16

was like, I'm a very thin person. I'm constantly

40:18

trying to gain fat and there

40:20

is like not any real

40:22

resource around

40:24

that. Other than just

40:26

like, you know, the extremely

40:28

weird actor interviews that are like,

40:30

to gain weight for this role, I just melted a

40:33

pint device cream and chugged it or whatever. Right? She should

40:35

be going on Instagram and looking at photos of

40:37

happy fat people because that just induces

40:39

fatness and

40:39

others. Sometimes

40:41

you're fat now. Yeah. They're not they're not nuclear.

40:43

Just oh, I'm fat again. I've looked at two

40:46

photos. I looked at the heart and

40:48

now I'm fat.

40:50

I mean, I don't

40:52

ever anymore say anything

40:54

to people who make accusations about

40:56

glorifying obesity because they're telling

40:58

me who they are. Speaking of people who

41:01

are not worth our time -- Whoa. -- who we're

41:03

gonna be spending time with. Boy.

41:05

What a fucking segue? You have

41:07

a section in your about

41:09

peers Morgan. Mhmm. I guess there was a

41:11

music video that it includes a shot

41:14

of a plus size model

41:16

doing like plus size

41:18

model things. And Pierce Morgan melted down and

41:20

then, like, had the model on his

41:22

show -- Mhmm. -- where he, like, tried

41:24

to grill her about how she's,

41:26

like, destroying society.

41:28

Yeah. So I saw this in your

41:30

book and then I did the thing

41:32

that I should never do where I I went on YouTube

41:34

and I was like, Pierce Morgan obesity.

41:37

Yeah. Look, at all the videos. We have done

41:39

some cursed fucking Internet searches on

41:41

this show. Some cursedest.

41:44

Here's more organ obesity

41:46

might really take the cake. But, like,

41:48

he has covered this so

41:50

many times, and he keeps Coming

41:53

back to it like one of the videos is called

41:55

doo plus size mannequins promote obesity. Oh, it's about

41:57

the Nike thing.

42:00

The most tedious,

42:02

just like, obviate, like, no, they don't.

42:04

What the fuck are you talking about? Like, fat

42:06

people also wear clothes.

42:08

So, of course, There are fat mannequins.

42:11

They promote clothes for

42:14

people to buy. That's what all

42:16

mannequins do. But I wanted to watch

42:18

a clip together. I watched the clip of him

42:20

interrogating the plus size model lady, which was

42:22

just so egregious

42:23

that, like, watch

42:26

again. Yeah. But this is one that

42:27

I think is, like, very

42:30

telling about, like, how most of

42:32

these conversations actually

42:34

play out I'm just gonna describe what's happening on screen before we press

42:36

play. Okay. We're on the set

42:38

of good morning, Britain. He's sort of in

42:40

the background on their

42:42

little, like, green mini

42:44

jumbotron. There is an

42:46

image of Tess Holiday who is a

42:48

plus size model on the cover of

42:52

cosmopolitan. And then a panel of, like, plus size people.

42:54

Here we go. Yeah. And the and

42:56

the caption is, is it fine to

42:58

be fat? Here's the full

43:02

Kyron. Developing story. That is

43:04

fine to be fat. Question mark.

43:07

Doctor Miriam stoppered colon,

43:09

if you are overweight

43:12

You are unhealthy. Yes. Merrell street

43:14

voice, groundbreaking. Yay. I

43:18

am paused and ready when

43:20

you are.

43:21

And I just asked the question. Are Dr. Miriams?

43:24

Yes, you missus Ader. These lovely

43:26

women here.

43:28

Even though Helen has already objected to the word obese, but Piers

43:30

points out, obese is technically

43:32

a category when you're judging

43:36

BMI. Is the test holiday

43:38

cover actually promoting something that is

43:40

not a good idea? Or

43:43

is it I think about

43:46

accepting who you are and

43:48

not constantly fighting yourself? Okay. I'd

43:50

just like to say at the beginning, Susannah, that

43:52

I think every woman has the right to be

43:54

proud of her

43:55

body. Yes. And everybody is her

43:57

own business. I

43:58

totally agree. By the way, Okay. That's totally

44:00

great. So what if you make a

44:03

lot of days at Budget. You're all

44:05

fabulous. Thank you. So just a

44:06

minute, though. I am bothered by things

44:08

like the cover of cosmo because I think it glorifies

44:11

and glamorizes, and I'm going to use

44:13

the word

44:13

obesity. It's it's this

44:18

woman test Holiday, this model had been anorexic. Genuinely

44:20

anorexic. Yeah. Right? And she was on the cover of

44:22

Cosmo. What would you say

44:24

about

44:24

that? So it's

44:25

a really it's a really tricky issue. They're all still because

44:27

I feel the same way about size zero

44:30

when when Victoria Beckham is using

44:32

on the cap walk, I've written scaving

44:33

columns. Right? A lot I think that is equally dangerous.

44:36

It's not about being -- Okay. -- just anti

44:38

three hundred pounds simple.

44:40

It's

44:40

about people who are dangerously underweight

44:42

or overweight being glamorous or overweight. In terms

44:44

of somebody being normalized or glamorous,

44:48

there is huge amounts of research that proves that feeling

44:50

terrible about your weight means you're more likely

44:52

to put on weight and emotionally eat.

