Speaker 1: Pushkin, this is solvable. I'm Ronald Young junior. If your
Speaker 1: goal is health, but your body doesn't change, If your
Speaker 1: body size does not change, or even worse in your mind,
Speaker 1: your body size gets bigger, well, you still want to
Speaker 1: pursue health. Is that enough for you? The COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: pandemic has forced many of us to consider our health
Speaker 1: in new ways, from reporting on our physical vulnerabilities and
Speaker 1: examinations of pre existing conditions to the stories highlighting mental
Speaker 1: health and our loss of human connections. Just what health
Speaker 1: is can be complicated to define. In the United States,
Speaker 1: there's an often repeated idea that body size and overall
Speaker 1: health are linked. That oversimplification can be problematic. Seventy nine
Speaker 1: percent of weight loss program participants report coping with weight
Speaker 1: stigma by eating more food. And eating disorders have the
Speaker 1: second highest mortality rate of all mental health disorders, surpassed
Speaker 1: only by opioid addiction. That's according to the National Eating
Speaker 1: Disorders Association. For me, I based my health on my
Speaker 1: blood work, on my consistency with going to the doctor.
Speaker 1: For me, it's how much of sleep am I getting?
Speaker 1: How much connection am I getting in my relationships, rather
Speaker 1: than am I eating enough fruits and vegetables, and am
Speaker 1: I exercising Precampos used to work in an eating disorder clinic.
Speaker 1: She worked to help her young female clients to restore
Speaker 1: their weight, but she wanted to spend even more time
Speaker 1: helping them to redefine their relationships with food and their bodies.
Speaker 1: I think it scares the American public. We live in
Speaker 1: constant disarray with our relationship with food, and it's actually
Speaker 1: to a point of bonding. Like we often connect around
Speaker 1: feeling bad about our bodies or feeling bad about food
Speaker 1: or oh, i'm a I'm cheating today, I'm off today.
Speaker 1: Campos is a licensed mental health counselor and body image coach.
Speaker 1: She operates from the premise that health at every size
Speaker 1: is achievable. The Health at Every Size framework has been
Speaker 1: shown to improve cardio respiratory fitness and reduce psychological distress
Speaker 1: and clinically obese people. It deemphasizes weight in favor of
Speaker 1: a focus on overall health. Disordered eating and disconnection from
Speaker 1: your body are solvable problems. Health at every size at
Speaker 1: its core, is the idea that, regardless of our body size,
Speaker 1: we have the right to pursue health and I don't
Speaker 1: deal with people's food, but their relationship to food and
Speaker 1: to their body. Talk to me a little bit about
Speaker 1: your journey to becoming a body image coach. I got
Speaker 1: into the work because I lived it, lived life in
Speaker 1: a larger body, and my health was always assumed and
Speaker 1: it impacted not only my relationship with my food, but
Speaker 1: with my body as well. What do you mean when
Speaker 1: you say people assumed your health? So my entire life,
Speaker 1: I was made to feel like your body size is
Speaker 1: a problem, and specifically doctors and family members. I did
Speaker 1: not struggle with an eating disorder in the same way
Speaker 1: that the girls that I worked with, but I definitely
Speaker 1: struggled with disorder eating because we pushed this singular idea
Speaker 1: of what beauty is supposed to be. And so not
Speaker 1: only did I see myself as larger, I also saw
Speaker 1: it as something that was disqualifying. That I would not
Speaker 1: be as successful in my career, that I would not
Speaker 1: be accepted, that I would not find a romantic partner
Speaker 1: that doesn't even align with my values. I believe in
Speaker 1: not judging quote unquote a book by its cover, So
Speaker 1: why am I putting that standard on myself? In the
Speaker 1: last year I've lost a lot of weight, and I
Speaker 1: think one thing I've noticed is like there are for me,
Speaker 1: I can tell you that there's concrete things that have
Speaker 1: changed about my own body and my own health that
Speaker 1: are tangible that I can see, whether it's like not
Speaker 1: being out of breath, whatever, all those things that are
Speaker 1: connected to being in a smaller body. Absolutely, With all
Speaker 1: of that being said, what do you think is the
Speaker 1: disconnect between actually getting people to be healthy, like just healthy,
Speaker 1: size agnostic, just healthy? What are we lossing here? Health?
