[Show Intro] Jala Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here! [Intro music] 05:22.95 Jala Hello world and welcome to Jala-chan's Place. I'm your host Jala Prendes (she/her) and today I'm joined by Raúl (he/him) and Briar (they/them). How are you both doing today. 05:43.26 Raúl Hi everybody and welcome to our old place the podcast where we don't tell our co-hosts what our intros are going to be until it's too late to stop us. 05:54.75 Jala Ah, well now it's Raúl's place so we've switched. We've we hopped houses. 06:02.60 Briar He did an old timey deed scam ah doing fantastic Glad to be here. 06:02.74 Jala Right? right? An old timey deed scam right at the top jeez ok, that's how we're going to be this episode? Ok so Briar how are you doing? It's been a minute. 06:19.76 Briar Um I am treating this more like a early screener because I have less academic experience and more ah personal experiential experience with this topic so looking to live laugh learn. 06:32.72 Jala All well. Hopefully we will be doing all of those things nicely and such on this episode. It is a hard topic to be discussing. We will be talking about. 06:47.32 Jala Phobia and eating disorders disordered eating and such but before we get into that topic I want to remind everyone about our coffee you can support this show by going to k o hyphen f I dot com slash fireheartm mediaia and either dropping us a 1 ne-time donation or subscribing and yes. He does have patron tiers just like Patreon and there's extra stuff for subscribers and in all donations are given a shout out on the show and are greatly appreciated. You can also rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice and it gives me warm fuzzies to see each and every one of them everybody who ah has. Been in my discord nose because like I always go go this thing somebody said it was so nice like I I do the whole thing. It's nonsense so anyway, with that being said, couple of disclaimers. First off is that um this is something that was suggested by my fellow hosts on this show. Ah, we are not going to be stopping every 5 seconds to tell each other. No, you actually do look fantastic. You shouldn't think that way or whatever like we're not doing that. Um, first off, that's like toxic positivity to just like say oh you know Um, you shouldn't feel the way that you feel like no, no, no, no, no. You feel. However, you feel you know? Um, but we're not going to be reassuring each other every 2 seconds on the show as we discuss our own feelings about our bodies. Ah that is not because we do not feel supportive of one another it is simply because that would slow down the show second. 08:18.68 Jala Is that we will put a trigger warning right? before we talk about it but obviously by the topic of today we're talking about eating disorders which is a big deal obviously that if that's a trigger warning for you. We will let you know before we start actually getting into that with any great detail and I will also. Endeavor to put those timestamps in the show notes. So that folks can see prior to actually listening like where do you need to skip right? So ah, that being said, are you guys ready to talk about fat phobia cool. All right. 08:52.41 Briar I Think so I am on anyway. 08:57.96 Jala So I'm actually going to toss to Raúl first. So Raúl let's break down and talk about the terminology first before we get into fat phobia itself. 09:10.50 Raúl Okay, fat What is fat um from a medical standpoint fat is adipose tissue that stores energy that is all it is fat. The way we're using it. Is just a neutral descriptor of someone's Body. You can be Fat. You can be thin. You can be Muscular. You can be anywhere in between overweight and obese are basically medical ways of saying fat. Ah, whenever possible I am going to default to saying fat. Ah because in my opinion overweight and obese kind of because they're medicalized terms. They they conflate wellness and size which. Not necessarily the case. 10:01.57 Jala Yeah, we will get into ah more detail about deconstructing this this coupling of wellness with weight but definitely within the community of people who are fat. Ah they they. Prefer fat to Obese or overweight. Um, for the most part I don't believe I've ever met somebody who prefers being called overweight or obese. So yeah, like fat would be the more neutral term to use when talking about someone who is heavier set. 10:35.77 Raúl And there are different categories of fat of small fat which is what I used to be is someone who is basically fat a larger than average body but you can still wear. So what's called straight sized clothing anything you can buy at a normal store up to 3 or 4 excel is considered small fat. Ah Midfat is someone who wears plus size clothing. They have to shop at special stores to get their clothing and super fat is the. Someone who must order custom clothing. They require special equipment for medical care and they may not fit in standard furniture and ah they're the group that suffers the most discrimination and stigma to the point where even other fat people consider them. 11:32.97 Jala Right? right? And what's really terrible about that in particular is that sometimes in this kind of situation. It's because of like a medical condition or something that is causing this to happen in the first place. 11:33.40 Raúl Unacceptably fat. 11:49.15 Jala So like it could be a medical condition. It can be trauma which we'll get into you know any number of reasons why someone is the way they are genetic stuff. Um, you know, just societal stuff unfortunately caused by this bat phobia so we will definitely get into that. So a language. 12:07.48 Briar I think I think one of the watchwords too is like the intersection for ableism that'll come into it. Um, because there are so many ablest ways that could either cause fatness or be because fatness. 12:23.51 Jala Um, yeah, absolutely so a language refresher this is something that was discussed originally in episode 17 on disability and ableism to kind of piggyback off of what Briar just mentioned we've got. 12:23.73 Briar Ah, that often gets swept under the rug. 12:39.86 Jala Identity first language or ifl that presents the identity first such as I am an amputee rather than I am a person with an amputation. So in terms of this episode that would be like I am a fat person person first language or pfl emphasizes the person before the descriptor so people with disabilities. 13:00.14 Jala Employees with AdHD and person First language is generally not something that is ah used in terms of talking about someone who is fat because it's person with obesity because that's that's just being really awkward like you don't say a person with thinness. A person with Muscles. You don't usually say that you usually say that's a muscular person. You know? yeah like that doesn't that doesn't even make sense like it sounds Nonsense. So but it also it can increase the stigma because you're like. 13:19.52 Raúl Or person with overweight. 13:36.14 Jala Separating it out in this weird way like you're not using it like a descriptive word like you know a blonde blonde haired person. You know a person with blonde hair like that that separates it out a little bit in a way that just makes it feel weird. It's not like a description of you know what they look like or whatever it's It's um, othering. 13:54.42 Raúl Yeah, and I it is just my opinion I don't think being larger than average should be considered a medical condition like you You wouldn't say you would say a person with cancer instead of a cancer person but person with fatness is like. 14:14.24 Raúl Or a person with obesity is like it's almost like their their body is is so horrible. You have to talk around it and kind of like use a euphemism to not actually say it because you don't want to offend them by describing them accurately which I I find kind of insulting. 14:31.20 Jala What do you think? Briar how do you think about the language. 15:47.40 Briar I Personally like to operate in euphemism a lot I enjoy a show I like says person of carriage a lot with a tongue in cheek. Ah which is goofy and fun when I'm feeling goofy and fun. But. I think Ra little talked a lot. Um, ah they touched a lot on um when it comes to overweight and obese I hate those terms because it just seems to lend ah severity and legitimacy to like. 16:23.30 Briar I'm fat. You know you know what I mean like um, the stigmatization doesn't feel backed up by the medical field if you just call me fat. 16:31.70 Jala Right? because like someone who is thin. You know like that that isn't associated with like some kind of medical condition. I mean you don't really often hear anybody say that person is underweight. You know you don't hear that unless you're talking about somebody who is. Like has an eating disorder and is severely severely Underweight. You don't You don't hear that word associated with that. There is no no. 17:02.19 Briar Unless they're appealing to authority through ah through medicalization. 17:03.55 Jala Yeah, yeah, so that the the kind of point there is that like for the people who are are slimmer of build like they don't have all these other extra terms. But like there's so much stigma attached to the being called overweight. First off, you're already telling this person that. You know if you're overweight. Well then you know like there's something wrong, right? because you're not of the ideal weight right? and it's it's it's kind of adding. Yeah, it's it's it's taking in what is a normal weight and we will get into that we will get into that when we get there so of. 17:29.38 Raúl You're not normal weight. 17:38.39 Briar At Also like some of these feelings aren't formed in a vacuum too is like ah anyone who's ever called me Fat has not faked concern. But people have called who have called me obese. It's always the whole pity party like oh I'm just looking out for you when I'm trying to make you feel bad about yourself. 17:53.49 Jala Right? And it's it actually is very very much like ableism in that way because a lot of the microaggressions when it comes to ableist language have to do with you know, somebody feeling uncomfortable with with some aspect of another person and then. Talking around it like not wanting to say a disabled person. They want to say Ah, ah what is it?? Ah, handy capable or something terrible like that right? they use those kinds of words instead because they are uncomfortable and they are projecting that onto the person that they're speaking to and it's the same thing here with like obese. For example. That word is a very stigmatized word. It's kind of like you know, Ah, it's not quite but it's kind of like the the equivalent of saying something like Anddy capable or whatever you know where you're just. 18:43.21 Briar Yeah I've literally had the crossover between my Neuro divergence and my obesity as um, it's for your own good is whatever those terms get bandied about that's what what I get told you know. 18:56.96 Jala Yeah, and that's just horrible. Don't don't do that thing please? Um, yeah, yes, yes, yes. 19:00.21 Briar Yeah, well yeah, it's so infantilizing and it also like if I needed care. It's also used to Deny care. 19:14.69 Jala Um, so um, do we have anything further to say about the just the language the terminology the the way of of talking about that aspect. 19:24.97 Raúl No I think we got it covered. 19:26.53 Jala Great Cool. So Then let's go on and actually talk about what is fat Phobia Fat Phobia is the implicit and explicit bias of overweight individuals. There's that word overweight anyway. Ah that is rooted and this is in that like the literature this is pulled off an article anyway. Ah that is rooted in a sense of blame. And presumed moral failing. So What perpetuates fat phobia and this is going to be like ah a pretty media Topic. We're going to have a lot to say on this we will add it in as we go probably camp out on it. A little bit later if we have more time so things that. Perpetuate Fat phobia in our society social learning as parents siblings friends other people in society teach children from an early age to fear fat and in some cases forced diets or restrictive eating patterns on them or bully them or otherwise segregate them and other them if they fail to fall in Line. So I definitely had some of that. Ah my parents did not get to be that way when I was a little kid other little kids did and then as I got older. Ah. When I became a teenager. That's when my dad started to do that and my sister started to do that. There was one point where when I was a teenager or maybe early 20 s person I went to a buffet with my sister and we went to the buffet we ate. We came home. 20:57.18 Jala And then like the next day she comes up to me and says I will I'm embarrassed to be seen with you at the buffet and handed me a calorie counter book and then went away so that was like just 1 instance of like you know that kind of a situation now now just to um. 21:14.60 Jala Explain like my sister. We've obviously grown up since then ah she is not like that now. But definitely. There was like a long period in which she bullied me and did stuff like that. Ah, and you know my dad would make comments and things that were all along those lines as I was growing up. And I heard it from kids when I was little and you know not so much from other kids when I was like a teenager and older like people pretty much left me alone other than my family. My family was the worst about that. Actually so how about yell. 21:44.50 Raúl Yeah, um what um I I'm not aware of your like I guess well I'll start with with me. Um I was um, what would be called small fat. Ah. Pretty much my entire life until mid high school and at that point I had lost some weight I'll get into that later but I did not really realize I was fat until maybe sometime around 5 or 6 we were at the beach and one of my quote unquote friends ah turned to another friend and told them that I had ah let's say breasts although that wasn't the word he used. Ah. 22:36.66 Raúl And that was the last time Shirtless Raúl was at the beach for a very very long time and my my family also was you know it's your family is your your first bullies you know? ah I would ah. 22:55.20 Raúl And up having to like hide food. Um, my mom's nickname for me was goodito which translates to fatty. Um, and yeah I am. 23:15.60 Raúl I Have to get my thoughts in order. But. 23:16.81 Jala Yeah, well I'll kind of transition back a little bit to me just to add a little bit more context so when I was little I was actually very small and ah when we moved when I was about eight years old we lived in a ghetto at that point we moved to basically a really ghetto area. And um, it was unsafe for me to go outside and we also for a while were living with like an aunt and uncle and the aunt in particular had a lot of sweets around the house and just let me eat them all the time and I couldn't go outside and go burn it off so I ended up gaining a lot of weight at that time and that's when I started getting picked on for my size. Because I was ah ah you know I guess an average size or whatever or even small when I was little little little and it was about eight years old when I started to gain weight and I had stayed at a heavier set weight for ah my teenhood through. Um. My college years and everything because I worked full time and went to school full time I did not have time to do like to eat properly or take care of myself really because I was struggling just to pay the bills and get my work done. Um, but then when I was 26 I moved out. Ah. You know like I'd moved out in a way and I got a different job and I got to a situation where I was able to take my health into my own hands and so then you know like I started changing my lifestyle becoming more active and and all of that and um. 24:44.20 Jala So then I drop weight again at like age 26 and then stayed about like in ah a variety of different shapes and sizes and and doing different types of activities ever since but um, you know like the the main period in which I was. Mostly ostracized was from around eight years old to about 25 ish. So. 25:07.34 Raúl So yeah, um, mine was about until sixteen ish years old actually remember at 11 years old. My mom gave me a book called stop the insanity by Susan Powder it was latest diet book at the time and you know from that point forward I was the 1 putting myself on diets like I was before I had gone through puberty I could I could read labels on food and calculate the fat percentages. You know I knew one gram of carbs and proteins is is four calories one gram of fat is 9 three hundred and fifty calories is £1 like that's that's stuff that kids shouldn't have to worry about. But you know that's ah, that's that's that's fat phobia. Um, throughout all middle school I was trying to lose weight I would actually skip lunch and save the dollar I would take to to school and ended up buying myself some video games with that money. So I guess that worked out at least um and honestly the the only reason i. I believe I don't think there's any medical proof or anything but I honestly believe the only reason I lost weight and was able to keep it off was because at sixteen I had a growth spurt and I think there are kind of like periods of time where your body sort of like sets itself. 26:39.60 Raúl And I think I just happened to have lost weight right when I had a growth spurt and my body decided this is our our set point now and I have had my ups and downs like during Covid I Gain £25 but I've I've been able to get back to my normal weight. Relatively easily after that. Um, but before that it was just constant slog with no progress. 27:06.82 Jala Yeah, we will. We will get more into like and adult dealings with with ah you know the the fat phobia and and weight and all of that. But Briar I want to hear about you social learning. When it comes to fat phobia. 27:25.30 Briar So I've got a lot of similar experiences. Um I was Rail thin for an early portion of my life too like um, no matter what you put in to me, you could see my ribs. Um. 27:41.14 Briar And it wasn't like I was particularly active that was just kind of what was in the cards when I was a kid and then there was the turning point when I started looking more average at everything past that point was fat obese large at. 28:00.71 Briar Like some of it. It was just a snowball effect is I was being told I was obese when I was like 10 but I'm 30 and have a 56 shoulder when I get close and I was like. 28:17.21 Briar Bump in the fifty when I was like 11 like I had very early and tremendous growth Spurts I was about as wide as my shoulders were going to be like as soon as Puberty started. Um so I have been fat for. As long as I can remember now and it's really weird because I remember all the time. Ah you know, being told oh we could play xylophone on your ribs. Oh You're so tiny and like getting body shamed on the lower end of the spectrum and then as I was like more medium. 