44:55

People who feel okay about their bodies and more like expect, do

44:57

you know what? I deserve good nourishing food and

44:59

a

44:59

workout. So actually, if I don't

45:01

really agree with

45:01

that. Yep. I think most

45:03

people I think

45:05

most people either get they hear

45:07

something about their

45:09

weight. No. I got to tell them something about their way now. But

45:12

look in the mirror and go.

45:14

Enough. I'm getting too fast. No. I can't. I

45:16

can't work. There's an element of

45:18

shame driving

45:20

Hi. Yes. I had bulimia after I lost all of my weight. So

45:22

I've been at two I've been two ends at

45:24

a Spectrum. I've been severely overweight.

45:27

And then to a point where I couldn't eat. And I didn't

45:29

have a positive frame of mind being

45:31

that

45:31

side. Okay. You know, just just one last question

45:33

to Dr. Meghan. I don't agree

45:36

that body shaming on making someone feel

45:38

bad about that way.

45:40

What is the most

45:42

effective way that people can lose

45:44

weight. Tell me about

45:46

your first of

45:48

all, bless this entire

45:50

panel of people for putting up with

45:52

this level of like personal

45:54

fucking insults to their

45:56

fucking faces. Dude right. What world are we living in?

45:58

But someone's like, nope. That didn't happen to

46:00

you. Nope. That's not your experience. And also

46:02

just like, I don't

46:04

know, man. We're coming right off of the holidays

46:06

and boy oh boy,

46:08

the, like, uncle, you

46:12

don't want to talk to -- Yeah. -- energy that is

46:13

just radiating from peers

46:16

more than Glorifying,

46:18

like, staggering.

46:20

This is so clearly

46:24

shot through with so much

46:26

misogyny. Right?

46:28

No. Right? I'm going to talk over every I'm going to ask a question. Let

46:30

someone get four words into an

46:32

answer and then talk over them. I mean, like -- Yeah. --

46:34

he's just a fucking trash

46:36

monster of a guy. What is so striking to me

46:38

about this clip and like the

46:40

fifteen other abysmal clips about this

46:42

that I watched from Piers

46:44

Morgan Show. Is that he always does this totally

46:46

disingenuous preface where he's

46:48

like, well, I think everybody has a right

46:50

to be proud of their bodies. But

46:53

and then he does the sort of boilerplate

46:55

fatness is bad thing. And it's like,

46:57

if you actually believe that, that's just

46:59

the end of the sentence. I

47:01

think everybody has a right to be proud of their body.

47:04

That's why -- Yeah. -- I don't

47:06

speculate about the health of someone who's like middle

47:08

name, I don't even know someone whose health

47:10

status, I know nothing about, but he's

47:12

doing this thing where he he he doesn't

47:14

want to accept the fact that

47:16

he's being unkind. He's being cruel. And on

47:18

top of that, there are

47:20

baseline fact checking issues

47:22

happening here. Right? Like, peers

47:25

is talking out of his

47:28

ass about this idea that shame will

47:30

motivate people to

47:32

lose weight. If you did any kind of fact checking

47:34

on that statement, you would

47:36

find immediately that that

47:38

has been fully

47:40

debunked and disproven. Yeah. It's not

47:42

true. On top of that, there

47:44

is this absolutely

47:46

egregious from peers in

47:48

from this doctor both, they

47:50

both referenced the idea

47:52

that one of the four fat people on this

47:55

panel has ejected use of the word

47:57

obesity. Mhmm. And then they go

47:59

back and use it to

48:02

describe them --

48:02

Yay. -- in the same way that, like,

48:05

if someone if you were introduced to

48:07

someone new and they were you asked them their name

48:09

and they said Thomas and you'd be like, great, I'm gonna

48:11

call you Tommy. Right. That's weird. You're

48:13

being weird and mean. Right? Yeah. Like,

48:15

I can just feel my blood not boiling

48:17

but, like, at a simmer.

48:19

Well, now, luckily, there's, like, ten more of those clips

48:21

in your right hand

48:24

bar. God. You too. I know I just looked at the rate hand bar

48:26

and it's like Cosmo editor,

48:28

defense cover featuring plus

48:32

size model. Do we

48:34

need to censor humor with

48:36

a split screen between a black

48:38

person and a thin dude? I got that

48:40

one too. So

48:42

that was not worth our time, but we spent a lot of time on

48:44

it. But the point is, go

48:46

buy Aubrey's book. It's good.

48:49

Thank you. No. Fun.

48:51

It has lots of other things to make you angry, and also

48:54

some happy stuff. And Lizzo. And Lizzo.

48:56

Lizzo makes a brief

48:58

appearance. We've got preorder

49:00

links for you in the show notes or you

49:02

can go to obry gordon dot net

49:04

slash myths and get it there. Preorder.

49:06

And we will be back in

49:08

the main feed next time with Michael, can I tell you? Can

49:10

I give you a preview? Oh. Next time

49:12

we're doing Elizabeth Taylor's

49:14

diet book, Elizabeth takes off.

49:18

White

49:19

diamonds. That's all I

49:20

know. I know literally nothing else

49:22

about this woman. Oh my god.