The TRUE DARK SIDE of Health at Every Size

so now what i wanted to talk about and this is kind of a perfect um video to release after the last one that we just talked about um and so the last video was talking about how fasting was really dangerous for someone and then this video was again recommended to me in my discord but this is from the the youtuber uh nicole bertone um and it's called how the body positivity and haze movement almost killed me and then she says really um and so i think that it's it'll be an interesting kind of juxtaposition um from you know extreme dieting things versus extreme anti-dieting things and uh maybe it'll serve as a good example as to why being on the extremes of either end probably isn't the best right uh so let's see what she has to say i sped up her video a little bit because she does talk a little slowly for you guys hi y'all my name is nicole and i've lost almost 80 pounds i'm 51 and i'm a mom and i'm a nurse and today i want to talk about how the body positivity and the health at any size movements um caused me to allow myself to stay in poor health and endanger my life how's the um how's the speed on that let me know um i think i have a unique perspective to talk about these things because i'm a little bit older than a lot of the other people who talk about this topic and i did have serious health ramifications for being overweight my highest weight i think was 218 pounds and i am now 132 pounds um if you would like some receipts you're welcome to go back and look at some older videos on my channel she said if you want some receipts i love it um i'm interested because i watched like up until this point when i was kind of like you know vetting the video to make sure i wanted to talk about it but i think that it's it'll be really interesting to hear the opinions of someone that is you know over 25 years old because that's usually seems to be the median age of people that are really into health at every size um or pictures on my instagram or my youtube which i'll link below but i um over the last year have experienced what it's like to be a smaller sized person and over the last decade and a half or up to two decades was a larger size person and so i can compare and contrast the way my body felt when i was bigger and when i was and when i'm smaller as well as tell you what happened to me because a lot of the people in this particular movement are younger uh they they range from you know teenagers to people in their early 30s mostly the most vocal ones and they haven't gotten to the age yet where this philosophy of health at any size could catch up with them interesting i wonder who said that before and so that's just the story i have for you today is how that philosophy did encourage me to put off things i probably should have done about my weight and to put off feeling like i was unhealthy um because it gave me a very very good excuse and some good examples of people living that lifestyle who were healthy so i guess i'll start at the beginning i was um what i consider to be healthy my labs were good i was very active i have a very very active job i'm a nurse i take care of other people so i had a very active job um i could do shout out to all the nurses out there because wow that's a hard job what i wanted to do and what i needed to do i dressed as cute as i could for my size i feel like i was attractive for my size i have a partner i have happy kids i had what i consider to be a good life and i have been following the health at any size and the body positivity movement for some time on instagram and on social media on twitter and such um and looked towards those people as an example of people my size living their best life um and i felt like i was too i did not eat unhealthy really i probably just ate a whole lot too much um i really was not a fast food eater i wasn't um that much of a junk food eater although i did have my little favorite junk foods everybody does i ate relatively healthy for a person my size um i did not have a binge eating disorder but i do recognize now that i did have some disordered eating in that i rewarded myself with food very often for hard days for stressful days when good things happen when bad things happen i felt like i deserved a treat so everything that she's explaining so far like i don't have a problem with that and this is what i've said before i truly do believe and i know people disagree with me on this and that's fine you know hey be mad at me i'm used to it now but like there are 100 people that might be considered overweight that are completely healthy that are that are living healthy lives that are that make healthy decisions but like she says maybe you're just eating a little bit too much maybe you're just indulging a little bit too much and like the whole thing where she's talking about how like she would use food as a way to like um say you know oh i had a good day i had a bad day used to cope like that's such a normal thing that i don't think if that's happening a little bit that it's something that you need to be worried about because that is such a normal human thing to do and so it's when that starts getting out of control is when you should be worried about it but if it happens every now and then like i don't think it's the end of the world and it's something that you need to be like oh my gosh i need to fix this right away or else i'm gonna die like it's it's okay it's okay or a good meal out or something like that i loved to eat out with my husband we loved experiencing new meals and going new places and that was one of our favorite things to do together and i will