- I'm sorry there's a-
- Very different, yeah. - Differences between the people who are telling people,
"Go out and get fat." Versus a Lizzo who's saying,
"Accept me the way I am." - She's not just saying,
"Accept me the way I am." She is dressing extremely scantily clad and then saying, "If you
don't think that it's normal for a morbidly obese person to be wearing a G-string
in the middle of public, then you're the problem." (upbeat music) - [Host] Being fat or skinny is a choice. Agreers?
(footsteps clomping) - Of course, not every
factor is purely choice. I don't think that every factor is, but I do think a majority of it is, and in most cases for
most people, being skinny or being fat is about willpower. It's about the environment
you grow up in-shore but who you choose to associate with. What sort of things you choose
to listen to, who you choose to kind of have as your friends
around you and support you. All of those things are
choices that you can make that will lead you closer towards being one or the other. - I know what I do with my body. I know what I put into
it, day-in-and-day-out. I choose not to eat some days. I choose you know, how I want to look and I don't fault anyone
for how they want to look or how they want to be, but I
think it's a choice at the end of the day. I'm very, you know, always wish-washy on how I want to be presented and if I want to gain weight or not. But the only person that's
gonna gain the weight at the end of the day is me and me myself. - For me, it's calories-in-calories-out. Go to the gym, you'll get buff. Don't go to the gym, you won't get buff. I understand that there's
genetics that could cause you to want to eat more, but even with the genetics
that cause you to want to eat more, the same solution
is calories-and-calories-out. - I think that the whole
choice is, you know, always determined on who they are and it's not gonna just
be a thing done overnight. - Yeah, yeah.
- It takes a lot of, I think it's like breaking the barrier and breaking a lot of things. Not only your body but also
breaking your mental state. - Sure.
- And, again, that depends on who you are and what you want to go through. - Disagreers.
(footsteps clomping) - I felt like as a toddler I
always viewed myself as big. I grew up in a very like poor home. So where my mom couldn't provide the meals that she could healthily. So when we would get like free
meals even then it would be like canned food and it
would be like very much food that's not as edible. It was food for us, yes. But then I felt like
once it reached a point where I was old enough to
try to make my own choices, I made all of the wrong choices. I wasn't eating, and I was
only eating like grapes and lettuce and I was mainly
because I was in a sport and that sport just worked me out so hard and it was to the point where
I just was scared to eat. I didn't like it. I would only drink water. - When you were eating grapes
and lettuce, were you thin? - I was as thin as I could be. - Were you still big though?
- I was still big but that was the skinniest I've ever been and that's coming from
somebody who was only eating somewhat salads that are just
fruit and lettuce and water and maybe ice right before a practice. - Do you think that right
now you would not be capable of becoming a thin woman if you wanted to? - I possibly would be capable
of becoming a thin woman, but since I was young, I was
supposed to get blood tested probably when I was very,
very young and I never did. And they had mentioned
that it could have been because of my weight and how
that connects with my thyroid. I never made the connection and I never had like that leaning parent to be like, "Go and get checked out. Go and do this," like your weight is probably not your fault. It was always like, "Your
weight is your fault so that's your issue." - I mean I also struggle with, you know, thyroid and my own blood
issues, I'm not quite sure but I do see an endocrinologist
and I go see a doctor. It's a choice to do the requisite steps. It's a choice to go grocery
shopping instead of going to fast food when it's easy. It's a choice when you're
grocery shopping to go to the outer aisles and like
not go into the bread section and not go into the junk food section. These are all choices. - As a disabled woman, I
can't do a lot of the things that people say,
"Calories-in-calories-out. Oh, you gotta go work out and exert it." A lot of the things that
are typical, "Oh, this is how you lose weight,
put me in the hospital." I have to navigate weight differently. I have to look at it differently. My weight is the way it
is because of medication because doctors put me in this position and I had to learn, okay,
am I going to be so hateful of my own body that I am going to backlash and put myself through extreme gym nights through keeping myself from eating things that I should be able to eat. You should be able to have a balance. You should be able to go
into the junk food aisle like other skinny people do and still not have to worry
about gaining 20 pounds. - But I don't think skinny people go into this junk food aisle.
- No, they do. - They certainly do.
- Yes, they do. - Need a lot of junk food. - I mean-
- A Lot of junk, yeah. - I mean my DoorDash would
tell you otherwise, like- - There's a thing called Set Points. There's a ton of research
on it that your body likes to be at specific weights.
