In this episode, we dive into the complex and often sensitive topic of body weight, fitness, and societal perceptions. We discuss the realities of weight stigma, personal responsibility, and how different struggles—whether visible or not—impact our lives. With personal insights and an open conversation, we aim to navigate this subject with honesty and empathy. Join us as we explore what it means to be real with ourselves about health, lifestyle choices, and the effects they have on our well-being.
Highlights from this episode:
- The Reality of Weight Stigma – Personal experiences and how society treats people differently based on body size.
- Health vs. Appearance – Why being lean doesn’t always mean being healthy, and why obesity isn’t always about lack of discipline.
- Taking Ownership of Your Choices – A candid discussion about personal responsibility, lifestyle habits, and their consequences.
- Empathy & Understanding – Acknowledging the challenges of weight struggles while encouraging self-awareness and action.
Tune in for an honest, relatable chat that goes beyond the highlight reels and into the heart of what it means to connect authentically.
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Related Phrases:
weight stigma, health vs. body size, fitness myths, lifestyle choices, misconceptions about obesity
Transcript:
[Giacomo:]
We’re already recording?
[Dani:]
We are, we are. You’re doing the intro. And we’re at 206.
206. All day. No, just today.
Are we ready to rock and roll?
[Giacomo:]
At some point we’re going to record, I swear. Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins, Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Giacomo.
[Dani:]
And I’m Dani.
[Giacomo:]
And this is episode 206.
[Dani:]
All right, so I think that we should actually just dive right into this one. I don’t even think we need any, any chitchat.
[Giacomo:]
Nobody cares about what we’re doing anyway. Let’s go right, right to what we’re ready to talk about anyway. Let’s not waste any time.
Well, I kid. We have been doing some cool stuff. But yeah, this is a big topic is what it is.
[Dani:]
This is a topic that I should have recorded about six years ago, honestly.
[Giacomo:]
Were you afraid to record this?
[Dani:]
Yeah, actually. I know. Terrified to record this particular topic because it’s very hard to talk about.
It’s very complicated and nuanced. And it’s also highly emotional for a lot of people. And I think it’s was especially very easy to offend somebody talking about this topic.
[Giacomo:]
Like any socio-political topic and one that is not fully fleshed out and that has a lot of room for interpretation, even though it is an intrinsically good thing.
[Dani:]
And what we’re talking about today is the health at every size movement, which is and has been, I don’t, I actually don’t remember when I first started noticing that it started, but it’s been around for a while, a long while. And it’s evolved a lot in that amount of time. And I have followed along pretty closely for as long as I’ve known about it.
But Giacomo has not. He’s not super familiar with it other than the name and what you probably think that implies, right? Health at every size.
So this is going to be a kind of podcast where Giacomo is going to learn about it. And I’m going to get to finally, after many, many years, give my thoughts on the whole thing.
[Giacomo:]
Well, why don’t we all learn together? Because I’m sure that I’m not the only one who’s been in the dark about the movement itself, as well as where it was birthed from, where it came from. Why don’t we just start with describing the, defining the health at every size movement?
[Dani:]
Well, it sounds like you have the actual literal textbook definition here, which I do not. So I’d be curious to hear what the actual textbook definition of it is.
[Giacomo:]
Health at every size is a public health framework that promotes the idea that health is not determined by body size. H-A-E-S encourages people to focus on healthy behaviors, such as eating well and being physically active instead of trying to lose weight. And this health at every size movement was established by the Association for Size, Diversity and Health back in the nineties.
[Dani:]
Wow. In the nineties. So sometimes health at every size is used interchangeably with the fat acceptance movement.
That’s another term and they probably mean slightly different things, but I hear them used interchangeably, colloquially, fat acceptance, body positivity movement. They all technically mean different things, but a lot of people use them interchangeably. So probably use them a little bit interchangeably here.
[Giacomo:]
Before we get into the culture of all of this, which is something you are much more intimately familiar with than I, and I definitely have some blind spots here, that’s for sure. But I’m going to catch up for the purpose of this conversation. We should talk about why this movement was established in the first place or more over the organization and what their intention was with it.
[Dani:]
So I don’t actually know anything about the organization that started this. I know, I mean, I know why it happened. You might have some different information there, but generally speaking, and I think most people would agree with this in the United States at least, there has historically been a huge amount of weight stigma around people who are plus sized, where, you know, if someone is overweight, they’re automatically seen as unhealthy.
And the first step to becoming healthier is to lose weight. They go to the doctor because their elbow hurts, and they’re like, you just need to lose weight. You know, they can’t see the person, especially in the medical field, without first talking about their weight, even if their weight isn’t necessarily the thing that’s causing the problem.
So there’s a lot of discrimination there. There’s a lot of discrimination in the way people are represented in the media. I mean, how many movies and television shows did we have to see the funny fat friend, especially in the 90s?
I mean, that was insane at the time. Like literally being fat was the joke, which is pretty terrible. And of course, the answer to this was a tremendous amount of fear.
Like there are still people I know to this day that there is nothing on earth that is scarier to them than gaining weight or becoming overweight. Like they would literally rather die than be overweight, and that’s not an exaggeration. And that led to a lot of problems.
