All Fired Up

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In diet culture it's hard for most of us to feel comfortable in our bodies, let alone LIKE them. But what if it's possible to burst through this thin-ideal bubble and experience the joy, the light, the MAGIC of our bodies? My guest this week, artist and speaker Kathryn Max, has done just that, and you simply MUST hear their story! Kathryn's art is a powerful expression of tenderness, compassion & unconditional body acceptance. It's so beautiful - let's get all fired up with LOVE!

Show Transcript

Intro: Welcome to All Fired Up. I'm Louise your host, and this is the podcast where we talk all things anti-diet. Has diet culture got you in a fit of rage? Is the injustice of the beauty ideal getting your knickers in a twist? Does fitspo make you want to SPITspo? Are you ready to hurl if you hear one more weight loss tip? Are you ready to be mad, loud and proud? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Let's get all fired up.

Welcome back to the podcast my delicious diet culture dropouts. Thank you so much for tuning in for yet another intriguing, deep dive down the anti-diet rabbit hole. I want to start with huge love to you all and thank you for continuing to listen and support this podcast, which as you know, is completely produced and put out by me on my lonesome, alongside a whole lot of editing. And I really appreciate your messages of love and support, especially during this year where things have become pretty rocky with getting the podcast out in a predictable way, I'm really pumped about 2022, and I've got big things of what I can't wait to share with you next year. But in the meantime, I really appreciate your listening. And if you love the All Fired Up podcast, help get the message out there by rating and reviewing.

A five star review is always good, wherever you get your podcasts or preferably maybe with apple podcasts, because I'm really trying to target that. The more this message gets out, the more likely it is that diet culture falls onto its knees and I can go off and become a florist like I've always wanted. And if something about diet culture is pissing you off, let's get it off your chest, send it to me. Send your rage straight into my inbox - [email protected]. Tell me what's bugging you. It could be something that happening in your local community, could be a diet that's getting pushed in your social media or just something that you've heard around the traps that's really getting up your nose about living in diet culture. I want to hear it. I'm your agony aunt for all things diet, so send that to my email address.

Free stuff, alert who doesn't love stuff that's for free. I have amazing E-Book called Everything you've Been Told About Weight Loss is Bull Shit, and that was co-written with the glorious Dr. Fiona Willer, dietician and amazing podcaster from the Unpacking Weight Science podcast. In this classic resource, we have stuff that's full of fun facts to help you push back against diet culture's bullshit. Essentially, we bust top 10 myths about the relationship between weight and health. And we give you heaps of scientific articles and resources and overviews, giving you the truth about the relationship between weight and health and just how much bullshit is being fed to us. It's an excellent resource. It's completely free. You can download it from the Untrapped website, untrapped.com.au. I encourage you, if you haven't already got a copy, to grab it and share as far and wide as possible; friends, family, health professionals, everyone needs to hear this message.

More free stuff. If you have been living in diet culture and you find that you have found it difficult to be at ease in your body - ie. if you're a human living in diet culture, this eCourse called Befriending your Body is completely free. It's created by me and in it I send you an email once a day for 10 days. And it's like a little love letter to you every day for 10 days, giving you some small messages of self-compassion and practices of self-compassion, which are all designed to help you start looking at your body through a different lens, through the lens of compassion, support, friendship, appreciation, respect, and liberation. The befriending your Body eCourse is really easy, it doesn't take too much time out of your day, and as I said, it's completely free. So if you're tired of struggling and you're looking for something completely different and something pretty urgent; this can be with you in seconds. All you need to do to download the Befriending your Body eCourse is go to my Insta, which is untrapped_au and click on the link in the bio and you will see the Befriending your Body eCourse sitting there waiting to befriend you.

Huge hello and big love to everyone in the Untrapped online community. Without Untrapped this podcast wouldn't be able to be produced. Untrapped is an online masterclass in the art of everything anti-diet. And it was co-created by me and 11 other health professionals working in this space. It's an incredible program. Very comprehensive, all online so you can do it at your own pace. And in it, we go through all kinds of stuff like recognizing and waking up from die-culture bull shit, reconnecting in with your body signals and repairing your relationship with food, with your body and with moving your body joyful ways.

One of my favorite aspects of the Untrapped masterclass is the online community that we've created. We've been running since 2017. Can you believe it? And we have built up this incredible group of people we meet every week in a Q and A, and we've completely bonded. And I think most of the power of Untrapped is in this community. So if you are looking for a change and if you don't want to do it on your own, think about joining us in Untrapped. You can find out more from looking at untrapped.com.au and we would absolutely love to have you.

So, on with the show, my guest this week, oh my gosh. I mean, this is a completely mind-blowing episode that I hope that you've got somewhere nice to relax and really take some time to absorb the awesomeness of what you're about to hear. So look, it's Christmas time, diet culture bull shit, no matter where you live on the planet, it's at an all time high at this time of year, the pressure is on. It is high season for the weight loss industry. And look, we are all feeling a little bit more fragile than usual, thanks to the ongoing bull shit of this year and living with this COVID pandemic. So it's been a complete mind-fuck, and look, you know, you all know how much I love to rant and complain about diet culture, but I think we need a bit of love, and that's what this episode is all about.

In this Christmas season, let's pivot into something completely different. So my guess this week, Kathryn, formally Kathryn Hack, now known as Kathryn, or you might know her on Instagram as fat_mystic_art or Fat Mystic. This is an amazing human. Kathryn is a fat liberated artist and speaker, and they, sorry. And they are the pronouns. They have many intersecting identities including being fat, queer, disabled, poly, ADHD, lipedema and ex-evangelical. Are you fascinated? Because I certainly was completely fascinated by this human, when I saw their art in their Instagram feed. It took my breath away and like kind of hit me in many areas as you're going to hear about in our conversation. So, I really don't have more words and I don't want to give anything away, but I think your mind will be blown by this amazing episode interview individual. So without further ado, I give you me and the glorious Kathryn.

Louise: So Kathryn, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Kathryn: I'm very happy to be here, Louise. Thank you for having me.

Louise: So tell me what's firing you up.

Kathryn: Well, interestingly, I would say that being fired up, hasn't really been my lived experience recently with whether it's diet culture or any kind of oppressive systems. They definitely can feel discouraging, but I have a really deep practice of self-compassion. And what I have observed is that the more I live in a state of grace with myself, the more I am kind and consistently really gentle with myself, it's almost effortless for me to extend that kind of grace and compassion to other people while also having good boundaries. So I don't let people mistreat me because I live in a fat body or disabled body or because I'm queer or any of the identities that I live within. And yet, I don't feel fire about it. I don't feel anger exactly. I feel yeah, real contentment and peace and this journey and where it's brought me. And I feel a lot of joy in my life and the grace to handle the challenges that come in living in the body I live in.

Louise: My goodness. Okay, everyone wants to know what cocktail is this self-compassion. This is so interesting. So you said you've got a really deep practice of self-compassion and that's what got you to this place of not being unimpacted, but not being affected in a negative way.

Kathryn: And I think sometimes I might still be affected, but it's just that self-compassion is such an effective tool, that even if something does impact me negatively, I'm able to be present with that emotion with a deep resource of compassion and care, and so it just doesn't damage me. Like, I'll sort of let this emotion move through me. I'll feel it. I won't deny it. I won't suppress it. I definitely don't shove it down in my body like I used to. I just feel it, I'm present with it and then it sort of moves through. So the deep practice started a little while after I was first introduced to the fat liberation movement. It was intellectual information to me that, oh wow, some people are living in fat bodies and they're like, yeah, I'm fat, so what?

And I was like, whoa, that was a revolutionary idea to me. I've lived in a fat body since puberty and I felt shame about it my whole life. Around the same time that I learned about fat liberation, I was also diagnosed with a chronic illness. The name of my chronic illness is lipedema. It's progressive, there's no cure for it, and it contributes to the size and shape of my body. It's understood to be a fat disorder, and it happens to accelerate during major hormonal changes. So most humans who have this experience, they see the onset around puberty. And then during childbearing years, during pregnancy specifically, there can be significant advancements, and then again around menopause. My experience was that I lived in a smaller but fat body for most of my life. And then after I had two kids, about 21 months apart, my body really changed radically. It impacted my mobility, I took up a lot more space in the world. And for the first several years, there was an incredible amount of shame there.

Louise: I guess that built on the shame from puberty, you said like it had been there anyway. When were you diagnosed with lipedema?

Kathryn: I was diagnosed in 2016.

Louise: Okay, so that's fairly recent.

Kathryn: It is actually. And that's kind of a fascinating thing. Like, I talk a lot on my art page about how much my life has changed, thanks to reconnect with my body and healing my relationship with my body. I would say that self-compassion is what helped do that. So first it was sort of the information, like there's humans out there and these brilliant activists that are brilliant feminist thinkers and like helping me to get new information about whether or not I'm allowed to exist as I am. I also want to say that humans in the disability justice movements are just so brilliant in how they articulate that dignity is not condition and ought not be. So, that was all really, really helpful information.

And then what happened is I was able to apply the information by compassion, you know, like learning how to just sit with myself and feel my feelings and validate them and then genuinely out loud saying to myself, like "Kathryn, I'm so sorry." And then I'd be really specific; "I'm so sorry you don't deserve love because of the body you live in." And intellectually, I knew that sentence wasn't accurate, but in my body it felt true somewhere. And so, I would just acknowledge these things that were sort of limiting beliefs. And it was a limiting belief. I absolutely am worthy of love in the body I inhabit. And as I started to offer that specific lie, compassion and heal the pain that it caused, I suddenly was in relationships where I felt really loved and seen and valued and desired, and so it changed literally everything living in my body.

Louise: How did you learn about self-compassion?

Kathryn: Well, you know, it's interesting; it really first started with, with my body. So learning about fat liberation, I was reading everything I could get my hands on. And then also, I just am a very spiritually curious person. I spent most of my life inside Christian theologies. I was an ordained pastor for about a decade. And then I left that worldview because it was more and more confining, and I started to feel - even though I had sort of these incredible spiritual experiences, what I would now say is I think that divine doesn't care about dogma. I feel like the divine is willing to engage with us no matter where we are. And it really, really doesn't care about any dogma that we may bring into our desire to connect with whatever is out there, so as a Christian, and I was a Pentecostal Evangelical Fundamentalist Christian.

Louise: Wow.

Kathryn: Yeah, that's a mouthful, but yeah. And it's really rigid thinking, but also there's this Pentecostal element that is very metaphysical. There are a lot of interesting experiences. Things like speaking in tongues or getting sling in the spirit. And I had had an incredible experience after experience, after experience of feeling a sensation of being completely loved and accepted by what I would now call is just the divine or the universe, that something benevolent that loves me exists. And now I would even say like I'm part of it, like we're all sort of connected as consciousness, you know? I'm still very spiritual and I like to refer to myself as a Woo-Woo Bitch these days. Are we allowed to swear on this podcast?

Louise: We encourage swearing on this podcast. Absolutely.

Kathryn: That makes me happy. That was one of the first things that showed up when I stopped being a fundamentalist is I was aware of how much I had edited my language. And now swearing is my fucking favorite thing to do.

Louise: It's my fucking favorite thing to do too. It's expressive.

Kathryn: It is, and it feels freeing to me. So my body started to slow down kind of dramatically. I had had this outpatient surgery that was supposed to be a quick in and out kind of thing. And I had an incision rip and it meant that I was like literally in bed for about six or eight weeks. And then I finally am better enough that I can move around a bit, and then I immediately get vertigo. And it fascinating because in that particular window, I felt like my body was saying, "Kathryn, we're going to sit you the fuck down. We've got something to tell you." And it was an incredibly powerful time in my life where I stopped limiting my spiritual curiosity to what was sort of acceptable within Christian circles.

And by that point, I was already no longer a fundamentalist, but I was still attending like a more liberal-minded Christian Church. And the person I was married to was a pre-devout kind of more liberal Christian. But I knew that Christianity was really important to them and our marriage. And it turned out if I allowed my evolution to take me beyond Christianity, that that relationship would end, and that is what ended up happening. But my body working so I could stop participating in culture, really. And I had two small kids, it was a really strange time. They had just kind of fend for themselves a bit more than their peers, because I just couldn't function.

And my brain was like - my spirit, my brain, whichever was just curious. And we have like this amazing technology and our hands, and so I just was following my curiosity. Eventually, I mean, it took me lots of places. Like I did a little time of like, oh, I'm curious about tarot cards. And so I looked into that and then I was like, oh, I want to learn about like all of our chakras, and I even bought some like stones to like, you know. I took one of the online quizzes that talked about like, which one of my chakras needs more attention, you know, that's my clothes, I need to work on that. And so it was like a game. It was like fun. It was just following my curiosity. And in that space where I was just following anything that was shiny, I was reading more and more about self-compassion.

And there was this very specific practice that I had read about and learned about that I started doing and telling my friends about and it was this thing where you literally say out loud to yourself, I'm so sorry. And then you be as specific as you can about the belief, even though intellectually, you know it may not true, but the painful thought and you just say, I'm so sorry, and you just hold space for yourself. And I don't know how it works, except that it does work and it just shifted those painful things. They just were allowed to move through me.

Louise: Yeah. I love that because you're bringing like mindful kindness to the beliefs and thoughts that are happen in the moment, so I'm so sorry that you just thought, oh, I'm so disgusting.

Kathryn: Yeah.

Louise: And so you're pausing, you're not letting it kind of just sink in, and you're apologizing to yourself - so powerful.

Kathryn: And it's really been the most affected, I would say, on the old beliefs that have sort of been sneaky. We've been very programmed by the cultures we grew up in. That's why fat phobia is so rampant, you know, anti-fat is everywhere. It it's like a global phenomenon that fatness is bad. That's kind of fascinating. What the hell?

Louise: The world is wrong and fat is bad.

Kathryn: Yeah. But actually, and I think that's so interesting, and one of the things I really love about the fat community is that we are an international global group of humans, that are going to push back on this really stupid presumption that our bodies are wrong. And I don't know, it creates this really interesting energy of when you choose your own inner knowledge over the projected information. It is powerful. It's an empowering transition. And so, you turn the volume up of your own inner space, above the chatter of culture and you start to realize, you can do whatever the fuck you want. You can have whatever.

Louise: You can wear what you want, you can have sex, you can enjoy hell out of yourself.

Kathryn: It's all of it. Absolutely.

Louise: For how long has life felt like that for you?

Kathryn: It just keeps getting better and better and better. So, when I was experiencing that period of time where I was recovering from surgery and then ended up with vertigo, that was like, it felt like explosions, like my body expanded and my brain and my spirit was expanding. And I'd had this sort of metaphysical experience where I had this profound sensation that my physical body that was inhabiting was an allegory to this spirit size I was meant to embody in this. And I don't actually even talk about that that much, but it was huge in shifting my thinking about like whether or not my body was allowed. And not only is it allowed, it's powerful. When people see me, it's not hard to see that I am also quite free, but I live in a body that we're used to people seeing shame. Walk around in bodies like mine and they there's just shame. I's hard not to, because of how much conditioning we've been taught about fat, but I just don't have that. I don't have that energy. And so, people interact with me and I'm not easy to forget.

Louise: Do people just not know what to do with you if you don't kind of obey that is not expected shame.

Kathryn: I don't know if they... I'm not having those kinds of conversations with strangers. The humans are that are close to me, like they just see me. I'm a full human person. I do have this deep spiritual practice, but like I have hard days too and I have sad days and I reach out for support when I need it. I get frustrated with my kids and I complain about that. So yeah, it's just the humans that are in my life really see me. And then when I'm out in the world, I just don't live. I just am not anticipating. I remember living in a way where I anticipated hostility for the body I lived in and I felt hostility. Now I just don't anticipate hostility directed towards me. It just doesn't occur to me anymore. I don't know how, except that it was all this self-compassion, but this very dramatic shift is, can move through the world and I'm not anticipating hostility.

I just assume that I get to be treated with the amount of dignity and love and care that I treat myself with. And if that doesn't happen to be the case where someone doesn't treat me the way I want to or expect to be treated, it just doesn't wreck me like it would've before. It just is like, oh, that's an anomaly. Like, I'm sorry, that person, they must be having a rough time. Like, how sad that they would feel the need to project their shit onto me. It's very clear to me that that's theirs. It's not shit my. I'm good.

Louise: Oh, that's it, right? Because the self-compassion has kind of sunk in and made you kind of unstoppable.

Kathryn: And what's funny is like unstoppable how, because I have a lot of limitations living in my body. I have a lot of limitations moving through the world. Like, my body doesn't fit in most public seating. I've had to do the both end of doing this internal work of, I know that I'm allowed to exist in the world with full dignity and I'm also someone ADHD, and so sometimes I have low executive functioning. Which means, I can be overwhelmed with the amount of extra labor that's required for me to like, make sure that that restaurant I want to go to with my friends is going to have seating that's going to work for my body. And so, I've been able to like my circle of friends and people I date, I've been able to invite them into this sort of tender space of, hey, would you actually help do some of the labor here?

And I was pretty tentative about it at first because it felt really vulnerable, and they were so happy to. They were just so happy to. They were like, "That is okay Kathryn, we love your presence in our life. And of course, we're going to try to streamline this and make it less hard for you. You shouldn't have to work this hard, just go out and be in the world." Yeah, and so it is the both end. Both things are at once; I am unstoppable and this world is still not built for, to welcome a body like mine, I have to do in a lot of extra labor.

Louise: Which is terrifically difficult, but how nice that you can like share this with friends who will then go out and advocate and take care of everything alongside you; you don't have to do it on your own.

Kathryn: Yeah. It's a really beautiful thing. I think the work of getting free and liberation is an internal spiritual work. And then what happens is we get to see it lived out in human relationships because we are social creatures and it's got to be the both end. We're not meant to be alone, most of us aren't. And so, yeah, and then that was just a really - that took some compassion too. It was very tender when I first started saying out loud to my circles, like I want to be out in the world a little more and I'm noticing I'm saying no to invitations because it will be too hard. And then I'm like, oh, actually I can ask for help. Turns out, asking for help is its own kind of superpower. And culturally again, especially in Western cultures, we have been taught not to do that.

Louise: Yeah. Don't impose on people, don't have needs, don't... that's terrific. Out of interest, who were the fat liberation people that you read for inspiration? Who your community now that you...?

Kathryn: Let's see. So Sonya Renee Taylor's work was really impactful to me and the book, The Body's not an Apology. I really liked what I read from the author who wrote Shrill and now Lindsay-Anne Baker, The Will author. I can't remember her first name.

Louise: I can't remember it either.

Kathryn: Yeah. And then I just started following like the hashtags on Instagram. Instagram was really helpful in my evolution as well, because I love how you can just follow hashtags, like disability justice and fat liberation, haze, so all of that was really impactful. So it became like this big, beautiful soup of just taking in everything that was sort of out there and allowing it to change how I thought about things.

Louise: I love that; a big, beautiful soup, because Instagram can also be like a treacherous shark infested ocean.

Kathryn: The thing is like curating our feed too. I mean, it can be. But I think that internet has served me so well because social media is can reflect back to us our own energy sometimes. And whatever you're drawn to are attracted to you, you can unfollow and start following the stuff that makes you actually feel good, so it doesn't have to be that. It doesn't have to be that.

Louise: No, I love my little haze bubble that I have on Insta and social media, speaking of which that's how I found you. Because I think I was scrolling through Being Nourished, their feed, Hilary and Dana and I saw this amazing picture of lady and it was just lit up with flowers and it was glowing, like literally like no shit glowing. And I was like, I just stopped. And I'm like, that is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. So since then, I was trying to find it and I couldn't find out anywhere. And then I found you and looked through your feed and your art and it was like how I think self-compassion looks like in art. I can't explain it very well, but it's like it moved me in my body. It was so beautiful see. And that's why I kind of tracked you down and finally found the beautiful painting, which is going to be up in my new office. Which ironically the new office is called Flourish at [unclear27:54].

Kathryn: Wow.

Louise: And then the idea is that it's a big, beautiful like greenhouse full of plants and growth and beginning for people. And so, I wanted to feel it full of like art that showed that. That painting that I had seen is called Flourishing, so I can't wait to put it up there. I just want to talk about your art because it's just like a mind bogglingly awesome. How long have you been doing it?

Kathryn: Not that long. I started really making body art, figurative art in 2018. I was sort of dabbling in 2017. I was sort of experimenting. I was 38. I'm 44, almost 44 now, but I was 38 before I could even call myself an artist. It just was things were, again, we have these limiting ideas sometimes. Like the idea that I was an artist felt so gatekeepy, like I wasn't fancy, I'm just up hot. Yeah, so I was 38 and I was like, oh my God, I've been calling myself crafty my whole life. But like the truth is, is that I am an artist. And then when, like I said, I describe how in the same window of time I had this lipedema diagnosis, this chronic illness and there's no cure, so my body will continue to evolve. And then they're just like, by the way, all of our bodies are continuing to evolve. We're in a constant change.

And then fat liberation, that I was allowed to take space and have the body I lived in and I needed a way to marry these two ideas just to make peace with the fact that this is a reality of my life. My body is going to stay this way and progress. So up until that point, I just constantly was believing that like someday I would lose all the weight, you know, like most of us think, you know? So I had to decide, nope, if that never happens for me, I'm going to live my best life. So making art was the bridge and it was like, I wanted to see myself depicted beautifully in art and media, and so I just started playing around with it. And it's interesting because you know, you referenced the image flourishing and you said painting, it's actually not really a painting. It's digital.

Louise: It's digital. I have no idea when it comes.

Kathryn: We have these iPhones, and there's all these apps on there. I literally make all this art on my phone. Sometimes I like the aesthetic of mixed media, and so sometimes I'll do like mixed media art, like an abstract sort of thing. And then I can like take a photo of it and I can layer it into a silhouette. But yeah, we have all this software now where you can just like take a photo and then like strip away everything that's not the silhouette, and then I can layer and layer and layer. I can create a background, I can do all these things. I can just pull an image in and out of like 16 different phone apps, you know? And it was just plates. Something I can do while laying down and it doesn't require any art supplies that my kids are going to make a fucking mess out of.

Louise: That is exciting.

Kathryn: And it really helped me get into a state of flow where I could be like listening to an audio book and then like playing on my phone, making something beautiful. Here's the other interesting thing is that, in like summer of 2018, I started my Instagram and I was like, I'm going to make new art every day. I'm going to post something every single day, and I did that for six months straight. And there is really something powerful about adding creativity to whatever our work is. Like, what are you working on in your life human? Like, what's the thing that is asking for your attention, right? Is it body issue stuff, then find a creative outlet for that. It could be poetry. It could be writing short stories. It can be visual arts. It could be clay. I have this sculpture of myself that I made with, oh, I wonder if I can remember their name. There's this other, like the activist who I think is from Australia, actually.

Louise: Yes, yes. And my God, what is happening to my brain? It's 6:00 AM. Ashley Bennett. It's Ashley Bennett from at bodyimage_therapist.

Kathryn: She's delightful, and it was really fun to go to her class in San Francisco. And a bunch to us were in there with clay molding our own forms. And it was powerful to lovingly touch this clay, to like fill in where all of these fat roles are, you know, the volume of my big belly. It was just powerful. So whatever creative outlet attracted to, adding creativity to whatever your work is, somehow I think unleashes huge amounts of energy. It just opens us up in ways that I don't think just thinking about things could ever.

Louise: I think you've nailed it. You're regularly visiting that place and reinforcing it, but just sort of intuitively finding this way of doing it. It shines out of it. I don't think I've seen art before, which embodies self-compassion, this stuff that you've done, I just love it. And I love how you've paired it with compassionate phrases, like be gentle with you.

Kathryn: Yeah.

Louise: And I love fat-trans queer loved, just full of love. It's too just incredible. And I particularly, yeah, I'll just keep blushing if I keep looking. I just encourage everyone to go and look at it. So this is really like a love story of you and your body.

Kathryn: Well, okay. So maybe, right. My relationship, my body meant that my spiritual worldview shifted a great deal. How I interact with the world around me changed. It also meant that I ended a long term marriage that wasn't exactly a terrible marriage or anything, it's just we didn't resonate with each other anymore. I was no longer a Christian, that was really important to him. And as soon as I knew that that marriage was over, I was like, oh my God, I'm queer. Of course, I am. How did I not know that? You know? And so I spent so many decades in purity culture, I just was prohibited from exploring my own sexuality. And so, one of the things about being a late bloomer is the temptation to feel like a I've missed out on a lot of stuff. And again, like I felt all those feelings. I gave myself a lot of compassion. It would've been amazing to be having lots of gay sex when I was in my twenties, but that wasn't my experience. And so the cool thing is, is that I get to be a sexual being today in the body that I have, but as also as a person who's incredibly self-aware who is great communication skills, who is emotionally intelligent. And so, I'm navigating dating almost as if I'm a preteen or a teenager, but also I have all of this wealth of internal self-knowledge and self-compassion.

Louise: So that's good make it like much more enjoyable than usual teen experiences.

Kathryn: I'm having a fucking blast, yeah. And not that every date I go on is amazing. A lot of them are amazing. I'm also very interested in nontraditional relationship models, so I'm practicing solo polyamory. Another interesting thing to read about is something called relationship anarchy, which is just brilliant. It's just asking us to challenge all of these beliefs about what relationships are supposed to be and gender roles and like expectations we might have on a dynamic with another person. You actually get to invent that; you and that person get to make that up as you go, it gets to serve both of you, and it can be like anything you want it to be. I love that. I love the freedom of turning everything on its head. There's no external expectations on what my relationship with any one person needs to be. I get to decide that. They get to decide that with me. So yeah. Right out of the gate, you know, I came out as queer during the pandemic and then once enough of us were vaccinated, I'm out here dating, dating a lot. I'm having a good time.

Louise: It's not easy to date in a pandemic. Wow, this is all so new. You're riding the wave.

Kathryn: I'm riding this very big wave. Also one of the things that I've learned is that scarcity is a capitalist construct, and it fucks us up pretty bad, but we apply scarcity to everything. We definitely apply it to dating and it just doesn't feel true anymore. Like, people are coming out to the fucking woodwork to be like, hey, how you doing, can we date? And I'm like, yeah, let's go on date. Me and the body I inhabit, I'm a desired person that feels amazing. That feels amazing.

Louise: Wow. That is the power of not limiting yourself. And that's the other kind of word that came to mind looking at your art is abundance.

Kathryn: Yeah. Yeah. It feels so much better to live in this space. And I want to be really careful to say, it's not that I am in an elated state of being constantly. I really do have access to this like really high, high frequency sensation of joy and pleasure and abundance. But also, I still am inhabiting a human body that has chronic pain, that experiences big fatigue. I've had relationships end in a way that really hurt my feelings. And I've been afraid of things here and there too, you know? And so, it's just that in those times now I don't judge myself harshly. I can experience very, very big fatigue and just decide that everything I wanted to get done that day isn't going to get done and I'll go home and I will just rest and do whatever I need to do to get through that particular window.

Louise: What would you offer yourself then? How do you stay compassionate in a moment like that?

Kathryn: Well, what's interesting is that that's taken a while because I remember even just, I don't know, eight months ago I would have a fatigue spell and sometimes they would last up to like five days where it was just super hard to function for days. And the first day or two, I could be like, that's all right, I'm just going to roll with it. And then if it went on beyond that, it would start to feel scary because our brains have a tendency to be like, oh my God, this is my life now. And what I started to see though, was on the other side of a hard window, I felt more free somehow. And I don't know how to explain that. Sometimes we go through a hard time and then coming up out of it, there's just some kind of lift. And that had happened enough times that I started to trust it.

So several weeks ago I had a rough spell and I didn't have that panic feeling. I just remembered like, oh, I've been through this before, like on the other side, I'm just going to feel more powerful. So in the time while I'm experiencing it, while I feel like really low energy, I just lay down as I needed to. My body is like, this is what's going to happen, this is how much rest we need and stop trying to qualify it. Like, I feel like I rest more than any human I've ever met, and I'm like, what? Really? More? How much more could I need? And my body's like, it doesn't need to be qualified like that. Like it's not about comparing it to other people, like you're going to need to lay down and rest somewhere. And so then I just keep myself occupied by listening to audio books or playing on my phone or meditating or whatever I want to do. That's a really powerful thing too. I stopped doing things that I was supposed to do. I literally only do what I want to do.

Louise: I love this.

Kathryn: There's some amount of privilege that comes with that. Like I'm separated, so I don't have to live with my ex anymore, but I was a stay-at-home parent before. And so, with child support and whatnot, I still get to like live as a stay-at-home parent and I have my art that I do and other things occupy my day and my time. I'm not needing to work 40 hours a week in order to live in the world, so I recognize that as a great privilege I get to have. But that being said, I still think being free on the inside is what's making me free. You know what I mean?

Louise: Yeah, much more. I remember being at one of Hilary and Dana's retreats in 2016 and talking about how like... it was for embodiment, to be an embodied practitioner. About trying to get out of like the crowded city of our brain and down into the wilderness of our body - uncharted territory. And I remember us talking about that's where the freedom is, it's down there and it's not verbal, it's sort of felt.

Kathryn: Yeah. And I would say that - like I said, I've been explaining who I am as a person, as someone who's quite spiritual, and that's true. But what I started to see is that in some spiritual communities, they would talk down about the body. They would say like, oh, this meat sack that we're in, you know, like your body is not who you really are, you are not your body. And I don't agree with that at all. I think our bodies are fucking magic. They hold so much intense wisdom. They will talk to us and teach us things. Our bodies have held all of our trauma our whole lives; just held it, just waiting for us to be ready to look at it again. And it has only ever been kind to us. And even when it's not working well or there's pain or any of those things, it's not out to get you, it's just trying to get your attention.

And when we can turn into it and listen and believe that it's our friend I feel like it's multiverses within ourselves, like unending amounts of wisdom and love and compassion all in this physical form that we inhabit. Even if you just think about DNA, like our fucking DNA is ancient. You know what I mean? There's studies that talk about how like trauma can be passed down in your DNA. Like the stories that your body has, it's way more powerful than we give it credit for often. And so when we live our lives, we're not ruled completely by our minds, but we actually get to make decisions based on how does it feel in my body when I think about doing this thing? If we literally do the things that only make our body feel like, ah, expansive and open and relaxed, oh my God, your life will change. If you're constantly doing things to your body's like, "Oh, dread, dread, I don't want to, I'm going to make myself." Nope, nope, it doesn't serve you.

Louise: This is an amazing conversation. I knew this would be an amazing conversation. There's so much in everything that you are saying, and it's learning how to do that I think that's difficult for people. Because like you said, we're so kind of stuck in our heads and so scared, and often I think it's that fear response that's in our body that stops us getting down or trauma cuts us off. So it is really interesting that you come to it in your late thirties and you come to it in a moment, like when your body just sort of calls it a day almost and says, oh, lie down for a few weeks, you're going to have to just be with me.

Kathryn: Yeah. There's an account. I follow on Instagram called The Nap Ministry. And I can't remember who is in charge of it, but this really powerful black woman. And I just want to say too, like as a white woman in the privilege that I embody there, like the kind of freedom that I get to live in is absolutely because of the work of black women and fems and indigenous people. Like, I'm really grateful for all the labor and the work that they've done to help kind of illuminate the path forward. So this particular person who has the Instagram, The Nap Ministry, they just blew my mind when they talked about like rest as revolution. Capitalism has really indoctrinated us with the idea that our worth is connected to our labor or our productivity. And then we live in systems that you literally can't live unless you do labor for often someone else. And that's really wrong. Human beings are not designed for that. That's a system that we all have grown up in and it's impacted how we think about ourselves.

There was a time where human beings existed without having to go to work and labor in order to just stay alive. So to nap, napping being resistance to those capitalist ideas was a revolutionary idea to me. And that rest was how we honored all the people that went before us that weren't allowed to rest. And it absolutely - I really do credit my body stopping working and requiring so much rest with my ability to disconnect with these systems that control our thinking. You know what I mean? So I was out in the world less because in my bed napping more. And what that meant is I was spending more time in my own energy and the things that I was just naturally feeling curious about. And then I could follow my curiosity to the next step and the next step.

In a spirit paradigm, you might say like your higher self is always going to guide you towards enlightenment if that resonates with you. But I would also say that my body had a very key role in that. My body was the one that arrested me and got my attention, my body demanded rest and I said, okay. And before I said, okay, I spent years pushing through like most of us do. You like buckle in, you like buck up, you push through and that's stupid. We don't have to do that anymore. You know what I mean? The idea that you were good because you hurt your body in order to achieve some task is really stupid. We don't have to do that anymore. We don't have to hurt ourselves anymore. We can be kind to ourselves. Rest is revolutionary.

Louise: I love that. Absolutely love that. And I think especially now, you know, the last two years have been pretty shit for most people on the planet. And I don't know if this happened over there, but as we are coming out here in Australia, there's a lot of like exhaustion and a lot of anxiety coming back into, and fear of what's going to happen next step. People do need to rest more. We can get these messages, like you said, from the structures and systems that we need to kind of pull up our socks and lose the COVID kilos and, you know, whatever. And I'm finding for my clients that that kind of message like let's get back to normal, just doesn't resonate as much, is maybe we've had a bit more time to spend in reflection.

Kathryn: Normal was very toxic. It really was. Normal has never been good or kind to human individuals. It has served these systems that are oppressive and that's all. And I think the pandemic forcing most of us to slow down to some degree, it means that we get to become disillusioned with how it was really shit before too. And no, not fucking going back to that. No, thank you. No, we're going to have to create something new. A lot of the kind of things that I'm listening to and reading about now is all anti-capitalist stuff. And the idea that we're in late stage capitalism is a pretty widespread idea at this point. And so, how we going to cope with that? How are we going to cope end of capitalism? Those of us who are adults now are probably, I don't know that it's going to be easy or fun.

And again, that's why we have to do the internal work of like, I'm actually, okay no matter what, I'm going to be okay, and I'm going to be really fucking gentle with myself, because I don't know what the future holds. And sometimes uncertainty can be very scary. And again, we can offer ourselves compassion for that, but the truth is the more I live in a state of genuine compassion for myself, I'm very present in this exact moment and you know, that's a spiritual practice that most of us had heard about like be present, be present in it; it didn't resonate until I started to live in a state of compassion. And it's not that I'm trying to be present; I just am. I just am here. I'm just present with myself because I'm so kind to myself. I don't have to escape into the future to think it'll be better then. Oh my God, I've spent years thinking it'll be better then, when my body is smaller - I would escape in the future all the time. I don't do that anymore. My life is beautiful because I am so fucking kind to myself. And when I am this kind to myself, somehow the world is just way less hostile. And it doesn't mean there's not still a ton of unknowns; I'm just not afraid of the unknown anymore.

Louise: You're amazing. That everything you just said is just brilliant - so inspiring. No matter what, just keep doing what you're doing, because you are like your art. You're just like glowing. It's amazing.

Kathryn: Thank you. And the thing that I kind of want to reiterate is like, I know I can speak eloquently about some of these things. I am very human too, right? There's the both end. But if I can come to this state of being, that means it's available, like the amount of freedom that I get to live in. I realized a long time ago that I kind of wanted to be of service to the world in some way, you know, I was in vocational ministry, and the world who I was a part of really made perpetuate to this savior complex. And then I had religious trauma and I had like childhood trauma and I was definitely someone who was codependent for a lot of years, was codependent in my relationship with my spouse. And I feel like I've lived a very normal life, but I've started to taste freedom, and then the freedom just brought more freedom. And then that freedom brought even greater freedom. And so, I would very much like to say that existing as I am in the world now, it feels like it's accessible to people. Like being alive and free in the body inhabit might convince someone else that, oh my God, what if I could be more free too? And now I no longer feel like it's my job to save anyone. It's just not. Like, I really trust people on their journey. I trust you to follow your own curiosity and see what path that takes you on. But I being free in the world, I think perpetuates the idea that freedom is available to all of us.

Louise: Yeah. And I think that's why it's so lovely to speak to you, and to know that this conversation gets the listen to by so many people. I think this part like of like finding that freedom through self-compassion, connected to your body specifically and inhabiting - I think that's really tough for a lot of people, and that's a bit that we can get stuck on. Like, we can kind of talk about I love fat liberation, and I love haze, and I love anti-diet, but I still don't feel okay in my body. Like I still can't really accept it, let alone inhabit it, let alone feel freedom in it, let alone expand. What you're talking about is I guess, perseverance with that compassion until it doesn't feel like an innate trick, but it feels like it's the portal and then you just sort of go down and inhabit.

Kathryn: Yeah. And our brains do change, right? So, like it's the default. It wasn't always, it took some time and I didn't make myself do it. Like, this was really born out of when I realized I was only going to do what I wanted to do. And so, my meditative practice is really like when I'm laying my bed, I'll just take some deep breaths and I'll let my brain just sort of wander. I don't like any kind of dogma or high structure at all. Some of that might be PhD, but also I spent decades in a lot of fundamentalism and so there was so much dogma. So, this is me sort of pushing all the way to the other extreme and it has served me. And I think the big message for anyone who's listening would be like, find out what serves you by following your curiosity and what you actually want.

Sometimes we don't even know what we want because we're not embodied enough. But then you can try this little fun game of like think of something that you might want and then see how it feels in your body. Does it feel expansive? When you take a breath, do you feel like room or does it feel tight? And so, then we start to ask our body questions. Our body has our own individual truth. It really, really does. And what happens is you start to check in with your body more and more. Then you are sort of guided in your life. Eventually, it's not something you have to think about; it just happens. And then you will lead yourself to whatever is your best life.

Louise: That is so cool. It's like the difference between thinking and knowing in your body, it's that language of knowing in your body or not the language, but it's that experience of knowing in your body that when [unclear52:02]. That is a cool trick.

Kathryn: Yeah. They live in concert now, you know, so like our brains have been very subject to conditional cultural programming. Our brains are really susceptible to that because human beings want to belong and society tells you, these are the things you got to do to belong. And so you want to belong so you conform, right? And then when you are not in relationship with your body, again, that's why anti-fatness is such a destructive force because it separates us from our body, and it makes controlling your body the objective, and your body is not to be controlled. It's just to be loved and enjoyed and to be honored. So yeah, I think there's a lot of different ways we can just very gently, it doesn't have to happen overnight, but just a little to check in, like you just happen to be eating a meal and you just realize, oh, I'm going to take some deep breaths. I'm going to breathe really deep into my belly. And I'm going to experience this one bite of food and just relish every bit of pleasure. I'm going to feel it go down into my body. And then you you'll start to see you'll just do that a little bit more and more, and you can heal the relationship with your body by just actively engaging with it a little bit more and a little bit more until it becomes something you do without thinking

Louise: So lovely. And all of that is stuff that we're not encouraged to do. Even a belly breath - oh gosh. You know, don't let your stomach pop out. Eating and feeling pleasure, like honestly, pleasure and eating is not something we even like - it's not on the radar. These things are radical, but so simple. And what is it that Dana and Hilary talk about body trust is our birthright.

Kathryn: It is. It is our birthright. And you know, most of us have been around small children, they do not feel self-conscious in their bodies. Someone told me that they were having Thanksgiving dinner with a three year old. They were sitting next to the three year old and the three year old was going, "Mm mm." And so they were laughing about how, like, it almost sounded like orgasmic sounds from this toddler who hasn't been socially conditioned yet. And hopefully they get to live without that other stuff limiting their experience in the world.

Louise: I'll [unclear54:13], right?

Kathryn: Yeah, exactly. So as a parent myself, that's the thing I teach my kids more than anything is bodily autonomy and to make decisions based on what feels right to them in their body. That feels like the best gift I can give them.

Louise: I couldn't agree more. And that connects to so many other experiences.

Kathryn: It really does.

Louise: Yeah. What a terrific conversation. I'm so grateful for you to come on and talk to me about all of this today, and I'm going to continue buying your work.

Kathryn: Thank you. It's been such a pleasure for letting me share, and I really, really love talking about these things and thank you for getting up early so that the timing worked and all of that. Thank you for reaching out and finding me. I'm really delighted.

Louise: Ah, right back at you. Thank you.

Outro: What did I tell you? Is this an incredible interview and an amazing individual or what? I tell you what I could not stop thinking about that conversation for days afterwards. Kathryn's experience and way of expressing everything through their art, it's just mind blowing. So look, I'm a bit spent, I'm sure you are too. I feel little part of me feels like lighting up a cigarette and just laying back and just enjoying the after glow of that conversation. Thank you so much, Kathryn, for coming on and blowing all of our minds at a time when we really, really need some awesomeness. Thank you so much for delivering.

If you like me are fascinated and a bit blown away by everything Kathryn-related, look at their Instagram, which is fat_mystic_art, and go to the Etsy shop and buy everything, which is kind of what I want to do as well. The Etsy shop is Fatmystic, and there's just so much terrific stuff there.

