“Just 5-10% of weight loss is all you need to improve your health” is one of those things that “everyone knows”, only – it’s complete and utter BS. My guest this week is the fierce and fabulous Ragen Chastain, fat activist, speaker, prolific writer, dancer, and marathon runner, and she’s had a GUTFUL of health professionals hiding their fatphobia under a condescending veneer of ‘health concern’. Do NOT MISS this inspiring conversation – Ragen’s mind is like a razor-sharp encyclopaedia of ANTI-DIET PUSHBACK!
Show Transcript
Welcome to all fired up. I’m Louise your host- and this is the podcast where we talk all things: Anti Diet. Has Diet Culture got you in a fit of rage? Is the injustice of the beauty ideal getting your Knickers in a twist? Does fits-po making you want to spit-spo? Are youready to hurl if you hear one more weight loss tip? Are you ready to be madloud and proud. Well, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s get all fired up! welcome back and happy new year toeverybody who has lurched through the weirdness of the last few weeks here in Sydney, Australia. The cases multiplying almost quicker than we cancount, and it’s been it’s made for a very interesting Christmas break,unlike even last year. So look, I hope, everybody out there is stayingsafe and optimistic because, hopefully we are nearing the crest of this giantwave that’s up ended all of our lives and I’m just yeah. Who knows whathappens next, but I want to give you huge heartfelt Thank you to all of theall fired up listeners who have faithfully stuck by me during thispandemic and to continue to send messages and support, outrage and alove for the podcast. And if you love what you’re hearing please subscribe,so you don’t miss episodes as they pop out. I have such a jam packed year foryou, I’m very excited so make sure you’re subscribed, so you don’t miss anepisode. subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from and if you have a momentin your day and you’re feeling generous, maybe give us a quick five star review,so this message can get out to more and more people and we can topple Dietculture for good and of course it is diet culture high season, so things areprobably outraging you left right and center. I know I have kind of a wrist strain from pressing block and report on all of these bloodyweight loss adsthat keep popping up in my social media. It is worse than it ever has beenbefore, and I really hope you guys are also blocking and reporting as a scamor inappropriate. These disgusting attempts to get hold of our moneybecause no matter what time of year it is diets still don’t work and no matterhow much these places are claiming not to be diets, If they’re selling weightloss, they’re selling weight loss, it doesn’t matter what they’re trying topretend. Absolutely outrageous in normally start the show by some free stuff,but I’ve got a really exciting announcement to make I’ve been workingon this amazing product with the G W M candle company, who I encourage youlook at on Insta, and I have come up with the antidote to diet culture STENCH, so everybody I introduce to you anti-diet room spray, yes, AntiDiet spray because, let’s face it, living in diet culture, stinksbut fear not. Our Glorious Anti-diet Spray banishes the loathsome stench of fatphobia with just one beautiful spritz You can replace the toxic films ofweight loss worship with this empowering mist, which is infused with white sage lemon and lavender. It is so cleansing it smells so delicious. Youwill not believe that pushing back against diet culture can smell so good, andI have created this gorgeous product for use in Diet, culture emergencies.So basically unwanted weight talk, conversations in the lunch room,someone giving you an appearance, focus comment encountering those idiots insocial media land or another weight loss ad popping out, basicallythe entire month of January, before or after or let’s face it even duringfatphobic, medical appointments. Any time you need to connect with your antidiet power, one sprits from the Anti Diet spray will connect you and groundyou, I’m so so excited about this product, because it’s something I’vebeen dreaming about creating for years, so you can buy it right. Now. It’s forsale through the flourish Carabelli website, which is Flourishkirribilli.com.au or on the insta account. You can go to untrapped_auand click on the link in my bio and up your pop with Merch, so go grabyourself some. It is a wonderful way to celebrate and connect back with yourglorious self. Before we get on with this show, I want to give a quick shoutout to everyone in the UNTRAPPED community. untrapped is the amazingonline group and Master class that I co created with other Anti Diet, healthpractitioners here in Australia and we’ve been running since two thousandand seventeen? This community has really gelled and bonded during thepandemic, and it’s just a lovely to be connected with all these people. Solook if you are struggling with life…
00:05:00 – 00:10:01
…and DI culture and you’re looking toconnect with some like minded people who are pushing back and not taking itany more think of joining us at untrapped, you can find out more bygoing to untrack, but we’d love to see you there. Okay, on with the show I amso pumped so excited to bring you this amazing, guest. Ragen CHASTAIN is aspeaker, writer and a thought leader. Let’s face it in the health at everysize movement she always is speaking up against weight, stigma and speaking infavor of weight inclusive health care and also sticking up for fitness forpeople in larger bodies, she’s written so so much she’s the author of the blogdances with fat and she’s also the co- author of the HAES Health Sheets, whichare an amazing resource which she will talk about a little more in our interview,she’s, the CO founder of the fifth, a facebook group, she’s been in a documentary filmcalled Fattitude, America the beautiful too, and a stage of a size is a multicertified health coach and a fitness professional three time nationalchampion dancer a triathlete and a two time marathonner who has a Guiness world record for theheaviest woman ever to complete a marathon, I’m so pumped to bring you thisconversation so without any further delay. Let me give you me and the gloriousRegan. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Oh thank youfor having me I’m thrilled to be here. I so pumped tell me: What’s firing you upat the moment? Right now, I’m fired up about this idea that five to tenpercent weight loss causes clinically meaningful health benefits and I’mfired up about it because, like it’s a you know, it’s a misunderstanding thatgets repeated over and over, and it recently happened to me. I was on ashow in the states called the doctors and we were talking about weightneutral healthcare and then, of course, they had a doctor on who comes from aweight loss perspective and she kept refuting my the studies that I wastalking about by just saying, like what sort of everybody knows and I’m sure Icould find studies- and she kept saying this thing like Oh five to ten percentweight loss produces clinically meaningful benefits, and so, like thetruth about this, is that in fact, that number comes from attrition and notfrom any kind of clinical study. So it’s started like I go…yeah, so itstarted here in the states there was the metropolitan life health insurancetables and it gave very specific weights based on your height and yourframe. But doctors couldn’t get people to lose enough weight to hit thesetargets, so they were like well, let’s say twenty percent and it was literallylike Throws Dart. It did not come from any kind of research. It just seemedlike a number that people could remember. It seemed like a significantamount of weight loss to them, but they couldn’t get people to lose twentypercent, so they went down to ten, but they couldn’t get people to lose tenpercent, and so the you know average in what happens in weight loss studies. IsPeople lose, weight, short term in the first like year or so, and then gain itback long term and the amount of weight they typically lose before they startregaining, is somewhere around five to eight percent, and so they, literallyby attrition, like you, know, move the goal post to declare victory said: okay,well, five to ten percent weight loss is clinically meaningful. This is notbased on any kind of clinical studies and in fact, Mann &;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Tomiyama in 2013, which was a while ago, actually went through thisin great detail and what they found was that the health benefits that peopleexperienced weren’t actually linked to the weight loss they were linked to thebehavior changes did, oh, my goodness so yeah I see your dog is on boardwith this, and I am on board too she’s outraged she’s. I like – yeah thank you forthat. It’s important but yeah, so what they found was then I mean this makesabsolute sense. People make behavior changes yeah as part of these. You knowprograms and they experience a little bit of temporary weight loss and theexperience some health changes, but because we are so focused on thisweight loss paradigm. We credit the weight loss for the health changes,even though it’s small and simultaneous yeah with the health changes ignoringthe fact the behavior changes came before both of them. Oh, my God. Thisis (dog is barking) Dolly’s, outraged and I’m just going tolet her out. Okay, okay dog is now in crate all is under control, so youI mean everything. You’re saying is blowing my mind. So essentially, theamount of weight people are being advised to lose for health benefits isbased on the shittiness of weight loss diets. I e they don’t work so the goalpost were shifted down, not because they were like sparkle-ily like finding outthat ‘you only need to lose this amount of way to get health benefits, but,like literally that’s all that is possible exactly unbelievable and thenattributing the health benefits from just a fat cell shrinking, as opposedto like the human being, actually doing a shit load of things exactly- and thisis of what is like incredibly frustrating, and what gets me so firedup is how much this misin forms people and how much it causes people todisengage from their own a self care…
00:10:01 – 00:15:02
…and health journey. So look health isnot an obligation. It’s not a barometer worthiness, it’s not entirely withinour control, and I always want to be really clear about that. But for peoplewho are like how can I best support? My Body, if we were honest and said likeOh there’s, like a lot of things, you could do you could get more sleep, havemore social connection, do a little movement drink. A little water likehere are things that would nourish you. It would be so much easier for peopleto accomplish that, but what we tell them is you have to lose weight andfive to ten percent, and the thing that’s super frustrating is thatthey’re not keeping that off in almost all cases right? Ninety five percent ormore of people end up gaining that weight back up to sixty six percent game backmore than they lost. So instead of telling people what the studies showand we’re talking about, Matheson at al Way et al the Cooper Institute Longitudinal Studies, Gaesser &;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Angadi that just came out this year, Matheson&;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Tomiyama, 2007, 2013 thousand and thirteen like this is welldocumented and for a long time you are like the Encyclopedia of pushing back,against weight loss bullshit! Well, I mean, I just think it’s important to behonest, and you know it’s something that also happened on the doctors, as Idid that and the doctor Jampalis said, oh well, I’m sure I could find fifteenstudies to say the opposite, which is a really common response right, likefirst of all, it’s not ethical to treat patients based on what you assume youmight be able to find. If you actually looked at the research and the researchis really terrible and that’s something else too, because people think I’malways bashing health care providers- and sometimes I very much am so ifhealth care providers are relying on studies as primary sources, which iswhat they’re taught to do right because they’re a doctor, they don’t have timeto read the whole study. The conclusions are deeply misleading, soyou’ll see things like everyone who complied lost, five percent of theirbody weight and what it doesn’t say, is sixty four percent of the peopledropped out of the study. Most people left the building so yeah thepeople that stayed in like white knuckled five percent for a few months, and thenwe stopped the study exactly my absolute favorite and by favorite, I meanthing that makes me want to like set things on. Fire is when they say allparticipants gained weight but remained below their starting weight and whatthey actually did was just stop counting at year, two right so likethey lost ten pounds in year, one game back five pounds in year, two and thenthey just stopped counting and said. Oh look, everybody’s below they’re goingand, like my background, is research methods and statistics, and so theseare things that, like I want to say. This is like day one research methods,class stuff and it is, but I feel like, even if you were sick that day, theywould still expect you to understand that, like if two thirds of your studygroup nopes out you’re responsible for caring about that, like you’re, notjust allowed to somatically erase them in the conclusions, and that, if Ivariable is going straight up, you’re not allowed to stop counting and actlike it just leveled off there miraculously. But that’s exactly whathappens: People in weight science when they like that doctor, whoever she wassaying I could find fifteen studies. I could find fifteen really shittystudies that stopped earlier, ignored the