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United States of PTSD
Season One: Mental health concerns are on the rise in the United States. This podcast will look at the influencing factors contributing to the decline of our culture. With the rise of school shootings, political divisiveness, increasing levels of hate, and a chronic war of peoples' rights, we have entered a domestic war that never ends. Our podcast will look at whether this is done by design or is it an abject failure. We will discuss it from a clinical and common-sense perspective. Secondarily we will discuss ways to protect yourself from being further traumatized. Hosted by Matthew Boucher LICSW LCDP (licensed in RI) who has over 20 years of experience working with people who have addictions and trauma with a specialty of pregnant/postpartum women. Co-host Wendy Picard is a Learning and Development consultant with 15 years of experience, lifelong observer of the human condition, and diagnosed with PTSD in 1994.
Season Two: Is joined by Donna Gaudette and Julia Kirkpatrick BSW. Julia is currently working on obtaining her MSW and her LCSW. She is a welcome addition to the podcast.
Season Three: Cora Lee Kennedy provided research and worked as a temporary co-host. Dr. Erika Lin-Hendel joins as a co-host for season 3.
United States of PTSD
S2 E 21 The Truth about Diet Culture
Cramped airline seats and long security lines might sound like a travel nightmare, but Julia's recent trip to Scotland, Ireland, and the UK was anything but. She brings the adventure to life, sharing her awe at ancient castles and endearing Highland cows, while Matt injects humor with his witty tips on scoring a first-class upgrade on Aer Lingus. Together, they offer a candid look at the joys and challenges of international travel, blending personal anecdotes with practical advice for navigating the ups and downs of exploring new places.
Switching gears, Julia gets personal about her journey of self-care and the unexpected weight gain from healthy activities like hiking and gym workouts. This sparks a broader conversation about the toxic nature of diet culture and the societal pressures of body image. Reflecting on the harmful messages from platforms like Tumblr in the 2000s and her own childhood experiences, Julia and Matt emphasize the importance of mindfulness in how we talk about weight, especially around children. They uncover the deep-seated issues tied to diet culture, stressing the need for a more compassionate and inclusive approach to health.
Finally, the discussion broadens to tackle the gender disparity in diet-related content on social media and the flawed focus on weight in healthcare. Personal stories highlight the often misguided medical advice that overlooks other health conditions, while also touching on the unrealistic body standards perpetuated by the media and clothing industries. Julia and Matt advocate for weight inclusivity and the importance of fostering genuine connections for overall well-being. As the episode wraps up, they tease an upcoming discussion on "mom influencers" and invite listeners to share their topic suggestions and feedback, promising more engaging content ahead.
Weight-normative messaging predominates on TikTok—A qualitative content analysis
Marisa Minadeo ,Lizzy Pope . Published: November 1, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267997
A Third of TikTok’s U.S. Users May Be 14 or Under, Raising Safety Questions - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
https://www.killingussoftly4.org/
Second-hand Television Exposure Linked to Eating Disorders | Harvard Medical School
Fijian girls succumb to Western dysmorphia — Harvard Gazette
#voteoutJoeCourtney
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/hartzmann/no-time-to-die
License code: S4CEQWLNQXVZUMU4
Artwork and logo design by Misty Rae.
Special thanks to Joanna Roux for editing help.
Special thanks to the listeners and all the wonderful people who helped listen to and provide feedback on the episode's prerelease.
Please feel free to email Matt topics or suggestions, questions or feedback.
Matt@unitedstatesofPTSD.com
This podcast is not intended to serve as therapeutic advice or to replace any professional treatment. These opinions belong to us and do not reflect any company or agency.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody and welcome back to the United States of PTSD. This is Matt and I have Julia back from her vacation.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone. It's good to see or talk to everyone again.
Speaker 2:Julia, tell everybody how awesome your vacation was.
Speaker 1:it was awesome. I went on a trip to. I got to see some of Scotland, ireland and a little bit of the UK. I was very excited to see all the castles. I guess I'm a little bit of a history and like fantasy nerd, so got to see a lot of castles, was super interested in a lot of the Celtic mythology and everything so, and got to see a lot of sheep and Highland cows, which was really neat.
Speaker 2:Oh, the coos, the coos. I loved that. That was like my favorite part of one of my favorite parts of the trip when I went.
Speaker 1:I. What were you going to say, matt? Sorry.
Speaker 2:Just how they. I even bought a magnet that said the Coos or whatever from like the Highlands. The Highlands are gorgeous. I would go back there in a heartbeat. Scotland is just such an amazing place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say Scotland definitely has my heart. After driving through I was like maybe I should just get a sheep farm and raise some Coos.
Speaker 2:Wouldn't it be nice?
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:It's so lovely.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:And I only have 30 days until I'm going to be in Italy. So actually a little bit over 30 days, like 30, 40 days actually.
Speaker 1:I'm very jealous of that one. Ireland and Scotland was the first time, first international trip for me, besides going to Canada in like eighth grade. So first true international trip for me and it was amazing. I absolutely fell in love with the area and we'll be wanting to go back very soon.
Speaker 2:Do you feel more confident now about international travel that you've done it?
Speaker 1:International travel sucks.
Speaker 2:Oh, totally.
Speaker 1:We on the flight there, the air flight that we were on, the seats were so close to each other that like and of course I was in the middle section, so it was four seats across in the middle and then like three on each side and I'm not kidding my like knees were touching the entire time, like I could not move our flight and I was just miserable the entire time and all I was thinking to myself is that if I ever travel, travel international like I'm gonna have to pay for the business class or the first what.
Speaker 2:So what airline did you fly, by the way?
Speaker 2:so we flew their british airways okay, I've never flown british airways, but I can tell you with air lingus, because I have flown air lingus twice. Yeah, I absolutely love air lingus, and what we did on the way back from both of our trips was you can bid first class. So because if they have seats, if they have seats available, they'll send out an email that says like, hey, you can put a bid on first class seats. There's like a little barometer that tells you whether or not your bid is a good bid or it's a moderate bid or it's a bad bid. And both times we flew back, we got it, and I am so spoiled now I don't know if I could ever fly home not doing it now.
Speaker 2:Granted, it's still a lot of money, but flying up there, I think, is easy because you're excited, right. So I mean, and you're, you know you're, you get a lot of energy, you want to go, go on trips.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, you can tolerate the kind of plane stuff. Then when you're coming home, like I know you probably ran into oh no, because you were on a cruise, so you may not have run into the same thing, but when we left Edinburgh there was no direct flight to, so like we're, you know, back home to Boston, so we had to fly into Dublin. So we get in the Edinburgh plane and we go through security, we go through all that stuff and then we land in Dublin and we had to go through security again. It was like okay, where did we go? Did we like somehow get off in the middle of the air and like my mom and I.
Speaker 1:so our flight back we um, we flew into and out of London and our flight back um, we flew from London to Portugal and then from Portugal to Boston. But when we had come back to Boston we were doing the security checkout with International and my mom and I had noticed on the sign there they had said if you're trying to do a connector in Boston, you have to go through security to get out and then have to go through security again to do a connector flight International with them. My mom and I were like that sounds like hell like I could never imagine doing that.