Thank you everybody, and thank you, Kathryn. Look, we're going to sign off now and into the end of the year we go. Be very, very careful everyone, because like I said, it's diet culture high season, the weight loss wolves are after us. Remember that your body is awesome, magical, mystical and not something to feel ashamed about. There's just so much awesomeness sitting right here right now. Okay, so look everyone, I hope you take really, really good care of yourselves and I hope that there's some kind of break coming for most of us. I know I'm going to have a rest. I'm going to be back and absolutely raring to go early next year. We've got some, like I said, some really cool news and big news coming, but this All Fired Up podcast is going nowhere. You're going to be hearing from me a lot. I'm very, very pumped and excited. So look, look after yourself, everyone. And I'll see you in the new year. In the meantime, trust your body, think critically, push back against diet culture. Untrap from the crap!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is the fierce and fabulous Lindley Ashline, fat-positive photographer and body liberation activist, who has literally BANNED the weight loss industry from using her stock photos. In this glorious episode, Lindley tells how she pushed back when a diet company tried to do just that! The AUDACITY of diet companies and the weight loss industry is next level, but they were no match for Lindley! Join us for a completely fired up, inspiring conversation with a woman who takes no bullshit, AND takes staggeringly awesome photos!

Show Transcript

Intro: Welcome to All Fired Up. I’m Louise your host, and this is the podcast where we talk all things anti-diet. Have diet culture got you in a bit of rage/ is the injustice of the beauty ideal? Getting your nickers in a twist? Does fitspo make you want to spitspo? Are you ready to hurl if you hear one more weight loss tip? Are you ready to be mad, loud and proud? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s get all fired up.

Hello, passionately pissed off people of diet culture. I am so excited for some episode of All Fired Up. And thank you to all of the listeners who send messages of outrage to me via email [email protected]. If something about diet culture is really getting your go, let me know about it, get it off your chest. And who knows, we might be able to rant about it here on All Fired Up.

And if you are a listener, don’t forget to subscribe, so you don’t miss episodes when they pop out. And while you’re at it, why not leave us a lovely five star review and rating wherever you listen to your podcast, because the more five star reviews we get, the more people listen, the quicker diet culture topples, and then I can go and become a florist. As the COVID crisis unravels, more and more people are banging on about the relationship between weight and health. And if that’s really getting up your nose and you want a strong resource to help you push back against that, and you want something for free; look no further then now wonderful ebook, ‘Everything you’ve Been Told About Weight Loss is Bull Shit’ co-written by me and the wonderful Dr. Fiona Willer, anti-diet dietician, and general all-round awesome person.

In this ebook, we are busting wide open the diet culture bullshit myths about this relationship. Because when you look under the hood and scratch the surface just a tiny, tiny bit, we see that all of this BMI stuff is complete bullshit, and it’s great to have a booklet in which all of the scientific evidence to support the health at every size and anti-diet approaches can be presented to people who are still upholding the greatest injustice when it comes to health. So have a look for the ebook, it’s at untrapped.com.au, and a little popup will happen, and you can download it from there. Give it to all your friends and all your family. Put it in their stockings for people for Christmas, give it away, trick or treating for Halloween. Hell you know, give it away instead of Easter eggs, just get it out there to as many people as possible because just so over this groaning insistence that size is all accounts when it comes to health.

If you’re looking for more free stuff and you’re struggling with your relationship with your body, because let’s face it – who doesn’t in diet culture. Have a look at the Befriending Your Body eCourse, which is completely free. You can find that on untrapped_au on Insta. In this course, basically you’ll get like an email from me for 10 days. Every day for 10 days, you get a lovely little email from me talking through the wonderful skill of self-compassion, which is essentially literally learning how to become your body’s best friend and become your own best friend as you wade through the of diet culture. So have a look for that course, as I said, it’s on Instagram, it’s completely free. What have you got to lose?

Huge shout out to all of the Untrapped community. Untrapped is my online community and masterclass for all things anti-diet. Untrapped has been around since 2017. And we have built ourselves into this wonderful online group of fierce and fantastic people. If you are struggling with your relationship with food, with how you are moving, with your body, with just generally trying to get along in diet culture with all of the pressure that’s heaped upon us every day and you’re just absolutely sick of dieting; have a look at our Untrapped course and community because we would really love to have more people join us. You can find it at untrapped.com.au.

Louise: Okay, let’s get into the nitty-gritty. Shall we? I’m so excited in this episode, I’m having this awesome conversation with fat activist, photographer, author, and cat mom, Lindley Ashline. Lindley is the creator of Body Liberation Photos and does some really amazing ethically produced diverse stock photos of people in larger bodies. And, oh my gosh, how much do we actually need this kind of stuff. So I had the most amazing ranty conversation with Lindley. You are going to absolutely love her. So without further ado, here’s me and Lindley. Lindley, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Lindley: Oh, thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Louise: Me too. So tell me, what’s firing you up at the moment?

Lindley: Well, when we were emailing back and forth talking about doing this podcast episode you had said, I want to hear what’s firing you up, and I would love to hear you talk about stock photos, which are photos that can be used for marketing that people buy from other people. And also, wondering if you’ve experienced any diet culture co-opting of your work. And I immediately said, I have all that put together because I do have the stock photo website where I sell my photos. And most of my clients, my stock photo customers are health at every size oriented, or anti-diet, or body positivity folks who are marketing their small businesses. But the other day there is a diet that is probably familiar to you, that is very big here in the United States, that is called Whole30.

Louise: Whole30, is that the Brene Brown one? Was she doing that?

Lindley: Oh, I don’t know.

Louise: I’m sorry.

Lindley: That’s very, very trendy here. So, someone from Whole30, the company that runs that diet bought some of my stock photos.

Louise: Oh no.

Lindley: To use for an event. And I know this because I reacted to that. I’m a small business, so I do sell a decent number of stock photos, but I’m not at the point where I don’t see every order as it comes in. So every time someone buys something from me, I get an email, of course, and I’m always curious, who’s buying things. So I saw this such-and-such a name @whole30.com. And I said, wait a minute. Because not only do I not want… my photos are, they’re mostly people in larger bodies or fat bodies. When I use the word fat, I’m using it as a neutral descriptor of people’s bodies and not an insult. You don’t have to use that word for yourself, but I have reclaimed it and many other people have too.

Louise: That’s such a beautiful way of putting it. Thank you.

Lindley: Oh, thank you. Yeah, it’s like saying that I’m a medium height, or if I were tall or short, I have long hair. It’s just a descriptor. But the people who appear in those photos, they are in vulnerable bodies themselves. They are often people of color. They are people in very large bodies; people who experience a lot of discrimination and stigma just by living in their bodies. And not only do I not want those bodies being used to represent diet…

Louise: Yeah, like they’re not before photos.

Lindley: Yeah. No, but also when I started creating stock photos, I worked with a lawyer to create my license that you are bound by when you buy these photos, you have to agree that you’re going to respect this license to use the photos, and in the license, it specifies that you cannot use them to promote diets.

Louise: You are terrific. So they’re buying it in breach of your licensing already.

Lindley: Yeah. If I’m going to set out to create body-positive and fat-positive stock photos, and work with people who are in marginalized bodies to start with; I can’t allow those photos to be used in ways that will hurt people.

Louise: How dare they. They have the audacity.

Lindley: I was very fired up speaking into the theme. Oh, I was fired up and I said, no, how you. I immediately messaged my best friend and said, how dare they. And so, I emailed her, I issued her a refund. So here’s what I did; I issued her a refund for the money that she’s paid. I deleted her account. I couldn’t delete the account, so I changed her password on her. I couldn’t delete it, but I could change the password. And then I emailed her and said I have refunded your money, you may not use these photos, my license prohibits you from doing so. And that’s that.

Louise: So, did she respond to you?

Lindley: Well, to make it even better, she had put her work email address in when she placed the order. But for her billing address, she was using a corporate credit card. So she had put as the email for the credit card, she had put in the corporate address. So I emailed her, but I CC’d the whole company.

Louise: Oh my God. That’s fantastic.

Lindley: CC’d [email protected]. I’m sure that maybe just a random assistance, someone deleted it, but like, I’m sure it didn’t go to all the employees, but that was very satisfying.

Louise: That is very satisfying. So she did email?

Lindley: Yeah, she emailed right back and sent me kind of an indignant email. And she did say that they wouldn’t use the photos. I keep meaning to go check and see if they actually did. But she was very indignant because she said we were going to use these for an event to promote body positivity next month, and I guess we won’t. And I’m like, yeah, I guess you won’t.

Louise: What are you doing in the field of so-called body positivity if you’re a diet company?

Lindley: And that’s the co-opting, that aspect of it. Because now, like Weight Watchers has changed its name formally to WW. What does that even mean? Like, we all know it’s Weight Watchers, we’re not stupid

Louise: Well, they think that we might be. Do you remember in the eighties when Kentucky Fried Chicken decided to improve its brand by going to KFC, because then it wouldn’t be fried.

Lindley: But it’s still fried chicken.

Louise: Yeah. And this is still like, we want your money.

Lindley: Yeah. And they’ve realized that people are wising up.

Louise: We know that their diets are shit.

Lindley: Yeah. They don’t work, and in fact, they’re worse for you, for your health than not dieting than being at a stable weight.

Louise: Yeah. And then they’re like, well, we can’t have that, so let’s launch into the field that grew around resistance to us, and let’s nick everything, including their stock imagery. And how dare they run a body positivity event when they’re in the business of shrinking bodies.

Lindley: And as we move forward in time, you’re going to see more and more of this because there is a lot of profit in telling people to love their bodies while selling them products because you made them hate their bodies. And in the body positivity movement, it’s really rampant. If you look at Dove, Dove is one of the first companies to really monetize at a grand scale the body positivity movement. In the last decade, they’ve done a bunch of very high profile feel good, “love your body no matter what,” you can’t see me, but I’m making really sarcastic hand gestures right now.

Louise: Yeah, I’m loving it.

Lindley: I mean, you can see me, but our listeners will be able to. But all these love your body just the way you are things, but at the same time, they’re selling skin lightning cream to people of color.

Louise: How dare they?

Lindley: And they’re selling wrinkle cream or whatever.

Louise: Anti-aging, right?

Lindley: Yeah, so it’s very two-faced.

Louise: Yeah, they were just changing the marketing where baiting and switching people on a global scale. And I agree. I think we’re going to see more and more and more of it, but it’s also like kind of core at the same time, because the fact that these big nasty wolves are coming to sniff at your door means that you are the one with the power, right. Body positivity movements are the ones who are driving the direction of – like the increasing level of diversity that’s happening around the planet. I think they’re just getting a bit desperate.

Lindley: I mean, these are dinosaurs – that meteorite is coming. And I want to say too, for our listeners, I want to acknowledge, because you don’t hear this stated enough, how traumatic, like full-on psychologically traumatic it is for both us as a culture and for people as individuals to be told for hundreds of years that their bodies, particularly fat bodies, and particularly women’s bodies, but all bodies are bad in their natural states. And then have a generation of companies turn around and tell us that it’s our fault for not loving those bodies. That’s trauma. That is trauma – culturally and individually. So I want to be very clear that if you don’t love your body, which most people don’t, I have days I do and days I don’t, but if you don’t love your body, that is not on you, that is on hundreds of years of culture driving up and product power, so it’s not you.

Louise: It’s the system.

Lindley: Yeah. And you’re not individually possible for fixing that, unless you want to.

Louise: I’m so glad you’re here. You are on fire and I love it.

Lindley: I get so angry at the scam that’s been perpetuated.

Louise: Yes, that’s exactly what it is. It’s a giant gaslighting scam that turns us against ourselves and each other. And when we kind of hit body size as a measure of worth, it’s really damaging and divisive. I really want to ask how you got to this point.

Lindley: I got mad.

Louise: Yeah, how did you get mad? Like, how did you come to have this amazing idea to start the body liberation stock photography stuff, and come to it with so much conviction to protect people who have been marginalized?

Lindley: Well, it’s been a process of about – it took about 10 years to go from being very, very sort of normal person invested in diet culture, sort of very mainstream, to being very passionately anti-diet and doing this activism work. In 2007, thereabouts, I discovered I had been on the website live journal for a very long time. At that point, it was like a pre-Facebook.

Louise: The dark days of early internet.

Lindley: Yeah. And I had stumbled across this group called Fatshionista. So like fashionista, but with fat folk. And it was such a revelation because here were these mostly women who were in large bodies in very large bodies who were being styling and confident and walking around in horizontal stripes.

Louise: Oh my God.

Lindley: And tight fitting outfits and colorful outfits and just living their lives confidently. And I just lurk for a really long time. But from there I started discovering… so the pre-cursor, these of foundation of the body positive movement is the fat acceptance movement, which started in the 1960s and has been the backbone of all of this. So this was a little bit before body positivity became a thing. And I found these fat acceptance blogs, where they were talking about the science of weight loss and why scientifically it doesn’t work. And I had been in this state that I think many people sort of existed where they’re like, well, it’s fine to say, love your body, but my body is big. My body is not okay. Like, that might be cool for other people, like maybe other people deserve to be confident. But something about…

Louise: Gosh, that is like, when you said that, that is like where so many of us are stuck. Like it’s okay for everyone else and I love the idea of diversity and I love the idea that large and small and everyone in between can exist, but my body. I can’t get there.

Lindley: Yeah. And so, when I learned the science and the fact that somewhere around 98% of diets fail and that people gain the weight back, I started to feel like I’d been scammed. I’d been raised my whole life to believe that if I could just be good enough and strong enough and have enough willpower and do the right things for long enough, then I too would be thin and healthy and fabulous and have the life I’d always dreamed of and all those other things you see in diet ads, and it turned out none of that was true.

Louise: It’s bullshit. Amazing.

Lindley: I started to get annoyed and then gradually I got mad, and then I got really mad.

Louise: Excellent.

Lindley: And then I started doing my own activism work because it was so tragic to see people that I love trapped in that system and be lied to. And so, I started speaking out – just a little bit, just a little bit. Like, I’d post something on my Facebook about, “Hey, we know that diets don’t work because of science.”

Louise: Yeah. I mean, like in tiny little writing.

Lindley: Yeah. And that’s really scary when you start doing it because it’s so counter to what we think we know. So in about 2015, I was in a really crappy job, after a series of really crappy jobs, corporate full-time jobs. And I said, you know what, I got to a breaking point. And I said, “I’m done. I want to take my photography and turn it into a full-time business.”

Louise: So you’d learned photography for a while.

Lindley: Yeah. Well, I’ve done nature photography for many, many years, but I had never photographed people.

Louise: Interesting.

Lindley: So I took a year and I took a bunch of classes online and then I learned to photograph people. So in 2015, I quit that job. And I want to acknowledge my privilege here. I am a white cisgender straight woman who lives in the United States, and my husband is my financial safety net, so I was able to take that. I also have a part-time job as well, but I was able to take that leap because of my privilege. And so, I’ve always…

Louise: Because you have some security, yeah.

Lindley: There’s not a lot of path that is open to everyone, and so I always want to acknowledge that.

Louise: Yeah, it is really important, but I also think it’s kind of fabulous that there are people who are able to do that because what you’ve done is create something for so many people.

Lindley: And if you had asked me a decade ago, if you had said maybe in 10 years, how you feel about being a full time, small business person, photographer and activist, and I would’ve laughed in your face. Because at this point I have enough experience speaking out that I often sound very confident and powerful.

Louise: You do, you sound really fired up and it’s fantastic.

Lindley: Which is wonderful, but that is not where I came from.

Louise: So you took it on.

Lindley: Yeah, I came from a very meek sort of very nice lady, southern sweet background, where you never disagreed with anybody to their face. Not to their face…

Louise: Disagree behind their back with a cup of tea.

Lindley: Yeah. That’s how we do it in the south, the Southern US, we smile at your face and then snip at you behind your back. But like, I wasn’t brought up in a way where I was allowed to access anger or to even believe that I felt it.

Louise: It’s part of the, like, part of the gaslighting of diet culture is that it uses other gaslighting of being raised female, and like, just be nice and shut up and don’t rock the boat. And if you’re mad, it’s probably a period, right – it’s not worthy.

Lindley: Yeah. And it’s very threatening to a lot of people, too, particularly when someone in a fat body is angry, that’s very threatening because we are expected to shut up and take it. And so, I do get a lot of trolling. I’ve had some threats, but thankfully I’m not yet high profile enough to really be getting a lot of that. But it there’s been some unpleasantness.

Louise: It’s really terrible. What you were saying about the science stuff and speaking up about the science, its that’s sort of, my pathway was through the science as well, initially as well as like the massive sense of social justice and eating disorder work as well. But I’m so aware, and when I talk about the science, so if we were in the same room talking about the science, it’s possible that my voice would be listened to more, even though we’re talking about exactly the same thing, because our body sizes are different, which is ridiculous because actually you’ve got more lived experience alongside the science, so it’s kind of like what the…

Lindley: Yeah, yeah. We consider it culturally, we consider a thin body or a thinner body to be a credential, just like a degree. I was actually talking about this on Instagram literally last night that we consider thin body is to be a credential. So even though I live in this body and I have experience with this body, in general, I am considered as much of an authority on this body as someone who is in a more socially acceptable body.

Louise: Which is so weird, it’s like being like, oh, I’m the expert on same sex relationships, but I’m completely head show. Why would that credential be?

Lindley: Yeah. Again, when marginalized people are allowed to speak and allowed to be angry and allowed to be believed, it’s very threatening to the status quo. So it’s easier to, I mean, again, both at a cultural level and an individual level, it’s easier to assume that I am lying or that I’m exaggerating or that I am unacceptably angry or unacceptably sad or whatever, so that it blunts the impact of what I’m saying.

Louise: Yeah, it’s easy to dismiss something you don’t agree with.

Lindley: Right. I had someone who is in an average size body for here to the US. A maybe US 14, 16, which I think in Aussie size is about a 12.

Louise: I have no idea because sizes confuse me.

Lindley: I think the Aussie sizes run one size lower, I think. But anyway, at any rate, someone who is of average size here in the US. And often I find, again, I am speaking for my US experience. I’m not speaking for the whole planet, but I often find that folks who are of the average size because of the nature of our culture, think that they are much larger or much farther along that spectrum. So I often find that there’s people who are of average size assume that the way that they are treated is the same way that people much larger than they are, are treated – which is not accurate.

Louise: But it’s about that unconscious, like they don’t know the privilege they have.

Lindley: Yeah, because it’s a spectrum. I live in a very large body, but I am nowhere in near the extreme end of the fatness spectrum. There are many, many people who are larger than I am. And then I have privilege over those people because I can still get clothes that are… I can’t get them in person. I mostly have to buy online, but I can still get clothing that’s commercially made. Even if it’s not the clothing I would prefer, and even if it doesn’t fit very well, I can still find clothing somehow. But this was a person who I think wasn’t quite ready to understand that that is a spectrum.

Louise: And that’s real.

Lindley: And I had written this, I was recently diagnosed with a new to me health condition that has been quite challenging and that I am pursuing treatment for. And the treatment for that condition, it is a stigmatized condition. I’m not going to go into details, but it is a stigmatized condition, and it is a condition that is correlated with larger bodies. We don’t have any scientific evidence that it is caused by being in a larger body, but it is correlated. And so, as someone who now has condition, there’s sort of a double stigma and there it’s been very challenging to get treatment.

Louise: So you’re stuck in the whole stigmatizing, like, medical condition stuff where they’re like, “Oh, you’ve got this condition. If your body was different, you wouldn’t have this condition,” Which is really not an interesting conversation, but it seems to be one that keeps on happening.

Lindley: Right. Right. And so, this is something that I have been dealing with for a while now. Just pursuing treatment and it’s taken much longer than it should have. And I was talking on my personal Facebook about the challenges of getting this health condition addressed and the ways in which some of those challenges have been caused by people reacting to my body size by fatphobia, plain and simple. And this person who has been listening to me speak for years and who is very earnest and was clearly trying very well intentioned. Because this was not the same experience that this other woman had had in her life, she approached me and wrote me a long message about how I was basically bringing all this on myself.

Louise: Oh, bringing all of what on yourself?

Lindley: That maybe I was just imagining that people were treating me poorly.

Louise: Oh ouch. Oh dear.

Lindley: Because I was putting out negative energy into the world, and so my poor treatment was my own fault. And there was a time in my life that I would’ve been devastated and I would’ve believed her. I would’ve gone, “Oh no, maybe because I’m in a fat body, maybe I am putting some kind of energy out into the world that maybe I just, oh no, it’s all my fault.”

Louise: Oh wow.

Lindley: And my friend Brandy, calls this confidence magic.

Louise: Good time.

Lindley: Yeah. She said she calls it confidence magic because she is also in a very large body. And quite often, when we talk about the way we’re treated it, the retort is, well, if you were just acted more confident, if you were just friendlier, if you just did X, Y, Z. But mostly, if you just acted more confidently, then people wouldn’t treat you that way. And it’s entirely possible that for someone who is in a smaller than ours body, that works. Maybe it does work if you’re in a smaller body. But I want to be very that there is nothing I can do or not do that will make my body not an oppressed body. It doesn’t matter what kind of energy I put out into the world, I don’t deserve to be treated poorly, especially for the size of my body.

Louise: It’s putting emphasis back onto you, it puts it back onto you and it takes the focus away from the person who’s being the dick head.

Lindley: Right. My oppression is never my fault, period. And so now I asked her to sit down and really look at that discomfort because the problem was that she had reached a point where she couldn’t imagine that people actually get treated the way that I was describing. And so, it was so uncomfortable to realize that her experience was universal, that she sort of flipped over into this default state of, oh no, you must have done it to yourself, because it it’s so hard to think. It is hard to think about people you like being mistreated. And it’s easier to think that it must somehow be under their control it, that it [unclear28:21] behavior.

Louise: Exactly. I was going to say that it’s a locus of control problem. If we can locate the problem within us, then we feel like it’s controllable and that we can do something about it. But to actually kind of recognize that this is structural, this is big. And we can be as kind and nice and put as much positive energy crystals out to the universe as possible and it won’t change fatphobia.

Lindley: Yeah. And unfortunately, this particular person was not receptive to being asked to reevaluate what she was saying, and so she wandered off and I haven’t seen her since. But it really illustrates that when we start learning about systems of oppression, it can be really uncomfortable. As an America, I have had to do a lot of work around racism and a lot of learning, and as a very white person, that is very uncomfortable. But also, I feel like it’s part of my job on this planet.

Louise: We’re not always supposed to be comfortable.

Lindley: Yeah. And it’s okay to be uncomfortable, especially when you’re learning; you have to learn to sit with it.

Louise: Yeah. Gosh, like there’s so much that you have to deal with, when all you’re really wanting to do is get on Facebook and talk about it.

Lindley: I just want to whine on Facebook, and now too, my personal Facebook, because I have so many professional connections there, it is up being a hybrid. It is a hybrid space. When I’m speaking there, half of the folks who are in my sphere are there because of my work, so it’s never really personal. And that is a boundary that I chose. I could choose to maintain my Facebook to be much, much smaller and more closed, and so I do have to be aware that I’m sort of speaking to a hybrid audience there, but sometimes you just want to get on Facebook and gripe too.

Louise: You want to have a good old Facebook page and just get supported. That’s kind of what we want to.

Lindley: Right. But yeah, it’s so important that all recognize that when we are treated badly for something about ourselves or related to something about ourselves, that’s not ever our fault.

Louise: Ah, such a good message. And the solution isn’t to be kinder to the person who’s being the dick head.

Lindley: Yeah. I don’t owe someone who is oppressing me, who is treating me badly based on the size of my body. I don’t owe them in anything. I don’t owe them an explanation. I don’t owe them kindness. I don’t owe them education. The only thing I owe is to myself to minimize the harm done to me. And if I give them anything beyond that, that’s a gift.

Louise: Yeah. Ah, God, what you’re saying is so important, it’s going to resonate with so many listeners. I just know it.

Lindley: I hope so. It’s time to stop blaming ourselves for the way that we’re treated.

Louise: Yes. Yes. And just last week, one of my clients was talking to me about a health interaction here in Australia with yet another person who is kind of locating the problem, same story. There’s a person who’s lived for a very long time in a larger body, tried every diet under the sun, the body’s not going to change size. Now there’s a health condition that needs urgent attention, and this person has been told very nicely that the problem is their body size. And they’re actually experiencing delays to the actual treatment, while they are referred to a “obesity clinic” to address the problem of their size. And the emphasis there for this person, this health profession was being kind – it was being said to me in a nice way, which was a revelation for this person, because they’ve been treated so unkindly, but people can still be kind and still be a dick head.

Lindley: Yeah. Oh yeah. Like a doctor, many years ago now; the doctor who lied to me about my health numbers so that she could put me on an off-label medication to try to make me lose weight. And so, she told me I had a condition that I did not have so that she could prescribe me a medication to actually try to make me smaller. She was so nice about it. I assure you; she was kind and sweet and gentle while she lied to me and gave me an unnecessary medication for a decade. Oh, she was very nice though.

Louise: I have no words, that is dreadful, but this brings us right back to that Whole30 thing, right. I’m sure their body positive event would be full of kindness and niceness and fairy wings. But what the fuck are they doing? They’re selling a diet.

Lindley: Yeah. And you can, you can put as much lipstick on that pig as you want, but it’s still going to be a pig. And I understand that pigs are smart, sweet, intelligence animals, they’re still going to be a pig.

Louise: That’s right. You know, shit rolled in glitter is still shit.

Lindley: Yeah, it’s still terrible.

Louise: So I’ve looked at your website and there’s the most beautiful photo of a woman in a larger body, in a chair, in a garden, and oh, it is stunning. It is such a beautiful photo. And there are many, many photos like that. And I really want to talk to you about your photography, like how you got… so you got angry at the science, you got all fired up, you started to take pictures of people and now ended it up in this body liberation photography. So tell me about that and how you feel that photographing larger bodies is such an important piece?

Lindley: Yeah, there are two sides to the photography. The one side is the stock photos, and for that I’m finding people who most of those folks are not models. They’re just regular folks that I find in various ways. And then I’d also do offer client photo sessions; boudoir photography and portrait photography and business branding like business photos, and so there’s sort of the two sides of it. And I started out doing the client photography because when I quit my full-time job, that seemed like the most obvious path to take income-wise at the time. And a couple of years later, there’s a stock photo company, a very famous one called Getty images, based out of New York – when you see red carpet photos and you see really high quality stock photos that big companies use, those are often from Getty.

They are very large and powerful. And they released, I think it was in 2017, they released a special stock photo collection. That was a body positive collection. And it got a ton of press. And I got really excited because we need – the more of that in the world, the better. But I went to go look at the photos and it turned out that they were mostly people who are again, in the US average size, which again is much larger than model size body. It was still different, but it wasn’t particularly representative. And also, the photos were very expensive and they were also for editorial use only. And in stock photo lingo, that means that you can’t use them for marketing.

Louise: Okay.

Lindley: What on earth was the whole point of that?

Louise: What are they folding?

Lindley: What a wasted opportunity. And so once again, I got mad and I said, I can do that, so I did.

Louise: And you went like the full spectrum of body sizes, and identities, and cultures and genders, it’s like everything, basically humans.

Lindley: Yeah. When I am looking for models for the stock photos, and again, most of these people aren’t trained models, but when you pose, you become one. So now these folks can all say that they’re, that they’re models too, which is cool. But I am always looking for the largest possible bodies to represent because I’m the only one on the planet doing this work right now, photographing very fat people – the only one. And I look forward to the day when that’s not true. I look forward to the day when I have tons of competition.

Louise: When it’s not a niche or a specialty.

Lindley: Yeah. And it turns out that many of the people who come to work with me on that basis are also people of color, are also LGBT+, or they’re folks, or they have a mental illness, or they have a disability. They bring these other identities with them, and so I have the honor of being able to represent those things as well. Lots of folks in eating disorder recovery.

Louise: Yes. And so, how did someone, like, if someone wants to do a stock photo with you, do they approach you or do you like follow people in shopping centers and ask them? What do you do?

Lindley: It’s been a combination. I have an email list that I maintain. And if you would like to be on that list, I am in Seattle, Washington in the US. But if you’re ever visiting or you want to be on my list just in case, you are welcome to contact. We’ll put that in the show notes, but I do have an email list that I send out model calls to, at least in non COVID 19 times. And then, I did once follow a coworker into a work bathroom; I was doing a corporate contract at a big company, and I had kept running into this woman, she was just lovely and seemed, I don’t like you can tell when you’re washing your hands at a bathroom sink beside someone, but she seemed very nice. And she was right in the demographic I represent. And so finally I followed her into the bathroom one day and I said, “I’m so sorry if this is creepy, and you can tell me to leave at any point and I will leave and never talk to you again. But I do photography and I’d love to have you as a model.” And she came and modeled for me, and it was wonderful.

Louise: That is so gorgeous.

Lindley: But yeah, it’s a combination. When I started out, I was finding people on Craigslist, which is an American website, the classified ads, so it is just been a combination.

Louise: Fantastic. Have you heard of Obesity Canada?

Lindley: I’m aware that they exist. I’ve tried not to get tangled.

Louise: That’s pretty gross. It’s pretty eww. Well, actually, I’m not sure who has released it, but they’re kind of like this O organization up there who have this stock photos collection.

Lindley: Oh yeah. It’s another one of those weird co-opting things.

Louise: Yeah. Yeah. And they work very closely with our friends at Novo Nordisk who are releasing all the weight loss drugs, and trying to take over the whole world.

Lindley: Of course.

Louise: Yes. But those I guess they’re competition for you in a way.

Lindley: Well, yeah, in a way. There’s also a free collection on a website called Unsplash of our own bodies. And those photos are lovely and they are free to use, unlike my photos, which are not free because I need to eat.

Louise: Imagine that!

Lindley: Yeah. My models have the choice of, they can either choose a living wage money or for every hour that they are modeling or they can choose to be paid in photos. Many of them are very poor and they need the money, so I’m happy to pay them. But everybody involved in mine gets paid a living wage, which is why the photos aren’t free because I get paid a living wage too. But yeah, there are some collections out there that do compete, which is fine. Again, we need all the representation we can get.

Louise: We too, but I guess it’s ethics, isn’t it? And because I think that some of the people who are being photographed for those stock photos associated with the O organizations use members of their so-called patient groups, who are people who – that’s another kind of section of my podcasts, people who are being encouraged by the weight loss industry to promote body positivity in the name of getting better public healthcare for weight loss surgeries and the like. So, it’s really nice to hear about the ethics of you treat the people that you work with.

Lindley: Yeah. When I’m photographing people, because again, almost everyone who comes to me… now, sometimes I’ll get people who are just like, I’m ready. Let’s do it. I love my body. I’m ready to show it off. Let’s do the thing.

Louise: How often does that happen?

Lindley: It’s rare, but it’s cool. That’s fun too. But most of the people who come to me, they’re nervous. These are bodies – we live in these bodies that are not considered okay. And now here’s this girl with a camera pointed it at you going, “No, you’re great.” That’s very disconcerting. And so, we do a lot of coaching. We do a lot of… I tell people like they get to control when they’re done, whether they need a bathroom break or they’re hungry or they just need to not have a camera pointed at them. It’s a very warm and friendly environment because that’s the only way to be ethical about this. And if nothing else, if you’re unhappy, it’s going to show in the photos.

Louise: Yeah, of course.

Lindley: So I have a vested interest in keeping you relaxed too. But these organizations releasing these photos is another example of this smiling oppression because it doesn’t matter.

Louise: What a beautiful way of putting it.

Lindley: It doesn’t matter how nice you are about it; if you’re trying to erase me, and if you’re trying to get me to pay you for surgeries or drugs or meal plans or meals or whatever, or weigh-ins, whatever that are not evidence-based. And you can tell I’m all fired up about this, come back to our theme again, because it doesn’t matter how nice you are about it.

Louise: You’re still a dick head.

Lindley: I know all about nice, but nice is not kind and kind is not anti-oppressive.

Louise: Yeah, we’ve got to stop this bullshit. Yeah, I love that term “smiling oppression”. Yeah, if people are being nice to you and trying to represent you, and simultaneously trying to eradicate you; that’s bullshit.

Lindley: Yeah. I mean, again, I talk about being Southern because it’s very relevant here because I have an ancestor who owned a slave, who owned another human being. That was a couple hundred years ago, so I had no idea whether that person was nice to their slave. I wouldn’t have any way of knowing.

Louise: It doesn’t matter.

Lindley: Yeah, it doesn’t matter. In the south, one of the things that I was taught in history classes in school was that slavery wasn’t it really all that bad because people were nice to their slaves and let them live in the house, and I’m not going to repeat the rest of it. It is very…

Louise: Oh my God, that’s just, yeah.

Lindley: Yeah. And I had to learn better as an adult. But just because, and I’m not comparing slavery and fatphobia, they are not the same thing. They are not the same oppression. It doesn’t matter how nice I am to you’ if I am hurting you, if I’m stepping on your foot while smiling and asking you about the weather, the proper response is, “Hey, get off my foot.”

Louise: Yeah. Right. Oh God, so many people need to hear this, and it’s so good to hear how fired up you are.

Lindley: We’re being lied to, and we’re continuing to be lied to by people who want to present, particularly weight loss surgery is now the big new thing, but it’s still not evidence-based. We know that the side effects are really horrific, that a lot of people die. And then most people who even have that surgery gain the weight back. I know somebody who’s had it twice and the doctor is pushing her to have it a third time because it didn’t work. I mean, she lost the weight and then she regained it right back because that’s what human bodies do – they protect.

Louise: Our bodies are amazing. They’re smarter than the weight loss surgeons.

Lindley: Yeah. My body says, “I see a famine coming. We’re hungry, I need to protect you.” That’s what our bodies are doing.

Louise: And I love that the photography that you do highlights the beauty inherent in diversity. And like that picture of the woman in the backyard, she is by no means small and she is just absolutely, like, there is just such beauty in that photo. A lot of the people that I work with really can’t see that beauty in their own body and really don’t even look at their own body, and that’s where I guess photography can open up. Like, what are you trying to do for people when you take their photo, when you’re aware of that much, like avoidance or disgusted or all of that stuff that people get stuck on when it comes to their own body?

Lindley: Well, again, there’s, there’s kind of two facets. There is often when client come to me, generally the folks who are modeling for stock photos, because they are aware that those photos will be used publicly and sold, so there’s an extra layer there of not only being willing to see yourself, but to know that many, many, many other people are going to see these. So generally, the folks who model for stock photos are maybe a little more ready for that. But a lot of the clients who come to me, maybe they haven’t had a photo of themselves since their wedding day, or maybe they haven’t had one since high school, or maybe they’re always in the back of photos, or they’re the ones behind the camera because they can’t stand to be in front of it. And for those people, when I started doing this, I didn’t know the term for it, but the term is exposure therapy.

This is not a process that I’m qualified to coach at this point, generally, this is ad hoc, people do it for themselves. But people will often take their finished photos, and we’ve always look at them together. We always go through them together, both from that’s… I mean, it’s part of my sales process. It’s business, we look at them together because people are buying products with them. But also for support, I think your photos are amazing, and I know that you will too, but I’m still going to be there to metaphorically hold your hand while we look at them. But then people take them home, and they’ll look at them for just a minute. And then the next day they’ll look at them for two minutes, and they will expose exposure therapy themselves. That’s the coolest thing because they’re teaching themselves to look at their own bodies. And then the other facet of that is that you saw that photo of the woman in the chair, in my backyard. I’m very lucky to have overgrown backyard to put people in.

Louise: You have a nice backyard.

Lindley: And we had the behind the scenes of that photo is that I had sheets hung up all over around her because the back of my backyard is open to the next area behind, so I had sheets hung up all over for privacy because she is very nude. So, you saw that photo on the website and it made a difference for you. You remembered it. And so the other facet is that you can… I don’t know what the verb is. You can expose your therapy yourself by finding photos of people who are either look like you, like have your similar body type or are bigger or have visible disabilities, or basically by exposing yourself to all kinds of bodies, not just the ones that you kind of get forced fed by the media. You can do this process for yourself without necessarily having to look at photos of yourself. Although eventually you will also want to look at your own body, but you can do so much just by looking at people of actual bodies; look at them.

Louise: Not in a creepy way – maybe in a creepy way.

Lindley: I mean, maybe don’t go staring at people in the grocery store.

Louise: Don’t follow people into the bathrooms at pools.

Lindley: Yeah, please don’t follow people around staring at them, but the internet is a wonderful place to stare at other bodies.

Louise: Yeah. And actually, you raise a really good point because I think it’s, well, 20 years into my foray into like the non-diet stuff. And I think me, even in the mid two thousands, looking at that same photo, I wouldn’t have had the same reaction of just like being struck by the beauty because I hadn’t done all of that. Like, I do surround myself with lots and lots of pictures of, like we’ve got naked women all over this house and my kids make a point of warning their friends, and I’m pretty sure my dad does think I’m a lesbian, which is okay, because I’m exposing him to diversity, but it’s the exposure, exposure to diversity. If we see ourselves everywhere, represented everywhere and see other people represented everywhere, nothing strikes us as wrong, and then the beauty can grow.

Lindley: Yeah. You know, what we are exposed to inn our regular lives, without taking efforts otherwise is a very narrow slice of humanity. And the more we see people… the more we see all different kinds of bodies, the more normal they become. The more we can see the beauty in those bodies as opposed to those bodies and out of bounds, or wrong, or transgressive, and the more you can expose yourself, the faster it will work.

Louise: Yeah. And do you think that the last place that that kind of appreciation happens is your own body?

Lindley: I think it depends for people. I think for some people, yes. I think for some people, body is the least, like theirs is the last place that happens. And I don’t know, you know, I’m not in other people’s heads, so I don’t know whether that correlates with how outside the mainstream your own body is or not.

Louise: Yeah, I do think there’s something in that, but to keep going. So you are basically encouraging us all to take modes of ourselves.

Lindley: Oh, yeah. Take some new selfies, seriously. Start in the bath. Like if you have access to like a bubble bath, because then you can like take pictures of your toes, like pointing delicately up from the bubbles and it’s the least offensive nude in the world and it’s really safe. And then you turn that camera around or use your use the other camera on your phone. Don’t electrocute yourself please.

Louise: Don’t live stream it.

Lindley: You take a photo of like if you have cleavage and you want to see that cleavage, like you do the bubbles and the cleavage. Again, I’m making hand gestures that you can’t see so you don’t imagine. And you do like the coy bubbles and the cleavage and you like camp it up. And then from there, you get out the bath and you dry off or not, I don’t know your life. And you start putting that camera on a timer and you do whatever makes you happy if that’s nudes or a costume or a Godzilla suit, I don’t care – as long as you’re seeing yourself.

Louise: I love it. It sounds really playful.

Lindley: Yeah. It doesn’t have to be… like, there is a lot. And if you are an eating disorder recovery there a chance that you have been exposed to some of these exercises already on body image. There is a ton of resources out there on things like mirror work, where you’re looking into mirror and seeing yourself and lots of… like, I have a whole book of journaling prompts about body image. There’s a ton of resources out there, but just taking a selfie and deleting it, you can delete it. You don’t have to keep it.

Louise: You don’t have to put it on Facebook.

Lindley: You don’t have to share it. I know that some people will start like a secret Instagram that is just them sharing selfies just to have them out into the world, but you don’t have to, you don’t have to do any of that.

Louise: You don’t have to perform this. Yeah, this is fast, this is good stuff.

Lindley: Just like anything you can do. But again, you’re not obligated to, this is not a moral imperative. You don’t have to do selfies. You don’t have to do nudes. You don’t have to love your body. It’s great if you can respect your own body, but there’s no particular moral good in it other than that, you deserve it. None of these – I’m not giving you marching orders. I’m giving you some options, but like we get to do you.

Louise: Lindley, thank you so much. This conversation has been immense and everything and awesome. Thank you for everything that you’re putting out there in the world and for being so fired up.

Lindley: Yeah, thank you. Such a joy to get to come in and talk about what I’m really head up about.

Louise: Yeah, it’s truly terrific. And I hope that your health condition gets properly addressed and that you feel better soon.

Lindley: Thank you.

Louise: All right. Thank you.

Outro: What a dead set legend. Thank you so much, Lindley, I just adored that conversation and thank you everybody for listening. So if you are looking to learn more about Lindley and all of her amazing work, you can find her at bodyliberationphotos.com or on Insta @ bodyliberationwithlindley. And don’t forget that her name has a silent D in it. So it sounds like Lindley, but it’s L I N D L E Y. Okay everyone, that’s all for this week’s episode, I will see you soon, I promise. Take really good care of yourself in the meantime, trust your body, think critically, push back against diet culture, untrap from the crap.