So what happened was this movement was created to encourage the idea, you can be healthy at all sizes. Sounds wonderful, right? Like we don’t have to focus on diet.
We don’t have to focus on counting calories, doing tons of cardio. We can focus on more positive habits, like eating healthier, moving our bodies in ways that feel good, taking care of ourselves, speaking positively about ourselves rather than talking down to ourselves, and trying to make that like a generally accepted policy by the public.
[Giacomo:]
All while understanding fundamentally that this has deep, deep roots in the broken healthcare systems, the broken medical systems, and the field and the framework that they use.
[Dani:]
And if we go beyond this and look at the body positivity movement, remember these are often used interchangeably. The body positivity movement stemmed from things like racism, being disabled and viewed differently for that, like body positivity, regardless of what your body was, whether it was covered in scars or you happen to be a race that people treated you differently for because your body was a different color, different sizes. Some people like, you know, didn’t have a leg or something.
We are accepting of all bodies. All bodies are good bodies, right? Again, all of this is wonderful.
And I love the sound of everything that I’m hearing so far. But the body positivity movement over time seemed to be co-opted by fat acceptance, almost exclusively just overweight bodies and predominantly overweight white women. That’s a separate thing.
We could get into that another time or not. But again, all of these movements, fat acceptance, body positivity, health at every size, they kind of melded together in a lot of ways.
[Giacomo:]
And then you have us, the nutritionists and the… The enemy. Just kidding.
Well, we have some extreme ends over here on our side as well. Athletes, for example, who take things to a competitive level, which you already know our argument with that. Do it if you love it.
It’s inherently unhealthy and challenging, et cetera, et cetera. And then of course our focus on, well, let’s just put it out there. Dieting is something we focus on.
We don’t call it dieting. Sometimes we do.
[Dani:]
But I don’t think that dieting can be harmful. Diet culture is absolutely harmful where it’s just like a normal thing that we talk about and push on people and kids and outside conversations. Absolutely problematic.
But dieting doesn’t have to be harmful in the right framework.
[Giacomo:]
But what do you do when you take on a client, Dani? Is the first thing that you do is you acknowledge their goal. And if it’s dieting and weight loss and a certain amount of weight over a certain period of time, if they’re that kind of person, oh, well, I think it’s sort of like, hey, don’t shame that.
Put it out there, right?
[Dani:]
But the flip side of that is if somebody’s, if somebody comes to us and they’re technically overweight and their goal is not weight loss, I’m not gonna be like, hey, have you considered losing 20 pounds? Like I would never do that if that wasn’t somebody’s goal in the first place. I always say it’s not my job to determine somebody’s goal.
It’s my job to get them there.
[Giacomo:]
And depending on how dysmorphic someone is or how disordered they are when it comes to how they eat or how they see themselves or what they feel they need to and or should do, we actually might move them away from that being the point of focus in the topic. I mean, the outcome is gonna be the same, but the process in which you get there is going to be radically different from person to person.
[Dani:]
So over time, this health at every size movement, which on its face, as we’ve just described it, I think sounds great, right? I mean, doesn’t everything we said so far sound great? I mean, I think it does.
Like, yeah, no, your health is not determined solely by your body weight. That’s insane. But it’s changed.
It morphed over time to become certainly people that were like just touching into the overweight category and maybe well into the overweight category and then into the obese category and then into the morbidly obese category where many of the influencers in the community, some well over 400 pounds, 500 pounds, sometimes more, like talking about health at every size and how body size is not making them unhealthy.
And if they happen to have health problems, that is completely unrelated to their weight. And I feel like this is where things kind of started to slip off the rails. And a lot of people just started to slip into straight delusion and science denial.
And I feel like an asshole saying that, but it’s true. Because I think where people get confused is that health at every size can be untrue in that, yes, there are body sizes that you cannot be healthy at on both ends. And we’ll talk about that later.
But that in no way means that a person who is 500 pounds is not worthy of respect and dignity and proper medical care, et cetera, et cetera. This person can be worthy of all of those things and deserving of all of those things and treated like a human being, which is crazy that we even have to say that, while also acknowledging the fact that there is a tipping point and a certain amount of weight on your body and body fat on your body will absolutely negatively affect your health. And for years, it was like taboo to even say that, what I just said.
And maybe it still is, I don’t know. That’s the land we were in for a while.
[Giacomo:]
Yeah. And then you could take those who are not morbidly obese or, and maybe not even necessarily in the obese category, and also those who are in the obese category that are focusing on the wrong reasons to change their behaviors and how they’re eating and how they see themselves, right? They’re focusing on weight loss and looking a certain way and doing it in a destructive way and with the wrong reason.
[Dani:]
What do you mean?
[Giacomo:]
So like, let’s just say someone’s like, I wanna be thin, so I’m just gonna take a bunch of stimulants or I’m gonna starve myself out or I just wanna look this way because I know I’ll be healthy. But in reality, they’re just like focused on what they look like and they’re afraid, they’re fat phobic, essentially.
[Dani:]
Right. And there was a point in time where saying what I just said, you cannot be 500 pounds and be healthy. That was seen as fat phobic.
