The Financial Diet is spreading fat acceptance pseudoscience | Fat activism podcast analysis

hello so today i'm reviewing an interview that was done on a channel called the financial diet with a fashion expert named john luca russo and i'm going to give a preemptive warning not to leave a spiteful angry comment before watching the full hour-long video let us begin [Music] [Applause] do you feel like it's fair to say that there is a attacks placed on people for being in a larger body absolutely i think it all goes down to the fact that this world is not created for or accommodating of pe

ople who live in larger bodies despite the fact that we have statistics that show that the average american woman and same for men as well are plus-sized but plus-sized people are taxed on many different ways literal tax known as kind of the fat tax which is a higher price that's attributed to clothing um for having more fabric being needed and then other ways as well so the only concrete thing mentioned for this fat tax is more expensive clothing due to more fabric being used to make plus size

clothes i don't understand why that isn't reasonable the salon i get my hair done at adds an additional price for their services if your hair is longer than shoulder length which makes sense because that requires more work and more product to deal with longer hair this is even the case with children's clothes they tend to cost less than adult clothes because they have less fabric so why is it unreasonable for a size 2 dress to cost less than a size 16 dress how do you think that it's possible th

at we are in a society where as you say the majority of people adults in the society are falling into a category which is oppressed and ostracized and um sort of uh regarded as being an aberration when statistically they're the norm i think a lot of it goes back to the fact that we don't see those bodies reflected hollywood top ceos tech all of the people we're seeing kind of broadcast it out there in headlines and imagery what we're taking in is this very thin image so the world doesn't see bei

ng fat as normal because there isn't a lot of representation in media fat people sure i guess i disagree with the idea that being fat is seen as out of the norm but i don't really have strong opinions when it comes to plus size representation other than i don't think it would be a good idea to have the average size of the u.s population represented in media because put plainly the u.s population is very unhealthy almost 10 of the u.s population is considered morbidly obese and i don't think it's

a good idea to have 10 percent of media representing those people just like it's not healthy to have very skinny underweight women widely represented in media either a lot of people would identify the past several years as being a kind of body positive era i don't feel anecdotally that a lot of the bodies that i've seen really change what is presented to me is aspirational despite the body positive noise um it still feels pretty homogeneous and pretty centered on thinness um what do you think h

as have been sort of the progresses of body positivity and where do you think it's sort of coming up short it's a hard question because body positivity at its core had really great intentions like you said and if you go back years ago and even before body positivity was a thing and you just kind of had the fat liberation movement and other advocates as well there's these really great intentions and really great people fighting i think what's happened in the past few years is we've seen this comm

ercialization of body positivity happen like you like you spoke of and we're seeing kind of brands capitalize on this topic of self-love and how they can kind of market it and in that they have kind of pushed body positivity away from its core which is about really centering plus size voices in the representation and accessibility of them and they've made it something that's more just kind of a welcoming of all feel good about yourself message which while important is not what body positivity wa

s set out to do and so this movement necessarily didn't start to be inclusive of all it was specifically focused on larger bodies we're not seeing as much progress as you think we would be seeing now you know 10 plus years into body positivity 30 plus years into fat liberation we're not seeing the progress that we would have hoped for because it has kind of been co-opted and commercialized in these ways so the question chelsea gave was why do you think there hasn't been much of an increase in fa

t representation despite the body positivity movement and the response was the core messages of body positivity have been co-opted from the original goals which were societal progress for fat people that is not why body positivity was made it has always been about loving our bodies despite the perceived flaws and just so happens in the past decade there have been a huge increase in young plus-sized women that want to find a way to love themselves more and that's how the decades-old fat liberatio

n group collided with body positivity to create a hybrid that they claimed was always for fat people when it wasn't and even the way john lu explained this doesn't make sense he said that that liberation has been around for 30 plus years and body positivity has been around for about 10. if that liberation and body positivity have always been the same why has one been around decades longer than the other and he also said that long before body positivity people were advocating for fat people so th

at also suggests that body positivity wasn't created to center fat people because why would that liberation create another movement that has the same goals as the original movement with a name that is less specific to the actual goals of the movement and if that's the case how can you see the body positivity has strayed from its original goals from my perspective it seems like the fat liberation movement retroactively co-opted the body positivity movement which should be for everyone and yes cor