- Right. - It likes to be in a specific way. So if you are fighting
yourself to lose weight by not eating, over-exercising, and you are damn near killing yourself to be at a specific weight,
your body's unhappy. - It's important to note
that a choice can be harder for people to make due to
conditions in their life. But at the end of the
day, it's still a choice. I could say that I had
food addiction, I looked to food when I was stressed
and this and that and this, and so, it's harder for me
to choose it than for someone who has like the perfect
lifestyle who, someone who has parents who are giving
them this and that and this. But I definitely still acknowledge that it was my choice at the
end of the day when I go there and I look and I see, hmm, should I order a second hamburger? I'm the one choosing
whether or not I order that second hamburger. I'm the one making that choice. - Hey, you all right? - I don't know, I've been
feeling kind of lost lately. - And how is this helping? - Well I don't know to be honest. I'm just trying to figure out who I am. - Well, I don't wanna hold
you back with what works. You might have a breakthrough
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month of better help, click the link in the description or visit betterhelp.com/jubileemedia. - Thanks, BetterHelp, for
supporting this channel. Now let's get back into the episode. - [Host] I would rather
be skinny than fat. Can the agreers please step forward? (footsteps clomping) - I think there's a lot of
different struggles when it comes to being a bit bigger and I have a sister that is
very like she's 400 pounds and she struggles a lot. She has lymphedema and the to
shower's really, really hard. So I do think for like
an overall happy life and like zero struggle, I
think I'd rather be skinny. - I think that it is common in society to want to be skinny. I think the average person
typically wants to be skinny. I'm actually surprised that I didn't see more people come forward on that question. People treat you better. It is what is considered
the standard of beauty. Your life expectancy is longer,
you tend to be healthier. - I'm also really tall, I'm six-foot-six, so I kind of wish I could
just pick a single struggle because finding the clothes and things like that when you're bigger both ways can make it really hard. So if I was skinnier, at least, that's one less thing
I have to worry about. But also, I've got two kids and a wife and I'm taking care of them,
and as you pointed out, I definitely think that
I am at less health risks if I'm a skinnier person, if I'm a healthier person in that capacity and I would much rather be that so that I could be around for my kids longer. - [Host] Can the disagreers
please step forward? (footsteps clomping) - I am speaking as someone who actually was a former smaller person and I had the most body
insecurities when I was small. I was constantly living
in fear of gaining weight and having people tell me, "Oh, don't gain weight, don't do this. Make sure that your weight is the same." And once I finally
gained weight, I realized that first off, life wasn't over. I didn't feel any need to not engage in life the
previous way that I had and the attention that
I got was different. But even as a smaller person
you get negative attention. And rather than trying to
control my body to avoid that negative attention, I would prefer to address the situation as a society, make it more accessible for everybody to where we aren't feeling
like I have to be a certain way that's normal in order to be treated like a
human being and respected. - If I could counter
because I was a bit bigger when I was younger, and that's
when I was the most insecure, I would look in the mirror. I did have family members that were skinny but then I had a family
member that was much bigger and just the way that I
perceived myself, I hated it. And I even became anorexic
to like not be big. - I don't think skinny always
equates to being healthy. - Exactly.
- Absolutely. - I am fairly skinny. I'm six-five, I'm 140
pounds, last time I checked and I'm severely underweight and I know about this
on a day-to-day basis. That being said, I don't know where I'd wanna lean at a
appropriate weight level, but I think it's important to understand for some skinny people it's, we're not living a
great life by any means. And sometimes I feel
like that's always kind of lost in translation when they see someone who's really skinny. - I guess it depends on
what you mean When you think of the term skinny, are you thinking of just like an average-weight person or are you thinking of how you are now. - I'm the average weight
for like women in America. so, if we're talking about an average, like I'm gonna be the closest. If your biggest priority
is to be at a smaller body, you need to reassess your priorities. - Yeah.