And I do not consider myself to be a fat phobic person. But some folks might hear this podcast and think differently of me or you afterwards.
[Giacomo:]
And here’s the other question. Those individuals who have met the weight, body weight criteria for the body mass index that was originally meant for white men, that’s how, or just like for medical treatment in general and for health insurance, those who have met the weight criteria to be treated, they could be way unhealthier than someone who is like tipping over into the obese category and they could have gotten there for the wrong reasons.
[Dani:]
Right, okay. Hypothetical. I follow you, I follow you.
[Giacomo:]
You know what I mean? And then, but they’re getting taken care of. And on top of it all, they’re not getting judged.
And on top of it all, people are looking at them smiling and being like, oh, you just, yeah, you have a stressful life or whatever. Take that person weighted against the 500 pound person, for example, or someone in the middle. That’s just not right.
[Dani:]
Well, I mean, this is a very, very, very large range we’re talking about here. I think it’s possible that when health at every size was created by this particular organization, I mean, I was alive in the nineties. Yes, certainly there were obese folks in the nineties.
It was different. Like it was just different. There were fewer folks that were obese.
There were way fewer folks that were morbidly obese and way fewer folks that were, I guess, what I would call like super morbidly obese when we’re up in that 500 pound range. But all of that said, I want to make sure I wrote these down because I think they’re very important. There were, there are a lot of pros to this movement, to the fat acceptance movement, to all of these movements that I want to acknowledge because they’re really important tenants that I think people should listen to and hear and internalize.
Because I think when someone says, oh, you can be healthy at 600 pounds, that’s the health at every size movement. It’s really easy for people to just overlook the whole movement as insane and just move on. And I think there are some real pros in here.
So, well, my first one, I already said it, like everyone deserves respect, period. Like that, again, it feels so insane that this is something that even needs to be said out loud. Yeah, fat people are people.
What? You know, I’m saying it, but I see it. I hear it.
And because I’m a coach, and this probably, you probably experienced this as well. Because I’m a coach, because I help people reach a certain body composition, if that’s their goal, people think like I’m the one that they can kind of make these like jokes to on the side because I’m going to get it because I’m obsessed with health, right? Which I’m not, but I hear it.
And it is infuriating to essentially make fun of someone’s struggles and look at or talk to or treat someone like they’re kind of subhuman because of their weight.
[Giacomo:]
But is it depressity and they’re painfully aware, and they’re just trying to be funny with you? Or is it them coming from a place of insecurity and judging others?
[Dani:]
Oh, you’re talking. Oh, it could be both. I mean, it could be both.
I think there’s also truly a lot of fat phobia. Like people are so afraid of being fat themselves. But it’s like they don’t even realize part of the thing they’re afraid of is assholes like themselves existing, right?
So whatever. I think that another pro is that it did reduce weight stigma. And I think that’s great.
I think that, you know, my aunt whom I love dearly, she is a very large woman. And she said to me so many times in my life, like fat people are the last group of people it’s okay to make fun of. Because when I was a kid, it was common to hear people make fun of people for their race or say gross racist things or disabilities or I could go on.
But she said, you know, fat people are the last ones. I said, hey, vegans get made fun of a lot too. But it’s a little different.
I feel like that’s changed a lot. Certainly there are still those assholes that I just mentioned. But I think that in general, it’s way less acceptable to pick on someone in real life or in the media because they’re not a stick.
[Giacomo:]
I think men probably suffer from that more than women. I don’t think a thin woman is going to be at risk as much of being picked on than a thin man by anyone really.
[Dani:]
But again, even the men have this stereotype of the funny fat friend, right? Like that’s still a trope that exists. It just exists less than it did.
[Giacomo:]
Thinness is celebrated across the board though. No doubt about it.
[Dani:]
But there is like a thickness, certainly for the women that exists now that did not exist then. And on its face, you could be like, well, that’s one of the side effects of the body positivity movement. Like all bodies are good bodies.
You know, you can be thicker and still be beautiful. That’s wonderful. I would argue that it also turned into just another completely unattainable body shape because you couldn’t just be thick and be beautiful.
You had to be thick, but also little in the middle and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But still it was different. It was different than what people looked like in the 90s and early 2000s, right?
[Giacomo:]
So that’s an interesting point you make there.
[Dani:]
Yeah.
[Giacomo:]
Yeah.
[Dani:]
It seemed like, oh, yay, inclusivity, diversity. And it’s like, no, that’s just a shape 90% of women will never be able to achieve without surgery. More representation.
So tags onto that. Like, again, think back to watching like Friends or something on TV, Saved by the Bell. I don’t know.
Think of whatever was on TV back then. The body types were pretty much all the same. Men and women, I would say.
[Giacomo:]
There’s a certain look in Hollywood.
[Dani:]
Yeah. It was all the same.
[Giacomo:]
Yeah.
[Dani:]
And now I feel like that’s definitely changed in both actors and musicians. And there’s famous people that would not have ever made it to television 20 years ago.
[Giacomo:]
Right.
[Dani:]
Because we are being more inclusive in terms of representation in media, which I think is a very important thing. I mean, 30, no, it’s like 50, 55% of Americans are overweight. It might be higher than that, actually.