Speaker 1:Thankfully the flight's back like we're a little bit better. Um, just seat wise and honestly, at that point I think I was just ready to be home. So I was just like whatever, I don't care what the what my seat is, or anything like that, I just need to be home. So I was just like whatever, I don't care what the what my seat is or anything like that, I just need to be home especially when you really know that the whole TSA thing is really just theater.
Speaker 2:Yes, so like you're wasting all this time going through like smoke and mirrors to make you feel safer and the London.
Speaker 1:The London one was. I had never been to like an international TSA and in London they make you take out like all of the liquids in your bag and you have to put them in a clear bag, like even if they're travel sized or something in my bag and it wasn't in the clear bag. Mine got pulled out and I had to wait like an extra 30 minutes for the guys to like go through my carry-on and he was like oh yeah, it's just this small shampoo. And the woman next to me is like well, you should have taken that out oh, they're so rude, so rude.
Speaker 2:We had flown, sorry, years ago. We had flown domestically, we had gone from. We were going to a wedding in Pensacola. So we had flown from TF Green to, I think we went to Georgia and then from Georgia we ended up going to Pensacola and it was the same thing back. So I had this little, tiny, tiny, tiny utility knife on my key chain that.
Speaker 1:I forgot about.
Speaker 2:It was one of those little things that has the screwdriver on it and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, at the time I hadn't flown really a lot, so I didn't know to take it off. We go to TF Green not a problem. We land in Georgia not a problem. We get to Pensacola not a problem. Then, coming home, when we go back to Pensacola, they've pulled my luggage out. They're like like what's this weapon? And I'm like, oh my god really. And then they were like you can either pay to have it sent home or we have to confiscate it. And I'm like you do whatever you need to do. If it makes you feel better, you can. You can keep it. It was like four bucks, I'll go buy another one, but it got through it got through three other airports right.
Speaker 2:so when you talk about like again, again, it's just all theater, it's all theater and it gives them permission to be mean to us. I mean I can't stand it, but anyway, we're off topic.
Speaker 2:I was going to say totally off topic, that's okay, today actually I wanted to make another really quick announcement. So Cora Lee Kennedy, who I absolutely love and she did the last episode it was approved for her to do her internship for our podcast, so she's actually going to be doing all the back-end research now and she may come on from time to time. So I'm very excited about that, yay.
Speaker 1:Cora.
Speaker 2:She's responsible for 100% of the research we have for this episode.
Speaker 1:Yes so.
Speaker 2:I want to give her another shout out for that.
Speaker 1:I was going to say a true, honestly, a true rock star. She did amazing on the last episode. I was just telling Matt, actually before, that I was listening to it and she did an amazing job and the research for today's episode is impeccable.
Speaker 2:Well, I, as you know, I and I've said this before I only take the best students and hopefully, as you know, there's another student that's going to be doing more clinical work but maybe I'll have him pop on from time to time too as well.
Speaker 1:So he's incredible as well. I obviously biasly think that that's true as well.
Speaker 2:Of course, of course, right. So the other thing that Cora interestingly enough, that Cora had said to me after the last episode and I didn't get a chance I was going to put it in as like an epilogue and I didn't have a chance to do it, so I did just write it in the body of the description for the last episode was she had talked about how it's important for self care. That's something that I'm always talking about and the content of what we covered last time was a little bit heavy, so I really took to heart what she had said and realized that I was getting a little bit lost and not having self-care so since then, I have been hiking almost every single day.
Speaker 2:I've been hiking about two to three miles every day. I have to tell you, I feel amazing, ironically. So I've increased exercise, I've gone back toically. So I've increased exercise, I've gone back to the gym and I'm eating better and I gained two pounds, which is funny because that goes right into what we're talking about today. Right, because I was like how is it I'm doing all this work and I'm gaining weight and of course gaining muscle.
Speaker 1:Matt, you're gaining muscle.
Speaker 2:That's what everybody's saying and I'm like, yeah, not in a week, but okay, you week, but okay, you know what that sounds like to me. That sounds like in mean girls when um caddy says to regina george, which is like oh, the calatine bars, first you blow it's all the water weight, then you shed it all um.
Speaker 2:So anyway, but interestingly, the segue into what we want to talk about today, which is diet um, toxic diet culture. Yeah, emphasis, that we put on weight. I think we all do it right. I mean, I just said myself, we all do it. What is your take on the we'll call it diet, toxic diet culture. What's your take on that?
Speaker 1:so I think, overall to start very just like blanket overall statement that toxic diet culture is so embedded within our culture, within our society it has been for years. Thinking back when we had first discussed this being a topic that we were going to do, I remember the conversations we were having were a lot about Ozempic and TikTok and those weight trends which I think are so prevalent. But also I had started to think back to like my childhood and when I was first like exposed to that dangerous messaging. I was born in 98. So, of course, like I'm a 2000s baby, but when I was younger, tumblr was like a big thing. That was a big social media platform which really infanticized not infanticized, but like really romanticized um, anxiety, oh my gosh, anorexia, okay, and bulimia and things like that. I remember, because at that point I was just starting to get onto social media and everything, when tumblr really took off and I remember seeing like pictures of girls who were like in emo stuff and like seeing things but we're skinny, skinny, skinny, like bones and skin. But that was what was romanticized. Those were all the photos, everything like that. And then you think about what was on TV at that time. There were so many Weight Watchers commercials, so many lean cuisine things, stuff like that.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was younger I guess my mom my mom tells me this story of. I guess when I was younger, my mom used to always check her weight in the bathroom and I guess that there was one day that she had. I don't remember this, but apparently there was one day that she saw me in her bathroom and I was looking at my weight, was getting on the scale and looking at my weight and then getting off. Obviously, I believe I was just copying what I saw my mom do. From that moment on, my mom threw away the scale. She was completely.
Speaker 1:We didn't have a scale in our house until I was 16, 17. It was completely gone. And this had happened when I was like four or five, I think, and my mom and I had talked about it recently because my mom was like. That was like a really big wake up call for me because I had started to just not have a healthy relationship with food and my body and then seeing my daughter mimic some of the behaviors I was doing took me a step back and realized, okay, this is not good, this is not healthy, I need to stop, because I'm putting on these beliefs.
Speaker 2:My daughter is watching what I'm doing and then all of a sudden she's going to start doing that I want everybody to hear out of that story that you just told, because if I had a dime for every time I have worked with somebody in therapy who believes that their children do not see their behaviors, I would probably be rich, because kids do see as much as we I mean we, come on. We were all kids at one point in time.
Speaker 2:We all know what it was like to be spying on our parents and knowing what our parents were doing, when our parents believed, truly believed, that they were hiding stuff from us.