facts, and then I could keep mybelief system going yeah. How annoying that you were on, like that’s a fairlybig show, is the doctors to be um I mean, that’s a great platform for theAnti Diet approach, but then to get I’m assuming she was in a small body. Is Iyes, YEP yeah smaller body white thing to white female with, I think booksabout weight loss like I think she sells weight, loss yeah, so no vestedinterest at all in Yeah and not listening to you yeah. So it’s just sofrustrating, and I mean it was we were treated pretty well. I had I was on andthen with Dr Greg Dodell who’s an endochrinologist who comes from a weight neutral perspective. Is he the only one on the planet. Like he’s a nice endocrinologist? Yes he’s a great endocrinologist, and I mean in terms of endocrinologists, Idon’t know a lot of others, but I know other physicians who come from HAESperspectives and there are whole clinics that do now so we’re making headway butyeah. I knew they originally said it was just going to be Greg, and I- andso we talked the night before- and I was like look this isn’t my first showthe contract we signed said. Basically they can do anything they want. I wouldbe shocked if there wasn’t somebody else brought on from the weight, losspoint of view, and indeed five minutes before the show yeah, you started torecord. They were like Oh yeah. We have a friend of the show coming on to joinyour segment. Oh my gods, like yeah, I am not surprised by that at all. Thatis just outrageous, though, like not to inform you that this, because Iactually had a quick review of that. well segment, and I noticed that thelittle picture like behind the doctor said like it’s something like a weight debate: Hmm yeah like yeah, which like points for rhyming, but that’s notactually what this is. It’s like a debate about bloodletting you know it’s yes, yeah, except that everybody’s on theside of blood letting and there’s one person like. Can we please look at theresearch for the love of all that’s…
00:15:02 – 00:20:00
…holy? I know her, but that is sofrustrating and, like it’s lovely that you are on national, shows and there’sand endo on national shows and there’s HAES clinics and there’s the definitely isstarting to catch on, but yeah this immutable force of people who are like,but it rhymes, and I want it to be a debate, and I want to kind of keep mymy book being sold. I want to keep my research it’s and, of course, as we youhave blogged about, and I’ve talked about on, podcast there’s massivecommercial interest industries who are pushing this as well, but like at whatpoint do we think this is like? Where do you think this is going? It’s suchan interesting thing, because I mean it’s called the practice of medicinefor a reason and mistakes have been made right. Heroin was originallyprescribed as a non addictive substitute for morphine, like whoops.That was not good right. There’s mistakes are made, and I don’t mean tomake light of the people who are harmed by that. I really don’t when, as we’relearning more about the human body and more about science, the mistakes thatare made harm people, but what seems to have happened here is an unwillingnessto admit being wrong. Yes, and I think that’s because of how much the forprofit weight loss. Industry has allied itself and wriggled itself into thehealth care industry, and it was a brilliant game plan for profit, becauseat some point people were like I’m not selling weight loss is better becauseyou’ll be more attractive. It wasn’t getting it done yeah, but if it’s youknow, your doctor says you have to lose. Weight Loss, to lose weight to be healthy.That gets it done right. Then people believe it and the cycle that happensis the Diet. Industry tells these lies people internalize this information,health care providers, everyone else and then the critical step is weenforce the standard on others right. So when I go online and make here’ssome research and here’s some information and people just come out ofthe woodwork to freak out, you know on a facebook comment section like theybecome violent, that it’s that’s those people have allowed themselves or havesub consciously become a marketing force for the weight loss. Industry, yes, andso that’s how it keeps perpetuating itself, and so every person who getsliberated from that takes away part of that marketing force, whether it is ahealth care provider, whether it is like your aunt Gerty at the holidays,like whoever it is that to me right now. That’s the process is people beingliberated and then understanding and then starting to talk about thesethings. Yes, yeah, it’s collective, isn’t it it’s collective growth likepeople connecting with each other and yeah we’ve got to do it. You know in inour real lives, because we can’t do it in institutions yet or universities yet. you know there’s it’s still honoring, and there are, I mean a lotof progress has been made. I started giving talks to universities and health carepractitioners about this in 2009 and people have beendoing it for years before I was but right, my personal experience when Istarted doing them, especially for health care practitioners. Typically,they were forced to be there. Typically, they were incredibly hostile and Ireally honed a presentation that was entirely research based. So I stoppedtalking about feelings or patient engagement, because I learned that theywere happy to blame a lack of engagement on fat patients right. Well,they don’t come to the doctor, that’s their own fault, and so I just reallytargeted the evidence and started to have a little bit of change, andsometimes you know I’d get feedback you. But thinking about what you said andand now, though, I’m being requested like in the last couple months, I’vespoken at the medical schools of the University of Utah and the University ofColorado. I’ve spoken to practitioners at Kaiser Permanente, which is a hugehealth care provider here in the United States and like people actively wantedme to be there, people self selected into some of them were like the wholeclass, but some of them were self selected and there really is adifference and a change and I think people aren’t willing to let go yet ofthe idea that losing weight is a path to health, but they seem to me morereceptive to like it’s not working, though so like what else can we do orlike? We shouldn’t delay care? While somebody tries to lose weight, weshould give care immediately point of incident and then so they’re not readyto let go of the Weight Loss Paradigm, but a lot more people, I think, areparadigm straddling. Oh yeah, lots of lots of fences, fence poles up thearses of health professionals right now there yeah, so we just got tokind of pull them all the way over into this paradigm, but I feel like there’sthings are getting a bit better. Oh my gosh. So that’s really a greatperspective to notice, like in the twelve years, you’ve been doing thesethat it’s shifted. I’ve noticed a shift here in Australia as well like it justfeels like momentum is growing, but how did you? How did you start like how?How did you kind of come to be standing there in two thousand and nine full of studies in front of a hostileaudience? So my own journey into this…