And then of that, like 30% are obese. You could say that’s good. You could say that’s bad.
I don’t care. The point is, that is our demographic. So why would all of our media show the minority?
Like, we want our media to reflect reality.
[Giacomo:]
Plus, there’s already been decades worth of media created that we need to correct a little bit.
[Dani:]
And when you are a 12-year-old chubby girl, like I was, and you don’t see yourself reflected in anything that you’re watching or listening to or seeing on MTV, when you don’t see yourself reflected anywhere, whether you want to or not, you start to think, there’s something wrong with me. I don’t belong. I have to change.
I’m not good enough. A lot of people will call this glorifying obesity. And I’ll get there, because I do think the movement kind of did that.
But I don’t think this is it. I don’t think just having fat people exist in media is glorifying obesity at all. I think it’s critical to helping people, especially young people, develop a sense of belonging and self-worth.
[Giacomo:]
For sure.
[Dani:]
So that was a positive. I think that it got people talking about diet culture and how toxic it can be, because it is. It’s, I should not have known about the goddamn grapefruit diet at 11 years old.
Why did I know about that? I wasn’t looking it up. There was no internet.
It was just, this was common stuff to talk about all the time. And I feel like that has decreased. I mean, it’s certainly changed form in some ways.
But it’s less. I think parents, relatives are more conscious about certainly what we talk about in front of young people than was the case.
[Giacomo:]
You hope. You don’t know.
[Dani:]
I think so. I can’t be sure. But I think so.
[Giacomo:]
And even if they’re not, there’s much, there are many more resources out there for those who don’t have that kind of support in their households from their parents, because parents pass on their wounds to their children and so on and so forth. And they’re learning how to talk about it as they go. There’s no rule book for any of that.
[Dani:]
And I think that Health at Every Size helped with that, because it got people to at least recognize what is this diet culture-y, toxic kind of conversation? Like, what is that even? You know, it doesn’t have to be like, oh, I’m on a diet.
It could be your aunt at Christmas happening to mention that, you know, you look different than you did last year with a side eye. Like, that’s diet culture. And just recognizing it, I think, helps people detach from it a little bit.
Yeah. So that was a positive. Health care, I think there’s still so much room here.
[Giacomo:]
Yeah.
[Dani:]
Well, I think the health care system in America is hot garbage in the first place, but I won’t go there. But I do think that especially for people who are on the, just in the overweight category, I think that it has improved where doctors are not having, well, just lose weight, be the first and only thing that they say before they tackle the next thing. And there are doctors now who specialize in Health at Every Size.
[Giacomo:]
Okay.
[Dani:]
Where they, you know, they’re probably few and far between. And again, I have mixed feelings about them. Like, how extreme does this go?
But if that’s what you’re looking for, you can find somebody who will do that. You’ll find a doctor that will not weigh you every time you walk in the door as the very first thing that they do. Again, we could get into all the nuances here.
There’s so many nuances. This is like a decade of me just watching everything happening and just being like, huh. You know, some people are like, that’s so fat phobic to weigh people as soon as they come in the office.
I understand that it’s uncomfortable. I don’t like it either. No one likes to get weighed when they just ate breakfast and have all their clothes and their coat on.
Nobody likes that. Like, what if you need a medication? Those doses are based on your weight.
Do you want to die? Do you want the medicine to be effective? There’s scientific reasons that we do these things.
So every single thing I’ve talked about, there’s like, there’s just some like nuance there, I think.
[Giacomo:]
But should you have some sort of health markers that you want to focus on? And it revolves around weight loss. It can be harder to actually get the support and the help you need in the medical field and with health insurance.
I still don’t think any of that is supportive. I mean, but again, you could argue that point.
[Dani:]
But health at every size isn’t about weight loss at all.
[Giacomo:]
Well, yeah. And that’s the criticism of it.
[Dani:]
Right. Oh, I have a cons list. This is just the pros list.
[Giacomo:]
Yeah. Boy, do I have a cons list here. We try to hold back here because that’s obviously part of our bias.
[Dani:]
Well, I just don’t want to make people think like, I hate this movement. I don’t at all. I think that it just like so many movements went all the way off the deep end.
[Giacomo:]
Well, the idea is like, if it doesn’t support dieting and it doesn’t support weight loss, does it also shame dieting and weight loss against it?
[Dani:]
Yeah, right. Great questions, though. So in general, I would say my last pro is that I think as a society, it helped us change what we considered to be healthy.
It broadened our window of what we consider to be healthy. And I think that was very important. And I will explain why later.
And I have science to back that up. My cons list is pretty vague. So just dig because there’s more to say about every single thing here.
So my first con is that eventually, I do think it was glorifying obesity. And I’m not talking about, oh, everybody deserves to love themselves and respect themselves and have respect from other people, regardless of their size. I think that is wonderful.
But I think that there were a lot of influencers who were genuinely glorifying obesity. And there’s an argument to be made that anything a fat person does in public, people think they’re glorifying obesity simply like for existing. Like if you see somebody at a restaurant and they’re obese and they’re eating, it’s like they’re glorifying.
And no, they’re just freaking eating dinner. Like, calm down. We all do it.