- Focused on health. - In the immediate tie between skinniness and health, like you
emphasized, there is such a gap between one, the research, 'cause the research has a
huge fat-phobic bias in it. And there has been research that shows that they aren't even, especially during let's say COVID, and the correlation between
obesity, they rushed through those studies so fast because in society's mind, "Oh, of course, a fat person
is gonna equal someone who's gonna get sick faster is
gonna say it's sick easier." It was an easy jump. So they didn't do all of the testing that they were supposed to do. They didn't check their bias didn't. - So, if by saying the
study is bias, you're saying that the study didn't
account for the variable that obesity may also take a factor into. It's just that there's so
many variables in humanity that these pharmaceutical
companies could only account for so many during their trials and that doesn't necessarily
mean that they're bias, however, you wanna talk
about bias in studies actually, recently we've
been doing the opposite. So for instance, a lot of our
studies have been based on BMI and so we've been showing that, oh, fat people aren't
necessarily extremely unhealthy if we look at people with a certain BMI. However, bodybuilders also
have a really high BMI and so they get counted
into that category. And so it wasn't until very
recently that they equated for that mistake and it
shows, oh, my goodness, being fat is actually extremely unhealthy. Like way, way more unhealthy
than we ever realized. - You can't gauge health
by looking at somebody. like none of my health issues, all of them precipitated my weight gain. But I always get assumed, "Oh,
don't you wanna be skinny so that you don't have a cane anymore and you don't feel the way you
feel," and it's like, "No," 'cause I have lupus and
I'm always gonna feel like like ACPS, it's gonna
deteriorate, it's gonna continue. - [Host] America has an obesity problem. (footsteps clomping) - I wanna sit next to you.
- Oh, absolutely, you can. - I think it's pretty clear
you look at the weight of the average American, you see how obesity has affected not
just children, I mean the fact that we have more younger
and younger people who are looking heavier and heavier and you see that like, you know, the way that weight affects us as a society and you compare that to how
we were in the past now, not that we should always, you know, we shouldn't compare ourselves to the era of the Great Depression when
people just couldn't find food. Of course, but people are
heavier now in an unhealthy way and people are eating unhealthy. They are eating it through
unhealthy access to food. They're eating diets high in seed oils, they're eating high corn syrup, they're doing all this kind
of stuff that's not good for them that we didn't used to do. And it's bad, it's not a
good thing, it's an epidemic. It needs to be quashed in some capacity. - There's so much access to just- - Junk food? - Anything, like it's so crazy these days, and you know, I'm so surprised that we're actually supporting
a lot of this, you know, and there's always people
like, "You know, like it's fine that we have like three
McDonald's like on the same street and it's just like we don't think that this is adding to the problem." - What I think is really sad about that is so many people in America
just see the profit in it. I don't wanna say I know that
these people know the problem, but it's like how can
you not see the problem? They have to see it and just not care. They have to just be like,
"Well, we're gaining profit. Do you see how much this
McDonald's is making?" Put another one across the street. Like that's just like how it is. - That's the corporations,
it's the medical industry. Having a fat country makes us money. - It doesn't help that our
cities aren't walkable either. America's a country of
non-walkable cities. - That is why I wavered a little bit because I think we have a problem
with how to treat obesity. I think we have a problem
with how to make it so that it is not an epidemic. This is a systemic thing
that we are in a society and in an environment that breeds this and we are doing it to ourselves. We are doing it to our
children and our corporations and our industries are doing it to us and they aren't having to
take responsibility for it. - And they're encouraging it with media- - So, I was literally gonna bring that up, be the mukbangs and like all those videos that just come up to trends for people. - Not only the mukbangs
but also like Lizzo and other big like media.
- Lizzo's - I'm sorry, there's a very big difference between the people who
are telling people go out and get fat versus a Lizzo
saying, "Accept me the way I am." - She's not just saying,
"Accept me the way I am." She is dressing extremely scantily clad. And then saying, "If you
don't think that it's normal for a morbidly obese person to be wearing a G-string
in the middle of public, then you're the problem." And they're trying to normalize society to this obese culture, which
is extremely unhealthy, and- - What is an obese culture? - A culture which like normalize (speakers talking over each other) - Look, obesity's already normal, so it's- - I don't think it should be normalized. And it wasn't normal just
a couple of decades ago. - What's the difference
between a obese person, myself walking around in a G-string or a bathing suit as I do almost every day and a skinny person? Like is it okay that the
skinny person is doing that? - I don't think so, but-
- I don't think that- - I get the whole public thing - Or to say that when
Lizzo does it, is the same as a Victoria's Secret angel,
it's just not the same. - Yeah, what's the difference? - What you mean? Are you telling me they look,
you're telling me it doesn't- - I'm not saying they look the same but- - Well, I mean Lizzo goes
(speakers talking over each other) - The implication. So if I walk down the street,
oh, I'm a runway model, I'm a print and runway model. I have walked down a runway in a thong. So me doing that is shameful. But a skinny model is okay. - Like a Victoria's Secret model. - I don't know if I used
the phrase shameful. I don't think that we, as a society, should be modeling obesity. - So, we're not modeling obesity, I'm modeling the lingerie that
obese people need to be able to have availability to buy, yeah. - So they've always
had the ability to buy- - We have not.