28:56.67 Raúl Yeah, you never got to be just right. 28:56.81 Briar All a sudden I was fat and ah yeah, what? which like looking back at pictures of myself. Ah I'm like yeah I was just right I was ah shmovin for a majority of my teen years I actually could ah could have got it. 29:18.60 Briar And I was I was just like ah Wow I was tiny compared to where I ended up. Um, but since you since I went from Rail thin to tiny that was like oh you're obese now and um, just. 29:36.70 Briar I similar relation with like parents is they never like outright would call me fat or anything or ah I did get lazy a lot but that was usually related to a lack of perceived effort. 29:54.77 Briar But um, the real trouble is so my entire family has had you know where I come from a long line of fat people and my parents have been working consistently to not be and from a young age. 30:12.52 Briar Ah, to the point where I started being about some of their weights at the end of my later teens I was just constantly for seeing decades long projects to have people not look like me and not look like the trajectory I was going. 30:31.11 Briar And ah so that that's where my college years happened which is what we'll probably talk about more in the later end of the show. Um, but yeah, so even like we talked about active bullying and there's even that passivity of like. 30:49.80 Briar Just seeing people disgusted at their own like things that you have a kinship what you share you know. 30:55.92 Jala Yeah, well like I remember very distinctly that in 95 I got a journal for the first time and I started writing a little journal and I was but 13 at the time or something and um I remember I was playing the first lunar game on Sega Cd and how this goes into how this plays into anything. Ah we will talk about it in in thing you know this this anecdote that I'm telling kind of segues into the next section. So um I was playing lunar the silver star and in the little guidebook thing. Um, you know like the instruction manual. It had all of the different characters and their heights and their weights and there was one character that was five foot 4 which was how tall I was at 13 and I never grew past that age like I just stopped growing i. Ah yeah, yeah, yeah, right. 31:42.81 Raúl You still have time you still have time. 31:51.65 Jala And ah so anyway I was ah five foot four and I was looking in there and 1 of the characters Mia the mage was £99 is how they listed her and that sent me into a tizzy never mind the fact that number one this is a fake you know this is ah a made up character. And number 2 this is a made up character from Japan. So like you know, smaller set people just like by their genetics that didn't matter like I was comparing myself to that weight and then going oh my god like I'm the same size you know height and my weight is x and I remember I wrote a shameful blah. 32:30.21 Jala And I was already feeling shamed about my weight you know, definitely by the age of 13 absolutely by the age of 13 But um I had written that down in a journal and I still have that journal somewhere. So but um, yeah, that was ah. 32:47.20 Jala This this segues into like advertising and media portrayals right? So ah, they perpetuate low self-esteem when people fail to meet an unrealistic body ideal. So a book that goes into this quite a lot is the beauty myth by Naomi Wolf which I can definitely recommend to people as a very interesting and enlightening. 33:06.44 Jala Book about the history of advertising and self-esteem as specifically about assigned female at Birth individuals but it kind of has expanded to include everybody at this juncture for sure. So. 33:22.79 Raúl Um, um, and it it doesn't help that I meanre I'm not sure um buyers' age but ah and know we're about the same age. So the 80 s and 90 s was like we we grew up right in the in the teeth of the. 33:39.88 Raúl Bigger quotes obesity epidemic where it was everywhere like our kids are fat. We have to fix that our kids are fat move move fatty like just nonstop everywhere like for health reasons. 33:57.34 Jala Yeah, and not only that but 2 ah extra I mean if it was again for everyone but like the ideal for females at that time for for ladies or sine female birth individuals um, was. 34:10.65 Jala Super thin like Teeny Teeny Teeny Tiny tiny tiny tiny burn off the fat burn off the everything don't have any muscles be like as small as possible and that really played into what we will get there when we talk about like how we've dealt with things as an adult. But like when I first started to lose weight. 34:28.58 Jala I was obsessed with being as small as possible and you know when I ran started running and doing ultra marathons and things like that I was very much about wanting to be as small as I could possibly be um, just because that's what was drilled into my head and it took me a long time to get past that you will get there. So yeah, like Media portrayals. 34:47.11 Jala Ah, because of course in media. Anybody who's fat is almost always depicted as being lazy or um, you know super hedonistic or um, anything like that like yeah, cowardly or or just gross like gross slovenly you know that kind of thing. 35:05.41 Raúl Um, yeah, then they're never ever happy unless they're just oblivious to their weight or just dumb. 35:16.72 Jala Yeah, they're also portrayed as being dumb. That's another thing you know they are um, usually there's the pairing of like the the thin guy and the big bigger guy and like um, the thin guy is the smart one and the big guy is the dumb one usually. 35:32.64 Raúl And then yeah and then there's the elephant in the room for representation. The the biggest loser which. 35:34.31 Jala Is how that runs so. 35:39.79 Jala Oh yeah, absolutely the biggest loser I I Absolutely abhorr that show when it was you know a thing and and when it was super popular. Nobody understood why I was so upset about it at that time and it's like no this is absolutely terrible. This is so toxic and like. You know I only caught one very small clip of that show where they were having these people after they lost a bunch of weight put on a fat suit of like the size that they were before and then have them running on a beach and they were like crying their eyes out and this is supposed to be like a good thing I'm like you are this is terrible. 36:15.60 Jala But this is absolutely terrible. Why would you do this. 36:15.87 Raúl Yeah, let's just let's abuse these people so they lose a bunch of weight wreck their metabolism and then and 95% of them will get it all back within a few years what a great show. 36:30.70 Jala We yeah and will we'll talk about like the fact that diets don't work in stuff when we get that far for sure. But so taking a real quick pause. Yes I know that Briar ah is gone they messaged me and they said that they had a dip in their internet signal. They'll be back as soon as they can. 36:48.28 Jala So um, okay so moving forward so another way that the whole fat phobia stuff is being perpetuated is through healthcare practitioners. They fail to challenge the assumptions that they were indoctrinated to in the first place. And prescribe weight loss over lifestyle changes stress management tactics or anything like that. It's like I don't know about you but like I actually left one of my doctors because I had a doctor or gp for a little while and every single time I came in because I am a muscular person I am ah my bmi is high. I am always showing as being overweight. No matter what and that's because again I carry so much muscle on my body but that individual is like oh well it I see that you've gained you know and this is like right after I've I've told her oh well, you know, um, my. 37:41.67 Jala My parents have been in a bad you know, physical state and I had covered for two months or whatever. But then like I would come in and then she would just be like oh I see that you've gained um ten ten pounds or whatever since the last time you've been in. So ah, you know. If you're not worried about it. I'm not worried but she has to make a comment about it and it's like you know there's just her her manner overall and just the way that she was was just so terrible. Not just about that. But also about my diet. So. 38:15.12 Briar I'd see that all the time in my personal life is I'd go like my personal lifestyle wasn't incredibly active and then a doctor would tell me look you need to work on yourself. So I'd start going to the gym I'd start lifting I'd start you know Cardio is my least favorite because of my bum leg. Ah, but like I'd start actually being active and I would put on just muscle after muscle because my my whole routine would change. And then ah you know so £7 in a couple weeks and they're like well where did this all come from and I'm like well I can bench press a hundred more pounds I'm like I'm moving my body easier and you're still telling me. 39:01.40 Jala Yeah, yeah, and the the worst of it is that there is no causal link between fatness and the health problems such as diabetes and whatnot and actually it has been shown through various studies that. 39:01.60 Raúl Yeah, and. 39:02.83 Briar I'm a fatty boombolati. 39:19.60 Jala When you have a little bit more weight on your body particularly as you get older. It's actually a good thing because it it actually people who have a little bit more fat on their body tend to have better health outcomes than people who are the quote unquote ideal size Or. Underweight So that's enlightening stuff there. It's actually it can be protective actually g you know. 39:46.68 Raúl It's almost like having reserves of energy when you get sick is a good thing. 39:50.60 Jala Yeah, right? 39:55.91 Briar I've actually seen that with ah my grandma and 1 of her peers is they both had a similar devastating fall and broke their hip in similar ways now barring the fact that my grandma was stubborn and it get. Didn't get treatment as soon she was also incredibly underweight. Um, and her break was worse and it took longer to heal than her heavier compatriot who was within like a 2 or 3 year age difference of her. 40:26.66 Briar And we're talking upper end to we're talking eighty Plus So um, it just seeing that experientially recovery from an injury just how different that was. 40:37.25 Raúl Yeah, and also like studies of of cadavers have been shown consistently that fat people are significantly more likely to have undiagnosed medical conditions meaning you go to the doctor you tell them I don't know my arm hurts and they say well it's because you're fat. They don't run a test and they don't see that you have some kind of I don't know arm Disease I Not sure how to end that sentence there but but they don't they just go. It's because you're fat. 41:49.40 Raúl Um, so go going back to what Jalla was saying about how there's no causal link I just want to clarify for everybody listening because I'm sure that kind of sets something off in your brain because we all have this fat phobia. Ah. Correlation and causation of different things diabetes generally if you're overweight I'm sorry fat people are more likely to get diabetes. But that doesn't mean the fatness caused the diabetes because I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that. 42:06.27 Jala Yes. 42:24.65 Raúl Maybe a disease that makes it so your body can't process sugar properly might cause you to gain weight even before it can be detected. 42:35.27 Briar And that that also just doesn't address the fact that we see record numbers of people with diabetes that are not fat um particularly ones in marginalized medical groups too. 42:50.27 Jala So yeah, ah, some good books to read about these topics about the health outcomes of fat folks and just like different information that kind of deconstructs with science the the concepts of fat phobia. Body respect and health at every size both of these are by Linda or lindo bacon the author transitioned but both names are out there in the published world I like I don't know which 1 you might see on a site. It might be Linda it might be Lindo. Um. But both are in the published world is the only reason I use both names. So ah, but yeah, that's body respect and health at every size. Definitely recommend those books for everybody to read because they are um, very sensibly ah, and rationally you know exploring the topics. And saying stuff like look and when you're looking at any study make sure that you are checking where is the funding coming from for that. You know? Oh yeah, like where where is ah like the the government information coming from oh who is paying for x information who is paying for this advertising campaign that tells you this you know. who is who is funding this research that is being you know, provided to medical you know practitioners you know and and when you look at all of that information like that's where you can find all the flaws and like oh this is funded by like the x you know dairy or whatever people you know in. 44:19.58 Jala That makes a big difference as to what is being touted right? so. 44:27.54 Briar Yeah, if you can't find the thesis of the study. Um and just assume that the thesis was what they say they proved. 44:35.74 Jala Well, it's just like the the funding is such a big thing like um, ah Dr Bacon talks about just when he was doing a study. Um, you know he he made sure to get the funding from a source that was not. You know part of the whole capitalist construct right? That doesn't have like a stake in the outcome of this study and trying to get that funding from like a neutral source and that was so hard to do and so you know it's very important to just consider all of that and anyway like I definitely recommend those books. In general but Raúl you had some notes about public health authorities tell us about that. 45:17.90 Raúl Oh um, in the well let me start over ah back in the 80 s and 90 s we had the the obesity epidemic which ah again, huge air quotes. 45:35.25 Raúl Which caused weight to not just be weight now. It's wellness and we want you to lose weight not because you know you'll look better not because we like. Thinner smaller people because it's better for you and there have been studies of 1 by Dr Catherine flegel who worked for the Cdc she did this study in 2013 the one that Jolla referenced earlier that people in the overweight be a my category. They have slightly higher life expectancy than all others. It's kind of like a bell curve if. You're a severely if you're in the underweight category. You have a lower life expectancy if you're in the what's called the obese category you have slightly lower if you're in the high end of obese then it. Your life expectancy does begin to drop at that point significantly, but the normal weight bmi actually has a shorter life expectancy than people in the overweight b my category and people lost their god damn minds about this. She was. Attacked. She was personally mocked by and ah by other researchers for and I'm I'm quoting here for being a little bit plump herself and just nonstop there as far as I'm aware. There has been no work that has. 47:10.96 Raúl Refuted like her work has not been refuted by any later studies but everybody just sort of pretends that it didn't happen and wellness and being at the ideal weight by Bmi which is its own other bag of worms. Ah. Just everybody just sort of pretends that study didn't happen and being in shape translates to healthy. 47:40.27 Briar I I think that also speaks to just the cultural permeation of fat phobia too is like ah Jollah brought up a good point is track the money track the studies. Um I brought up you know track. Ah, professional. Bias Are you working to make a conclusion and what I think that speaks to too is um, there's no academic way to account for personal biases in these studies as well. 48:04.60 Jala Yeah, absolutely. 48:08.58 Raúl And um, over time as they've been tracking Implicit Bias Anti-fat bias of the implicit variety is the only one that's actually gone up over time all other implicit biases have either stayed the same or reduced. But. We just we just don't like fat people as a as a as a society. 48:29.42 Jala Society. Yeah yeah, so we will delve into I want to I want to kind of speed up a little bit so we can talk about like the history of fat phobia and where it comes from and then get to some eating disorder topics as well. But let's camp out on 1 more thing about perpetuating fat phobia before we get there. 48:49.30 Jala So the fitness industrial complex which is of course as I am a personal trainer have been for 15 years this is important to me. Ah the fitness industrial complex also fails to challenge the assumptions that they were indoctrinated into and sell the myth a better health happiness and longevity through weight loss. 49:08.16 Jala So the entire schema just like fat phobia in general perpetuates white supremacy by placing greater value on the lithe white cishet body over disabled queer trans and bipoc bodies of different shapes. There is going to be an episode of this show that I will be doing with Marcus who is also a personal trainer. 49:27.64 Jala And we'll be talking about deconstructing the fitness industrial complex overall and like how we approach as personal trainers ourselves. How do we approach this subject and for folks who have worked with me or just talked to me for any length of time you will know that. Even though I say I'm a personal trainer that's because people understand what that is when I say that I act act far more like a wellness coach I try to holistically approach someone for their overall betterment health and well-being activity level strengths. You know that kind of thing I'm looking at their stress levels. Their sleep. Um, you know how do they feel about their relationship with food things like that and I have worked with people who have had eating disorders or history of them and things like that and so you know it's important to look at the bigger picture. We're not looking at everything in a bubble. Right? So and then also just understanding that again. Fat does not mean unhealthy fat does not mean inactive fat does not mean weak at all. So ah, all of this is just wrong. Just. Wrong and that's a lot of the reason why you don't see me doing like a bunch of advertising on the internet and you know like putting my Instagram feed full of just like you know, unrealistic photos of of my my physique all edited and photoshopped. 