Resources Mentioned

Find out more about Lindley here

Follow Lindley on Insta @bodyliberationwithlindley

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Imagine being 13 years old, standing in front of a judge, accused of the "crime" of being fat. Imagine the incredible pain you would feel as the judge announces that in the interests of your 'health', you will be removed from your family. But there's no need to imagine. During the height of the UK COVID-19 pandemic, two children were removed from their loving home and put into foster care. The ONLY reason was that both kids were fat. This harrowing story raised the ire of the fabulous Fat Doctor UK, who advocated and pleaded and offered to help educate the social workers, judge, and anyone who would listen, but her valiant attempts have so far been ignored. Two kids have lost their families, thanks to fatphobia. Join me and the fabulous Fat Doctor UK as we get UTTERLY fired up about this travesty of justice. This is a tough listen so please make sure you have adequate spoons.

Show Transcript

0:00:12.7 Louise: Welcome to All Fired Up. I'm Louise, your host. And this is the podcast where we talk all things anti-diet. Has diet culture got you in a fit of rage? Is the injustice of the beauty ideal? Getting your knickers in a twist? Does fitspo, make you wanna spit spo? Are you ready to hurl if you hear one more weight loss tip? Are you ready to be mad, loud and proud? Well, you've come to the right place. Let's get all fired up.

0:00:40.3 Louise: Hello, diet culture drop-outs. I'm so pleased to be with you again and very excited about today's episode. Okay, so first of all, I wanna say a massive thank you to all of the listeners who are so faithful and loving. And I love all your messages and emails, so keep them coming. And if you love the show, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the episodes as they pop out on a roughly monthly basis. And if you love us, give us five stars because the more five star reviews we get, particularly on Apple Podcasts, the louder the message is, the more listeners we get and the quicker we can topple diet culture. And that's the objective here.

0:01:24.7 Louise: If you're looking for some free stuff to help you with your anti-diet journey, gosh I hate that word. Let's call it an adventure. Anti-Diet Adventure, 'cause that's what it is. It's rocking and rolling. It's up and down. It's not predictable. But if you're looking for a resource where you might be going to medical visit, you might be trying to explain just what you're doing to friends and family, look no further than the free e-book; Everything You've Been Told About Weightloss Is Bullshit, written by me and the Anti-Diet Advanced doctor dietician, Dr Fiona Willer. In it we're busting the top 10 myths that float around diet culture like poo in a swimming pool, about the relationship between health and weight, and we're busting myths left, right and centre.

0:02:06.8 Louise: It's a really awesome resource. It's crammed full of science and facts and it will really help steel you and give you the armour that you need to push back against diet culture. So if you wanna grab a copy, it's absolutely free. Like I said, you can go to Instagram which is untrapped_ au and click on the link in the bio and grab a copy there. Or you can go to the website untrapped.com.au and a little pop-up will come and you will grab it there. More free stuff, if you are struggling with relationship with your body during the last couple of years in particular, Befriending Your Body is my free e-course. All about self-compassion, this amazing skill of being kind and befriending your body. And it's like a super power, self-compassion, because we're all taught from the moment we're born, practically, to disconnect and dislike and judge and body police ourselves. Not exactly a recipe for happiness and satisfaction.

0:03:05.9 Louise: So, this little e-course will help build the skill of self-compassion, which is absolutely awesome because if we can learn to connect with our imperfect bodies, we can learn to inhabit them, to look after them and to push back against the forces that are still trying to get us separate from them. You can find the Befriending Your Body e-course from Instagram. So, untrapped_au. Click on the link, Befriending Your Body, it's all free, it's beautiful. It's just so lovely to practice self-compassion meditations. Self-compassion is built for difficult times. And my friends, we're in a difficult time. So, get hold of that if you haven't already.

0:03:47.6 Louise: Big shout out and hello to all of the Untrapped community, the Master Class and online community, who we meet every week. We push back against diet culture together. We share our stories, we've been supporting each other through the various challenges of lockdown and it's just a wonderful community of awesome human beings. So, if you're struggling and you want to join a community, as well as learning all of the skills of how to do things like intuitive eating, returning to a relationship with moving your body that doesn't feel like hard work. Understanding weight stigma and weight prejudice, relationship with body, all of that kind of stuff is covered in this comprehensive course, Untrapped, which I co-created in 2017 with 11 other amazing anti-diet health professionals.

0:04:39.9 Louise: So if you wanna grab a hold of this program and join our online community, please do and now's the time. We're meeting weekly. So every Saturday, I meet with the whole community and we have an awesome chinwag about everything that's going on. You also get all of the material. And there's other things that happened throughout the year like events and retreats. Well, if they're not scuppered by COVID. [chuckle] In usual times, we are able to do that. Well, if that's not being scuppered by COVID, of course. But in ordinary times, we do extra stuff. So find out more about Untrapped on the website, untrapped.com.au. You can also find a link from Insta. So, I think that's a run through all of the preamble.

0:05:23.5 Louise: Now, we arrive at the exciting time. I am so excited to bring you today's episode. You would have heard of the Fat Doctor UK by now, because she burst onto the internet a few months ago. And it seems like she's everywhere and she is loud and she is angry and she's a GP. So, here we have a very fierce, fat-positive voice, straight out of the UK medical profession, which is sorely needed. And I've just got so much admiration for Natasha and everything that she's doing. And I was actually listening to the Mindful Dietician podcast when I first heard Natasha being interviewed by the wonderful, Fi Sutherland. And during that conversation, she mentioned an awful situation in the UK where two kids were removed from their family for being fat.

0:06:13.9 Louise: And I'd actually seen that story and was so horrified that I kind of shelved it a way. But hearing Natasha talk about it and what she decided to do about it herself, it just inspired me. I just knew I had to talk to her. So this episode is everything. It's a long one, and it's a bloody rollercoaster. We go a lot of places during this epic, fantastic conversation. So you are going to laugh, you are going to cry. You're gonna cry more than once, because I know I did. You're gonna be absolutely furious, because just what we're talking about is just so horrific. We are in the 21st century and kids are being removed from loving homes simply because of BMI and a failure to do the impossible, which is lose weight and keep it off via the epic fail of dieting.

0:07:06.8 Louise: So look, this is really a challenging episode to listen to. It's a horrible story but the conversation with The Fat Doctor, Natasha herself is nothing short of inspiring. This woman is on a crusade. She has got heaps of other people involved in changing the landscape in a meaningful way. She is a real champion in the UK and across the planet, and I know you're gonna enjoy this conversation, but have some tissues close by and keep your slow breathing going to help contain the rage 'cause it's real. So without further ado, I give you me and The Fat Doctor herself, Natasha Larmie. So Tash, thank you so much for coming on the show.

0:07:49.0 Natasha Larmie: Thank you so much for having me, I am so excited. Due to the time difference, it's past midnight now and I've never been this awake past midnight before, so I'm really looking forward to this talk.

0:07:58.8 Louise: Oh my god, I am so impressed with your fired up-ness. [laughter]

[laughter]

0:08:04.6 Louise: Tell me what is firing you up.

0:08:07.3 NL: Just in general or specifically about this case? 'Cause obviously a lot of things are firing me up, but I mean, obviously...

0:08:11.7 Louise: Yes.

0:08:12.5 NL: We wanna talk about this particular case that's firing me up.

0:08:16.3 Louise: Yes, what is this case?

0:08:17.9 NL: Yeah, what's going on with this case. So I think it was back in September, October last year that it happened, but I became aware of it a few months later, where two young people, one was actually over the age of 16 and his sibling, his younger sibling is under the age of 16, had been removed from a very loving home, for all intents and purposes, a very loving, happy home and placed into foster care by a judge simply because they were fat, and there is really no other reason at all. There was no other signs of child abuse, neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse, nothing. It's just because they were fat and they failed to lose weight, a judge removed them from a loving home and placed them in foster care, and the older sibling, I think he's 16, 17, didn't actually have to go in because he was too old and the younger girl, she's 13, and she was removed from her home.

0:09:11.5 NL: And when I read about it I think I was so disgusted, it sort of broke... One newspaper reports on it in the UK, and it was several weeks later I guess, because the court transcript had come out, and I read it, I read the article, and I just thought, "Well, this is just the press over-exaggerating." And then someone said... One friend of mine sent me a text message saying, "No, no, no, just read the court's transcript. Transcript, read it," and sent me a link to the court transcript. I read the whole thing and within an hour I think I read the whole thing, and I was in tears. I was so full of rage that I just felt like something had to be done and started a petition. Have tried really hard to get answers, to push people to look into this case but unfortunately, haven't got very far because we're dealing with people who have very much kind of shut us down and have said, "It's not your concern. This is a judge who made this decision and there's nothing you can do about it."

0:10:05.4 Louise: Really?

0:10:05.7 NL: So I'm pretty fired up. Yeah.

0:10:07.2 Louise: Oh, god. Oh, I mean, when you say it out loud, like my whole body is responding. When I read the court transcripts last night, I put it off because I knew that I just probably would have a massive reaction and I was crying too, because this transcript is literally fucking heartbreaking.

0:10:26.5 NL: Tears.

0:10:27.2 Louise: That they're all admitting that this is... No one wants to be split up, they love each other but there's this stupid idea, as if everybody is completely unaware of science and weight science and how fucked dieting is.

0:10:41.5 NL: Yeah.

0:10:42.2 Louise: And how it doesn't fucking work.

0:10:44.4 NL: No.

0:10:44.7 Louise: And it's in a pandemic.

0:10:46.0 NL: Yeah, yeah.

0:10:46.7 Louise: If I fail to lose weight in a lockdown, when the world was going mad...

0:10:51.6 NL: And I mean, actually, the story begins I think 10 years previously, the story begins when they were three and six. These were two children, a three-year-old and a six-year-old who were picked up most likely because... I don't know if it's the same in Australia, but in the UK we have a screening program, so in year one, which is between the age of five and six, you are weighed and measured by a school nurse, and they...

0:11:13.4 Louise: Really?

0:11:13.9 NL: Yeah. And do you not have that? No.

0:11:15.6 Louise: No.

0:11:15.7 NL: We have. This is the National Child Measurement Programme, there's a acronym, but I didn't bother to learn.

0:11:21.2 Louise: Oh my god.

0:11:21.6 NL: But it happens in year one, which is when you're between five and six, and again in year six, which is when you're between 10 and 11.

0:11:29.0 Louise: Oh Christ.

0:11:29.2 NL: Two of the worst times to weigh people...

0:11:30.0 Louise: Correct, yeah.

0:11:32.0 NL: If you're think about it, because of course, especially around the 10, 11 stage some people are heading towards puberty, pre-puberty, some people are not, and so those that are heading towards pre-puberty will often have gained quite a bit of weight because you know that always happens before you go through puberty, you kind of go out before you go up, and that's completely normal, but they get penalised. But anyway, so I imagine... I don't know, because that's not actually in the transcripts but I'm guessing that at six, the older sibling, the boy was shown to be grossly overweight or whatever they call it, morbidly obese. They probably just measured his BMI, even though he was six, they probably measured it, which is just ridiculous 'cause that's not what BMI is for, and rather than looking at growth charts, which is what we should be doing at that age, they will have just sent a letter home and the teachers would have got involved and somewhere along the line, social services would have been called just because of the weight, nothing else, just because of the weight, and social services...

0:12:25.8 Louise: Just because of the percentile of a BMI.

0:12:28.5 NL: That was all it was. It was just weight. There was literally no concerns of ever been raised about these kids apart from their weight. And at the age of three and six, social services got involved and started forcing these children to diet, and they will say that's not what they did, they tried to promote healthy eating, but when you take a three-year-old and a six-year-old and you tell them... You restrict what they eat, you force them to exercise, and you tell them there's something wrong with them, you are putting them on a diet at the age of three to six, and we know, for sure, with evidence, you know, I know, and everyone listening should know by now that when you put young children on a diet like that at such a young age and you make such a big deal out of their weight, they are going to develop disordered eating patterns, and they are going to...

0:13:06.8 Louise: Of course.

0:13:07.8 NL: Gain weight, so...

0:13:09.3 Louise: They're going to instead, that's a trauma process happening.

0:13:12.2 NL: That's true. Yeah, it's...

0:13:13.8 Louise: A trauma to get child protective services involved.

0:13:17.8 NL: Yeah, and live there for 10 years, and then...

0:13:21.4 Louise: Ten years?

0:13:22.5 NL: Got to the stage where they took the proceedings further and further, so that they kept getting more and more involved. And eventually, they decided to make this a child protection issue. Up until that point, child social services were involved, but then, about a year before the court proceedings, something like that, before the pandemic. What happened then was that they gave these children a set amount of time to lose weight, and they enforced it. They bought them Fitbits so that they could monitor how much exercise they were doing, they bought them gym subscriptions, they sent them to Weight Watchers. [chuckle]

0:13:55.9 Louise: Fantastic, 'cause we know that works.

0:13:58.4 NL: We know that works. And of course, as you said, it was during a lockdown. So, Corona hits and there was lockdown, there was schools were closed, and for us, it was really quite a difficult time. And in spite of all of that...

0:14:13.0 Louise: I can't believe it.

0:14:14.9 NL: When the children failed to lose weight, the judge decided that it was in their best interest to remove them from their loving parents. And dad, from what I can tell from the court transcripts. I don't know if you noticed this as well. I think mom was trying very hard to be as compliant as possible.

0:14:26.9 Louise: She was, and even she lost weight, the poor thing.

0:14:30.0 NL: Yes, but I think dad almost seems to be trying to protect them, saying, "This is ridiculous. You can't take my kids away just because of their weight," and I...

0:14:38.1 Louise: Seems like he was in denial, which I fully understand.

0:14:41.1 NL: I would be too, I would be outraged. And it sounds like this young girl... I don't know much about the boy, but from what I can see from the transcripts, this young girl really became quite sad and low and depressed, and obviously, shockingly enough, her self esteem has been completely ruined by this process.

0:14:58.7 Louise: I know, I know. I really saw that in the transcript. This poor little girl was so depressed and getting bullied. And in the transcript, the way that that is attributed to her size and not what abuse they're inflicting on this family.

0:15:13.3 NL: Right. Yeah, really quite shocking. And then of course, the other thing you probably noticed from the transcript is there is no expert testimony at this court proceeding. None whatsoever. There is no psychologist.

0:15:24.0 Louise: Actually, there was.

0:15:25.8 NL: There was...

0:15:26.6 Louise: Dr... What's her name?

0:15:29.4 NL: Yes. You're right, there was a psychologist, and you're absolutely right. She was not an eating disorder specialist or a... She was just a psychologist.

0:15:37.3 Louise: She's a clinical psychologist. Dr. Van Rooyen, and she's based in Kent, and she does court reports for child abuse. Yes, and I can see her weight stigma in there. She's on the one hand acknowledging that the kids don't wanna go, that the kids will suffer mentally from being removed, but you can also see her unexamined weight stigma. And that you're right, where the hell are the weight scientists saying, "Actually, it's biologically impossible to lose weight and maintain it"? Because in the transcripts, they do mention that the kids have lost weight, failed to keep it off.

0:16:16.5 NL: Exactly, exactly. And it's just shocking to me that there would be such a lack of understanding and no desire to actually establish the science or the facts behind this. If I was a judge... I'm not a judge, I'm not an expert, but if I was a judge and I was making a decision to remove a child from a home based purely on the child's inability to lose weight, I would want to find out if it was possible that this child simply couldn't lose weight on their own. I would want to consult experts. I would want to find out if there was a genetic condition. I'm not saying she has a genetic condition. You and I know that she doesn't need to have a genetic condition in order to struggle to lose weight, that actually, the psychology behind this explains it. But even if you've not got to that stage yet, there was no doctors, there was no dietitians, there was no... No one was consulted. It was a psychologist who had no understanding of these specific issues, who, as you said, was clearly biased. There was social workers who said, "We've done everything we can because we've given them a Fitbit and we've sent them to Weight Watchers and sent them to the gym, but they refuse to comply."

0:17:24.9 Louise: I know. It's shocking.

0:17:28.4 NL: Yeah, it strikes me that we live in a world where you just can get away with this. It's just universally accepted that being fat is bad, and it's also your fault, your responsibility. The blame lies solely on the individual, even if that individual is a three-year-old child, it is. And if it's not the child, then of course, it's the parent. The parent has done something wrong.

0:17:52.1 Louise: Specifically the mother, okay.

0:17:53.5 NL: The mother, yeah.

0:17:54.4 Louise: The one with the penis, okay, let's not talk about him, 'cause that was absent. It was the mom. And the only possibility that was examined in this is that it's mom's fault for not being compliant, like you said. That's the only thing. Nothing else like the whole method is a stink-fest of ineffective bullshit.

0:18:13.5 NL: And there's the one point in the transcript when they talk about the fact that she had ice cream or chips or something in the house.

0:18:19.7 Louise: That's Ms. Keeley, their social worker, who went in and judged them. And did you notice that she took different scales in during that last visit? That last visit that was gonna determine whether or not they'd be removed, she took different scales in and weighed them. And they say, "Look, we acknowledge that that could've screwed up the results, but we're just gonna push on with removal."

0:18:43.0 NL: It was their agenda.

0:18:45.0 Louise: It was. It's terrifying, and it's long-term foster care for this poor little girl who doesn't wanna leave her mom. I'm so fired up about this, because the impact of removing yourself from your home because of your body, how on earth is this poor kid gonna be okay?

0:19:05.7 NL: This is my worry. How is mom going to be okay? How is that boy going to be okay? And how is that young, impressionable girl... My oldest son is a little bit older, and my younger son is a little bit younger, she's literally in between the two, and I'm watching what the last two years or last year and a half has done to them in terms of their mental and emotional well-being. And to me, even without social services' involvement, my children's mental health has deteriorated massively. And I cannot even begin to comprehend what this poor girl is going through. I cannot imagine how traumatized she is, and I cannot see how is she ever going to get over this, because she's been going through it since she was three, and it's not at the hand of a parent, it's at the hand of a social worker, it is the social worker's negligence. And what's interesting is a lot of social workers and people who work in social services have reached out to me since I first talked about this case, and they have all said the same thing, the amount of weight stigma in social services in the UK is shocking. It is shocking. It is perfectly acceptable to call parents abusers just because their children are overweight.

0:20:21.8 Louise: Jesus.

0:20:22.2 NL: No other reason, just your child is over the limit, is on the 90th percentile or whatever it is, your child is overweight and therefore you as a mother, usually as you said, it's a mother, are an abusive mother, because you've brought your child up in a loving environment but they failed to look the way that you want them to look, that's it.

0:20:41.0 Louise: Okay. So, that's me, right. My eldest is in the 99th percentile, so I am an abuser, I'm a child abuser.

0:20:47.3 NL: Child abuser, I can't believe I'm probably talking to one.

0:20:49.3 Louise: I know. [laughter]

0:20:49.9 NL: I can't believe I'm probably talking to one. And you know, the irony, my son's been really poorly recently and he's been up in... I mean we've spent most of our life in the hospital the last few weeks, and...

0:20:58.1 Louise: Oh dear.

0:20:58.3 NL: Went to see a paediatrician and they did the height and weight, and he is on the 98th percentile, my son has a 28-inch waist. He is a skeleton at the moment because he's been really ill, but he is mixed race, and we all know that the BMI is not particularly...

0:21:12.9 Louise: It's racist.

0:21:13.2 NL: Useful anyway, but it's massively racist, so my children have always been, if you weigh them, a lot heavier than they look, because I mean he's... There isn't an ounce of fat on him. My point is that BMI is complete utter bullshit and it doesn't deserve to exist. The fact that we've been using up until now is shameful and as a doctor, I cannot accept that we use this as a measure of whether a person is healthy and certainly as a measure of whether a child is healthy, because until recently, we were told you don't do BMIs on anyone under the age of 16 but that's just gone out the window now, everyone...

0:21:48.5 Louise: I know.

0:21:48.6 NL: Gets a BMI, even a six-year-old.

0:21:50.1 Louise: You get a BMI, you get a BMI. [laughter] I think it's not supposed to be used for an individual anything, it's a population level statistic.

0:22:01.1 NL: And a pretty crappy one at that.

0:22:02.3 Louise: It's a shitty one.

0:22:02.6 NL: It is like you said.

0:22:04.2 Louise: Yes.

0:22:04.6 NL: It's based on what European men, it's not particularly useful for men, it's not particularly useful for any other race, it's just useful perhaps. Even when it came out, like even when... What's his face? I forget his name right now, Ancel Keys. When he did that study that first look, brought in the BMI into our medical world as it were, yeah, even he said at the time it was alright. It's not the best, it's not the worst, it will do. It's the best out of the bunch. I mean he didn't even have much enthusiasm at the time. He said specifically it's not meant to be used as an individual assessment. And even the guy who kind of didn't invent it, but he sort of invented it as a measure of "obesity" and yet... And even he didn't have much good stuff to say about it. If he was selling the latest iPhone, Apple would have a lot to say about that. [laughter] I just... This fact that we've become obsessed and we know why this is. We know this is because of the diet industry, we know this is because of people trying to make money out of us and succeeding, very successful at making money out of us.

0:23:02.9 Louise: It's actually terrifying how successful this is because when I read this transcript, I've been doing a lot of work against the Novo Nordisk impact and how our modern oh, narrative has been essentially created by the pharmaceutical company that's producing all of the weight loss drugs, they have 80% of the weight loss drugs market and they've shamelessly said in their marketing that this is their drive to increase... That it's to create a sense of urgency for the medical management of obesity. And here it is, this is where it bleeds, because they're telling us this bullshit that it's going to reduce stigma. No, it's going to create eugenics. This is hideous what's happening here and I can't believe that the world didn't stop and that the front page of newspapers aren't saying like get fucked, like get these kids back. There's no outrage.

0:24:04.2 NL: No, there is none whatsoever. We got just over 2,000 people supporting the petition and as grateful as I am for that, that's just what the fuck, that's 2,000 people who live in a country of 68 million and only 2,000 people had something to say about this and, we... That's how much we hate fat kids and how much we hate fat people. We just don't see them as worthy and nobody wants to defend this young girl, nobody sort of feels sorry for her and I just... I can't get my head around this whole thing. It's funny because I didn't really know about it, a year ago I was completely clueless. It's all happened rather quickly for me that I've begun to understand Haze and begun to understand who Novo Nordisk was and what they are doing and what Semaglutide actually is and how it's going to completely change the world as we know it.

0:24:56.5 NL: I think this particular drug is going to become part of popular culture in the same way that Viagra is, we use that word now in novels and in movies. It's so popular and so understood, nobody talks about... I don't know, give me a name of any drug, like some blood pressure medication, they don't talk about it in the same way they talk about Viagra. But Semaglutide is going to be that next drug because they have tapped into this incredibly large population of people who are desperate to lose weight and they've got this medication that was originally used to treat diabetes, just like Viagra was originally used to treat blood pressure and have said, "Wow, look at this amazing side effect. It makes people lose weight as long as you run it. Let's market this." And the FDA approved it. I mean, no...

0:25:45.1 Louise: I know.

0:25:45.8 NL: No thought as to whether or not this drug is gonna have a massive impact on people in their insulin resistance and whether they're gonna develop diabetes down the line. I don't think they care. I don't think anybody actually cares. I think it's just that everybody is happy, woo-hoo, another way to treat fat people and make a good deal of money out of it.

0:26:03.9 Louise: Right? So, Semaglutide is... It's the latest weight loss drug to be approved by the FDA from Novo Nordisk and it is like the Mark II. So, they were selling Saxenda, Saxenda's here in Australia, they're pushing it out and this Semaglutide is like the Mark II, like I think of Saxenda as like Jan Brady, and Semaglutide is like Marcia.

[laughter]

0:26:29.3 Louise: 'Cause it's like, "Oh my God, look at Semaglutide. Look at this amazing one year trial." [laughter] Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, like oh my God, we can make so much weight loss happen from this intervention. Why? Why do we need all of this weight loss, all these percentages? And, "Oh, we can lose 15% and 20%," and we don't need to for health, but okay.

0:26:53.3 NL: Yeah. The other thing that we have to remember about it, I don't think it's actually that much better. I've used all of these drugs in treating diabetes. So many years, I used these drugs. The beauty of it, of course, is that it's a tablet, and Saxenda is an injection. I'm assuming you have the injectable form, yeah?

0:27:09.9 Louise: That's right. You have to inject, and it's very expensive.

0:27:14.0 NL: It's extremely expensive, as will... Marcia Brady will be more expensive, I'm sure.

0:27:18.6 Louise: So high maintenance. [chuckle]

0:27:20.2 NL: Absolutely, but she is easier to administer. A lot of people don't like the idea of injecting themselves, but taking a tablet is dead easy. So, that's what makes this special, as it were, because it's the only one of that whole family that is oral, as opposed to injectable.

0:27:37.6 Louise: Well, that's interesting, because the paper with all of the big, shiny weight loss was injectable, it wasn't tablet.

0:27:43.7 NL: Oh, really? Oh, but they're marketing it as the oral version, definitely. That's the one that's got approved. It's brand name is...

0:27:51.3 Louise: Wegovy.

0:27:52.2 NL: Oh no, well, I have a completely different brand name. Is it different, maybe, in Australia?

0:27:57.1 Louise: Well, this is in America. In Australia, they haven't cornered us yet. I'm sure that they're trying to do it, but it was the FDA approval for Wegovy, [0:28:05.4] ____.

0:28:05.9 NL: So, they obviously changed the name. That's not the same one we use in diabetes. Clearly, they've had to revamp it a bit. Irrespective of oral, injectable, whatever, I think that this is going to... Novo Nordisk is sitting on a gold mine, and they know it. And it's going to change our lives, I think, because bariatric surgery is quite a big thing, and it's something that often people will say, "I'm not keen on doing." And the uptake is quite low still, and so, in bariatric...

0:28:35.2 Louise: In the UK, not here.

0:28:36.2 NL: Yeah, [chuckle] yeah, but bariatric surgeons are probably very afraid right now, because there's drugs coming along and taking all of their business away from them.

0:28:43.5 Louise: Actually, you know what Novo were doing? They're partnering with the bariatric surgeons.

0:28:46.2 NL: Of course they are.

0:28:46.9 Louise: And they're saying to them, "Hey, let's use your power and kudos, and our drugs can help your patients when they start to regain."

0:28:56.4 NL: Oh my gosh.

0:28:58.0 Louise: It's literally gateway drug. Once you start using a drug to reduce your weight, you have medicalized your weight, and it's a small upsell from there. So, I think this is all part of a giant marketing genius that is Novo Nordisk. But I'm interested to hear your concerns, 'cause I'm concerned as well with the use of diabetes drugs as weight loss medications, and I read about it being that they're hoping that people will take this drug like we take statins. So, everyone will take it preventatively for the rest of their lives. What's the long-term impact, do you think, of taking a double dose of a diabetes drug when you don't have diabetes?

0:29:43.5 NL: Well, first of all, they don't know. Nobody knows, because they've only done a study for a year, and just how many diet drugs have we put out there into the universe since the 1970s, and then taken them back a few years later, 'cause we've gone, "Oh, this kills"? If you've got diabetes and you take this drug because you've got insulin resistance and this drug helps you to combat your insulin resistance in the way that it works, you've already got diabetes. And so, there is no risk of you developing diabetes, and this drug does work, and so, I have no issue with the GLP-1 analogs in their use in diabetes. I think all the diabetes drugs are important, and I'm not an expert. But you've really got to ask yourself, if you take a healthy body and you act on a system within the pancreas and within the body, in a healthy, essentially, healthy body, healthy pancreas, you've got to ask yourself if it's going to worsen insulin resistance over time. It's actually going to lead to increased cases of diabetes. Now, they say it won't, but...

0:30:47.4 Louise: How do they know that? 'Cause I've read a study by Novo, sponsored, in rats, that showed that it did lead to insulin resistance long-term.

0:30:57.6 NL: Right, I think common sense, because we understand that the way that the body works, just common sense. The way the body works suggests to me that over long periods of time, taking this medication in a healthy person is going to lead to increased insulin resistance, which in turn will lead to diabetes. That is what common sense dictates. But of course, as you said, we don't know. We don't have a study. Nobody has looked into this. And it makes me sad that we are using a drug to treat a condition that isn't a condition.

0:31:30.2 Louise: I know, yeah. [chuckle]

0:31:32.4 NL: And inadvertently, potentially giving people a whole...

0:31:36.0 Louise: Creating a condition.

0:31:36.6 NL: Creating an actual medical condition, which we all know to be life-threatening if untreated. And so, I cannot fathom why... Well, I can, I understand. It's for financial reasons only, but I can't understand why there are doctors out there that want to prescribe this. This is the issue that I have. I'm a doctor, and I can't speak on behalf of drug companies or politicians or anyone else, but I can speak to what doctors are supposed to be doing, and we have a very strong code of conduct that we have to abide by. We have ethical and moral principles and legal obligations to our patients. And so, doing no harm and doing what is in your patients' best interest, and practising fairly and without discrimination, and giving people... Allowing them to make an informed choice where they are aware of the risks and the side effects and all the different treatment options.

0:32:28.0 NL: When it comes to being fat, again, it seems to have gone out the window. None of these things are happening. We wouldn't dream of addressing other issues this way, it's just fatness, because it's just so commonly, widely accepted that fatness is bad and you've got to do whatever you can to get rid of it. I've had someone tell me today that they are pregnant with their first child and they had their first conversation with the anesthetist, who told them they had to do whatever they could to lose weight before they had their baby. This is a pregnant woman.

0:32:58.1 Louise: Whatever they had to do?

0:33:00.1 NL: Whatever they had to do, and she said, "What do you want me to do, buy drugs off the streets?" And the anesthetist said... Wait for it. The anesthetist said, "It would be safer for you to use a Class A drugs than it would for you to be fat in pregnancy". The anesthetist said that to this woman. She told me this and I just went "Please just... Can you just report him?"

0:33:21.7 Louise: Shut the front door, Jesus Christ!

0:33:24.6 NL: Can you imagine? First of all, that's not true. Second of all, he is saying that it is better to be a drug addict than to be a fat person. This is no judgment on drug addicts, but you do not encourage your patients to use Class A drugs to lose weight. That's stupid. Imagine if he'd said that about anything else, but in his... And it was a man, in his world, for whatever reason, his ethics just abandons them all in favor of fat shaming a woman.

0:33:52.4 Louise: This is where we're at with, it's self examined. It's like there's a massive black hole of stigma just operating unchallenged effortlessly and actually growing, thanks to this massive marketing department, Novo. It's terrify... That poor lady, I'm so glad she's found you and I hope she's not gonna go down the Class A drug route.

[laughter]

0:34:19.3 NL: She's definitely not, but she was quite traumatized. She's on a Facebook group that I started and it's great because it's 500 people who are just so supportive of each other and it was within a few minutes 50 comments going "What a load of crap, I can't believe this," "You're great, this doctor is terrible". But it just stuck to me that one of my colleagues would dare, would have the audacity to do something as negligent as that. And I'm gonna call it what it is. That's negligence. But I'm seeing it all the time. I'm seeing it in healthcare, I'm seeing it in Social Services, I'm seeing it in schools, I'm seeing it in the workplace, I'm seeing it everywhere. You cannot escape it. And as a fat person, who was in the morbidly, super fat, super obese stage where she's just basically needs to just be put down like a...

0:35:16.3 Louise: Oh my gosh, it's awful.

0:35:18.5 NL: And as that person, I hear all of these things and I just think "I'm actually a fairly useful member of society, I've actually never been ill, never required any medication, managed to give birth to my children, actually to be fair, they had to come out my zip as opposed to through the tunnel." But that wasn't because I was fat, that was because they were awkward. But this anesthetist telling this woman that she's too fat to have a baby. I was just like "But I am the same weight. I am the same BMI as you". And I had three and I had no problems with my anesthetics. In fact after my third cesarean section, I walked out the hospital 24 hours later, happy as Larry, didn't have any problems. And I know people who were very, very thin that had a massive problems after their cesarean. So there's not even evidence to show how dangerous it is to have a BMI over 35 and still... And then caught when it comes to an anesthetic. This isn't even evidence-based, it's just superstition at this point.

0:36:12.8 Louise: It's a biased based and the guidelines here in Australia, so I think above 35 women are advised to have a cesarean because it's too dangerous. And women are not allowed to give birth in rural hospitals, they have to fly to major cities. So imagine all of... And don't even get me started on bias in medical care for women. It's everywhere, like you said, and it's unexamined and all of this discrimination in the name of, apparently, healthcare. It's scary.

0:36:43.9 NL: It really is. Gosh, you've got me fired up, it's almost 1:00 in the morning and I'm fired up. I'm never gonna get to sleep now.

[laughter]

0:36:51.7 Louise: Okay, I don't wanna tell you this, but I will. 'Cause we're talking about how on earth is this possible, like why aren't there any medical experts involved to talk about this from a scientific basis, and I'm worried that even if they did have medical people in the court, they wouldn't have actually stuck up for the kid. I found this JAMA article from 2011. It's a commentary on whether or not large kids should be removed from their families, and it was supportive of that.

0:37:18.0 NL: Oh gosh. Of course it was.

0:37:22.0 Louise: And in response to that commentary, the medpage, which is a medical website, a newsletter kind of thing. They did a poll of health professionals asking should larger kids removed from their families, and 54% said yes.

0:37:40.7 NL: Of course.

0:37:41.3 Louise: I know. Isn't that dreadful? One comment on that said "It seems to me the children in a home where they have become morbidly obese might be suffering many other kinds of abuse as well, viewing in the size of a child. 'Cause we've all gotten bigger since the '80s. We're a larger population and viewing that as abuse and as a fault of parenting. Unbelievable. I also had a little dig around Australia, 'cause it's not isolated in the UK, there's so many more cases.

0:38:16.9 NL: They have. Yeah.

0:38:17.8 Louise: And I think actually in the UK, it might be a lot more common than in Australia.

0:38:22.1 NL: Yeah, I can believe that.

0:38:23.5 Louise: But it did happen here in 2012, there was some report of two children being removed from their families because of the size of the kids. And the media coverage was actually quite dreadful. I'll put in the show notes, this article, and the title is "Victorian authorities remove obese children, removed from their parents". So even the title is wrong, couldn't even get their semantics right. There's a picture, you can imagine what picture would accompany...

0:38:55.2 NL: Well of course it can't be of the actual children, because I think it leads to lawsuit. I'm assuming it's a belly. Is there a belly? Is there a fat person in it or a fat child eating a burger?

0:39:06.2 Louise: Yes. [laughter]

0:39:07.1 NL: Sorry, it's either the belly or the fat person eating the burger. So, a fat child eating the burger, sorry.

0:39:11.9 Louise: Helpfully, to help the visually impaired, the picture had caption and the caption reads "Overweight brother and sister sitting side by side on a sofa eating takeaway food and watching the TV." So not at all stereotyped, very sensitive, nuanced article this one. And then we hear from Professor John Dixon, who is a big part of obesity Inc here in Australia. He told the ABC that "Sometimes taking children away from their parents is the best option." In the same article, he also admits "There's no services available that can actually help kids lose weight", and he says that it's not the parents fault. Helpfully, this article also states that "Obesity is the leading cause of illness and death in Australia."

[laughter]

0:39:58.7 NL: I love it when I hear that. How have they figured that out? What do they do to decide that? Where does this...

0:40:08.4 Louise: They don't have to provide any actual evidence.

0:40:10.5 NL: Right. They just say it.

0:40:12.1 Louise: Got it.

0:40:13.0 NL: Just say it.

0:40:14.4 Louise: Diet. And I checked just to make sure, 'cause in case I've missed anything.

0:40:18.4 NL: Yeah.

0:40:19.6 Louise: The top five causes of death in Australia in 2019; heart disease, number two dementia, number three stroke, number four malignant neoplasm of trachea bronchus and lung.

0:40:30.4 NL: Lung cancer.

0:40:30.9 Louise: Lung cancer.

0:40:31.5 NL: That's lung cancer.

0:40:32.3 Louise: And number five chronic lower respiratory disease.

0:40:38.4 NL: So translation. Heart attacks, dementia... In the UK it's actually dementia first, then heart attacks. So dementia, heart attacks, stroke, same thing in the UK, and then lung cancer and COPD. Both of those are smoking-related illnesses. And I can say quite safely that they are smoking-related illness because the chance of developing lung cancer or COPD if you haven't smoked is minuscule. So what the people are doing is they're saying, "Well, we can attribute all of these heart attacks and strokes and dementia to "obesity". And the way we can do that is we just look at all these people that have died, and if they are fat we'll just assume it's their fat that caused their heart disease.

0:41:20.0 NL: To make it very clear to everybody that is listening, if you have a BMI of 40, we can calculate your risk of developing a heart attack or a stroke over the next 10 years using a very sophisticated calculator actually, it's been around for some time. It's what we use in the UK. I'm assuming Australia has a similar one, don't know what it's called there. In the UK it's called a QRISK. So I've done this. I have calculated. I have found a woman, I called her Jane. I gave her a set of blood pressure and cholesterol, and I filled in a template. And then I gave her a BMI of 20. And then I gave her a BMI of 40. And I calculated the difference in her risk. I calculated the difference in her risk, and the difference in her risk was exactly 3%. The difference in her risk if she was a smoker was 50%. She was 50% more likely to have a heart attack if she was a smoker, but only 3% more likely to have a heart attack if she had a BMI of 40 instead of a BMI of 25.

0:42:15.0 NL: To put it into perspective, she was significantly more likely to have a heart attack if she was a migraine sufferer, if she had a mental health condition, if she had lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, if she was Asian, if she was a man, and all of those things dramatically increased her risk more than having a BMI of 40. So it's just very important that doctors will admit, 'cause it's about admitting to a simple fact, this calculator we use to predict people's risks. So if we know that weight only has a 3-4% impact on our cardiovascular risk as opposed to smoking which has a 50% impact, as opposed to aging which is why most people die because they get old and let's face it everybody dies some time.

0:43:04.0 NL: So what's happening is the... Whoever they are, are taking all these deaths from heart disease which was likely caused by the person aging, by the person being male or just being old and being over the age of 75, your risk of heart disease goes up massively irrespective of your weight. So instead of saying, "Well, it's just heart disease", they've gone, "Well, it's heart disease in a fat person and therefore it was the fatness that caused the heart disease." And that is offensive to me to the point that now, I have heard... And this is awful in this year, our patients that are dying of COVID, if they die of COVID in the UK, it's actually quite heart breaking, it's happened to someone that I was close to. If they die of COVID in the UK, and they happen to be fat, the doctor writes "obesity" on their death certificate...

0:43:51.8 Louise: No way.

0:43:52.4 NL: As a cause of death. They died of COVID.

0:43:55.2 Louise: What?

0:43:55.5 NL: They died of COVID. That's what they died of. They died of this terrible virus that is killing people in their droves but people are under the misguided impression that being fat predisposes you to death from COVID, which is not true. It's not true. That is a complete gross misrepresentation of the facts. But we've now got doctors placing that on a person's death certificate. Can you imagine how that family feels? Can you imagine what it feels like to get this death certificate saying, "Your family member is dead from COVID but it's their fault 'cause they were obese." And how can the doctor know? How could the doctor know that?

0:44:34.2 Louise: How can they do that?

0:44:35.6 NL: How can they do that? And this is my point, this doctor that's turning around and saying it's safer for children to be removed from their loving home. Obviously, this person has no idea of the psychological consequences of being removed from your family. But it's safer for that person to be removed from their home than to remain in their home and remain fat. What will you achieve? Is this person going to lose weight? No. I can tell you what this person is going to do. This person is going to develop...

0:44:58.9 Louise: They even say that. They even say that in the transcripts. We don't think that they'll get any more supervision.

0:45:03.1 NL: Yeah. In fact, we're gonna get less supervision because it's not a loving parent. You're going to develop, most likely an eating disorder. You're going to develop serious psychological scars. That trauma is going to lead to mental health problems down the line. And chances are you're just gonna get bigger. You're not gonna get smaller because we know that 95% of people who lose weight gain it all back again. We know that two-thirds of them end up heavier. We know that the more you diet, the heavier you're gonna get. And that actually, this has been shown to be like a dose-response thing in some studies. So the more diets you go on, the higher your weight is going to get. If you don't diet ever in your life, chances are you're not gonna have as many weight problems later on down the line. So, as you're saying, we are living in a society that's got fatter. And there's lots of reasons for that. It's got to do with the food that we're eating now. That we're all eating. That we're all consuming.

0:45:55.1 Louise: Food supply. Only some of us will express from there the epigenetic glory of becoming higher weight.