Speaker 2:So, that really I want people to hear. That is indicative of most of the behaviors that we learn come directly from what we're seeing. So for those of you that do have kids and this is with everything, not just with diet, culture this is with like drug use, this is with like toxic relationships, abusive relationships, patterns Kids pick up on this stuff and then they repeat it. So again, it's just please pay attention to what Julia just said in that part. It's very important.
Speaker 1:I think that kids pick up on it and also, depending on what it is, it might normalize it for them as well and think that it's okay, or this is how they should be behaving or this is how their thought pattern should be, which in reality might not be the case. Yeah, I think that that goes along. Specifically, again, like you said this, that idea blends into so many other things besides just toxic diet culture. But going back to the toxic diet culture, also being mindful of the messages that you're not only saying to yourself but saying to family members A sly comment that people might not think about, of like oh, you're having seconds, or something like that it's going to hit a lot harder than you might think or realize If you just say that in passing to someone. Harder than you might think or realize, yeah, if you just say that I'm passing to someone and like don't really think about it, but like that statement could stick with someone for years and years.
Speaker 2:Oh well, yes, pretty much their whole life. I think we should probably define what diet culture is, though, for people who are listening. So this, actually, and again, I want to thank Cora for all the research, because every single thing we're going to mention Cora was behind finding. So there was a study, an article, a qualitative content analysis, and this was by Minato and Pope, published in November 1st 2022. Bio of the show that defines his diet culture as a system of beliefs that worships thinness, promotes weight loss as a means of higher status, demonizes certain ways of eating while encouraging others, and oppresses people who do not match up with the prescribed vision of health. Most frequently affected are women, trans people, larger bodied people, people of color and people with disabilities. Are women, trans people, larger bodied people, people of color and people with disabilities.
Speaker 2:You know what's interesting is I I didn't get a chance to look at the study. Probably should have before we did this, but I just didn't have time. One of the things I'm surprised by that is that they don't include gay men in that, because I can tell you, in the gay male community, there is a significant increase in talk in like body distortions, body dysmorphia and this whole concept of six packs Got to be fit and trim and starve yourself. So I'm really surprised to see that they're not mentioned in this study. So I'm almost wondering if maybe they didn't look at that population. But again, I can't fairly say that because I didn't read the study. But so that's, that's the definition in that study of diet culture.
Speaker 2:And what's interesting is I remember there was a, there's a video you used to be able to find on TikTok but unfortunately you can't, because I think it I mean not TikTok YouTube, because I do think it was not it was published erroneously without consent of the author.
Speaker 2:But there's a video, if you can find it, called Killing Us Softly 4 by Jean Kilbourne, and she talks a lot about the impact of media on particularly women and what it does to their bodies and their beliefs about their bodies and weight. And I remember this is where I got the article for Fiji. So she had talked about at one point they had introduced television into the island of Fiji and how it significantly increased body image issues with the women there and significantly increased eating disorders. And I just found another study that links secondhand television exposure to eating disorders in that same group of people and it went up pretty significantly. So I'll put that in the link as well. But it basically said that there was a 60% increase in girls who had exposure to television to increase their odds of having severe eating disorder symptoms, and including the ones who had secondhand exposure. So it didn't even have it themselves, but it heard it from their friends.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. And that makes me think of well, of like a what Cora's. A lot of Cora's research was about current mass media and the percentage of creators and like women versus men on who's creating. There's a trend going on and I don't know if it's necessarily like a trend or just like a subsection of tiktok which is about diet culture of like what I eat in a day, meal prep stuff like that, where the creators either go through what they eat in a day or like on a sunday, they're doing their meal prep for the week and they're talking about what they're consuming and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:According to cora, the videos created by females are 64.6, so the majority of the creators are females that are that are doing that, but the way um there's a.
Speaker 2:There's a hashtag that goes with it too. What is like hashtag?
Speaker 1:what I'm eating today or something like that yeah, it's hashtag what I eat in a day and hashtag meal prep. The majority of the according to the research core, it did the majority of the weight, nor the majority were weight normative. Um, and we're becoming associated with eating disorder videos of people who demonstrate the small amount of food consumed in a day. So like the thing that they're putting out is just like not realistic for the amount of food or calories that you should be consuming in a day in order to be considered healthy and eating the proper amount. I use the word in there called weight normative. I just want to go over the definition of that just in case if any of our listeners are like what the hell is that? So weight normativity.
Speaker 2:This is from the same article, by the way, this is from the same article.
Speaker 1:Yes, health is the only possible at a specific weight. Weight and disease correspond and one has a personal responsibility for meeting weight expectations. So this really thought process of like everyone needs to be skinny, everyone needs, disease correspond and one has a personal responsibility for meeting weight expectations. So this really thought process of like everyone needs to be skinny, everyone needs to be considered like normal weight, if not underweight, and if you're not, then there's obviously something wrong with you, you're not healthy, you're not trying, you're gross. In all these, either subliminal or direct messages are getting delivered to you.
Speaker 2:And I know clinically, in terms of what I've seen, trends with clients and I've experienced this myself. If you for the listeners, if you listen to the one of the episodes I did on unprofessional professionals in season one, I talk about this where doctors, doctors, at some point in time were linking everything and I think they still do a little bit to weight. So clients would come in with, like, a particular issue and their primary care physician would say to them it's because you're fat, like, lose weight and it'll go away. It's because you're fat. It's because you're fat. It's because you're fat. Having had that told to me in terms of what my my blood pressure, it was because I was overweight or because I forgot.
Speaker 2:The other thing was I was having some like joint issues that had to do with overweight. Everything was lose weight, lose weight, lose weight, and then, of course, come to find out both of those were erroneous. It was because I had a sleep apnea that was untreated, which also was not related to weight. It turned out to be related to the fact that what the doctor had said the opening of my throat was actually smaller than the average person, which was causing sleep obstructions. The joint pain actually had to do with the fact that I had a diagnosis called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which I had never heard of before, which is a joint connectivity issue which has nothing to do with weight. But we hear this over and over and over again that it's weight, it's weight, it's weight.
Speaker 2:And the second problem we have which we I don't think we did a lot of, we don't have a lot of stats on this is the food industry. So a large majority of the food we, the food we eat in this country is garbage and most of it's illegal in other countries because of the health problems it promotes. So you have this, this dichotomy of of saying, okay, you got to lose weight because it's causing all your health problems, but all the food you're getting increases your weight because it's all shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you were talking about the doctors and the gaining weight and it always being like blamed, like the symptoms you're experiencing, always going back to needing to lose weight and everything, it made me think of, um, in terms of, like, women's issues, the insurgence of women getting diagnosed with PCOS and women who have been taught, who have been recently diagnosed with PCOS, and talking about their previous experience and being like I was constantly told I needed to lose weight.
Speaker 1:I was doing all these things and I couldn't lose weight and I was just getting and I was just getting told over and over again well, if you want to have children, you need to lose weight and you need to do this. Come to find out that there's actually a medical condition going on. That's the reason why you can't lose weight, but it's not getting discussed about. Instead, these women are getting shamed and getting told well, you're not doing enough, it's your problem, you need to figure it out, you're eating too much, you're not eating healthy and all these things, when in actuality, there's a bigger medical diagnosis going on, but of course, since it's a woman's issue, there's not a lot of research about it.