50:59.93 Jala And you know whatever up on there to show everybody you know, try to sell them some kind of cookie cutter. Ah programming right? I don't do that I work with individuals I talk to you about all the different aspects of your needs and you know I don't try to sell it the way that. 51:19.67 Jala Everybody else seems to be selling it. You know, um I do a bad job of selling myself. But that's because I have like you know a strong moral feeling about the fact that um I I understand that I have a capacity to do. 51:37.50 Jala Ah, some good for people to help them learn about these different things and educate them and basically work myself out of a job by ah, helping them learn how to do things on their own but a lot of people out. There are not trying to do that they are trying to in showing you? oh. Look at how strong and how fit and how whatever I am and you know you too can be like this if you just buy my program or whatever like in doing that they are automatically making you feel that unless you can fit that mold then you are not doing something right? You are failing at something. And I'm not about that life. You know I'm not about that presentation. So um, but yeah diets They don't work. They don't work period The end they don't work. Um, not only you Raúl you had mentioned earlier that. 52:31.48 Jala You gained the weight back within 5 years actually ah Dr Bacon found that within 2 years people would gain back and not only that. But you you know how you mentioned set point the set point weight and how like when you hit a growth spurt that changed your set point. Ah because you had been. You know. Dieting or whatever at that time and that the dieting does change your set point. But what happens in the long term if you are a serial dieter is that you are basically starving your body your body thinks that it's starving and then when you finally get off that diet and you eat normally for you then. Your set point gets raised every time that you diet and go back to a new fat or like a new level of fat in your body when you go back to eating like you normally do your body will try to compensate for the fact that it routinely gets starved by putting more fat on your body every time. So it actually works against whatever it is. You're trying to do so. 53:35.12 Raúl Yeah, um, the the numbers I've seen are that the weight comes back? Yeah I've seen ninety five ninety eight and 99% of the time I'm not sure which is accurate but they're all pretty close and if if there was a medication that. 53:53.10 Raúl Only worked 5% of the time they'd recall it but whenever a diet whenever someone doesn't lose weight on a diet. It's because the person didn't have the willpower because they were doing it wrong because they're weak you know or whatever and it's just that's we're we. 54:12.31 Raúl We're trying to do individual solutions for for systemic problems and an interesting little fact I found the number 1 predictor that somebody will gain weight in the future isn't having diabetes or anything you would think it is. 54:30.55 Raúl That they're currently trying to lose weight. 54:32.16 Jala Yeah, yeah, and that's it's in part because like okay when people are doing diets so often they are restricting what they're eating in such a way that they're not listening to their bodies and what their bodies are wanting to eat and like your body is smarter than your brain is. About what it needs. So like if you listen to your body. It's trying to tell you I need X nutrients or I need you know, whatever you know this this macro that I'm not getting and you will crave that thing because your body is trying to get something that is not being given currently that it needs and you know like. 55:10.90 Jala There is a whole lot to be said about intuitive eating and part of intuitive eating is paying attention to your food when you're eating it and paying attention to your body as you are eating the food. So What I mean by that is because because I know people are going to be asking Well then how the hell do I lose weight if I want to lose some weight. You know how do I get back to wherever I was at X time in my life or whatever you can, but understand that you need to just kind of shift your relationship with food a little bit. So um, you need to eat a variety of foods so that you get all the nutrients that you need So You're not constantly craving something um you need to. 55:46.11 Jala Try to work on your relationship with food as in um, tried to get rid of disordered eating habits. We will get to those but basically like emotional eating like stress eating or you know eating as comfort. You know when you are feeling bad and things like that. Also. 56:05.35 Jala Don't try to like because in in America especially we get this whole like you have to eat everything on your plate. You know like you're taught that as a kid you have to eat everything on your plate. But yeah, don't throw away food. But if you are done eating if your body is full if you are done. 56:12.90 Raúl Yeah, don't throw away food. 56:23.20 Jala You don't need to eat everything on the plate just because there's a little bit left put it in the fridge and come back to it later or whatever like you don't actually have to eat the rest of that and you know even something like I I tend to when I'm bulking I eat on bigger place if I am cutting or trying to eat normally I eat on smaller place or in smaller bowls and that actually does. Ah thing like you will put less food on your plate and you will still be satisfied by the food that you are eating on the smaller plate. It's it's weird, but it's True. It works and like taking your time to actually be present with your food when you're eating this is something I can't stress enough because everybody's always on their phones. 56:59.38 Jala Or distracting themselves watching Tv or something instead of paying attention to their food and paying attention to their body eat slower for one because your body does not register that it is full until like 20 minutes after you finish eating and then 2 pay attention to it pay attention to how you feel and you know like. 57:19.90 Jala Even even when it comes to like scheduled times to eat right? like there are a lot of days where I'm not hungry when I first wake up in the morning. Well if I go and I eat breakfast anyway, then I'm just going to be putting in extra calories that my body actually doesn't need at that point you know like. 57:37.66 Jala Yeah, not everybody has the option to change their schedule around. You know when their body feels like eating but like you know if you are able to like get a little snack in or like eat smaller amounts or something like that's what I do I do a lot of snacking I do smaller meals throughout the day and I just eat a little bit whenever I get. 57:57.42 Jala Munchy or or hungry for something I feel you know oh my stomach's rumbling or whatever then I'll have something you know small to eat and um, you know like that works better for me that works better for my system. Not everybody has the capacity to do that if you have a job where you cannot just eat whenever and you have a set lunch break like my lunch break is at noon every day. 58:16.47 Jala That's the time that I have to eat sometimes I eat and sometimes I'm like well I'm just going to have a protein shake or something and that'll be enough until I get back. You know like to but you know get off shift and can have something else. Um, so like just being being aware that you might not be hungry. When it's time to eat. You know like don't eat if you're not Hungry. You know, like unless you absolutely have to because like you don't have a choice and when you can can consume your food like if you have a choice in the matter pay attention to your body and listen to it when it's telling you what it needs you know. 58:55.12 Jala And also ah another thing is like don't don't try to restrict yourself and say oh you can't have I I can't have that cake or that ice cream or whatever because if you tell yourself you can't have it then you're just going to want that a lot of that what I used to do myself is I would eat. Like I would have the ice cream or whatever that I want but I would have it with Berries. You know I I would eat like fresh fruit with it and then I would have something healthy and I would have the ice cream and then whenever I was full I would stop and that's it like I wouldn't get a bowl I would just get a little bit. You know In. You know have like a smaller dish. Not even a full size bowl and and eat a little bit and when I was done I was done and I put it up. 59:40.17 Briar That's one of my issues now with things like food waste is when I start cooking or start making dinner. My appetite being tremendous is more than my body is asking for and so I'll I'll finish dinner and then have like. 1 serving and I'll be like oh well now this entire pan has to go into the fridge. 01:00:03.51 Jala Um, well and and 2 like ah I find that for me if I don't have little snacks throughout the day like if I don't eat like 5 or 6 times a day then I just get stupidly hungry. 01:00:17.89 Jala And I get really really hungry and then like I I eat too much because like I've waited too long and then like my stomach is rumb rumbling and I'm like oh I got to eat I got to eat it then like I I you know I eat more than what my body actually needs to eat. So um, having the little snacks that I do throughout the day kind of helps offset that hunger to where I'm not. 01:00:35.39 Jala You know, ah basically like rewarding myself for waiting so long to eat or whatever you know like there's this whole thing in your head where you're like oh well I'm going to just I'm so hungry I'm just going to go get X because it's convenient food like also I try to make like healthier options convenient and available like I keep stuff in the freezer that I have that's like. 01:00:54.80 Jala You know steamer veggies and and whatever like easy to make healthier foods. So I can say well I could go out and get something but you know what I have this right here I'm just going to eat this and and having good sauces is really helpful. Have a good sauce to put on something and you can make anything taste fancy without. 01:01:16.40 Briar Ah, that's why I love being a house spouse is my sauce game always always ah Ams back up when I'm doing dinner again. 01:01:21.17 Jala Oh yeah, and like good spice mixes I'm all about that life for sure. So. 01:01:27.99 Raúl My issue lately is I've sort of accidentally gotten myself intermittent fasting even though I don't want to because I'll I've I'll ah reach my calorie limit for the day and. 01:01:45.38 Raúl Maybe like a three o'clock or whatever. So I won't eat the rest of the day the next morning I don't really have time for breakfast before I get to work and then by the time it's lunchtime I'm starving I'll end up eating you know thirteen hundred calories and then I only have. 4 or 500 left for the rest of the day which end up having around 3 or 4 and then the cycle repeats again I need to find a way to I need to find a way to break that. 01:02:10.22 Jala Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that that feels like definitely the kind of situation where like you would have to because like ah just for listeners that what he's talking about the um Calgary limit or whatever like you're currently trying to trim up so like that's that's what's going on with that. Um, but that's because you're going for like muscle definition kind of things. So um, yeah, yeah, well like it sounds like that that's got to be like ah, a situation where we've got to find ways to get you to have like ah smaller amounts throughout the day so that you don't. 01:02:32.87 Raúl Yeah I Guess that's a transition to disordered eating. 01:02:47.38 Jala Like because what what it sounds like is you're just you're getting so many calories in that 1 big chunk and it's not like that's necessarily bad. But if you are hungry at other times then it does become bad because your body is processing that so fast. So like you need smaller amounts more often. So. 01:03:03.38 Briar Yeah, and transitioning into recovering from disordered eating and we'll backload into disordered eating part of mine is I just eat when I'm hungry. But recently the job I last did I was cutting glass a lot and I got a lot of efficiency gains where if I skipped lunch I'd get out of work a half hour early and if I wasn't hungry at noon. What's the point of taking lunch because I'm not going to eat but then I'd get hungry around three o'clock and my glass cutting would it be over till 4 and like until you're trying to be mindful of your hunger. You don't realize how being hungry for an hour warps your next meal. 01:03:46.76 Jala It does and so something else I would say too is like for me I like even if you can't you know, grab something to eat like if you have a job where you can have any kind of a drink having a drink that has some kind of um, nutritional value to it like some kind of you know smoothie or protein shake or whatever. That can help tide you over and help cut that hunger a little bit so that that way when you can actually sit down for physical food. Um, you know you are not starving starving. You know So that's. 01:04:18.61 Briar Yeah, or well also because like oh I'm getting so hungry I'm having a headache home is 12 minutes away and ah fast food is 2 minutes away um yeah 01:04:26.14 Jala Ah, that's why I pack snacks I have snacks in my car I have snacks in my desk at work I have snacks everywhere and that's because like I I need to make sure that if I'm in my car and I get hungry. There is a bag of pretzels or something likes the almonds or something. 01:04:42.34 Jala Sitting in my glove box that I can just grab and eat real quick because I want to make sure that I constantly and and that was a habit that I I found myself slipping into when I was doing all the ultra marathon training and stuff because with endurance stuff you're constantly burning So many calories you ah you are always hungry. So um. 01:05:00.28 Jala You know, having snacks all the time with me packed in every bag like I I was absolutely you know I'm are you a mom. No I just have a bag full of snacks. No matter where I go even though I do not have a small child. The small child is me I am the small child. 01:05:18.35 Briar Um, yeah, just just learning how inconsistent hunger is ah I started picking up stuff like that too. Um. 01:05:27.81 Briar Ah, just because I started realizing I was making those bad decisions of getting just like empty emptied meals you know and I'm not I'm not condemning eating junk food I love junk food. But when you're like I'm going to cook dinner an hour from now. 01:05:30.48 Jala Right? right. 01:05:43.86 Briar Ah, don't get yourself a mozzarella stick get an Apple. 01:05:44.25 Jala Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like you know, um, an Apple is specific is something that is actually recommended pretty often because like it helps to um, like satiate you because it has so much water content in it and high fiber so it actually helps you to digest your meal better. So. Um, yeah. 01:06:05.45 Briar Especially after a day of glass cutting. Um you know, ah thirst sneaks up on you different than hunger does. And yeah, that satiation from the sugar and the water content of the Apple is that's a good choice for when you're working. 01:06:15.30 Jala Yeah, yeah, absolutely so and and again like I I part of the way that I would work with it too is that I I meal prep a lot and I try to as much as possible I don't have like space in my fridge right now to do it for me and Dave both. But um I try to meal prep and then also put everything into pre-measured containers so that it is so easy I literally pull the top off and put it in the microwave and then it's done I don't have to worry about what's for dinner tonight because it's already there. It's already pre-portioned. It is easier to get that and like I cut up my veggies and my fruits and stuff. Um, pre and put those in little containers. So I can just grab and go grab and go because I'm trying to make eating better the simpler thing to do so that it's like well not only is it simpler. It also saves me money because everything is so expensive these days to go get food out somewhere is so much more expensive like. 01:07:10.12 Jala If I have something at home and it's already convenient and I am tired guess what I can grab that thing because it's in a little snack pack already I don't even have to Jack with it. 01:07:19.27 Briar And that's a good balance that I've been working on too is um, the balance between traditional homemaking is great for my mental health I Love it I'm such a good house spouse. Um I Love having dinner on the table when my partner comes home. 01:07:37.52 Briar Ah, but ah so I start doing my mise on pla and my prepro I'm trying to frontload that more often find that balance of having easy and ready to go and then having my homemaking nurtured. 01:07:50.00 Raúl Yeah, it's It's a lot. It's easy to make the healthy choice when you're not hungry. 01:07:55.97 Jala Yeah, yeah, and that's why it's like I try to make the easy choice constantly available so that when I am hungry the easy choice is still to eat better because I have food packed with me no matter where I go like I. 01:08:00.59 Briar Um, exactly. 01:08:13.87 Jala Y'all don't even know I have like a big cooler lunchbox that like when I would go across town to work and then like I also had ah you know like dance class or yoga or whatever afterwards and I had a very long day I would have a gigantic tub of food with me. Snacks and a meal and everything just with me at all times prepackaged and ready to go so that way I wouldn't have to go and go buy something out somewhere or you know make a bad decision when it came to how I was going to eat because I already had everything ready and right there. So. Anyway, okay, so that's that's various stuff about um weight weight stuff in general fat in general. Let's talk about the history of fat phobia I'm just going to read a lot of information here. Ah stop me if y'all have something to say but I want to I want to cover this so that we can talk. Um, you know feel free to to interject if you have questions or anything so in her book fearing the black body Dr Sabrina strings puts forth the argument that the rise of the trans-atlantic slave trade and spread of protestantism. Both. 01:09:24.20 Jala Contributed to the fetish for spelness and fear of fat in the us fat was stigmatized as being both black and sinful. So we're going to explain all of that and how this comes out according to social theorist Pierre Bordou elites constantly work to differentiate themselves from the lower classes. This is something that has happened throughout history. These are so these social differentiations often manifest in physical appearance tastes and diets. It also can be like clothing choices and things like that. But it's often the physical appearance. And you know what they're eating and things like that. So how that works out like obviously that means that elites are always trying to to say oh well, we look different than the the commoners you know in these ways. We eat these different foods and you know we are of refined tastes so we don't eat just anything and we don't eat too much and we don't you know whatever like all of that mess. So there is a general consensus among scholars and historians that fat phobia first gained widespread appeal in the United States it was the us that did this largely like ah it started in Europe before the Us was a thing but the Us took it and ran with it and turned it into american exceptionalism so slenderness was part of that american exceptionalism. 