Speaker 1: And every size approach is not anti weight loss. It
Speaker 1: is anti intentional weight loss through restrictive measures because we
Speaker 1: don't know what our body's going to do. So for me,
Speaker 1: in my recovery, my body got bigger, and every time
Speaker 1: I lost weight, my mental health decreased significantly, and so
Speaker 1: that wasn't even being considered. And so I think that
Speaker 1: if we were to pursue health outcomes regardless of how
Speaker 1: our body changes, if we were to trust our bodies
Speaker 1: to do what they need to do, just like we
Speaker 1: trust them to go to the bathroom, just like we
Speaker 1: trust ourselves to fall asleep, that's how we would be
Speaker 1: able to measure and see health outcomes change people of color.
Speaker 1: They're suffering from body image issues and eating disorders at
Speaker 1: the same rate as white folks, but they're far less
Speaker 1: likely to receive a professional diagnosis or treatment. Is health
Speaker 1: at every size and weight inclusivity founded with a particular
Speaker 1: race or culture in mind? You know what? That is
Speaker 1: an incredible question, And I don't even know if I
Speaker 1: have an answer. It was probably written for what most
Speaker 1: things are written for, right, so the most accessible white female.
Speaker 1: And now people are arguing that body positivity health at
Speaker 1: every size should be a social justice issue. It is
Speaker 1: a social justice issue, because if we're talking about accessibility,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about who has the ability to get
Speaker 1: mental health care, never mind eating disorder treatment, then how
Speaker 1: can we even begin to cover? You know, these issues?
Speaker 1: I worked a neating disorder center. We didn't even talk
Speaker 1: about fat phobia, never mind talking about racism or the
Speaker 1: Patrick artchyme. And so I think that there's a deep
Speaker 1: need on the macro level. And sometimes if I go
Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole too far, I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: what's the point, Like we're screwed. And so that's why
Speaker 1: I am like, I see it and I know it,
Speaker 1: and I hold importance for it now. According to the
Speaker 1: American Journal of Public Health Health that every size has
Speaker 1: been shown to work on the individual level, but the
Speaker 1: studies authors didn't endorse it as a public health measure.
Speaker 1: What do you think the hold up is? Have you
Speaker 1: been like following the research or have your class but
Speaker 1: a part of any of the recent studies. Here's the
Speaker 1: thing is, nobody wants to fund that. The diet industry
Speaker 1: is a seventy two billion dollar industry that profits on
Speaker 1: the belief that dieting will help our health. So I
Speaker 1: would love for people to invest to measure at that level.
Speaker 1: It can health at every size help Nobody benefits except
Speaker 1: the consumer. Except us, We benefit from that. Don't you
Speaker 1: think that the food companies and the people that make
Speaker 1: food at whatever it is, this would be something that
Speaker 1: they could get behind where it's like, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, because if we're talking like not diet culture anymore,
Speaker 1: they were just being like, put butter on it. What
Speaker 1: are we doing here? You know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: it seems like there'd be more money from a different place.
Speaker 1: There are so many people who can get behind it.
Speaker 1: One of the things that people crap on is like
Speaker 1: I can't gain weight because then I can't fit in seats.
Speaker 1: I can't you know, buy clothes. And I'm like, there's
Speaker 1: a huge industry here for companies to be like, all right,
Speaker 1: we can make it. We caught it for you, So
Speaker 1: why don't people? Because I think it scares the American public.
Speaker 1: We live in constant disarray with our relationship with food,
Speaker 1: and it's actually to a point of bonding. Like if
Speaker 1: you can pull yourself back and you look at how
Speaker 1: we connect. We often connect around feeling bad about our
Speaker 1: bodies or feeling bad about food or oh, I'm on it,
Speaker 1: I'm cheating today, I'm off. Once I was able to
Speaker 1: step outside of that, then I see like, oh man,
Speaker 1: like what I was doing there was It was a
Speaker 1: bid for connection. I just I wanted to belong and
Speaker 1: I was so fearful that my body size or my
Speaker 1: food freedom was going to be the thing that exiled me.