Speaker 1:There's not a lot of research about it. There's not a lot of discussion about it. Thankfully, I feel like in recent years there's been more and more of a discussion about kcos and some other women's specific issues. But that made me think of that. And then, going off of the food thing, even portion sizes in america compared to Europe or other countries.
Speaker 2:Oh, totally, oh, my God, yes.
Speaker 1:You put a large McDonald's soda in front of someone who's never been to America before. They're going to look at you and say what the hell is that? Is that my ration for the week.
Speaker 2:You know what's really interesting about that, having both now that you've been to Scotland as well and you've traveled outside the country. You've seen this stuff when the portion sizes are certainly smaller in everything, like even when I got a soda came in like, I think, like an eight ounce. I think it was like eight ounces or 16 ounces, I don't remember what it was, but it was a small can, like a glass bottle basically, of soda that didn't have all the same chemicals that we have here. Even though the portions were smaller, I felt full.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And then I would come you know when. When I came back home, you know you eat larger portions and you still feel hungry. It's weird. Or you don't feel like as satisfied because the food again is garbage.
Speaker 1:I I'm going gonna quote this take and unfortunately I don't remember who the creator was, but I remember watching a tiktok um, like it had to be like six months ago or something. And this creator frequently visits greece because her boyfriend is from greece, and she was talking about how, whenever she goes to greece for an extended period of time, she is always eating more because the food there is so good and everything, but she always ends up losing weight. Yep, while even though she's eating more she's eating bread, she's eating pasta, she's eating all these things that she says that she normally doesn't eat in America, but she's eating it there and she's actually losing weight there.
Speaker 1:And that made me, that made me take a step back and be like then, what the hell is in our food that is causing people to just gain weight like this, whereas if they eat the same thing somewhere else by different producers, there's different standards of what's allowed and not allowed in food they're actually losing the weight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not surprised, which that goes to another study that Cora had given us, uh, tilka 2014. That showed that research, that most of the research with weight loss interventions failed and that 20 percent of participants maintain the loss after a year, which decreased in the second year. And I know, in terms of motivational interviewing, when you look at rates of relapse, relapse rates for diets are the exact same thing as relapse rates for drugs and alcohol or anything else, because it's the way it's perceived as this like lack of willpower thing, right, like you're not, you're not doing it. But what's not included in that is the constant how, how much inundation we get on terrible food habits and how to do it right. I mean, one of the things that jean kilbourne mentions in her video is how food is even sexualized Like. I remember she showed this one. It was a Haagen-Dazs ad for ice cream. It was like a commercial and it had these very attractive women who were on a bed together and it looked like they were having sex with the Haagen-Dazs, right. And there's been multiple different commercials about turning food into sex and linking the two together and that somehow it's going to make you incredibly attractive and eating that cake is going to give you a better orgasm than having sex with like your husband or
Speaker 2:wife or partner or whatever. So that's another distorted belief that we have. And then, to go with that, that same article. It talks about how the influencers that you were referencing earlier that a high percentage of videos gave nutritional advice, with only 1.4% being given out by experts, and that often it was harmful information, which I don't know.
Speaker 2:If you remember this, there was a trend, probably a couple of years ago, where people were trying to make their cats vegan. Do you remember this? They were giving them like because eating meats cruel. So they were trying to make it so that cats would have these vegan diets and they were killing their cats. You can't cat cats cannot be on a vegan diet. But somewhere someone bro told them trust me and put up this information about how feeding your, your cats vegan food was going to make them healthier. And unfortunately, we see that with diet culture too. Like you know, these people who are not experts are out there talking about here's what you need to do to lose weight and maintain your weight loss, and people end up getting very serious eating disorders as a result of it.
Speaker 1:Well, that the vegan thing made me think of, like the fact that a lot of not a lot but many influencers who say that they're vegan and stuff like that, it's kind of a glorified eating disorder. You're not eating enough in order to be properly vegan. And I learned this the hard way because I tried to be vegan, for I tried to be vegetarian first and that didn't work out for me. But my friend in high school was vegan and I remember her and I having conversations because we were dancing at that point and ballet. We were dancing ballet like five times a week, so it was a high intensity, needed protein needed, just things to keep us going. And I remember her telling me, like I feel like I'm not eating enough food, but I can't eat a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1:And I remember having a conversation with her and I'm like, in order to like healthfully do something like a vegan, like I feel like you need a nutritionist, you need someone going down and talking about the amount of protein that you're taking. How are you getting that protein? How are you getting those other vitamins that you're not going to be able to get somewhere else, Whereas you see some of the influencers who are vegan, vegetarian and they're like well, I had a smoothie today and I'm going to have a salad later and I'm going to have a little tofu on my salad and I'm watching it. I'm like there's not even enough food. There's no protein on it.
Speaker 2:You are having an eating disorder, but you're phrasing it in a way of like no, I'm just vegan, but yes, and we know too that under eating calories, restricting calories can also help mean keep people from not losing weight, because then their body holds on to weight. I mean, I just went through this with somebody I work with now where and they had a nutritionist and it turned out the nutritionist was erroneously telling them to eat too little calories and the person plateaued and couldn't lose any more weight anymore and then got a second opinion, and the second opinion was like you should have been eating way more than you were eating. And again, that's the problem is that we are so focused on having this perfect body type. And I can tell you from my own experience, when I was younger, I had the opposite problem. I was always underweight, like always underweight, and the message I would get from my relatives particularly like aunts, but like older people, um, was you know, you eat like a bird, you don't eat enough, you're too skinny, you're too this, you're too that, right.
Speaker 2:So then over the years and you know when I would go out to eat with my friends, god, you eat too slow, we're always waiting for you. Why don't you eat fast like everybody else? And I remember I didn't want to go to the beach because I had this image that I was too skinny to go to the beach. People were going to make fun, right. So like there's, there's, there isn't this this perception of a healthy body image where, unless you, you are going to the gym seven days a week and have this body type that I think it's like eight percent of the population has? I mean, that's genetic. You're never going to get that Right. So either you have it or you don't.
Speaker 1:But then we convince ourselves that we can somehow become these Greek gods when most people can't. But there's also this dichotomy of, like you're either too big or too skinny. I went through something very like when I so during my childhood, during my teenage years, I was skinny, skinny. Skinny it was because I was dancing, like like you said, I was intensely dancing ballet five times a week. Also, it was just my body type. I could not gain weight. The amount of times I got told you need to eat a cheeseburger I heard very similar things. You eat like a bird. You don't eat enough All this stuff.
Speaker 1:In actuality, we'd get home, we'd get out of dance rehearsal, my dad would bring us to McDonald's, I would get a quarter pound and down that down, and I still wasn't necessarily like gaining weight at that point.
