Hi. In today's episode, Katy Stoll looks at America's obsession with weight, how social media has made this obsession worse, and how we can be more empatheti...
We would not have to worry about our weight if we lived within a normal food environment. But we don’t. The truth is that our food supply is contanimated and poisoned. There are no other words for it. It’s gotten to the point that it’s not even about the excess of sugar or whatever that is contained in our food - although there is an excess of sugar - it’s about hyper processed, industrialized edible substances which are designed in a lab to overrule our hormonal and neurological pathways that regulate appetite and metabolism.
80 years ago someone might be somewhat overweight, and that balance will start shifting further with age as their body reacts differently to protein and packs on slightly more fat and slightly less lean muscle mass. That reasonable coating of fat compared to everyone else is down to age, genetics, epigenetics, and does confer health benefits. But it was not obesity except for around 1% of the population. It was not widespread non alcoholic fatty liver syndrome or type 2 diabetes. Because in the world of today, once you have enough food to feed your population, the only way to grow a food company is to erode traditional cooking culture and to induce people to overeat. Capitalism is the systemic problem, not the lack of diet and exercise. Or bad parenting for that matter.
So ultimately there are two dimensions to this. On an individual basis it is illogical not to worry about your weight. Just as it is illogical not to worry about becoming addicted to a harmful substance. Because you and your family and friends are under attack by the capitalist mold of our food companies. They create soft, addictive food that prey on the most vulnerable amongst us. And render ALL of us sick. Full on obesity fucks up your joints, your breathing and your heart. But it’s not just a complicating factor, it’s a symptom that not everyone shows. A plurality of thin people are also on the road to fatty liver syndrome and type 2 diabetes. They often just don’t know it.
Whereas on a societal level we require a large political pushback that forces government to deal with the hyper processed menace. Hyper processed goods, sugar, white bread, fruit juice, and so on must all be treated with the same fear as cigarettes and the same respect as alcohol. And it won’t be easy getting there. The food industry lobby is powerful as fuck, global and capable of toppling governments. From what I understand, when the Brazilian government issued the new dietary guidelines, opposition from the food industry was so severe it nearly killed the administration. And what it recommended boiled down to ‘avoid hyper processed goods, use processed goods as part of a meal centered on in natura goods, cook more often and as a part of a family and social experience’.
When we start doing just that, we might not become the thinnest person in our social group. But we have such a better time at life. Once we are free from addiction food is more nourishing, taste better, and all the underlying psychological issues that tie us to that addiction become something we can actually tackle.
You can bet however that there’s a legion of highly paid ghouls whose job is to keep you under lock and chain. The most dangerous words in the english language today are: a calorie is a calorie, and it’s your personal responsibility that you’re fat and sick.
You can bet however that there’s a legion of highly paid ghouls whose job is to keep you under lock and chain. The most dangerous words in the english language today are: a calorie is a calorie, and it’s your personal responsibility that you’re fat and sick.
All that you said does, can, and will continue to be dismissed by I-Fucking-Love-Science types that want to bully overweight people under technically correct chants of “CICO,” or “calories in calories out.” It makes them feel superior, bolsters the belief in the infinite capacity for willpower for those worthy enough (implying everyone else deserves contempt or worse), and they have a convenient sciency out if they’re confronted with their bullying.
So here’s the thing, I don’t really face these sorts of people IRL. Or even this sort of thinking, much. But I do run into the incomplete thinking about calories. To which I try to give a short and straightforward answer. Losing weight is Calories and Calories out, but not all Calories are the same. There are calories that are unfulfilling. There are Calories that are addictive. There are Calories that make you sick. You wouldn’t go on a diet to lose weight and improve your health by counting 1500 calories of whisky every day because that’d be insane.
From then on you can open the discussion towards all the other pitfalls of modern diet. Soft, white bread. Fruit juice. Mayonnaise, other industrialized sauces. And so on. Eventually you can work all the way to recognizing ultra processed food for what it is. It’s not food, it’s industrialized edible substances meant make you addicted.