- The lingerie- (speakers talking over each other) - It was like almost $20.
- Yeah. - And you go to like any
other Walmart, any Target and like all these underwears
aren't special for like five to like $20 and stuff. - Well, it does take
more fabric to make it. - It does take more fabric to make it. - They use it as an
excuse but you make yards of fabric for gowns. - Like it's a Small a different price than an extra large or a large? - It is, yeah, and we're
willing for 3XL shirts, I gotta pay more money. - I think people view
models and Instagram people and all of us who are plus-size and proud as we're pushing
this obese lifestyle. - Yes.
- No, I am pushing the fact that this is what I live in, this is my life and I need
other people who feel this way to say, "Hey, I wanna be able to wear clothes that look cute too. - I do think there's a problem
with obesity in America, but I think it's a
first-world-country problem because it's spread across the globe. And also, I don't see it as a problem. I do feel like health-wise, people should try to be healthier. But there's no perfect body,
there's no perfect person, there's no perfect size. And there's people who are underweight. There's a lot of them, and
then there's a lot of people who are overweight. So I really don't see
it as like a problem. But just to touch on what you were saying, because I am in the
fashion industry, I want it to become a fashion designer. My dad was one, and they buy 10 rolls of fabric for one price. So it really doesn't cost
that much to make underwear. - Sure, but don't you also have
to worry about distribution? I mean if the average person is let's say in between Small, Medium, Large and you're sending clothes
out for those, you know, you could send out 10,000 of this, 10,000 of that, 10,000 of that. You can't always send out 10,000 3XLS because you're not gonna
have that many people fitting in the 3XL. - No, because there's somebody
who works in marketing and they research that that
area, there's a census. So we have a database of what
type of people are there. Now we don't know who's going in there, but we know the type of
people that live in that area and the type of the people
that come and visit the area. So that person is doing
their job accordingly, and usually, large sizes are sold out. - Okay, so somebody brought
up the food desert earlier. I can't even think of an
area that would have a so-called Food Desert. - Sorry, can someone
explain like maybe just for my ignorance, I'm
guessing a food desert is just, there's no food anywhere? - No, it's healthy options for food. So you can go into
certain low-income areas and you'll see a Starbucks,
a McDonald's, a Chick-fil-A but there's no Trader Joe's - A food desert actually properly, there isn't any, like for a long period of driving there's one gas station and a liquor store, then you
have to drive two more miles to hit the next grocery store. - But with the food desert, it's not just that there can be a grocery store there, but if I am making minimum
wage, I'm not gonna spend all of my money on what is gonna last me two meals versus what's gonna last me an entire week. - Or if I'm on EBT and I have specific things
that I have to choose to buy versus what I can't buy. - So, I'm born and raised in
Colorado, in the outskirts, there's so many small towns that you don't even
know that they're there, Most of 'em you won't see on a map, but if you're from there then you'll know and they all have to drive a
decent amount to be able to go to an actual grocery store. - But how often are you
going grocery shopping? Maybe like once every two weeks
would be typically normal. (speakers talking over each other) - You have to do a drive once a week. So you're making a drive once a week, once every two weeks. (speakers talking over each other) - If I don't have a car-
- I don't enjoy it. - And if you don't have, usually, these food deserts also have very poor public transportation options. So you are left with
people who are stranded. - Yeah, but then what
are they eating at all? - Yeah, unhealthy crap. - No, but how are they surviving at all- - whether they go through
the drive-through, they don't get a car to go everywhere. They usually, what I've seen when I go to those rural towns and
those rural places is, they have chickens and they have animals. And guess what, that's, you can get some healthy food outta that. Having eggs and protein, things like that. I think I would be healthier
if I lived rurally. In fact, my wife and I are
trying to leave the State so we're not near all the
Uber Eats and all the stuff- - I grew up in a town of 500. The obesity problem there
was not as significant as say in LA.