Speaker 1:But I remember when I had hit 2021 and women talk about like, the second puberty and I know that there's a third puberty and a fourth puberty, specifically with women and I remember I was gaining weight, specifically because I got put on birth control, but also, like I was just getting older, I wasn't as active still active and not as active and I was gaining weight and I didn't know how to deal with it, because all the messages you're getting through social media online is like you need to be skinny, and throughout my entire life being skinny and kind of getting the opposite messages of like you need to gain weight and everything.
Speaker 1:And then I was looking at myself and I'm like this isn't who I am, this isn't my body, and that was really tough. But there's no conversations about how your body changes when you get older and how your lifestyle can affect your body. And it's not a bad thing that your body just naturally changes and that's OK. And as long as you are healthy and maintaining healthy habits truly healthy habits, not healthy habits that you're hearing on social media or on TV and stuff like that, that you're good.
Speaker 2:Which could also be linked to ageism, right? So I mean, think about everything we're talking about in terms of diet can also be connected with age. How much money is made off beauty products to make women and men appear younger than they are, because, you know, aging is obviously a natural part of life. We're all aging. As somebody who's leaving his 40s tomorrow appear younger than they are because, you know, aging is obviously a natural part of life. We're all aging as somebody who's leaving his 40s tomorrow, right, like we are, right, I mean, we're all aging.
Speaker 2:It's not something that we can, we can get away from, but there is billion dollar industry that is going to convince you that you're too. You either look too young or you look too old, right, you're never the right age, which is, you know, yes, like toddlers and tiaras and all those disgusting shows that, if you ask me a border on child porn, um, where that is? They're taking these like the really young kids and making them look like they're adults and sexualizing them because they're too young. And if you look at why women shave their legs, right, it's to give the illusion that they're younger for men, right? So it's all about this illusion of making women look younger, but then you get to I mean older and then younger at the same time Like you can't be old enough, you can't be young enough.
Speaker 1:You can't be old enough, you can't be young enough, you can't be fat enough, you can't be skinny enough, like you know what I mean. Like it's never. There's never a good place for people to be, society and culture and those bigger organizations beating off of our insecurities and things like that.
Speaker 1:It makes me think of the known drug that has become very popular within the past two years ozempic and oh god, don't even get me started on that so Cora did some amazing research um for us about ozempic and wagovi and some of those other medications that kind of go along with Ozempic that do similar things. So if any of our listeners aren't sure exactly what Ozempic is or what it does, according to this looks like it's from the New York Times by Danny Blum. It was published in 2024. Both Wegovy and Ozempic contain semiglutide, which mimics the hormones GLP-1 to stimulate insulin production in the pancreas and slow down stomach emptying, making people feel fuller faster and for longer. There are two other kinds of drugs which are Mojern, Monjarojaro, sorry and bound. They work similarly but they use tri-zepatide tri-zeptide rather than semi-glutide to stimulate both glp-1 and a second hormone.
Speaker 1:There's a reason I didn't go into medicine. I can't pronounce anything anyways, listening to that and hearing that you're really when people are using it for the purposes that it's meant to do, which is type two diabetes patients who are just unable to lose the weight because of the lack of insulin production. You have a lot of people, specifically in LA, specifically celebrities and stuff like that, that are using it to just lose weight and are using it because your stomach feels fuller, You're not having to eat as much. It's just a different form of an eating disorder. You're just using a medication to assist you with it, rather than something else. Going off of that, my main issue is that a lot of celebrities, a lot of people that are using it in the public eye, are not disclosing that they're using it and actually saying that they're well, I'm just working out and eating healthier. So then these average Americans, or average consumers, are watching this and being like okay, but that's what I'm doing and it's not working for me. Why is it not working for me? It's just so harmful.
Speaker 2:And you have to take my understanding and I could be wrong on this, but I have quite a few clients that are doing Ozempic is that it's like a lifelong thing, like you have to keep taking it. You just don't take it for a short period of time and then stop taking it thing Like you have to keep taking it. You just don't take it for a short period of time and then stop taking it. And what I want everybody to remember is the reality in this country and this is why we started the podcast is that this country is a business. People like to, you know, claim it's a, it's a democratic Republic. Sure, it's a business.
Speaker 2:This entire country is about making money off the people who live here, and making a drug that somebody is going to have to be dependent on for the rest of their life in order to make them feel a certain way is 100% profit when the weight problem is caused by the same organizations that are now selling medications that you're going to buy to get you to a place where you're losing weight again, right? So it is 100% about profit, profit, profit. And we all know I mean there's studies coming out right now about, I think some of the side effects of Ozempic and drug loss medications with like stomach paralysis. I have no doubt in my mind that big pharma knew those things before they released those products, because now they can sell you medications for the side effects that you can buy and spend more money on and put more money into their pockets while they're killing us basically. So I am 1000 opposed to all of the weight loss drugs and I always have I going off of the?
Speaker 1:I like having to stay on it for um like for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1:my understanding with, specifically, ozempic I don't know if like will go V and those other drugs are similar my understanding with Ozempic is that if you stop, you're going to gain all the way back not all, but you're going to gain a lot of the weight back because the stimulant of the insulin and the stomach fullness is going to go away after you stop taking the medication and then you're just going to go back to your eating habits, which I'm not saying. For some people who are using Ozempic not the right reasons, it might not be a bad thing to gain a little weight back. Not the right reasons. It might not be a bad thing to gain a little weight back. I mean some of the celebrities.
Speaker 2:You look at now and you're like, oh my gosh, you've gone too far, yeah, yeah, but it's, but it's addicting, like once people start to see the weight come off it, it feeds into the body dysmorphia and the eating disorder or the disordered eating, you know, and then, of course, it's going to create a dependence on something that they have to keep paying for and keep taking.
Speaker 1:That's going to be damaging their body yeah, but it's all profitable, like you said, it's profitable profitable on the drug and it's profitable on the fast food. And when you're driving down the street and you're passing 20 mcdonald's and like five burger kings and you're like I, the street, and you're passing 20 McDonald's and like five Burger Kings and you're like I need something quick to eat, it's right there, I. It's faster and easier than going to a local restaurant or cooking something at home. So you're profiting from those end. And then you're also profiting from the end of influencers and social media and those women or creators, men, whoever, who are promoting like well, this is what I do and I look like this, but they're making money off of that as well, and who knows what they're showing you. Is that the reality? Or is that just what they're putting on because they're getting sponsorships and other things? It's just oh.
Speaker 2:Because, again, like I just said, at the end of the day, you are a dollar sign. Yeah, we all are. So when, when, when, companies are looking this is why they spend billions of dollars on research to the cigarette, the nicotine companies and the cigarette companies they're great examples of this. I mean, they would hire teams that would specifically look at how do I get white women, julia's, to smoke? How do I get people of color who are between these ages to smoke? How do we get gay men to smoke? How do we get trans people to smoke? They will spend billions of dollars on marketing to specific people to get them to buy their product, knowing that it's going to kill them because they're going to be like the healthy dead, as they refer to them, right, so they're going to keep buying their product and they do that with everything, which is why boycotts are so important and why there's so much pushback about boycotts not working. Right, like there's all this. Don't do it, it's a waste of time, like you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Tell that's a starbucks. How much money have they lost? Yeah, right, or other companies, because boycotts do work. At the end of the day, we are dollar signs and if they're not getting our dollar signs, if they're not getting that income, they're going to change what they're doing. But more people have to get on board and do that.