But there certainly were people on there that turned the health at every size moving into like mukbangs on YouTube, like watching a woman that’s already 400 plus pounds eat six Whoppers, Whopper meals, like with the fries and the Cokes or whatever in one sitting. That’s so messed up on so many levels.
[Giacomo:]
Can you blame the health at every size moving for that? Or because to me, that sounds more like just a behavioral problem with like society and humans, we just find a way to go to extremes and hurt others and hurt ourselves.
[Dani:]
Well, I don’t blame the movement itself for anything. I just think this is what the movement became was a lot of things like this.
[Giacomo:]
But put it this way, if you put that person there with that organization and in a room with them, would they be like, yay, go you. And you’ll be able to have better, you know, you shouldn’t diet. Yes.
You shouldn’t lose weight and you’ll be able to possibly lose a little bit short term and you’re fine. Blah, blah, blah.
[Dani:]
There were full interviews with some of the leaders in this movement. And also talking about how if you’re at a birthday party, I could not make this up. If you’re at a birthday party and they’re cutting the cake and you say, oh, I just want a small piece.
Like somebody in the health at every size movement, literally one of the like main talking heads for the movement said that that saying that was an act of violence against fat people. Saying you want a certain size piece. Yourself, not oh, cut her a small piece of cake, but saying I just want a small piece was an act of violence against fat people.
[Giacomo:]
That’s very aggressive language. Okay. So this is coming from them.
[Dani:]
I mean, I don’t know if it’s from this organization that you just read about, but certainly one of the figureheads of the movement. And that’s just one example of some of this. Man, it’s so tricky when you hear something and you’re like, yes.
And then the next sentence, you’re like, what? That’s why I think it became so problematic and why people stopped listening to the stuff that I think could actually continue to be helpful. You know, many of these influencers, leaders, whatever, were battling health problems.
Lots of health problems. Diabetes, high cholesterol, prediabetes, because a lot of them are young and beautiful, right? This isn’t to take anything away from how they look.
They were young, beautiful influencers, but they’re in their mid-20s and they’re battling prediabetes and high cholesterol and lipedema and they’re struggling to walk. They’re twisting their ankle regularly. These are health problems.
[Giacomo:]
And they could have used more support from the organization that…
[Dani:]
It has nothing to do with the organization. Forget about the organization. There is no organization.
It’s just a movement. That would be like talking about the vegan organization. It’s just vegans, right?
It might have started with the Vegan Society, but we don’t talk about the Vegan Society, right?
[Giacomo:]
Okay, sure. But maybe the movement could have shifted or… But by definition, if you shouldn’t focus on weight loss or dieting and portion control and behaviors and patterns should result in short-term weight loss and it’s not happening, then what do you do?
You just say, oh, we’ll just continue to raise the flag and be like, this is acceptable. This is okay. This is the movement.
And then where do you go with that?
[Dani:]
Well, a lot of people would say go to a doctor that won’t tell you to lose weight and go to a doctor that’ll just treat your diabetes or treat your lipidema, which you can’t really treat lipidema. Don’t cut foods out of your diet because that’s restriction. A lot of these people, they’re usually women.
This is a largely female community, not entirely, but mostly. They’re going and getting their blood work done and it’s coming back and it’s perfect. Maybe not somebody that’s 500 pounds, but maybe somebody that’s 300 pounds, 350, whatever.
Getting their blood work done and it’s perfect and they’re like, see, I’m fine. Well, guess what? This community has been around for a long time now and a lot of those people that had clean bills of health 10 years ago don’t anymore.
And that’s the thing. They say you can’t tell anything by looking at somebody because they could have better blood work than you. 100% true.
But there are certain things that we know that over time are very likely to lead to health problems. And just because you don’t have them now doesn’t mean you never will. And it was really heartbreaking to watch so many of these women that were vibrant, happy people, like become, you know, unwell and immobile while a community cheered them on for doing so.
[Giacomo:]
Enabled them, one might argue.
[Dani:]
Yes, absolutely. And of course, there’s also the opposite community of people that just go watch these people on YouTube just to be mean to them. Those are the worst.
And that would also encourage of course, them to just go harder at what they were doing.
[Giacomo:]
The worst of enablers. Those are the aggressors. Yeah, those are the ones that.
[Dani:]
So, I mean, it’s been really hard to watch and really hard to comment on because I don’t care what other people do with their body. Like you do you. And I mean that like across the board to everybody about pretty much everything.
But to see somebody making choices for themselves based on misinformation or false beliefs. I mean, this happens with all different kinds of things. It’s just it was really hard to watch and it actually got even sort of worse from there.
So when and if one of these main people, if they did lose weight, the community would attack them. If they lost weight by accident, who knows what happens behind closed doors, the community would attack them. If they said, if they outwardly said, you know, my health is suffering.
I think I need to make these changes. The community was rabid against them. Like you’re a traitor.
You’re a fake. You’re a poser. You’ve abandoned your fat community.
Like look at what people did to Lizzo or still do to Lizzo. Anytime she loses weight, people flip out on her for promoting diet culture. And what?
Like it’s her. First of all, it’s her body. Let her do whatever she wants.