Speaker 1: Am I still afraid of that? Now? Sure? Am I
Speaker 1: probably going to get flat back for this episode? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Are people going to say that I'm justifying my body
Speaker 1: size by taking this position? Absolutely? Does that change my position?
Speaker 1: Not at all? So where do you think the idealization
Speaker 1: of Thinness comes from and what do you do to
Speaker 1: push back. I'm giving your listeners lots of reading to do.
Speaker 1: There is a book called The Beauty Myth written by
Speaker 1: Naomi Wolf, and she talks about how the beauty myth
Speaker 1: and the thin ideal has actually been carried with us
Speaker 1: through generations. That's rooted in racism, It's rooted in the patriarchy,
Speaker 1: that there is an ideal body size Sabrina Strings book
Speaker 1: Fearing the Black Body. Somebody profits off of their being
Speaker 1: an ideal and it's making it a desirability. And so
Speaker 1: the average female woman in the United States wears a
Speaker 1: size sixteen. And so how I push back from that
Speaker 1: is one acknowledging what are my values and what are
Speaker 1: society's values. I was told by people, you're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to find a boyfriend if you don't
Speaker 1: lose weight, and I was able to recognize that's not true.
Speaker 1: I have friends and larger bodies who get married. I
Speaker 1: have friends and larger bodies who are having intimacy and
Speaker 1: are able to connect with their body with other people.
Speaker 1: So why is that message true for me? And I
Speaker 1: had to unlearn that message, and so my reframe is
Speaker 1: I am not for everyone, and I am deeply loved.
Speaker 1: That's where progress is made. I say this thing to
Speaker 1: my clients. Would you if you could pursue health if
Speaker 1: your goal is is health, but your body doesn't change.
Speaker 1: If your body does, size does not change, or even
Speaker 1: worse in your mind, your body says gets bigger. Well,
Speaker 1: you still want to pursue health. Is that enough for you?
Speaker 1: That's a good question. I noticed that the health of
Speaker 1: every size movement doesn't have a lot of data about
Speaker 1: successful outcomes with heavier groups. You think that there's any
Speaker 1: limitations to the health at every size approach? Again, I
Speaker 1: think that we would love to do more studies, but
Speaker 1: we need to have studies funded. I know, so, I
Speaker 1: know it's a little bit of a what about ism
Speaker 1: because I'm going in the opposite direction. But how long
Speaker 1: do we see weight loss successful? For the most that
Speaker 1: we have is about five years for five percent of
Speaker 1: the people we have sustained results, which means for ninety
Speaker 1: five percent of the public, we're going to end up
Speaker 1: back in the same place that we started, or heavier,
Speaker 1: and they're not giving you long lasting studies that are
Speaker 1: effective in changing health outcomes. Brie. A few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: we talked with Michael Moss. He's an investigative journalist. We
Speaker 1: talked about the exploitative nature of food companies. He believes
Speaker 1: that the food industry's product development actually contribute to food addiction.
Speaker 1: I will tell you off the back, from my clinical perspective,
Speaker 1: I do not believe that people can be addicted to
Speaker 1: things that we need. And rather, I believe that restriction
Speaker 1: causes binging. That it's sort of like this pendulum, and
Speaker 1: this pendulum is pulled and so then once there's freedom,
Speaker 1: we swing in the opposite direction. Now, the first guideline
Speaker 1: of intuitive eating is to reject the diet mentality, the
Speaker 1: notion that there are good foods and bad foods, and
Speaker 1: to allow ourselves to have permission to eat all foods.