Speaker 2:I just found out, um, and I'm sure for the people who've lived in connecticut for a longer time than I have, they probably are already aware, but I just found out. So we have the second highest energy cost in the entire country. Hawaii has number one and we have Eversource, who is making record profits off their CEO the CEO right. They're making shit ton of money while our our expenses, our energy bills, are going up and up and up and for a lot of people becoming unaffordable. Well, the reason why is because during COVID, when they weren't charging people, when people weren't paying their bills, they tacked that onto our bills. So basically they just kind of divided what was owed back and now we're being charged that. So we're being. We are now paying for the lost wages that Eversource had during COVID, which is why our bills are skyrocketing and somehow that apparently, is approved.
Speaker 2:So personally again, as somebody who lives in Connecticut, I am not voting for any incumbent. They are all disgusting people in this state, every single one of them, I mean, not to mention the fact that I've talked about this numerous times. They support genocide. And I'm just going to throw this out there, because I emailed Joe Courtney and I told him I was gonna trash him as much as I could.
Speaker 2:He's my, he's my congressman and I know when this whole thing started with with the genocide, I had emailed him and he responded back saying like I'm one of the few congressmen who's been to Gaza and Palestine and I know how bad it is there and I've seen firsthand how awful the people there are being treated, and it's, it's unimaginable. And it was going on and on, and on, and on and on. Yet he goes to the meeting with war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and kisses his ass while he's there, right? So like you can't say one thing and then do the other thing. And he's a scum bucket, they're all scum buckets and I think we need to vote them all out. A scum bucket, they're all scum buckets and I think we need to vote them all out.
Speaker 1:That's my two cents for the day.
Speaker 2:Thank you for attending I have to because I'm so like this, this causes me so much rage.
Speaker 1:Um, I was gonna say you gotta stick to your word too. If you said that that's what you were gonna do, you're gonna trash your man. I need you got ta. Yeah, you gotta do it.
Speaker 2:I'm a man of my word and, unlike most of the people that I'm seeing today, my values don't shift. So I'm 100% opposed to genocide. I don't care if it's coming from the Democratic Party, the Republican Party. I'm 100% opposed to it, period.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Hands down period. All right, again sorry. Moving on All right.
Speaker 1:Again, sorry. Moving on Totally switch of topics, I wanted to bring up another just societal cultural norm within America is BMI's body mass index, which I know that there's more. I remember there being more emphasis on it when I was younger, like in my pediatrician's office and everything pretty much. For anyone who is unaware, not sure what the BMI is, because they're not from.
Speaker 1:America or just have never been exposed to it. Bmi stands for body mass index. When you go to the doctor, they take your weight and they also take your height. They then insert those into kind of like a chart thing and then that determines according to your depending on your height, depending on your age, like range, and then your weight, you are classified either as underweight, average, overweight or obese. Classified either as underweight, average, overweight or obese According to one of the studies that CORA was amazing to do.
Speaker 1:According to the World Health Organization, this was published in 2024. In 2022, one in eight people in the world were living with obesity. This is according to the BMI scale and I don't love that. They did this worldwide, but looking for specifically in America, in 2022, 43% of adults ages 18 or over were overweight and 16% were living in obesity. The reason I bring this up is with specifically BMI.
Speaker 1:I think of my brothers so I have twin younger brothers who are three years younger than me my brother's experience with the BMI scale. Whenever I was a kid, like I mentioned earlier, I was always considered underweight. So whenever they would talk to me about my BMI, it was always like you're not eating enough, you need to eat more and meanwhile my mom's sitting in the doctor's office with me and she's like she literally eats the most out of our entire family. I don't know what else to do. Like it is what it is. On the other hand, my twin younger brothers were considered obese whenever they did the BMI scale, from when I remember up until they were like 17, 18. On the BMI scale, they were always considered obese. Now my brothers are the furthest thing from obese. They're both baseball players. They're both very active. So the issue with the BMI is it doesn't take in muscle mass at all and it doesn't take in body types either, because some people just have a bigger body type, but they're not obese.
Speaker 1:Now I remember there was one year that my brothers both went to the doctor's office. Their doctor was like your BMI says it's obesity. Both of my brothers had a conversation with their doctor of how to lose weight. Now this is when they're we're like 13. And I remember us leaving the doctor's office and my mom in the car, having to talk to both of them and like talk them off a ledge and pretty much being like yeah, well, what the doctor said was bullshit.
Speaker 1:And like they're not taking into account this. They're not taking into account that. They're not taking into account that the fact that you guys are playing baseball like six days a week and you're constantly outside and doing things Like there's nothing else we can do, this has lasting effects, at least on one of my brothers. I know this for like just observing and everything, but the fact that this is the information that the doctors, the health professionals, are telling kids. You're having a conversation with a 14 year old. Well, according to the BMI, you're considered obese, so you need to lose weight. When you look at him and you can tell like he's obviously active, he's healthy, he's doing everything right, like it's just so appalling to me.
Speaker 2:You know what this reminds me of. So working when I was working in addiction and agencies and this with a addiction specific treatment back in the before the opiate crisis, there was this big push for pain scales. So, they would tell you you know, our, our companies would tell us this that when a client came in like, say, you came in for marijuana dependency, like you'd been smoking marijuana, you want to quit smoking.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:That the most important thing we had to screen for was pain and it had to be addressed immediately. So when you came, there was like literally a whole pain scale. So when you came in, we had to go through what you know. What type of pain are you on a scale of one to 10? How much pain do you have? What type of pain is it? Sharp, shooting, stabbing, burning, blah, blah, blah, blah?
Speaker 2:And the very first thing we had to treat was the pain and Jayco which, for those of you that don't work in healthcare, jayco, which I think is the joint healthcare accreditation committee or something like that they were the ones that would determine whether or not the agencies were accredited. So they would come in like every so many years and they would do like these spot checks and you had to be following all these policies and procedures and they'd go through like all your charts blah, blah, blah, blah, blah it and procedures, and they'd go through like all your your charts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was coming from them, right? So they were like the pain management needs to be the number one thing you address. So obviously, if that's the case, you can imagine the amount of opiates being prescribed just going through the roof, duh boy, I wonder who's. I wonder where that was coming from, right so then, oh surprise, surprise, we have an opiate crisis.
Speaker 2:Gosh, how did that happen? Right? So I, I truly believe that's what's happening with ozempic and mogovi and all those medications right now, where it is doing the exact same thing, right? So, like, everything is now about wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Like, how are we gonna? How can we profit off making you hate your body? And the more we can get you to hate your body, the more money we can make.