0:46:02.0 NL: Right. And that's the thing, isn't it? Genetics, hormones, trauma, medications. How many people do I know that are on psychiatric medications and have gained weight as a result, Clozapine or... It's just what's gonna happen. You name it. Being female, having babies, so many things will determine your weight.

0:46:21.0 Louise: Getting older. We're allowed to get... We're supposed to get bigger as we get older.

0:46:25.1 NL: And then you know that actually, there are so many studies nowadays, so many studies that we've labeled it now that show that actually being fat can be beneficial to you. There's studies that show that if you end up in ICU with sepsis, you're far more likely to survive if you're fat. If you've got a BMI over 30, you're more likely to survive. There's studies that show that if you have chronic kidney disease and you're on dialysis, the chances of you surviving more long-term are significantly higher if you're fat. Heart failure, kidney disease, ICU admissions, in fact, even after a heart attack, there's evidence to show that you're more likely to survive if you're fat. And they call this the obesity paradox. We have to call it a paradox because we cannot, for one moment, admit that actually there's a possibility that being fat isn't all that bad for you in the first place and we got it wrong. Rather than admit that we got it wrong, we've labeled a paradox because we have to be right here, we have to...

0:47:18.0 Louise: Yeah, it's like how totally bad and wrong, except in certain rare, weird conditions, as opposed to, "Let's just drop the judgment and look at all of this much less hysterically."

0:47:29.5 NL: Yeah. And studies have shown that putting children on a diet, talking about weight, weight-shaming them, weighing them, any of these things, have been linked to and have been demonstrated to cause disordered eating and be a serious risk for direct factor for weight gain. And that, in my opinion, is the important thing to remember in this particular case, because as I said, social services start in weight-shaming, judging, and talking about weight when these children were three and six, and they did that for 10 years. And in doing so, they are responsible for the fact that these children went on to gain weight, because that's what the evidence shows. And there's no question about this evidence, there's multiple papers to back it up.

0:48:14.1 NL: There's an article published in Germany in 2016, there was an article published last year by the University of Cambridge, and even the American Academy of Pediatrics agrees that talking about weight, putting children on a diet, in fact, even a parent going on a diet is enough to damage that child and increase their risk of developing disordered eating patterns and weight gain.

0:48:37.9 NL: And so, as far as I'm concerned, that to me, is evidence enough to say that it's actually social services that should be in front of a judge, not these children, but it's the social workers that should be held to account. And I have written... And this is something that is very important to say. I wrote to the council, the local authority, and I've written a very long letter, I've published it on my website. You can read it anytime, anyone can read it. And I wrote to them and I said, "This is the evidence. Here are all the links. As far as I'm concerned, you guys got it terribly wrong and you have demonstrated that there is a high degree of weight bias that is actually causing damage to children. I am prepared to come and train you for free and teach all of your social workers all about weight bias, weight stigma, and to basically dispel the myths that obviously are pervading your social work department." And they ignored me. I wrote to politicians in the area. They ignored me. I wrote to a counselor who's a member of my political party, who just claimed, "Yeah, I'll look into it for you." Never heard from her again. Yeah, nobody cares.

0:49:44.0 Louise: It's just such a lack of concern.

0:49:45.7 NL: I didn't even do it in a critical way. I had to do it in a kind of, "I will help you. Let me help you. I'm offering my services for free. I do charge, normally, but I'll do it for free for you guys." No one is interested. Nobody wants to know. And that makes me really sad, that they weren't even willing to hear me out.

0:50:03.0 Louise: I can't believe they didn't actually even answer you.

0:50:06.5 NL: Didn't answer me, didn't respond to any of my messages, none of the counselors, none of the... Nobody has responded, and I've tried repeatedly.

0:50:14.4 Louise: So, this is in West Sussex, yeah?

0:50:16.7 NL: That's right, West Sussex, that's right.

0:50:18.0 Louise: You know what's weird about that? I've actually attended a wedding at that council, that my ex-father-in-law got married there. And when I saw the picture there, I'm like, "Oh my God, I've actually been there." So, I had a poke, and I don't know if you know this, but hopefully, in the future, when those children, C and D, finally decide to sue the council, that they can use this as evidence. There is a report from a... It's called a commissioner's progress report on children services in West Sussex from October 2020, which details how awful the service has been for the past few years, and huge issues with how they're running things. And it says, "Quite fragile and unstable services in West Sussex." So, this family who've had their kids removed were being cared for by a service with massive problems, are being referred to programs that don't work, and that there's a massive miscarriage of justice.

0:51:17.3 NL: And I'm glad you're talking about it, and I'm glad we're talking about it. And I wish that we had the platform to talk about it more vocally. I'd want to be able to reach out to these... To see patients... They're not patients, child C and D. I want to be able to reach out to mum as well, and say...

0:51:36.3 Louise: I just wanna land in Sussex and just walk around the street saying, "Where are you? I wanna help."

0:51:40.2 NL: "Where are you? And let me hug you." And I'm very interest to know, I'd be very interested to know the ethnic origin of these young people.

0:51:48.9 Louise: And the socio-economic status of these people.

0:51:50.2 NL: Socio-economic status, 100%. I would very much like to know that. That would make a huge... I think that I can guess, I'm not going to speculate, but I had a very lovely young woman contact me from a... She was now an adult, but she had experienced this as a child. She had been removed from her home and was now an adult, and she had been in foster care, in social services, for a few years, and had obviously contact with her mum but hadn't been reunited with her mum ever. So it wasn't like it was for a time and then she went back. And we talked about this. She was in a London borough, I shall not name the borough, but I know for a fact that her race would've played a role in this, because she was half-Black, half-Turkish.

0:52:39.2 NL: And there're a few things in that court transcript that caught my attention. I don't know if you noticed there was a mention of the smell from the kitchen, and they didn't specifically said, you know, mould, or you know that there was mould in the kitchen, or there was something in the kitchen that was rotting, something like that, 'cause I think they would have specified. It was just a smell. And that made me wonder, is this to do with just the fact that maybe this family lived in poor housing or was it the type of food that they were cooking for their children? Is there a language issue, is there a cultural issue. What exactly is going on? 'cause we don't know that from the court transcript, so that's another thing that... Another piece of the puzzle that I would really be interested in. Is this a white wealthy family? Probably not. I don't think they are.

0:53:27.2 Louise: Yeah it didn't struck me that way either. Yeah, yeah this is potentially marginalization and racism happening that...

0:53:35.1 NL: Yeah.

0:53:35.9 Louise: And here in Australia, we've got an awful history of how we treated First Nations people and we removed indigenous kids from their families, on the basis of like we know better, and I just... Yeah honestly, elements of that here, like we know better.

0:53:51.5 NL: Yes. Right, this is it. We know better than you have to parent your child. I am have always been a big believer of not restricting my children's feed in any way. I was restricted, and I made the decision when we had the kids that there would just be no restriction at all. I have like been one of those parents that had just been like, that's the draw with all the sweet treats in it. They're not called treats, they're just sweets and chocolate and candy, there it is. It's within reachable distance. Help yourself whenever you want, ice pops in the freezer, there's no like you have to eat that to get your pudding. None of that.

0:54:27.6 NL: My kids have just been able to eat whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, I never restricted anything, I wanted them to be intuitive eaters. And of course they are, and what amazes me is now my teenage son, when we were on lockdown, and he was like homeschooled, he would come downstairs, make himself a breakfast, and there was like three portions of fruit and veg on his plate, and not because someone told him that he had to, but just because he knew it was good for him and he knew it was healthy, there was like a selection, his plate was always multi-colored, he was drinking plenty of water. He would go and cook it, he cooked himself lunch, he knew that he can eat sweets and crisps and chocolate whenever he wanted to, and he didn't, he just didn't. Like it was there, that drawn, it gets emptied out because it's become a bit... But no, they don't take it, and sometimes they do, 'cause they fancy it, but most of the times they don't. And that is my decision as a parent, I believe that I have done what is in their best interest, I believe that I will prove over time that this has had a much better impact on their health, not restricting them.

0:55:26.4 Louise: Absolutely, Yeah.

0:55:27.6 NL: But the point is they're my children, and it was my damn choice, and even if my child is on the 98th percentile, it's still my damn choice, nobody gets to tell me how to parent my child. That is my child, I know what's best for them. And I believe that my children are going to prove the fact that this is a great way of parenting, and I know that actually most of their friends who had, were not allowed to eat the food that they wanted to eat used to come over to our house and just kind of like wide eyed. And they binge, they binge, you know, to the point that I have to restrict them and say I actually I don't think mom would like that if I gave that to you.

0:56:00.0 Louise: We know that that's what we do when we put kids in food deserts, we breed binge eating and food insecurity, and trying to teach our kids to have a relaxed and enjoyable relationship with food is what intuitive eating is all about. And without a side salad of fat phobia, we're not doing this relationship with food stuff in order to make sure you're thin, we're doing this to make sure that you feel really safe and secure in the world, and you know health is sometimes controllable and sometimes not, and this kind of mad obsession we have with controlling our food and the ability it will give us like everlasting life is weird.

0:56:39.0 NL: Yeah.

0:56:39.7 Louise: Yeah. Gosh, I'm so glad you're parenting those kids in that way and I've noticed the same thing with my kids. Like my kids, we are a family of intuitive eaters and it's just really relaxed, and there's variety, and they go through these little love affairs with foods, and it's really cute. [chuckle] And they're developing their palettes, and their size is not up to me.

0:57:05.8 NL: Yeah.

0:57:06.4 Louise: Yeah.

0:57:07.4 NL: Right.

0:57:08.1 Louise: It's up to me to help them thrive.

0:57:10.7 NL: That's right. And when people talk about health, I often hear people talking about health, and whenever they ask me that question, you know, surely you can agree that being fat is not good for your health, well, I'll always kinda go, "Oh Really? Could you just do me a favor here and define health?" Because I spend my whole life trying to define health, and I'm not sure that I've got there yet, but I can tell you without a doubt that this for me, in my personal experience as a doctor... And I've been a doctor for a long time now, and I see patients all the time, and I'm telling you that in my experience, the most important thing for your health is your mental and emotional well-being, that if you are not mentally and emotionally well, it doesn't matter how good your cholesterol is, it doesn't matter whether or not you've got diabetes, that is irrelevant, because if you're not mental and emotional... I'm not saying that 'cause you won't enjoy life, I mean, it has an impact on your physical health. And I spend most of my day dealing with either people who are depressed or anxious, and that's what they've presented with, or they've presented with symptoms that are being made worse or exacerbated by their mental and emotional pull, mental and emotional well-being.

0:58:19.1 NL: So giving my children the best start in life has always been about giving them a good mental and emotional well, start. It's about giving... It's not just teaching them resilience, but teaching them to love themselves, to be happy with who they are, to not feel judged or to not feel that they are anything other than the brilliant human beings that they are. And I believe that that is what's going to stand them in the greatest... In the greatest... I've lost my words now, but that's what's gonna get them through life, and that's why they're going to be healthy. And how much sugar they eat actually is quite irrelevant compared to the fact that they love themselves and their bodies, and they are great self-esteem, we all know that happiness is... Happiness is the most important thing when it comes to quality of life and happiness is the most important thing when it comes to length of life and illness, all of it. Happiness trumps everything else.

0:59:07.0 Louise: And to you know what that comes from. Happiness comes from a sense of belonging, belonging in our bodies, belonging in ourselves, belonging in the community, and all of this othering that's happening with the message that everyone belongs unless they're fat. That sucks ass and that needs to stop. This poor little kid when, in the transcript it mentioned that they found a suicide note...

0:59:29.9 NL: Yes.

0:59:30.1 Louise: And some pills. And she's fucking like 13.

0:59:34.8 NL: Yeah, and they called it a cry for help.

0:59:36.0 Louise: They called it cry for help 'cause of her body.

0:59:38.1 NL: Yeah.

0:59:38.4 Louise: They didn't recognize it since they've been sniffing around threatening to take her off her mom, and because she's being bullied for her size at school. This is like a calamitous failure to see the impact of weight stigma.

0:59:52.9 NL: She's been told that it's her fault that she's been taken away from her mum. They had told her that because she didn't succeed in losing weight, that she doesn't get to live with her mother anymore. Can you imagine?

1:00:02.4 Louise: So her mom. I can't even wrap my head around that. I can't.

1:00:07.2 NL: Well, she feels suicidal, I think I would too. I felt suicidal at her age and for a lot less. It's terrible, it's terrible. And I hope she's hanging on and I hope that...

1:00:14.6 Louise: I wanna tell her that she is awesome.

1:00:17.4 NL: Yes.

1:00:17.9 Louise: If she ever gets to listen to this. But I know the impact. So like when I was 11, my mom left and I remember how much it tore out my heart.

1:00:26.4 NL: Yeah.

1:00:26.9 Louise: You're 11...

1:00:27.5 NL: Yeah.

1:00:28.3 Louise: 12, 13. This is not the time to do this to kids, and this whole idea... The judge said something like, "Oh, you know, gosh, this is gonna be bad... " But here it is, I will read it to you. This is... She actually wrote a letter to the kids.

1:00:42.5 NL: Oh, gosh.

1:00:43.7 Louise: "I know you will feel that in making this order, that I'm taking something away from you; to be able to live with your mother in your own familiar home. But, I would like you to think that I'm giving you something; a chance to learn new ways of eating and exercise, which will benefit you for the rest of your life."

1:01:00.8 NL: I hate that woman. I hate that judge so much.

1:01:03.5 Louise: Literally.

1:01:04.7 NL: I feel it in my gut. Do you feel it in your gut? I feel it in my stomach. It's clenching.

1:01:07.8 Louise: I feel like vomiting. I feel like vomiting 'cause its vile. The failure... Like how dare she write that letter saying, "I know you might feel like how, of course, you would fucking feel. But I want you to really appreciate that you've been taught the right way to eat and not be fat."

1:01:25.2 NL: Yeah, yeah. And of course that right way is of course we all know the wrong way anyway, so [laughter] that's even to add insult to injury, it's not like they put them in an intuitive eating program, is it? So yeah, you be...

1:01:38.6 Louise: I just like... I love that there are people in the world like you who will write letters, outrage letters and stat surveys, and I'm disgusted in the whole of the UK for not signing that petition. You're taking your anger and you're channeling it, and I love what you're doing on social media.

1:01:55.7 NL: Thank you.

1:01:56.3 Louise: Even though you're getting push back, of course, from the people who can't stand to have their authority challenged.

1:02:03.1 NL: Yeah, that's okay. I understand that. I wasn't here to make friends and influence people. I wasn't there to get sponsorship deals and to get lots of likes and followers. I still don't think I understand social media, to be honest, but I wanted to be able to express something that is going on inside of me and has been going on inside of me for 20 years. And I needed to put it out there, and I needed to put it out there and take responsibility, I think, on behalf of the entire medical profession because as far as I know, there aren't that many doctors that are doing this. To just to say to people, we've really let you down, we've massively failed you for years, for decades, we've let you down, we've done terrible, horrible things to you, and we are in the wrong, and we are part... I keep saying we are part of the problem, we are not part of solution. And we need to change. And if I make lots of enemies, but I can force people, I just force it down people's throats until they actually have to listen to me, then I will have succeeded, and then I will pack up my bags and they I will live a nice, normal, simple life again, but...

1:03:02.8 Louise: Me too. I'm gonna become a florist when we topple diet culture.

1:03:05.7 NL: Amazing. Is that what you're gonna do? So we've got to get rid of diet culture, so you can become a florist. I haven't decided what I'm gonna do, but I like that idea. I'm allergic to flower, so that wouldn't work for me, but I'll think of something equally as good.

1:03:16.6 Louise: Tell us about the health professionals against weight stigma group that you started.

1:03:21.1 NL: Yeah, really early on, these people actually have supported me. So I started with just Janet, she's the mindset nutritionist on Instagram, and she was one of the first people that came to me and just supported me and has been... Really helped me to understand about pays and intuitive eating, that's what she does. And she was really kind and understanding and supportive, and she's just one of the most lovely people in the world, and we started texting each other and agree from there. I said, "Hey, Janet, do you wanna form a little group? Let's form a little group, shall we?" And she said, "Yeah, great, who should we get on board?" And then we started sort of asking around and people we knew, just friends and friends, and we are now six of us coming from different places. One is a PT; Amy is a PT. Nicola is a fertility coach and is amazing, and knows everything there is to know about fertility; positive fertility.

1:04:12.2 Louise: Oh, yes, yes.

1:04:12.8 NL: Yeah, she's fantastic. Karen's a beautiful artist, but also doing a Master's in... Well, she's doing it in weight stigma, that's what her thesis is about; it's about weight stigma, so she knows a lot about the public health side of things. And who I've missed. And Rachel is a physiotherapist. So we... Should I say, she sort of represents a lot of allied professionals. So we got together and we just said, let's form a little group. We have no idea what we're doing, none of us have done this before, but if we can collect as much lived experience, like almost like some test, like a, I just wanna collect a big ringbinder's worth of just page after page after page of this is what is being done to me, this is what happened to me. And those lived experiences are so massively powerful because they are dumbing in a way that nothing else is. You know the GMC, the General Medical Council, the Nursing in [1:05:04.6] ____ Council, the government, whomever, Public Health England, they cannot deny a big, giant bloody stack of lived testimonial, saying, "This is what happened to me." And I was kind of hoping... In the same way, that's what happened with the MeToo movement.

1:05:22.1 NL: It's what happened with a lot of different movements recently. People just came forward and told their stories, and then enough stories were told and reported on and eventually people went, "Oh, maybe we need to change the way we do things around here." And that's what I'm hoping that we'll be able to do, and also to support other health professionals as well, who want to be more Hays based, who tried to learn, who are trying to figure out or who already are and just want to be able to support one another and we would like to be the people that the government call on, because right now when the government wants to ask advice, they go and call on Obesity UK or whatever charity, all these charities, so-called charities, they are funded by drug companies. They are not charities, they are biased as buck and I cannot stand them. And so we want to be the other group that gets a seat at the table that actually brings that Hays perspective into things. So that's what we're hoping to achieve.

1:06:13.9 Louise: That's exactly what we're trying to do here in Australia with HAES Australia becoming the actual grassroots go-to for lived experience as opposed to, in our advocacy branch, as opposed to things like the Obesity Collective over here, which are kind of the same type of... They've got that whole marketing message of it's a chronic disease or illness or condition which requires medical management. I love that you're doing that.

1:06:39.7 NL: We also try to do... We'd love to get involved in some more lobbying and stuff. There was a politician who wrote something on their website a few weeks ago that really pissed me off, and I went off on one on Twitter, I went on a rant on Twitter. But he was talking about weight management services, which we haven't talked about. But in the UK, we have all of these private companies now that we commission, so local authorities will commission them to provide healthy living advice for fat kids, essentially, or adults, but in this case, children. And the politician referred to it as a charity, and it pissed me off because I knew it wasn't a charity.

1:07:19.1 Louise: I wonder who's behind that.

1:07:19.5 NL: Yeah, I wonder who's behind that as well, because you go and have a look, this is a registered company that is making a profit, and I got very, very angry about the fact that this company was getting together with a whole bunch of politicians and they were making policy. Because this company isn't invested in the well-being of children, this company is invested in profit-making, so were the drug companies that fund the charities. Everybody is funded by organisations that are trying to make money out of weight loss. There is nobody who is sat at the table talking about the opposite. People who are not interested, I'm not profiting in any way, what money have I made? I'm not making any money from peddling anything. So nobody has sat there giving the alternative option where I'm not trying to sell weight loss. And if you're trying to legislate, if you're trying to be fair and just and right, you have to hear both sides of the story. So I'm hoping that health professionals against weight stigma will become the other side of the story, and I know that we're not the only group out there.

1:08:19.5 Louise: That's so terrific though. How can people find you and join you and help you topple it?

1:08:23.6 NL: So we do have a Wix website now, and I can't remember what it is. [laughter] I'll have to give you the link.

1:08:29.1 Louise: I'll put it in the show notes. [laughter]

1:08:32.2 NL: Something to do. Oh gosh, Jeanette's gonna kill me. [chuckle] But yeah, we have a website and we're on Instagram as @HPagainstweightstigma, so the HP is for health professionals. The most important thing you can do is share your lived experience with us. That is really ultimately the best thing you can do. But if you are a health professional that's interested in finding out more, get in touch, we're hoping to do some teaching and some training soon, and if you wanna get involved and actually be part of the organisation, we will bite your hand off. We are all overworked people running two or three different things at the same time, got kids at home, so if you wanna help out, be part of it, just... Yeah, the more the merrier. As long as you are in line with what we are and you don't work for a drug company, we'll probably say yes.

[laughter]

1:09:18.3 Louise: Oh my God, that's so terrific. Actually, isn't it interesting that all of these global organizations who apparently care so much about weight stigma, like Dust, like where were they when kids get removed from their families? Nowhere. In fact, the head of the World Obesity Federation who care deeply about weight stigma is Professor Bauer, Louise Bauer, who's the head of the Fast Track Trial here in Australia who, back in 2012 when this stuff came out here in Australia, also was advocating for child services to become involved if people don't perform well in their weight management services.

1:10:02.6 NL: What a surprise, there you go. You heard it here first, folks.

1:10:06.3 Louise: So we definitely need... We need the other side, like you said, the completely unfunded...

1:10:15.3 NL: Grassroots.

1:10:16.5 Louise: Actual grassroots, not artificial turf. Actual grass.

1:10:21.2 NL: Yeah, we've set up as a non-profit organisation, we didn't plan to earn any money, no profit needed, anything that we... Any courses or whatever that we're putting on, the money gets channeled back into this organisation to help it to grow. That is what we want. We are not interested in getting rich or famous here, we're interested in helping people because we've all experienced it. That's the thing, is that all of us have experienced weight-based discrimination and are keen to eliminate it.

1:10:49.0 Louise: I bloody love you. You're awesome.

1:10:56.3 NL: Ditto. [laughter]

1:10:56.7 Louise: Thank you so much for a wonderful conversation. I could talk to you all day, but let's just keep the fire going.

1:11:05.2 NL: Yes. Amazing.

1:11:06.6 Louise: Thank you. Just wow, am I right? Like me, you might feel kind of exhausted and needing to crawl under a doona after that conversation. But isn't she awesome? The things that she needs to do, just driven by rage, I feel like she is my spirit animal. And thank you so much Natasha for everything that you're doing and for staying up so incredibly late to have that amazing talk. So look, if you are interested in the fat doctor and everything she's doing, and I'm sure you are, you can find her in lots and lots of places, 'cause like I said, she is everywhere, let's have a look. Her website, fatdoctor.co.uk. On social media, on Twitter at thefatdoctorUK, and Insta @fatdoctorUK. Doctor being like the actual spelling, so D-O-C-T-O-R. And guess what? She has started a podcast, which you must listen to because it is epic, and she is talking to awesome people doing just huge amounts of pushback. It's conveniently called The Fat Doctor Podcast, really easy to find.

1:12:11.7 Louise: So please get on there, listen to her. She's just inspiring and doing a lot. During our conversation, we were also talking about the health professionals against weight stigma, and I'm happy to announce I've found the handles for that, so if you wanna look at that on Insta, it's HPaws on Insta, and the website is weightinclusivehealthcare.com. So those are very important movements that the fat doctor is involved with, and look, we have really looked into the abyss of awfulness that can come out of weight stigma, because I can't think of many things more horrific than kids being taken off their families because of their size, but we have also seen the formidable power of angry people who are determined to make a change not based on profit, but based on a genuine desire to make this world a better place. So get on to Natasha and everything she's doing. And again, Natasha, you're a spirit animal. Whether you like it or not, we're friends for life, so thanks for an awesome conversation. That's it for this episode of All Fired Up. Thank you everyone for bearing with that very long conversation, I hope you're okay. Please stay safe everybody, until next time. Trust your body. Think critically, push back against diet culture. Untrap from the crap!

Resources Mentioned:

Find out more about the Fat Doctor UK here

Natasha's blog about the kids being removed

The Court transcript (please have tissues, wine, and something to throw on hand, this is very disturbing reading)

The Commissioner's Progress Report on Children's Services in West Sussex

The Australian news article on the removal of Victorian children from 2012

The disturbing Medpage poll in which more than half of the physicians surveyed thought that fat kids should be removed from their families

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why do internet trolls have a full-on fascination with fat women? Why do they pretend to care about 'health' when all they're really doing is abusing strangers? Why is it so upsetting for them to see fat people creating awesome online content? And how can trolls access the psychological help they clearly need? Finally, a long-overdue helpline is available for all fatphobe internet bullies! Join me for an epic conversation with Cara Macb, TikTok sensation and CEO of the Overweight Bitches Content Creators Helpline (OBCC). Join us for a HILARIOUS and firey conversation as we deconstruct the psychology of the internet troll. Cara's sense of humour is razor sharp, her satire is ON POINT and she's calling BS on the trolls!

Show Transcript

(Transcript begins after the general show introduction)

Louise: Now, look, I am so excited to bring you this conversation. So a few months ago I was scrolling through Instagram as you do. And I came across this incredibly funny recording from a British comedian called at the time, then Nanny Macb who's now Cara MacB, but she had done this satirical helpline for internet trolls. And I just could not stop laughing. I'm just going to play you a little clip right now. Cara, Youtube Video: "Hello. You're through to the OBCC Overweight Bitches Content Creators helpline. How may I help? Someone on TikTok displaying signs of happiness, despite having a larger body again. I see. Well, let's have a look. So, you say you signed up to a patriarchal beauty ideals plan, are you still happy with that? It's just that lots of people have upgraded because they found that plan quite constricting, between you and me. The company likes to move those goalposts a lot, so it is hard to keep up. You’re happy with your existing plan and the daily misery it causes? Fair enough. Oh, you'd like everyone else to move back on to the old plan so they can be miserable too, to help you feel better. Have you tried giving less of a shit about what others do? Tried a bit of trolling to make yourself feel better? Yeah, but it doesn't work. Okay. Well, we're here it you want to upgrade, love. Anytime.” Louise Adams: As soon as I watched that after I finished laughing, I basically contacted Cara to say, please come on this podcast and explain because you are too incredibly funny. There's the satire was on point. I mean, the idea of a helpline for people who are trolling fat people on the internet is just it's gold. It's absolutely. So, I am really looking forward to this, uh, sharing this conversation with you. She's a British Tik TOK star. She's a comedian, she's an antidiet Crusader. And of course, she's now known as Cara underscore B, but we just had the most terrific conversation, which we are really deconstructing those trolls. And it's hilarious. And we also hear about how Cara came to this place. To be so incredibly awesome around all of this. So, I'm very excited and, and now you're going to have fun with this one. So, without further ado, I give you me, Cara. Cara, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming.

Cara: Thank you for having me.

Louise Adams: All the way from London lockdown. So, tell me what is firing you up?

Cara: Well, mostly internet trolls who are...oh, myself being a fat person, the ones that bug me the most are the ones that are coming after larger people. For no reason whatsoever, it seems or they, well, they create their reasons, but I don't ever think any of them are justified.

Louise Adams: I could not agree more. I've even... I think a little while ago, one of my friends here in Australia, who's a fat activist came on the show to talk about internet trolling and just how intense it is, and if you are in a larger body doing anything in the public eye, it's like fair game. And like he said, there's no reason that can justify, like when we say trolling, it's just bullying.

Cara: Yeah, absolutely. And the problem is half the time as well that they will say... they'll start off with a main comment. And then if you try and challenge them on it, or even try and be a bit funny, which is my go-to, they backtrack and say, "well, I'm just concerned about health". Well, how, if you're concerned about people, coming in with a really nasty comment is not, is not going to change anything, is it? And you know that, yeah. You know, it's such a lie to say, "well, you know, I care about people". No, you don't. You just want to bully and that's that.

Louise Adams: Yeah. And on the internet, like it's, it's next level. So, what do you on the, on the internet... I'm so old. You're on TikTok and Instagram. So is that, and I assume Facebook, even though everyone here in Australia is slowly getting kicked off.

Cara: Yeah. I know I was reading about that today, it's so awful.

Louise Adams: It's weird. But that, those are your kind of platforms. How long have you been on and doing stuff in comedy or just... because it looks like your platform- your platform that is so awesome- and you cover a lot of topics.

Cara: I do. Yeah. I mean, I've been told before that I should try and stick to one thing and, and find my niche, but I find that very difficult. I'm a multifaceted person. There's a lot going on and...

Louise Adams: we can have many niches.

Cara: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, I joined TikTok at the beginning of lockdown last year, 2020. So, that was March. And I didn't even post for a while cause I, I couldn't, I I'm, I'm also getting old. I couldn't figure it out basically so much, but I was enjoying the content, but I was desperate to kind of get involved as well. So, I forced myself to figure it all out and spend time on it. And at first, I sort of started just joining in with the trends that occur on there. And then I thought I've got to start putting out my own stuff cause I'm enjoying being creative and, and you know, performing, I suppose, for want of a better word. I was enjoying doing that again and putting myself out there. So, one night something held me up there's I mean, obviously I follow a lot of body positive, Health at Every Size creators on there and just... looking at the comments are just horrendous.

Louise Adams: I know.

Cara: Completely disgusting.

Louise Adams: It's not on at all. Like hats off, and huge shout out to anyone who's a fat content creator because like its absolute shit, what you have to put up. Not 'have' to put up with, but what hate comes from...

Cara: That's what I was going to say. You have to have a thick skin, but actually you shouldn't have to have a thick skin. That's the problem. But, yeah, so I was just, I was completely riled up by it all. And like, as I said, my go-to is just making light of situations with a bit of comedy. And so, yeah, I just, just out of the blue, just tapped something out on the keyboard. Filmed it, did it in one take, put the captions on, posted it before going to bed. It was ridiculous hour of the night as well, because I tend to stay up late so that I have more time to myself and my kids and everyone's in bed and it's quiet.

Louise Adams: I can relate.

Cara: So, I thought, you know, it's 3:00 AM. Shove that out there. If I wake up in the morning and it's got no views, I'll just delete it. It's fine. And I woke up and it had blown up.

Louise Adams: Wow.

Cara: And then not only that, there were people asking for more. So, I said, well, okay, well, this is... I can continue with this because I've got lots to talk about. So, yeah, that's how it started.

Louise Adams: Okay. And that's the post that was the overweight bitches content creators.

Cara: Yeah.

Louise Adams: Oh my God. And maybe this is why you resonated so strongly with me because like, I got pissed off the diet culture enough to make a podcast, even though I really am an introvert, and it takes energy and anxiety and all kinds of stuff to put it out. But you did the same thing, right? You just got the shits with something.

Cara: Yeah.

Louise Adams: And then from the shits came brilliance. Just creative brilliance.

Cara: Thank you for saying... yeah, I really didn't expect it to do what it did. I really didn't. But I'm pleased at it did, but yeah, I'm an introvert as well. I'm...you know, that's one of the, one of the reasons why online stuff is great for me, because I can do my little thing while I'm in my little bubble in my little world and then put it out there. It's great.

Louise Adams: Yeah. Yeah. But it blew up because it resonated. Like, I do think I love comedy as a way, you know, satire does highlight injustice and I think the British do it better than anyone.

Cara: Lots of people have said that, lots of people have said the accent adds to it just because it gives that extra little sting. The extra bit of sass.

Louise Adams: Yes. Yes. Because you have a... the way you kind of in a motherly tone let these trolls know maybe it's them? Maybe?

Cara: Yeah, yeah.

Louise Adams: It's beautiful stuff. So, when you say it blew up, what was that like for you to just be someone who's like, literally just learn TikTok and then boom?

Cara: It was bizarre. I mean, I got, I got quite... excuse me. I got quite overwhelmed by it at first because I was kind of... my brain was trying to go, "but why, what is it about this", you know, and obviously the subject matter is important. And I know lots of people talk about that already. But you know, I just didn't understand why that particular thing had hit. And I think for me, because I overanalyze everything and I think of...I overthink things and I'm constantly trying to sort of figure everything out. So, I was obsessed with like, what is this winning secret?

Louise Adams: What's the formula?

Cara: Yeah, exactly. But I think what it was is just, people had never kind of... other than saying, "well go away, you're not being very nice" or trying to sort of hit these trolls with facts about fat bodies and the fact that like you can be healthy at every size. I don't think anyone had sort of shone a light on why they behave the way they do, or at least, you know, not in a way that had had resonated before. I think, you know, it's very easy to say, you're just being mean, but I mean, maybe it's because I've always worked in childcare. If there's a bad behavior, I've always tried to figure out what's prompted it. There's a need there that's not being met, usually. Yeah.

Louise Adams: What is it about you...?

Cara: Exactly. So that's why I kind of, you know, was able to kind of deconstruct the troll a bit, I think. And then I think a lot of people were like, that is why they do that. That is it. It is because they're a bit miserable in that, you know, whatever's going on or whatever, in their lives.

Louise Adams: Yeah. And it's like, nothing to do with the health. Like that's one of them where you're like, well, if this fat person was to die, are you going to contribute to their funeral costs?

Cara: Yeah. Exactly, exactly.

Louise Adams: It is not about health concern. And we, you know, lots of people say that, and what is it called? It's called concern trolling.

Cara: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Louise Adams: Highlighting that there is no concern here, but there's a troubled human.

Cara: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I've got my own experiences to draw it as well, because I've been in a thin body. I've been in a bigger body than this. I've been all over the place. I remember growing up and I was fairly slim for a long time and still feeling that scrutiny on me and my body and because of the behaviors I was modeled growing up, you know, it's okay to look at the fat person and laugh. Or it's okay to look at the person who's wearing shorts when they've got big thighs. Because of all of that, I used to assume that people looked at everybody in that way. Everyone was scrutinizing everyone. And if I saw somebody in a larger body just moving through life, happily carefree, I was confused. I would just look at them and be like, how are you doing this? I don't understand. And then a lot of the time that confusion would bubble up and its habit to then spit out something, some comment, because that's what you've been modeled. So, it's like, well, that person shouldn't be wearing shorts because they're fat. And so, I had, you know, that's the other thing as well. I had my own experiences of being quite mean. I'd like to think I've never actually actively gone and hurt somebody, but the thoughts were there. Thoughts of being like, well, "how dare you exist in public as a fat person? That's not what we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be torturing ourselves to not be fat, thank you very much. So, yeah, I found it... I try to sort of assume or not assume, but I try to sort of wonder if maybe that sort of thing is going on within the troll as well. "I've got to attack you for your choices because they don't align with mine".

Louise Adams: I just, like, I don't understand. Cause like what you're, I think you're talking about like internalized weight stigma, these messages that we all get. All of us, thin, fat and in-between, all of us get these messages that in diet culture, it's always got to be thin and anyone who's not and isn't trying needs to be put back in their place and reminded of their, you know non-conformity that you've, you've obviously examined that and come to a different conclusion, whereas maybe some of the trolls just haven't. Maybe.

Cara: Yeah, I was, I was talking to somebody last night actually about diet culture and how, because we grow up with it, it's just one of those things that just is, it's there. So, we don't think to question it. No, that's just life. And so, when you see somebody who has questioned it and maybe stuck two fingers up, instead of fuck that I'm not doing it, it is, it's jarring. You just don't, you just don't get it. And then you're kind of angry because you're watching them live their best life without this burden that you don't even really know. You have, you know, it's there, but you don't know how to label it or what to do with it. And you're watching somebody move through life without that burden. And there's an anger, there's a jealousy there. And then it's like, "no, no, hold on. I'm going to make sure you come back into this box. I'm going to make sure I tell you that you're wrong. You've got to be back over here in the box conforming with me". That's what I think it is sometimes for some people.

Louise Adams: That's a really awesome understanding of it. And that sort of, now I can see how you got the idea of the helpline. Like, there is literally help out there if you're a troll.

Cara: Yeah.

Louise Adams: Come to nanny and you will explain these things. But I always wonder, you know, cause there's a level of misogyny that you can't ignore in all of this trolling behavior that it's about men controlling often women or, you know, anything different as well too, to just the male, female binary. But what do you think of that, that kind of controlling element with trolls?

Cara: I did. I think I did do... one of the OBCC helplines was about this. It was basically saying, "are you really mad at fat people? Or is it just that if you see women existing without a care for continuing to look as thin as possible or to match whatever beauty ideal does your is going on, are you worried that you'll be less able to use that as a form of control?" I mean, I've seen it all the time with friends and family being in relationships. It's like, "Oh, well, you know, so-and-so said I should be watching my weight". Or, you know, "so-and-so said I shouldn't order dessert". I just think, why? Fuck these guys, what are they doing? How dare they, meanwhile, they're off out doing whatever the fuck they want.

Louise Adams: Yeah, having twelve beers.

Cara: And I remember saying to them, "it's not about your weight. They just want to control you. That's what it is", which obviously didn't go down very well. I did try and be a little more compassionate than that, but yeah, and that's exactly what it is, you know, there's, it's the same thing. It's like control, concern trolling within a relationship, men trying to, you know, find a reason to put women down and that they can keep them feeling not as worthy as they are in order to keep them by their side because not many men are worthy of the presence of a woman in my opinion.

Louise Adams: I am just like having a quiet standing ovation here. Thank you. Absolutely true. And you know, it's poignant tonight, you know, in Australia it's the 12-month anniversary of the murder of a woman and her three kids by her violent ex-husband who had been controlling her for years. And it's just such a dreadful story. So traumatic. And what is coming from that is this push to recognize coercive control as abuse and violence. It's staggering to think where in 2021 and you know, there's basic recognition of how men control women is. It's not legislated, it's not recognized. Kind of like, yeah, it's mistaken for, "Oh, I'm just concerned about your health." Yeah,

Cara: yeah. It's awful. I was talking on my Instagram the other day, actually about how as women we're conditions to always put other people's feelings before our own. And that includes our comfort. We'll question ourselves and we will dismiss bad behaviors from other people in order to make everyone comfortable. And aside from putting our own comfort aside, we're also conditioned, I think, to be the caregivers for everyone. So, when something happens, if somebody treats you badly, it's like, well, what's the fallout for everyone. It's not just me. It's my family. It's their family. And so, I think things like that are what keep people in abusive situations because we're busy worrying about everybody involved. Not it's not just between the two people.

Louise Adams: Hmm. Everyone except ourselves.

Cara: Yeah, exactly. Whereas men are not conditioned. They can just move through life and you know, brothers can move away from home and never be responsible for the parents. Whereas women are the ones that are more obligated to stay and keep the families together and stuff. And I think in general, that allows...and a lot of men play on that. They know what's going on. They know they can abuse are our kindness and our compassion and our just willingness to keep the peace, whereas they can just run like a bull through a china shop and not care. Somebody else is going to pick up the pieces.

Louise Adams: Yeah. Look, I mean, it's, everything you're saying is so true and it's important to raise awareness of it, which is why, you know...you through the power of humor and satire are rising awareness. That's why you blew up because now's the time. I think a lot of people are waking up and recognizing that control is in a lot of unexpected places.

Cara: Yeah. Yeah. Hundred percent.

Louise Adams: And pushing back. And I absolutely love what's happening. Like the whole world of body positivity and Health at Every Size and just the right representation of diversity and respect for diversity. It's accompanied by a big push back. Because, you know, when your position of power is threatened, you're gonna, you're going to up the volume on the trolling.

Cara: There was a personal trainer who's got quite a large following on Instagram, recently, ranting again about fat people and...

Louise Adams: Which one?

Cara: Oh, his name is James something.

Louise Adams: Yes, I think I've done a podcast...I think I know the one you're talking about.

Cara: Yeah. And he was, he was ranting again. And I just thought, dude, your business is not in danger. Like, what are you doing here? You've got plenty of people who do take fitness seriously. You don't have to come after fat people. And you know what, if you are worried about, you know, your income and your industry and everything else, you know what, if you are kinder to people in larger bodies...because people in larger bodies, don't just reject health. You know, there are people who still have fitness goals and things like that. If you want to include those people, all you'd ever do is increase your market. You know, shutting down fat people, you are not protecting something. You will just be alienating a bunch of people that you could include in what you're doing.

Louise Adams: You're becoming a dinosaur. Yeah, exactly. You' e kind of ensuring your own extinction. Yeah. Like clothing shops that don't have full ranges, like most of them. Yeah, again, that absolutely confused as me. Why people would say... like our one of the major fitness brands here in Australia is always criticized because it doesn't, it stops at like the average Australian women's size. It stops. That's the highest and famously they were saying "look, there's no market". Oh, have you checked the stats on human females? It's kind of weird to say, like, people don't exist when like clearly, they do.

Cara: Okay. And the average, the average size has been increasing steadily over the years. And yet the clothes have not moved to cater to what is now probably the majority of people.

Louise Adams: It is, it's so weird. And yet, like somehow, we're all clothed.

