Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. I don't know if you've heard, but we
Speaker 1: have a book coming out finally, finally, after all these years.
Speaker 1: It's great, it's fun. You're gonna love it. It's called
Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know Colon, an incomplete compendium of mostly
Speaker 1: interesting things. Ye, and it's twenty six jam packed chapters
Speaker 1: that we wrote with another guy named Nils Parker, who's
Speaker 1: amazing and is illustrated amazingly by our illustrator Carl Manardo.
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Speaker 1: and read. Even though we haven't physically held in our
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Speaker 1: support is a very big deal, So pre order anywhere
Speaker 1: books are sold. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Chizy,
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff You Should Know. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all I gotta say. I think this is super interesting,
Speaker 1: this anti diet movement episode MM hmm, I do too.
Speaker 1: I'd heard a little bit about it. Every once in
Speaker 1: a while, we'll say something and one of our listeners
Speaker 1: will write in and be like, Hey, you guys shouldn't
Speaker 1: be saying that, or you guys shouldn't be talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to lose weight or something, because it
Speaker 1: shames other people indirectly, Like you should check out the
Speaker 1: anti dieting movement. So all of you people who have
Speaker 1: ever written in with the suggestion for that, this one's
Speaker 1: for you, because I believe all of you are the
Speaker 1: ones who who brought that to my awareness. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the anti diet movement is a response to, Um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of pieces to it, and we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna go over all of them. But it's a response
Speaker 1: to diet culture in the world old especially in the
Speaker 1: United States, and a response that basically says, we don't
Speaker 1: think diet culture is healthy. Uh, literally healthy for your
Speaker 1: physical health and also not healthy for your mental health
Speaker 1: and for the well being of an individual. Uh, we
Speaker 1: don't think diets work. We think we have proof and
Speaker 1: studies that show diets don't work, and we think that
Speaker 1: there's a better way, which is to accept food as
Speaker 1: something that is to be enjoyed and accept your body.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot more to it than that, but
Speaker 1: that's sort of the broadest stroke in society goes what
Speaker 1: I tell you, man, it's when you look at how
Speaker 1: we are, you know, I don't want to maybe brainwashed
Speaker 1: is too strong of a word, but how humans and
Speaker 1: Americans are brainwashed into thinking there is only one way
Speaker 1: right to live um and only one way to of
Speaker 1: that way right. It's pretty interesting and hard to undo.
Speaker 1: And there's and we're all of us, every single one
Speaker 1: of us in America, and I would guess and most
Speaker 1: of the West as well, are subjects to kind of
Speaker 1: this two pronged attack about weight. One is the idea
Speaker 1: that you just don't look as good when you're overweight,
Speaker 1: and then to the idea that you're not as healthy
Speaker 1: when you're overweight. And this anti dieting movement rejects both
Speaker 1: of those. They they so their whole thing is. And
Speaker 1: it's really it's worth kind of restating here because it's
Speaker 1: tough to wrap your head around because of the way
Speaker 1: that we've all been brought up for so long that
Speaker 1: the anti dieting movement isn't like no, no, no. All
Speaker 1: you have to do is cut meat out and you're fine.
Speaker 1: You can do everything else. There's nothing like that. It's
Speaker 1: not only not only don't diet, it's throw away. You're
Speaker 1: dieting books, stop following dieting blogs, reject the standard of
Speaker 1: beauty at like the the small kind of vaguely underweight
Speaker 1: um standard that we have in the West. Um. And
Speaker 1: stop listening to people, including your own inner voice. That's
Speaker 1: that that makes you feel ashamed when you crave or
Speaker 1: eat certain foods. That all foods are on the table.
Speaker 1: There's no such thing as bad foods. And you can
Speaker 1: just stop thinking about weight and food. Those two things
Speaker 1: can be decoupled for the rest of your life. You're free,
Speaker 1: basically is whether say you're free, Go fly, little bird,
Speaker 1: go live your life, stop thinking about being overweight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it all comes down and this might it's just
Speaker 1: some people may just think this is the craziest thing
Speaker 1: they've ever heard in their life. Um. But what they're
Speaker 1: saying is is something called that you should embrace, something
Speaker 1: called intuitive eating. And this came around and the sometime
Speaker 1: in the nineties there was a book written by Evelyn
Speaker 1: Tree Bowl and uh At Lease resh called intuitive eating
Speaker 1: colon a revolutionary program that works. And this is and
Speaker 1: this was basically the idea that we've been looking at.
Speaker 1: This cycle happened for years of restricting your food, getting
Speaker 1: on a diet, losing weight, gaining it back, sometimes gaining
Speaker 1: back even more weight, doing this over and over and over.
Speaker 1: It's not working. It's not good for people, it's not effective. Uh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make you healthier to go through this weight
Speaker 1: loss and weight gain cycle. And you need to stop
Speaker 1: listening to these external controls, whether it's the media or
Speaker 1: your parents, or your spouse or partner or yourself. And
Speaker 1: you need to start listening to your body and eating
Speaker 1: what your body says to eat. And here's the important part,
Speaker 1: stop eating when your body says it's full, right, And
Speaker 1: so they kind of put all these things. So intuitive
Speaker 1: eating is kind of the central focus of anti dieting,
Speaker 1: but it's not one and the same. Anti dieting is
Speaker 1: a larger umbrella movement is the best word for it.
Speaker 1: That includes anti or intuitive eating, but it also includes
Speaker 1: a kind of a militant opposition to um fat shaming
Speaker 1: of any sort of any kind, and also kind of
Speaker 1: believes not even kind of overtly believes that any weight
Speaker 1: loss goal is negative, that it's it comes from that
Speaker 1: being brainwashed culturally. So we'll talk more about that anti
Speaker 1: dieting movement in general, but like we should really explain
Speaker 1: the intense principles of intuitive eating that UM that triple
Speaker 1: and Rush put together, and we should say it one
Speaker 1: other thing too, This is not a diet So so
Speaker 1: when you're hearing these things, don't think and then you
Speaker 1: do this and you lose weight. Now that's out the window.