Speaker 2:And we have to collectively stop doing that. And it's really hard because we get it everywhere. We get it on TV, we get it on billboards, we get it on people's clothing, we get it on video games, we get it on everything. You know, like companies who purposely have made their products smaller sizes than they actually are, so that people will buy their clothes and then say, oh my god, how is it that I, I'm no longer like a 34 because, like I, I can't fit in them anymore, or like whatever the size is, when in reality, that this, the clothes, are intentionally smaller and mislabeled so that people will make them then be like, oh my god, I'm so fat, I need to do all this stuff, right, so we need to stop feeding into all that narrative. And it's super hard. I mean, like I said, we all do it going off the clothes thing.
Speaker 1:I think it's becoming more prevalent in men, in men's clothing with the changing of sizes and everything like that women's clothing. I I know for a fact that this is a shared experience, the fact that I am a different size, like pant size or shirt size, in every single brand of clothing, like my closet. There's no consistency with sizing. That happens in men's.
Speaker 2:It happens. It absolutely has happened in men's clothing too, because I can buy jeans for three different companies and suddenly my waist size goes up or down two inches depending on like what company I'm buying from it. And it's like if you're measuring in inches, the inches should be the same regardless of what pant company you're buying from, right? So it does happen. I think it happens way more, way more and for a longer time in women's clothes way more.
Speaker 2:But it is certainly now crossed over into men's clothing and it's been going on for a long time. Actually, I'd probably say it's been going on for a good 10 years.
Speaker 1:It is so interesting, specifically with the men's clothes because at least like, not at least. But with the women's clothes, because at least like, not at least. But with the women's clothes, like pant sizing specifically, there is that ambiguity of like a size zero versus a size 24 and like what store size 10 is like compared to another store size 10, but in men's jeans, or like men's pants, it's by inches. Yep, like that should be like very cut and dry and like, okay, 24 inches or like 32 inches is the same across the. It makes no sense.
Speaker 1:But I also think of like sizing and everything. Like my, my boyfriend is a twig. Like he's very skinny, but like the shirt sizes he has. Like he has XL, xls, he has larges and stuff like that. If you were to look at him you'd be like there's no shot how you wear an xl, but like that's his size because anything else is too short on him so here's an interesting thing I just want.
Speaker 2:I want to point this out and I bet some of our listeners are going to pick this up too. So we just spent this entire time talking about, like body image, and you just called your boyfriend too skinny and a twig.
Speaker 1:So I was saying it and all I was thinking to myself, like literally while it was leaving my mouth, is that matt's gonna call me out of course I am.
Speaker 2:I mean, but I called myself out too right, like when, when I was talking about it earlier. I mean we should, as you, I don't think any where none of us are immune to it None of us and it's insidious, it it's in every single thing, every single thing we do. You know one of the big things in gaming? Cause you're a gamer too right, like you, aren't you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, More cozy. I don't. If someone's trying to kill me, I usually deter away from those games.
Speaker 2:Something that we have seen, for I mean, I grew up probably with like an Atari in my hand. I've gone through like all the gaming systems and I've seen them evolve over the years, but particularly in fantasy games, role-playing games or I would imagine even maybe in some of the first person shooter games, which I don't play that many of, is you know, when the male characters get stronger, they get bigger and their armor gets bigger. When female characters get stronger, they get more naked yeah right.
Speaker 2:So, like their, their powerful armor becomes like a thong and a you know like like a like a bra and it's like look how powerful they are little pasties and it's like, yeah, that's really going to stop you if you were like fighting somebody, but OK, it's everywhere.
Speaker 2:And I know one of the other studies that Cora referenced is was about the, the ages that we referenced earlier. I think by let me just double check that by Menendo and Pope that the majority of TikTok users are Gen Z and that 49 million daily users are below the age of 14. And then if you compare that with the amount of disordered eating that's taking place on TikTok, so they are starting like what's that woman's name? Eugenia, I don't know her last name.
Speaker 1:She is Tony Cooney.
Speaker 2:Maybe I mean she is scary and I don't mean I don't mean scary in the sense that you know she's a scary person, but you're watching her die.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:On live videos. I mean, the girl is. The woman is incredibly emaciated and barely can walk. She's falling over half the time and she has this ridiculous following of people telling her how good she looks and like how skinny she looks.
Speaker 2:The woman is a walking corpse. I mean that's what she looks. Yeah, the woman is a walking corpse. Yeah, I mean that's what she looks like. And you know, you have these 14-year-olds that are watching this 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds or even younger when they're super impressionable about their body and their identity and they're absorbing this and it's killing them, right, it's? It's creating like these awful, awful, distorted body images. Now, I don't want to trash, necessarily, tiktok, because I do think TikTok does have some really great content on there. I mean, most of us wouldn't even know what's happening in terms of the genocide if it wasn't for TikTok. So I mean I I certainly don't want to trash that app as a whole, but I mean any. Any social media app that you're looking at goes based off algorithms. So I mean, if you're watching stuff, you're going to obviously be more exposed to that stuff.
Speaker 1:So, um, but we, we, I think it's an epidemic, like we need to do something about it I was thinking last point on this, like when you were saying like your genius followers are saying that she looks good and everything like that. That also makes me think of like other influencers. There's one that sticks out to me. She goes by like Remy Joe on Tik TOK she. The original content she was doing was that she was a model, like a considered an overweight model and was doing like plus size campaigns and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:She's recently had like a breakup and has been losing a lot of weight like post breakup. All of her comments are like you look amazing, you look so good. And there's a really this common theme of it. Like someone loses weight, no matter if it's like healthy or unhealthy, the common messages is like you look amazing, you look so good. What have you done differently? So no wonder people are wanting to lose more and more weight. If you're getting that positive feedback of like you look so good, oh my gosh, what are you doing differently? The person's just going to want to lose more and more weight and then it's going to go into this cycle of just wanting to lose more and more yeah, which again is also comparable to ageism.
Speaker 2:Right, because then we do the same. Thank god, you look so young oh my god, you look so great. Like you don't look your age. Like it's the. It's the same thing. We we are so superficial, based on what people are perceiving, and we want this perfect we're getting like very depressing and dark sorry no, don't apologize well you know, the reality is most of the stuff that we talk about is going to be dark I know, I feel like the what do within our personal life, within our social media life, within those things.
Speaker 1:What can we do to combat these negative messages, this, just this negative trend that is happening within our society?
Speaker 2:I'm reading a book right now. I haven't finished reading it so I can't attest to the whole thing. However, I can attest to the author because I think the author is amazing uh, johan harry, and the original book that I read by him was Chasing the Scream, which really takes a look at addiction treatment and the fallacies behind a lot of the stuff that happens and why the disease model is maybe not necessarily an accurate model, and I loved the book. It's all backed up by facts. He references a whole bunch of different studies. He has quite a few books out there right now.