Cara: We had, I think it was, it was a major sports brand who bought out a specifically specific plus size range. And it got splashed all over Twitter and the media and people were saying, "well, if you, if you get that people, clothes to wear at the gym, you're promoting obesity". How does that make sense? You're telling us fat people to not go to the gym, then that's what it comes back to. People just want to believe, they want to have...that number of people that they can feel that will make them feel better about themselves. They have to have people below them.

Louise Adams: Yeah. Let's keep everything narrow. Let's keep the unrealistic ideal and let's keep excluding, let's keep it like that because that's what I'm comfortable with. And that's like, that's not gonna threaten my power. And it is like a giant school yard. And you mentioned that you're in childcare. So, is that... are you a childcare worker? Are you a nanny?

Cara: Yeah, I was a nanny. Yeah. I was a nanny until my last job ended because of COVID so yeah, but I've worked in all sorts of settings. I've worked in earlier years and schools and yeah, it's tough. It is really tough because I'm finding with my own kids as well.... well, my son's school age, but all the work we've done at home with him on, you know, about accepting all different shapes and sizes and colours of people. And then he goes to school and one kid says something and it's, you know, kids, they will much rather take the word of their mates and even their teachers than they would mum and dad or, you know, whatever at home. So that's been hard to fight against, but there was one good incident. Actually, there was a kid at my son's school who tried to piss them off by saying "your mom is so fat". My son just went "and?" You didn't get the significance of the insult. He was just like, "yes, congratulations, your eyeballs work, well done". And he came home, and he told me, I was like, "so weird that he said that". I was like...

Louise Adams: Good on your son.

Cara: Something is going in and staying there, which is good, which is good. But yeah, there's still a lot of, a lot of stuff that kids pick up from their parents that they're still...

Louise Adams: They still have to go out into the soup of diet culture. It's funny, isn't it? Because I raised my kids also to be really body positive and really inclusive. And at around...I can't remember how old they were, but my oldest child had something like that happen. And their friends said, "Oh gosh, your mom's like fat". And my kid goes, "you realize, you said that out loud".

Cara: That's so good.

Louise Adams: Yes. And then I think this same year though, we're in the health classes and they were telling the kids that they had to eat a certain way otherwise they would get fat. My kid comes home and says "but mum, I am fat? So, what do I eat?"

Cara: Exactly. The messaging is horrendous. It's

Louise Adams: Yes, but you know, it's, it's like we can't stop them going out in the world. Well, unless we're in lockdown but it's all these teaching opportunities to identify it as not a problem with your body or of mum's body, a problem of how the body is being treated.

Cara: Exactly.

Louise Adams: Yeah. Yeah. So, I love the fact that you're on the internet treating the troll like a giant schoolyard. Like come to the principal's office, let's have a talk about what you did and what was wrong.

Cara: This is the funny thing, actually, a lot of the times when the trolls comment on those videos, the helpline videos, they ignore everything that I've said. And they come there just to tell me again, that I'm fat. I'm like, dude, this video is about you, you realize?

Louise Adams: Yeah. So, you have lot of trolls commenting on the OBCC helpline videos?

Cara: You know what, touch wood, I've actually been...I've been shocked that I haven't received as many as I thought I would, but I have a theory about that. I think it's because I'm funny, at least I think I'm funny.

Louise Adams: You're very funny.

Cara: I think that intimidates people a bit, I think they probably know they're going to at least get a bit of sass back, if not completely, you know, slapped down. Do you know what I mean? That's my theory on it anyway. Cause I mean, I see other people just dancing or, you know, even people just having a chat about something online and someone comes in and mentions their weight. I mean, it's bollocks.

Louise Adams: But you're directly challenging that in your videos, you are...and so that's interesting.

Cara: So, yeah, I don't get as many. And then the ones that do come, they ignore what I've said, and they just talk about the fact that I'm going to die at 40 of a heart attack. So, okay.

Louise Adams: Okay. That's helpful and nice to know that they have understood this whole thing. How did you come from...so you talked about like being a many different sizes and many different sorts of stages of recognition of weight stigma? How did you come to kind of Health at Every Size and body positivity?

Cara: So, I was... I'd lost a lot of weight for my wedding. And in doing so... and I should just point out that there was no pressure from my significant other to do that, by the way, that was just me thinking I must be a certain size to fit in a wedding dress.

Louise Adams: Well, that was not just you, that was diet culture kind of identifying that life-stage of, ""Oh, look, you've hit the bridal thing. So now it's time to go on another diet.

Cara: Yeah, well, actually, while we're, well, we're slagging off Facebook. The minute I changed my Facebook status to engaged the tailored ads all switched to diet stuff.

Louise Adams: Seriously?

Cara: Yeah. Yeah. And then the day I changed it to married, I got adverts for divorce lawyers. But, yeah, so, I'd lost a lot of weight for the wedding. And then, because you know, what I'd done was quite drastic as diets usually are it wasn't long before I started piling it back on and I was getting unhappy with that because I don't know why, for some reason, in my head that wedding diet, I felt like, well, I've smashed it and that's me done now. I'm free of diets.

Louise Adams: Okay, but that's what they tell us.

Cara: Exactly. That's the thing. That's the lie they sell, you know, just one more, one good one. One way you smashed it with the willpower and then you're done for life.

Louise Adams: And that's the dream to save us all.

Cara: Exactly. So, I was putting weight back on. I was desperate to try and get it back off when I was looking at more and more drastic measures and I found one diet that basically led me down a really dangerous rabbit hole, being obsessed with the quality of the food as well. It had to be clean eating.

Louise Adams: Oh, wellness diet.

Cara: Yeah, absolutely. Zero processed food. And it was taking over my life, like going to the supermarket was taking me three hours because I scrutinized every single label. I was shunning fruit because it had too much sugar. And that was the worst thing to me. Well, there were two tipping points. One was, I was at my mother-in-law's house and she'd made a vegetable soup. And she said, "Oh, do you want some soup?" And I said, "well, what's in it". And she laughed at me and she's like "vegetables". And I said, "no, okay. But like, if you put anything else in it", so she handed me this packet of stock cubes and she said, "well, just that, just stock cubes and vegetables". So, I read the label of the stock cubes and decided I couldn't.

Louise Adams: Oh, you poor thing.

Cara: And I was like, afterwards, I thought it can't be right that on a diet I have to turn down vegetable soup. It doesn't make sense.

Louise Adams: Yes. There you are, coming to your own rescue.

Cara: I was doing all sorts of weird shit. Like I was cooking a full steak for breakfast because steak was okay somehow.

Louise Adams: That's it, we get so obsessive though, because we're so restricted. We will...

Cara: So, and then the other thing was, I was thinking to myself, cause obviously we just got married and we were thinking that kids would be in the future at some point. And I suddenly thought to myself, "Oh my God, what am I going to do when I have a kid and it goes to a birthday party and there's cake, and my kid's going to eat this cake and it's going to get fat". And that's the worst possible thing that can happen. So, I actually had the seriously deranged thought that I was going to tell my unborn children that they were allergic to certain foods in order to stop them from eating stuff. Well, at that point, I just went, what are you doing? Had a serious word is myself. What are you doing? Because obviously working with kids as well, I just thought I can't deny my kid the joy of having that stuff. It's going to be so bad for them. So, I'm going to have to lie and tell them there's a real reason.

Louise Adams: Oh, my goodness.

Cara: I mean, how I talk about it? I can talk about it now, but for a while, once I got out of that mindset, thinking about that because...

Louise Adams: But you know, it's not your fault because when we're that restricted and that...it sounds like Orthorexia

Cara: Yeah, that's what it was.

Louise Adams: That's the pursuit, not of thinness, but of perfect eating and like your thinking does go almost like culty kind of.

Cara: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I know. I very nearly went down an anti-vax route as well as an offshoot of that.

Louise Adams: Isn't that interesting. There's that connection between... And they

Cara: draw you in with that. There's like, you know, now you're in this community of people and they draw you in with that whole thing of "look, we know better, okay? We know better than everyone else. We can teach you the way" and you're already so lost, then you're kind of like, "okay, Tell me. Take me".

Louise Adams: You're lost and you're nutrient depleted and your brain's shrunk because you've got not enough on board and you've already got this distrust of everything processed. Yeah. That's not fun.

Cara: And you're tired. And so, it doesn't take long for somebody to go, "I'll sweep you up, come over here and I'll tell you more about, you know, how the whole world has lied to you about everything" and you just, yeah. You start to lap it up. But thankfully I knocked myself on the head and thought "that is not okay, that's no".

Louise Adams: That's amazing, that there was this beacon inside you, that kind of came to your own rescue and your inner bullshit detector went off.

Cara: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Something just said, "enough now, come on". As then I started...I again, I stood in that diet mentality. Really. I got quite drastic. I was like I'm ditching all diet stuff, throwing out all the books. I'm unfollowing all these accounts on Facebook. And then I found an account that was more promoting of Health at Every Size and talking about how diets are terrible. And I dived headfirst into that and I did the research and everything, and the more I read and the more testimonials I was looking at, from people who said that, you know, "no, this is true. You know, diets are really bad". I started then to kind of crawl out of that headspace.

Louise Adams: Yeah. How long ago was that?

Cara: That was, it was the year after I was married. So, it was 2013. It was before I got pregnant. Yeah. Because I spent a whole year after the wedding going down that orthorexia rabbit hole.

Louise Adams: Jeez. Yeah. That's so nice. That you came out of it in that way and that the kind of non-diet, anti-diet approach has been useful for you.

Cara: Yeah. A hundred percent.

Louise Adams: Yeah. Cause it doesn't, you know, the Health at Every Size, anti-diet stuff, like, it just makes sense on a scientific level, on a social level. On an equality and oppression and social justice level, as well as nutrient wise and, you know, narrowing it down just to those physiological health indicators that your brain came back. You wouldn't have been able to be this funny if you...

Cara: It's true. It's true. Yeah. This is the thing with the Health at Every Size community, you know, they're just pushing out all of these, you know, the actual science and debunking all these diet myths. And that's what really helped was like, okay, this is actual proper information, not just get thinner, get thinner, get thinner. This is them taking the time to break everything down and talk about how these things actually do affect your body. And that, that made me feel like, "Oh, what if", for the first time it made me feel like some, some institution is actually caring. About how I'm going to feel and how my body is going to feel. And my health rather than get thinner, get thinner, get thinner.

Louise Adams: And try and just ignore how uncomfortable or past mad you've gone.

Cara: Yeah, exactly. Don't worry that you feel like you're being tortured, like, just forget about that. No pain, no gain. So, yeah.

Louise Adams: Someone who a movement that says actually, pain in the pursuit of weight loss is stupid.

Cara: Yeah. There was just, there was just a huge 'you matter' vibe, and that you matter to yourself and to, you know, to the people around you and also the big message that you kind of owe it to yourself and those around you to not have your brain taken over by this stuff. But the time and energy that I felt like I actually got back once I'd ditched all of that. It was just, it was actually phenomenal.

Louise Adams: Yeah, it's full on, isn't it? How like three hours in the supermarket reading labels is like, who has time for that shit?

Cara: Yeah.

Louise Adams: Yeah. Christy Harrison calls dieting 'the life thief'.

Cara: Yeah.

Louise Adams: Yeah. It really is. It's nice to get your life back.

Cara: Yeah.

Louise Adams: Was it like, I am assuming if you're, if that extreme practice of wellness diet. If you stopped that, that your weight would have changed after you stopped dieting.

Cara: What, if I continue to pursue...

Louise Adams: When you stopped dieting that your weight changed.

Cara: Oh, I see. Sorry. Yes. I did. I did gain weight and that was...at first it was, it was scary, but because I'd found a good community of people online who will say," look, a lot of us go through that stage. And you're going to be fine". And then there was also the focus on, "you've got to love your body as it is, or at least accept your body at every point you hit, you know, that is your body doing what it needs to do". And a lot of it for me was, I saw it as recovery in a way, because...it was hard to get my head around at first because I'd already gained weight from my wedding. So, I was already quite big. I kind of felt, "well, my body doesn't need to gain any more weight. Like that's not recovery, I'm already big, but yeah. But then again, the Health at Every Size community and the online community I found pulled me out of that. It was like, "no, you can be, you can, you know, be" any size and still need to go through that stage of recovery of just healing your relationship with food". And so, yeah, so my weight did change, but then it was, it was only scary for me for a short time, because I've come to accept that this is what needs to happen.

Louise Adams: I think that's really tough for people that, like, that, trying to accept that I actually don't have control over my body weight. It's going to do what it's going to do and what I can focus on is trying to restore that relationship with food and nourish my body and kind of like, you know, stay grounded in the community that are telling you that it's going to be okay. It would be really hard to do that on your own.

Cara: I agree. I agree. Yeah. That's why I think online stuff helps so much. Yes.

Louise Adams: Yes. Well, that's why...and Getting back to you and the overweight bitches content creators. It's just such a beautiful subject matter. Are you going to continue putting out videos out?

Cara: As long as people want them, I'll keep making them. Cause I enjoy it and it's not like I'm short of materials, so...

Louise Adams: Oh, my goodness. And where can people find you?

Cara: I think on TikTok is the same as it...I think it's nanny_macb, and I think my Instagram handle is exactly the same. Yes.

Louise Adams: You know what, I Googled Nanny McPhee and I'm like, she looks different. But yes, thank you for putting this stuff out there and, you know, may the hotline be flooded and who knows, maybe you'll heal the world of trolls.

Cara: Maybe, maybe.

Louise Adams: Thank you so much.

Cara: Thank you for having me.

Resources:

Find Cara on Insta at @Cara_MacB and on TikTok Cara MacB

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The news media are a major source of diet culture BS. Every day there's an apparently "inspirational" story in which diverse bodies are shrunk down to diet culture's version of acceptability. We're literally brainwashed into viewing increasingly disordered, bizarre and downright dangerous behaviours as "#inspirational". Join me and my guest, anti-diet warrior and coach Summer Innanen as we present some truly epic examples of "SHITSPIRATION" from Australia and Canada. You will not believe how ludicrous they are! Grown up humans are supposed to be #inspired by a 'doubledown diet' which reduces calorie intake to almost nothing, a BARBIE DOLL (I am not joking), and....a Malamute? You have to hear this to believe it, it's next level #ridiculous. Trigger warning for this episode - very explicit language and we're discussing diet, calorie counts, etc, in (critical) detail. This one's not for the faint hearted! But if you're ready to get your rage-o-meter cranked up to ALL FIRED UP, this episode's for you!

Show Transcript

Louise Adams: Oh, Summer, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Summer Innanen: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here with you.

Louise Adams: Tell me, what's firing you up?

Summer Innanen: Well, I saw an article recently in Women's Health, and it's about... it's supposed to be like a, you know, quote unquote 'weight loss inspiration story'. And it's about a woman who had a very significant weight loss experience by doing a very disordered diet. And I think what fired me up so much about it was not just the content within it, which I'm sure we'll you know, dissect and talk about it. But the fact that in 2015, in December 2015, Women's Health came out and it was a huge... we got a lot of headlines, a lot of publicity around the fact that they were taking the words, 'bikini body' and 'drop two sizes' off of their covers.

So they sort of made this like quasi- body- positive stance. Like, 'hey,  we've heard you, our readers. And we've heard that, you know, you don't like us sort of using this very patriarchal, sexist language'. Yeah. Yeah. And so, like I remember at the time this was shared, like even people within the sort of anti-diet community were sharing it, saying 'this is great, like nice to see a major publications sort of making these changes' and then, you know, to, to look and see here we are five years later and it's the same shit.

Louise Adams: It's back.

Summer Innanen: Worse. Like I would argue what this what's contained in this article is so terrible from the perspective of promoting disordered eating and like really what this person is talking about is like, the way that they eat to me sounds like a, like an eating disorder, which obviously like I'm not here to diagnose or go...

Louise Adams: it's disordered eating practices. Right? It's promoting starvation.

Summer Innanen: Yeah. So it's a combination of keto and intermittent fasting. So it's like keto isn't bad enough on its own. So it's like, we're going to make intermittent fasting onto it.

Louise Adams: It's an unholy marriage.

Summer Innanen: It is honestly, and that's like, for me, I think why I was so fired up about it too, is because when I sort of reached the end of the line with my own disordered relationship with food, I was doing, I was trying to...attempting, it would only last like three days...to do something kind of similar.

And it's what absolutely destroyed my body. Like just... like put me into amenorrhea, even with like a higher body weight percentage, and like completely disrupted my hormones. And when I work with clients, I see the same kind of behaviors really being kind of the end of the line for a lot of people.

Like the one that really, really kind of messes up their head and their physical, like their actual, you know, physiology a lot worse than other diets that they have done previously.

Louise Adams: Oh, this is an awesome thing to get completely fired up about because like we have Women's Health magazine here, which is... it's not health, it's women's starving magazine. They did no such thing as  like...to tell us that they're not going to do the 'bikini body', but how gaslighting to say, 'Oh, we're not going to do that anymore. Hello, here's something  worse'. And like to use that kind of little bit of that... they just wanted the publicity of that. 'We want to perform the idea of body positivity, but like, hell no, we're not actually going to stick to that'.

Summer Innanen: Yes, yes.

Louise Adams: It's going to go back to this apparently inspirational behaviour of this lady. Who is doing the very thing that tipped you into like a severe eating disorder? That's so disturbing.

Summer Innanen: Yes. Yes. And, you know, they give a outline of what she eats in a day and as I think, as I emailed you before, I was like, that's kind of what I eat for breakfast. Like, it's the same amount of calories that I consume for breakfast. Like, that's it. And I remember being in that frame of mind where you would read a magazine and they would sort of show like, 'oh, here's what somebody eats in a day'. Or 'here's what a celebrity eats in a day'. And I remember always feeling like, so ashamed because I ate so much more than that. And I was always like, 'what's wrong with me? Like, why can't I eat as little as this?' And you know, I just can't believe that stuff is still being put out there, like that the author of that piece didn't think like, 'Hey, this might really promote an eating disorder.'

When it's that blatant! Literally...

Louise Adams: my dog eats more than that. When it's that blatant and there's, you know, throughout every article that we're going to talk about today is...oh, except the last one. There's literally no critical thought. Or even appreciation of the damage that's being spread by these, like it's full on evil messaging as far as I'm concerned, dressed up as inspiration.

That the fact that a journalist...journalists, as far as I know, are trained to be critical thinkers and, and yet it's like that goes out the window when it comes to these apparently inspirational stories.

Summer Innanen: Yeah. Yeah. Like there's absolutely no consciousness at all. That's what I felt like. Cause you know, it's just, it was one of those things. That's, it's almost like when I first read it, I was like, it's almost too ridiculous to believe this is...that they actually publish this as something that's supposed to be inspirational. But it's to me like, you know, I think the readership probably skews a little bit, you know, on the younger side, you know, maybe more like 20 to 30 age group or younger, probably teen, a lot of teenage girls and you know, to be reading that at such an impressionable age and to think 'oh, this is how...this is what I should be doing'. Which is essentially like starvation as well as like malnutrition and just something that would put such a high amount of both physical and mental stress on your body, that would really create like long lasting damage. Yeah, both biologically and psychologically.

Louise Adams: And that's, that's who I see, you know, my clients are the diet casualties, people who have had these experiences and then...you know? Dieting like this, crash dieting...because this is, this lady is on a severe calorie restriction. And then she's added intermittent fasting, which basically means you're only allowed to eat for six hours a day and squish in your tiny little bits of food into six hours. Like when you really think about that, that is so many levels of fucked up and she's saying, 'oh, it's so good'. And I feel for her being in that diet head, And who knows maybe an eating disorder head, but there's  ...the payoff is so great for her because the weight loss like that, the whole article is about her trying to shift the last bit.

And she's still got a way to go. And her poor body, if her poor body could talk would be going, 'I'm starving. I'm slowing down this cause it's getting dangerous'. And she's like, 'right, I'm going to double down using the halo of intermittent fasting', which is starving.

Summer Innanen: Yes. Yeah. And the other thing too, that stood out to me, well, two things. One is the amount of caffeine that she talks about drinking in terms of hydration. Cause it says, like, what really works for her. It's like, 'I'm really hydrating'. And it's like so much coffee and green tea. And I'm like, if I had that much caffiene I'd be, I don't even know what I would be doing.

Louise Adams: That's a question I ask when I'm seeing people with eating disorders, like, what are you drinking? Because quite often when you get an eating disorder, you will drink caffeinated stuff to kill your appetite. So, she's calling that hydration.

Summer Innanen: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then the other thing too, is that she uses the language of 'food freedom' to talk about how she feels, because  she says you know, 'food is really just food. It's not good or bad. I don't obsess about it anymore'. And it's like, really that could be pulled from any sort of anti-diet playbook, which is what we want, but it's so counter to what she's actually doing. And I think that it kind of shows like when you're really into, like, when you' re really kind of overtaken your mind, you're sort of riding this, this buzz or this wave where it does feel like that.

But, you haven't woken up to how you really are looking at things that way. And you really are, you know, like if you're tracking every calorie, which is what she says she was doing...

Louise Adams: How is that freedom?

Summer Innanen: Yeah. That's not freedom. And that's, that's like, maybe she's sort of, you know, like kidding herself. She's at the sort of like, kidding, 'I'm kidding myself' phase. Like, it's like, you know, most of us when we were sort of dieters were like, 'well, no, no, no, I'm doing it for my health. Like I'm doing no, this is for my health', but really underneath it's, you know, there's, there's some other stuff going on, but I hate it when they kind of steal, like they sort of co-opt the language of intuitive eating and co-op the language of the anti-diet message and really use it to promote something that's so restrictive. It just makes...

Louise Adams: You know who came to my mind when you were saying that is Rebel Wilson.

Summer Innanen: Yes

Louise Adams: she's an Aussie actor and has always been in a larger body. Apparently like her kind of whole catch phase for 2020 was that it was her 'year of health'.

Summer Innanen: Yes!

Louise Adams: But the behaviors are restriction and starvation and over-exercise, but she's masking that in the language of 'I'm so healthy now'. Like, 'I don't think about food anymore. My habits are so great', but it's the same thing.

Summer Innanen: Exactly. Exactly.

Louise Adams: Worlds apart from what the anti-dieting and intuitive eating stuff is actually about.

Summer Innanen: Yeah. And, and like, it's not their fault. Like, I don't like talking about this. I'm not, I don't want to like, shame this, this woman at all.

Louise Adams: As an individual, no.

Summer Innanen: Or Rebel Wilson. It's like, but it's really about. You know, the it's really about the culture diet culture, and just the fact that we feel as women and more, you know, more specifically that we have to go to these extremes to really like, you know, show our, our worthiness as humans, like in our value. And like, Rebel Wilson is so talented.

Louise Adams: I know, so funny.

Summer Innanen: She's an awesome actress. And now it's like, everyone's just talking about her body and her weight loss. And it's like, it takes away from all these other amazing things that she's done.

Louise Adams: And when it's really uncritical, as well. It's like, why is she so much better now than she's small? That just reinforces the diet culture message and keeps stories like the woman you talking about going. It's like, I can get all this attention, uncritical, positive attention, but it's like, we're not seeing what's right in front of it. Like we are teaching and promoting women in this case did a really, really sick eating disordered and stuff under the flag of health.

Summer Innanen: And that is like, supremely unhealthy.

Yeah. Yeah. It's so frustrating too, because you see all these positive changes happening in the way of, you know, women becoming more liberated or just having, you know, bigger voices taking up more space. And yet it's just like the same old shit is still there as it relates to our bodies and our value and, and...

Louise Adams: There's such an uptick too, in January, isn't there.

Summer Innanen: Oh yeah. It's a predictable tsunami of the weight loss. The walls of relentless inspiration, whether we want it or not. It's just, it's here. ESpecially with the pandemic, you know, because everyone, a lot of people have...maybe their bodies have changed a little bit, which makes a ton of sense because we're under a lot of stress or just life changes that have happened.

So I think that, you know, depending on where you live, if there's still a lot of restrictions, which I was saying to you before, like there still is here. Dieting gives you like a bit of hope, almost like weight loss gives you a bit of hope. In this time when maybe some of us are feeling a little hopeless or just like really kind of sick of, sick of the isolation and everything else.

And so I wouldn't be surprised that maybe your body's changed a bit during quarantine. I wouldn't be surprised if this year really you see like just a lot more people really engaging in dieting as a way to cope with the emotion, emotional discomfort of living through a pandemic.

Louise Adams: That is a really good point, isn't it. Dieting can be a bit of a lifeline. It can feel like it, like something familiar to do in a scary time.

Summer Innanen: Yeah. Some sense of control, some sense of like, you know, hope, something else to focus on other than like the fact that there's a lot of horrible things happening in the world. Yeah, absolutely, a hundred percent.

And I just, I, you know, I've heard it from people that I work with just feeling more urges to diet lately. And I think that, yeah, it's just something to be mindful of. If anyone listening is experiencing that too, like I think it's pretty normal to be experiencing more of those urges, but hopefully you can...

Louise Adams: LIsten to today's episode and get your bullshit detector back.

Summer Innanen: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't drink the Kool-Aid it's not actually going to help.

Louise Adams: It's not control!

Summer Innanen: Yeah, exactly.

Louise Adams: It's so interesting because like, Canada is very similar to Australia, culturally in lots and lots of ways. And it's funny...not funny. It's not funny. Cause like, you're talking about really disturbing uncritical weightless articles. And we've got them here in Australia too. And I really want to talk to you about the lady who lost weight, because she wanted to look like Barbie.

Yes. And

Summer Innanen: I, so you said that to me, I honestly, it was like, okay, this needs to be a tabloid. Like this can't be like a real, and, and then you told me that it's actually a very legit publication.

Louise Adams: Yeah. Oh, I'm so ashamed of ourselves. So, this is on Nine News. Channel Nine is Murdoch press and it's, you know, one of it's a huge...it's the number one news platform in Australia for news. I want to say news, right? News. Okay, exciting. And in this news, I'm just using air quotes.  It's this story from late gen a Barbie fan has dropped a whopping blah-blah-blah kilos in a bid to look like a favorite doll. And it's a story about a lady called...a 35 year old lady called Kayla. Who's apparently battled with her weight since she was seven, and has done all of the diets in the book and…

Like, I just, I can't even, because yes, Nine News is promoting this as, as awesome. This lady that the article is...littered with her dressed as Barbie. She's a full grown female adult woman dressed as Barbie. And the whole story is about how she's had a gastric sleeve and, and is also starving herself, post gastric sleeve, and now she's very happy and...like I just, I mean, I can't get this article out of my head because it's on a major news platform also. I've just realized it was on the TV on a morning show. She now lives in Las Vegas pursuing her Barbie lifestyle. And I'm not criticizing Kayla herself whatsoever, but what I'm criticizing is the news. Which, by the way, I've also found out isn't even news, because this is from Jan 2021. When I'm Googling, to send you the article. THis article actually came out in June last year, it's old, it's not, it's old. It's not news. But it's been rehashed - guess why, it's January - it's Diet season and then some, you know, money hungry gastric sleeve doctors, and some people who want to sell their diets saying 'let's get her on TV, and uncritically throw this... it's an appallingly ridiculous idea that we need to look like a doll in order to reach the pinnacle of our existence.

Summer Innanen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think like, you know, there were, I don't even...there were so many things wrong with this piece.

Louise Adams: It's hard to know where to start.

Summer Innanen: Yeah. Okay. Well, let's start with when she was a kid, because she talks about how, you know, 'it didn't matter how hard I tried or what side I was on. I could rarely shift the weight or I would lose some and then regain double'. And it's like, well, yeah, that's what diets do. And so, this poor girl probably had her parents putting her on diets, which we know she did actually.

Louise Adams: It says 'my obsession with Barbie began as a child and has continued into my adult life. I used to have over 200 dolls as my parents use them as an incentive to go on a diet and lose weight'.

Summer Innanen: Yeah. Yeah. Which is so messed up.

Louise Adams: That just made me want to cry. Yeah. Because as a parent to, bribe your a child with a Barbie doll, like the poor thing, she's seven. I know. And I don't know, that's at least 200 diets, isn't it?

Summer Innanen: Well, exactly, like how horrifying is that? So, her metabolism is probably been so altered and she has no sense of her own  instincts on what actually, you know, feels good for her. And her parents basically instilled like this belief that like you're better or you're good or you're more worthy when you lose weight, And like, to think about the damage that that would do to someone's self-worth and their body image and the way that they feel it. Yeah. Yeah, right.

Louise Adams: Cause it's...I see this as a real heartbreaking story and I cannot understand how this is inspiration.

Summer Innanen: Yeah. Yeah. It's so awful. It reminds me of the there's this book. I don't know if you've ever read it. It's called 'The Heavy' and it's about a mother who puts her daughter on a diet and it's...it's a memoir written from the mother's perspective and she keeps putting her, she can't figure out why her daughter can't lose weight.

She keeps putting her on diet after diet, after diet. And like, it just reminds me of that because the parent is...has so much  internalized fat phobia and their own disordered relationship with food that then they pass down to their kids. And like, that's what I see. I'm sure you see all the time with the people that we work with is that what our parents did, which they kind of were doing out of this like, protection. They wanted to protect us by helping us lose weight or commenting on our body or restricting food...actually completely backfired and made us feel like we, you know, we weren't worthy of their approval, of love, like of our own existence, unless we looked a certain way unless we lost weight, unless we ate a certain way...

Louise Adams: All contingent on weight, which is it's insane because a weight is not under our control. And when we do the diet thing, all we guarantee is a slowed metabolism and weight regain. And she even says in this that she would lose it, then lose weight and then regain like that. Plus some, which is, we know that's perfectly normal as a response to starvation her. And cause her parents obviously have that internalized weight stigma, and she has it, you know? This is a story about her internalized weight stigma and how, you know, rather than kind of pushing back or being able to push back against it. She's really drunk the Kool-Aid.

Summer Innanen: Yeah, yeah. And again, they highlight what she eats in a day, which is like, why, why these places do this is like, beyond me, because...

Louise Adams: Well, they go into so many stereotypes too. Cause like it's the, it's the traditional thing like, 'Oh, before I had my gastric sleeve, I was a bad person and I ate terribly'.

And ignoring the fact that perhaps her, part of her weight issues was to do with the diets themselves.

Summer Innanen: Right?

Louise Adams: Yeah. So that's ignored and so about...'it was definitely 100% my personal fault' quote unquote, 'that my body was large and I ate terribly but now I eat great'. But, what we see actually, like when you look at that, what she used to eat, she used to starve herself all day and then eat at night.

Summer Innanen: Right? It's like, well of course you're going to binge at night. If you starve all day, that's no surprise there. You're going to be so hungry. You'll eat anything that's not locked down. And then what she eats now is like, it's so dangerous. It's like such a low amount of food and...

Louise Adams: And says, 'I ate,'...I'm going to read some numbers here so trigger warning. Cause it's just, I just want to get across the point of how restrictive it is. She's had 80% of her stomach removed, and then she's saying 'I eat 90 grams of protein a day, 10 grams of carbs and five grams of sugar'. Everyday.

Summer Innanen: Do you know what...10 grams. That's not even a banana. Right? 10 grams of carbs. Like that's like, that's like what? Like a few baby carrots or something like that?

Louise Adams: There's no actual veggies. Breakfast is a protein shake. Lunches, chicken or beef with cheese, dinner is chicken or steak or a protein shake. And the snacks, cashews or walnuts. Like there's there's no fruit or veggies. Poor thing. In a stomach which is 80% removed, amputated.

Summer Innanen: And can't be reversed. They also say that, which is another thing.

Louise Adams: And it says this article has the hide to say 'she now has a good relationship with food'.

Summer Innanen: Yes. I highlighted that too, because again, it's like, co-opting this language of food, freedom and, and using it in like a place where it's like clearly a very disordered.

Louise Adams: How is that a good relationship with food?

Summer Innanen: Yeah, it's sad.

Louise Adams: And works out seven days a week.

Summer Innanen: That, right. That was the other thing that really stood out because also extremely unhealthy to be, to be doing something like that. And you just sort of wonder, like what's going to happen to this individual. You know, and they may be riding the sort of like validation of having a significant weight change and getting the publicity and feeling really good about that.

Louise Adams: But, you know, as we all know totally done it, you know, as a psychologist, she's finally saying to her mum, 'look, I am the Barbie doll'. I just...it's heartbreaking. I totally get why she's doing it.

Summer Innanen: Right.

Louise Adams: But I find it an incredibly sad story.

Summer Innanen: I know, and I feel bad for her as a child.

Louise Adams: I feel like I'm kind of alone in seeing her as a really sad story.

Summer Innanen: No, it's really sad. It is really sad. And it's, and it's this idea like, again, it's like this idea that it's our fault, like, and it's a kid's fault if they are in a larger body instead of thinking, 'okay, well, this is just, you know, genetics'.

Louise Adams: Here's my child, here's my kid. Give her a barbie doll, for fuck's sake, if she wants one.

Summer Innanen: Yeah. Not to earn it by restricting food or whatnot. To put all the onus on her and to, you know, that she had to earn it by losing weight, earn Barbie dolls by losing weight. Like, it's so sad. And yet it's being like, you know, applauded and praised and...

Louise Adams: It's sickening. How like diet culture, it's weight loss at all costs. And this is an extreme example of the costs, but I mean...2015,  right? Women's Health magazine is talking about, 'Oh, we see the harm done by diet culture. We see that talking about women as if they're a bikini body and stuff is not cool anymore. Well, we're going to stop doing that'. But now, like we just talked about like two really extreme articles promoting starvation. Like there's no problem here. And we've gaslit ourselves to the point where these things are being called lifestyle changes or health behaviors.

Summer Innanen: Yeah, exactly.

Louise Adams: We're talking about stuff that's much, much worse than the good old diet industry days.

Summer Innanen: Right, right. Yeah. It seems to have gotten a lot more extreme, hasn't it? Like it's, it's something that has, it's always sort of been extreme, but it seems to be even more....I guess now the extremism is normalized.

Louise Adams: Yeah. And it's mainstream. It's like pro-ana used to be pro-ana, cause we could see it as being different to what the world was.

Summer Innanen: Exactly. Exactly.

Louise Adams: Yeah. Someone said to you, I only ate in a six hour window and I don't eat any vegetables or fruit or carbs. We're like, 'Oh, you're so healthy. How do you do it?'

Summer Innanen: Yes. Yes. 'Let me put you in my magazine. You're a success story'. But I wonder if like, if either of them took, you know, assessments on whether or not you have an eating disorder or disordered relationship with food, you would most likely see that they would probably check most of the boxes in terms of the things that they would say that they're thinking and doing as it relates to...you know, the behaviors, but I was going to say as well, it also just shows how weight stigma plays a role here. Because if this was an already thin person eating this stuff, you know, we as....there might be more people sort of calling this out as like very disordered or an eating disorder, but because they were in larger bodies and they went to these extreme measures to get in a smaller body it's applauded and like, that's the influence of weight stigma. It's like, we prescribed these eating disorder behaviors to people in larger bodies that we would diagnosis an eating disorder and somebody in a smaller body.

Louise Adams: Yeah. that's Deb Burgard's point, isn't it. That's so like...

Summer Innanen: Yes, exactly. Thank you. Cause I was like, I'm saying this and I'm like, I can't remember....thank you.

Louise Adams: I know, it's such a slam dunk awesome quote because it's exactly what's happening here.

Summer Innanen: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Louise Adams: You know, I wonder, I literally wonder, like what you're saying about, if it was someone smaller, would, would the media alarm bells ring. Because I'm thinking, well, if that was Gwyneth Paltrow's day in a plate, we'd probably still be going, 'Ooh, isn't she cool?'

Summer Innanen: You know what, you're right. And I saw that recently because Aaron Flores who hosts the Dieticians Unplugged podcast, he posted...I think it was via Glamour magazine. It was like what Kelly Ripa eats in a day. And it was the same thing. It was like, she was basically talking about how she eats dust. But...it was honestly very similar to what the first, the girl in the Women's Health magazine was talking about eating in a day. And so, you're 100 percent right. So, so maybe my point is...

Louise Adams: I do think it's viewed differently. But I actually think that we're getting to the point where like it's competitive, not eating is at such extreme levels that we're not, it's only the people in the eating disorder industry who are going, 'hello, what the hell', like it has become so unfashionable to eat like a grownup.

Summer Innanen: Yeah, yeah. Eat like a grown ass adult is what I say exactly. Exactly. Yes. I remember. I remember in the one that the Kelly Ripa, when she says, like, she called it...'my first chewable food of the day is around like 11:00 AM' or something, like that was the way that she described it. And I just, I remember commenting on it when Aaron and I was like, I can't believe she just used the expression, my first chewable food of the day. Like if, if that's not a red flag that you're describing the way you eat stuff, using those terms. And I don't mean to laugh. It sounds like a laughing at someone with a disordered relationship with food, but it really is horrifying. Just how normalized and then praised and applauded that is.

Louise Adams: Like, 'oh, oh no, it's any 10 o'clock. Should I be chewing? Oh my God'.

Summer Innanen: Yes, exactly. And I just, and again, like, I just remember always looking at those things and feeling so ashamed and always just being like, why can't I do that? Like, why can't. And thank goodness, my body couldn't do that because it was the reason why I didn't actually have like a full blown eating disorder and instead was just a chronic dieter.

Louise Adams: We really need to stop this. We really need to stop listing what people like in a day. It's ridiculous. It's kind of like comparing what we eat to each other, it's encouraging  externalization of eating behavior? We cannot continue to do that. Like really, the articles about 'what I eat in a day' should just be followed by the phrase 'is going to vary every single day', and it's none of your damn business'. Right.

Summer Innanen: Yes. Yes. That's the headline right there.

Louise Adams: Right. Eyes on your own plate. Does it matter? It's not a fricking competition. It's not like we're going like, 'ooh, what my poo looks like every day. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe that's where we are  we going? Comparing physical functions. We just need to stop.

It's so true. You kind of quid pro quo's me with, like, I came up with the Barbie ridiculous story and you came up with a whopper from Canada.

Summer Innanen: The dog?

Louise Adams: Yeah.

Summer Innanen: So, this was on the CBC. So CBC is the Canadian Broadcasting Company, it's like our major national news network. And like, that's the one place I go when I want to get unbiased, like just straight up, really factual news. And they have this article that they posted called 'meet Woody a massive Malamute, serving up weight loss inspiration for the new year'.

I just couldn't believe this was on the CBC and it's literally like this story, this weight loss story of a dog that like dropped half its weight and also had like shared it on social media as a way to inspire others to, you know...

Louise Adams: Other dogs?

Summer Innanen: No, no, no. Oh no. Humans.

Louise Adams: This is a new low, eat like a dog.

Summer Innanen: This is...

Louise Adams: Oh my God. It says, 'If you're looking for inspiration to meet your new year's resolution to trim the fat, look no further'.

Summer Innanen: Exactly. Yeah, no, it's to inspire humans.

Louise Adams: Oh, please stop inspiring me. Oh my God.

Summer Innanen: It's such a cute dog though. I just, as a side note, he's a really, really cute dog, but you know, this has come up. I don't know if you've been...you've probably been asked this question too before, but people will say like, well, you know, why is it okay to put pets on diets, but not humans? Do you have a good answer for that? By the way? Before I was going to say what I say.

Louise Adams: I don't think I have actually had that question put to me.

Summer Innanen: Oh, you haven't? Just me. I've gotten that.

Louise Adams: Why is it okay? I don't, I don't know if it is okay. Like, I haven't looked at the weight loss research for dogs, but I'm assuming it's going to be physiologically similar to humans. Right? I don't know. I don't know.

Summer Innanen: I don't know. My answer is like, we're not dogs. Like we aren't dogs, dogs aren't influenced by like diet culture. Like dogs don't have fat phobia., cause they're not like looking at thinner dogs everywhere and thinking like, 'I'm not good enough because I don't look like that'. Like they're...

Louise Adams: Oh my God, you're reminding me of poodle science, you know, ASDAH's awesome little  video. Which is like, it's illustrating what body diversity is like, you know. But in weight science it's like, all the poodles are in charge and they're telling everyone, all the breeds of dogs to like, they like 'be like me, be like the poodle', but like a starving mastiff will never be the same as a poodle.

Summer Innanen: Right, exactly. Yeah. One of the first like, quotes that I said many years ago was 'we're not Golden Retrievers'. We're not all meant to look the same. It's one of the things that I still say to this day, because it's true. And you know, in this article, like it's a pretty basic...they're just restricting the dog's food and making the dog exercise. But this idea that like we're similar at all. It's just so, it's so backwards to me because it completely ignores the culture that we live in. And like the fact that we are emotional being...dogs are emotional beings too. Yes. I will give you that. I love dogs. But they don't have the same. Not living in like a patriarchal society. They're not exposed to sexism. Like they're not, they're not exposed to fatphobia like, I don't think they're internalizing those charts at the vet that have like pictures of the different dogs with the big classifications like we would be. They don't feel ashamed when they step on the scale.