But it made people similarly to how I was afraid to even talk about this for so long. It made people afraid to change their bodies for the better, even if they wanted to, because it was seen as a betrayal.
[Giacomo:]
Yeah, they were getting hit from every angle.
[Dani:]
But again, as time went on, more and more of these people started to have health complications. And I think eventually many of them realized they cannot deny the correlation between morbid obesity and some of the health problems that they were having. You know, there’s being morbidly obese has so many comorbidities that are directly linked to that amount of weight and strain on the body and that amount of body fat.
Your body fat is an endocrine organ. It’s a functioning organ. And if it’s not functioning, if you have too much of it in the wrong places.
And so, yeah, there was that.
[Giacomo:]
And more cons.
[Dani:]
Yeah, I mean, there’s just the amount of science denial in general, just so much science denial. And again, we see this in other movements looking at you vegans. But in this particular area, I feel like it kind of spread its fingers into a lot of communities.
Even if you weren’t yourself a very, very large person, you might have started to believe some of these things to be true. Like you can be healthy at every size.
[Giacomo:]
Yeah, when you cross the line, when you blur the lines and it has to do with your image, how you look, your body versus your health. When those lines become blurred, then there’s room for interpretation and we move further away from science. When it becomes a conversation that community is built around.
Unfortunately, sometimes the conversation becomes so confusing that really terrible things can result from community being built around these kinds of conversations about these kinds of things. So it’s really unfortunate, honestly, because people get hurt in the process.
[Dani:]
I feel like I never heard one of these folks in this community ever say you can be 80 pounds and healthy. I never heard you could be healthy at any size in that direction, right? Because I think we instinctively know you can be too thin and we’ve all seen somebody in person or a celebrity or whatever that was dangerously thin.
And what is the media around that, right? Oh my God, she’s gonna die. She needs to eat something.
Somebody help her. Like if you go, I mean, don’t go looking for this if you don’t already know what I’m talking about. But if you look at Eugenia Cooney’s comments on anything she posts, anything, they’re all, please, please get some help.
Please, one day you’re not gonna be here because she’s been at the verge of death’s door for 10 years. Honestly, I don’t know how she’s still here. And I genuinely pray to God that she gets, but for some reason it’s okay societally to say that, but to see somebody at the other end and say, oh my God, this person needs help.
That was a problem. And mean, it would be like me looking at Eugenia and being like, no, you don’t know anything about her. You haven’t seen her blood work.
How dare you say she’s unhealthy? How dare you ask her to change her life or suggest that that would be helpful for her. It became irrational.
It became completely irrational. What started as something that I think was really wonderful became something that was not. And there’s an end to this story.
You think so? Yes, here’s what happened. These GLP-1 agonists started becoming available to the public.
And suddenly all of these influencers, all of these health at every size influencers were suddenly significantly smaller. Now I’m pro Ozempic. This is who this is for, right?
These people, that’s who this is for. It’s going to save their lives. But all of a sudden, everybody who was like, rah, rah, you can’t make me lose weight.
I’m perfectly healthy, is smaller. And most of them have said, and it’s obvious that they’re taking a GLP-1 agonist of some sort. And it’s led to all of these conversations from them about how, it’s my body and I just wanted to feel better and be healthier and move better and deal with this health problem and that health problem.
[Giacomo:]
Here’s a question for you. Where was all of the focus on the framework of this movement that was supposed to be centered around mindful eating? Where was the focus that was supposed to be centered around portion control?
Where was the focus that was supposed to be centered around changing your behavior and your patterns? Where was the focus on all of that? And where was the focus on accepting that some short-term weight loss would happen?
And in theory- That’s a side effect of moving more. And in theory, there will be no harm in this being a stepping stone. Not encouraging you over time, but definitely not shaming you over time to get there so that you could in fact be healthy, whether it was by natural means, meaning on your own, or whether it was through medical intervention with the right kind of support and resources to medical intervention.
Where was all of that in the movement? Because from what I’ve been hearing, because obviously you have your finger on the pulse with social media and I can understand, but I did not watch it as much as you did. I don’t hear any of that as far as, like that did not enter in…
None of that entered into the conversation. Why? Because those are the tenets of this movement.
It’s what they were supposed to be.
[Dani:]
So I’ll say this. A lot of the influencers would show at least like videos of them exercising, you know, like doing a body weight workout in their living room or going for a walk or like there absolutely were people who were doing this. They’d show their food.
Some days, just like anybody, some days it was healthy, some days it was not healthy, some days it was a lot, some days it was a little. There were people that were doing that, but you don’t get to be that size and stay that size without eating a considerable amount of calories. And, you know, genetics, health conditions, all of that stuff definitely plays a role, but that’s still how it works, whether we like it or not.
You don’t get to maintain 500 pounds on 1200 calories a day. That’s not a thing. It’s not a thing.
It’s not a thing, no matter how many times someone tries to say it, sorry. And, you know, a lot of times people would say like, oh, I listen to my body. You know, if I want a salad, I’ll have a salad.
If I want the cookie, I’ll have the cookie. And like in general, I think that’s mostly a fine way to be when you’re in relatively healthy place. But sometimes, sometimes if you want to improve your health, you can’t always give your body exactly what it wants, like or what your mind wants.