Speaker 1: And when I say this to people, and when I
Speaker 1: share this with clients, there's a lot of pushback. There's like, no,
Speaker 1: but if I if I'm allowed to eat this, I'm
Speaker 1: never going to stop eating it. And I have felt
Speaker 1: that myself, and I can tell you I am in
Speaker 1: the largest body that I've ever existed in, and I
Speaker 1: have the best relationship with food because I was able
Speaker 1: to set rate out those food rules. And now when
Speaker 1: I eat said food. It is out of desire and
Speaker 1: not out of restriction. So I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that is noted in that episode is we're born
Speaker 1: being addicted to the thing that we need, which is
Speaker 1: food and water. Do you think that still falls in
Speaker 1: line with what you're saying or does that fall in
Speaker 1: opposition of what you're saying. I think what we're arguing
Speaker 1: here is the nuance of addiction. And one of my
Speaker 1: favorite authors on addiction is Johan Harry, and he talks
Speaker 1: about addiction with the rat in a cage with cocaine
Speaker 1: water and regular water. The rat would go towards the
Speaker 1: cocaine water. But Johan Harry had followed another study that said, well,
Speaker 1: if you're just putting that in front of the rat,
Speaker 1: of course he's going to go to it. But what
Speaker 1: if you put the rat in an environment where he
Speaker 1: had friends and he had things to do, and they
Speaker 1: called it rat park and you put it out of
Speaker 1: the way, would the rat bs life to go towards
Speaker 1: the thing that it feels addicted to. And what they
Speaker 1: found in their research was no. And so what Johan
Speaker 1: Harry says about addiction is that the opposite of addiction
Speaker 1: is not sobriety that it is connection. Yes. Do people
Speaker 1: maybe use food as a coping skill, yes, but why
Speaker 1: do we demonize that if that is all you have
Speaker 1: access to? How do you define health? If you only
Speaker 1: define health based on body size, then sure I'm not healthy.
Speaker 1: For me, I base my health on my blood work,
Speaker 1: on my consistency with going to the doctor as a
Speaker 1: fat person, and I use fat in a reclaimed way.
Speaker 1: I get a lot of pushback from doctors who are
Speaker 1: not in line with this health that every size paradigm.
Speaker 1: For me, it's how much of sleep am I getting?
Speaker 1: How much connection am I getting in my relationships? What
Speaker 1: does my mental health look like? It is a true
Speaker 1: holistic approach rather than am I eating enough fruits and vegetables?
Speaker 1: And am I exercising? And there's another book that I
Speaker 1: have erect ammend people read. Lindo Bacon and Lucy Affermore
Speaker 1: wrote a book they wrote, Health at Every Size, But
Speaker 1: then they also wrote a follow up book called Body Respect.
Speaker 1: It says that food and exercise only make up thirty
Speaker 1: percent of health, that health is impacted majoritatively by accessibility,
Speaker 1: and so we can't even get into the nuances of
Speaker 1: what these big companies are doing. While yes, that is
Speaker 1: important if we can shift our relationship to said food,
Speaker 1: it's that we will trust our bodies to do what
Speaker 1: they need to do. I don't need any program to
Speaker 1: tell me how many times I need to go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom. I trust my body to do that. It's
Speaker 1: a natural reaction. Everybody was freaking out this year that
Speaker 1: they gained weight, and I'm like, if we were to
Speaker 1: think about this in you know, the cavemen times, if
Speaker 1: they were sheltered in and they were stuck in, they
Speaker 1: would be grateful that their body sustained weight as a
Speaker 1: survivability mechanism. So I think we might be differing on
Speaker 1: the word of addiction. I think it has a negative connotation,
Speaker 1: but I truly believe in giving the power back to
Speaker 1: the consumer, to the person that without feeling guilt, I
Speaker 1: can buy these foods that I have been told I'm
Speaker 1: not allowed to and they don't have to control or
Speaker 1: consume your life. Brie, I read that in your practice
Speaker 1: you explore something called body grief with your clients. Tell
Speaker 1: me more about that. Yes, when I was in the
Speaker 1: thick of my body image journey, and I realized that
Speaker 1: because of some of the health complications that I have,
Speaker 1: which are hormonal and autoimmune, that the likelihood that my
Speaker 1: body will ever change or be small, the fact that
Speaker 1: I will never be able to attain that ladder. I
Speaker 1: had to explore the death of what that grief meant
Speaker 1: or said to me. I had to learn how to
Speaker 1: belong to myself, and in that I had to say
Speaker 1: goodbye to things that I wasn't going to get. So
Speaker 1: I would never get the praise and adoration from my
Speaker 1: family around being in a smaller body. I would never
Speaker 1: be seen to society as a success story. In allowing
Speaker 1: myself to go to those dark places with grief, sharing
Speaker 1: with other people and realizing I'm not the only one
Speaker 1: who feels this way, it lifted that burden of being
Speaker 1: alone in my body image. And Elizabeth Cooper Ross actually
Speaker 1: wrote the stages of grief. They're originally the stages of death,
Speaker 1: and we're familiar with them. And it is denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
Speaker 1: and then acceptance. An acceptance is not yeay, death, yea hey,
Speaker 1: I let to live in a bad image. That's never
Speaker 1: what acceptance was. Right. Acceptance was I am here, I'm
Speaker 1: glad I got you said, and I think that there's
Speaker 1: this misconception that acceptance is going to be like, yeay,
Speaker 1: I love my fat body. And here's what I'll tell
Speaker 1: you that my body acceptance does not mean that I
Speaker 1: love all the parts of my body. It's not like
Speaker 1: I have some acne over here. I'm not excited about it.