Speaker 1: That has nothing to do with this. This is about
Speaker 1: your relationship to food. And then number two, these people
Speaker 1: are no slouches. UM Trible and Rush are both registered dietitians,
Speaker 1: which are UM certified regulated UM professionals who know what
Speaker 1: they're talking about with with nutrition and intuitive eating is
Speaker 1: widely almost universally embraced by dietitians and nutritionists as well.
Speaker 1: So you just kind of keep that mindset when you're
Speaker 1: hearing these ten principles of intuitive eating. Yeah, and before
Speaker 1: we actually listen to ten, it's worth pointing out that
Speaker 1: part of intuitive eating is UH. Part of the foundation
Speaker 1: is the fact that they say, hey, listen, look at
Speaker 1: your kids when you're born and your little baby, and
Speaker 1: you don't know anything. You're just a dumb baby, and
Speaker 1: you grow up to be a dumb little toddler. Your
Speaker 1: body tells you when you're hungry, and you eat, and
Speaker 1: your body tells you when you're full, and you stop eating.
Speaker 1: And I see that with my five year old. I'm
Speaker 1: not hungry anymore, all right, stop eating. And it's that easy.
Speaker 1: And the argument for intuitive eating is that, uh, and
Speaker 1: you know, partially the anti diet movement is somewhere along
Speaker 1: the way, we lose that as adults or as you know,
Speaker 1: teenagers even because of this onslaught from the media and
Speaker 1: from everybody talking about your weight, your weight, your weight,
Speaker 1: and your health and you've got to be skinny, and
Speaker 1: we lose these we literally lose these biological triggers that
Speaker 1: say when you're hungry, stop when you're full. Those just
Speaker 1: go away. And the idea is to kind of retrain
Speaker 1: your mind and body to get back to that state
Speaker 1: you were when you were a dumb baby, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I don't even know if it goes away. We're
Speaker 1: just trained by diet culture to ignore them. It goes away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I don't know if I agree with that. One,
Speaker 1: but I but the but the key is is that
Speaker 1: that it's being one way or another. We don't have
Speaker 1: that intuitively anymore because diet culture is come in and
Speaker 1: replace that with no pay attention to the calories or
Speaker 1: ignore the fact that you're hungry because you're you're limiting
Speaker 1: portion size and they're saying, ignore that bad advice. Right,
Speaker 1: So here are the principles, the ten principles. The first
Speaker 1: one is we already kind of covered it to reject
Speaker 1: the diet mentality. Basically, it's just saying that you know,
Speaker 1: these these diets, um don't deliver lasting results, and you've
Speaker 1: got to remind yourself of that, right. Um. There's also
Speaker 1: the next one is honor your hunger. It's so sweet
Speaker 1: they have honor and here a couple of times, but
Speaker 1: they're basically saying that when you are hungry, you should eat,
Speaker 1: and you should pay attention to not only um, what
Speaker 1: your bodies like the fact that your body is telling
Speaker 1: you're hungry, so so go ahead and eat, but um,
Speaker 1: what your body is asking for too. Now your body,
Speaker 1: it's important to say, is what they're saying to honor
Speaker 1: not you're sad, so go eat the ice cream, right,
Speaker 1: which comes later. That comes later. Yeah, what else, Chuck,
Speaker 1: there's make peace with food. Yeah, that is basically unconditional
Speaker 1: permission to eat um. You know, we're tempted by the
Speaker 1: twinkies and the ice cream and stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: they're saying, give yourself that permission, because that's sort of
Speaker 1: one of the keys is once you rewire your brain,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna want the twinkie for lunch because it
Speaker 1: doesn't have that allure and it's probably not gonna make
Speaker 1: you feel great physically. And maybe you need to do
Speaker 1: that a couple of times to realize, you, boy, I
Speaker 1: don't feel so hot after eating ice cream for lunch
Speaker 1: and only ice cream for lunch exactly. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: there's they're saying, just like there's there's if you if
Speaker 1: you are on the couch and you're like, uh, those
Speaker 1: oreo sound good? Should I should not? They're saying, get
Speaker 1: rid of this. Should I should not? If you feel
Speaker 1: hungry and those oreo sound good, you just get up
Speaker 1: and you eat the oreos without a second thought. That's
Speaker 1: the point of making peace with food, giving yourself permission
Speaker 1: to live like that, That's right. The next one, number
Speaker 1: four is challenged the food police, which can be everything
Speaker 1: from your friends and family or partners to your own
Speaker 1: and I think many times your own inner voice probably
Speaker 1: more than any anything, that inner voice UM. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that the food police too, is um,
Speaker 1: they can come about in ways that are much less
Speaker 1: direct than than calling them the food police. Sounds like
Speaker 1: food police, sounds like somebody who's going to tell you
Speaker 1: to put down that twinkie because you, you know, a
Speaker 1: moment on the lips of a lifetime on the hips.
Speaker 1: People who say stuff like that to other people, that's
Speaker 1: definitely food police kind of stuff. But that that same
Speaker 1: kind of guilt or shame or reinforcement of feeling guilty
Speaker 1: or ashamed about food can come from people who are
Speaker 1: talking about their own dislike for their body or their weight,
Speaker 1: because um, it makes you kind of sympathetically trigger and
Speaker 1: examine your own, especially if that person is maybe um,
Speaker 1: weighs less than you do, because if they're worried about
Speaker 1: their weight, well geez, that means you should really be
Speaker 1: worried about your weight. Or they're worried about eating that
Speaker 1: the grilled chicken on their Caesar salad and you're tucking
Speaker 1: into a chili dog, should you really be eating this?
Speaker 1: So the food police in this sense can kind of
Speaker 1: come from a number of different directions. Defund the food police.