porations will take advantage of trends to capitalize on them but he also mentioned how body positivity has been watered down due to corporate interests but what about the fact that clothing sizes have been heavily expanded in the past 10 years 10 years ago it would have been almost impossible to find a size 20 in most stores and now even mainstream stores like american eagle carry those sizes you think they did that because they just love fat people so much no it's because they saw money to be

made off of providing for a new demographic so you can say that corporate interests have watered down body positivity but they've also adapted a lot to the larger population in a pretty short amount of time also a lot of the models that you mentioned they are larger than standard size models but a lot of them fall into a very very specific body type that is still you know slim wasted you know full chested full hipped and is you know sort of like a very conventional hourglass figure which at leas

t you know uh i think from uh a normal quote-unquote average woman's perspective is like in its own way is still quite unachievable for most of us absolutely and i think this is something that has frustrated a lot of plus-sized people because it's what they've coined the acceptable plus-sized body and while it is far different than the bodies we saw in the devil wears prada it is not really reflective of what the average plus size woman is and so what designers will do they will take these size

12 14 girls and make them their muses and they will only represent them and while there's nothing wrong with these women and i'm in fact a fan of all those women i listed they're not the only body type i think that's the hard thing in the commercialization of body positivity is that it's centered individual body types when it should center the spectrum of them which goes far beyond the 24 into a 26 28 30 plus to start out what chelsea said in the clip was pretty much a reference to female beauty

standards the women we mostly see in media have slim waists large chests etc yeah that's all true but beauty standards are meant to be unattainable by the masses that's not a good thing but it's also not specific to a single demographic i.e fat people small chested women whatever the standard for the past 10 years was having a giant butt also unrealistic so this conversation is far from specific to plus-sized models and john lucco's response was he wants more representation for people above a s

ize 30 why no i disagree on a fundamental level i think it was wrong for magazines to put women that were clearly emaciated and underweight on magazine covers in the 90s and 2000s i think it's just as wrong to put people that are grossly overweight on magazine covers in 2022 it's a different side of the same coin both unhealthy both shouldn't be represented in a good light he said that current representation isn't represented of the average woman's body but as i said before the average person in

the us is unhealthy and being morbidly obese shouldn't be normalized so from a lay person's perspective if most of the country uh falls into the category of plus size then one would think it would be very lucrative for businesses to um cater to that market even perhaps more so than they cater to what i guess we could call straight sizes and it's hard to understand what the financial rationale kind of is for that um can you talk a little bit about the finances of why companies are making the dec

ision to exclude such a potentially lucrative market on paper you would think that they would want to dive in they would want to dive into this market that's been estimated to be worth more than 24 billion but in reality there's a lot that goes into it that from the outside looking in you wouldn't expect the challenges from the financial perspective though come from the fact that diving into plus is a huge investment for starters designers in fashion schools are not taught to design for plus siz

es it's not something that is in their curriculum even today there are some schools today that will incorporate electives that you can design for plus if you want but there is no plus size curriculum in these top design institutions so the designers of today especially who went to school 10 15 20 years ago don't know how to design for plus so this already has to be an investment made in figuring that out that's done through fit modeling which is where designers will bring in models of a size 12

14 16 18 they'll fit their garments on them they'll figure out how do i design for this how do i accommodate for this how do i design for curves and that is really expensive of all the designers i talk to that's the biggest investment they make is in fit models but that's the only way they can learn about how to design for these body types because if they simply grade up which is about adding two inches per size it's not going to accommodate for the different ways that weight is held on differen

t body types yeah all of this makes sense the plus size market is very new so learning how to make plus-sized clothes is a new art form so of course there are very few people that can do it and do it well and weight is held in very different ways the larger you are but that isn't something all designers can accommodate for it's also not something you can expect them to accommodate for it's the same way petite women or really tall women struggle to find pants in their size because it might fit th