That said, I do have a personal experience with being a bigot myself. I’ve lost weight twice in my life. Once currently. The first time was nearly ten years ago. I did so mostly for aesthetics, I was young and healthy at the time. And I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. I went to a nutritionist, got their input, adapted it a bit to my tastes and just ate smaller portions while doing increasingly more intense water workouts on my own. This allowed me to lose about 30 kilos and improved my life considerably. Then, for health reasons, I could no longer exercise. I had to go through surgery and that sent me on a depressive spiral where I regained that weight and some more over the course of the decade.
Here’s the thing though, I believed that my primary motivator was the chaining of exercise and dieting with one another. If I exercise that morning, then I’ve got too much sunk investment not to eat less over the day. But there were other more toxic behaviors that kept me on the game. I browsed the subreddit fatlogic every single day, just so I could feel superior to these caricatures of people who really are victims not only of their own decisions, but of the food environment they exist in. Cardboard cutouts of fat activists and addicted people meant to be raged at, gawked at. Once I could no longer exercise I became human again. I could no longer gawk at anyone. I was just another sick person in this sick world.
Today I’ve lost 35 kilos, there’s still a few ways more I wish to go. My exercises are much milder. I’ve learned how to cook. I’ve learned all the there was to reasonably learn about metabolic pathways and hyper processed food. I do exercise by walking around my neighborhood, which is pleasing in itself (it’s not the nicest place but it’s home). My diet is focused on my daily well being, so while I do count calories the key thing I do is that I practice fasting because it does make me feel better. Overall, I think I’ve entered a much more conscious path to self improvement that has rendered me completely disgusted at the subreddit. I can’t really read it anymore. It’s not just because I don’t need it. It’s because it runs counter to the person I’ve become after struggling with the food addiction, having a ‘fall from grace’, and now entering a much surer phase of the struggle that truly approaches a sustained victory.
At the end of the day CICO is like finding a lifeboat. It’s not unimportant, it’s you surviving in the storm. But when it comes to the poisoning of our food supply, CICO is not enough. What you need is solidarity. What you need is to save the ship from sinking with the rest of the crew in it. And Solidarity is all about policy, looking after society, and really just treating people not as things but as people. Confronting their issues, but always extending a hand. There’s no such thing as cruel kindness, just as there’s no such thing as pure niceness. You’re either kind or you’re not.
We would not have to worry about our weight if we lived within a normal food environment. But we don’t. The truth is that our food supply is contanimated and poisoned. There are no other words for it. It’s gotten to the point that it’s not even about the excess of sugar or whatever that is contained in our food - although there is an excess of sugar - it’s about hyper processed, industrialized edible substances which are designed in a lab to overrule our hormonal and neurological pathways that regulate appetite and metabolism.
80 years ago someone might be somewhat overweight, and that balance will start shifting further with age as their body reacts differently to protein and packs on slightly more fat and slightly less lean muscle mass. That reasonable coating of fat compared to everyone else is down to age, genetics, epigenetics, and does confer health benefits. But it was not obesity except for around 1% of the population. It was not widespread non alcoholic fatty liver syndrome or type 2 diabetes. Because in the world of today, once you have enough food to feed your population, the only way to grow a food company is to erode traditional cooking culture and to induce people to overeat. Capitalism is the systemic problem, not the lack of diet and exercise. Or bad parenting for that matter.
So ultimately there are two dimensions to this. On an individual basis it is illogical not to worry about your weight. Just as it is illogical not to worry about becoming addicted to a harmful substance. Because you and your family and friends are under attack by the capitalist mold of our food companies. They create soft, addictive food that prey on the most vulnerable amongst us. And render ALL of us sick. Full on obesity fucks up your joints, your breathing and your heart. But it’s not just a complicating factor, it’s a symptom that not everyone shows. A plurality of thin people are also on the road to fatty liver syndrome and type 2 diabetes. They often just don’t know it.
Whereas on a societal level we require a large political pushback that forces government to deal with the hyper processed menace. Hyper processed goods, sugar, white bread, fruit juice, and so on must all be treated with the same fear as cigarettes and the same respect as alcohol. And it won’t be easy getting there. The food industry lobby is powerful as fuck, global and capable of toppling governments. From what I understand, when the Brazilian government issued the new dietary guidelines, opposition from the food industry was so severe it nearly killed the administration. And what it recommended boiled down to ‘avoid hyper processed goods, use processed goods as part of a meal centered on in natura goods, cook more often and as a part of a family and social experience’.