Speaker 1: Ye uh. The next one is respect your fullness. And
Speaker 1: this is a big part of it because they're saying
Speaker 1: eat when you're hungry, but they're not saying eat till
Speaker 1: you feel sick. They're saying you need to listen to
Speaker 1: your body at all times when it's hungry, feed it
Speaker 1: and then maybe eat a little slower, maybe pause during
Speaker 1: that snack or during that meal and say, all right, body,
Speaker 1: all am I hungry now? Or my board or stressed out?
Speaker 1: And is that why I'm continuing to eat? Like check
Speaker 1: in with yourself in the middle of a meal to see, body,
Speaker 1: do you need fuel right now? Or you know it's
Speaker 1: some and going on at work and this twinkie makes
Speaker 1: it a whole lot better. And so that kind of
Speaker 1: um reveals like one of the big principles of intuitive eating,
Speaker 1: which is mindfulness, Like you're not supposed to just kind
Speaker 1: of zone out and watch you know, TV while you're
Speaker 1: eating ice cream, because then you look down and you
Speaker 1: eating way more ice cream than you've even realized, which
Speaker 1: means that you didn't even enjoy that ice cream. You
Speaker 1: want to be more mindful when you're eating, in part,
Speaker 1: not just to monitor how much you're eating, but to
Speaker 1: enjoy it more. That's part of the whole thing as well.
Speaker 1: And then for the next one on the list, in fact,
Speaker 1: this satisfaction. Okay, hold on, I've got one more thing
Speaker 1: about respecting your fullness. So there's this confusion teaching that
Speaker 1: the Japanese called hara hatchi boo, which means belli is
Speaker 1: eight percent full. And the kind of rule of thumb
Speaker 1: among Japanese people is that you eat until you feel
Speaker 1: about full, because then your food kind of expands in
Speaker 1: your stomach and by the time um, you're done eating
Speaker 1: eventually becomes a hundred percent full. So you don't you
Speaker 1: don't overeat until you feel sick. And it's actually extremely satisfying.
Speaker 1: It just takes again that level of mindfulness that uh,
Speaker 1: and that number six was satisfaction, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: enjoy your food, Assess that taste in the texture, and
Speaker 1: how does that feel in your stomach? Is it a
Speaker 1: gut bomb or does it feel good? Right? And I
Speaker 1: think also chuck, if you if you stop and think
Speaker 1: about a lot of the ultra processed foods that people
Speaker 1: have in America, you will find it doesn't make you
Speaker 1: feel very good. So I think the authors are aware
Speaker 1: that part of that mindfulness is going to lead you
Speaker 1: to a different some different kinds of foods than the
Speaker 1: ones that that people traditionally think of that they're just
Speaker 1: gonna eat when food when they don't feel guilty about
Speaker 1: eating food, you know, right, like they sit back and
Speaker 1: they're like, no, no, no, go ahead and uh down
Speaker 1: on the ice cream. And then they sit back and
Speaker 1: go watch this, right, I don't know about be happy
Speaker 1: for a few minutes, and then they're going to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I gotta stomach cakee. I think ice cream is exempted
Speaker 1: from that. I keep talking about ice cream ice cream
Speaker 1: in the world. Let's I'll leave ice cream alone. But
Speaker 1: I think, you know, there's there's been plenty of stuff
Speaker 1: that I've eaten where I realized later that it's not
Speaker 1: actually good, it doesn't actually taste good, it's not actually satisfying.
Speaker 1: It actually makes me feel kind of bad. And then
Speaker 1: the icing on the cake of of I love icing
Speaker 1: on cake. Disappointment. Yeah, icing and ice cream are exempted,
Speaker 1: but the icing on this cake of of um. Just
Speaker 1: feeling kind of duped is that I probably saw an
Speaker 1: ad for that food within the last couple of days,
Speaker 1: and the ad worked its mojo on my head. And
Speaker 1: that's why I ate it, not because I like it,
Speaker 1: but because the ad got me. And then the food
Speaker 1: itself is designed to hijack your limbic system, so I
Speaker 1: ate more and more and more. But when I stopped
Speaker 1: and really thought about how it made me feel, it
Speaker 1: didn't feel good about it. I didn't like that food
Speaker 1: and I've actually given up Popeye's chicken as a result.
Speaker 1: Very good. Yeah, honoring your feelings is the next one.
Speaker 1: Without food. Um, you know, check in with yourself emotionally,
Speaker 1: how are you? Are you anxious? You lonely? Are you
Speaker 1: stressed out? You mad? Like? What are your food triggers
Speaker 1: and why are they there? And try and resolve some
Speaker 1: of those those issues without using the food. That's a big,
Speaker 1: big part of it. I think that is the part
Speaker 1: of it, dude. I think most people who are overweight
Speaker 1: are overweight because they eat emotionally. Maybe I'm maybe it's
Speaker 1: over confirmation by some huge stress eater huge um, And
Speaker 1: I guess it's possible I could just be presuming most
Speaker 1: people are like that, But I suspect that that is
Speaker 1: the key to all of it. Is if you can
Speaker 1: figure out that food is in addiction to you, um,
Speaker 1: and that you're using it as an emotional crutch, that
Speaker 1: that will make you identify what you're actually trying to
Speaker 1: deal with or cover up or run from or make
Speaker 1: your make make yourself feel better against using food, and
Speaker 1: that is the key to decoupling it. And when you
Speaker 1: can do that, you can do all this other stuff,
Speaker 1: I would guess is just kind of like a cascade
Speaker 1: of easiness from that point on. I think that's probably
Speaker 1: the hardest part. UH. Number eight is respecting your body.
Speaker 1: And this is the idea that you know, you want
Speaker 1: to love your body and accept your body and feel
Speaker 1: good about what what they call your genetic blueprint and
Speaker 1: the body that you have and maybe were meant to have,
Speaker 1: and having a realistic expectation about what you can and
Speaker 1: should look like. That's a big, big part of it. UM.