- Mm. - And we talk about like
food deserts and stuff, the nearest Walmart where
I grew up was 45 minutes in any direction. The nearest McDonald's was nowhere near to be seen for a long time. So when I hear these like, and there could be some evidence there as like the obesity
problem is very low-lift. - Were there grocery
stores in your small town? - Yes, like I'm like kind of baffled by the-
- Oh, thank you. - Maybe I just need to go out there and like experience the food deserts. But like there was grocery
stores where I grew up. Just because we lived in the middle of nowhere doesn't mean we
didn't have access to food. And actually, and I have to
agree, we did have access to healthy food, very
healthy food all the time. I don't think this is a big of an issue in my personal opinion. - [Host] Fat shaming is
worse than skinny shaming. (footsteps clomping) - So, I do agree that fat shaming is worse
than skinny shaming. Just overall entirely the way that people like comment
on people's weight, compared to somebody's skinny. They usually don't comment
on somebody's skinny. They don't think there's
something wrong with them. They don't like, they'll maybe say like,
"Oh, you're very thin. Do you want to eat a cheeseburger?" But that's not as bad as telling
somebody you eat 10, stop, and you don't even know
that they're eating 10. - Fat shaming is a systemic problem. You're not gonna not get a
job because you're too skinny. Skinny bodies are praised in
our society whereas fat bodies, like I don't get it as
often as other people but I get a lot of
comments on my Instagram that are saying like,
"You're really beautiful but you would look a lot better
if you lost 50, 60 pounds." (footsteps clomping) - Something that I always get a lot of comments on is my masculinity as a man because of how skinny I am. It's always something that
I've always kind of dealt with. My favorite comment is always I look like a sickly ill Victorian child. And-
- That's horrible. - Sorry, I don't mean to laugh at that. - No, no, no, I don't, it
doesn't bother me as much. But this idea that skinny people can't also feel, get these
kind of comments are just kind of mind-blowing, that
doesn't mean that they're, you know, that one side is
getting worse than the other. I think that there are
both sides getting piled on just at different varying degrees. - I think we're conflating
two things as well. So there's a difference
between fat-shaming and fat-discrimination. Fat-shaming is an aspect
of fat-discrimination. But some of the things
you were touching on are specifically societal and
systemic fat discrimination that goes into our medical system. It goes into employment, it goes into all of our civil rights as fat people that skinny people don't
necessarily have that same issue. And I come from cultures where they straight-out
called out skinny people. You look like bones, oh, fuck
it all, like all of that. So I watched my cousins go through it. I went through it when
I would get too skinny. As people, we are just too scrutinized when it comes to our bodies. We don't let people live. - But I think that's a good point. You said you were called skin
and bones when you got to- - My cousin. - What your, sorry, not
whatever but your cousin. So people using shame as a
motivator to get your cousin to not be too skinny. Shame as a motivator is a powerful tool. So the reason I sit over
there is fat-shaming worse than skinny-shaming. Well, you could argue that
shaming somebody in order to motivate them towards
a healthy lifestyle is actually a good thing. Now, I have a lot of empathy 'cause hearing your story about
how you've been struggling with this since you were a child- - Since I was like a newborn baby. Like health, just, everything's
just been on that end where I've never known
anything about being skinny or being fit or being athletic. I've never known anything about that. - Probably your situation,
I don't think shame necessarily would motivate you. But for somebody where it is a option, so for instance, if you've watched TLC, you watch "My 600-lb Life," "1000-lb Sisters,' "Family by the Ton," all of them can do it. All of them have had this
systemic issue of blinking. - Though, I have watched those like as a younger person, and it
would make me feel disgusted with me when I was a kid. So it would make me worse and it made my mental health worse 'cause then I'm like, "Is that how like everybody automatically views me as just like somebody who's oversized and could possibly never even attain it 'cause it's so just common." - I don't think we should
shame anyone to do anything. I think everyone deserves
to like themselves enough to like enjoy life.
- Mm-hmm. - And if you do that as a fat
person, okay, if you do it as a skinny person, also chill. It's not my business. - But I-
- Shame is a broad category. I do think shame works in some cases. I think that there has been
good fat-shaming towards me and bad fat-shaming, bad
fat-shaming is just, you know, somebody just saying, "You are fat," there's like that doesn't really work. But what does work is
somebody looking at me and saying, "Don't you wanna
be around for your kids?" And that worked. That worked.
- I don't think that shaming. Do you consider that shaming? - I do, I think that's shaming.