Louise Adams: There's no diet culture in dogs, but there's diet culture in the humans that own them. And you can hear that in this article, can't you? Because it's like...actually it's everywhere. Like this sentence, 'he once weighed double what he should have'. How do you know what he should? He's a fucking Malamute.

Summer Innanen: Yeah, yeah.

Louise Adams: 'Should have'. So, we've decided what he should weigh and we starved him down there. And then, Pam Hedgie, who's the foster mom, apparently she's known for doing this. Starving the dogs so that they're adoptable. Now, that is awful. And...but the woman she's like, totally like lost it. She puts it on social media and...here we go. She says, 'humans have something to learn from dogs. They're so willing. I think that's the most amazing part about them. They don't get down, they get up everyday, they're happy to go to the park. And it has to be hard work. It can't be a breeze, but they're so happy and willing to do it. We could all learn a little bit about that'. I'm sure what he likes going for walks. Yeah, but I'm also sure that if Woody could talk, he'd say 'why are you starving me?'

Summer Innanen: Yeah. I think it's, again it's like, you know, it just shows, 'okay, you have to do something extreme to be healthy'. Whereas really it's like, of course the dog wants to go out and play. And if we just let them do that by letting them tell us and get them outside, and they listened to their bodies, kind of like humans do..then you wouldn't have to, you know...It's not like this, like... 'oh, you should work out every day and you have to like push yourself through'. It's like dogs are naturally hardwired to kind of want to be that way anyways. And so long as we give them an environment where they can do those things, then they're going to be healthy regardless of their size. And that's, that's sort of similar to humans in a way.

Louise Adams: His health is not even mentioned.  Like it'e literally just his size. And this assumption that he has to be half his size. Like we don't even know it was here actually just a larger dog in good health? We don't even know how old he is?

Summer Innanen: No, you're right. You're right. Because yeah, because malamutes are huge to begin with anyways.

Louise Adams: Yeah. Well, I've got a Great Dane and like big dogs, the big dogs. And like, my vet, there is no correct weight. And like, I love my vet because my vet is like full of body diversity. It's like, there's a great big range in Great Danes. You can have smaller Great Danes and big Great Danes.  And they're all Great Danes.

Summer Innanen: That's so refreshing. Wow.

Louise Adams: Thank you. I'm in the right place.

Summer Innanen: People used to criticize my dog all the...my dog might, we lost my dog a few months ago. People used to like stop me on the street and like...not me actually, they would always do my husband for some reason. Cause they probably saw the look on my face and was like, 'I'm not going to say anything'. They would say like, 'what are you feeding your dog? Like your dog is too big' because we had a pug and he was really big and he was just naturally. Really big. He'd always been really big and like, vets were always totally fine with him. We never had a vet say, 'hey, you know, you gotta watch this weight' or anything like that. But, you know, people in the street would stop and comment. And I remember just saying to my husband, I was like, 'I swear if someone did that to me, I would just rip them to...', I don't know why they always stopped him.

Louise Adams: Yeah. Actually now you say it. I get that about my Great Dane, Dolly. Her name is Dolly Pawton. It's so cute. They stop us and they're like, Oh, what is, what does he ate? Oh, first of all, they say 'he', cause obviously a big dog is always a 'he'. 'What do you feed him? He must eat you out of house and home.' This dog eats, you know, not as much as my boxer that I used to have. So there's assumption about size and what they eat. Let's look to our dogs,  right? No as inspirational weightless stories, but as diversity right in front of us.

Summer Innanen: Yes.

Louise Adams: And connection.

Summer Innanen: And how we just love them regardless of their size.

Louise Adams: I know. Like, poor old Woody, he's not more oveable now he's starved into submission.

Summer Innanen: It's so silly to me that they would use that as a story of inspiration. Must've been a slow news day in Canada. Like you don't have a pandemic going on, I don't know why.

Louise Adams: The sad point is that it appears that Woody has more variety in his diet than the Barbie lady.

Summer Innanen: Oh yeah, at least he's eating lots of fruits and vegetables. I know. Oh my gosh. Right.

Louise Adams: God. So, we've arrived at our last. Article, which is an interesting one in Good Housekeeping. That's just come out. Jan 29th, 2021. 'The unbearable weight of diet culture', which...it's such an exciting article cause it's really long, really in-depth, and it's talking about this whole idea of diet culture. In the intro, it says this: 'throughout 2021, Good Housekeeping will be exploring how we think about weight, the way we eat and how we try to control or change our bodies in our quest to be happier and healthier. While Good Housekeeping also publishes weight loss content, and endeavours to do so in a responsible science backed way, we think it's important to present a broad perspective that allows for a fuller understanding of the complex thinking about health and body weight'. So, kind of cool.

Summer Innanen: Kind of reminded me of the Women's Health 2015 publicity. What I do like about this article, I will say, is Judith Matz and Christy Harrison are quoted quite a bit through it.

Louise Adams: And Sabrina Strings.

Summer Innanen: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Which I thought was great because they tied in that component too, like the race component. And I thought it was one of those articles that you could probably send to a family member or a friend that didn't understand why you were doing Intuitive Eating or that had questions about it, but you didn't really know how to give them the information in a way that was a little more palatable. And I thought that this article was one of those things that you could totally pass along to them. It's easy to read, makes a lot of sense, kind of hits all the main points.  It's one that I'll probably bookmark for people.

Louise Adams: It's nice too as evidence that the wider culture is taking the whole concept of not dieting and looking at the Health At Every Size sort of stuff seriously.

Summer Innanen: Yes. And actual people who are in the space instead of like the people who are in between who talk about this stuff yet still promote weight loss, you know, like the sort of like, you know, Geneen Roths of the world and whatnot. So, I thought it was really great that they actually had a lot of, like a lot of like really well-respected experts weighing in and some good links and things like that, but there was still a little problem with it. Did you want to talk about that or do you want me to talk about it?

Louise Adams: So it's at one point it says, look like it's all this awesome, awesome and stuff.  And then it  says, loo... they're talking about how the media in particular can promote dieting, and it says 'even Good housekeeping's own article on 1200 calorie diets is a tricky juxtaposition. The article aims to serve the approximately 40,500 people who search for 1200 calorie meal plans on Google every month. Despite the 2015 study that shows this number of calories falls within the realm of clinical starvation'. And that's, that's been changed...

Summer Innanen: It has actually, because I...

Louise Adams: I think it said something about the Holocaust before?

Summer Innanen: Okay. So I have it, cause I cut and paste it into a document. It says, this is what used to say. It says, 'It's the most popular article here on Good Housekeeping's own website, about 1200 calorie diets that netted over 2 million search users in 2019 alone. Our second most read story of the year, despite the fact the number of calories falls within the realm of clinical starvation. In brackets - Holocaust concentration camp prisoners were fed 1,250 to 1400 calories per day'. So, that's really interesting that they changed it.

Louise Adams: They've watered it down, haven't they? They've removed a bit of culpability. Like, cause that example of like in a concentration camp, you would get more food.

Summer Innanen: It reminds me of the Minnesota starvation study, which, which was around like 1500...

Louise Adams: 1500.

Summer Innanen: 1500 calories a day.

Louise Adams: And they all went around the twist from that over six months.

Summer Innanen: Yeah, exactly.  Exactly.

Louise Adams: I'm so glad you cut and pasted that.

Summer Innanen: Yes. So that, and then the other big thing is they still link to the goddamn diet. Like they still link to it. They link to the 1200 calorie day diet. Like it's like they're saying, 'okay, we're exploring this'. And then they're linking to the thing that is probably the most like harmful triggering thing that you could put in that article.

Louise Adams:  'We're not actually going to stop doing it because it's the second most popular thing we do'.

Summer Innanen: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Louise Adams: That is so fucked up.

Summer Innanen: It's like these publications want to explore these topics and they admit that they're complicit and they get publicity because of that, they get a bit of applause and then they continue to uphold and perpetuate the same dangerous stuff.

Louise Adams: Get off the fence, Good Housekeeping. Get the splinter out of your ass. Take the article down.

Summer Innanen: Yeah, take it down, take it down. If you want to, you know, put your money where your mouth is... but they don't, they want to keep taking other people's money. And then you were telling me this was the article that people were opening and then they were seeing weight loss advertisements, right? Was it this one?

Louise Adams: Yeah. So I was saying chats and people like reading the article, but in between the text of the article, were getting sold weight loss stuff.

Summer Innanen: Yeah. Yeah.

Louise Adams: I mean, geez. I mean, can we, at some point stop the fence sitting and stop performing the recognition of diet culture as harmful and, and start actually stopping the harm. So we protect little kids, like little miss Barbie.

Summer Innanen: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Louise Adams: And we stop the metabolic and physiological harm. If nothing else, you know. People are so worried. In the article, Good housekeeping. It's talking about how more people are dieting than ever before. Did you see ...'In November, 2020, the CDC, Centre for Disease Control, reported that more people are actually dieting now compared to 10 years ago', you know? Dieting, even though no one's dieting, more people are dieting than in 2010. And we are in massive trouble from the perspective of psychological damage and also from the perspective of long-term metabolic damage. And if I hear one more person bang on about diabetes, insulin resistance, you know, metabolic problems from being fat and they haven't kind of put the pieces together about actually, maybe it's the people who are dieting because it's the dieting that's doing that kind of physiological damage. You know, we need to wake up. So Good Housekeeping aren't just able to politically fence it because it sells sharticles and sells hits on their harmful website. We've got to. If we care  about health, let's start caring about it.

Right, right.

Summer Innanen: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that historically Good Housekeeping's always had like, you know, advertisements for Slim Fast and like diet, weight loss drugs in their magazine. And so I, you know, I would wager  I guess, that that's still going to be there. And, you know, I think the reason why diets have probably gone up like over the last 10 years is because it's all shrouded in health now.

Louise Adams: Yeah, it's 'not dieting'

Summer Innanen: Like everyone thinks that, yeah. It's like, this is our quote unquote 'healthy lifestyle'.

Louise Adams: 'I've got a good relationship with food'.

Summer Innanen: Right. And it seems, it's almost seen, like positioned as more empowering versus restrictive. And so like, more people are buying into it, but like you said, it's all the same bullshit when you look at it.

Louise Adams: Just wrapped in glitter.

Summer Innanen: Right, exactly. It's like that meme that the HAES student doctor says, it's like the poo emoji called 'diet' and then like in glitter, it's like 'lifestyle change'. It all, you know, it all upholds fatphobia. And dangerous dieting. And quick weight loss. And this idea that...

Louise Adams: And a massive industry. Let's not forget that this is all a bloody huge  industry. It's...what is it? 600 billion in the States every year.

Summer Innanen: Yes.

Louise Adams: Yeah. This is a business and the media is in the business of keeping these businesses going. And even when they admit it, they don't stop it.

Summer Innanen: Well because they would lose their sponsors. And, and then it would, I mean, it would all probably collapse. So it's a tough  situation. It's a tricky situation. I don't think it's an easy fix. I think you have to really stand out. You have to be willing to say like, 'okay, we're going to really be, you know, these are our company values and we're going to, you know, stand, actually stand by them regardless of what the fallout is from that'. But I mean, my hope is that more people are going like, you know, would support those messages. Cause I think there are, there's also a growing population of people who are sick of it and who are, are tired of that crap and who know that diets don't work.

Louise Adams: Yeah. I think the pushback is happening. It is maddening when we see stuff nearly, nearly get it. And then kind of, whiplash straight back into it, but we keep pushing. We keep these voices going and the voices are getting louder and louder and more diverse and more strident. And I think, you know, 2021 January has been the usual bullshit tsunami, but I hope that this conversation for the listeners helps get the bullshit detector flashing. Push back against this whole idea that insane levels of starvation are somehow healthy. And you know, what we can do is like articles, comment on articles like that. I haven't read too many of the comments on that article, 'The unbearable weight of diet culture', but I did see the usual shit fight starting underneath.

Summer Innanen: I did too.

Louise Adams: 'Oh my God, you're  killing people'.

Summer Innanen:  I know, that's going to happen. That's going to happen. But you know what, like good on them for at least publishing that and getting it out there. And let's hope that five years from now, they're not, they're still standing by those things and not totally changing. Although I think I might be...I'm going to be cautiously optimistic on that one.

Louise Adams: Uh, I mean, it's so crappy when you go to that little bit about the 1200 calorie diet. It says 'follow this and you will feel satisfied and drop all the weight', which is exact opposite of what we've just spent like half an hour telling you. Yeah.

Summer Innanen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like enough for maybe a seagull or something, but not a human being. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's...I'm still like, I'm just still in amazement that they took out the reference to the Holocaust concentration camp prisoners, because I think that, that was like, that was such a huge thing to say that...but maybe it was because then they didn't want to take down the 1200 calorie-a-day article. And so therefore they...

Louise Adams: Interesting too that they hid the idea that this is our second most read article.

Summer Innanen: Yeah.

Louise Adams: That's pretty huge.

Summer Innanen: It really lowered the number of people who had requested it or looked for it, or what did you say?  It was like 45,000?

Louise Adams: It was annually rather than by the month. Like it's just kind of interesting that they tapped in...they altered that part of the article. Which is kind of the bit, which says this is the bit where complicit with.

Summer Innanen: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So, have media literacy.

Louise Adams: Yeah. Oh my God. But thank you so much for coming on and unpacking the crappy diet culture stuff that's circulating in our countries.

Summer Innanen: Thank you so much for having me. I loved chatting with you. I loved, yeah, just kind of dissecting all this stuff. Yeah.

Louise Adams: All the rage. So thank you for getting it off your chest and thanks for coming on.

Summer Innanen: Thank you so much, Louise.

Resources Mentioned in the Show: (Major trigger warning - all of these sharticles discuss weight loss in excruciating detail !!)

The lady who lost weight to look like Barbie

Woody the Weight loss guru Malamute

The horrendous Keto plus fasting diet that claimed to be inspiring us (the same method that spiralled Summer's eating disorder)

The Good Housekeeping article "The unbearable weight of diet culture"

Find more about the wonderful Summer Innanen here

Summer's wonderful podcast Eat The Rules

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's no-one on the planet like my awesome friend Dr Lindo Bacon! It's been more than 4 years since we got to hang out drinking wine in a hot tub in the Napa Valley, and even though we can't see each other in person, I am SO HAPPY to kick off the new year and a new season of the All Fired Up podcast with them! Do not miss this fiercely loving wisdom from Lindo, who has NAILED the problem with self-love and is calling for a revolution - not of self-care but of BELONGING! We don't need to fall in love with our bodies - we need to work on healing our entire society, we need radical change - EQUALITY, and JUSTICE, and we need to ALLOW DIVERSITY! Basically, if all humans are welcome - if all humans belong - we can heal. Lindo has come a long way since their first book Health At Every Size, and we had an awesome conversation about how their perspective has changed - and all about their fabulous new book "Radical Belonging: How to Survive and Thrive in an Unjust World (While Transforming it for the Better). This is a not-to-be-missed episode!!

Show Transcript

LOUISE: Thank you so much for coming on the show, Lindo. Welcome.

LINDO: Oh, I’ve always wanted to do this, Louise. It’s always such a pleasure to hang out with you.

LOUISE: I know!

LINDO: So, I can’t believe we haven’t done this sooner.

LOUISE: I can’t believe it either, but I’m so excited we’re talking about your new book as the reason to have you here. But I’m just…I’ve got so much to say and talk about, but it is so awesome to get to chat to you. But, you know, before we kick off…it’s been like over four years since…because we hung out in like, live, when I came in 2016 which was just before Trump got elected.

LINDO: Oh, is that the timing? Yeah?

LOUISE: Yeah! And now I’m talking to you just a couple of days after that whole period’s ended and we’ve got a new president. Isn’t that weird?

LINDO: It is. I remember just relaxing in a hot tub with you in the Napa Valley, which is wine country in California, talking about the election.

LOUISE: I know, I know, right? What a wild memory now, thinking of…the fact that I can’t even get on a plane.

LINDO: Yeah, so…present tense, what are we talking about today?

LOUISE: Yes, so I want to know what is firing you up at the moment?

LINDO: What’s firing me up…lately I’ve been listening to all this ‘body positivity’ and what’s getting me is that everybody is preaching this ‘self-love’ message. And self-love, yeah, it’s a gorgeous thing and I wish it for everybody. But there’s this idea that that’s what’s going to save us, and we have to do all the internal work on ourselves. And it makes the whole ‘body liberation’ journey very individual. And that’s not what it’s about, because we can love ourselves fully and completely, and then we walk into a world where people tell us there’s something wrong with us. Whether it’s that we’re too fat, or we’re denied an opportunity because of our skin colour. So, I want people to know that as beautiful as self-love is, it’s not enough to save us. We also have to be working on social change. Because we’re individuals in a context, and if we forget the context then we end up blaming ourselves that we can’t love ourselves, and then it becomes problematic. But it’s hard to love ourselves in a culture that doesn’t support us.

LOUISE: Absolutely.

LINDO: That’s what’s on my mind right now.

LOUISE: Yeah, this is so absolutely necessary, and this is very much your book.

LINDO: Can I tell you a very funny thing? I was very proud to see that Radical Belonging, my book, is selling well. And it’s jumped up on Amazon’s best seller list.

LOUISE: Really?

LINDO: Yeah, it’s near the top of Amazon’s vest seller list. But here’s the thing, it’s the self-help best seller list. And I explicitly have a chapter in there that’s titled something like ‘why self-help is not enough’. You know? Just trying to get away from that. But it makes me laugh, I’ll take it, you know? I’m glad the book is getting around, and I’m glad the book is getting around to people who are interested in self-help. So that it can help to expand their horizons a bit.

LOUISE: It helps them hopefully to abandon self-help and start changing the world. Oh wow. You have led this whole…I wouldn’t say body positivity, I’d talk about Health at Every Size®, HAES®. You’ve done three books, you’ve done ‘Health at Every Size’, which a lot of people refer to as one of the original textbooks of HAES®. And you did Body Respect, which was co-authored with Lucy Aphramor, and then Radical Belonging is your third book. And like all of us, it’s such a process, this HAES® perspective. I’m interested to ask you how things have changed for you since you first wrote HAES®, up until now. That’s a big question.

15:48

LINDO: It is. I’ll keep it short, because there’s a short and easy narrative that ties the three books. And that’s that…first of, you didn’t imply this, but I want to just announce it for the audience because there’s a big misunderstanding that people tend to think that I started the Health at Every Size® movement, and I did not. Health at Every Size® was around long before I had ever entered the scene. And my book, I think, helped to popularise it quite a bit. And so, that’s probably why I got that reputation. Anyway, that first ‘Health at Every Size’ book, I’m still proud of it. I think it’s an important book and I get a lot of feedback that it’s changed people’s lives and given professionals a totally new framework for approaching weight. So, I am still proud of it. But in retrospect, what I see is that it was very much a self-help book. It really put the emphasis on individual change. And all that stuff is valuable, but there are also a lot of limitations to it. I mean, one is that it means it’s a very privileged book because there are a lot of people that just don’t have access to being able to eat nutritiously and eat the foods that they want when they want, and they might have a job that doesn’t give them food breaks except during prescribed times so they can’t really respond to body cues, or they’ve got to learn how to make adjustments to that. Or, you know, they might be living in poverty and have difficulty taking care of themselves in that way. So anyway, there’s a lot of class privilege that’s involved in being able to make individual choices. Another problem is that we know that that stuff doesn’t play that huge of a role in our health anyway. I’m not going to deny that eating nd exercise don’t play some role in our health, they do. But research shows that all of our health behaviours combined probably only play 25% of the role in our health.

LOUISE: And that’s mind-blowing.

LINDO: It is. And the really big thing about your health is about how you’re treated in the world. You know? What we call the social determinants of health. So, I regret in some ways that I wrote a book that was so catered to privileged people without knowing it, and put the emphasis on things…well, I mean, it is helpful for people to learn the skills and strategies of self-help if they can, but not to put that stuff in context also means that there’ll be a lot of self-blame when people don’t get all the health results that they’re hoping for.

LOUISE: Yeah, so if you can’t do it, then that’s your fault?

LINDO: And if you don’t get a result…

LOUISE: If you’re health’s not improving you must be doing something wrong.

LINDO: Yeah. I mean, if you still have diabetes after changing your diet and exercising, you’re doing something wrong. Or even if you get, you have diabetes and you’re not eating so nutritious, right? I still don’t think there should be self-blame. Anyway, that’s why I was really happy to have the opportunity to kind of approach it again. And the second time I worked with Lucy Aphramor and we made all those connections, and we started talking about the interplay between the social determinants of health – things like racism, and sexism, and ablism, and how they intersect with our health and our opportunities to change our life.

LOUISE: Yeah, that was an incredible book and an incredible change in emphasis from the first, because I came to your training in Seattle…

LINDO: Yeah, I remember that. It was the first time we met.

LOUISE: Yeah. It was like, five days of diving into all of that, the social determinants of health and thinking about oppression and thinking about stuff I had never thought about. And when I came home from that trip…I had an online program at the time, like a…to help people, based on HAES® principles. And when I came home from that trip, I literally took the whole thing down and shredded it and did it again. And came up with Untrapped, which was a co-work with all of the other people who helped, because of that, that shift in emphasis…and it was mind-blowing, and just phenomenal.

20:30

LINDO: It’s interesting too how much it resonates with people, because you’re telling them ‘your story mattes’. Who you are plays a role, like, your history and what’s happened to you plays a huge role in your attitudes towards exercise, your attitudes towards your body, and how you’re treated in the world is just so, so important. Once people start to see that they’re seen, it opens up possibilities for them to come up with an individualised approach to how they want to live their life, right? Rather than following somebody else’s rules.

LOUISE: Yeah, and it also sort of opens the door for social justice and really sort of taking seriously things like inequity and oppression and trauma. Here in Australia, the Aboriginal population have diabetes rates much, much higher than the white population, and of course the weight science researchers like to talk about ‘that’s because of the size of our Aboriginal population, we need to make everyone lose weight and it’s going to go away, it’ll be magic”. It’s just such bullshit to think of things that…

LINDO: That’s the first thing they say, is they blame it on weight. And then the second thing they tell people to do is to diet and exercise. Even that has been shown to have limited effect on changing diabetes outcomes. But you know, what the real research is showing is provide people with more opportunity, so they have higher paying jobs, so they’re not so stressed out. Treat them better. Stop oppression. That’s how we make a dent in diabetes.

LOUISE: Yeah, right? So, what a huge realisation that maybe the solution here isn’t with individual behaviour but with social change.

LINDO: Right. Which again, si not to suggest that individual behvaiour change doesn’t do anything. It does. But to change the emphasis a little bit, to give people more agency in the world.

LOUISE: Yeah, and more respect.

LINDO: Yeah.

LOUISE: Which was the name of the book, Body Respect.

LINDO: Yeah. So, it was really fun to have the opportunity to write that book with Lucy Aphramor. That book was meant to be short, to the point, very concise to that people could really see the arguments clearly. And we didn’t do nearly as much storytelling as I did in my first book. This was a very different book. It was meant to really sell to people this idea of what we called in the book ‘Health at Every Size’. I think there’s still some debate as to whether that’s what people were calling Health at Every Size® at the time, or whether that was just ideas that we wanted to be Health at Every Size®.

LOUISE: Interesting.

LINDO: But anyway. I’m not so sure about that. But regardless, the book to me was a really important transition, and much of what’s in the book, believe it or not, I’m still very much behind. You know? I think it really…it’s last…maybe four or five years since we’ve published it. I think we’ve really grown into the ideas in Body Respect more.

LOUISE: Yeah. As a HAES® community, you mean?

LINDO: Yes. Exactly. And then the progression as far as the third book goes, there’s very little emphasis on…I don’t use the term Health at Every Size® often.

LOUISE: Yeah, I’ve noticed.

LINDO: And in part that’s because…I think there’s so many other people right now who are helping to define and grow Health at Every Size®, and I want to step back a little bit and let other people…or not ‘let’, but so that other people can emerge and there can be wider perspective. And I also don’t feel like I want to be responsible for a movement. Like, I’d rather just talk about what’s important to me and not be so closely assigned responsibility around something that is so much bigger than me and is not me.

25:04

LOUISE: Yeah, there’s so many voices and so many people and so many perspectives that need to be heard.

LINDO: Right. And Health at Every Size® is a community idea. And also, I’m not so interested in physical health as much.

LOUISE: Interesting.

LINDO: Like, yeah, I think it’s important, but it’s not my focus. My focus is more on love and community. Maybe I should have said that in terms of what’s firing me up. I think we’re recognising more than ever how much we need each other, and that’s what I want to do. I want to forge those bonds. I find that the more that I connect with my vulnerability and expose myself in the world, the more I get seen by everyone and I can find my pockets where I get respected and valued, and that’s what feeds me. Having that kind of support, of unity. And it’s not so much that I get seen, but the richness of seeing other people too, in all their uniqueness.

LOUISE: All of their states of health. Yeah.

LINDO: So, belonging seems to be the thing that’s captured me more, and why I wrote about that in my last book.

LOUISE: Yeah, belonging. And it’s such a beautiful word.

LINDO: It is.

LOUISE: What’s…what does it mean to you? What does belonging mean?

LINDO: Belonging to me is about that unconditional love. It meant that I can expose the stuff that I might not be so proud of in myself, and yet I’m still loved and validated and seen and appreciated, and people will sit with me through that, right? And that gives me opportunity to make change, or not. But that’s a very different idea to what our culture offers up to people. Like, it says…it kind of sets normal standards and it tells you that you belong if you match up with that. If you’re thin enough, for example, you belong. If you’re cisgender, you belong. And so many people feel that they don’t have the same ability or opportunity ot be appreciated in the world.

LOUISE: So, it’s like diet culture would say there’s conditional belonging.

LINDO: Right, right.

LOUISE: And you’re saying radical belonging, we all belong.

LINDO: Right, radical.

LOUISE: Radical, meaning like, we don’t need to fit into boxes.

LINDO: Right. So, it’s two things there. It’s about not needing to fit into boxes. What that means is we take on social justice issues, because we have to value everybody in this world. And then the second thing is just recognising that humans are vulnerable, we get scared, we make mistakes and inviting all of that humanity into the picture too.

LOUISE: Yeah, welcoming that.

LINDO: Yeah.

LOUISE: It is, it’s so beautiful. This book is so beautiful. It sort of fills you up. I’m interested, what led you to write Radical Belonging?

LINDO: When I started writing it, it wasn’t because I had this idea in mind of a book I wanted to get out. In fact, it actually started just as a personal journal. And at first, I was basically just writing my gender identity, and looking at the obstacles over the years, how I overcame them. And I’d say that that first writing was something that was very painful, and it certainly wasn’t something that I wanted exposed to the world, because it was all about my pain. But when I looked at it, I also realised that I’ve developed to much resilience over the years. The stuff that I got japed for when I was a kid…my parents hated that I liked to wear clothes that were meant for boys, they wanted me to wear dresses. When I wore dresses, I always just felt like I was doing drag, right? My parents always just shamed me for that, saw it as something that was really wrong. Never could I go out in public dressed the way I wanted to dress.

LOUISE: That’s awful.

LINDO: Right. And I have to realise that I got through all of that stuff, you know? Maybe, sure I had to develop an eating disorder to figure out how to…you know, food got me through some of those difficult times.

LOUISE: But that’s coping strategy, right? It did get you through.

LINDO: Exactly, right. So, I was able to kind of rewrite the book and look at how I saved myself, and not just through the eating disorder but how I learned other skills to kind of manage discomfort, so I no longer needed the eating disorder or the substance abuse that I also went through when I was younger. And recognising that I had developed so many skills to kind of transform the challenges that I was given. And then I went back, and I looked at the book, and was able to look at it through my scientific lens. To recognise that hey, there’s a biological reason why I was reaching for food. And I could recognise the way that trauma kind of lodges in your body, or in my body. You know? And how that participated in a distrust of other people, and hypervigilance that I kind of carried with me in adulthood and kind of a…

31:08

LOUISE: That’s the legacy of trauma, that hypervigilance. That fracturing of trust.

LINDO: And that inability to kind of sit with discomfort. So, I could kind of put the science to it and show how trauma played out physically in my body and resulted in a lot of behaviours. And then I could also look at the part two to that, how I developed strategies that kind of rewired  my brain so that I got better at tolerating things, and didn’t have to jump to coping behaviours. And I could fill in all of the science for what you can do to kind of save yourself.

LOUISE: Yeah, that’s what I love about the title. It’s ‘how to survive and thrive in an unjust world’. So, not just survival.

LINDO: Right, and come out happy and having fun. You have difficult times too, but learning how to just accept them and get through them.

LOUISE: Resilience is a remarkable thing. Humans are like, we’re pretty tough.

LINDO: We can be. But you can always keep getting better at it.

LOUISE: Yeah, and that’s what this book is all about. It’ like, how to do that.

LINDO: And then the big recognition that I had through all of that is one of the reasons why we develop all of the coping challenges is because we really want to be loved and appreciated by other people. And when we get rejected, it hurts. And so it makes sense that we develop an inauthentic self to kind of protect ourselves in the world. It makes sense that we kind of run away from relationships and get scared. But once you recognise that it’s all about fear of connection, because connection is what saves us. Right? I mean, that’s the irony. We’re scared of something because if we don’t get it, we can’t survive. Right? So the more you can develop the courage to kind of jump into relationships, and be with people, and be vulnerable…

LOUISE: And authentic.

LINDO: Yeah.

LOUISE: And that’s what you’ve done! By writing the book and putting it out there, that’s the ultimate of what you’ve done.

LINDO: Yeah, I put myself out there. I showed the world who I was and asked to be seen in the way that I haven’t been seen previously.

LOUISE: And I think that’s one of the loveliest things about this book, is that we get to meet you.

LINDO: Thanks, that’s sweet.

LOUISE: Alongside the science. But the ‘you’, the human, everything that you’ve been through was…

LINDO: Thank you for that. And I think that the storytelling in the book and the vulnerability does make it a lot more readable and fun. I think too that one of the things that I was really looking for was using myself so that other people could see themselves, too. And I was really proud when Ijeoma Oluo who wrote the introduction to the book…she was a stranger to me and I just sent her the book and asked her if she’d read it, and it just moved her. And I asked her to write the foreword and…she’s a black woman, she’s an activist and what she said was that in every chapter she was able to see herself. To me, that just made me cry. That was what I was shooting for in the book, to use myself to open up the possibility that other people can see themselves and think about similar stories. And I write other people’s stories into the book too, to help that process along. But it was really beautiful, because Ijeoma had so many different social identities than I do, and yet she saw herself so profoundly there.

LOUISE: That’s extraordinary.

LINDO: That to me was a marker of success, you know? That I’d been able to somewhat universalise this book across our different social identities.

35:28

LOUISE: Yeah, you do. And you also speak about so many just human things that we don’t really think about. Like, how much avoidance we engage in, for example. Like, if we’re feeling shame about friends, or things that are going on socially, how much we hide. There’s so many little snippets in the book that you can relate to, like “oh, I’ve done that! I’ve done that” and we don’t really hear about this. It’s really human.

LINDO: Right, right.

LOUISE: What was it like to come out at trans in the book? Because, you know, in your community everybody knows you and knows you as Lindo for a long time. But this book’s just come out. What’s that been like from that perspective?

LINDO: Well, it’s a huge relief. It’s interesting to use the word ‘come out’, because…

LOUISE: I wasn’t sure what to say.

LINDO: I know, and I’m never sure what to say either. Because I’m not sure that my gender identity has ever changed since birth. I think most people are much more gender fluid than I, they’re much more playful about it. But my gender identity has been the same. So, it’s not like there was a ‘coming out’ period, or a change that happened. I think the problem is though that we live in this world where people just assume a gender binary. And so, everybody has tried to put me into this package that was never ‘me’, and except for in childhood when I really tried to be feminine because my parents, it was important to my parents, I never was ‘woman’ that people saw me as. And being genderqueer, it’s not an easy box for people to put you into. People see me and they just make an assumption about who I am. And I think that shifted over time, physically I look a lot different now, but not enough to always push me out of the like, like what people think of in terms of gender presentation. Not enough to necessarily push me out of a category where people are making the assumption…like, making the assumption that I’m a woman. For example, if you’re hearing audio right now and my voice is definitely what most people attribute to ‘woman’, and so on the phone everybody just misgenders me automatically. But anyway. Having this book out, I’m telling people ‘don’t do that’. So, before it made sense to me that people would make the wrong assumption, but now I’m not allowing for that anymore. Like, I’m just out there and asserting myself. So, I guess that just, might feel different.

LOUISE: Yeah, and that’s what you’re talking about in the book as well. Not just the act of self-love but acts of social justice and sticking up for yourself. You’ve got many examples in the book of when you’ve tried to do that and make changes, and that’s part of body liberation, right?

LINDO: Sure, yeah.

LOUISE: Super cool. So, one of the really fascinating bits of the book, from the science perspective, is when you start talking about the brain on trauma, and how experiences of oppression and exclusion particularly actually impacts our brain. Can you talk a bit about that?

LINDO: Sure. It was totally fascinating to me to learn that when you experience rejection, that it’s the same areas in your brain light up as when you experience physical pain.

LOUISE: Wow.

LINDO: Yeah. All these times socially we’re excluded, we’re told we’re not enough, we’re told there’s something wrong with us, we’re told we’re too fat, all of these things lodge in our brain and after a while the brain changes and adapts to this. We call this ‘high allostatic load’, when you’ve had repeated experiences of…I’ll call it trauma, or…actually, why don’t we call it microaggressions. You can read the book to come up with distinctions there. But repeated experiences of microaggressions add up to trauma in your brain, and after a while your body comes to expect all of these things. And what that means is that you’re going to have a higher level of anxiety, be more fearful when you go into different circumstances, because you have experiences of rejection in the past. And people develop a hypervigilance, get depressed, we talked about this a little bit earlier. Your body adapts and this becomes your go-to response, this kind of fear being in the world. And it also contributes to things like Type 2 Diabetes and heart disease risk. Which explains why marginalised people are much more likely to get many chronic diseases and to die earlier than people who are given more social and economic privilege in the world.

41:00

LOUISE: Yeah, that is so important and so overlooked.

LINDO: Right, and it’s interesting to see how physical and biological it is. That it’s not that the individual isn’t trying hard enough in the world, it’s that the world is trying to…

LOUISE: The world is being hard for the individual.

LINDO: I think we’re always kind of focused on the negative stuff, but the amazing thing is that we always have the opportunity to rewire our brain so that we don’t have to be as hypervigilant in the world and distrustful. There are plenty of strategies we can employ that are going to help our brain to sit with discomfort more readily, and to tolerate not knowing things and going into unfamiliar environments, etc. There are a lot of things we can develop, and probably one of the most beautiful and most powerful is that our friendships can help us to develop a physical resilience that’s going to make us more able to handle life when it gets hard, and more happy in the world.

LOUISE: So interesting, so connection can help.

LINDO: Yeah, connection is probably one of the most important things, and it can help you to feel more safe in the world, so that you’re more able to kind of venture out and take risks.

LOUISE: So, it’s really important to find your people.

LINDO: It is. And it’s really important to learn how to do vulnerability, right? Sometimes you need to be protected in the world, and that makes sense because the world isn’t safe. But if you can find safe places where you can truly be yourself and you can get appreciation for that, and love for that, the more you can develop that, the more it can give you a sense of peace that’s going to allow you to move more freely and happily through the world.

LOUISE: Yeah. And it’s those people, like I’m thinking of…you’re an example of someone who has that. Connection, community, support. And with that resilience, you can write books like you’re written and put them out there and have these conversations.

LINDO: I know, and I appreciate that. I know a lot of people couldn’t put this kind of vulnerability out, that it would be too threatening to them.

LOUISE: Yeah, if they don’t have a community or a connection.

LINDO: I appreciate that I am so bolstered by other people that it allows me…it protects me, it allows me to do this. And I think in some sense that’s why I feel a responsibility to do the kind of work that I do, because I have so much privilege and…

LOUISE: But also, in your bubble…not bubble, but in your community, it’s an inclusive community too, right? There’s attention to Black Lives Matter, there’s gender diversity, there’s all those kinds of things. I’m not at all saying that social justice is working over where you live, but there’s efforts and there’s attention and there’s a sense of preparation, and that social change is important as well.

LINDO: Right. I mean, my world would be so boring and unimaginative if everybody looked like me and acted like me. And the way we get excitement in your life is having that kind of exposure to people in all their glorious uniqueness.

LOUISE: Yeah, we need to build that.

LINDO: And it’s interesting, because I wish the larger corporations would recognise how much creativity they’re losing out on by only hiring certain people who fit a certain mould. You know? Like, you can recognise for example that people who are neurodiverse and might…that everybody sees the problem through a different lens that’s going to allow them to have some kind of unique perspective. And I think that corporations would benefit from like, having so many different perspectives to find what really works well in the world, you know? You think about, if you’re not going to hire fat applicants you have so many fewer applicants to choose from. You’re not going to find the best people.

45:45

LOUISE: Yeah. You’ll probably some very hungry people if they’re dieting, too!

LINDO: Yeah, so the more we open up to all the different expressions of humanity, it only benefits us.

LOUISE: It really does, and that’s such a lovely way of looking at it. We need to be really welcoming diversity in all areas, in all walks of life. It’s a totally different way of thinking.

LINDO: And we do it not because it’s the right thing to do, but because there’s also…we benefit from it. It’s not that we’re helping other people…

LOUISE: Yeah. It’s like, it’s evolution too, isn’t it? I few get rid of diversity in any ecosystem, it suffers.

LINDO: Exactly.

LOUISE: Bring in the glorious diversity and see what can happen. Can you tell us the story, because there’s this awesome story you tell in the book about the gym?

LINDO: About the gym. Sure. You know, I haven’t read the book in a while, so I’m going to have to remember which of many stories…but I think it was going into the gym on a day that I was feeling particularly irritable. And there was a new guy that was checking everybody in. so, I do my fingerprint ID, I don’t know, maybe it was a phone ID…I don’t remember. Anyway, I guess my name pops up on the screen and he says, “have a good workout, Miss Bacon”. And it just bummed me out. Like, I had…I was going to the gym to kind of get in a better space. And to be hit right away with being misgendered, it just hit me hard and I kind of snapped at him. I don’t remember what I said. And he got all defensive and said, “that’s what the computer told him” and he was blaming it on the computer.

LOUISE: The computer!

LINDO: And also he couldn’t quite understand, like I looked like a woman to him, he didn’t understand wht he had gotten wrong. And unfortunately, we’re having this dispute and another worker walked up and was more sensitive, and was able to kind of get the guy to back down and explain that you can’t always know somebody’s gender identity by looking at them and we need to be open minded, and helped me through it. But then while I was working out at the gym, I was just obsessing on it. Iw as just so angry. This was just one more time when…

LOUISE: it’s not the only thing, it’s another pain.

LINDO: Exactly. Like, he triggered a lifetime of feeling misgendered. And it meant that I couldn’t let go of that, and it kind of spun out into somewhat of an anxiety attack. And anyway, I learned form that, right? And one of the ways I took back my power was by complaining at the gym and my…the end result of that was that they actually changed some of their policies, and that helped me to feel more empowered and respected. The fact that people adapt and change…

LOUISE: That’s awesome, that’s such a massive change if out of one panic attack that message of pain in your body drove you into action.

LINDO: Right. And another funny part of that story is that at first, just me protesting wasn’t getting far enough. So I just got together a few friends and we just made up a fake organisation. We called ourselves something like ‘Social Justice Advocacy Corps’ or something.

LOUISE: Oh my God, that’s brilliant.

LINDO: And we kind of threatened a social media callout. And I think the fear of something bigger was really what motivated them to listen.

LOUISE: Really? Okay.

50:00

LINDO: So, I think that, that’s an important statement. Build communities so you can get support around this.

LOUISE: Yeah, create an organisation.

LINDO: Exactly, take it…if you can’t do it.

LOUISE: Lean in, get a bit of pressure on them, because people these days might not respond to one person, but if you are a representative of an organisation or if you have social media…

LINDO: And I think that more and more, they’re recognising that people are angry that trans folks don’t have equal rights. They’re angry at racism. So it now is a liability for a corporation to be seen in that light.

LOUISE: Isn’t that cool? It’s no longer cool to be exclusionary and it has to be attended to.

LINDO: So, we certainly have a long, long way of change ahead, but I think that the playing field’s a little bit different now.