Speaker 1: The ninth one really kind of stands out to me
Speaker 1: to Chuck is that um, exercise There they're saying, like exercise,
Speaker 1: but the thing to know about exercises, you don't exercise
Speaker 1: for weight loss. That's not what exercises for. It's actually
Speaker 1: not that great for weight loss. It's good for improving
Speaker 1: your mood and making you feel better. And it can
Speaker 1: help with number eight. With you just respecting your body.
Speaker 1: You can just feel good about your body without even
Speaker 1: really losing any weight, just from from exercising from time
Speaker 1: to time. And they don't even say you necessarily need
Speaker 1: to exercise, they're just saying move more. Don't be sentary.
Speaker 1: Just a big one. But but that was a big
Speaker 1: life changing thing for me too, is learning that exercise
Speaker 1: is not about weight loss, it's about boosting your mood
Speaker 1: and sense of well being. It feels good, it does,
Speaker 1: it feels really good, but if you do it to
Speaker 1: try to lose weight, it's very frustrating and counterproductive and
Speaker 1: you'll eventually give up exercise probably. Uh. And then the
Speaker 1: last one honor your health with gentle nutrition. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this is the idea that you're making food choices um
Speaker 1: that you you like the taste of, but also honored
Speaker 1: the health aspect um. Sure, you might want to have
Speaker 1: some cookies and chips from time to time, but focusing
Speaker 1: on those, you know, nonprocessed foods that that also do
Speaker 1: taste good. That's sort of the route that they suggest
Speaker 1: you go right. So, so that's and that's intuitive eating.
Speaker 1: Although if you if you go back to number um
Speaker 1: uh three, technically number ten could be canceled out. Like
Speaker 1: if you're just like, no, I really hate asparagus, I
Speaker 1: hate vegetables, I love oreos. I'm just gonna eat oreos.
Speaker 1: They're like, Okay, that's fine, as long as you're not
Speaker 1: feeling guilt about as long as you love your body,
Speaker 1: as long as you know you're listening to yourself and
Speaker 1: and the cues your body is telling you whatever, that's
Speaker 1: that's just part of it. It's it's go to town.
Speaker 1: Just love food and love yourself is kind of the message,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty pretty good message that I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people want to hear. You want to
Speaker 1: take a break and then talk about the idea that
Speaker 1: this is rooted in science. Yeah, okay, we're gonna do that.
Speaker 1: Eventually everybody will be right back. Stuck stuck, Stuck. I
Speaker 1: don't know that you know it's stuck in this Stuck.
Speaker 1: It's a great name. That's the name of it. It's
Speaker 1: a great name. Alright, stuck snet with with an X. Alright,
Speaker 1: so intuitive eating this has been you know, sort of
Speaker 1: a new way of thinking. Um, that's come about over
Speaker 1: the last like probably ten or fifteen years, maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit more, but it seems like it's really gainsteam
Speaker 1: in the last ten or fifteen. And the idea is
Speaker 1: that they're all these budd buzzwords that we are sort
Speaker 1: of ingrained in its dieting, losing weight, getting healthy. They've
Speaker 1: changed that to or changing from diet to things like
Speaker 1: getting healthy or or it's a lifestyle change. Uh, and
Speaker 1: they're trying to avoid some of those earlier buzzwords. But
Speaker 1: if you're an anti diet proponent, you're saying, know what,
Speaker 1: this is all the same stuff, just because you call
Speaker 1: it a lifestyle now and you're talking about getting healthy
Speaker 1: rather than losing weight or going on a diet. It's
Speaker 1: the same size, it's just in different clothing. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's here's the standard and everyone needs to reach it
Speaker 1: no matter what. And that really flies in the face
Speaker 1: of this idea that that seems to be one of
Speaker 1: the tenets of intuitive eating and definitely of the anti
Speaker 1: diet movement, which is that every person has their own
Speaker 1: different basically genetic weight set point and that that is
Speaker 1: what your body is going to stay at uh no
Speaker 1: matter what. UM. And if if you try to contravene
Speaker 1: that set point, you might be successful for a little bit,
Speaker 1: but probably the vast majority of people are going to
Speaker 1: suffer relapse, I guess, and they'll gain that weight back
Speaker 1: over time. Give them enough time, they'll gain that weight back,
Speaker 1: and then the problem is they might even gain even more.
Speaker 1: And so there are some diets out there that have
Speaker 1: been demonstrably shown to work, like weight Watchers now called WW,
Speaker 1: like Jenny Craig now called Jenny Craig still, although I
Speaker 1: didn't know it's Australian, so I guess it should be
Speaker 1: Genie Craig. How was that that was great? I don't
Speaker 1: think it was great. I thought all of a sudden
Speaker 1: I was talking to Russell Crowe, right. So um, those
Speaker 1: have been shown to work. The problem is this that
Speaker 1: you are signing up for a lifetime of paying attention
Speaker 1: to what you eat, like that's how it works. Like
Speaker 1: it'll work, but you have to keep it up for
Speaker 1: literally the rest of your life if you want to
Speaker 1: keep that weight off. So um, and then other diets
Speaker 1: just don't work at all, or they will work temporarily,
Speaker 1: but then you just go right back and then you
Speaker 1: gain some weight. And they seem to have figured out,
Speaker 1: at least according to intuitive eating dietitians and anti dieting
Speaker 1: movement proponents, that there there seems to be some biological
Speaker 1: response by the body to diet and it's almost this
Speaker 1: comedy of errors that just makes everything even worse when
Speaker 1: you try to diet. Yeah, I mean the idea is,
Speaker 1: you know, if with any diet pretty much you're restricting
Speaker 1: food in some way, whether it's a kind of food
Speaker 1: or the amount of food, there is almost always going
Speaker 1: to be some amount of hunger involved. Even though they
Speaker 1: all say, like, with this diet, you'll never be hungry again.