You know, my body wants ice cream every day.
[Giacomo:]
Do you argue that all the time? The what you eat, whether it’s healthy or unhealthy, you’re going to wind up having the tendency to eat more of it. You’re going to crave it.
And it’s what’s going to be the easiest for you routine wise to enjoy and not just think you won’t.
[Dani:]
But here’s here’s the most infuriating thing to me is that when all of these influencers who now now they’re influencers, they’re making a lot of money, right? Okay, right. You see these people with a million subscribers on YouTube, like every video they post, they’re making 10 grand.
Okay, now they’re coming out 50 pounds lighter, 100 pounds lighter, et cetera thing. I decided to start taking Ozempic.
[Giacomo:]
Oh, here we go.
[Dani:]
And they’re saying this to their audience that for years, they’ve been encouraging them to just like live their life and treat themselves. And don’t worry about your body. Don’t worry about your weight for years.
Now they’re subscribers who largely cannot get Ozempic, cannot afford Ozempic. Now they’re watching these people they looked up to shrink because now there’s a much easier way to do it. And I don’t think Ozempic is cheating.
Again, I’m in support of it, but there’s not a question that it makes it easier, right? Duh, that’s why everybody’s doing it. And the followers now they’re feeling betrayed as they should be because all along the chances are very, very good that if these folks could have snapped their fingers and made themselves smaller, they would have.
And they were saying all along that they wouldn’t have, but they would have. And we know that because they did when Ozempic came out and was available to people. I think that now because so many of these folks are now losing weight, now it is slightly more acceptable to have this conversation, which is why I think I’m a coward for just having it now, but I should have done it before that.
[Giacomo:]
Well, but it’s a tough one. In all fairness, we did start to talk about this a little bit in our early years of podcasting, probably like in our first 50 episodes, I think somewhere along there, if you go back to the library.
[Dani:]
And I got messages from people saying that it wasn’t inclusive enough.
[Giacomo:]
And we realized that it was a hot button topic. And when it comes to what all of us do here is we usually don’t just spout off something until we understand it. We don’t start saying things and talking about things and we don’t understand what we’re saying yet.
Unfortunately, the consequence of that is that we’re not part of the conversation publicly. And arguably we could have been part of this conversation.
[Dani:]
We have these conversations with people individually.
[Giacomo:]
Privately, not publicly. The benefit of it is that we’re going to understand what we’re talking about when it comes time to talk about it. When it’s ready for YouTube, essentially, or for, you know, your favorite podcatcher, it’s in your ears.
Like, you know that this is something that that we truly do understand. And believe you me, we’ve been talking about it. We’re just not looking to be a part of the problem is what it is.
[Dani:]
But I do think there was, there is, there is a good, there’s a good thing that came out of this. I think, I guess it didn’t come out of this. There’s a good point that I want to make that goes along with this.
Because I don’t want to make it sound like if you’re overweight, you’re unhealthy. Because the research actually shows this is kind of wild. You know, we talk about BMI all the time.
And it’s not, it’s not a very accurate system. It’s not a very helpful system for a lot of people. Of course, it’s very helpful at the extremes.
Sorry, it’s true. The group with the lowest all cause mortality in BMI is 25 to 30, which is overweight. It’s the overweight category.
Now there could be lots of reasons for that. But it’s the overweight category that has the lowest all cause mortality, not the normal weight.
[Giacomo:]
Yes, but the statistical model in itself is so inherently flawed that I don’t want to sit here and just be like, yes, that’s true, even though correct, statistically speaking, in that BMI index, I mean, you’ve been in the overweight category. I’m an outlier though. So I suppose like, you are, statistically that works, but the model itself is inherently flawed.
But there’s more. Needs to be trashed.
[Dani:]
There’s more. The body, they have the body fat percentages of the lowest all cause mortality.
[Giacomo:]
Okay.
[Dani:]
Because I think a lot of people, especially listeners of this podcast, are probably thinking the ideal body weight, or I’m sorry, the ideal body fat percentage. You know, most women are like 18. 18 is the magic number for women for some reason.
And then for men, what do people usually say?
[Giacomo:]
13 to 15.
[Dani:]
Yeah. Okay.
[Giacomo:]
Like, I don’t want to put in the effort for 13, but I think I like myself better there, but I’d be perfectly fit at 15.
[Dani:]
So the ideal body fat, I shouldn’t say ideal body fat percentage, the body fat percentage with the lowest all cause mortality for men is 20 to 25. Got that one. And women was 25 to 30.
[Giacomo:]
Okay. I was a little off there in my thinking, but that doesn’t surprise me.
[Dani:]
That’s way higher than what most people would think of as acceptable. And I mean, we can imagine this looks like a curve.
[Giacomo:]
Right.
[Dani:]
Right. So it’s not just like, oh, 25 to 30, and then everything else is zero, ladies. It’s probably like, you know, if you’re 31 or 32, that’s not like unbelievably high.
The point being, you know, it’s called health at every size. And I don’t believe in health at every size. No.
[Giacomo:]
But I believe… Take a female to 22 to 25. Take a male to…
[Dani:]
I’m like 20. I’m probably 22 right now.