01:10:52.30 Jala It was used to show how the Us populace was better than everybody else and well why was the us slender because they were hard at work trying to form a nation and they didn't have all of the the resources and everything that the europeans did having established societies and everything like that. So they just said well that's why we're better is because we're smaller because you know we're we're living off the land and we're living lean and we're ready to work or whatever you know, like part of the whole work ethic and whatever of America was this whole concept of being thinner. Fat was actually considered good. In women specifically even right after Europe first encountered Africa but when the europeans started delineating differences between the quote unquote superior caucasians who were thinner to the quote unquote inferior africans however, size began to separate those in power from those. Without power in the 1790 s british reports from Africa stated that the black folks were larger and lazier than europeans in the early eighteen hundreds a woman named Sarah Bartman was sold to a british man who paraded her around Europe naked to show off her large buttocks and labia. And they had a whole bunch of like caricatures of this lady and ah you know all of this other mess and he called her the hot and taught venus hotentot was a people from Africa whose name became synonymous with negro and she was used as kind of like a sexy freak show so like ohh look at this naked lady. 01:12:26.46 Jala And with her large buttocks and her large labia and you know this is what's considered sexy by the african people and they started to talk about how she was so different from the quote unquote long and slender lines of english women. So y'all can see a picture in the notes I will ah link an article for folks in the show notes as well. So you can see a picture of this lady and then like one of the um images that was rendered of her so that was really like a big notable point in the history of fat phobia because. Ah, Sarah was paraded around and you know used as like a spectacle for people to differentiate people of color from the white europeans so of course eventually religion. Popularized overindulence overindulgence as a sin and it became increasingly popular, especially after the years of fatness being popularized as a trait of black slaves so you know of course they're going to say the people who are sinning are the people who are enslaved right? so. They're going to use that as ah, a way to differentiate between master and slave so the rise of protestantism in the Us ah further leaned into that because of protestantism's a special interest in you know, um. 01:14:00.27 Jala Being worthy of of god's grace and all of that and then there was also the development of women's magazines right around the same time frame and those women's magazines were written by uneducated and ignorant white people white ladies that were elites. That were seeking to differentiate themselves from lower classes of colored folk and you know the notion of american exceptionalism was indoctrinated in them and then you know put into these magazines and you know sent out to all these ladies who then said oh. Well this magazine knows what it's talking about. It's the ladies magazine that everybody reads and you know is doing that whole false information kind of thing where like these beliefs that these people have that have they have carried forward from you know this this kind of delineation that started in Europe. You know like they're carrying all this stuff forward and then they're throwing it out there via the press and just putting it out into everybody's heads and who's reading these magazines guess what? they're white women so ah fat phobia actually affects. Ah, cis het white women more than it affects anybody else any other population more than it affects people of color even ah because they were the ones who kind of like pushed it out there in the world even further than religion and you know like some of these other masculine sources. Um. 01:15:33.93 Briar And well also so like and excuse me if I'm speaking out of turn because it's not a social group but the the way it interacts with misogy are no R is different than the way it intersects with general misogyny. Um. 01:15:51.81 Briar Because with the way it interssects with massage are is ah inherently tied to blackness and fear of a black body. Ah, the way you demonstrated with ah the way the English treat treat ah treated people. 01:16:05.34 Jala Yeah, yeah, absolutely and this also ties in to of course like women's magazines are a very very big source of the beauty myth by Naomi Wolf like that book that I mentioned earlier it talks about how the the women's magazines really? um. 01:16:22.10 Jala Drove home This concept of of beauty as like um, a controlling factor for women once they started to gain more you know Greater Independence from men and once they started to get out of the house and and were no longer controlled by their spouse by their father by whatever um the beauty myth was. Placed on women to ah basically keep them in Check. Keep them exhausted. Keep them feeling ah bad about themselves and that book is really good. Definitely read that. But anyway, but like fatphobia affects everybody I'm not saying that It's only a women thing but like it's also tied. 01:16:59.28 Jala Very much into that because women in especially ah with like the the very slender svelte models that were out there in the world for so long. Ah, they were pressured especially because they from an early age we of the assigned female at birth population. Have been basically taught that our worth is given to us by the eyes of men looking at us and so that pressure of that gaze even when we are not being looked at by that male gaze like it's still there that pressure is still there no matter what? all the time. So um, it definitely is something that has been an intrinsic part of ah anybody who is assigned female at birth and over the years of course has been pushed more and more onto men as well and other people of various gender identities of course because you know. 01:17:57.48 Briar I Have a way that that intersects with my personal Trans identity too is we talked medicalization earlier. How yeah ah fatness is used to. 01:18:08.99 Briar Deny certain types of care and things we say that in the Trans world all the time when it comes to gender affirmation. Um, and my personal ah stress ah stressor that I have with that is um, my current level of fatness I have. Ah, the sexualized version of breast and I enjoy that Um, but it ah without ah hormone replacement or H R T This is the best I'm going to get so my fatness. 01:18:45.44 Briar Ah, being used to Deny medical care and gender affirmation is also like I have to walk that line of like to meet a medical standard I will have to lose something that does affirm my gender. 01:19:00.90 Jala Yeah, and we talked a little bit about this in the body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria episode which will come out the month before this one does? Um, but definitely, it's it's a thing you know like the the. Fatphobia in general has affected. People's concept of body and dysmorphia and dysphoria they inform 1 another. They don't necessarily. You know it's kind of like the the correlation correlation versus causation right? It's the same thing here like you know like the the dysmorphia and dysphoria are correlated. They are not. Causal to one another. So definitely that is a factor that plays into all of that. So um, so continuing on with the history of fat phobia the world wars also helped to further entrench anybody into praising slenderness. 01:19:53.74 Jala Because advertising um then took everything and was like oh well if you're a manly man then you've got to be fighting fit or whatever right? And that's when it started to to get into shifting from like well men have to be fighting fit and you know ladies have to be delineated from men and have to look. A certain way because you know they have to differentiate them. You know, like for advertising reasons they want to um, you know, put out this idea of ladies as being delicate little flowers you know fragile that kind of thing. Advertising of course took it and ran and then super gendered everything and that's like the common concepts of gender are largely not 100 % but largely due to just advertising the way that people advertised and trying to advertise to certain markets and. You know, trying to make that certain market buy into their products by making them feel a certain way about how they should look versus how they do look you know is. 01:21:01.81 Briar 1 of ah one of the things I'm working on with writing is the history at the printing press and seeing how advertising changes ah the cultural landscape the moment you become able you're able to mass produce. 01:21:19.28 Briar Language and communication. Um it it speaks a lot to how memetic culture is nowadays. It's just ah more insidious because it's not as in your face as current internet culture is. 01:21:36.12 Briar But some of our gender norms are are as young as the printing press sometimes younger. 01:21:39.70 Jala Yeah, yeah, absolutely and um, there are a lot of sources that say that really the source of our current concept of gender began with the rise of agricultural communities and things like that and the necessity of you know, Delineating. Who does what type of work and needing x number of people on you know, children aka children people on the the farm to do the work aka children. Ah you know, like that's that's how we got to the place that we are today but advertising and printing especially really is what. 01:22:14.93 Jala Increased that you know the the rate at which that was spreading. 01:22:20.72 Raúl Yeah, just thinking back on this now. Ah, ah think a major source of my fat phobia for myself was men's health magazine I read those things all the time growing up and every single one has. Ah, 6 pack on the cover and an article about how doing this one exercise will do will we'll get you looking how you want to look. It's like a. 01:22:45.49 Jala Yeah, and the reason Yeah, the reason why they want to do that in in the dieting. You know why? Why are people selling these things that don't work well because they want to keep you buying so they have to make you continually feel like there's number one. There's something wrong with you at all Times. You can never get what you're looking for because if you ever did they would be out of selling you something and 2 they have to sell you something. That's not going to work because if it was a cure a quote unquote cure for this quote unquote problem then they wouldn't have any income capitalism is a big part of it. You know that's what's driving this advertising which is driving these these fake things. The same thing. Um, yeah, Well, it's also like um, say for example with the the Beauty myth book right? It talks about like makeup companies and how all these companies have like things that are supposedly going to melt your Cellulite. You can't. 01:23:26.94 Raúl It's a straight line the whole way through. 01:23:40.78 Jala Melts your cellulite off because cellulite is ah like a way that your cells your fat cells form that causes this dimpling it wasn't until 1 73 when advertising took it and ran and started calling it cellulite and saying it was bad that it was ever. Called cellulite it was just the way that women's bodies were so you know like you you were just a a woman if you had cellulite and you had the the fat dimpling that way because that was a a trait of you know those chromosomes so you know like. It it was turned into a bad thing by marketing trying to sell you things snake oils basically to ah quote unquote fix the problem and I can tell you like as somebody who has cellulite I definitely for years. Tried different stuff trying to quote unquote fix it right. It's still there like even when I get down to a really low body weight like back in 2019 when I tried bodybuilding for the first time and I did a cut and I went down to like probably my lowest healthy adult weight I'll will get to the unhealthy one later. Um I still had cellulate like it wasn't as much. An appearance there because there wasn't as much fat on my body but I still had it no matter what it doesn't go away. You know, but like everybody's going to keep trying to sell you this. They're going to try to sell you things to help you know with your fine lines and wrinkles and with these other prop like whatever on your skin and you can't fix that that is stuff that can't be fixed. 01:25:14.75 Jala And even the people who make these products will tell you this like that you know there's no research that tells you that any of this stuff actually works but people buy it because they are desperate to you know, live up to this this beauty ideal that they are handed and you know that's that's. This whole thing. So like the same thing happens when it comes to the fitness and even the Health industries. Um, when it comes to weight they they keep on telling you you know there's something wrong with you If you are not X and even if you are X most of the time they still tell you oh well, you have to watch having carbonated bevered like whatever like it every single. Yeah. 01:25:51.32 Raúl You're not X enough. 01:25:52.59 Jala Yeah, you're not, You're not healthy. You're not in you know ideal enough you're you're never enough. You're never enough for anything because they are all every single thing is an industry it is trying to sell you something every single always so step away just try this one simple trick right? so. 01:26:06.59 Briar Yep, and you're always just 1 step away. Yeah, you know. 01:26:11.75 Jala Yeah, with regards to the medical community. The concept of fat being unhealthy was based on health outcomes of their patients. This is where they were starting to conflate that correlation with a causation and so who who you know they were analyzing the correlations and saying well this means. You know, just because these people are fat and they have these health problems that must be because the fat is the problem because they're taking these biases that they already had about elitism right? that we've already discussed that were built up from previous and then they're saying you know like they're they're coming to the conclusion that they want to see. Because they think that fat is bad and therefore fat must be the reason why so who can afford health care though. not poor people not poor people of color you know it's going to be well off white men who don't have as much activity as the people who are having to toil hard for a living right? so. You know health insurance actually was a big big problem that caused the eventual development of the bmi scale. So Metlife is largely responsible for it in the early nineteen hundreds it published pieces in newspapers listing ideal weight tables. Based on their policyholders again who had money for that insurance almost exclusively white men with a very small smattering of white women. The company itself admitted this. So why you know like these these tables didn't include. 01:27:44.90 Jala People of different races which all have different. You know, um, genetic predispositions insofar as like height and weight stuff how they build fat you know and all of that where they keep fat on their body and what's healthy for Them. It's all going to be different depending upon who you are and you know all of your specific individual attributes. Right. 01:28:04.73 Raúl Yeah, they had no no divisions for race gender age The only thing they had was frame size small medium large and absolutely no guidelines for how to tell what you were um. Something that I do want to point out is that these charts were not based on any medical research or standards whatsoever think think back to this this is around 1900 around 1900 most surgeries still took place at home. They weren't there was no medical licensing. At the time and you could literally go and buy snake oil to treat any medical problem and it was not illegal. So that's those those that's the the medical standards they were working with at the time. 01:28:55.91 Jala Yeah, absolutely and the tables these these ideal wait tables were used by metlife as a grounds upon which to deny coverage to people who wanted insurance because of course ah an insurance company which is privatized. Needs to assess the risk factor of any potential insured So How likely is it that they will make a claim against their policy and how much is that claim going to cost the company because if they insure a bunch of people who are high risk and then all of those people cash in on their policies that company. Is going to go bankrupt and then can't you know, pay out for any of their policy holders at all and they will they you know they will default so like that's a thing that insurance companies have to consider so higher risks are associated with higher rates and premiums of course so this ends up being like a poor or you know bipoc tax. You know. On people who are fatter. 01:29:53.98 Briar And it's like you said it's all driven by the profit motive. 01:29:56.95 Jala Yeah, and it's all again capitalism, it's because this is a privatized industry those 2 words you know, ah that that you see all this happening so Rowe tell us about andell keys. 01:30:14.14 Raúl So um, he was a a doctor 1972 I believe who took some research that a mathematician in the eighteen hundreds named I'm not sure her para pronouns but Ketalette Cat catlet is. 01:30:26.64 Jala Kit. Yeah I guess Kitile I have no idea. 01:30:31.81 Raúl he's he's belgian so maybe it's catel a um well he had he was trying to find population level trends to see what the average man was for his his country and others because in according to his writings if you could find the. Average height. The average weight everything average about a person then that would be like the perfect man and if you'll notice I've said man and men every single time because he did not use women in his research but he he made what would later on what. And cell keys would rename the body mass index this was his formula It's your your weight in I believe kilograms divided by your height squared and that's what's the Bmi now. So this. Obscure mathematical formula from somebody trying to find population level trends exactly is the basis for how we categorize people now in their whether they're underweight normal weight overweight or obese. 