00:20:00 – 00:25:00
…actually came? I didn’t know there wasa community out there like a size, acceptance or health at every sizecommunity. I was actually looking for the best diet and I have been spendingyears like Yoyo dieting and my background was in research methods andstatistics. So I was like. I should really bring that to bear on thissituation, so I decided to do a literature review of all the studies. Icould find about weight loss and find the Diet that worked the best. So are youat university or you just doing a lit review because you’re a massive nerd,because I’m a massive nerd at the time. I was a business operations consultant,Oh my God, so I like it’s, I’m so like frustrated. I didn’t even write itup right, like I, don’t even have it whenit was like before I was like in the early two hands like I don’t like. Ididn’t, because I wasn’t at school, so there’s no grades, so I just did it butyeah. So I just a massive nerd and yeah what I found reading all these studieswas. There was not a single study, no where more than like a tiny fraction ofpeople were succeeding at long term weight loss and usually that weight lossis like five or ten pounds which like not for nothing. I could lose that amount of weight right now with a Loofa and haircut. I could do a good poop and – exactly so like. I don’t need two years of Intervention to make that happen.But so, yes, I was like okay, I’m a fan of math and science and logic. So thisis in it. What is there? And so that’s what got me looking for? How do wesupport health outside of weight loss and then in two thousand and nine I ortwo thousand and four? I sort of competitive, Ballroom dancing, of course,and I really thought that it would be about my dancing, which was so naive,and so I started getting these horrible fat, shaming comments from the judgesand, at some point, a judge, sort of pinned me against an elevator and saidyou know I couldn’t stand to look at you and she said it over and over again,because my dress had spaghetti straps and my arms were bare, and so in thatmoment I finally I just said um: I probably won’t choose to change thedress, but I appreciate you taking the time to tell me it’s such a problem foryou, Oh my God, and she got Super Mad like I thought she was going to take aswing at me maybe mad, and then she was like red and then she just walkedaway, and I had I’ve always been sort of social justice minded, I did myfirst protest in kindergarten yeah. I am had done. I came out in Texas in themid 90s in college, and so I done a lot of queer and trans activism, a lot ofworking in solidarity with anti racism work, but I never thought I was on my ownpersonal journey at that point of like health at every size and sort of sizeacceptance, but I never thought of fat people as an oppressed group, and so inliterally in that moment after that woman stomped away. I was like. Oh Iget it like. This is not just about me. This is I’m part of a group who are systemically oppressed and is treated,and I didn’t want to be A. I just want to be a fat dancer right, but I wasgoing to have to be a fat activist to get it done, and so that’s what got mestarted. I started on like a live journal and then moved to in twothousand and nine, I think to word press yeah and started the dances ofthat dances with fat blog, which was first of all you’re amazing. But Idon’t know how you think, like I’m the kind of person who thinks of comebackslike that three years later, so it’s a double edged sword. I’ve alwaysbeen the person who has a snappy come back, but the the other end of it isall that was witty, but I shouldn’t have said it to the dean of my college.Like so there’s definitely times when I wish I have been slower with the comeback as well. Oh my God, but we you were one of thefirst blogs. I found Oh wow yeah in this. I am also a massive net and whenI went into private practice as a psychologist, everyone hated theirbodies. Everyone wanted to lose weight. Hats to people had to eating disorders,so I’m like well, I don’t know how to help people lose way because you knowI’d had my own weight, cycling story, so I went off and research I’m like.Well, I’m a good clinical psychologist I go and do a Lit review andlike – same fucking thing, I’m like yeah, what the hell – nothing works, and then I had thislike weird grey area. Time of like drifting and going, I don’t know whatthe hell to do and then I found Dr Rick Kausman who’s an Aussie GP who wrote a book called If Not Dieting Then What? And he was like my portal in, but you were likeone of the first blogs and I think he even mentioned your blog in in the training. Oh, my gosh, that’samazing! I had no idea, I know it’s so cool, so it’s funny how we get into itlike the pathways in mine was kind of academic like yours, but you had theextra layer of like suddenly realizing. Oh my gosh. It is an oppression thingand oh my gosh, I’m in it and I just yea got it like a height act, yeah yeah and it so. I started the blogand, what’s incredibly embarrassing about the early blog post somebody. Justtold me: Oh, I read your early blog posting some to that. But, like Ididn’t know, there was a community. So these were like my original thoughtsthat I was having and I didn’t know. Other people had had these thoughtslike since, before I was born and so they’re like these, but I started. Iwas just going to talk about my own personal journey as a dancer and then Iwas like. Let’s talk about this from a civil rights perspective and then let’slook at like how many negative things do…
00:25:00 – 00:30:01
I get and that’s what happened withdances with fat was that I wrote a blog post. I think it’s three hundred andsixty seven thousand one hundred and seventy unhelpful things number mightbe wrong, but basically in a very unscientific way. I tracked how manynegative messages I got. I got about my body in twenty four hours and thenextrapolated that to a year here is like- and that was the number I thinkwas three hundred and sixty seven thousand one hundred and seventy. Butagain I may be making that number up. It’s been a while, since I visited that,but then somebody found that, like I don’t know who, because I had like sixblog readers, including my mother, at this point and then somebody found itand submitted it to Jezebel. Oh, my God, and they re posted it, and I got tenthousand views in one day and I was absolutely certain that was the mostpeople who would ever see my blog and then they asked for, and I didn’t atthe time I didn’t even have a subscribe button. I had nothing like. I literallywas just writing for my friends, and so my friend who was in IT and SEO is like.Let’s fix this, let’s get a way for people to