LOUISE: Yeah, well there’s strength in numbers, as you’re saying, and there’s an increased recognition. Isn’t it incredible to think about what the world might look like in another generation with this kind of change? It’s incredibly hopeful.

LINDO: And I know that when I was a kid, I wasn’t even able to imagine ‘trans’ because I hadn’t ever seen a trans person that I was aware of. So, it didn’t even enter my mind as a possibility. But that’s not true of this next generation, at least the generation of kids that live in areas of the United Sates surrounded by that kind of imagery…

LOUISE: The inclusion, yeah.

LINDO: Kids are more able to find their gender identity and recognise it, it doesn’t have to be the one that was assigned to them at birth. There’s just a lot more creativity that’s possible.

LOUISE: I know, exactly. I totally agree with that. I think it’s going to be just this source, amazing source of creativity. If people’s brains aren’t always bound up with that trauma and that kind of confusion, trying to stick yourself in a box that doesn’t fit, there’s so much ability to create and evolve. Yeah. There’s going to be so many cool things come out of this. Thank you for a wonderful conversation. Where can we get the book? It’s here in Australia now, I think.

LINDO: Oh, it is? That’s exciting, because I think there was a little delay getting it to Australia.

LOUISE: Thanks, Covid.

LINDO: Covid-related problems. I’m pretty sure people can get it anywhere books are, these days.

LOUISE: Yeah. And there’s an Audible version?

LINDO: The Audible version comes out on February 15th, so it’s not out yet.

LOUISE: But that’s only a few weeks’ time. And are you reading the book?

LINDO: I am not.

LOUISE: You’re not reading the book, okay. That’s okay.

LINDO: But there is a really wonderful narrator, I spent days and days listening to people to come up with the perfect voice.

LOUISE: Oh, how did you come up with that? What was the perfect voice for the book?

LINDO: Oh, I wanted someone who could radiate compassion at the same time that they had passion, and really could find when to use one and when to use the other.

LOUISE: Cool.

LINDO: Yeah, there’s someone that’s really amazing that did it, so I feel good about it.

LOUISE: That’s so good, I’m a big fan of Audible lately as reading in Covid for some reason has gotten really hard for lots of people.

LINDO: I’m the same way, and I’m out going for walks a lot, and I just listen to books.

LOUISE: This is a lovely book to listen to whilst walking, I’m definitely going to do that.

LINDO: Excellent. Enjoy. Lovely talking with you.

LOUISE: Thank you so much, you’re the best. Thanks. Well, I promised to give you an uplifting start to 2021, and there you are. You don’t get much more uplifting than Dr Lindo Bacon. Thank you so much, Lindo, for coming on and sharing your wonderful book and your vision of what we can achieve if we work together and work more on belonging and just how healing that is. Just a wonderful book, wonderful human. Go out and get it, everybody. And if you want to find out more about Lindo and all of the work they’re doing, head to lindobacon.com website or Instagram, @lindobacon, or on twitter @lindobacon. Some wonderful stuff that is coming out from Lindo, and some wonderful community work in relation to this book. So, go check out the website and find out more there. Okay, so we’re come to the end of the first podcast for 2021. I’m really enjoying myself talking to you, and I’m just really glad to be back. And I’m looking forward to our next episode, which will come out in a few weeks’ time. So, look after yourself, everyone. In the meantime, listen to your body. Think critically. Push back against diet culture. Untrap from the crap!

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There's nothing more infuriating than when people throw shade at the anti-diet perspective without bothering to actually research it. When "The Biggest Loser" trainer/shameless fatphobe Jillian Michaels arrogantly released a Youtube clip trashing the 10 principles of intuitive eating, WITHOUT EVEN READING THE BOOK, she REALLY pi***ed off the community! And none more so than my guests, anti-diet fitness trainers Anna Hearn and Shreen El Masry, who have been dying to come on the podcast and set the record straight! Finally the COVID window opened just a crack so I could record the very first IN PERSON podcast! Join us as we dissect Jillian's often hilarious inability to comprehend a life beyond diet prison. WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS 'PERMISSION TO EAT!!' It seems the lady doth protest too much - could it be that the Queen of Diet Prison is sensing the paradigm-shifting power of the anti-diet revolution? That's right folks, the unrivalled reign of Biggest Loser-esque terror is over!! Vive La Difference! Please note - this episode comes with a hefty side serve of calorie count discussions, so if you're in recovery from an eating disorder please consider your level of spoons to hear the diet talk. But, if you've had a gutful of igno-rants about anti-dieting, it's time to get ALL FIRED UP!

Show Transcript:

LOUISE: So, here I am with Anna and Shreen. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

ANNA: Thank you for having us.

SHREEN: Yeah, thank you so much.

LOUISE: It’s so exciting to be alive with actual humans in the room, and slightly weird. Why don’t you guys tell me all about what is firing you up?

ANNA: We’re really fired up about Jillian Michaels and her aggressive fatphobic rant on intuitive eating.

LOUISE: (sighs) First of all, I have to say I love how you say ‘rant’, it’s very proper and awesome. But yes, Jillian Michaels – Biggest Loser trainer in the United States. Horrendously fatphobic.

ANNA: Yeah, I mean … she got her living, she makes her living from shaming fat bodies. I think that tells a lot about her character and where she’s going to go with her intuitive eating rant.

LOUISE: So, she was on the Biggest Loser for years and years and years. Her website … well, she’s touting herself as the world’s best trainer. Like, the biggest expert in the world on all things fitness. Which, well … this is just a hunch, but I could find people on the planet who are more qualified.

ANNA: Well, if you want to break down her qualifications, I think it looks like she’s done a couple of personal training qualifications, a couple of fitness qualifications and …

SHREEN: One ‘woo woo’ nutrition qualification.

ANNA: There is a nutrition qualification there too, but it doesn’t look like there’s any degrees or anything. So, when it comes to intuitive eating and looking at all of that, when we go into it you’ll realise, I think, that she hasn’t really done her research. She doesn’t understand it. And I think it’s interesting that somebody without that nutrition background or lived experience with that sort of thing talks about it the way that she does.

SHREEN: I think as well, not only does she come across really aggressive and shaming, also I think her insecurity is really coming out in this video. Intuitive eating is a movement that’s really starting to take off, and she’s clearly threatened by it. You can see her defence mechanism is up, and she’s … you know, really, just … her demeanour is just awful.

LOUISE: It's hard to tell, though, if her demeanour’s just awful because she’s defensive or because her demeanour’s just awful.

SHREEN: Yeah, that’s true.

ANNA: I kind of picked up on that and thought she was sensing a threat because intuitive eating is becoming more mainstream, people are becoming more aware of it. So that could threaten what she does, because she makes a living forcing people to lose weight.

LOUISE: So, during the 90’s and the early 2000’s, like … it was a free-for-all with bullying people with larger bodies, as we saw. World-wide, the Biggest Loser was the number one show, and everyone thought it was okay. So, she’s had this unfettered ability to be horrible about body size and really belittling of people in larger bodies. And now, I think she’s realising it’s not okay to keep on doing that.

ANNA: The backlash about it.

LOUISE: So, just to set the stage. What we’re seeing … because I did see the internet blow up. It was a while ago now, but let’s face it - we’ve all been in iso and unable to talk to each other. So, she has like a YouTube channel and one of her YouTube little presentations - I don’t watch what she does, just for my own mental health - but this one was Jillian Michaels talking about intuitive eating. Which, oh my god … let’s just get Donald Trump talking about sexism.

ANNA: That’s a great analogy.

SHREEN: She’s basically, I think she’s just gone on the website and just pulled up the principles without doing any research into it or even understanding there’s over a hundred studies done on intuitive eating and there’s a whole book as well. She just went on there, read out these principles and gave her, I guess, her opinion. 

ANNA: It became really clear that she hasn’t taken the time to understand it. She hasn’t learnt about the authors; you’ll see as she comes to the end of it, she talks about assuming that it was written by somebody who had just had some bad experience with diet culture, maybe had an eating disorder

LOUISE: Oh my god, that’s so disrespectful

SHREEN: So disrespectful.

ANNA: No understanding or bothering to explore that the authors are actually dietitians who had come up with this approach because they had done so much work with clients who had struggled a lot and this is what they’d learnt from working with them over years and years.

LOUISE: These are the gurus. Like, Tribole and Resch, they wrote the initial book Intuitive Eating and it’s just been updated, which is fantastic. But even that, even their book which is written from that perspective of helping people recover from eating disorders, that book is built on another big long history of social justice and fat activism. To not recognise that intuitive eating is part of a social movement and like, the way she presented it is like, she just stumbled across a webpage and … oh my god.

ANNA: Definitely, yeah. And it came across very, very condescending. I felt really bothered …

SHREEN: It’s so harmful, as well. That was the thing that really bothered me the most, was how much … I mean, she causes so much harm anyway, but the message was just next level harm. And if anyone was watching that and had no idea, the things that she was saying … yeah, it’s just not on.

LOUISE: Oh god, yikes. So, we thought we would unpick Jillian Michael’s feelpinion to each of the ten principles of intuitive eating. And you guys have written some awesomely detailed notes.

ANNA: We had a really good chat about it.

LOUISE: Fantastic. But I’m so interested, because you guys both work in this industry as HAES® positive, body inclusive, weight neutral trainers hearing from almost like the personification of diet culture woman.

SHREEN: She is the reason why people have so much fitness trauma and so much negative association with fitness. She’s causing that.

ANNA: She is the epitome of diet culture.

SHREEN: Yeah, she is the epitome of diet culture, for sure.

ANNA: And I think we chatted about this as we were hanging out one day, and we just came across this as a topic that fired both of us up. And it’s frustrating when you see … when you’re so heavily involved in this space, and the HAES® space, and the body inclusive space, it can be … and luckily for me working here at Haven, this is the space I come to work every day. So, I’m not exposed to traditional diet culture unless I stumble across it or it’s brought to my attention. So, I couldn’t help but just be really quite wild about this.

LOUISE: I love it. I mean, I don’t love that you’re wild, but I kind of do. But, yeah. It’s nice to know that in this industry there are people who feel really strongly about just putting an end to this. She’s what’s wrong with the fitness industry at the moment, and you guys are the future. And I think she can smell that. So, I think, like I … I managed to watch it and still shaking with rage but thank you for this glass of champagne.

ANNA: I don’t think we could do this without a little bit of champagne.

SHREEN: No, we need some bubbles.

LOUISE: The first thing she starts with, so she’s actually going through all the principles.

SHREEN:  Correct.

LOUISE: Why don’t you give me the lowdown on your reaction.

ANNA: Let’s kick off. So, she does go through the points one by one, and the first principle is ‘reject the diet mentality’. And I just want to point out a few things that came up for me that were just so apparent throughout. Her fatphobia is so clear. She’s driven, everything she says, and her approach is all drive by this. And I think she’s very ignorant, like she doesn’t see that there’s an issue with this. She comes form that space where it’s very normalised to shame fat bodies, it’s not okay to be in a bigger body. And she very clearly associates weight and health, they’re so closely tied, which I think it really problematic, obviously. So, in this ‘reject diet mentality’, what came up for you, Shreen?

SHREEN: Well, the first thing for me was that she couldn’t distinguish a difference between fad diets and what dieting is, and diet culture. She’s like, “oh you know, if it’s fad diets we’re talking about yeah, yeah sure”, but this is a woman who has sold supplements in the past.

LOUISE: She’s sold fad diets.

SHREEN: She’s sold fad diets. And she is diet culture, so I guess she can’t … she doesn’t understand what diet culture actually is and why it’s so important to reject it. I mean, diet culture in the US alone is worth 70 billion dollars.

ANNA:  She profits off it.

SHREEN: She profits off everyone’s insecurities. So, she was just like, “reject diet culture? What’s this, what does this mean?”. And I really did sense there that her insecurity is coming out there because that is her, that’s how she makes her money.

ANNA: Well that’s it, she’s really incentivised to support diet culture. 

LOUISE: But the distinction that she made between “well, if it’s fad, but if it’s proper” … it just made me laugh, because she’s had no less than four separate lawsuits …

ANNA:  Jillian?

SHREEN: Yeah.

LOUISE: Launched against her by her consumers who bought her caffeine-fuelled diet pills.

ANNA: Which I think she might have … there might have been something on the Biggest Loser where she gave them to contestants unfairly, apparently, as well.

LOUISE: Oh my god, scandal on the Biggest Loser. Like …

ANNA: Well, the other thing that came up for me there was she said, “what is this, healthy at any size?”, and that’s immediately a red flag representing that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She hasn’t researched this because … I can understand it’s very easy to misconstrue Health At Every Size® for healthy at every size, but it’s quite a different meaning and that assumption that, you know, just assuming that we’re saying as a Health at Every Size® professional that all bodies are healthy, that’s not where we’re aiming. We’re talking about people being able to pursue health regardless of shape and size.

LOUISE: Or, also, we’re talking about the choice not to pursue health and to be left the fuck alone.

SHREEN: Yeah, there’s no moral obligation. If people want to do so, then it’s up to them. It shouldn’t be … they shouldn’t have to do it if they don’t want to, but that’s what diet culture is saying.

ANNA: Your body, your rules.

SHREEN: And this part of her rant really, really … we know that she’s incredibly fatphobic and she fat shames, but it just came out so much in that where she was again talking, talking about size 16. And she’s saying “well, you know, if you’re a size 16 of course I love you but you’re not healthy”. Which is just …

LOUISE: Get fucked.

SHREEN: Yeah, absolute garbage.

ANNA: Yeah. And Health at Every Size® also is about respect for all bodies, and I think there is a real lack of respect in just making that assumption. You can’t tell. How does she know what someone’s health is, you know? What their metabolic functions are, their blood work, their social, mental health … you can’t tell that by someone’s size.

SHREEN: Genetics, everything. There’s so much, it’s so multifaceted.

LOUISE: Everything I think is just far too complicated for her. She has to actually, like … I mean, clearly, she hasn’t read anything or thought about anything. “Nope, that’s a number, that’s an assumption, and don’t challenge that”. 

SHREEN: Yeah. And if someone’s watching that, I mean, how triggering. How much harm that one comment could cause somebody that could lead them down a path of dieting and to an eating disorder.

ANNA: And especially if they were already vulnerable of somebody who would identify with being in a size 16, or plus. And also, size 16 is quite variable depending on which shop you shop in, you know? Where you get your clothes from. What’s a size anyway? What does it matter?

SHREEN: Yeah, it doesn’t matter.

LOUISE: Size is not the same as health, and she needs to pull her head in. I wonder if her YouTube videos come with a trigger warning. I don’t think they do, but they should. Because good point, you know, that she … everything she says is potentially a trigger.

SHREEN: Especially the size of her audience as well, I’m worried.

ANNA: She’s got a big reach still. Some of the comments though were interesting, some really great points. People were talking about intuitive eating and picking up on that she doesn’t understand it, she’s missing the point.

LOUISE: That is really reassuring.

ANNA: She stopped the comments, she cut them off.

LOUISE: Oh no, they were too complicated.

ANNA: So, the next principle is ‘honour your hunger’, and she said something pretty radical here. Well, it’s not really radical in the fitness world. These numbers get thrown around a lot. But trigger warning, there are numbers here. She says, “if you’re trying to lose weight, you can keep your body fed on as low as 1200 calories”. And that most women, especially those over, you know, relating to being a certain age, shouldn’t be eating over 1600 calories a day.

SHREEN: Which is just absolutely unbelievable. She’s saying that … I mean, that’s what a toddler needs. A toddler needs 1200-1600 calories a day.

LOUISE: How very dare she tell me how much I can eat, under a principle that says, ‘honour your hunger’.

ANNA: She … on one hand, I’m not surprised she threw those numbers out because those numbers are thrown out all the time in the fitness world. I don’t know where … MyFitnessPal?

LOUISE: Are they really?

SHREEN: We were saying, MyFitnessPal may have started the whole 1200 calories thing …

LOUISE: I think Michelle Bridges is guilty of that too.

ANNA: Oh actually, you’re right, she had a program that was based on that.

LOUISE: It’s just a nice round number, isn’t it? Let’s just pluck this out of our arse and throw that at all women.

ANNA: What I find there though is that like Shreen said, it’s something that a child needs. And I just wanted to double-check that, because I’m not a nutritionist, I’m a yogi and I run a studio, but I wanted to check with somebody who does work with that. I chatted to our non-diet nutritionist Nina and she clarified that yes - this is generalisation - but that kind of number is something that would serve a child. Like, a toddler or a four, five-year-old. And then thinking about the effects of being on a low-calorie diet for a long period, things like loss of menstrual cycle, loss of bone density, fatigue, mood swings, constipation, blood sugar imbalance, stress hormones getting out of whack …

SHREEN: Sex drive …

ANNA: Sex drive … what did you say before?

SHREEN: Dry vagina (laughs).

ANNA: She didn’t mention that, did she?

SHREEN: No.

LOUISE: No, but that might be suffering all of them, you know? And why she’s so grouchy.

ANNA: Memory fog and brain fog … memory loss and brain fog. So, these are all things that can be affected by not being adequately fed. And the better indicator of your needs are your body and your internal hunger signals. And we’re taught to … these external sources of just following this rule plan of 1200 calories a day means that if I need more than that – maybe at the time of my period especially I might need much more - and I’m just denying my natural hunger levels.

LOUISE: The whole ‘per day’ thing really gives me the shits as well.

SHREEN: Yeah, that’s a really good point.

LOUISE: This is just a statistical method to help researchers make assumptions about nutrition. It’s not supposed to be something religiously followed.

SHREEN: No, there’s no …

ANNA: An individual thing, yeah.

LOUISE: It’s bizarre. But, isn’t that interesting that even as she’s like, she’s trying desperately, the poor little thing to understand that this is a principle of intuitive eating but she can’t quite get there because she immediately lurches into “well, if you want to lose weight …”. I just felt like reaching through the screen and saying, “realise that intuitive eating is not a weight loss program”.

ANNA: That’s half the problem, is that she clearly thinks that the only people who explore intuitive eating are going for weight loss. She says that a few times.

LOUISE: Oh, she’s a scrambled egg.

ANNA: Yeah. She doesn’t understand that the whole purpose of intuitive eating is more about finding a peaceful relationship with food and your body, not about trying to pursue making your body be something, a certain size.

SHREEN: It’s about food freedom, it’s about having a healthy relationship with food, stopping the obsession. It’s not … it’s definitely not following these external rules. It’s about being in tune with what your body wants and needs and getting in touch with those signals.

LOUISE: Different planet, I don’t think she’s visited.

SHREEN: I don’t think she understands what the ‘honouring hunger’ … it’s a basic self-care need. If you’re not honouring hunger …

LOUISE: Again, you’re mentioning a foreign concept here. This is someone who will happily live with a dry vagina, it doesn’t matter.

SHREEN: Yep (all laugh).

LOUISE: We all went there.

SHREEN: She just really doesn’t understand and that is the reason why … people don’t give themselves enough food and they’re following diet plans, and they’re going to give themselves cravings leading to overeating and bingeing, and that’s perfectly normal as well. Other than ‘rejecting the diet mentality’ one of the first steps of intuitive eating is to just honour your hunger and it’s so important. It’s self-care.

ANNA: It's so liberating too, if you’re been on the diet bandwagon for many, many years, to recognise that “hey, my body’s got a lot of wisdom, and it’s telling me, it’s giving me messages and I can learn how to reconnect with that”. And I think part of the common thread that comes up with what she says all the time is that … she thinks it’s all about ‘you can’t trust your body’. I think an important thing that I’ve learned is you can really learn how to trust your body. We get into this as we move into the next principle or two. It’s not about endless eating and not being able to, you know, like you’re just not going to go out of control all the time, which is what she sort of thinks.

SHREEN: Point number three is that ‘unconditional permission to eat all foods’.

LOUISE: She really had a problem with principle three. Like, she was visibly …

SHREEN: Yeah, and she started comparing it to smoking, and credit cards, and it’s like …what are you talking about?

ANNA: So yeah, this ‘make peace with food’, you’re right. And she talks about saying, talking about the ‘last supper mentality’, and she says, “I’m not religious, I don’t know what Jesus ate”.

LOUISE: She really needs to read some books.

ANNA: She needs to read Intuitive Eating if she’s going to talk about it. Because if she read it, she might really understand what that means. I thought it was quite clear just from the ‘last supper mentality’, don’t you think?

SHREEN: You just eat everything in sight.

LOUISE: I don’t even think it has religious connotations, I thought it was like a death row thing.

SHREEN: Oh, that’s true …

LOUISE: Like eating your last meal.

ANNA: That’s right. And it makes sense, I think, if you think about that. You know you’re not going to have something again, so you want to make the most of it in that moment. And ultimately that’s what it’s about. I think that’s kind of clear. But she didn’t understand that, she was sort of like “I don’t like this intense, this hostile approach”. And I’m like, you ARE intense and hostile. 

LOUISE: How is that intense and hostile? I’ve not ever read the ten principles of intuitive eating and thought “gosh, that’s angry”. I mean, gosh. Visit the internet, really (all laugh).

ANNA: I think she is the, again, the epitome diet culture, and she is the hostile one. Think about the Biggest Loser, she is very aggressive and in-your-face, pushing her clients. So, here she talks about it all being about self-control and willpower, and I think that’s missing the point of intuitive eating completely as well.

LOUISE: She just can’t …

SHREEN: She doesn’t understand. If she’d read the book, she would understand there’s science behind it as well, if she …

LOUISE: I don’t think if she read the book she would understand. 

SHREEN: Yeah (laughs)

ANNA: I picked up on that too, she’s [inaudible].

LOUISE: She almost yelled “You do not permission to eat”. Which was quite scary.

SHREEN: Because I think that reflects her inner narrative. That’s what’s going on in her head.

LOUISE: Yeah. Not … not relaxed, that’s for sure. That response to the third point was quite unhinged.

ANNA: And like you said, relating the food to credit cards or smoking, that’s a completely different thing. I don’t think … you know, food is something that we rely on, like biologically …

SHREEN: We need food to survive, we need food … and intuitive eating is about healing your relationship to food, it’s about having a healthy relationship to food, and you can’t have that if you’re restricting foods. That’s why it’s really important to give yourself unconditional permission to eat. And yeah, it is scary. Of course. It’s scary when you’ve come from that mentality, but it’s the only way for food to lose its power.

ANNA: Yeah. And I think it may be a good point to think about how it’s helpful to be handheld through that process. It can sound really scary to somebody who’s new to it, or who hasn’t delved into intuitive eating too much, or worked with a coach or therapist or something. Maybe working with a. dietitian on this would be really helpful. I understand how it can feel like that lack of control, but I think that’s a period that sometimes is part of that healing process. When you let go of the restriction, and allow yourself full unconditional permission to eat, then you might explore some of those foods that were off-limits for a period. And it might feel like you are diving into them a lot. But …

LOUISE: Which is perfectly normal.

SHREEN: Yeah.

LOUISE: The last supper effect … like, that actually, now I remember. The ‘last supper’ effect, it is the paper by Herman and Polivy, “Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet”. That’s the ‘last supper’ effect. It’s a perfectly normal psychological response to restriction is to eat more. And the difference between that and going into massive credit card debt is if you keep giving yourself permission to eat, if you keep reminding yourself that the food’s always there, it’s perfectly safe and I’m allowed to eat it, you will naturally settle down when you get food safety. Eating is totally different to compulsive spending on credit cards. I think she’s just … a lot of people freak out when they let go of dieting and get into that all-or-nothing pattern with eating, but there’s like … a real difference between being in an all-or-nothing pattern of eating and adopting intuitive eating and going through that first phase of eating all the food. It’s just different, and its’ not pathological. It’s a normal response to restriction that obviously … she is so restricted and terrified of that.

ANNA: It’s all about control, isn’t it? And I think that, you know, talking about the 1200-1600 calories, and I think she refers to that 1600 calories as something you should never, ever go over. So, as a woman, we’re meant to live our lives constantly not going above that.

SHREEN: And it’s such a dangerous message. It’s just not enough food, at all. And it’s … and that’s what she’s selling to people, as well …

LOUISE: She’s more like ‘honour your restriction’.

SHREEN: Yeah!

ANNA: We could reverse all of this and create a Jillian Michaels plan.

LOUISE: The non-intuitive eating principles. Accept diet culture … what’s the second one?

ANNA: Honour your hunger … don’t honour your hunger.

LOUISE: Ignore your hunger.

SHREEN: Ignore your hunger, yeah.

LOUISE: Number three, you do not have permission to eat (all laugh). Alright, principle four?

ANNA: Principle four is ‘challenge the food police’.

LOUISE: Okay, so hers would be ‘obey the food police’.

SHREEN: I don’t think she really understands that she is the food police. When she’s going through it? Like she is … the food police are all the things she’s already talked about. 1200 calories, 1600 calories, these are things that are the food police.

ANNA: These are the rules.

SHREEN: She doesn’t understand that principle at all.

ANNA: The one thing that she said that I did agree with her on was “don’t beat yourself up”. I think she says it in a different way, she means it in a different way, because she kind of adds on and says, “don’t beat yourself up, but don’t fuck up”. Oh sorry.

LOUISE:  Please, swear.

ANNA: She says, not quite like that, but “maintain balance, it’s all about balance”. And don’t …

SHREEN: And self-control.

ANNA: So, “don’t beat yourself up, but just don’t do it”, sort of thing.

SHREEN: Or, “you can do better”. She always says that, “you can do better”.

ANNA: Yeah, so that message is like, it’s still that sort of shaming approach.

SHREEN: Condescending.

LOUISE: It makes no sense whatsoever.

ANNA: But don’t beat yourself up, I mean, that’s important.

LOUISE: You know what, ‘don’t beat yourself up’ means she knows people are not going to be able to do it. 

ANNA: That’s a good point, yeah. Yeah, which she talks about the…

LOUISE: … about going straight back to jail.

ANNA: She talks about the stats, which is interesting. She brings up the stats.

LOUISE: Oh, the stats. Yeah, that bit made me itchy.

ANNA: That’s coming. It’s coming. The next one is ‘discover the satisfaction factor’, which I think she was actually in agreement with.

SHREEN: Yeah, that one … she was saying, food for pleasure … I think that one was almost okay.

ANNA: Like wow, okay, we agree. And then six was ‘feel your fullness’. And what came up here was again, it was just clear she hasn’t read the book because she didn’t understand that concept at all.

LOUISE: She probably doesn’t know what fulness feels like.

SHREEN: And then she started talking about how it’s in your head, and kind of went off … even I got a little bit lost with what she was saying. Like, “oh, we’re on fullness principle? I thought we were …”

ANNA: She was kind of saying, yeah, she was kind of saying that if you’re not listening to your body, you’re not picking up your fullness levels, there’s something messed up in your head. And I was thinking, you know what? Sometimes I eat food and I’m quite satisfied physically but I’m still eating because the food’s really good, or I don’t want to … I’m eating in company and I don’t want to finish the meal and want to show that I’ve appreciated it …

SHREEN: That’s the thing with intuitive eating, that it’s not the ‘hunger/fullness’ diet. And eating past fullness is normal. It’s totally okay. And it’s not just about eating, you know, getting in touch with your fullness signals. It’s about eating foods that give you pleasure and satisfaction.

ANNA: Which is the ‘discover the satisfaction factor’.

SHREEN: Which is the next one, but yeah. (sighs).

LOUISE: God. So, if you can’t feel fullness, there’s something psychologically wrong with you. 

ANNA: That’s the message that she’s giving, yeah.

SHREEN: But not understanding that if you’re dieting or especially if you’re only eating those dangerous amount of calories a day, you’re going to be absolutely …

LOUISE: You mean, like an adult [inaudible]

SHREEN: (laughs). Absolutely starving and of course you’re not going to feel your fullness. But there’s nothing wrong with you, it’s just your body. Your body is doing exactly what it is meant to do. It needs food.

ANNA: She doesn’t see that 1200-1600 calories as a restriction. She sees it as like …

SHREEN: That’s her normal.

ANNA: That’s food, that’s what you’re allowed during the day.

LOUISE: So depressing.

ANNA: Pretty sure I eat double or triple that.

LOUISE: Oh, my goodness.

ANNA: So, we’re at number seven. We’re still only … oh, over halfway. ‘Cope with your emotions with kindness’. 

SHREEN: I think the thing is …

LOUISE: That doesn’t really bring her to my mind.

SHREEN: Yeah. She kind of goes “oh, yeah, I agree with this, but it shouldn’t just be one paragraph …”. And I’m like YES, there’s a BOOK. A book! There’s a whole book to go with this. 

ANNA: She clearly seems to think it’s just this very basic, you know, overview …

SHREEN: Guidelines.

ANNA: Yeah, just these ten principles. She hasn’t read the book; she doesn’t know who wrote it.

LOUISE: No, but this one really shat me to tears. Because this is where she’s saying that she’s had some childhood history with being maybe fractionally larger than someone else and has had to do, like … basically what she’s saying is that if you cannot lose weight and keep it off forever, that is your psychological fault.

SHREEN: Yep.

LOUISE: You haven’t done the work in therapy to fix your seemingly not thin body. Which is like, such a load of bullshit. And just unscientific and not sound whatsoever. And like you were saying before, people … she doesn’t understand that food is a relationship, and it’s a complex relationship. And the refusal to see anything other than like … she doesn’t even mention hunger as a reason to eat. Anything other than eating to a calorie control, anything else is incorrect. And we eat for an infinite amount of reasons and all of them make sense. And that’s what I love about intuitive eating, it doesn’t pathologise eating. It doesn’t pathologise hunger, it doesn’t pathologise fullness, and it doesn’t pathologise emotions as a reason to eat. And she clearly is. Seeing the function of how wonderful sometimes binge eating is as a way of protecting yourself from [inaudible] stuff. There’s no pathologizing in intuitive eating, but she’s full of pathologizing thinking that even to read statements like this, it doesn’t sink in.

ANNA: She’s oversimplifying the whole thing; she doesn’t understand it at all. And this is where she moves into talking about the percentage of people that are successful versus not successful at diets.

SHREEN: So, she acknowledges that 95-98% of diets fail. Is this where she starts talking about the Biggest Loser?

ANNA: Yeah.

SHREEN: She then starts talking about how the Biggest Loser, there’s a 30% extra success rate if you follow the Biggest Loser method.

LOUISE: Really?

SHREEN: Yeah.

ANNA: So, she basically says, she acknowledges that the studies are very clear that 95% of people are unable to sustain a diet or sustain that weight loss, not a diet. But she says that actually on the Biggest Loser it’s only 65% of people that fail. So actually …

SHREEN: So, she’s basically saying “we’ve got this success rate, if you do this …”

LOUISE: Which study is this published in? Because the only study I’ve read from season 1 which is the …

ANNA: The six-year study?

SHREEN: The six year, yeah, really interesting.

LOUISE: There were 16 people, and 14 of them regained. I don’t think that equates to 65%. Am I …?

ANNA: I don’t know but even so … no, she says 35. So, 30% more than … she says 30%, 35% are successful.

SHREEN: But even the fact that she’s now saying that 95-98% of diets fail, and she acknowledges that, but all that she’s been talking about is dieting. Diet the whole way through. She’s just completely contradicting herself.

ANNA: Not only is it that they don’t work, but she continues to spruik it, continues to say that it’s possible, and if you do it her way, the Biggest Loser way … they did 7 hours of exercise a day, with gruelling regimes and being pushed and yelled at …

LOUISE: And they all put the weight back on.

ANNA: They put the weight back on.

SHREEN: yeah.

LOUISE: And their resting metabolic rate was screwed, six years later.

SHREEN: Yeah, 700 calories it decreased by. They lost lean body mass, their fasting glucose increased, their blood sugar levels, yeah. They were the main things. But the fact that their metabolic rate decreased by such a large amount … especially where we were saying, she’s telling people to only eat 1200 calories but then you’re going to follow the Biggest Loser method, your metabolic rate’s going to drop by 700 calories, then what are you going to do?

LOUISE: So, she lied about the stats on the Biggest Loser, and she’s not even talking to people about the metabolic impact. Because that study was fascinating, and I talk to clients about it. Because they predicted, the researchers predicted how much their resting metabolic rate would be dropped by … 

ANNA: And what did they …

LOUISE: And they found out it was even lower. So, they were worse off metabolically than they had predicted six years later. No one expected it to last that long, to have such a devastating impact.

ANNA: Yeah, so it’s like a continued effect. It hasn’t regained back to before, pre …

LOUISE: Exactly. And when stuff like that is suppressed, we know people are going to experience intense hunger, which of course you can’t honour.

SHREEN: And the thing is, again, she’s completely misquoted this study herself but if she’d done her research she would know that there’s been over a hundred studies on intuitive eating that have been done that show you have better body image, higher esteem, improved metabolism, decreased rates of disordered and emotional eating, diminished stress levels and increased satisfaction with life. That’s over a hundred studies on intuitive eating that have been done.

ANNA: And I’m pretty sure that you couldn’t say the same, with all of those positive effects, with dieting.

LOUISE:  No, especially the ones that use her supplements, which show that everyone puts the weight back on. And the Biggest Loser study, everyone puts the weight back on … but let’s not focus on whether or not the weight comes back on. It’s actually the damage to the body and the metabolic systems that’s just absent from her rant.

SHREEN: And not even the psychological damage, that’s not even mentioned.

LOUISE: She’s evidence of the psychological damage.

SHREEN: Yeah. That is true, yeah.

ANNA: So, the next one is … principle eight, respect your body.

LOUISE: Oh, fuck.

ANNA: So, I think going back to when she spoke about size 16 always equalling healthiness, I think that shows that she doesn’t have respect for all bodies. And that kind of bothers me a bit.

SHREEN. A bit. A lot.

ANNA: It’s a big part of like, you know, our approach here and being a Health at Every Size® professional, you know? It’s about honouring and understanding and respecting that all bodies are different and need something different.

SHREEN: And that you can’t tell somebody’s health by their body size, and that’s such … it’s a huge misconception as it is, let alone, I mean, Jillian Michaels saying this and it’s just …

ANNA: Yeah, and just recognising that bodies are diverse, and they will do different things. Your health looks different at different points in your life. What you need changes day to day, and only your body really knows. You know? No external source, no trainer, no Jillian Michaels, no Dr Oz, nobody knows your body.

SHREEN: And the whole principle of respecting your body is about being kind to yourself and compassionate and self-care, which is the complete opposite of Jillian Michaels. Like, she is just not kind. She’s not compassionate. She’s just shaming, judgemental, mean. Like … yeah. She’s … I just don’t think she even understands the word ‘respect’, quite frankly.

LOUISE: Unless it’s like ‘respect my authority”.

SHREEN: Yeah.

ANNA: Something I noticed too, that came up before, was that because she’s so invested in it … have you heard of the concept of religion, like dieting? The religion of dieting? She’s so completely invested in it, she’s almost not willing to look the other way, or explore that there might be some truth in this, because she’s so invested, like financially and that’s her way of living …

LOUISE: It’s her identity.

ANNA: Exactly.

LOUISE: It’s interesting, isn’t it? I think Alan Levinovitz, ‘The Gluten Lie’ …

ANNA: That’s the guy.

LOUISE: He talks about this, the religion of diet mentality. She is definitely the Pope.

SHREEN: Quote of the day (all laugh).

ANNA: So, then we come into ‘movement, feel the difference’. Which is principle nine.

SHREEN: I think this one really got us fired up, didn’t it?

ANNA: Well, the first thing that she said was like, “what is this? I don’t know what this ‘militant exercise’ even means”.

LOUISE: That’s so funny (all laugh).

ANNA: Like, really? Are you sure?

LOUISE: She’s like, world-famous on memes for [inaudible]. I think I even did a presentation once where I used her with her finger in her face at someone as a demonstration of militant exercise.

ANNA: Yeah, the kind of exercise that you don’t want to do if you want to have a sustainable relationship with movement.

LOUISE: Yeah, your name’s on the t-shirt, love.

SHREEN: Just telling people in this thing that, you know, this myth that’s just not true – ‘no pain, no gain’, that only hard exercise counts, it’s just utter rubbish. All movement counts, it doesn’t matter what it is. From playing with your kids, to hoovering, to dancing around your living room.

LOUISE: Hoovering doesn’t count, I don’t even know what hoovering is …

ANNA: She’s talking about hoovering, the hoover …

SHREEN: Vacuuming, is that more Aussie?

LOUISE: No, I don’t understand. (all laugh).

SHREEN: But like, movement can be anything and you get the exact same health benefits from any type of regular movement, doesn’t matter what it is. But what she’s just trying to … she’s just bringing movement and aesthetics, that’s what she’s talking about. She’s talking about …

ANNA: That’s a really good point, because if she was really interested in somebody’s health, then any kind of movement would be accessible, you know, like …

SHREEN: Beneficial.

ANNA: Helpful, yeah.

SHREEN: Your blood markers, and stress levels, and sleep, it doesn’t matter what it is, it has the same health benefits. But she’s not talking about health. She’s talking about the way you look.

ANNA: Yeah. She’s talking about ‘results’ a lot, and “if you want to get results fast” … because you know, let’s face it, she says “if you’re coming to look at intuitive eating, you’re trying to lose weight, you’re trying to get results fast.”

LOUISE: Jillian!

ANNA: “You’ve got to do a certain type of exercise, and my programs do that”. So, a little bit of spruiking her own programs too.

SHREEN: What she doesn’t realise that she’s doing is having that negative relationship with exercise is not going to make people want to do it. 

LOUISE: She doesn’t care about that.

SHREEN: She’s the reason why people don’t want to go to the gym, or they hate exercise, because of people like Jillian Michaels.

ANNA: Yeah, it’s that fitness trauma that you were talking about before. And what I recognise here, at the studio at Haven, community … in my experience, community has always been really powerful in building that sustainable and healthful relationship with movement. Joy and …

SHREEN: And it’s that you enjoy, you [inaudible].

ANNA: And to want to come back, too. And that militant approach might work well for someone who responds to that but maybe for a short time. And then that motivation kind of wanes. And then it’s always trying to get back the motivation, you hear that a lot in fitness culture. But if you’re not coming at it from external, an external place, for external purposes, and it’s more about the …

SHREEN: The way it makes you feel, using it as a tool for self-care rather than punishment …

ANNA: Your mental health, having fun with your friends, it’s a completely different experience to being yelled at by Jillian Michaels.

SHREEN: Her whole thing is yelling at people, making them feel guilty, punishing them. Like, and that’s just not what people need in a fitness professional. They need someone who is kind and compassionate and she’s just … that’s just not her, unfortunately. She’s just giving …

ANNA: What is she? She’s the Pope of … the religion of dieting. She’s also the epitome of diet culture. She’s all of those things. And then the last principle is gentle nutrition, principle ten.

LOUISE: I think this actually blew up her brain.

SHREEN: Yeah, because she couldn’t understand the whole diet … principle one, principle ten …

LOUISE: She couldn’t figure out how that fits with unconditional permission to eat. Because of course, if you have unconditional permission to eat, you’re going to stick your face into a burger for the rest of your life. 

ANNA: Yeah, so again she thinks it’s all just endless eating.

LOUISE: She’s stuck in that ‘all or nothing’ mentality.

ANNA: Exactly, yeah.

SHREEN: It’s funny, because she talks about that ‘black and white, all or nothing’ mentality and not understanding that’s exactly what she’s saying. Yeah.

ANNA: Yeah, and again it came up just very, very clear that she hasn’t read the book, she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about.

SHREEN: Yeah, I think that’s the main …

ANNA: This is when she said, you know, “it’s probably written by someone who has just really been hurt by diet culture and probably had an eating disorder, and, you know, probably just some random” and actually …

LOUISE: Such a shame that she didn’t actually look at the author.

SHREEN: Yeah, just even look up to who they were. Yeah.

ANNA: It’s a little bit disappointing because you’d think somebody who has such a following, I think, has such a … I think there’s a moral obligation in a way to represent something that … when you have such a big following and you’re sharing something that can affect people deeply …

SHREEN: It’s what we say, that she’s really coming from that dieting mentality and all that sort of shaming that she doesn’t understand that intuitive eating at its core is a self-care model. It’s very compassionate and she doesn’t understand that. Also. with intuitive eating, we’re not saying that it’s a solution for everybody. Everyone has the right to do what they want with their body. She just doesn’t understand the concept at all, what it stands for.

ANNA: It’s like she’s on such a different planet, and it’s not … doesn’t come across as open to exploring that this might be something that really serves people.

SHREEN: Yeah, and that it’s having such a positive impact. We talked about earlier with the …

ANNA: Feeling a bit threatened by the impact on her, you know, her …

LOUISE: To her bottom line. I also think that, I mean, if she really is undernourished to that point that she has restricted her entire life, one of the things that happens when you’re weight supressed is cognitive rigidity.

ANNA: That’s a really good point.