01:31:29.96 Jala In 1832 all people of whatever gender of whatever race based on white men from this specific country in the 1830 s 01:31:54.93 Raúl In this specific time. Yeah, and the the best part that the part that blew my mind is I didn't know this till I had researched it in 1976 15% of adults were considered obese by their bmi. Most recent data forty two and a half percent of americans are considered obese one of the major reasons for that is that they've been lowering the threshold for obesity and overweight repeatedly over the years so I mean look look around. Do. 42% of the people you see day-to-day seem obese to you like it's insane some something like 29000000 people overnight became overweight and obese and 9098 when they adjusted the number the numbers. So it's it's all a racket. 01:32:51.70 Jala Yeah, it's all a racket and again like why is that that they're doing this. Well it's because of this whole war on fat this moral moralization of your body weight this ah you know seeking of denying care denying everything you know to you. 01:33:09.18 Raúl Yeah, it's it's actually legal in 48 different states. It's legal to refuse to rent somebody an apartment a hotel room refused to serve them ah as ah at a restaurant or give them a job just because they're fat. You can say. 01:33:24.23 Raúl We did not hire this applicant because he's fat and that is not illegal in 48 states 01:33:30.35 Jala Yeah, think about that for a second because you know there's all the the you know Americans with disabilities act and you know like all the different stuff for um, you know people of color and discrimination. But there's nothing in place for for fatness at all. 01:33:45.68 Raúl Yeah, and thanks to the war on Obesity now even kids aren't safe from it. We blame the parents and just fat fat Kids do actually have higher rates of anxiety depression and disordered eating. But. That and being fat doesn't make you anxious doesn't make you depressed all this is caused by how you're treated So It's It's actually the stigma of being fat that is causing all the the mental health side of it for sure. 01:34:24.79 Raúl And probably a very significant portion of the physical side. And the the conflation of size and wellness is not only incorrect I actually think it's bullshit like we just. 01:35:13.14 Raúl As a society we don't like how fat people look so we want to get rid of them because I mean the perfect case for this is in the 90 s there was a drug called drug combo called fenfen I forget what they what they're short for, but there are this combination of two drugs. 01:35:31.27 Raúl That will cause people to lose weight and they would prescribe it to people who were overweight or obese.. The only problem is it caused heart failure and it subsequently got banned and everybody was. Incredibly upset by this and even I was upset by it because I never got to use it. You know it was. It's like I. 01:35:59.39 Jala Like yeah and meanwhile is causing heart failure and you know people people are prioritizing ah weight loss versus you know their own health. You know. And it kind of reminds me of something that ah someone had said in the Discord about a different topic not about weight but like what good is is your health if you know you aren't happy or something something along those lines that somebody was saying about something else and um. Like we had a whole whole long discussion about that in the the framework within which that statement was made and um, they eventually got to the point where they're like oh I realized that I have some some like things I need to work on you know, like ah we we figured that out you know, right? ah together. But um. Yeah, and that's that's kind of the mindset that's at work here right? You know and I think I remember when that even happened and I was in the middle of my fat phobia too and I was like what they banned it. oh no oh like I was hoping to maybe lose some weight you know like and it was the same Yeah yeah, it was the same thing where it was just like you know this? this. 01:37:01.83 Raúl Yeah, we both missed out. Like it's It's worth risking heart failure to be healthier right? He he said sarcastically just to make it clear. 01:37:09.93 Jala Ah, oh yeah, healthier our heart failure if a heart failure is absolutely Held. No no, This is so wrong. Yeah I know I know it's just who who? yeah. So yeah, go ahead, Go ahead. 01:37:28.67 Raúl And gut was gonna say and I've I've been doing my best um to not be like I am not fat Phobic towards other people I I. Very strongly believe that I shouldn't judge others for something they can't control and for me weight is something that I consider that something that can't be controlled, but the way I think about myself the way I talk about myself if I So. Spoke or thought that way about other people I would consider myself what just world's biggest asshole because go ahead. 01:38:10.98 Jala Right? in? Well in that that's something where like you know it's not just that you are your harshest critic. What I find myself because like I recently went back and I was like Watching. Um. A video of me from like 2016 and cringing because I'm like oh boy I've done a lot of growing since 2016 Oh my God ah, and and I I felt that way about it just because of of just yeah yeah, that's good. That's a good thing overall. But at the same time. Um, it's like you know you you about yourself like you are you are a super super harsh critic on yourself and the way that you grow okay like the way that I grow I grew from 16 to now when it comes to other people is phenomenal right? There's a whole lot of of changes that have gone on. 01:39:03.15 Jala In that timeframe which is good. That's a number of years right? So like that's very good but um, when it comes to how you think about yourself though. There's always holdover. It feels like it's always harder for you to like accept and come to terms with an updated viewpoint. As relates to yourself versus as relates to other people at least that's how I find it for myself like it took me longer to um, you know, give myself grace then it it took for me to give everyone else. Grace does that make sense. 01:39:36.15 Raúl Yeah, if yeah and if if you ever the way I figured if I ever look at myself in the past and don't cringe that means I probably stop growing and that's a problem but the the reason I. 01:39:49.70 Jala Yeah, right right. 01:39:55.73 Raúl Bring that up is because I've I've done my absolute best. But I've caught my son saying things like anti fat things I'm like man where did you get it from that and it must have been me talking about myself. 01:40:12.15 Jala Um, yeah, it could be. It could also be other people that you know your son talks to you know who knows. 01:40:22.94 Raúl Because I the people who lose weight tend to be the most anti-fat when it comes to biases because their their view tends to be I did it So Why can't you um. And I've you know I I guess I thought I had avoided that avoided that but maybe not and you know he'll he'll say things like ah he asked my dad why his stomach was so big and and. 01:40:58.88 Raúl I Told them. Basically we don't talk about other people's bodies which turns out was the wrong thing to say if I could go back I would ah have said something different but I'm basically letting him know that yes being fat is something that is. Shameful that we don't talk about when I do that and what I should have said was something along the lines of all bodies are different and everybody's body. 01:41:34.19 Raúl Everybody's body's different and different bodies are good at different things and don't and don't comment on other people's bodies unless they ask you to whether it's good or bad because I've another thing I used to do is I would see someone who had lost weight and I'd say you know. 01:41:53.29 Raúl Congratulations you've lost weight or some something similar and that's another little bit of anti-fatness that just going under the radar. It's part of my blind spot is you don't you don't know why people lost weight. Um, okay, what you've lost weight. What's your secret cancer. 01:42:04.25 Jala You don't know like they could have an eating disorder and you've just reaffirmed that they they should continue because you've just positively. Reinforce the behavior that got them there so and or if it's something like a medical condition that has caused it or whatever or it's like super stress time like you know, maybe they have like they're in mourning or something and they they are dealing with ah strong emotional issues. 01:42:35.71 Jala And that's what's causing it like there's so many different reasons behind why someone might have lost weight is kind of like ah even in my my Discord community somebody more recently was talking about oh I lost this much weight and I was like well if that was your if weight loss was your goal congratulations like I'm not assuming that that's. 01:42:55.45 Jala You know, like from the context it appears that is the reason like they are they are you know, ah happy that they have lost that weight but like I'm not going to ah presume that that's you know the end goal like if you're if you're going if you you start doing activities and stuff to feel better that is. Important thing to me like really like that's that's a good way to go about it. You know because that's that's like accepting your body the way it is. You're not trying to change that you are just trying to be healthy like cool. Good. You know like ah I worry a lot of times whenever people are like oh I really will want to lose. Ah, you know I want to lose. X weight or whatever it in that it worries me because I know myself and I know how I have felt even in the last several months like I have been I decided to do these episodes because um I I've talked about it several times at this point I had. Couple injuries and ah lots of health issues in my family and with me and it's been a hard hard road to get back to being active again, but in that interim I had gained a good number of pounds and um, like at first. I was just feeling overall bad because like my clothes weren't fitting right? and you know I didn't feel you know as good and all of that and you know part of it was fat phobia and part of it was me wanting to be as strong and as active and as happy as I was when I was as active. 01:44:26.49 Jala And strong and you know like trying to like I'm so I was studying all this stuff and trying to undo because I and I recognized that within myself that there was a mixture of ah, an okay mindset right? and then a not okay mindset and that I needed to work on that. Not okay part. And in doing all of the active studying that I have done and lots of conversations with various people of different backgrounds ah preparing for this episode and the last one it has really helped to open up my mind and like ah break some of that negative. Stuff up in my head to where like I'm starting to undo that and it's a process. Um, and I am currently like trying to tone up but I'm toning up because I'm I'm doing a cut so I can see my muscles so that I can do a bulk and then gain some more muscles and gain some more strength and go through the. Ah, bodybuilding process of you know, ah getting stronger and you know having a goal and ah Raúl you and I talked off episode off mic about um you know well is there a point where you will ever be strong enough and I told you I was like no I'm actually strong enough right now. Um. As I am but if I train without a goal I did that for a while you don't get any motivation unless you have a goal so I'm now giving myself goals of oh well I want to I want to cut and I want to you know, get down to you know, see my muscles a little bit better because that makes me happy when I can see the work. 01:45:59.58 Jala That I put in and see how the muscles look and then I'll do a bulk I will get you know stronger I will lift heavier and do whatever and and get that variety of training style in there as well because like now I can focus on a lot of cardio and do whatever and then I can back off of that when I get onto bulk. And you know do a different style of training because I like variety as well. So I found that um like I don't want to cut to the degree that I did in like 2019 when I was I was super low body fat though because I started getting different um self-conscious feelings about. You know oh I don't have any fat on my body anymore. So the already small chest that I have became even smaller I don't even know what to do you know and that those kinds of feelings I started having feelings about being too small actually. So um I don't want to do that I don't want to become unhealthy and in like the severity of of cutting I'm cutting just just enough to see the muscles and um, be all toned up have some time with the cardio and do that during the summer when I like to be outside and then. Once it starts getting cold and I hate it I want to be like able to bulk and you know gain some strength work on some strength and stuff. So um, but like the way that I felt about the fat on my body though has been such that um I have. 01:47:24.14 Jala Been like oh well I don't want to wear short shorts like you know like the the little shorts you see like a lot of Crossfit Ladies wear or whatever I have a lot of those shorts. A lot of the lifting shorts I haven't been wearing them because I'm like but I have cellulite and it's like but you're always going to have cellulite like you just get over that you know like it's fine. 01:47:43.11 Jala Nobody else cares nobody else cares all these other people in the gym they're in whatever they want to wear what what's the deal and so like I've gotten past that because I've I've recognized that as a fat phobic worry in my own head that I need to just get past so like I've gotten past that and I'm I'm like you know wearing whatever I feel like wearing that day. Whatever that means you know and go into the gym and doing my thing and I'm like reframing I'm actively reframing a lot of stuff and you know I find you know I also don't want to cut super super hard and get down to like tiny tiny body weight because. That means that I I don't get to go out with Dave and go out to eat sometimes and I don't do whatever and like I'm I'm restricting myself from enjoying things in my life and I don't want to do that. So yeah and I will I will lose the muscle because you know you can't lose only fat you will lose some of that muscle as well when you cut so much. 01:48:25.42 Raúl Plus you'll lose some of that muscle. 01:48:36.36 Jala So you know like um I've I've reframed it and been actively working on that myself within myself when I first started to lose the weight I became obsessed because I had I had been. You know quote unquote overweight for so long that um when I started cutting ah, the first time when I first started to um. Tone up and trim down and change my lifestyle I exercised a lot. Um I wouldn't say excessively because like I always have trained a lot but it's just because like I have a lot of energy. Um. For a long time like I started doing like endurance events and stuff like that because I was trying to wear myself out so I could sleep at night like I just want to go to sleep. Ultimately I just want to sleep I just want to be tired and and like tired in a way that lets me go to sleep in and fall into a nice deep slumber and um. 01:49:27.66 Jala Turns out that I am built for endurance I am built to go forever because I ended up doing like 18 hour events and I'm still not tired I'm like okay I give up but um, so so anyway like when I first started though I was really worried about like I was like oh like people are positively reinforcing me. With me being smaller and smaller and smaller. So like I I did not have an eating disorder but I did have disordered eating. We will talk about but disordered eating means so let's actually transition over to that unless anybody has anything else to say about. Um. You know, weight discrimination or the history of fat phobia leading up to this. Oh yes, please do. 01:50:10.16 Briar Can I put my anarchist cap on for a little second I've just like condensing all of this like this history blurb down into one thing is just seeing the intersection of. 01:50:14.44 Raúl Help We've been waiting for this. 01:50:28.54 Briar How it hits like ruling classes and things like that like um oh oh gluttony is sinful. Glutby is ah is bad. Well you know those robes on the ruling class and the church they hide a little bit something you know. Ah, the the double standard is the people they were presiding over. Ah they were supposed to be small but you you know the The Church Has Been a power structure in its own ah way and seeing how it like intersects with ah we talked we talked world wars we talked. Ah. Times when things were not a plenty in the Us and then all of a sudden being small is the thing that's best for the average american hard worker or like you a jala even during ah colonial and revolutionary american history. Um, they were working hard. Ah, and always buzzing and probably did not have a plenty so that's another standard where thinness is desirable but we have centuries and centuries where a plenty is the ruling class thing where gluttony and ah things like gout is the ruling disease comes from that. 01:51:45.33 Briar Um, just like ah it became ah eventually we transitioned to and I think it's emblematic in like America ah, really bad is. Ah, 80 s and 90 is the way food production changed how it's so much cheaper to eat unhealthy now. Um I mean just looking at I'm in a pretty decent area when it comes to food availability and ah white bread with no nutrients is. A full two dollars cheap cheaper than any kind of decent bread. Um, it is so much easier to be fat nowadays because unless you're so severely impovered just improished that food becomes an issue. The. 01:52:36.61 Briar Poor but doing well enough. Um, if you're able to eat. It's easier to be fat and and like you said the distinction between ruling class or rich class now is they can they can afford to make all the better decisions. 01:52:55.72 Briar They can afford to have other people make the better decisions. 01:52:57.15 Jala Well and and they also don't live in food deserts right? Where all there is is that non-nutritive crap right. 