[Giacomo:]
And then caution them if they want to push it further, even if they have the idea, even if they’re married to the idea for that person who’s like hell bent on like, I want this sort of ideal look. Cause you’d be perfectly healthy at that other shape and size. Perfectly healthy.
And even that is, maybe you don’t even have to take it that far.
[Dani:]
You might not like the look of it as much. Like you might have a different ideal look. Correct.
I get it. You’d be perfectly healthy. Me too.
But the point is health at every size might kind of be bullshit. Right. But health at many sizes is legit.
And it’s way more sizes than I think people realize. And I think that is what we should be taking away from this.
[Giacomo:]
Oh yeah.
[Dani:]
Totally. Like you can be a little bit underweight and probably be healthy. You can be overweight and be healthy.
And that’s great. You know, that’s a wide range. Go to a BMI calculator and plug in some numbers till you see what that range is.
I think for me, I did this once. My underweight for my height was like 118 pounds or something, which I don’t even think I ever touched that on stage. So that I think I personally would be very unhealthy at that weight.
I think it went all the way up to almost 160. That’s a 40 pound range.
[Giacomo:]
Let’s not forget that there is hormone shifting for women specifically. We’re talking about you here when it comes to your 40s, 50s and 60s where that will affect your set point, so to speak. Where you…
[Dani:]
Maybe. It has the potential to.
[Giacomo:]
For a short term period of time, at least. Like there’s some unknowns. There’s some question marks.
[Dani:]
I would argue that people focus way too much on body weight and body fat percentage and focus not even close to enough on how much lean body mass they have. And I think having enough lean body mass is, you know, I don’t have that research in front of me, but I think that the higher that number is. Absolutely.
The better off you’re going to be. Absolutely. So.
No question. You know, focus on that. Like if you’re at a weight that you’re like, I don’t love this.
Just get real strong, man.
[Giacomo:]
Yeah.
[Dani:]
Like if you’re healthy, if you’re feeling good, if you’re not feeling winded walking up the stairs.
[Giacomo:]
Right.
[Dani:]
You know, it doesn’t have to be. I need to get my body fat down to 18% ladies.
[Giacomo:]
Yep.
[Dani:]
Or 15% dudes. Like if it’s health that you’re worried about, you have a much bigger window. If it’s aesthetics that you’re worried about, you know, that’s a different story.
What is aesthetic to one person is different to the next. But, you know, a lot of times we associate a look with a degree of health and usually they’re not, they’re not the same.
[Giacomo:]
Yeah. For us as fitness coaches, obviously we’re going to encourage the fitter look, but it doesn’t mean that it is the quote unquote, healthier look. It’s just, that’s our bias because our clients are typically coming to us.
[Dani:]
Yeah. That’s what they’re looking for that.
[Giacomo:]
So why wouldn’t we support that? However, it’s not critical, essential, or even something that we would insist upon depending on the client and their goals, especially depending on where they’re coming from and how hard they’ve pushed.
[Dani:]
Yeah. Go look at a bunch of Olympic athletes. Like look at Olympic athletes across multiple sports.
Look at the range of body types. It’s a big range, but it does have its limits on both ends. You know, you’re not going to see people that have bones jutting out in places.
I mean, I’m thinking probably the leanest, smallest are probably like the figure skaters, right? But I don’t, I don’t think of them as like, oh, all their ribs are sticking out. They’re not, not like that.
And you also don’t see people who are morbidly obese. Some people might be pushing into the obese category often because they have so much muscle in addition to some body fat, but nobody, nobody is in the morbidly obese category. And again, that’s how someone wants to live their life.
They have all my support in the world. You do you, you got one life, you live it how you want to, but be real with yourself about what it’s causing, what kind of damage it’s causing. I like to stay up late.
I love to stay up late. If I want to stay up late, that’s my prerogative. But when I feel like shit the next day and my workouts start to suck and my mood is down, I’m not going to be like, well, that has nothing to do with my sleep.
That’s dumb, right? We agree, stupid. It’s the same thing.
So I want to know what you guys think about this. Because it’s a big topic and it’s a touchy subject. And I hope that we were able to do it some justice while also being sensitive to the fact that it is a touchy subject.
It’s a super touchy subject. And I have all the empathy in the world for anybody who’s struggling. And we all have our struggles.
I feel for people who have to deal with weight stigma. I had to deal with it for a long time when I myself was in the obese category and it’s not fun. And the world treated me completely differently.
And I will never forget that as long as I live. I will never forget that reality. But there are things you can do.
It’s not fair that the struggles that you have are more easily visible. And therefore you’re more vulnerable to criticism from others. Whereas other people’s struggles might not be visible.
That doesn’t mean they don’t have them. They’re just lucky that they’re not visible. I will shut up.
If you guys are interested in any kind of coaching, you know where to find us. All the links in the show notes. You can hit apply.
Giacomo will respond to you right away. Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, all the places. And let us know what you think about this topic.
If there’s any areas we missed that you would like to hear us dive into, I would love to talk about this more. And that’s all I got. My name is Dani.
And I’m Giacomo. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
Bye.