subscribe and to figure outwho you are and then then they ask for a follow up piece and that’s kind ofhow my blog ended up gaining popularity was through Jezebel, Oh my God, andnow we have way more than ten thousand people reading yeah us done a littlebetter than that now, but but yeah it’s. You know I every person who clicks onmy blog or my weight and health care newsletter, like that’s an honor to me, andto hear that it was one of the first things you found. I I’ve just totallylike yeah, it’s yeah and now I send basically all my clients to you as well.It’s you not only do the science stuff, but you also do the like. I can danceand I can run a marathon, and you know you clearly value physical activity andmovement and like beautiful, dancing and stuff like that, and it’s reallyimportant, because we don’t see that yeah, it’s hard and it’s getting easier,but it has traditionally been difficult, especially before the Internet, to findrole models. I always want to say with fitness like again, not an obligation,not a brometers ness, there’s a thing called good fatty, bad fatty privilege,which is the idea that fat people who do their quote unquote right thingslike participate in fitness are somehow better or deserve better treatment. SoI always want to be clear that that is complete, bullshit right. I’ve doneboth completing a marathon having a netflix marathon, morally equivalentactivities right and if you go slow enough, they’re both a way to spend anentire Sunday but but yeah. I one of the things I try to do because I dolike to do fitness y things as a hobby, many of them ridiculous, and so I thinkabout it as like trying to create space in the fitness world, like withmy physical body and so like. That’s why I went for the Guinness record withthe marathon was so that there would be this record would exist and I made therecords, so it would be broken, hopefully a lot. Oh my God I mean againlike, of course you not only did a marathon, but it’s the Guiness world record hold up for doing a marathon. I mean Idon’t even know how you get in contact with these people. Did you ringthem up and say Hi? I think I’m thinking of doing it. I know somebodysuggested it, so I did a marathon with my best friend, and I did it because Iwas in at a freak accident and injured my neck, and I couldn’t do like any ofthings I like to do like dancing, weight, lifting I’m a fast twitchathlete, and so the doctor was like you can basically for the next twenty ishweeks you can walk and I’m just not like just going for a walk is not funfor me personally, totally valid thing to do. Just not my thing, and so I waslike, if I don’t have some kind of goal, I’m not doing this. I know myself, andso I found out that in twenty weeks there was a marathon in Seattle, whichis where my best friend lives, and so I emailed him and said: Do you want to doa marathon with me and like a very good best friend, emailed back I’m inimmediately, and so that’s how I did the first one and then after I did thefirst one and swore I would never ever ever ever. Do it again, Somebody said:Oh there’s actually there’s a Guinness World Record, but it’s all gendercategory, so you could ask them to make a category for cis women and then likeyou, and what I thought was that I would like contact them and be likehere’s, my marathon time and they be like. Oh congrats, here’s yourcertificate! No, you have to you can’t do it retroactively. So I had to do asecond marathon because you have to have video of the whole thing you haveto have witnesses like it was. I think my partner Julienne, my fiance, who wascoordinating the whole thing from a van and the freezing cold, worked harderthan I did on that Marathon Day to get everything done and coordinated andtake care of it. But yeah it was I it was a journey. Oh my God, that’s socool and the other thing. I noticed it with you. It’s like the amount of pushback from trolls and just like really nasty humans, and that must be. I wantto say. I wish I didn’t happen to anyone, but to see it happen to you it really upsets me because, like go, go and find something else todo men literally anything yeah? It’s interesting. I call them my therebefore the grace of whatever fan club because like if you spend that muchtime on me, you’re a fan as far as I’m concerned like misguided though you maybe- and I positive to me- is that, through whatever combination of likeluck and nature and nurture and personality and privilege, it’ssomething that I can handle, and so I would rather they come for me than forsomebody who it’s going to cause them to stop doing their work or it’s goingto intrinsically injure them. And it’s…
00:30:01 – 00:35:01
…been going on for so long now like on.I know it was a day in May in two thousand and twelve, I got they like coordinated, so that there were all these different websites and groups and Redittand stuff who were coordinated, and so they all emailed me or left blogmessages or message. You know on the same day, and so I got over fivethousand comments on my blog and they, like all said, like Kill Yourself, OhGod, and so like when it was happening, because I woke up-and I had like two hundred comments and that’s rarely good. It’s very rare thatI just have two hundred comments out of nowhere right, so that’s usually atrolling and then it just kept going, and so I really feel like they didthemselves a disservice, but kind of desensitizing me, okay, like when it’sso much it’s like when you like, play the penis game. You say the word somuch that like penis stops having it it’s like that, like, Oh, my God, it’sso many people. This no longer has meaning to me except to say like what ashame that this is what your life has devolved to yeah yeah. That is becauseit’s about them, isn’t it it’s yeah yeah, just the cruelty of the Internet.Astounds me yeah, but you phenomenal. I Bet Jeez, it’sactually I kind of get lost for words with what people have to go throughyeah. It’s an. I get it’s a lot better for me because of the privilege that Ihave I’m white cisgender, currently able bodied currently neurotypical. So Ihave a lot of privilege for people who are out here doing this work withoutthe kind of privilege that I do it’s. It can be much much worse, yeah itshouldn’t be yeah yeah, and all of that I think, is just related tomisogyny. Literally, it’s not they’re, definitely not concerned withhealth. NO No! No! No one who like suggest that you self harm isconcerned with your health, like that super obvious that again, even if youmissed the first day of whatever class that would be taught in, I think youprobably still know but yeah. It’s this misogyny and the intersection of misogynyand weight sigma and then often Ableism and healthism on top of that, and so it’sjust incredibly sad and incredibly gross and incredibly harmful yeah, andon the other side of that, just your popularity is encouraging right, likeimagining how many people’s eyes you’ve touched through