Speaker 1: They all say that, but that's sort of the idea
Speaker 1: with any diet is you're restricting yourself. And anti diet
Speaker 1: proponents say, you know what, when that happens, your body
Speaker 1: is wired to want to eat and survive and when
Speaker 1: you're consuming less food energy, Uh, that's going to create
Speaker 1: that energy deficit and that's when you're gonna be burning
Speaker 1: those fat stores and that is how you lose weight.
Speaker 1: But your body is also going to trigger a biological
Speaker 1: starvation response. That is going to mean you're gonna fail eventually,
Speaker 1: because your body is saying, I got to eat. I
Speaker 1: think I'm I think I'm lost in the middle of
Speaker 1: the woods all of a sudden, and go eat. You're hungry.
Speaker 1: You're hungry. Yeah, you're more hungry than you would have been. Right,
Speaker 1: So this can very, very easily lead to binge eating
Speaker 1: because you're not just hungry, you're you're angry at this point,
Speaker 1: and so when you finally do give in and start
Speaker 1: to eat, you're gonna eat more than you would have
Speaker 1: if you were just plain hungry. Right, that's a huge
Speaker 1: problem with it. But it seems to be even more
Speaker 1: um more nuanced than that, and that the body seems
Speaker 1: to to enter um basically a kind of starvation mode
Speaker 1: where once it does manage to get you out of
Speaker 1: that um or starvation response, where it does get you
Speaker 1: out of that diet and back into eating. Um, what
Speaker 1: what you've just done is scare your brain, it seems like,
Speaker 1: so where your brain says, well, I didn't realize that
Speaker 1: food scarcity was going to be an issue in our lifetime,
Speaker 1: So now that I realize it is, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take that set point of adipocity, which is the amount
Speaker 1: of fat you would generally store on yourself. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: inch it up a little higher so that that my
Speaker 1: person can store more fat, because we need to make
Speaker 1: sure that if this ever happens again, we have plenty
Speaker 1: of energy stores. So when you come out of dieting,
Speaker 1: you can actually gain more weight than you had that
Speaker 1: before because of that, because of that adipocity set point
Speaker 1: being increased, and then as a result, as a response,
Speaker 1: you end up dieting again. Your braid says, that happened again,
Speaker 1: so your adipocity set point might be set even higher,
Speaker 1: and so you'll gain even more weight back. And it's
Speaker 1: a phenomenon that we're just starting to understand that I
Speaker 1: can't tell if it's just theoretical or an interpretation of evidence,
Speaker 1: but a term I've seen for it is called diet
Speaker 1: induced obesity. And it's just fascinating to think that dieting
Speaker 1: can actually make you heavier then you would have been
Speaker 1: if you hadn't diet it at all. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: here's a thing I don't think we mentioned yet. When
Speaker 1: your body goes into that iological response that says, oh boy,
Speaker 1: you gotta eat now. It's also saying you gotta eat
Speaker 1: something that's really high in calories. It's like, don't reach
Speaker 1: for the triscuit, friend, you need that pimento cheese on
Speaker 1: white bread, which yeah, yeah, palmetto cheese. You ever had
Speaker 1: that stuff? I've got some of my fridge right now. Buddy, man,
Speaker 1: that's the best. It's hard to go back to anything else,
Speaker 1: to be honest, I didn't even know there was anything
Speaker 1: else anymore, although there was. There's a listener who makes
Speaker 1: some Queen Charlotte pimento cheese out of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: It's Queen Charlotte. Um, it's extremely good. Yes, it's like
Speaker 1: high end pimento cheese, but it's it's not like snooty
Speaker 1: pimento cheese is like really really good pimento cheese. Do
Speaker 1: you do you get the palmetto? Do you get the
Speaker 1: palepeno or bacon or just the plane just the halap Okay? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I've not had the bacon. I'm trying not to eat pig,
Speaker 1: not for any any health reasons, but just because they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be really smart. Yeah, I mean I don't
Speaker 1: get the bacon because Emily doesn't eat it, and I don't.
Speaker 1: I just get the plane. I don't get the helpine either,
Speaker 1: because I don't look super hot things although and it's
Speaker 1: not that hot. It's um, it's becoming really apparent that
Speaker 1: Emily and I are basically one and the same person.
Speaker 1: I have drawn up divorce papers for that reason. That's
Speaker 1: it from her me. We can't get divorced. Okay, all right, kay?
Speaker 1: So um we what were we talking about? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So your body wants, even like high high calorie foods
Speaker 1: to pack that weight back on, and it's going to
Speaker 1: pack on more than last time because you've scared it
Speaker 1: into thinking that it's going to possibly run into food
Speaker 1: scarcity again. So that's what you're doing, is you're basically
Speaker 1: forcing your body into a starvation mode to lose weight.
Speaker 1: But your body responds by saying, like, I'm two steps
Speaker 1: ahead of you. You're not going to win this game.
Speaker 1: And then you're eventually going to keep gaining more and
Speaker 1: more weight back and dieting more and more. And and
Speaker 1: here's the other big part of it, too, Chuck, is
Speaker 1: that you're going to end up on this disappointing treadmill
Speaker 1: where you've wasted all this time and energy and emotion
Speaker 1: into something that's just going to frustrate you. In the
Speaker 1: anti dieting people just say stop well, which could trigger
Speaker 1: what leads you to eat to begin with, which is
Speaker 1: stress and anxiety about your weight. Uh. And then there
Speaker 1: are people like Christie Harrison author. She's a podcaster of
Speaker 1: Food Pyke and author of anti diet colon Reclaim Your Time, Money,
Speaker 1: well Being and Happiness through Intuitive Eating. She's also a
Speaker 1: registered dietitian, so she knows what she's talking about too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so she says, you know what this um, your nutrition,
Speaker 1: your physical activity, smoking, alcohol, uh, any kind of behavioral
Speaker 1: health determine it is just about thirty of your overall
Speaker 1: health anyway. And you know people hang everything on this
Speaker 1: like that, like an ideal wheat and ideal weight means
Speaker 1: I'm healthy. Uh. And and of course we think people
Speaker 1: should quit smoking. I'm not saying go out and smoke anyway.