preface this with i didn't have to give that up um you don't have to give everything up your life will change but it's not all uh deprivation and living without afterwards so i felt like i was very healthy i didn't have high blood pressure my labs looked good and over the years as i got a little closer to 50 my uh cholesterol levels ooched up a little bit but still within you can control this with some diet changes territory and so that's what i tried that's what i attempted to do i just made a few dietary changes and i will say i was very irritated with the medical establishment at that time for blaming pretty much any complaint that i had on my weight and telling me that if i would um exercise more and lose weight and eat better that my health problems my small little nagging health problems would go away you know i had some back some lower back pain i played really derpy i'm a nurse i'm almost 50 i figured those things just came with age and this is again everything she's saying on point like this is one thing that i agree with the help that every size movement is like getting um people in the medical field and the you know doctors in the medical profession to not just look at someone's weight like yes i do think it's very important 1 000 obviously i do right but it's not the only thing that matters right it's not the only thing that matters so if someone is bigger and they're saying i have i'm having back problems yes maybe talking to them about their weight makes sense but also let's go deeper and try and figure out what's going on instead of just say hey maybe lose some weight see you later like that's not helpful um i had some joint pain i had uh i was tired a lot i was very tired and i chopped all of those things up to my busy lifestyle i was very active socially i'm really involved in a lot of things and so i had a lot going on and so i talked up all those things to that and i had these examples of really really active attractive um people who were telling me that i could love myself the way that i was that i didn't need to change anything about myself and that really i only felt that i should because of societal pressure and i am not going to negate those things at all there is societal pressure to meet certain beauty standards i have a daughter who is a tween and i worry about those things all the time um there there is definitely um a push in society to meet a certain ideal and i am absolutely 100 not saying that i am a nutrition expert a mental health expert or uh that that you should not love yourself the way that you are because i feel everybody should love themselves there are things to love about yourself but agreed i don't feel like you should love yourself to death and i feel like that's what i almost did and jeez dang she just said i don't think you should love yourself to death that is powerful right there wow i wanted to share that perspective with you guys because it's one that doesn't get mentioned very much so things went on i was you know i could fit in one seat on an airplane i needed a belt extender one time which was very on my last airline trip i took i needed a belt extender and that was a little disheartening there were always things that would nag at me a little bit i couldn't shop where i wanted to shop i couldn't necessarily wear the fashion that i wanted to wear because i'm very interested in fashion and i keep up with fashion i wanted to be a good example for my daughter of health and wellness and i want to be a good example for my patients of health and wellness and there were conversations i didn't feel comfortable having with my patients because i felt like who am i to tell them that they should be doing these things when i'm also saying you can be healthy at any size i am and you can uh be love yourself exactly the way that you are without making changes and my philosophy has changed a little bit through experience in that you can love yourself absolutely and you can love yourself so much that you want to give yourself the best and that's really where i am right now amen amen love yourself enough to change it's what i've always said love yourself enough to change if someone tells you that because you're trying to lose weight that obviously means you don't love yourself that person is a dummy head okay that's a fact i love myself so much that i want i want to give myself the opportunity to have a long life and to be around for everybody and so i feel like this perspective isn't brought up a lot because a lot of the more vocal people are a little bit shy of my age range and they haven't gotten to the point yet where serious things could happen and so i went along feeling like i was healthy at my size or as healthy as i could be for my size and everything was gym dandy until one day i went to the hospital not to work but to do um computer modules thank goodness i wasn't well even if i had been in my unit in the er they would have been able to tend to me quickly the thank goodness i was in the hospital building because with no history of cardiac problems with no history in my family of cardiac problems and with no symptoms that i can name other than fatigue and some exercise intolerance that i thought was just because of age i had cardiac arrest i had bystander cpr i was a full code blue i had to be whisked off to the er like they do on tv with people pressing on my chat storm stretcher i had a full code i spent a few days in the icu being therapeutically cooled paralyzed by medication and cooled and sedated so that they could keep me from having brain inflammation and give i i had no idea that this is where this was going