I think they were telling me like you should lose weight to
be around for your children. I think that's shame, like an attempt to like try and say
something bad about me. - Like they're personalizing towards you and towards your kids
like, of course, yeah. - Yeah, but, and I think that
worked, I think that worked. That really encouraged me to go to the gym and start
trying to lose weight. - But that's to you though.
- Sure. I think you have to be
specific towards the person. - I think that's one thing is, it depends on the person.
- Sure - And if someone wants to shame me and like, you know, it
depends on the person. I've been shamed a couple times and it's kicked me into
gear to try to gain weight, but it's still really hard. - Sure.
- And it's, you know, it depends on who you are, I think. - When you were making a comment about people questioning your masculinity, I get the question of actually
looking like a woman all the time and it's always in play. I always get compare to
like male characters, especially when I don't
wear makeup and that's because I don't have boobs
and I can't help that. But it's definitely really, really hard to like have people tell
you constantly like here's the standard of how a woman should look and you don't look like
that without even saying it. They don't say it,
they're categorizing me, they're making fun of me saying that I look like this one
soccer player or something. And you know, I think it's funny but also shame can also be hard. 'cause I can see what
you mean sometimes it can really motivate you when it's out of love. - Yes. (speakers talking over each other) - And when it's out of
like not knowing someone and just saying it- - Yeah, the people who said that to me about my kids were not, yeah, just some random guy online. It was people who were close to me and I knew cared about me,
who I had a conversation with. So I do think it matters who says it, but I still would consider
it to an extent of shaming. And I'm okay with that, I
think there is good shame. I think that's a... I think sometimes it helps
motivate people in the right way. - [Host] The body
positivity movement promotes childhood obesity. (footsteps clomping) Diet culture has positive effects. - I guess, for me, diet
culture is an important thing to have for people in the world. What I've realized after we're
about to finish this up is there wasn't a lot of
talk on skinny culture or like skinny people as a whole. Maybe that's 'cause of how the prompt is. But I think it's important if
we're gonna give positivity to kids who are obese,
I think it's important to give them the options to, you know, say if they want to lose weight they can. I don't see a problem with
that in any real sense. (footsteps clomping) - I think that diet culture
is a reason that a lot of people struggle with weight
problems in the first place. I have even struggled with my
own weight issues in the past and I was like struggling kind of with depriving myself too
much because I had a trainer and then I started binge-eating and as soon as I had like a mental break where I was like physically incapable of stopping myself from
putting food in my mouth, I immediately went to see a doctor and that doctor told me to read a book called "Intuitive Eating," and it wildly changed my life. And it was about getting past diet culture and about how so many
people ruined their lives with diet culture. And you see it with like somebody talked about
eating grapes and lettuce, and it's grapes and lettuce and it's just like, it's this extreme. And so you go from one
extreme and then you break and then you go to the other extreme. And so like I was in my
extreme, I broke went. So that's why I'm anti-diet culture. - Yeah, I tried Keto for a while, and that's the thing about
what I realized is like that fad diet kind of stuff
and, yeah, did I lose weight? I absolutely lost weight,
sure, I didn't keep it off. And the reason I didn't keep it off is because diet culture is
about turning the word diet from your overall eating into an activity that takes place over a period of time. A diet should not be
something you do from January until May of next year. Diet is what you continually eat, is what you continually put into yourself. Yeah.
- Lifestyle change. - Yeah, so my issue with diet
culture is this idea of like, oh, I've got this perfect
solution for you, man. All you gotta do is this,
this, this, and this and that. And it's like, no, like the reality is is like,
yeah, there are good correct and objective ways I think
for a lot of people to eat. And, yes, everybody has to have some variations here and there. There's no one-bag-fix-salt and diet culture is so much about trying to say like, "All you gotta
do is just eat cheese puffs every day for the rest of your life - And it's easy.
- Yeah, and so I just, I... That's why I think diet
culture doesn't help. - You know, you're always
gonna get those people who have the perfect answer,
they have the perfect solution to either lose weight or diet isn't just losing
weight, it's also gaining weight. You know, and I think a lot
of people, maybe it's just, for me, but when I diet, it's actually not the opposite of fasting. I'm trying to eat more,
I'm trying to gain more. And I think people forget
that when it comes to diet. When people instantly hear the word diet, they think losing weight.