01:52:57.94 Raúl Yeah, and don't. 01:53:06.55 Briar Yeah I say I'm on like a 7 out of 10 when it comes to being a food desert like if I if I put the effort and drive I can get some stuff but I am technically in a food desert and like dollar general is so much closer than even a Walmart for me. 01:53:23.39 Raúl And don't get me started on plant-based food somehow being more expensive than meat that comes from animals that eat plants. 01:53:33.11 Jala Yeah, yep, yep, absolutely so and there's a whole breakdown of like how that ended up being a thing in 1 of the various books that I've read about the you know, read read ah on these topics that I have in the. List in the show notes. So yeah, definitely. But yeah Briar so did you have anything further on um you know the weight discrimination Warren on obesity in the 90 s and all of that. 01:54:59.50 Jala Okay, so listeners here is a trigger warning We will be discussing eating disorders. So if this is a sensitive subject for you. 01:55:53.65 Jala Please skip ahead or stop the episode I will endeavor to put in the show notes the exact timestamps so that you know so let us talk about disordered eating and eating disorders so disordered eating. Is a broad term that encompasses unhealthy eating behaviors that do not meet the criteria for the diagnosis of an eating disorder a person who has disordered eating has an unhealthy relationship with food. So examples might include imbalanced nutrition like eating all protein avoiding all carbs or um also misusing laxatives or diuretics emotional eating or constant dieting things like that. 01:56:39.10 Raúl So I personally meet this via 2 different categories. So yay, um, constant dieting I I think I've spent well over ninety percent of my life on a diet. Some kind or another ah and there was a period of time where I did the the keto diet which was basically avoiding all carbs and I think while I was on keto that was the closest I ever came to. And eating disorder. But I I got I'm hesitant to say this because I don't want to like encourage other people to like you know, go up to the precipice of their own eating disorder. But and my experience is i. 01:57:33.60 Raúl I loved being on keto because for whatever reason I was not hungry like I could I would get to the point where I be like you know what I could eat and then I would eat and I would be fine and that is the first and only time in my life that i've. Been not hungry for an extended period of time and. 01:57:54.33 Jala So the reason for that is because of the high fat which causes satiety and the problem is high fat diets in the long run like okay so ah, the keto diet is something that was ah created for specifically people who have seizures I believe it was. Like certain types of people who have certain conditions. Ah yeah, yeah, there you go so epileptic seizures and um, that is helpful to reduce symptoms for them and and so on so it's only for that 1 thing like it became popularized especially with Atkins diet because that's the same thing. 01:58:15.31 Raúl So yes, epilepsy. 01:58:33.75 Jala Um, and atkins diet became a big thing well like high fat diets in the long run tend to have a lot of correlation with. Negative health outcomes including like lots of ah buildup in the arteries and things like that Dr Atkin himself died of a heart failure just something to keep in mind I mean like that's an anecdote but you know the whole point is like whenever you start. Eating exclusively 1 type of a macronutrient or something you are not giving your body. The entirety of all that it needs and so like you are running a risk anytime you start excluding things like that yeah yeah yeah I know I just wanted to stop and give like a little bit more context as to like. 01:59:15.15 Raúl That's that's why I'm not on it. 01:59:22.20 Jala That's why the satiety was there because it was a higher fat diet and like when you are doing something like a cut there are times where you will cut the carbs down and you will increase your fat on a cut when you are doing that to give you the feeling of satiety even though you are trimming down the carbs to keep from like the bloat that happens with carbs. 01:59:40.89 Raúl Yeah, it's in the I'm sorry got yeah ah in yeah and part of and this may just be the way my brain works but part of it. 01:59:44.45 Jala So go ahead. There's there's a healthy way to do that. Ah, if you if you want to eat lower carves but that the keto you know Ketosis is not not recommended at least not from me. So. 01:59:59.51 Raúl Was because it's so strict. It was paradoxically easier to maintain because it's like no I I cannot have that it's not that I can only have a little bit. It's like I cannot have Xyz and it was. And I don't want to ah you know I'm I'm not trying to push the keto or anything it just it. It was an experience that I I did and I I mean I guess I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I enjoyed it. 02:00:36.71 Jala You shouldn't feel um you shouldn't feel that way. Although you do like you. You can't talk about you know regulating somebody else's feelings but like um. 02:00:48.68 Jala It makes sense because you have always been in a state of deficit to where you don't ever feel satisfied. So at the time that you felt satisfied. You know like that. There's there's nothing wrong with enjoying the feeling of satisfaction. You know what? I mean. Um. 02:01:04.90 Raúl but but yeah that was my experience with that I stopped it for I didn't have a health scare or anything but after a few months I had lost some weight and I decided that it was probably. Better for my health to stop. So I I basically looked into it and I transitioned out of it without gaining any weight back although that was extremely difficult. 02:04:38.88 Jala Yeah, so as for me with I also had some disordered eating. Um I never got into imbalanced nutrition stuff. Um, when I have done all of the the training and stuff that I've done. Like I pretty quickly just ah, but 3 years into starting my whole lifestyle change I was also educating myself about nutrition the entire time and constantly working to um, you know, make sure that I was getting everything that I needed. So like I would have restrictive eating a little bit like I wasn't dieting I didn't follow a diet but I would you know, um say okay well I actually don't need that much food in order to you know run my body so I actually don't need to eat and and so. I say restrictive eating I was not hungry like I let myself get hungry in between meals but I was not um, starving myself or anything like that I was making sure that I got all of the the nutrients and everything. Um. Probably a little bit skimpy on the calories kind of like a constant cut if you will but getting all of the macros in there making sure that I ate a variety of foods and listening to my body when I was full and you know it's actually a lot of different people say that. Um. 02:06:08.81 Jala Having that feeling of hunger in between meals is important because like sometimes you aren't actually sure if you are eating because you're actually hungry or if you're eating just because it's time to eat or whatever so you know like that was a whole thing but I did definitely get obsessive about numbers I. You know, did a lot of working out I did a lot of you know, like um, you know, just eating eating you know like a specific regimen of foods and things. Um, but like I was obsessed with numbers I was checking my my measurements and I was looking at the scale. 02:06:45.90 Jala And I was obsessed with the scale. My lowest adult weight was one hundred and nineteen point five pounds and that was as small as I ever got um which for my size like I'm five foot 4 but like I I carry a lot more muscle. Usually so like I was. 02:07:02.82 Jala Pretty small like I did have muscle you could see muscle definition on me at that size but I was pretty small but then I started getting upset about because I had lost so much weight I had some loose skin on the bottom of my stomach and I started getting upset about that and I'm like I can't get rid of this little bit of fat on my stomach you know and also there's now loose skin from losing the fat. 02:07:22.82 Jala You know and that's that's the only way to get rid of that loose skin is surgery but then the moment you gain weight back again, you're going to stretch your skin back out again and have the same problem so you know obviously that's not something I ever did. But you know that's that's where I was at I was at a restricted eating. Um. And I didn't really do like emotional eating I sometimes I've I found myself in the last several years going into that habit just because I've I've gone through some depression in the last few years but um, mostly it was just like in restricting. You know what I was eating to a degree. So and then just like diet or not not dieting I'm exercising pretty often and just being being very very very numbers focused looking at the numbers obsessing about the numbers and you know like constantly weighing myself that kind of thing and getting into like that very obvious dysmorphia. You know where it's like oh I was trying so hard to because I got down to like a size zero I was a size 0 at one point. Um, and I'm not now. But the reason why I'm not is because I have so much more muscle on my lower half and like my body in general I'm I'm bigger because I have so much more muscle and um. Um, for a long time I didn't want to do the weightlifting and stuff because I knew that I would be heavier in terms of having muscle and I didn't have a problem with that. You know that necessarily but like because I was so obsessed with the numbers I didn't want to see the number go up. 02:08:54.62 Jala You know, like that's that's one case where I didn't want to see the number go up even if I knew it was muscle and so in 2019 when I started bodybuilding and going through bulks and cuts I was doing so under like the supervision of other trainers who you know knew more about that kind of subject before I started doing it myself. And you know educating myself and taking courses on it and so like I made sure that I was monitored when I was doing it and you know that I was getting everything that I needed and making sure that I was giving myself enough rest and all of those different aspects but like. You know I've read I've ah guess you could say I was writing the line of you know, having consistently disordered eating for a little while in there and I got past that. But then I was still so fat phobic that I was still you know ah worried about numbers a lot and even. And this last year when I had gained a lot of weight and then I was getting back to the gym and I saw the numbers on the scale and I was just like I have not been that weight since I first lost weight way back in the day and I was I was having a small meltdown about that. 02:10:02.65 Raúl Dark. 02:10:08.34 Jala And then when I started this cut I was looking at myself and I'm like you know what? I've only lost like £5 £7 or however, many pounds it was and um, you know I've lost that much weight. But like that's not a whole lot but I can already see this muscle definition. It's all muscle that that weight is muscle I'm actually just really muscular. Oh you know and it it started to to shift my perspective because like it kind of reassured me like oh no, no, no, no, Um, this weight difference is because of that muscle and like my new normal weight for like you know. Having having you know an active Lifestyle is about X you know which is like £10 or £15 heavier than it used to be which was £10 heavier than it was when I was running you know? Um, so you know it's It's kind of a weird thing when you're like a fitness person. 02:11:04.56 Jala And somebody who likes having an active lifestyle who then had a sedentary lifestyle for a short period of time and then you're like coming back to it and trying to fight fat phobia and also have a healthy approach to what you're doing and also have like you know, um. 02:11:23.35 Jala Like it's a lot. It's a lot to to work through. 02:11:26.33 Raúl I I think it might be like an assign me at Birth Slash Assigned Fuma birth difference that I've I never I have never ever in my life cared what the number on the scale is all I care about is what I look like and i've. 02:11:44.80 Raúl Basically never been happy with what I look like my entire life. Ah, for various reasons you know throughout. But Gen in general I've never been happy with the way I look um, that's. I guess the main difference I've I think I've I kind of have come up to the precipice of the exercise version of an eating disorder as I ah recently was sick I was in the bathroom throwing up. 02:12:21.41 Raúl And in between waves of of throwing up I was thinking how am I gonna go to the gym today. Oh no I'm gonna. 02:12:24.82 Jala Right? I remember when you were told yeah I remember when you said and the thing is is that like ah it it can be ah you can. You can be unhealthy with your fitness to the point where you are just like and I've I've been there. Um, not to the point of throwing up and then thinking about the gym but like you know, ah. Having a surgery and then being like I want to go back and work out I need to work out and need to work out in whatever and like you can get ah that that like your security blanket is your gym you know doing your your regular thing and then you think oh I'm going to lose all my gains I'm going to lose all my progress I'm going to Xyz if I don't get there. 02:13:00.70 Raúl I'm I'm gonna break I'm gonna break the habit and then future me is gonna be go back to being in garbage me and never go again and then it'll be so hard to start over again and I. 02:13:11.23 Jala Yeah, and you get into that whole negative mindset and it's really really hard because um, it turned like yes, um, when I got back to going to the gym last September it was hard to do but at the same time like it. I I felt so discouraged because I was like I have no strength I have no endurance I have no cardio I have nothing because it's been so long since the last time I was in the gym right? But like right right? and I did I did I was like. 02:13:35.80 Raúl Um, you're looking around that everybody else going This isn't the real me. 02:13:42.11 Jala There was a point where somebody had you had started you know trying to teach me something and I'm like oh no no no no I know what I'm doing you know then there there was a toxic person in the gym a toxic lift bro in the gym actually um, the only one that I've met at my gym and he came up to me and he's like. You know, trying to teach me a thing and I'm like oh I know what I'm doing whatever and then you know I was like yeah I used to be a bodybuilder and showed him a picture and he's like well what happened did you eat too many tacos. First off he was racist as a shit he thought you know I was mexican and then also um, he was being racist against mexicans but then also he was like fat shaming right. 02:14:20.70 Jala Because I was ah you know a little bit of not not even like I had a little bit more fat on my body. It wasn't you know so much I actually had up a lot more muscle to but like that was the kind of shit and I literally did pull out a picture and go no no, no this what I used to look like before when I was doing this before. I've had a lot of shit happen in my life. Yeah, but um, and and I did that whole justification rather than right right? Yeah, but I've I've found some lovely people at the gym since then ah that one guy I don't ever see him Anymore. So I think he went to a different gym. 02:14:39.25 Raúl Yeah, and he's and he's there asking and he's they're asking what what part of Mexico is Cuba in. 02:14:57.56 Jala But that's Good. You needs to go away. But um, yeah, and like when you have had that fat phobia or like you have work and you know I don't I don't even know that it's necessarily so much tied to the faphobia as it is just like a fear of losing all the progress losing all the hard work you have put in so much effort to do x. And then it you know you're worried that you're going to lose it right? So it It may or you know like it. It can be tied to fat Phobia. There's a correlation right? Not a causation. Yeah yeah, yeah, correlation not causation. So It's not necessarily fat phobia but like it can be.. It can be. 02:15:27.97 Raúl I'm going to lose my save file. 02:15:36.57 Jala So um, before we continue I will say the reason why nobody has heard Briar in a while is because Briar is having internet issues and they will not be back on. So ah, we are going to soldier on and talk about eating disorders and wrap this episode. By ourselves. So um, Briar is lovely I will link all of their links in the show notes. So please everybody take a look at all the stuff that they do so. Let us let us continue. So do you have anything further on disordered eating. Okay, so yeah. 02:16:11.36 Jala Ah I don't think that's a thing all right? so eating disorders. They're behavioral conditions characterized by severe and persistent disturbance in eating behaviors and associated distressing thoughts and emotions so types of eating disorder are many we will bring them up. Ah some of the the major ones. And kind of just touch on like what what they are. So first one that most people know just as the first thing they think of is anorexia nervosa it's characterized by self-starvation and weight loss resulting in low weight for height and age anorexia has the highest mortality. Of any psychiatric diagnosis other than opioid use disorder think about that for a minute that's wild Bmi is typically under eighteen point five in an adult with Anorexia Nervosa there's also 2 subtypes there's restricting type where individuals. Lose weight primarily per um, primarily by dieting fasting or excessively exercising which I never got as far as you know having a situation of Anorexia like I did not restrict eating completely but like exercising a lot and you know, um. Reducing how much I was eating yes I did have those traits. That's why I had a disordered eating not an eating disorder. So ah, ah. 02:17:34.56 Raúl Something to keep in mind is that this is where the fat phobia comes in again and the underdiagnosis um, you can have anorexia while being overweight or obese if somebody weighs 300lbs and they're eating three hundred calories a day they're anorexic. 02:17:51.10 Raúl Just because your bmi is over 18.5 that they literally have a separate diagnosis for that. It's called atypical anorexia and it is massively under diagnosnosed ah this while I've never had an eating disorder I can say that. When I was younger during my fat days I wished I had an eating disorder and it actually wasn't this one because I felt I never had the willpower to be anorexic like I wasn't good enough for Anorexia um, which. 