absolutely no idea wow i jeez she this title she is not lying she said really and she said really really that's really really true holy sh snap my body the best chance it had to heal i had um fractures in my sternum for my very effective cpr which i'm grateful for i was intubated i had the whole nine yards um and i had the best outcome you could possibly have from that situation because i had the extreme fortune to have my cardiac arrest in a heart center of excellence and in a medical facility where i could be tended to immediately um not everyone has that benefit in fact most there aren't there are barely even statistics for people who are a full um code as i was and uh five year life span i had my two year anniversary of that on 9 11 of this year so i'm two years out from my cardiac arrest and one year out from uh well one year into my weight loss journey i still have a little bit to go i would like to lose about 13 more pounds so i'm still working um on that but i the main point of it the main gist of it was i bought in to that health at any size and i thought that i was healthy and there was rhetoric to to help me believe that i was healthy and to help me believe uh that i didn't need to change and while it's great to feel good about yourself it's also a little bit dangerous to ignore things because you have that convenient excuse of i can be healthy at this size wow so what frustrates me the most about not everyone in the health at every size but what a lot of the the more vocal minority of the health at every size movement are is that they truly do and this is not this we've seen this happen time and time again they truly do make people feel bad for wanting to lose weight and there's a lot of people that would see this woman right here right and i even i've seen it in the comments she wasn't even that big she wasn't even morbidly ob she wasn't even this she wasn't even that like basically comparing where they were to where maybe they are now or whatever right saying she's not even that big and so trust me on this the people that are really into health at every size that are much bigger right test holiday or whatever they're gonna see this woman be like you don't have to lose any weight you're a queen you're beautiful you are worthy you're this you're that and they're going to downplay every single thing this woman says because she's a hundred pounds lighter than they are she's 150 pounds lighter than there she's 200 pounds louder than they are so what's what does she have to worry about meanwhile she had a heart attack that almost killed her okay so don't sit here and like it's so frustrating when people say oh you're not that even that big like you don't know what someone's going through and so to sit here and say everyone can be healthy being morbidly obese is just not true it's just not true lots of people are healthy at this size i'm not necessarily unhealthy um i'm just bigger i'm just a bigger person i'm just meant to be big um those are the things that i told myself when countless tries at losing weight didn't work i'm just meant to be this size my metabolism is slow i'm getting older and this just comes with older age and it's something that i have to accept and then i also felt like there was something wrong with me because i didn't truly love myself the way that i was i didn't fully embrace the body that i had i still missed the body that i had before my prior to my thirties um i missed being able to dress exactly the way i wanted to go into any store and find something that i needed to get into any car and be comfortable driving it without with being able to reach the pedals with my feet and not being pressed up against the steering wheel um to have space between me and the table when i'm in a booth to have space on an airplane to be able to stand on my feet be real active not be winded and move around like i wanted to and what i think what a lot of people who embrace body positivity don't realize many of them have always been heavier or many of them have been heavy for a long time and it's gradual of the change as you gain weight and as you get bigger you don't notice the mobility that you lose you don't notice the pain that you start to put up with every day you don't notice the soreness you don't notice the fatigue or if you do there are many convenient things to blame it on so and this is what i think the crux of this whole video is about is about when you get older right because she said she's in her 50s so a lot of these things that we've talked about so many times on with health at every size a lot of people all my lab results are fine or i don't have any mobility issues it's like yes you are 20 years old you're 25 years old how are you going to feel in 10 years that's important and that's a that's a fact right you don't stop aging and so i think that that is what is so interesting about her story is that yeah maybe she wasn't 400 pounds but she didn't need to be 400 pounds to have these problems um i have a different perspective in that i wasn't always heavy i started getting heavier around 30. i was heavy until i was 49 or 50. 