Speaker 1: But there are people that say, all of this stuff
Speaker 1: combined is only about of your health. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: your genetics have a lot to do with it. Um,
Speaker 1: somebody may uh, somebody's anxiety and stress level maybe so
Speaker 1: high that they have, you know, a steel cable running
Speaker 1: through their body at all times. And they may be thin,
Speaker 1: but they may drop dead from that heart attack in
Speaker 1: their forties because they're not addressing other factors in their
Speaker 1: life other than food. Right. Um, And that's it's kind
Speaker 1: of rich too for the diet culture to be like, well,
Speaker 1: what about health? What about health? Because diet there's some
Speaker 1: pretty unhealthy diets out there. Um. I ran across a
Speaker 1: few that have come and gone over the years, and
Speaker 1: then sometimes I revived. Have you heard of the sleeping
Speaker 1: beauty diet? What's that? You take a nap every time
Speaker 1: you're hungry, You take sleeping pills at night so you
Speaker 1: sleep longer so you're not awake to eat. Don't forget
Speaker 1: dealer meal, which wasn't necessarily bad, but it was definitely
Speaker 1: calorie rest Richard Simmons very colorful, cute little cards or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet, which severely and
Speaker 1: the cabbage soup. I didn't realize this dates back to
Speaker 1: the fifties and it works. The thing is it's calorie restrictive,
Speaker 1: so you're entering that that's that's that starvation response, and
Speaker 1: it'll work if at first, Um, it's just you you
Speaker 1: eat more when you finally get to eat again. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's this one is I just can't believe this.
Speaker 1: This is a real thing, chuck, the feeding tube diet.
Speaker 1: I didn't even want to look that up. I did,
Speaker 1: and it's exactly what you think a doctor, a doctor UM,
Speaker 1: like I guess, a doctor nick type um fits you
Speaker 1: with the naso gastric tube that delivers about eight hundred
Speaker 1: calories of nutrients directly to your stomach and um. Under
Speaker 1: the severe calorie restriction, you will shed the weight, but
Speaker 1: again you're going to gain it all back and then
Speaker 1: some probably when you start eating again, so that that's
Speaker 1: still going on. Yes, So the idea that you that
Speaker 1: that not dieting is unhealthy is awfully rich coming from
Speaker 1: people who undertake some of these extraordinarily dangerous diets, like
Speaker 1: you can get a kidney infection from that feeding tube diet.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of stuff can go wrong, But there
Speaker 1: are some things that that do exist in the world
Speaker 1: that you have to kind of consider, and one of
Speaker 1: them is the obesity epidemic, which is tough to get around,
Speaker 1: but astoundingly the anti diet movement has been like we
Speaker 1: got this. Yeah, I mean the anti diet diet movement
Speaker 1: says there is no public health crisis going on. Uh,
Speaker 1: unless you're talking about the diet culture burn. Uh. They're like,
Speaker 1: there is no obesity epidemic. If you look at the
Speaker 1: average weight of Americans compared to the generation before, it's
Speaker 1: about six to eleven pounds more. And maybe what this
Speaker 1: has done if you look at the b m I scale,
Speaker 1: which basically says there are three types of people I
Speaker 1: guess four underweight, normal, overweight, and obese. Uh, that might
Speaker 1: that six to eleven pounds, which amounts to ten extra
Speaker 1: calories a day um over time, that might nudge you
Speaker 1: into a different category, um, from overweight to obese or
Speaker 1: from normal to overweight. But b m I and mortality
Speaker 1: are just uh. And this is this is what they're saying,
Speaker 1: is that that's causation. Like we've we think we have
Speaker 1: evidence that shows that being obese and having a higher
Speaker 1: b m I doesn't mean you're gonna die sooner, which
Speaker 1: is that's astounding lee contrary to the common since it
Speaker 1: seems like or at least the common perception of the
Speaker 1: link between being overweight and being dead. Basically and apparently
Speaker 1: the the the um the holy text of anti diet
Speaker 1: ing UH, seems to revolve around this two thousand and
Speaker 1: six study by the law professor named campos So I
Speaker 1: don't know what campus is first name, but campos um
Speaker 1: did a survey of the medical literature and tried to
Speaker 1: find the the correlations between b m I and mortality
Speaker 1: and and seemed to find that there actually is a correlation,
Speaker 1: but it's not where you think that. People who are
Speaker 1: in the overweight range or the low range of obesity
Speaker 1: apparently don't seem to have much more of a risk
Speaker 1: factor than anybody who's in the normal weight range. As
Speaker 1: far as mortality goes, you have to get into the UM,
Speaker 1: the the the far side of obesity and then the
Speaker 1: far side of underweight UM to get to where you're
Speaker 1: actually at risk of dying. So that's super contrary to
Speaker 1: UM to what most people think. UH. And again like
Speaker 1: there's this is a two thousand and six study by
Speaker 1: law professor to survey of the new the literature on
Speaker 1: nutrition and weight and UM. So you can take that
Speaker 1: as you will, but at the same time, if it
Speaker 1: is correct, it's still to me, I don't think it
Speaker 1: discounts everything because if people have gained six to eleven
Speaker 1: pounds on average compared to just a generation before that,
Speaker 1: that's not terribly much. I mean, it seems like a
Speaker 1: lot depending on how I guess inculcated into the diet
Speaker 1: culture you are. But it it seems like that's taking
Speaker 1: a snapshot of something that we're still in the process of, um,
Speaker 1: and then just saying don't worry about it because it's
Speaker 1: just this much, not how much more is it going
Speaker 1: to be? And is there danger or if we reach
Speaker 1: that point, if everybody ends up like the humans in
Speaker 1: that in Wally, you know, um. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: akin to saying like, well, the it's just the living
Speaker 1: room that's on fire right now, there's the whole rest
Speaker 1: of the house is not on fire. Stop your moral
Speaker 1: panic about house fires. It's very similar to that. So
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it's wrong, and I'm not saying that, uh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't help the anti diet movements, um ideas. But
Speaker 1: I think that just to say like bam, case closed
Speaker 1: is is a little glib. You're being glib, Matt. What's
Speaker 1: that we say that in our house a lot? That
Speaker 1: was when Tom Cruise and Matt Lower interviewed Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: that scientology. You're being glib Matt. That is about is
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise? The thing to say is anyone's ever since?