various things thatyou’ve done. Do you think of that? Like okay, it’s freaks me out honestly, soyou know I mean my work is standing on the shoulders of people who have beendoing it since long before I was born it standing with people who are doingit right now with far less privilege than I have so I always try to likeremember that you have the idea that anybody is like. Oh I’m, a fan of yours,just freaks me out, like I just don’t think of it, because I’m just like ahome typing on my computer about stuff and like you breaking down studies, but it islike it’s something. That’s really comforting, it’s something that it’slike this is I’m very lucky that I’m saying these things in that there arepeople on the other end who are responding back and listening and whoare being supported like that. I recently had a cancer scare and so like,as I was like trying to like deal with the uncertainty, what we were figuringit out. I realized like look if this was it like. I have a life that touchedpeople like people have reached out to me and said to me, like you changed mylife for the better and like so I’m kind of a peace with that. You know,like I hope, to be able to do a lot more and the cancer scare. You know thecancer scare was like the best possible. You know scenario for the outcome, butso I’m fine, I’m going to be fine, but but just knowing that, like that, Ithink that was the first time that that really gave me like some real peacearound just sort of my life and what I’m doing yeah being an activist isyeah advocate activist, ally, It’s different yeah. I joke sometimes that Ihave a dream job that I wish didn’t exist. Huh me too! because, like yeahright like given what is happening in the world, this is exactly what I wantto be doing, but I wish this wasn’t happen in the way I could just go belike a mediocre stand up. Comedian somewhere like that, would be fine, soyeah, so you’ve written a book as well yeah.I wrote a book years ago, called Fat, the owners manual and my goal was it waswhen I had my blog and I wanted to have something that people could like haveand hold in it had all like the basics in it, because I wrote I blogged about alot of different things. So I was like, let’s get all kind of the basicconcepts together, and one thing that I think is a little bit sad is how muchit’s still at applicable. Today I, like- I, don’t remember exactly when it was.It was in sort of the early 2010s, but not enough has changed since Iwrote that book. I wish it was so completely out of date that it wasuseless. Yeah laugh at it on remember that yeah. You remember when we had totalk about that yeah, that’s not the case yet, but hopefully soon, and inthat there’s something called the underpants rule. Can you explain sure? So it was my wayof talking about the fact that our health isn’t somebody else’s businessunless we ask them to make it their…
00:35:01 – 00:40:03
…business. So, like I’m, the boss of myunderpants you’re, the boss of your underpants, so when it comes to personalchoices, we get to make those choices for ourselves, whether that’s aboutlike the prioritization and path which used to health, or you know whatbehaviors we engage in and with the understanding that these things areimpacted by by privilege by oppression by different situations. So someonedealing with a chronic illness, their choices may be different than someonewho’s not dealing with that. But it was that idea that, like it doesn’t matterwhat you think about my health, like you’re, welcome to think whatever youwant. But if you want to be around me you’re one hundred percent responsiblefor keeping those thoughts to yourself. I love that yeah. It’s like the underpants rule is like it’s none of your fucking business right right yeah? Ilove it thanks and to be clear. This is not about like some, because trolls tryto take it will underpants rule I can be like as racists. I want to be likeno, no, no, like that’s not a personal choice, that’s oppression! Those aren’tthe same so always want to like put that little disclaim, like personalchoices, is what we’re talking about here, God, the trolls yeahmisrepresenting, but I love that. I think that that’s a really nice way ofthinking about stuff, because when it comes to that what health thing which,because I think a health ism is like a rampant at the moment like in the maybein the 1960s/70s, it was the thin ideal that was rampant as a means ofestablishing like the the weight hierarchy. But now it’s I’m justconcerned about your health and that the healthism that comes with that is justnext level, yeah and massively hypocritical yeah. So when you look atthe people that we like celebrities and worship Athletes Rock stars, these arepeople who are not prioritizing their health like here in the US. Americanfootball is built around athletes risking their short and long term,physical and mental health, in the hopes that their team will somedayscore enough points to win a piece of jewelry right. That’s the thing likethat Super Bowl Ring, and this we we celebrate right. All of the injuriesall of like the long term, mental health, the fact that most of theseplayers are broke within two years, so they do become a drain. And again thisisn’t that’s not a real thing right, there’s no thing as being a drain onsociety because of your health. That’s not real, but in terms of looking atthe hypocrisy. People who complain about like the cost of fat people,which is also like a super Messed up thing, are not complaining about the cost ofsports injuries, which are billions of dollars a year for sports people, don’tneed to be playing yeah. I know right, nobody needs to do a marathon and weget a lot of injuries doing one that you wouldn’t get. If you were justdoing like thirty minutes of Gentle Movement a day yeah, we do we get angry about some things: m, yeah, yeah, so to weight. Exactly so healthismbecomes the thin veil where, if we can make it about health, then we can be aswe can have as much weight stigma as we want yeah. We can be as big a assholes as we need to be in the name of ‘health’ yeah yeah, but in truth, like health isa hundred percent, just not a barometer of worthiness, it doesn’t matter, islike for fat people for example it doesn’t matter. WHY WE’RE FAT? Doesn’t itmatter? There are health impacts of being fat like we have the right to betreated without shame, signaling or a period hmm, and to enjoyexcellent health right. We have access, we should have equal access tothe world, including health care, regardless just like Shaquille Neil gotne surgery right, here’s somebody who for sure caused his injury and who wasreturning to the lifestyle that would make his knee surgery less time be less.You know, be sub par, an outcome, and that was fine. Of course it’s fine rightbecause he wanted to play sports like he wanted to throw a ball in a hoop,and for that he can do anything like we’ll spend as much money as it costs for him to be able to