50. and then i lost weight a significant amount of weight and as i lost the weight i started to see abilities come back exercise endurance come back tolerance come back less pain in my joints less pain in arthritis that i was told that i had um which you know lower back pain less i wasn't i take stairs now when i would never have considered doing it before because i would be tired when i got to the bottom i often you know i try and sleep as much as i should but on the days that i don't get as much sleep i can still function because i still have a reserve of energy that i didn't have before and i'm more interested in active things than i was before um and so you can say i'm 100 happy at the size that i am and that may be true for you it might i can only speak to my personal experience i thought i was happy except for not being able to shop the way i wanted to shop in some of those inconveniences in public transport and being a little bit tired but i chalked those things up to changes in metabolism age the job that i do and how physical i have to be so i've said this before too like you can be happy with who you are right you can be happy with the person that you are but you can still also be unhappy about what your weight is doing to you right and that could be in a thousand different ways right it could be shopping at clothes stores it could be how you're able to move throughout the day it could be not having to get a seatbelt etc all of these things right so you can be happy with the person you are and love everything about yourself thank you so much for the shirt order but also not be happy about the the weight that you have on you like i don't think they have to be exclusive i think that they can coexist i never chalked them up to my weight until i had my cardiac arrest i had a blocked artery a very small artery in my heart i had to get a stent placed and i had a very uh no-nonsense cardiologist who told me i needed to lose weight if i wanted to be around for graduations marriages my kids if i wanted to be around for that and i know that people will say the medical establishment is laser focused on wheat and they use out-of-date charts and they give out-of-date information and they don't have enough nutrition information and all of those things are true they're 100 true every single health problem i had from you know a little respiratory illness to a heavy period to uh back pain to being fatigued to a legitimate thyroid issue were all chalked up to i needed to lose weight so it was very easy for me to dismiss that advice because it came at me from every doctor all the time in every situation and as a qrl for everything yep 100 and that's why that's why i always say like saying everything is up to your weight is detrimental because when something might actually be because of that someone that's heard that time and time again that has lived a relatively long life they're like now you're just saying that everyone always says that when it's genuinely a super crazy thing that's happened right for her she had the heart attack and she said she didn't lose weight until a year afterwards so she was still thinking the same way like ah they don't know what they're talking about they're always saying that it's my weight blah blah blah right and so that's why it's dangerous to it's like the boy that cried wolf if we're always saying oh it's your weight that's why this is that's why this that's what it is instead of actually finding the actual issue when your weight truly is the issue and it's a life or death situation someone might not believe you because they've heard oh it's your weight about every single thing that they have going on and so it's easy for me to dismiss it because i felt like they just think that i have fat mommy syndrome and they just want me to lose weight even and that's not what's wrong and no one is hearing me and no one is listening to me and to an extent that was true but there was some responsibility on my part too i was not hearing and i was not listening that there were things that i could do for myself to mitigate some of those problems so health at any size i do 100 believe that you can be as healthy as you can be at any size that you are you can have the most health that you can but there's a difference between health and health sorry a phone call cut me off and so i will just i wasn't gonna edit but i'll stitch these two things together the best i can because i'm not an editor what i was saying is there is health and there is healthy and you can have the most health possible at any size that you are you can maximize your health at any size but having gone i agree i agree with everything she's saying by the way and from big to much smaller and seeing the difference in my okay labs to my really good labs in my not good endurance to my really good endurance in my painful joints to my not painful joints in my not only my exercise tolerance but my willingness to engage in those activities change over time i will not say that you can be healthy at any size and i know i'm going to get a lot of backlash for this and i didn't even want to put it up i'm trying to brace myself for what i'm going to get for saying this but i feel like i'm in a unique position as a person who felt healthy at any size and embraced the size that i was and intended to stay that size and had a lot of good things in my life at that size and then had a life-altering event because cause in great part by my weight and my health um life-changing experience i had a life-changing experience and many of the people in this movement many of the people involved in the movement are not at the age where embracing this lifestyle has caught up with them yet and i've i feel like it really isn't yet um and maybe just me and there are many people who live a whole health a whole healthy long lifespan at a much higher weight than is what is recommended on the charts and by doctors and by nutritionists but i don't think that they're the vast majority i think they're the outliers i think that most people would be healthier if they lost some weight even 20 of their excess weight would be a significant