Speaker 2:The one I'm reading right now is called Lost Connections and he pretty much does all the stuff that I think in my head about what's wrong with this country. He does the research behind. So it matches up right, because I have a very mixed feeling about research. I mean, I think we all know research can prove whatever you want it to prove and you know. Just again, look at big pharma. So in this, in this particular book, he talks about why we in this country are not doing so well and the lost connections that we have are two different things and you know he talks about. Again, I haven't read the whole book so I can't talk about everything in it, but you know he talks about work and how most of the people in this country I think it was 70 percent of the people in this country hate their jobs and they're they're locked into jobs they don't like and then we are disconnected from our friends, we're disconnected from nature, we're disconnected from values and morals and we're just connected from all of these different things. And I think where he's going in the book is that if we can get reconnected to all these stuff you know the things that we've been taking away that will get better. And that's what I've been saying pretty much all along is that we are COVID did a number on us in terms of social isolation and getting really disconnected from people, which is why it's so much easier now for people to just not care about their fellow citizens, their you know their neighbors, all that stuff. We are constantly at war with everybody. Whether it's because of your political affiliation, your gender identity, your sexual orientation, your socioeconomic status, your race, your age, we are constantly at war with each other. Your race, your age, we are constantly at war with each other constantly.
Speaker 2:And I I know just from going hiking, like I said I've been going hiking for you know, like the last week, week and a half. Um, there was one day and I and again this is kind of returning back to nature that I was walking on a trail and there was a. There was a stream maybe like a foot deep, not moving quickly, and there was a rock out on the middle of the stream, maybe like a foot deep, not moving quickly, and there was a rock out on the middle of the stream. And I thought, man, that'd be really cool if I could go kind of just sit out on that rock and meditate for a little while. And then I get in my head about like what if I'm walking out there and I fall in the water? Like what if I slip? And you know, I'm trying to talk myself out of it and I'm like, well, I'm not 20 anymore, so like I don't want to, you know.
Speaker 2:Plus, I'm by myself right, so like I don't want to have something happen and I fall and nobody finds me and I'm kind of catastrophizing all these things in my head. Maybe some of them could have been a real, I don't know. But I, you know, I had this. I had this moment where I was like, or I could just take my shoes on there and walk out there anyway, what does it matter? Yeah, yeah. So I did it. I went out there anyway and I sat on the rock for a good 20 minutes and it probably felt like an hour and I literally just I was just meditating on like the moment, like I was listening to the birds and the water and like feeling the sun and like looking at the trees and smelling the air. I felt amazing for the rest of the day.
Speaker 2:Amazing, and I think that's the stuff we need to reconnect to is getting back in touch with humanity and each other and you know, like the whole thing with debates right now, right, like the political debates, I'm so sick of debates, and I don't I'm not even talking about just political, I'm just talking about general because, first of all, debates are a bunch of bullshit, because we know the large majority of people you're never going to change their mind.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't remember what the percentage is, but it's very small in terms of how many people go into a situation open-minded enough to change their opinion. So you're already going in believing what you want. You've got confirmation, bias, all this other stuff. So the whole point of going into the debate is to prove the other person wrong and to prove yourself right. It has nothing to do with actually trying to understand the other person and understand where the other person is coming from, and I think that's what we have to stop doing. We have to stop just attacking people and understanding people, but also understanding ourselves, and I think, if we can get there, things like weight and age and all of the things we worry about won't necessarily matter anymore, because we'll be more comfortable in just who we are we'll be more comfortable in just who we are.
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, when I was asking the question and thinking about what my response would be, it was very similar of just getting connected and also having open conversations about these quote-unquote taboo subjects of weight loss, of diet culture, of things like that. Within the same article that we keep referencing the Menendo and Pope article they use a term called weight-inclusive view. That is that bodies come in a variety of shapes and sizes. People in all body sizes can achieve healthy health with opportunity to pursue health behaviors and access to non-stigmatizing health care. Weight inclusivity doesn't define weight control as a health behavior associated with improved physical and mental health outcomes and may foster more healthy behaviors.
Speaker 1:Kind of taking on a viewpoint of the weight inclusive view, understanding that not everyone is going to look the same. Everyone's not cookie cutter. That's not how body types work, that's not how humans work, but also our connection and connecting with our neighbors, connecting with our friends, connecting with our family chosen or biological and just creating that connection with ourselves, with nature, with friends, with other social supports. There's such a lack of that there is going. There feels like there will be a lack of that with the upcoming months, just with the political climate within our country and the heightened anxiety regarding what's happening in America, but also what's happening in Gaza and our Americans, america's impact on that. I think connecting with nature.
Speaker 2:I love hiking, I love sitting out in the sun and soaking up all the vitamin d we have to right, like we absolutely have to try to return to that one thing we did forget to mention. So so Carla, uh, carla for those of you who don't know, carla is one of my former students who actually works for me now. She's also an amazing person. She had brought up.
Speaker 2:She had asked us to mention cultural impact of um the, the negative images of weight, where she was talking about going back to Peru, is it? I'm trying to remember it's Peru, right?
Speaker 2:And how she's afraid to go back because she's gained some weight and she said she knows that if she goes down there she's just going to be harassed and made fun of by like every single one of her relatives. And you know, certainly I've seen that in different cultures they do put a big emphasis on weight. The one thing I think we do have to be careful of and this is with every topic that we have is also going to the opposite extreme, right, when suddenly we don't talk about health issues that are related to weight, because there certainly are some that are directly attributed to people's weight and in those cases when that's brought, then the then it turns into like don't weight?
Speaker 2:shame me, and I think when you're talking about facts and if somebody, if it truly is a weight related issue, it does need to be talked about yeah so we, we can't, because, again, like a pendulum and this happens with everything we go from one extreme where it's all bad to where it's all good and we can't do that, so it has to be, and it also takes away from things then when they really, when they are important. So we have to be able to have a dialogue where when it's bs, it's bs and we call it bs and we don't allow them to make money off of us and we, you know, we, we use our dollars to put it in places that are going to support us actually being healthy, but if it actually is a real medical issue, that it needs to be talked about as a real medical issue without feeling like we can't do it yes right and that's a.
Speaker 1:That's again with everything I was gonna say, yeah, that's across the board. I think it's applicable, of course, to diet, culture and weight gain and everything, but it also is applicable to, you said, every other topic we've discussed so far.
Speaker 2:Right, Wow, that was a pretty good episode. I hope everybody enjoyed that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 2:So what are we talking about next time? You wanted to talk about toxic influencers, right?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, mom influencers, mom influencers mom influencers.
Speaker 2:Is that the official word, mom influencers?
Speaker 1:I don't know. If it's not, I've coined it.
Speaker 2:Good for you. Copyright it Get credit for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, All right everybody.
Speaker 2:So thank you for tuning in once again and if you have any ideas or suggestions, again, feel free to email us. You can actually contact us now right through the podcast directly. There is a link for fan mail. Some people have been using it, so certainly feel free to use it and send Julia myself, you know any topics you want us to cover, or if you want to give Cora a shout out for being absolutely amazing in her research skills. Yes, that would be great. So thank you, everybody, and we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody and thank you again for listening. This is just a reminder that no part of this podcast can be duplicated or copied without written consent from either myself or Wendy. Thank you again.