- Mm-hmm. - And I don't think that
should always be the case. - I've been on a lot of diets. I've been on diets for
myself, I've been put on diets and I've been put on diets by my coaches. So when I was young, I felt like it was more so like fasting, fasting, fasting, not
eating but working out and maybe, hopefully, eating
once you get home as a reward. And then, when it became like, oh, like you're a good person in the team to like be the big person, be the defender, be buff. So it was like now we have
to gain all this weight and we have to pound you out. So it was like I had to eat
like five meals in a day and I was, I felt so gross because I was just like, I've never had to like pull out like a bar or something and like eat it during
class and be like I have to eat this 'cause it's part of my diet. - When we talk about diet culture, we're talking about not
your diet as a whole. It's usually a fad diet is what we're talking
about when we're talking about diet culture. And for me personally, I
know that I've seen a lot of, especially women in my
life going on fad diets that are just not sustainable. And that's kind of the
purpose of diet culture is that it's not a sustainable thing. - But we're all talking about
like mainstream, like Keto, like gluten-free, and I think it's, everyone's just polarized
on these certain ones that I believe that you should eat gluten. I think if you take it outta your diet, you're actually gonna get sick. - Unless you're- - Unless, Celiac, no, like, yeah- - It goes back to like what she said, which is you know, intuitive eating. - So what is the positive you
think you've seen for people from diet culture which I think, and I guess what do you consider diet culture? - I guess like diet culture, to me, is the resources you need to get to where you want to
be in your life, in your body. That's how I've always
viewed diet culture. - By dieting, do you mean like journaling what you're eating? - Yeah, if you want to journal,
if you want to, you know, talk to a therapist, if
you want to work out, if you wanna see a doctor,
if you wanna go on meds. Like everyone's always-
- But it's not being super like when you diet, you're not being like, "I'm
completely cutting out carbs or I'm completely doing this right." (speakers talking over each other) Are you just like watching
your macros and your micros and you're calculating that- - I guess if you're asking if I know how many calories I have to eat, yeah, like I have to eat like 4,000 a day. - When most people talk
about diet culture, they've done some sort of
extremely restrictive thing and when you do something
really restrictive, it changes your brain chemistry
and the way that you think about food and it makes
you obsessive over food. and it makes you obsessive over food. And then, but it sounds like the way that you're doing it is extremely healthy - Isn't that just goes back
to like you guys are talking - Isn't that just goes back
to like you guys are talking - Diet culture is one thing,
and then healthy lifestyle- - Having a healthy diet is different. - I think are two different things. Think are two different things. Okay. of living a healthy lifestyle as a diet. - You've been in like a model spheres, do you see diet culture and
how has it impacted the space? - There was a point in my
life like when I was a junior in high school where the person
that I was with at the time, he's like six-foot-six and super tall. And so, you know, the mom was like, "Hey, And so, you know, the mom was like, hey, which is still big to this day and, you know, you should come." which is still big to this day
and you know you should come. and I was a D-cup and they
said that I weighed too much. And so, seeing that really struck me in the beginning with the negative part of dieting struck me in the beginning with
the negative part of dieting well if I'm too big then
what are people doing to not be this size?
- Mm-hmm. - Like how can I make it to be to do what I wanna do if this
is my limitation to it? It took years later to
realize like, "Shit, I was really disciplining myself for no apparent reason except for this underlying feeling from years ago that I can never get rid of." When you're talking about like discipline, I think it can be really
positive with dieting and like intaking your calories. But for me personally, and I'm a very specific
case, seeing those numbers and knowing that I couldn't achieve it because I didn't have the
appetite was also just so saddening to me because
reading the bare minimum of what a woman needs, five-foot-five
at my age, I was like, "That's not that much,"
and I still couldn't eat it at the time, and I'm like,
"What's wrong with me?" There's different ways to motivate people and one of 'em is out of pain and anger and I feel like a lot of the
diet culture, whether it's for positive or negative, is just trying to gear into that for that.
- Yeah. - And you know, I just am
more about being healthy. - I hear diet and I think
of something that's positive and it's been positive to me, and you know, it's something
I'm always trying to achieve. I guess like if we were to redo this, the same exact question, I may hesitate and not walk across the line. I guess I'll never know. But hearing these
perspectives were really good 'cause I probably didn't know
as much about the extremes. - I wanna thank all of you for
sharing your opinions with us and for challenging us, and
I really wanna thank you. I thank you for the back and forth. It's something that I came here for and I wanted to talk to
somebody who thinks differently and I've learned some things, so I appreciate that for all of you. Thank you all for-
- Yeah, thank you. - Yeah, this was great.
- It was a pleasure.