When we start doing just that, we might not become the thinnest person in our social group. But we have such a better time at life. Once we are free from addiction food is more nourishing, taste better, and all the underlying psychological issues that tie us to that addiction become something we can actually tackle.
You can bet however that there’s a legion of highly paid ghouls whose job is to keep you under lock and chain. The most dangerous words in the english language today are: a calorie is a calorie, and it’s your personal responsibility that you’re fat and sick.
All that you said does, can, and will continue to be dismissed by I-Fucking-Love-Science types that want to bully overweight people under technically correct chants of “CICO,” or “calories in calories out.” It makes them feel superior, bolsters the belief in the infinite capacity for willpower for those worthy enough (implying everyone else deserves contempt or worse), and they have a convenient sciency out if they’re confronted with their bullying.
So here’s the thing, I don’t really face these sorts of people IRL. Or even this sort of thinking, much. But I do run into the incomplete thinking about calories. To which I try to give a short and straightforward answer. Losing weight is Calories and Calories out, but not all Calories are the same. There are calories that are unfulfilling. There are Calories that are addictive. There are Calories that make you sick. You wouldn’t go on a diet to lose weight and improve your health by counting 1500 calories of whisky every day because that’d be insane.
From then on you can open the discussion towards all the other pitfalls of modern diet. Soft, white bread. Fruit juice. Mayonnaise, other industrialized sauces. And so on. Eventually you can work all the way to recognizing ultra processed food for what it is. It’s not food, it’s industrialized edible substances meant make you addicted.
That said, I do have a personal experience with being a bigot myself. I’ve lost weight twice in my life. Once currently. The first time was nearly ten years ago. I did so mostly for aesthetics, I was young and healthy at the time. And I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. I went to a nutritionist, got their input, adapted it a bit to my tastes and just ate smaller portions while doing increasingly more intense water workouts on my own. This allowed me to lose about 30 kilos and improved my life considerably. Then, for health reasons, I could no longer exercise. I had to go through surgery and that sent me on a depressive spiral where I regained that weight and some more over the course of the decade.
Here’s the thing though, I believed that my primary motivator was the chaining of exercise and dieting with one another. If I exercise that morning, then I’ve got too much sunk investment not to eat less over the day. But there were other more toxic behaviors that kept me on the game. I browsed the subreddit fatlogic every single day, just so I could feel superior to these caricatures of people who really are victims not only of their own decisions, but of the food environment they exist in. Cardboard cutouts of fat activists and addicted people meant to be raged at, gawked at. Once I could no longer exercise I became human again. I could no longer gawk at anyone. I was just another sick person in this sick world.
Today I’ve lost 35 kilos, there’s still a few ways more I wish to go. My exercises are much milder. I’ve learned how to cook. I’ve learned all the there was to reasonably learn about metabolic pathways and hyper processed food. I do exercise by walking around my neighborhood, which is pleasing in itself (it’s not the nicest place but it’s home). My diet is focused on my daily well being, so while I do count calories the key thing I do is that I practice fasting because it does make me feel better. Overall, I think I’ve entered a much more conscious path to self improvement that has rendered me completely disgusted at the subreddit. I can’t really read it anymore. It’s not just because I don’t need it. It’s because it runs counter to the person I’ve become after struggling with the food addiction, having a ‘fall from grace’, and now entering a much surer phase of the struggle that truly approaches a sustained victory.
At the end of the day CICO is like finding a lifeboat. It’s not unimportant, it’s you surviving in the storm. But when it comes to the poisoning of our food supply, CICO is not enough. What you need is solidarity. What you need is to save the ship from sinking with the rest of the crew in it. And Solidarity is all about policy, looking after society, and really just treating people not as things but as people. Confronting their issues, but always extending a hand. There’s no such thing as cruel kindness, just as there’s no such thing as pure niceness. You’re either kind or you’re not.