continue to play a game for a living, but likefor somebody who needs a knee surgery, who’s fat who needs it for basic life.Mobility. Oh well, you caused this and your outcome might not be as good as athin person. So you don’t get this surgery, it’s so fucked up. The samething happens here in Australia. It’s a yeah, absolutely outrageous, and especiallythis directive that you need to lose a certain amount of weight, like jump through ahoop before you earn or deserve even a say at the surgeon’s desk right, andit’s super obvious how sketchy this is when you look at the fact that thesethe amount of weight you need to lose is typically a percentage which means thatsomeone who comes in at a certain way and loses a percentage will get thesurgery. Even if someone who comes in at their ending weight would be deniedthe surgery and told that they have to lose. This is not anything to do withoutcomes and when we look at it, there’s a whole collection like on theHAES health sheets, on the resources. There’s a collection of that Deb Burgardput together of resources for joint replacement, denial , which is morehelpful in the states. Because of the way a health can stem works. Theirhealth care system is like a dumpster full of Shit on fire, but there’s thisone area where, like this is more helpful but yeah, it’s just completelyridiculous, completely helpless and what it says is that bodies are lessvaluable, more riskable than thin bodies Yeah, and so was this some of theimpetus behind the HAES health sheets? And can you talk a bit about that about that? The HAES Health sheets? So this is…
00:40:03 – 00:45:01
…something so several years ago Iemailed Dr Louise Metts who’s, an internal medicine physician and a fullylike HAES based, trans affirming practice, and the subject of my email waspossibly terrible idea. That was like. I have this idea. I want people to havelike a sheet for like a diagnosis that would give the weight neutral care theway that fat phobia is involved, that they could just like, download and likeif they’re a practitioner they can use it if they’re a patient advocate, theycan take it to the practitioner and she’s like No. I really like this idea,and so we then got Tiana Dodson on board WHO’s, a health coach and alsodoes web development, and so we worked on this project for a year and ourprocesses, I draft them and then Dr Metz goes over them and that’s her expertisefixes mistakes I’ve made because I’m not a doctor, I’m not a health carepractitioner I mean so that research can only take me so far so and thenTiana publishes them, and so in March of I think two thousand and twenty welaunched them, and so we’ve got unforgetable month to launch any yeahyeah right but yeah it was. I think, that’s right. I am terrible with datesand time. So, if someone’s, like fact checking me, let me know if I’m gettingthis wrong, but yeah. So it was this huge outpouring from people who arelike. Oh my gosh I- and we can you know I’ve. Always I needed this like becauseso many fat people get told. Oh, like fat caused this and weight loss is asolution and that’s never the case. Yeah right weight loss is never thesolution. There’s always, thin people get all the same health issues that fatpeople do so being thin or thinner, can neither be a sure, preventative or asure cure. No, but it will surely add a whole heap of other shit on your plate at a really difficult time. exactly a really difficult time right, So good. those HAES Health Sheets. For that reason, and I think we need something similar in Australia forsure we need one in every single country in the world. We shouldn’t need them atall yeah, but just you know the fact that we need this push back. Yeah, noyeah here again. It’s like it’s. What like what you did in two thousandand a nine yeah dive den. You got all of the research and now you’re sharingthem with people to make a change in their lives. Yeah and just so, you knowto get some support and practitioners to you know it’s like. I understand youthink that weight loss is a cure for, or treatment for, type two diabetes,but you’re wrong and here’s why and here’s what else There is so like.Let’s try to treat our patients from an evidence, based perspective, and soanyone can go and get these HAES health whereabout are they. So it’s haeshealthsheets.com and there’s a sheet library so you just look for thediagnosis and then download it, and then there’s also a resource andResearch Library, and so you can find everything from like cards to take tothe doctor’s office with phrasing or to ask you not to weigh in there’s also aresearch bank that has a ton of studies that you can kind of look into. There’sthe thing for the collection of resources for denial of jointreplacement and then there’s a page that people have found more helpfulthan I expected them to called why we don’t recommend weight loss that laysout the case against weight loss as an ethical evidence based Intervention-Oh my God, so not a terrible idea whatsoever. Right yeah I mean, if you enjoy, you knowprescribing something that has the opposite of the intended effect, themajority of the time and causes harm. Then I guess that’s like a fun dayfor you. But if not here’s a bunch of sheets that will give you somebetter ideas. Oh my gosh, and now you started a newsletter as well: The weight &;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; health care newsletter? yeah. Soit’s on substack. On blogging on dances with fat, the most like heart,wrenching and desperate requests. I got were round weight and health care, andso it’s something I’ve written about a lot, but I can also be reallytriggering for people to just like get delivered in the inbox they’re expectingmy usual rant to get some bullshit and instead they get like a really intenseway lost thing and also, as I speak, to more health care practitioners, it’shelpful to have somewhere to point them. That’s very specific, and so I startedthis newsletter to be specifically about the intersections of weight,science and weight stigma and healthcare and they’re coming out twicethe week yeah and like when do you likesleep? Or do you what’s happening here? Nota great sleeper? No, it’s you know I before I started the newsletter, I Iwrote a lot and so I have like pieces that will be helpful at any time andthen, when stuff happens, I can write a piece immediately and sort of insert itinto the schedule, and I am somebody who I’m really a fast writer, becauseI’m not really a writer like it’s when people say: Oh you’re writer, I like noI’m more like a talker with a keyboard, okay, and so basically you know as Ithe way that I think about these things. It’s easy for me to write about thempretty quickly, yeah yeah. So that is a super power because it definitely I’mlike writing constipated. It takes me a long time like a casserole like it justsits in the slow cooker and yeah. I just admire people who are so prolific and you aredefinitey on those.