02:18:29.42 Raúl You know, well give some idea of my headspace at the time. 02:18:31.68 Jala Yeah, and I will say that you know there was a point where I I recognize that eating disorders were unhealthy behaviors but at the same time I also felt so depressed that you know it's kind of like. You know you think about it and you think about what would it be like if I could do that thing or if I did that thing and like I I came to the conclusion and the way that I phrased it was I Love food too much like I like to eat and therefore ah I don't think I could do that just because I like to eat. 02:19:10.35 Jala It is true that like if you've gone long enough without food. You stop craving food like your body just gives up. Um, but like that's not a place that I wanted to go So like I was restrictive with what I ate or how much I ate but I never drop because like once you drop below like a thousand calories I think it is. 02:19:30.11 Jala Um, you start getting into starvation mode and you are effectively and you know starving your body at that point because you are and getting insufficient calories and your body is starting to shut down. 02:19:40.80 Raúl Yeah, and and it is actually counterproductive for long-term weight loss because ah the rule of thumb is thirty five hundred calories for £1 if you're eating a thousand calories less than you expend, you would think. 02:19:58.57 Raúl Every three and a half days you lose a pound great. The problem is every pound you lose lowers your betels basal metabolic rate. In addition, when your body's starving. It slows down even further. So now you used to be down a thousand calories now you're down 800 then you're still eating the same amount. But now you're down eight hundred calories you keep going you lose a few more pounds your body slows down even further and now you're burning maybe five hundred calories less per day and it's like ah what's that paradox with the arrow that. If you fire at the turtle. The turtle's always going to be further away from the arrow when it gets there and there you go. 02:20:41.63 Jala I don't know. But basically you got diminishing returns why you got diminishing returns. Um, there's that and there's also the fact that if you put your body in starvation mode and it's there for a while like it's kind of like what we talked about earlier with dieting you put your body into essentially starvation mode. You start you know. Depriving it of things and then it starts storing everything it stores everything because it knows the starvation is coming and so anytime you eat, you're going to store all of that as fat. 02:21:00.46 Raúl And then and then and the best part and by best I mean by far the fucking worst is. When you get off the diet and you go back to eating your normal calories. You go back to eating your extra thousand to get back to where you were now you're not at even your plus two hundred plus three hundred so now you have to be eating 2 or three hundred calories less per day every day for the rest of your life just to maintain where you're at before because of the damage. The diet into or yes, that's. 02:21:35.96 Jala Yeah, yeah, but that's a diet versus Anorexia. So so yeah, yeah, so the other type there's a restricting type. We already talked about that. There's also binging purging type so ah persons Also engage in intermittent bingeing you know, binge eating and. 02:21:53.43 Jala Purging behaviors in addition to so you can have binge purge and also be anorexic at the same time. So like you do sometimes eat food and then you binge on it and then you just purge right afterwards. 02:22:05.47 Raúl This This was the one that I was I was like I could do this one but it turns out I was not able to make myself vomit. Ah so ah for any ladies listening very little gag reflex. 02:22:22.70 Jala So moving right? along to bulimia bulimia nervasa involves alternate dieting or eating only low calorie safe foods with binge eating on forbidden high calorie foods so binge eating is defined as eating a large amount of food in a short period of time. Associated with a sense of loss of control over what or how much 1 is eating binge behavior is usually secretive and associated with feelings of shame or embarrassment binges may be very large and food. Is often consumed rapidly beyond fullness to the point of nausea and discomfort binges occur at least weekly and are typically followed by what are called compensatory behaviors to prevent weight gain. These can be fasting vomiting laxative misuse or compulsive exercise. So you eat like ah, an entire cake and then you go and then you just start doing lots and lots and lots of exercise. So ah, binge eating disorder as you may gather from the name is like bulimia. 02:23:30.62 Jala But without the purging or compensatory behaviors binge eating disorder can lead to serious health complications including Obesity diabetes hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. 02:23:42.32 Raúl Yeah, the the key thing about all of these is that they are incredibly bad for your health Anorexia will mess up your heart. Ah, bulemia will mess up your teeth your esophagus your acid base balance in your body. 02:24:00.42 Raúl Can literally die from vomiting too much. This is all extremely like this is not just unhealthy. This is dangerous. 02:24:07.35 Jala Yes, these are all severe conditions that definitely need to be addressed by like a medical practice. You know like their sb and not just like a medical practice like a doctor looking at it. But you also probably need some some therapies and things like that to work through because. Ah, we will get there but usually like as as it mentioned earlier in the notes when I was reading out just like what is an eating disorder. It's usually coupled with some other kind of psychiatric diagnosis. There's always some kind of other issue kind of triggering it in the first place right. So there's going to be some extra baggage that needs to be worked through and all of that needs to be worked through and unpacked as like 1 big glom one unit needs to be worked through so you know like ah we talked about a little bit on the other episode that was about dysmorphia and dysphoria but dysphoria. Often you know comes with these different sensations like when it comes to these eating disorders eating disorders. Um and dysphoria happen with some regularity again. There is correlation not causation and when being treated it is of paramount importance that. The dysphoria and the eating disorder be addressed simultaneously as a package because they are part and parcel you know like 1 influences the other you know so there are still some other types of eating disorders as well. There's other specified feeding and eating disorder. 02:25:45.49 Jala Which is a broad category including eating disorders or disturbances of eating behavior that cause distress and impair family social or work function but do not fit other categories listed here in some cases this is because the frequency of the behavior doesn't meet the diagnostic threshold or the weight. Criteria for the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa is not met so that would you know if you are um, a fat person who has anorexia they would give you other specified feeding and eating disorder or like that abnormal anorexia you know. Ah, diagnosis. So. There's also avoidant restrictive food intake disorder arfid which is a recently defined eating disorder that involves disturbances and eating resulting in persistent failure to meet nutritional needs and extreme picky eating. So in our fit food avoidance or a limited food repertoire can be due to 1 or more of the following things. It can be low appetite or lack of interest in eating or food food avoidance due to sensory characteristics like texture appearance color smell. 02:26:57.42 Jala Anxiety or concern about the consequences of eating like fear of choking nausea vomiting constipation allergic reactions and so on sometimes this is caused by a negative event such as an episode of choking or food poisoning that just makes you not want to eat anymore and um. Something else I can say too is that um you know I've mentioned this previously but there are folks who are on the autism spectrum that are within my family and when they have like their therapies and stuff they include food therapies for sensory stuff because those folks have you know like Sensory. So. Issues and and their their food is kind of restricted because of that but like that could also end up becoming a serious medical condition if they are not um, you know like ah working through that to to kind of um you know find ah a. 02:27:53.17 Jala Pattern of eating that works for them with their sensory issues that they've got from their Neuro divergence. So That's something that is also important to recognize there are a couple of other eating disorders as Well. There's pika. Which is a disorder where the person repeatedly eats things that are not food and do not have nutritional value and there's also rumination disorder which is repeated regurgitation and rechewing of food after eating where you swallow the swallowed food is brought back up and then rechewed and. Resallowed or spat out I don't even know how somebody can do that. 02:28:29.10 Raúl Yeah, brought back up is doing a lot of work in that sentence. 02:28:35.12 Jala Yeah I know that's that's I don't I don't even know how that works and I don't I I cannot I cannot um, personally get into that headspace in the slightest like you know we we talked about how we can kind of see. You know the trajectory that would lead to 1 or another of these other eating disorders but this is not one that I I can I can say that I can relate anything to myself. Um, yeah I I only found out about that in pika because of my looking for information for this episode about eating disorders. 02:28:58.56 Raúl And I'll admit this is the first I've heard of it. 02:29:10.69 Jala Ah, they they were things that I had never heard about before. So yeah, So ah, eating disorders often co-occur with other psychiatric disorders. So I mentioned that previously most commonly mood and anxiety disorders obsessive compulsive disorder and alcohol or substance use disorders. Evidence suggests that genes and Heritability play a part in why some people are at higher risk for an eating disorder but these disorders can also afflict those with no family history of this condition. Treatment should also address the psychological behavioral nutritional and other medical complications as mentioned previously like that is definitely um, you know there's always more at play than just. The eating disorder itself right. 02:30:04.42 Raúl Yeah, it's ah, very very. They don't occur in isolation. Yeah, nobody nobody decides to eat a bunch of food and then throw up because they they think that it feels good. To do that. They do that because they're worried about fat phobia or you know their parents are constantly on them about their food so they they feel like they can't eat or like there's there's people don't do this for fun. 02:30:35.83 Jala Yeah, so I don't have anything further to add on eating disorders because um, again like we've already talked about like what I have had which was disordered eating in the past. So okay, cool. So we will move on. Let's talk about. 02:30:48.71 Raúl Now I've got nothing else. 02:30:55.42 Jala How we can work on healing the damage of Fat phobia and note that we say fat phobia specifically and not eating disorders because that is beyond personal troubleshooting like there's so many different aspects and moving parts with that that that requires you know? um. Therapy and doctors and involving a medical community behind it. 02:31:17.10 Raúl Yeah, if if you see yourself in any of these descriptions see a doctor you it is life threatening. 02:31:25.54 Jala Yes, yes, so talking about healing the fat phobia part of it though if you are not someone who happens to have an eating disorder so learning the facts and hearing those stories a small selection of different books that I read for this episode. Include and I'm going to put this list in the show notes as well fearing the black bodyd by Sabrina Strings Body respect and health at every size by Linda or lindo bacon depending upon where you're getting your material. It could be under either name the beauty myth by Naomi Wolf and the body is not an apology by Sonia Renee Taylor probably some other ones too that I forgot to mention here, but those are a few books that I read Raúl how about you. 02:32:09.96 Raúl I read some books by Aubrey Gordon who is a fat activist. No home. Let me find my no I don't have my phone on me so I can't find the other authors there was a podcast that I basically mainlined. While preparing for this episode called maintenance phase. It's named after the maintenance phase of a diet aka the really hard part. It covers a lot of what we've covered but in much more depth if it's something that you're interested in. Might be good to look into them. 02:32:48.72 Jala Yeah, yeah, and um, we'll put in the show notes whenever you can grab your information. We'll put ah the different stuff that you sourced for this in these show notes as Well. So folks can take a look at that. So another way that you can work on Fat Phobia. Following Fat folks and people of all shapes and backgrounds especially those that are working to decolonize on social media so that you see them. You see their lives. You see their Work. You see what they're doing you see their concerns that they're bringing to the table. What they're working against so that you are aware of these issues right. Like you have to be involved with the people who are are dealing with this. You know, ah it seems like a really small action but it really does a lot in terms of normalizing to you people of different bodies and backgrounds so disassociation is a very powerful tool for maintaining a regime. So to undo that regime you have to associate actively associate yourself with people of you know, different backgrounds and different body shapes. So Another thing would be to find and become active in a support network. So This can be friends or family complete strangers. This can be in person. This can be online. Whatever works for you. Whatever you are comfortable with whatever fits your schedule and needs. You know there are a couple of groups already associated with some of the books that I read such as the health at every size and the body is not an apology.. There are. 02:34:19.54 Jala Groups that are available online for both of those 2 books and so like those are support networks for you that are available to you and they are free. So even if you do not have the book. You can still become part of the community and learn and grow from those communities and you can find those online. So definitely do that. 02:34:37.85 Raúl So like I I found the other book I Read It's a fat talk parenting in the age of diet culture by Virginia Soul smith. 02:34:48.87 Jala Ah, yes, yes, So definitely something to be aware of and like you said like even for your own you know your own situation with your own son and you know trying to find the ways to approach that right? so. And and enough Yes, okay, you can also work on reframing your mindset by talking to people about the subject and self-correcting. You know when you're talking to them. 02:35:24.85 Jala So Just like when you are learning somebody's pronouns or you are trying to undo your ableist Language. You also need to work on reframing how you think and talk about fatness in Action. You know. What words are you using? How are you approaching it. What's the mindset that you are presenting when you are saying stuff sharing your story and listening to other stories helps to build this reframing and it also helps to build the support network that you need so I will say too that um. Ah, shout out to Zombie who is definitely somebody who actively talks about you know, um, body body stuff you know in general just lots of stuff they they were on the last episode about dysmorphia and dysphoria. And shout out to them for actively being somebody who is were you know, ah constantly not just um, putting out the the healthier mindset for other people to see but also for their work In. Um. Working on their own mindset because they have their own fat phobia that they are dealing with right their own dysmorphia and Dysphoria and you know they recognize that and they also state their struggles and um, you know, just just putting that out there and helping people helping to facilitate that growth and that reframing of. 02:36:52.32 Jala How you are looking at it how you are approaching it How you are talking about it. You know that is that is so important and super critical to um, you know, really getting getting um your brain caught up to what you you kind of have already been hearing from through. This whole episode when it comes to the facts like you can do all the study you can read all of these books and still find yourself in the fat phobia trap unless you are actively anti-fat phobia you have to do the actions you have to save the things to get yourself there which. You know what? that looks different for everybody. 02:37:34.60 Raúl That's something listeners can do. That's very easily and will go a long way towards making things better is just don't comment on people's bodies at all whether positive or negative unless they ask you. Don't say Wow you look? You're looking Good. You've lost Weight. Don't say ah you know and anything if if if you're going to comment on someone's body just don't that that will that will help out a lot.. There are people who think ah you know. Reminding someone that they're fat helps them because it gets it gets them to want to lose Weight. It doesn't that everybody who who can see can look in a mirror. They people know their size. Don't don't think you're helping by bringing up that they're fat. Don't think you're helping by saying they look good when they've lost weight just don't comment on anything if you really have to comment on the clothes somebody picked. That's a good top I Like what you've done with your hair stuff that people can control easily but Just. Don't comment on people's bodies. 02:38:47.30 Jala Well and then to like if you're in a situation where say somebody in the Discord is posting a photo and saying look I you know I lost x number of pounds you know um like I said earlier like the the person in the Discord said oh well you know I lost x number of pounds and then I was like oh you know if weight loss was your goal then super congrats for you know, having achieved your goal or whatever you know like but putting it prefacing it that way is letting them know that. You're not expecting them. You know they're you're not conflating um their their weight with like a negative or positive value. You're not putting placing a value on that right? you are just saying if that was your goal good for you. You know that doesn't necessarily have to be your goal. You could just be doing it just because you want to be healthy, you could do this other thing you know like you you might be active and and changing your diet because you're trying to you know, um, have better food habits or or become active because you have a sedentary job for your health. You know that kind of thing. 