Speaker 1: I don't love it, but it no longer hold narrative
Speaker 1: that I am less then, and that is acceptance, That
Speaker 1: is body acceptance. What can our listeners do to support
Speaker 1: the help that Every Size movement, to learn more about it,
Speaker 1: to help promote a more weight neutral approach to health
Speaker 1: for themselves and among their friends. I love the idea
Speaker 1: of weight neutrality right because of being weight inclusive feels
Speaker 1: very hard at times, so of if we can just
Speaker 1: begin to be neutral towards it. The thing that you
Speaker 1: can do is begin to explore your own relationship with
Speaker 1: your body and with your relationship with food, and begin
Speaker 1: to unravel where did this come from? Where did this
Speaker 1: belief system exist? I recommend reading Sonya Renee Taylor's book.
Speaker 1: I recommend reading Sabrina String's book. I recommend reading The
Speaker 1: Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf Health at Every Size and
Speaker 1: Body respect and anti diet. I recommend getting into the
Speaker 1: literature and understanding. So we're deprogramming from diet culture like
Speaker 1: deprogramming from a cult on the macro level. That is
Speaker 1: a great question. My thought is, I don't know, so
Speaker 1: I just keep showing up and talking and hopefully people
Speaker 1: like yourself will listen. Thank you so much for briting
Speaker 1: with us, Brie, Thank you for having me. This has
Speaker 1: been such an honor. Brecamp Posts is a body image
Speaker 1: coach and mental health counselor based in New Jersey. Be
Speaker 1: sure to check out our show notes for links to
Speaker 1: all the books that Bree mentioned in this episode. Solvable Listeners,
Speaker 1: It's summer and we're gonna take a two week break
Speaker 1: to enjoy it. We'll be back in mid August with
Speaker 1: a terrific collection of solvables for you. Starting with a
Speaker 1: conversation with Ebram x Kendy from our sister podcast, Be
Speaker 1: Anti Racist. We're going to talk with him about how
Speaker 1: to endure while doing anti racism work. Sometimes we get
Speaker 1: a little tired in those spaces. He's going to teach
Speaker 1: us how to get through it. We're still reading tweets
Speaker 1: while we were away. Please write us what are the
Speaker 1: problems that you'd like to hear us discuss on this show.
Speaker 1: What do you need solutions for? Tweeted us with the
Speaker 1: hashtag solvable. You can tweet it me at oh It's
Speaker 1: big Ron, that's f O h I T S b
Speaker 1: I g R O N, or at Pushkin Pods that's
Speaker 1: at p U s h k I N p O
Speaker 1: d S. Solvable is produced by Jocelyn Frank, research by
Speaker 1: David Jack, booking by Lisa Dunn. Our managing producer is
Speaker 1: Sasha Matthias, and our executive producer is Mio LaBelle. I'm
Speaker 1: Ronald Young Junior. Thanks for listening.