00:45:02 – 00:50:01
I also like super got over beingincredibly worried about typos or with the weight and health care newsletterI’m a little more careful, but on the blog I was like. If, interestingly, Ihave the my folk send Australia who read the blog would email me with thetypos before the American readers would start to read it so I’d have them allfixed is like this amazing group of people who are like reading and alsolike being kind editors of my work, so that was really for a period of years.That was really like a cool way to interact with folks o yeah, thankyou Aussie spellcheckers. Thank you so much for ever. You saved me. What do you think aboutthat? You mentioned earlier like this kind of drain on the health care systemargument that we hear a lot and I’ve noticed lately. Certain organizationsin particular putting together calculations of the cost of havinglarger people exist on the planet, and I just think it’s full of shit, do you?So it’s it’s. Eugenics is what it is right. Any time you’re trying tocalculate how much a certain group of people cost so that you can argue fortheir eradication like that is that’s the that’s eugenics, that’s what thatis period, but also it’s really disingenuous,because look when any time we’re looking at the health out comes of fatpeople, we’re looking at the health outcomes of weight, stigma and weightcycling and inequal health care access, yeah yeah, and that is something that’snever controlled for in studies. It’s never talked about in these costcalculations. But when we look at the research, a tremendous amount of harmis some by these three things which are perpetrated by the you know: GovernmentWars on obesity on the you know by health care providers by the healthcare system in general, and so we have no idea what fat, people’s health careoutcomes would look like if we weren’t constantly constantly subjected to weight,stigma and weight, cycling and health care, inequality, yeah and justinequality in general yeah, and so it’s this thing where you can’t calculatethe cost of being fat, you’re, calculating the cost of being part ofan oppressed group. Exactly yes, but also what they do iscalculate the cost of actual things like diabetes or yeah, cardiovascular,disease or cancer, and and then kind of like lump that in with body size yeah,and then they do like the they do like this difference between the actualcosts and they’re, like cost of like number of health years lost- and you knowlike these- are that when it gets completely magical. Well, yeah, it’slike you know. If the person would live for twenty years longer and would makelike six times more money right, yeah really and that ends up being, like youknow, sixty billion dollars a year, really yeah aller gist. So when yousaid like you’re like this is when it gets magical, I’m like this is where itgets absolutely would fail. Freshman, research methods- if you try to pullthis in that class, but Allergen did this study and I it came out all overthe place that quote unquote: Obesity cost to work place, seventy two billiondollars a year or seventy three billion dollars a year”, one of those- and so Iwas like just as a. You know, trained researcher, like that’s a hardnumber to get so like I pay my thirty bucks and I got my study and what theydid was they found a questionnaire that asked people how much productivity didyou lose in the last seven days due to health issues on a scale of one to ten,and how many days did you miss in the last seven days due to health issues?Then they assumed that fat people’s health issues were due to their sizeand thin people’s were due to something else. It was yes and then they usedactuarial tables of wages higher than the actual wages of the people tocalculate this number, and it turns out that the number they calculated wasjust a little bit more expensive than it would be to give lap bands toeveryone and oh wait – Allergan – That’s right! What do they? They make a lap band. What a coincidence! It’s what they do, and so how convenient was it for them to beable to use that study to tell insurance it’s cheaper to give peoplelap bands than to let them keep losing all this productivity and look wealready know because of weight stigma fat people are hired less, paid, lessand promoted less so like we didn’t need Allegan to tell our bosses that,like we can’t get to work and when we do, we can’t get shit done becausewe’re just sitting around being fat. I guess but like that is exact and it gotinternational media attention completely uncritical that drives me upthe wall. Oh, like I’m sorry Allergan, the kind hearted gastric band makers have not uncovered a treasure chest of truth here yeah, and then you just see theheadlines. It’s the same with the covid that you know all of these headlinesaround Covid and size, and it’s like this has been rotten from the beginning.It’s rotten now. We continue to be rotten like it. If that is like whathappens like we see like if we start from a bullshit assumption, then theball of bullshit just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and then we juststart kind of branching off into other,…
00:50:02 – 00:54:41
…like it’s like a galaxy of bullshit,yeah and interesting, a really impactful little thing. I’ve been doingin talks with health care providers is talking about. There’s a study – in 2009 there was an h1N1 outbreak in the States. andfat people had much worse outcomes, yeah, and so all of this research cameout. Oh, it must be receptor sites. It must be that it’s multiplying in thefat cells, it must be cascade inflammation and then in two thousandand twelve Sen et al did a retrospective and they found no thin.People were given treatment before fat people that explains the entire difference: Okay and just watching people’s faces,because I’m like you know it’s the same claims that are being made in Covid nowand in the same way it was like treated like a fact like fat being fat, causesnegative outcomes and it turns out no medical weight Stigma caused worse out comes yeah, having years of stigmatizing events and all of theimplications on your body from that yeah. That’s the problem yeah and it’snot a fat cell. Let’s stop blaming fat cells for everything exactly oranything and like Bacon, and Aphramor found that the entirety of excessmortality that was attributed to obesity in Framingham, and the NHaines could very well be from the negative effects of weight, cycling orYoyo Dieting, and so again people aren’t controlling for that and so they’rejust saying if fat people have a higher incidents of health condition. Well, itmust be their body, size and being thin must be the cure and again that isfirst day of research methods, information. You cannot do that and youcan, but you can’t call it good science, but you know this is a beautiful kindof return to our starting point, because just five to ten percent whenwhich we’ve established is cyclical, but that just five to ten percentweight loss can cause the outcomes that the headlines Screaming about and yeah.Then we’re going to double down and blame it on your body, size, yeah, andthen you see the intersection right where Oh fat, people have worseoutcomes from Covid, so being thin must being fat must be the cause being thin must be – and then the weight loss industry swoops in you know and says: Oh well,then we have to do like weight loss for these people and we have a program sojust like get on board like the UK, like, I think it was slimming worldright, jumped right in with the government and to suggest that it was asocial responsibility to lose weight because you’re now again that quoteunquote drain on society, even if it was true that would be a eugenicsargument, but it’s so frustrating because weight loss. Isn’t it’s notjust that it fails all the time it’s. The failure is not benign. Failure atweight, loss weight, cycling comes with physical harm, yeah, yeah andpsychological harm and psychological harm. Absolutely so. Selling weightloss is perpetuating harm. Oh my God. What an amazing conversation!Thank you so much. I thank you for having me. This has been such a- bestpart of my day. Thank you right back at you, but keep doing what you’re doing andjust yes look after yourself, because you are a precious resource in HAESworld. Thank you, and likewise I am just honored to be in community with you.So thank you. Thank you BOOM. You are welcome. How completely awesome is Ragen Chastain. I am just blown away by that conversation, and I hope you really really enjoyed it and I’m sure you’re now fascinated to find out more about this woman who is Ragen Chastain?. How can I find out more about her? So you can go to Insta- Ragenchastain, so RAGENCHASTAIN, or you can go todanceswithfat.org to find out heaps more about Ragen and everything she is doing. She is a power house and you, as you have heard, and I’m very very grateful, so I hope you really enjoyed that episode. Everybody I am completely pumped because the rest of this year is going to be outrageously,amazingly fired up, and I can’t wait to bring it to you in the meantime. If there is something about diet culture, it’s really really getting your goat. I want to hear about it, so send me an email, louise@untrapped.com.au,and we’ll see if we can process the rage here on the podcast, okay, everyone. Thank you so much for listening, giving me some of your time stay safe, look after yourself, and I can’t wait to talk to you very soon in the meantime, trust your body think critically push back against diet culture Untrap from the crap! .