difference on the toll that it takes on us cardiac-wise or even like even if we didn't want to focus solely on even if we don't we didn't want to focus solely on losing weight right because i know a lot of people get mad when you talk about intentional weight loss but if if people that are really really overweight you know you're 100 200 pounds overweight if they actually focused on healthy habits right healthy habits not over indulging doing exercise that they can do that's healthy for them whether that's walking swimming walking in the pool whatever that might be weight would come off right and you don't even have to be like i'm losing weight but if you're truly health healthy at any size or have health at any size you would be doing things that would garner you health not eating whatever you want not at all moving your body just doing whatever you want that isn't health and so if we are actually chasing health i promise you you're not gonna end up 200 pounds overweight it's not gonna happen it's not gonna happen you might end up 30 pounds overweight that's that's totally understandable but you're not going to end up being 200 pounds overweight if you are truly chasing health and so that's really why i wanted to get on today because i wholeheartedly believe that there is too much emphasis on a perfect body i wholeheartedly believe that there is too much emphasis on fad nutrition i wholeheartedly believe that the medical establishment chalks up too much to you just need to lose weight and i also wholeheartedly believe with all of my heart that all of us could be healthier if we got our weight to a more sustainable for your body range a range that didn't put as much uh pressure and stress on your joints as much stress on your heart as much stress on the rest of your vascular system um i really do believe that to be true and i wouldn't have said that five years ago i wouldn't have said it three years ago three years ago i thought i was healthy at any size and two years ago i found out i wasn't and i found so this is why i'm such a big i have this is why i wanted to do this right after i um talked about the video right before where it was like fasting and that like yes she lost what she said she lost like 50 pounds in in three months but it was so far from being healthy right and so just losing weight does not equal you are in a healthier state it's just not that's not true that's not true but again if you are chasing healthy habits and you are doing healthy things to your body you are not going to be on either end of the spectrum you're not going to be overly thin or you have no body fat at all but you're also not going to be carrying excess excess amounts of body fat to where it is hindering your daily life right it's not going to happen if you're actually focused on health if you're focused on losing weight you can also be focused on health but just because you're focused on losing weight that does not mean that you are focused on health they are different things found out the hard way and if i can convince even one person not to put off doing something for yourself because there's a convenient alternative philosophy which is healthy no matter what size you are and loving yourself no matter what size you are and body positivity which i believe you can still have and still strive toward more health um if i can give that to any to one person if i give it to anybody then i want to because i don't want anybody to have the experience that i have of waking up in the icu and looking around and realizing wow i really have to i don't have a choice now i have to make changes or i'm going to continue to have these new health problems that i never had before and i hand to whomever you believe in did not have these health problems prior to that cardiac arrest it was sudden and it was life altering and so again ins to summarize the reason that i'm putting myself out there the reason that i'm making this video the reason i'm subjecting myself to what i guarantee are going to be some hard comments to look at is i can look at it from two perspectives i can look at it from a person who was not always heavy was heavy and then was not and i can tell the changes in my body from when i was heavy and now not being and i can see the benefits that i've gotten because i have watched my health very closely over that two year period not just from how i feel but from other sources from labs from cardiac workups from stress tests from other things i have quantifiable evidence that i am more healthy now than i was before and i can also look at it from the standpoint of a person who was 30 and heavy and a person who is was 50 and heavy and there is the chance that embracing that lifestyle will at some point in your life will at some point in your life catch up with you it may not there are people who will be perfect there are people who smoke their whole lives and never get cancer there are people who drink their whole lives and never get liver disease there are people who overeat their whole lives or people who take in an excess of calories um and stay at a little bit higher weight than what is recommended and are completely healthy and have no problems whatsoever but there are the unlucky ones like me who felt like they were completely healthy embraced that love yourself uh love the body love the skin you're in love your body and especially for me with a daughter i didn't want to set a bad example so i wanted to be as body positive as i possibly could about my body her body everybody's body um and i embraced that it was a really really easy philosophy for me to embrace and it helped me put