02:39:53.57 Raúl And and it's and if somebody actually asks you if that's fine. 02:39:55.34 Jala So yeah, yeah, and if somebody says you know oh what do you think you know how do you think I look because I I don't know I been go into the gym X a number whatever you can. You can whatever, whatever the situation is if they were prefacing it like that if they are presenting something to you and they are asking for some kind of opinion. That's a little bit different of a situation but still. Even in those situations where they are I You know I always try nowadays, especially like yeah as I'm I'm working on it is to say like if that is your goal you know if whatever you know, like not not placing a value judgment on the the size of someone. You know? So but so yeah and like we've talked about it but we're both dealingaling with our own fat phobia our own Journeys right? You know this is this is not like ah we're talking down from the heavens about this thing that we have already accomplished. No This is a constant because it's so Pervasive. It's the same thing like with the ableism talk right? So You know we did the episode about ableism but like it's a constant struggle. It's something that you deal with and you keep trying to work on it. It's a consistent thing. It's not like a one and done. You know you're you're going to be dealing with this. You're going to be trying to tackle this. And you're going to you know, even if you feel like you're you're past whatever thing you know that you're you're trying to conquer like that when something is so pervasive in Society. It's going to creep back up on you when you least expect it and you're going to have to tackle it all over again, you know like it's It's not 100% resolved ever because you're constantly dealing with society. 02:41:24.55 Raúl Um, yeah, yeah, you'll find some random thing you didn't even realize you were doing was really hurtful to someone and then you stop and that's. 02:41:39.26 Jala Yeah, and then like you can also uncover like I didn't realize I had this deep seated problem with X you know I didn't realize that this thing that I was doing all this time was because of the fact phobia and now I do and now I can work on it. You know like you uncover stuff as you you move through the world and you just. 02:41:40.23 Raúl How you grow. 02:41:59.56 Jala Deal with it as it comes. However, that is however, that looks so ah, just some some wrap up points so we talked about how fat phobia came into our lives and we were really young when this happened we were kids. So. What was the lowest point in your struggle in your body dysmorphia as relates to your weight Raúl. 02:42:21.69 Raúl Let me think about that. 02:42:25.52 Jala Okay, while you're thinking I'll say when I was my hundred nineteen point five pounds which I remember because I was like so excited because I got under 21 and like my my healthy weight at this point is probably about £140 because I put on that much muscle by the way. But um, in any case. Ah, yeah, exactly if that was my goal but no, ah, anyway, ah, right about now I'm sitting at like I don't know. Ah one fifty ish or something like that like I had I had done a cut I lost like £7 and then I um did. 02:42:48.96 Raúl Congratulations if that was your goal. 02:43:03.96 Jala And like I I had like ah a period of like a lot of stuff was breaking at the house and I had to stop doing all of the twoa days that I was doing before where I was doing lifting and then I was doing like yoga or I was doing lifting and then I was doing cardio and so I gained some of that weight back I'm not worried about it but like I'm probably around 150 something at this point. And time. Um, that's not like my slim weight but I'm fine with it and part of the reason why is because I've been doing all this work. Um, my worst point was probably when I was obsessing about being a size zero and I was like obsessing about you know, being one hundred and nineteen point five pounds and and all of that I never got to the point of an eating disorder but I didn't get enough rest for one I know that for a fact because I was also working multiple jobs at that time and you know I was just wearing myself out too much trying to get there. You know and I backed off of that because I realized. There was a problem when I was like obsessing about the numbers and you know I put the scale up and I refused to look at it for like years I didn't even look at it. So um I I kind of self-regulated and that that but you know like that was still a pretty low point for me because. You know again I had that restrictive eating and I was you know working at a bunch and obsessing about numbers that don't ultimately matter so and the the reason was because I was trying to get to that ideal slim figure that my body shape doesn't make. 02:44:38.30 Raúl Um, to dread or that anime character. 02:44:39.48 Jala My body doesn't make the shape of the Victoria's secret model of that era or that aimate character exactly so and you row. 02:44:50.80 Raúl So so my lowest point. Um I guess actually happened fairly recently. Um I had gained some weight ah during covid and our. And it it wasn't even a lot of weight which is weird for how much it affected me but I gained some weight and our pants at work have like a stretchy waistband and during covid it's not like you're going out so you're just hanging around the house wearing. Shorts and one day I went to work and I brought my old pants accidentally when I got to work I changed and the old pants didn't have an elastic waistband and they were at my old size and I got to see. I basically had to walk around with a what I guess like a three hundred and sixty degree muffin top would be I guess the best way to describe it. Although. Maybe most accurate, but not the best from a fat phobia standpoint. But ah, but yeah I yeah I did a lot of psychic damage to myself that day. Um, totally unrelated to is nobody even commented on it but it was all self-inflicted. 02:46:19.25 Raúl And I've I am about £35 lighter now and still haven't hit my goal which may indicate a problem with my goals but that was from like a physical standpoint that that day was very. Rough for me. Um from an emotional standpoint I mentioned that my mom used to call me, um, the equivalent of fatty as ah as a little kid that was her nickname that she said was ah said with Love. Although. 02:46:57.75 Raúl Was not taken that way and she referred to my son who was about two years old at the time she called him by the same nickname and that just brought everything back and I let her know in no uncertain terms that she was not to call him that. Ever again and it worked but I feel my reaction was like you know how emotional baggage adds like that she said some she did something that should have been a 2 on a 1 through 10 scale emotionally and I reacted as if it was an 8. 02:47:33.97 Jala And that's kind of the situation where I found myself like um, you mentioned the the weight gains mine was not from covid like in 2020 I was in like the best shape of my life. 02:47:37.12 Raúl Which tells me I have about 6 points of baggage about that. 02:47:52.40 Jala It was all that the weird crap that happened in 2021 22 that just like really like the the latter half of 2021 and then like the first chunk of 2022 that really like this knock me down. Um, but what I ended up having to do when you mentioned clothes. I had to go through my closet and you know I ah I had all the stuff that were holdovers from back when I was a size zero I still had all that stuff in there because I had very recently been very small and I had to go through all that stuff and look at it and you know like I had made the decision that. I wasn't going to be doing ultramarathons anymore because like that's where and tear my body I don't want to you know, ah put my body through right and then I also don't have the time to do those longer endurance events and stuff and I like the the fact that I am as strong as I am now because of all the weightlifting that I do and that's a different body type. So I had to go through all of my clothes. All of my clothes and you know ah try everything on and figure out what fit and what didn't fit and boy was that very hard to do to try on everything because you know again, um, the clothes not fitting made me panic and go. I'm you know again Faphobia I'm I've gained too much weight right? And then um I tried everything on and put it all aside and then when I lost those £7 or whatever I tried a lot of stuff back on. Not everything fit because my legs just have too much muscle. 02:49:19.82 Jala I can't pull them over my shoulders are too broad from the muscle and I can't put on some of the tops. It's because of my muscle it's because of my mother there was some fat but like I tried on a lot of stuff a lot of the stuff you know, fit again or like it didn't fit but like the reason it didn't fit is because I have more muscle on my body I'm in different shape now and I had to kind of. Reframe all of that and go oh I'm bigger because I'm muscular I have a different body so body shape now because of my activity level. Oh and but like I had the fat phobia knee knee-jerk reaction to that. And I went through all my clothes again recently here and I pulled everything that was smaller and said I just need to get rid of these I don't need to hold onto this because I'm not going to be that size unless I like stop for 5 years of lifting because like I retained all that muscle that whole time I was not lifting right. Ah, my body tends to to retain muscle better than it does anything else. So you know like I I stay larger. Um I'm not going to get to that shape again. So I have like a bunch of stuff I'm going to be selling on Poshmark that's like size zero because like I can't I can't fit that. Ah, my legs are too big now. My ah my shoulders are too big. Like I can't yeah yeah, exactly and so you know like that that was a big thing for me is some and and that was something that was recommended in the health at every size book was um, part of part of what it recommended was actually going through your wardrobe and like instead of. 02:50:29.30 Raúl You're stressing out over signs of success. 02:50:45.91 Jala Saying I'm going to hold onto these things that you know um you know I used to fit five years ago or whatever like get rid of it. You don't need that buy stuff that fits you now don't wait until you lose the weight to you know, buy something to wear or whatever if you need some clothes get the clothes now because you know like. You are how you are your body and like but 1 of the things that hell had every size explains to you is that your body like tries to keep you at essentially a certain weight like you have ah a genetic predisposition to be a certain size and your body is going to try to keep you at that size so you can read the book learn all about that. But it's going to try to keep you however, that is so for me if I am active like I'm not on like yes I'm I'm eating I'm making healthier choices. But I'm not restricting my eating if I am hungry I'm eating extra calories or whatever I'm doing right now I just have a lot of muscle because of my activities and so my size is the size that it is. I'm going to make sure that I get clothes now that fit me now you know and that's what I'm doing I'm getting rid of stuff that is too small for me I'm putting you know I'm getting stuff that are larger sizes that fit me in the shape that I am now you know, um, and so yeah, like. Through the lowest point that I've the lower points that I've been in. That's when I've turned a corner um each time. So like ways that I've worked to heal my dysmorphia and undo my fat phobia. Um I've been doing the studying I decided I was going to do these episodes I was going to talk about it I was kind of study about it. 02:52:20.50 Jala Was going to look at myself and look at everything that I'm doing with a critical eye and say okay how much of this is from fat phobia and how much of this is other stuff and you know, um, it's been kind of like a fifty fifty mix for a little bit. And I'm trying to get it to a better ratio to where there's not so much of that fat phobia in there. The idea is to get rid of the fat phobia of course but like it's a process. 02:52:41.62 Raúl Yeah I'm just trying to convince my brain to stop treating myself like I'm my before picture which is how it's been my whole life. You know like. 02:52:57.54 Raúl Like I don't need like life's not going to start once I get in shape life's been happening. Life is happening life will continue to happen. 02:53:01.81 Jala Yeah, yeah, and that's hard because like there's once you have lost weight you have that continual fear that you will get back to the weight you were in before because of the fat phobia and of society telling you telling you. Yes, you are doing so good because you lost weight you need to lose weight everybody needs to lose weight like you know the society is so driven by this this concept because of this this hatred for fat and fatness and fat people and you know it's It's hard. It's real hard especially when like you said the the diets don't work like your body's going to get wherever it's going to go. You know? So um, yeah I know like you're in the middle of your journey right now because you know you even said you know like you've been in the middle of your your goals and. You're like I haven't reached my goals I've dropped this much weight but I still haven't reached my goals and you're you're considering that you're thinking about that and going Huh Maybe I need to reassess some things you know I would recommend for you and and other listeners and stuff take a look at the body respect book and the health at every size book. Especially check those out those. Ah. Are very very useful at least to me like when I was reading through them as a fitness professional. You know with nutrition training and stuff like that all the information that is presented in there is sound Information. So um. 02:54:33.79 Jala We've talked about how other people have reinforced fat phobia. Ah how have other people that you have known worked to dismantle that fat phobia I already mentioned in my case, a big shout out to zombie for putting everything out there. You know. Ah, zombies lovely and absolutely ah, a very big help when it comes to like all these different you know, progressive stuff. You know all the all these different progressive topics right? I love I love having zombie on for that reason. But um, they they definitely talk about you know their their. Struggles and their their triumphs and where they are right now and ways to reframe things and having that out there having someone talk about it having someone you know in your life that you can kind of work through those things with is so important so that. Mine I would say like the 1 person that I know that's working to dismantle the faphobia would be zombie so and and and you know they're they're in their own struggle with it too. You know. 02:55:36.67 Raúl Yeah I mean I Maybe it's because of where I live but it's it's it's almost like fat people are the only ones that everybody feels safe making fun of like I can't think of a single person that I know. In real life. Not I mean obviously zombie but I don't know her. Um, you know that sorry I don't know them in I don't know them I know them online in actual like. 02:56:10.95 Raúl A person that I have met and interacted with physically I can't think of a single person. 02:56:13.48 Jala Yeah, and that's the thing right? The thing is there's not very many people out there that are actively working to dismantle fat phobia. That's part of where you know reflecting on it thinking about it talking to zombie about their issues. And everything made me go. You know not only do I need to dismantle this within myself and work on that I need to actually put some episodes out there and talk about it and bring it up and try to reframe things because you know we we are all on our Journey. We are all trying to to work on where we're at and improve ourselves. But like this is a hard. Hard nut to crack. You know? So um, we've also talked about like the disordered eating patterns and things like that and you know I think we're pretty much pretty much past that at this point but it's it's a struggle like dealing with it in society dealing with. Um, you know, just the bias that people have against anybody who is ah you know heavier set is just rough so there isn't like a ah like a end of episode moral right to the story other than you know, um. Again, Follow folks who you know are on their their journey ah of fighting fat phobia Follow fat people who are talking about this and decolonizing talk to people try to reframe things within yourself. 02:57:43.52 Jala Read some actual materials that will help you to reflect find support. You know. 02:57:48.40 Raúl And if and if any of this causes causes you to like feel like you want to push back like I don't need to do that. Why ask yourself? Why do you feel that way. 02:58:00.97 Jala Yeah, absolutely because if you have a strong reaction and go we. Don't need to do that. This is perfectly fine the way it is well then there's probably a reason why you have a strong feeling against it as well and that's something else to take a good look at for sure. So um. Yeah I don't have any anything further to add on this. We've talked a lot about a lot of different subjects I know that this topic will come up again in some form or fashion because this is um, a tough one. So ah, we definitely will be talking about this. In the episode later in the fall when we are talking about the fitness industrial complex so you can look forward to that coming up. That's the next planned episode about something proximal to this. But other than that Raúl may anyone find you on the internet. 02:58:52.54 Raúl You can find me at don't find me on Twitter Instagram and all the places including Raúl Kunda place 02:59:02.10 Jala Ah, that's very good I like it. You're so snarky but also get victual live vitamins. They're great I put it in the show notes for everybody. 02:59:06.81 Raúl Yes, do that too. 02:59:12.89 Jala And of course you can find me on the internet anywhere that I may be found at Jolllahan including Jalahand Place where you found this episode and all of the others that's all for now folks until next time take care of yourself and remember to smile. [Show Outro] Jala Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net! [Outro Music]