LOUISE: So, it’s quite hard to be flexible. We see that a lot with people who are suffering in the depths of Anorexia, that you simply cannot think. And perhaps there’s an element of that that’s happening here.

ANNA: That’s really interesting.

SHREEN: That’s a really good point. Because what dieting, that kind of restriction is doing to you …

LOUISE: Well, it gives her massive benefits. Huge amounts of recognition, it gives her income. She can’t think out of it. So, there’s not a lot of reason for her, like … I think the reason for putting up that video wasn’t a genuine exploration of “what’s this thing called ‘intuitive eating’?”. 

SHREEN: It was just to …

LOUISE: It was just to kind of …

ANNA: Debunk it.

LOUISE: To debunk it and keep hold of her customer base. Look, let’s assume that she is interested in the book. Jillian Michael’s house is in Malibu, California. I reckon we just whack a copy in an envelope, address it to her, maybe she’ll read it.

ANNA: Do you think? 

LOUISE: Yeah? I don’t know. Maybe if all of our listeners whack a copy into an envelope …

SHREEN: Yeah! 

LOUISE: 20 copies, please read. Maybe.

SHREEN: Maybe, yeah.

LOUISE: But I don’t think that was anything other than a … it’s quite interesting, I’m seeing this more and more. The famous people, the people who have really invested in diet culture, even the obesity researchers and all of that. They’re all kind of getting a little bit nervous about this pushback.

SHREEN: They should be.

LOUISE: It makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

SHREEN: It’s time.

LOUISE: It’s got nothing to do with the champagne. I think the celebs are getting nervous, like “what do you mean, people in larger bodies are okay with themselves just the way they are?”. And finding non weight-loss things to look after themselves, oh my gosh. What a huge, horrible threat. So, we’re not sorry, Jillian, that we made you nervous.

ANNA: Agreed. I hope it gives her a little bit of food for thought (all laugh).

LOUISE: I don’t know how many calories would be attached to that thought (all laugh).

ANNA: I have to say, like, the thing that I think fires me up the most is how fatphobic she is.

SHREEN: And how much harm … that’s the thing that fired me up the most, how much harm she’s causing people out there. And having had an eating disorder myself, it’s just …

LOUISE: Horrible. You can see how triggering it is.

SHREEN: I can see what it can do, yeah. That’s what fires me up.

LOUISE: and let’s not forget when we say fatphobic, we mean people who hate fat people. And that is really reflective … even though she is professing “oh, I’m going to love you … but you’re unhealthy so change”. That’s troubling. Using health as a halo, an excuse or a reason for my core treatment of you just based on your appearance. And that’s just … those days are done. You can’t do that anymore. It’s just not cool. And I do wonder if there is like a Biggest Loser university somewhere? 

ANNA: Michelle Bridges went to it as well.

LOUISE: Because the same kind of hatred of fat people, you know … again, like masked with a thin layer of concern trolling for your health was Michelle Bridges’ thing. Four years ago, when she was on Australian Story and she was saying “I’m yet to meet someone who is morbidly obese and happy”. So, for people who are listening from overseas, Michelle Bridges is the Australian version of Jillian Michaels. And what an awful comment. So, Jillian has been pushed back against from this video, right? Michelle was pushed back against from this video too, with really clear … I know we all live in a bubble, but with quite a lot of push back.

ANNA: That’s good. Was she on … was that on like Australian primetime TV?

SHREEN: She was on Australian Story.

LOUISE: Yeah [inaudible] … it shows how deeply she feels [inaudible] about people she’s profiting from. Putting them through three cycles a year of 1200 calorie program and she knows it doesn’t work. But the thing is, what they do is they double down. People like this double down, when they’re called out, when there’s a pushback. Instead of kind of opening up and say, “okay, I should probably issue an apology, maybe take the video down, maybe do some work”. They’re not doing that. Jillian’s not doing that.

ANNA: I think she just keeps responding. And she’s just responding with the same rhetoric, so she’s not …

SHREEN: I think she kind of comments that [inaudible], to learn about it more, which is a shame.

ANNA: And how did Michele Bridges respond?

LOUISE: Doubled down on it. About health, “I care deeply about health”.

ANNA: The whole thing with health and weight, this is what really frustrates me about it too. If she’s really interested in health, she could support all the behaviours that support someone’s health.

LOUISE: Too complicated. Remember? Too complicated. Anything that actually involves having to think about something other than my own diet plan …

ANNA: It makes me realise how happy I’ve become in moving away from all this, that’s why I got away from it. Because I learned about how there’s another way. Intuitive eating, Health at Every Size®, the body positivity movement … I started delving into it and it just felt so triggering being around other fitness professionals from the traditional approach. And this here, I’ve got to say, got me so fired up. I’m going to be fired up for a while from this.

SHREEN: We talk about fitness trauma, and Jillian Michaels is causing that.

LOUISE: May she go the way of the dinosaurs and … (all laugh).

ANNA: Well, hopefully there will be less and less of her to be seen in the future and more and more of kind of this messaging coming up, challenging …

LOUISE: Absolutely, I absolutely think that’s going to happen. You’ve just reminded me actually, she … because Jillian, earlier in the year before she posted the nasty intuitive eating thing, she said something nasty about Lizzo.

SHREEN: Yeah, of course. 

ANNA: That sounds familiar …

SHREEN: Yeah. That was before … 

LOUISE: A little while before, I don’t know. It’s Covid, none of us have a timeline.

ANNA: She’s said some pretty horrendous things.

SHREEN: Really horrendous things yeah.

LOUISE: Again, like … “she’s clearly going to get diabetes” or something?

ANNA: I think she said something along the lines of “there’s nothing sexy about diabetes”, or clogged arteries or something. 

SHREEN: Something like that, yeah.

ANNA: How can she … that’s so inappropriate. Lizzo’s bouncing away on stage. She’s got stamina, she’s got energy. 

SHREEN: We don’t know anything about her or her health.

ANNA: And why do we have to talk about that anyway? She’s this amazing performer and doing this really cool stuff. It’s wonderful to see some diverse bodies out there that are getting out there as much as the other, the thin ideal that you see everywhere.

LOUISE: Yeah, the comments that she made were like “why are we talking about Lizzo’s body, we should be talking about her music”.

ANNA: So, she said that?

LOUISE: Yeah.

ANNA: But then …

LOUISE: And it’s really funny, because she’s saying that we shouldn’t be talking about Lizzo’s body, but her entire website is full of shots of her body.

ANNA: Yeah, and that’s her thing.

SHREEN: That’s her thing, yeah.

ANNA: She’s always talking about people’s bodies. Size 16, yeah.

SHREEN: Yeah, non-stop.

LOUISE: The point I’m making is that you don’t say that about Lizzo. And the pushback she got after she made that comment? This is the future Jillian. Lizzo is setting the world on fire. 

ANNA: We need more Lizzo.

SHREEN: We need more Lizzo.

LOUISE: and you are the biggest loser.

ANNA: Well put.

LOUISE: Oh my god, let’s finish on a high note. Thank you, guys, that was an elegant unpacking of Jillian Michael’s ten principles of not understanding intuitive eating (all laugh). And how firmly we can steer the ship to this new awesome way of looking after our body.

ANNA: Thank you.

SHREEN: Thank you. 

Resources Mentioned:

(Watch if you can stomach) Jillian Michaels' Igno-rant on Youtube

Urbszat, Dax, C. Peter Herman, and Janet Polivy. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we diet: Effects of anticipated deprivation on food intake in restrained and unrestrained eaters." Journal of abnormal psychology 111.2 (2002): 396.

News article about 4 lawsuits against Jillian Michaels for her weight loss pills

Fothergill, Erin, et al. "Persistent metabolic adaptation 6 years after “The Biggest Loser” competition." Obesity 24.8 (2016): 1612-1619.

Alan Levinovitz's The Gluten Lie

Find out more about Anna Hearn & Haven

Find out more about Shreen El Masry and Be You Be Free

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At LONG LAST I am pleased to present Part 2 of our deep dive into the murky underworld of "Big O" - Australia's obesity organisations, and their links to Big Pharma. Join me and fearless anti-diet dietitian Mandy-Lee Noble as we reveal the disturbing progress which Novo Nordisk is making, steadily infiltrating our universities, academics, health professionals, consumer groups, and news media with one goal: to make larger bodied Aussies believe that they are diseased and need urgent treatment! And in spite of the obesity organisations repeatedly claiming to be 'transparent' about their funding sources, we keep discovering that NOTHING is what it seems! Smoke, mirrors and deflections abound, and there is SO much money being thrown at so many different groups, our heads are spinning. AND they're using weight stigma as a weapon to push their drugs and surgeries! It's diabolical double speak and it needs to be stopped. This is an episode NOT to be missed !

Show Notes

• What’s firing up my wonderful anti-diet dietitian guest Mandy-Lee Noble? Since our last podcast, (Ep #55 - Inside The Obesity Collective), there have been some new developments on the Big Pharma front, particularly in how they are trying to shape hysteria around weight - driving people into treatment and portraying higher weight as being a health issue in and of itself.
• What has really spiked Mandy’s frustration is that at the start of 2020 the esteemed journal Nature (in their medical journal ‘Nature Medicine’) released a “Consensus statement” about obesity stigma.
• CONTENT WARNING - we’ll be using the stigmatising ‘o’ word (obese) throughout this podcast because of how the groups we’re talking about use it. But we HATE IT because it is implicitly stigmatising!
• So this group released a joint international consensus statement for the ending of stigma of the ‘o’ word (with that stigmatising word in the title!)
• We thought … maybe they’re starting to do the right thing? But … no. Upon reading, it reveals itself as just another push to get people into treatment simply because they are in a larger body.
• And what might be influencing this paper? Let’s check how many times Novo Nordisk is mentioned in this statement as a ‘conflict of interest’ … it’s in the double digits. 20 times, out of 40 authors. 
• Novo Nordisk isn’t the only conflict of interest. The major supporters of this paper were pushing surgical devices for bariatric surgery (Ethicon). 
• Mandy has issues about the use of the word ‘stigma’ here. Weight stigma is when you’re treated poorly just due to your weight, which we know is an epidemic and happening all the time and leading to poor health outcomes and disengagement from healthcare. When these industry groups use that word, they consider it a barrier to people using treatment! It’s all just dollar-signs to them.
• In the spirit of transparency - let’s go through the conflicts of interest for Louise and Mandy. Hope you’ve got some time …. (Louise played a cricket sound). ;)
• Basically fuck all, right? We’re not getting paid. We’re here for love, not money - not for the vested interest of corporations or even of ourselves. This kind of ‘investigative journalism’ research has an impact on our mental health, for sure!
• Mandy arcs up at the assumption that people at higher weights need treatment for disease - the stigma is there in the assumption.
• Let’s reflect on what happened after the last podcast. There were unexpected ripples from that episode. The powers that be at Obesity Australia were listening … either that or there were some totally weird coincidences.
• Some of the coincidences: the fact sheets disappeared! The fact sheets telling people that chips were lethal and to drink Diet Coke to put off their hunger, all of the magic 1920’s weight loss tips have vanished. The whole oldy-worldy Obesity Australia website has vanished and replaced with a trendy new Obesity Collective website. This all happened within 2 weeks of our last podcast with Mandy.
• There was a bit of an MIA issued in the last podcast for the Weight Issues Network - a consumer group that just didn’t seem to exist, until it magically appeared very soon after the podcast aired. 
• We wondered, where are they getting the money from? Mandy sent them a Facebook message asking, and was told that the director would be in touch. Tiffany Petrie, director of The Obesity Collective, did reach out and offered to meet us for a coffee, which we accepted. We then learned Petrie would be bringing some friends to the coffee (some backup?). Immediately before the coffee date, they … pulled out! Petrie said she would be too busy for months to meet. The offer is still open from Mandy and Louise!
• On the types of articles that are being reposted on the WIN Facebook page, which has a huge following - at the moment there’s 100 people following, which includes Louise and Mandy. It’s funny that this group that’s meant to be addressing weight stigma reposts so many stigmatising articles. Things about the ‘war on childhood obesity’, and other articles that make Mandy go “wow”. Overall though, there isn’t too much action happening on that page. 
• Mandy was contacted by some journalists to comment on the funding that Obesity Australia receives, and was pleased to see the table she provided was reproduced entirely in one of the articles (but without acknowledgement).
• The Medical Republic released a podcast and media article, which Louise came away from a bit disappointed - the title of the article was framed as ‘why is this being battled out between skinny people’, as if HAES Australia is battling in the ‘war on obesity’. HAES Australia is a body without industry funding to support people who want to provide weight-neutral care. Whereas the WIN is a ‘patient’ group which frames obesity as a disease. Completely different agendas.
• Mandy wanted the title of this podcast to be “Obesity Australia, if you are listening” - a reference to Russia and Trump, and how Obesity Australia seemed to be listening to the last podcast.
• Obesity Australia, if you ARE listening and if you REALLY are serious and want to end weight stigma, DO THESE THREE THINGS WE’LL TALK ABOUT HERE. 
• Number 1: Advocate for medical professionals to disclose industry funding when they are talking to the media and/or their patients.
• It’s about informed consent! What is behind the advice that someone is receiving? If it’s money, that’s important information to know. 
• A good example recently from Channel 9 News in a short segment called ‘Study hoped to decrease obesity stigma’.  It’s just a minute or two long. We’ve seen all the ‘war on obesity’ stories, and this is a new take - obesity stigma?! But when you watch the story, it’s nothing new at all. The story is tremendously stigmatising with all the same language about ‘battling’ weight and obesity, framing it as the enemy. It also uses ‘headless fatty’ images, of people in larger bodies with their heads not shown, carrying their fast food lunches around as it was probably filmed on a lunch break.
• The program banged on about rates of overweight and obesity as if they were the rates of people who were unwell - as if everyone in those groups is diseased. Life expectancy, however, continues to rise (shh).
• The study mentioned in the story was QUITE hard to get hold of. It’s not even a new study, it was published in February 2019. At least, we think this is the study because they haven’t referenced it adequately in the story. Our statistics match up with theirs, so we think it’s the same one. And the study itself has NOTHING to do with stigma. The title is “Gaps to bridge: misalignment between perception, reality and action in obesity”. But the gap is ‘how to get people to treatment’ - why aren’t more fat people asking for help from their doctors? That’s basically the only question asked in the study, and ‘weight stigma’ doesn’t appear in the study. None of the researchers are weight stigma researchers.
• Dr Georgia Regis gives an expert opinion as an ‘obesity physician and researcher’ that people in larger bodies need to seek medical help. She’s using the big assumption that everyone in a larger body requires treatment. And was this opinion out of the goodness of her heart? Or … perhaps because she has some vested interest that isn’t declared in this piece? 
• Dr Regis actually has several conflicts of interest to declare, which we see on the research articles we read - but people seeing her speak on the news don’t get that declaration of conflict of interest. Dr Regis actually received $43,000 over three years from Novo Nordisk, a company that produces weight loss drugs. And that’s not the only treatment industry that she’s accepted fees from - there are other payments here from companies that make products and treatments for bariatric surgery.
• Dr Regis may of course be giving unbiased and evidence-based opinions. Either way though, just as she is required to do in research, she should be declaring these conflicts of interest to the media she speaks to and TO HER PATIENTS. Transparency! It’s even in the Obesity Australia principles!
• Fun fact: Novo Nordisk (you’ll never guess) actually completely funded this research paper. They also have made other payments to the authors on the paper, and this is on top of paying for the researcher’s travel expenses to attend ‘author meetings’ about this paper. Where would they need to go !??
• Let’s talk privilege, because it’s necessary when talking about stigma. Mandy and Louise have the privilege of being educated, having access to research, and being health professionals. When Mandy and Louise read this research, conflicts of interest have to be declared - but it’s not necessary at the moment that these conflicts are declared to media or to patients. Obesity Australia, if you’re listening - advocate for health professionals to declare conflicts of interest.
• Number 2: If you’re listening, Obesity Australia, be transparent about industry funded consumer groups. This includes WIN, the Weight Issues Network.
• WIN does say on their website (in their ‘transparency statement’) that they receive some funding from Obesity Australia, ANZOS and ANZMOS (groups with ties back to Novo Nordisk). 
• WIN has six principles - transparency is one of them, another is about being ‘safe and empowering’ - providing “information, support, and a place to have a voice”. So, what we’re asking from them is definitely in lines with what they say they’re going to provide. One of our planned ‘coffee questions’ was about where they got their money from - and at first we were told the money was donated. Since then we’ve learned that Obesity Australia gave WIN $5,000 to start them off. We haven’t had a response about how much money they received from ANZOS and ANZMOS. It’s interesting that when we email them we get responses back from Tiffany, who is not actually part of WIN … it’s all very incestuous. 
• On the WIN page, we learn that funding has come from the Obesity Collective, which is basically the same as Obesity Australia. The other thing is that WIN has now set themselves up as a separate charity, which means people can donate directly to them and get (possible) tax exemptions. 
• Some other issues we have with transparency - they claim they’re getting pro bono support. We generally understand that as people providing work for free. This pro bono work is coming from PricewaterhouseCoopers. They have a long term business relationship with Novo Nordisk, having been their auditors for years. 
• WIN has a board - some with lived experience, a clinician, a researcher and some others including a bariatric surgeon (we think some of the people in WIN are this surgeon’s patients). Who we mainly hear from is Lynne Keppler, who has done some media and spoken at obesity conferences. What is missing from the board is people who are not treatment-seeking. All of them describe themselves as a patient or someone living with a condition of ill health. 
• The WIN also receive some training, some webinars that we’ve seen that come from Dr Arya Sharma, a Canadian bariatric physician and bigwig in Obesity Inc. Who paid for that!?
• Novo Nordisk paid to fly Dr Sharma in for seminars and meetings - his expertise here is helping people tell their stories and stay on track with their key messages, all of which perfectly align with Novo Nordisk. It’s pretty clear in these webinars that the key messages he wants people to stay on are that obesity is a disease, and that weight stigma is a barrier for larger bodied people seeking weight treatment such as surgery and drugs. 
• So, what we have is a consumer group that has claimed that they are transparent, when they’re really receiving training from people who are heavily funded by Novo Nordisk and being supported by groups that are supported by Novo Nordisk and other pharma groups and bariatric supplies manufacturers. 
• It’s hard to see how this is a transparent consumer group that is free of conflicts of interest because it’s all being funded by weight loss treatment industries. That’s our concern.
• What we’d like Obesity Australia to do, if they’re listening, is encourage WIN to be transparent. For example, where is the source funding coming from for events such as the one run by Dr Sharma? 
• On their website and Facebook group, WIN encourages people to share their stories. Louise has the question ‘what for?’. Is it so their stories can be packaged up and used to further the agenda (lobbying the government to increase obesity services?). It’s a misuse of the word ‘stigma’. Talking about the stigma you’ve faced takes a toll - and then that lived experience gets media trained and packaged so you continue talking to the media and government groups about how much you need these interventions … it feels really dark. They’re not really asking people for stories about weight stigma, but about stories of treatment seeking. 
• Number 3: If you’re listening, Obesity Australia, we’d like you to be transparent about the industry funding that health professional groups get. Health professional groups are another way to lobby for change, lobby governments, etc. It would be really good if we could see those entities also be transparent.
• An example: NACOS, the National Association of Clinical Obesity Services. Louise had never heard of this group before! It’s quite new, having only dropped in September 2019, after WIN dropped in August 2019. Louise read through a NACOS financial report, wondering who they are and how they came to be. Clinical Obesity Services are units in hospitals involving teams of health professionals offering weight loss services. Evan Atlantis, NACOS President,  in his financial report for NACOS wrote that they are committed to improving health services and clinical services for patients with obesity, with considerable  support and grant funding from … Novo Nordisk. 
• After the NACOS formed, the Novo Nordisk money paid for Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) to write up a report outlining just how dire obesity is and how urgently services are needed (you guessed it, completely the same as the other Novo Nordisk reports written by PWC). PWC wrote 4 out of the 5 “obesity is dreadful” reports produced by Obesity Australia.
• Guess who is the secretary general of NACOS? Dr Nick … the bariatric surgeon who is also on the board of WIN.
• If you’re listening, Obesity Australia, here are those three things we want you to advocate for if you’re really serious about addressing weight stigma.
  • NUMBER 1: Advocate for medical professionals to be transparent and disclose industry funding with media, general public and patients.
  • NUMBER 2: Consumer groups that are industry funded be more transparent about all funding, in-kind support and training.
  • NUMBER 3: That health professional groups be more transparent about their funding sources.
• Is there something that All Fired Up! listeners could possibly think about as you move through media and accessing healthcare? We might look at all this stuff and think “bloody hell, I’m just one person! What can I do?!”.
• If you’re talking to anyone medical who is trying to sell or advise you on weight loss drugs or procedures, ask them to disclose if they are receiving any payments or training from these groups … and how much. You need to know if your health professional is being potentially influenced by industry funding. Research shows that for the majority of health professionals who are inviting people to use these drugs or surgeries, their training about them has come completely from these groups that make money from them. And ask about the long term side effects!
• We hope this has been helpful and insightful, and rounded out our journey down the rabbit hole that we started over a year ago.
• Why is Novo Nordisk, a HUGE pharmaceutical company, so interested in little old Australia? Actually, this is happening globally - and that will be the subject of the next podcast. You won’t believe the size of this octopus. 
• An update on Professor Simpson, executive director of Obesity Australia who had a grant from Novo Nordisk … we found out how much it was. Let’s remember that the research that Novo Nordisk were funding was NOT about weight stigma, but about cricket sperm. Hmm. And that grant amount for research that has nothing to do with weight stigma? 13 MILLION DOLLARS. The head of Obesity Australia, an organisation which pretends to be all about weight stigma, is being funded to the tune of $13 MILLION by Novo Nordisk in order to research cricket sperm.
• If people are really feeling they’re providing unbiased advice, they’d be happy to provide their conflicts of interest.
• When we hear messages from the head of Obesity Australia, think about it, are we really hearing the messages of Novo Nordisk?
• To be continued! This story isn’t over.

Resources Mentioned

Find out more about my amazing guest Mandy-Lee Noble here

The Joint International Consensus Statement for Ending Stigma of Obesity

The Weight Issues Network website (checkout the logo!)

The Medical Republic article “Why is the war on obesity being fought by skinny folks”?

The Channel 9 news piece which wasn’t really about weight stigma

The study that the Channel 9 news piece was talking about, which also has nothing to do with weight stigma

The Novo Nordisk funded National Association of Clinical Obesity Services (NACOS)

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In Part 2 of our Bright Line Eating episode, I explore Susan Peirce Thompson's grand claims that her weight loss program is "the most effective in the world", and come to a very different conclusion. I also chat with Dr Martina Zangger, who spent 2 years as a "Bright Lifer" and has literally been to hell and back. Not only is she thousands of dollars out of pocket, but she's had to overcome a Bright Line induced eating disorder. And she is NOT HAPPY! Diet culture constantly sells us the glossy testimonials, but the ANTI-TESTIMONIAL is much more important. The only winner here is the Bright Line Bank Account - you will not believe how much cash Susan Peirce Thompson is raking in from selling starvation. It's enough to run a small country, yet strangely, Bright Line Eating can't even squeeze out any decent research? CW for this episode, which has LOTS of explicit talk about eating disordered practices, numbers, and extreme dieting.

Show Notes

• Welcome to part two of our deep dive into Susan Peirce Thompson’s program Bright Line Eating - if you missed the last episode, go back and have a listen.
• Last episode we talked about the rules of the Bright Line Eating program, which is basically a monetised version of Food Addicts Anonymous.
• We talked about neuroscience with Dr Susan Aamodt, and how she found some peace in the non-diet approach. Susan also gave us a great overview of how our brains regulate body weight, and how the food addiction model isn’t well supported by evidence.
• Now we’re going to continue by looking at the alleged ‘research’ that ‘backs up’ Bright Line Eating, and then hear from  Dr Martina Zangger who nominated Bright Line for the Crappy awards and brought this rant to us.
• And to round things out - just how much money is this program making, and where is it heading?
• Content warning - there is some mention of numbers (weights) as we go through some research.

• Susan Peirce Thompson is always talking about research in her book, her emails and thousands of messages she sends out to program members (and prospective members) - research that supposedly proves the effectiveness of her program.
• The truth is that the research is much less shiny and sparkly than Thompson makes out.
• On her website - four publications are listed. Actually, only one of them is a published paper. The other three are posters from conferences. At conferences (for example, in the nutrition world) there are lecture presentations, panels and then ‘poster presentations’. Anyone from an Honours or Masters level student, a weight-loss industry group can put up a poster - they’re not the same as a published research paper. So, on her website there’s actually only one published research paper.
• And it’s interesting - Thompson has been in academia for most of her life, yet has so little in her name in terms of research publications. It’s usually a requirement of being employed at an academic institution, to be publishing often.
• So, let’s look at that paper. It’s from the Journal of Nutrition & Weight Loss, and the title is ‘Evaluation of a Commercial Telehealth Weight Loss and Management Program’, published in 2018. Thompson is not one of the authors. The paper overview evaluated her online eight week bootcamp, part of her monetised program. The paper said that between October 2014 - March 2018 (roughly four years), 18,778 people enrolled in the bootcamp. WOW - this program costs US $900 per person, and nearly 19,000 people have been through this program. 
• 9,996 of these people agreed to participate in this ongoing research study of the program, and then eight weeks later 5,374 people completed the return survey. That’s a drop out rate of around 50%. Remember - you’re just paid US $900 and you’ve dropped out after eight weeks.
• What they found out: 
  • Demographics - people buying this program are mainly white, well off, older, female. 96% were college educated, with an average age of 55. (Targeting menopausal women who are feeling horrible about their bodies?)
  • Average weight at the start of the program (number warning) was 88.3kg, and after the eight week bootcamp where participants are told to eat three times a day only, with strictly weighed and measured food and zero flour or sugar, average weight loss was 7.5kg.
  • That’s not surprising - restricting yourself so much for eight weeks means some weight loss isn’t surprising. But it does mean you’re paying close to $200 AUD per kilo lost - and we know it’s only temporary loss.
• Take away from reading this paper is that it’s nothing new. Like so many weight loss papers before it, it shows that when you starve you lose weight. There’s no neurological research being undertaken here, and no attempt to search for harm or screen people (such as for eating disorder behaviours).
• Pretty flimsy, pretty unimpressive. 
• Compare this rather limp research to the grand claims she is making in her book - “we believe this is the most successful weight loss program on earth”. Any facts to back up that opinion?
• There’s an effort in the book to put some numbers in to back up her claims, but she’s using pretty stinky tactics.
• She brags about the rate of weight loss on her program compared to other weight loss programs such as Weight Watchers (WW) and Jenny Craig. She cites research that on those other programs, that shows that after two years people lost 8-10% of their starting weight. Susan says that people lose 10% of their weight on her program, and 12x faster. 
• But what she’s doing there is comparing weight loss over two years to weight loss over eight weeks. Stopping research sooner to make your program look more effective. The longer you follow people on these research papers, the more weight they regain. Dodgy, sneaky, not a fair comparison.
• When you’re trying to peddle weight loss, the strongest evidence is not in the short term result. It’s all about proving that your program can “keep their weight off forever”, because that’s really what everyone’s looking for - and we know that in all these programs people overwhelmingly put the weight back on.
• So the claims Susan is making are leaving us dumbfounded. There are claims about the percentage of people in her program who have reached goal weight, maintained, etc - with no actual research to back it up. Are we talking about four people or one thousand - how many people are in this research pool?
• Another red flag - in the book, Susan admits that there are people in her program with eating disorders, and people in her program who are already ‘thin’ but doing the program to achieve a ‘goal weight’. 
• If she’s saying that there’s a cohort of people who have lost 25% of their body weight and are maintaining it, I’m really worried about those people. They very well could be unwell and potentially have eating disorders, but are being represented as success stories.
• The three posters (not actual published research) are labelled as ‘research publications’ which is misleading.
• One is a poster version of the published paper we just went through, and there’s a description of the poster that talks about a completely different, smaller sample of people. Perhaps because they’re talking about a smaller group of people who do have a BMI of 25 or above? Which means many of the people featured in the published article were thin to begin with, which muddies the outcomes substantially.
• “Bright Line Eating: An effective online program for sustained weight loss” is the title of another of the posters. It’s a poster version of the dodgy tactic Susan did in her book, where the sample isn’t actually discussed (who are they? How many?). There’s no actual statistical or experimental design given in this paper, nothing to tell the reader about how the research is carried out. 
• There are bar graphs presenting information but with no numbers to tell us about the sample being represented. There’s a bar graph titles ‘decrease in body weight over time’ that has 10% body weight lost at baseline - baseline? This poster is worlds apart from a peer reviewed published paper. Shame on you, Susan, for trying to pass this off as research.
• Please don’t be fooled, if you hear that Bright Line Eating is research based or evidence based. This is abominable - one weight loss research paper that just backs up that weight loss occurs, but no evidence of long term effects.
• Let’s talk with Dr Martina Zangger!
• Martina is fired up about diet culture in general, but most particularly fired up about the Bright Line Eating movement - an unconscionable money-making scheme that encourages eating disorders and is marketed brilliantly by a charismatic charming manipulator making at least ten million dollars a year from her various programs. 
• Martina’s Crappys rant stuck with us, because speaking from her own experience with the program made for a really strong rant!
• You can’t just pay once for the eight week boot camp - there are follow up programs! Most participants are women, between 40-70 years of age, middle class and white. They’re spending about $3,000 AUD a year on these programs that they become dependent on. You can’t continue this program on your own, you’d just fall off the wagon - it’s so controlled! So, if you’re very controlled, highly anxious, perfectionistic, perhaps mentally unwell - yeah, maybe you could sustain it on your own. It’s basically a restrictive eating disorder.
• When Martina was ‘succeeding’ in the program, she had an eating disorder. She developed orthorexia and was close to anorexia, which all developed during the program. It’s a really frightening slippery slope. 
• Susan suggested some weird things. ‘Goal weight’ was a huge topic of conversation - suggesting that we should go back to our ‘high school weight’ when we were 15 or 16, ‘at our thinnest in our teens’. So screwed up!
• Martina found the program through a long term friend. They’d both ‘struggled’ with food for a long time, and talked about things like bingeing, being ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and this friend told Martina she was going to start the Bright Line Eating (BLE) program. Martina joined her, and after a week told her friend it was just too hard - but her friend told her to keep going, that they’d try it for a month.
• The weight loss became really addictive - the rush of hopping on the scale, seeing the numbers change, having to buy smaller clothes. Martina feels embarrassed by how superficial it was, but it was highly intoxicating. Louise doesn't think it’s superficial at all - that pursuit of weight loss is really intense in an eating disorder. 
• BLE rules were strict and restrictive - no flour or sugar, very little grains, etc.
• Martina felt the program gave her an illusion of control at a very difficult time in her life - like she could set back the clock to feel younger rather than an ‘old menopausal frump’. 
• Martina’s mother was on a diet for 67 years of her life, and taught her to diet when Martina was 12. So sad for both of them. Martina was basically then trained as a dieter.
• Martina has very low self esteem as a young person, and felt that what she looked like could give her the self esteem she was lacking. Martina has a history of abuse in her childhood, and had feelings of being different, not good enough, ‘damaged goods’. But dieting gave her a feeling of being good at something.
• So, dieting actually had a positive function at that time. Diet culture is all about making people feel that their appearance is their worth. 
• Rather than think about the trauma you have experienced at the hands of (often) men, you can think about dieting. Instead of having a voice, you have dieting. It’s heartbreaking, and it makes sense. It’s a way of coping and surviving.
• “It’s a scientifically grounded program that teaches you a simple process for getting your brain on board so you can finally live happy, thin and free” - it’s so seductive, isn’t it?
• Since Martina’s Crappys nomination, Louise signed up for BLE newsletters and in one month has had 50 emails from BLE! It’s full of the ‘happy, thin and free’ message, and being in your ‘right sized’ body, or the ‘bright line’ body.
• She’s GREAT at the messaging - hitting every single marketing box, with the credentials (professor of neuropsychology) to make it tick.
• Martina is an academic with a PhD herself and so thought Susan must know her stuff. 
• Working out the money side of things - the eight week book camp costs about $1,200 AUD. Then you’re told “you can’t do this alone, you need our support” and you can sign up for “bright lifers”, a one year support program that costs about $700 AUD per year. Then there’s another program for those people who fall off their ‘bright lines’, maybe 60% of people? It’s called ‘reboot, resume’. Thousands of women sign up for that because they feel ashamed that they can’t keep their ‘bright line’. She’s making them pay for the relapse her program causes!
• There’s another program called ‘Bright Line Mind’, too.
• It all rhymes, but it’s all bullshit!
• She says when you’re cooking, if you’re hungry, put some sticky tape across your mouth so you’re not tempted to lick the spoon that you’re stirring your food with. WHAT!?! It’s irresponsible, it’s horrific - and she confidently says it to 50,000 people.
• For people who fall off their ‘bright lines’, they don’t blame Susan - they blame themselves. They sign up again and again, “I’ve been very bad and I need to learn how to be good”. It’s diet culture.
• Martina was able to keep her adherence to the program going without falling off her ‘bright line’ - she was brought up with a lot of Swiss discipline and put that all into being ‘good’ in the program. She thinks she was one of the more successful people in the program before deciding it was rubbish and walking away. For about two years she was following the ‘bright lines’ 100%, maybe wavering a little on quantities. Sometimes she would ‘cheat’ and put 10 grams more oats into her muesli at breakfast - cheat! 10 grams!
• You’re weighing everything, every day. How do you do that and live your life?
• You have to pack all your food ahead of time, and only eat out at certain places where you could get something ‘clean’. 
• Martina remembers eating an apple instead of joining in with her family eating gelato (she loves gelato!). One day they were eating gelato and Martina thought, “fuck this!” and had a double scoop of chocolate gelato, and that was the beginning of the unravelling of BLE for her. In spite of all that powerful, positive reinforcement - things were not okay.
• Martina is so pleased she’s found the courage to walk away from it. She wrote a letter to Susan describing her orthorexia and how the program brought on her eating disorder, and never heard back. She also wrote an email to her ‘house leaders’ who said they were ‘very sorry’ and wished her well. That was all. 
• No interest in how they might be doing harm.
• Within six months, Martina put on all the weight she had lost over two years. It was a very scary process, but she thought “no matter what, I’m not going to diet. No matter how much weight I've gained, I'm not going to restrict”. And now she feels the best she’s ever felt - so much HAPPIER! She eats what she wants, trusts what her mind or body tells her it wants, and is happier.
• Happy, NOT thin, and free!
• That beginning time of gaining weight back was terrifying. Martina had to pay for therapy (more money!) which was very helpful for her. She learned some principles of Intuitive Eating, and allowed herself binges - she had been so deprived that she would buy big packets of treats and eat them all quickly because she was starving for sugar. Now, she’ll eat any sweets she wants but isn’t needing to binge - because they’re all allowed.
• The bingeing didn’t have an agenda - she wasn’t trying to get the binging out of the way so she could get past it. The bingeing just had to happen because she’d been so restricted.
• *I can be smart, beautiful, have a loving heart, have a wise mind. I don’t have to look emaciated to be worth something.* 
• Martina remembers talking to her 87 year old mother the day before she was scheduled to have back surgery, and how excited her mum was about losing weight after the surgery. Martina’s mother died during that surgery. Both Martina and her mum were victims of diet culture. 
• There’s such joy in food, in sharing food, in looking forward to dinner out or the really special lunch you have in your lunch box!
• Louise is amazed that Martina has managed to get out of Bright Lines, recover from the eating disorder that it caused, and found not just peace with food but enjoyment.
• Susan lifted the BLE program from the FA and OA twelve-step programs, based on the addiction model. Those FA/OA programs are free - and yet she has monetised it and is making millions. It’s ethically completely not okay.
• Susan gave a sense of community, like a big sister - loving, attentive, ‘I care about you, I love you”, but at the same time “give me your money”. It’s so manipulative. You feel special, and it’s a marketing ploy.
• Martina doesn’t blame herself, but others do - they call themselves failures. It relies on the disempowerment of women and making them blame themselves.
• If you’ve been involved in BLE or anything like it and developed an eating disorder, that’s because of the deprivation and restriction, and normal responses to starvation. 
• No warnings in any of the emails or program notes so far about potential for developing eating disorders, and no accountability - she doesn’t reply to emails where people talk about developing eating disorders, about being ‘broken’, about needing to seek help.
• Martina generously offers up her email (in the resource notes) for anyone who has undertaken Bright Line Eating and wants to have a chat or converse via email about what they’re going through. You didn’t fail, the diet failed.
• Thank you Martina, for your courage and honesty. That recovery was so tough and our blood is boiling still about how Susan ignored Martina’s email about her eating disorder.
• So, how much cash is being raked in by BLE?
• Let’s look at that research paper again - in US$, she’s profited just shy of 17 MILLION DOLLARS in four years. 
• Often on All Fired Up we talk about how diet culture is a multimillion dollar industry making money off weight cycling, but this is just one woman!
• One website that gives out BLE information said that her husband David is the CEO of BLE. This website lists BLE as having 30 employees, and a revenue of 5.8 million US dollars.
• This website says that in the first quarter of 2019, revenue was listed as 6 million, and in the next two quarters it was 9 million. So, in 2019 this woman made 30 MILLION BUCKS. Link to this website in the show notes. 
• Think of just how many people that money represents, people who are desperate for the ‘bright lines’. Susan says in her book that by 2040, she wants 1 million people at what she calls ‘goal weight’. That’s $900 million in bootcamp sales!
• Something that’s struck Louise during this research is just how much positive press there is about Susan out there. There’s just no critical feedback - in fact, there seems to be an absence of even just basic journalistic research to look at her claims. People seem to be just swallowing her ideas and her story - is it that she’s so compelling, or that she’s a neuroscientist and we just don’t question it?
• There’s a particularly nauseating 2016 media piece about her, where the journalist just gushed about how brave Susan was to leave her academic position to do the BLE thing full time. Is it brave, or is it capitalism? How brave is it to leave academia if you're earning millions! The journalist says “as a scientist, I’m especially heartened by Susan’s desire to use profits generated by Bright Line Eating to fund research on weight loss, since objective data and evidence based approaches are sorely lacking in the field”. Okay? Is that true? In her book, she does talk about how she wants to do more research to prove how BLE works, and talks about something called the ‘Institute for Sustainable Weight Loss’. WTF is that? It’s a ‘charitable’ foundation with a mission statement of ‘advancing the science of sustainable weight loss for everyone’, claiming that they support study into neurological changes that support weight loss. Since the establishment of the institute in 2016, Susan has made millions of dollars and there’s been no research released. But they will accept donations!
• Louise hasn’t had any emails back after requesting confirmation of the Institute's charitable status. It’s actually registered as a ‘non-compliant charity’ in the state of New Jersey, meaning it hasn’t supplied enough information to charity directories. 
• So, there you have it - the Bright Line Eating world of mass marketing, dodgy diet claims, making a buttload of money off the agony of everyday people like Martina, and being unresponsive to criticism. Buyer beware!
• It’s so low calorie, it WILL induce a state of physical starvation which will induce a whole range of homeostatic drivers that will make you preoccupied with food, with your whole body fighting to regain the weight. You’ll be more sensitive to food cues, you'll experience a heightened sense of need for those ‘banned’ foods which makes you more likely to binge or compulsively eat due to the deprivation. Enduring a chronic starvation state slows metabolism and affects leptin, telling your brain you’re starving. 
• And let’s not forget the serious risk of developing an eating disorder. 
• It’s an incredibly expensive program to white-knuckle you towards some twisted illusion of ‘freedom’. Susan fails to tell people the entire truth about brain-based weight regulation and defended weight range. She is a neuroscientist but she has ignored the effects of yoyo dieting and chronic restriction. People she’s targeting are already primed to think that they’re food addicts, and she’s blaming the palatability and ‘toxicity’ of food - when really it’s the deprivation that’s causing these heightened responses. 
• And she’s making millions of dollars and running a non-compliant charitable research institute!
• Louise is sick of programs like BLE running unchecked, without criticism - it’s time for the anti-testimonial, like Martina’s. 
• Get in touch - let’s start reclaiming and shaking things up!

Resources

• Dr Martina Zangger’s email is [email protected] - please contact her if you have also suffered as a result of the Bright Line Eating program.
• The research publications section of the Bright Line Eating Website
• Link to the very gushy article on Susan Peirce Thompson in 2016
• The website showing the incredible amount of money that Bright Line Eating is making 
• Link to Institute for Sustainable Weight Loss
• Below is a screenshot of the 'noncompliant' status of the Institute for Sustainable Weight Loss charity:

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