off changes that i should have made um to keep me at a more optimal state of being so take from it what you will if there's a tidbit in my story that will help you that's great if you think i'm full of [ __ ] that's okay too because there's one person out there who is going to hear me and think you know i am putting awesome changes deep down i know i should make because there are these people who look like they're living their best life healthy happy above average weight looking cute have partners that they enjoy have a life that they enjoy are influencers have you know living their best life and not making these changes i will i would argue that those people that are those influencers i would argue that they're they're lying i don't believe them i think they're putting on a show for the instagram i know it's not you don't hear about it a lot you know influencers lying about things but they do do it you guys they do so if they can live happy lives like that i can too i don't need to take these hard steps i don't need to do these hard things and i'll be straight up i didn't do the hard things until i didn't have a choice but to do the hard things like i should always have a choice i had a choice that i could roll the dice and hope that i didn't have any more cardiac problems or take hands full of medicine um and control it that way and hope that i didn't have any more cardiac problems i chose to go a different route i chose to make the changes that i had to make and i'm very happy with them i don't feel deprived i don't feel like i've given up i don't feel like my life is harder i don't feel like i can't socially i live in the south we socialize with food i feel like i can still be involved in everybody's social activities um i feel like i can still do all those things and i feel even more empowered to help my patients be healthy because i'm speaking from a place of experience i went from there to here i took a you know some people hate that weird journey but i took a health journey and i came out on the other side of it and i have a lack of offer as far as that's concerned yeah i think that this i mean it's it's really really interesting and i mean i think that she's correct when she says she has an interesting perspective because like she said she wasn't overweight until she hit her i think she said her 30s and then in her 30s she gained some weight and then in her 50s is when she had the heart attack and then now she's on her journey in her 50s um i just i feel like this is a very interesting point of view that a lot of people like she said overlook so going forward i'm going to use this little baby platform that i have this tiny little channel with very few viewers and i'm going to use it to share with you my cooking what i eat in a day my what i know about fitness what i know about how i got from where i was to where i am and just be kind of real and raw and i'll answer questions i'll answer questions about the cardiac stuff i'll answer questions about the ptsd i have from basically dying and then coming back because that is a real mind trip as well i'll talk about the body dysmorphia that i have because there is some of that regardless of which direction you go in if you get bigger or if you get smaller or if anything changes there is sometimes somebody dysmorphia there and i absolutely have some and that will probably be the next topic that i talk about um i'll help you figure out your macros i'll help you figure out how to um make some small swaps in your diet because i feel like that's the easiest thing swapping out one thing for another one step at a time baby step at a time because it's a journey it really is it's a marathon it's not a sprint um and so if you take away anything from this take away it's great to love yourself and to have body positive feelings it becomes not great when you use those things as a little bit of a crutch or um as logic or as reasoning or as a way to convince yourself that you don't need to make any changes we're all constantly growing evolving changing and we can all be healthier so while you can have health at any size you can be healthier and that's what i'm going to talk about here from here on out but i just needed to really get that off my chest because it's been weighing on me for a long time and there's so much focus right now i feel like on different styles of eating and weight and weight loss products and so many things are being promoted by so many influencers and so many people are out there so i mean obviously this is the end of the video but um i i think that it's been really fun being able to um bring you guys these videos from people that you know aren't super well known i think uh she has currently has a hundred subscribers 112 well let's see how many of you guys subscribed since this video started so now she's at 117. so she doesn't you know this video has 42 views okay um and so it's really interesting to hear from people that don't have an agenda that aren't trying to promote anything because they're trying to make money like she's just saying this because this is what she believes right and i think that that is incredibly important and i'm i'm really glad that she shared uh you know her perspective so i highly recommend you guys go over there uh subscribe to her channel i'll have it linked down in the description um but i'm i'm really glad that i watched this and i was able to bring this to you guys

Channel: ObesetoBeast

Views: 151,839

Rating: 4.9571805 out of 5

Keywords: weight loss, fat loss, haes

Id: wvsjS9tzREA

Length: 31min 57sec (1917 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020