Speaker 1: And look what happened to Matt Lower. Yeah, he got cruised.
Speaker 1: Do you want to take a break. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: have we not taken a second break yet? No, let's
Speaker 1: take a break and we'll come back and talk about
Speaker 1: The big elephant is in the room right after this
Speaker 1: stuck stuck, stuck. I don't know that you know it
Speaker 1: stuck and this stuck. It's a great name. That's the
Speaker 1: name of it. It's a great name. Alright, stucks net
Speaker 1: within with an X. So the elephant in the room
Speaker 1: is nutrition. I think this is the glaring thing that
Speaker 1: if you've been listening so far and and disagreed with
Speaker 1: a lot of the anti diet movement, you're probably saying,
Speaker 1: you can't eat just oreos just because it makes you
Speaker 1: feel good. You gotta have nutrition. The body needs nutrition.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, the body does need nutrition. But
Speaker 1: the anti diet movement says, just unwire your brain on
Speaker 1: um this moral judgment on food, and if you get
Speaker 1: too intuitive eating you're what we're saying is listen to
Speaker 1: your body. And if you eat these just oreos for lunch,
Speaker 1: you're gonna feel like garbage later on. And if you're
Speaker 1: listening to your body, your body is gonna tell you
Speaker 1: that it wants nutrition, and it wants good vegetables and
Speaker 1: it wants whole foods. And if you're really in tune
Speaker 1: and you're really listening and you're not just uh saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna give myself permission because I'm an anti
Speaker 1: dieter to do whatever I want. And I may be
Speaker 1: doubled over in pain every afternoon for eating garbage food. Uh,
Speaker 1: that means you're not doing it right. That means you're
Speaker 1: not listening to your body because your body will crave
Speaker 1: nutritional health. Right, you're just being a smart alec at
Speaker 1: that point. That's right. So UM. There there's that's kind
Speaker 1: of like the big the big thing among registered UM
Speaker 1: dietitians and nutritionists that basically says like, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in favor of anti diet ng and we're definitely
Speaker 1: in favor of people being body positive. Um. There's some
Speaker 1: thing called UM Healthy at Every Size UM that was
Speaker 1: founded by h Dr Bacon of all people any size
Speaker 1: any size, Yes, size, health at every size, Linda Bacon
Speaker 1: back in two thousand ten um. And so most most
Speaker 1: dieticians and nutritions are like, of course, we're all very
Speaker 1: much in favor of that, but like, nutrition is important,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure there's some people out there like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would say that you're a nutritionist, but it is.
Speaker 1: There's just I just think that there's no getting around
Speaker 1: the idea that you need healthy, whole foods. I think
Speaker 1: the problem is the anti diet movement says that sounds
Speaker 1: awfully close to there's such things as good foods and
Speaker 1: there's such things as bad foods, and we reject that
Speaker 1: out right, And the nutritionists are saying, no, there really
Speaker 1: is such things as foods that are better for you
Speaker 1: and your body and are going to make you feel
Speaker 1: better when you eat them then other foods. So technically
Speaker 1: sure there is such thing as good and bad foods
Speaker 1: of that sense, but not shame. It's just this is
Speaker 1: going to provide more benefits for you than this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know there is a real danger too. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the people that are I guess you would say
Speaker 1: against the anti diet movement say like, listen, we can't
Speaker 1: let this thing. We're all for body positivity, but we
Speaker 1: can't let it go so far in the other direction
Speaker 1: that your diet shaming and you're saying, you know, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't eat like you were saying you shouldn't seek out
Speaker 1: nutritional foods, like, don't let the pendulum swing so far
Speaker 1: in the other direction that your brainwashing people into thinking
Speaker 1: that they can just eat garbage all the time and
Speaker 1: be healthy. I don't get the impression that that is
Speaker 1: super prevalent among anti diet movement. I don't think it is.
Speaker 1: I think it's more that seems to be targeting any
Speaker 1: kind of weight loss, and that seems to be a
Speaker 1: division in the anti diet movement itself to where um,
Speaker 1: if you if you want to lose weight, or even
Speaker 1: if you don't say you want to lose weight, but
Speaker 1: it's evident that you did. There's a model named Ashley
Speaker 1: Graham who was UM a full figured UH Sports Illustrated
Speaker 1: cover model UM a couple of years back, and she
Speaker 1: like lost a few a few pounds but it's still
Speaker 1: definitely plus size and full figured and proud of it UM.
Speaker 1: But she she she faced a huge backlash as a
Speaker 1: result of that, where people were like, I'm not a
Speaker 1: fan of yours anymore because you lost you lost weight,
Speaker 1: and you've betrayed us all. So there's there's this division
Speaker 1: between well, no, I feel better when I shed a
Speaker 1: couple of pounds and I have no problem with with
Speaker 1: wanting to shed a couple of pounds, and the other
Speaker 1: side is like, you can't even think that way. That's
Speaker 1: diet culture brainwashing you. We reject that, and we reject
Speaker 1: you basically too. And so there's it's just the Internet
Speaker 1: has been injected into it, which is the problem is
Speaker 1: what it seems like, right, because people should be able
Speaker 1: to make their own decisions on their own bodies and
Speaker 1: how they feel the best suits them without being piled
Speaker 1: on on the internet and on either side and I
Speaker 1: and I get to also that people are like, well no,
Speaker 1: that like when you talk about that stuff, it makes
Speaker 1: me feel shame. It triggers my shame. But the problem
Speaker 1: is is like you, you can't control other people. You
Speaker 1: can only control yourself and your response to other people
Speaker 1: and forcing other people to behave in a way that
Speaker 1: makes life easier for you. It's not how things work,
Speaker 1: Like you have to just focus on yourself and your
Speaker 1: own response and your own positivity so that it is
Speaker 1: strong enough and robust enough that it can withstand hearing
Speaker 1: other people talk about how they wish they could lose
Speaker 1: some weight and being like, huh, you know what, I
Speaker 1: don't anymore. I'm truly body positive. I truly love my body. Um.
Speaker 1: That would be the true body positivity that that people
Speaker 1: are trying to achieve there, and it would solve the
Speaker 1: problem of fighting in eating among people who agree on
Speaker 1: almost everything else. You know, yeah, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's so hard wired, it's really hard to undo.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of work. There was a study
Speaker 1: in two thousand seventeen of intuitive eating among retired female athletes,
Speaker 1: and they said they felt very liberated and when they
Speaker 1: you know, made that shift to food freedom for lack
Speaker 1: of a better term, but they said it quote necessitated
Speaker 1: an effortful process of recalibration, during which athletes had to
Speaker 1: relearn and reinterpret their bodies physiological signals of hunger and satiety. So,
Speaker 1: like I was saying earlier, how that you know, you
Speaker 1: you lose these signals from when you were a baby
Speaker 1: that you A lot of work has to go into
Speaker 1: relearning those signals, um, and these are from these female
Speaker 1: athletes of uh. And this isn't necessarily the same thing,
Speaker 1: but there's a big movement now among former NFL players
Speaker 1: to get their health back into shape. And there's a
Speaker 1: long list of these men who have come out saying
Speaker 1: the NFL like kills you, uh, the weight that you
Speaker 1: have to keep on, the amount of food that you
Speaker 1: have to eat to be you know, an offense or
Speaker 1: defensive lineman. And the before and after pictures of some
Speaker 1: of these guys there are like six four three twenty
Speaker 1: on the offensive line that are now like six four
Speaker 1: to five is unbelievable, and they're just like, I've never
Speaker 1: felt better in my life. And I can walk around
Speaker 1: now and I don't feel like I'm you know, carrying
Speaker 1: a sled behind me, uh, Because the NFL is just like, no, man,
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta way three pounds if you want
Speaker 1: to be on the line. Yeah. And then I think
Speaker 1: also the opposite way is for people who are in
Speaker 1: sports and have to be severely calorie restricted, you're basically
Speaker 1: taught to have an eating disorder that you have to
Speaker 1: unlearned when you stop playing sports too. So it kind
Speaker 1: of goes both ways. I think the key here is
Speaker 1: for everybody, for athletes, for everyday people, for people who
Speaker 1: are overweight underweight, the the cross that all of us
Speaker 1: are bearing, if you'll allow me to get a little
Speaker 1: religious in my metaphors here, um, is that we all
Speaker 1: have to stop being so obsessed with food and how
Speaker 1: we we look in our weight. And it's just we're
Speaker 1: all almost all of us are on the same road together,
Speaker 1: and it's good to remember that we're on it together,
Speaker 1: traveling together. Let's stop squabbling with one another. I definitely
Speaker 1: honor my hunger. You got anything else, I got nothing else? Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening everybody. We hope this helped. We
Speaker 1: hope it didn't set anybody off. If it did, email
Speaker 1: us let us know. We apologize in advance. That was
Speaker 1: definitely not our intent. Um. And since we said that,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener. Now, I'm gonna call this ex
Speaker 1: murder and Family or X murdered family. Hey, you guys
Speaker 1: are the best. I stumbled upon your macha that ain't
Speaker 1: just tea podcast a few weeks ago, and I've been
Speaker 1: down to stuff should know rabbit hole ever since. Well,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Of Jenny. Yeah, welcome. Love hearing
Speaker 1: about new listeners right. Most recently, I've been really into
Speaker 1: your shows about axe murderers. They're fascinating. And get this,
Speaker 1: I've discovered that members of my own family were killed
Speaker 1: by an axe murderer or two in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: There's a whole book about it titled to Murder along
Speaker 1: the Muskanic Cong Murder along the Muskanic Cong. I thought
Speaker 1: it was more. They're called the infamous Change Water Massacres
Speaker 1: of eight forty three. Uh. The casting Her family, which
Speaker 1: is my family line, was sleeping one night when two
Speaker 1: men who were attempting to rob them came in and
Speaker 1: murdered the mother, uncle, and two year old sister with axes.
Speaker 1: They had lured the father outside, killed him and threw
Speaker 1: him in a ditch right before that. What's amazing is
Speaker 1: that there were two survivors, little JP and his older
Speaker 1: brother Victor, who were asleep on a cot behind the doorway.
Speaker 1: The murderers had no clue the boys were there, and
Speaker 1: they were left unharmed and slept through the whole thing
Speaker 1: at six and ten years old. What's interesting is that
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if the two men convicted were killers?
Speaker 1: Were the Killers? More than two other men were originally arrested,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of sketchy. You guys should check it out.
Speaker 1: Thanks for all you do. You're a comfort, especially during
Speaker 1: the strange season. That is from Jenny Farnand thanks Jenny.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. We're probably just farning. I get I like
Speaker 1: Fard the Destroyer, the Macha Drinker. Um, thanks Jenny. We
Speaker 1: appreciate you listening. Can you imagine those two boys six
Speaker 1: and ten being like, hey, who's up for pan kit?
Speaker 1: When they wake up? Is it too soon? It's an
Speaker 1: eight murder Chuck and the other one says, no, I'd
Speaker 1: rather have waffle oh a little bit. Yeah, we might
Speaker 1: cut this, but if we don't, you guys can let
Speaker 1: us know how much we suck. Um. We're right to
Speaker 1: us via email at stuff podcast Us at iHeart radio
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
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