eir waist but it might be too short or too long these are problems that all women have when shopping but they are exacerbated the larger the size gets because you could have a woman that's a size 18 with a small waist an hourglass shape or you can have a size 18 woman with a large stomach a large butt and smaller boobs and a pair of pants is going to fit very differently on both bodies but that's not the designer's job to figure out shopping is difficult for pretty much all women but if you are

very large you are just going to have to accept that it's going to be even harder due to what he already mentioned the different ways weight sits on your body and john mentioned earlier about the fat tax of plus-sized clothing costing more due to fabric and how that's unfair but increased prices for plus-sized clothes make even more sense now when you consider all the extra work you just mentioned to be able to make plus-sized clothing they put in more effort to create a consumer product why sho

uldn't they be able to charge more and this is why a lot of designers stray or rate away from doing plus size because reaching this community is more difficult than you would think you think you know 68 of american women it should be easy we'll just put ads out like normal but this is a customer that's been underserved and ignored for so long she's not looking in the same places she's hesitant she needs to be talked to in a different way are you talking about children sir sounds like you're talk

ing about children what do you mean plus-sized women are hesitant they need to be talked to in a different way that is some of the most patronizing [ __ ] i've heard towards fat people in a long time let alone in reference to clothing sizes this type of language is used to compare systemic injustices not a group of women who spent their whole lives not being able to shop at francescas and a majority of designers have never had plus-sized people around them so they just don't know how to do that

the same with their marketing firms they've never marketed the plus before and marketing to plus is very different than marketing to straight sizes and so making that investment there means making a community aspect and so it's hiring plus-sized consultants it's talking to the community directly incorporating their voices so on all these different levels there's money that they have to put into it it is a huge investment i don't get why marketing plus size clothes is that much different than mar

keting normal sizes you always hear fat activists talking about how if brands just make clothes in their size they'll wear it and they just want brands to be inclusive and how plus-sized clothes shouldn't be separate from other clothing options because that denotes they are somehow different all that type of stuff but then this dude is out here implying that plus-sized women have their own deeply held culture and community that they need to be spoken to in a different way and that the clothing c

ompanies need to reach out in order to incorporate community voices to be able to relate to them in order to make clothes in their size what does that mean i don't think whatever plus size community you're talking about has views that are anywhere near as homogeneous as you think they are and referencing what is 60 plus percent of the us women's population like this sad traumatized group is super weird okay when we get into the focus group do not raise your voice under any circumstances to these

plus-size women and talk about 50 slower than you normally would wait why they need to be spoken to in a calm clear tone or you're going to scare them and they'll retreat back to torrid and then there's of course it goes down to everything to stocking plus sizes in store right for so long they've only stocked an x x uh extra small to an extra large how are they gonna now double that offering in store where's the size how are they gonna ship those out what about all these different factors so fr

om start to end there's a lot of money that has to be put in i think that's what designers are thinking of a lot and it's challenging because while this is a huge market there's a huge potential for failure and a lot of people simply just don't even know how to take the first step into figuring out whether it's the right move for their business so he just explained why designers may not want to make plus sizes it's a huge investment from model fitting to stocking a larger range of sizes to extra

shipping costs and that investment may not work out for them why does it need to be made into anything more than that he mentioned at the beginning that there's a fat tax but it's not oppressive for a brand to do a cost-benefit analysis and realize that making a specific product may not be profitable for them and to not make it i have a friend with a very small ring size and most jewelers won't even carry that size in sores so she has to have all of her ring size and she often have to pay for t

hat service is that oppression because the brands don't think carrying child sizes in store is worth it i really just can't understand any of this argument complain about clothes if you want but after all the reasonable explanations you've given as to why plus size clothes are more costly to make it's not a systemic struggle um something that i think has become very strange is diet culture yeah the outcome is generally the same right like you're still seeing an emphasis being placed on weight lo

ss but i think it's now become sort of superficially less acceptable to um speak strictly in terms of weight loss you'll speak in terms of you know health and psychology and habit forming and you know all of this stuff but at the end of the day a lot of it still boils down to calorie tracking with an explicit goal of weight loss can you talk about the state of the diet and weight loss industry right now i think at the end of the day a diet is a diet right you can't escape it from what it is but

with that commercialization of body positivity the diet industry has tried to welcome in this message of self-love where it doesn't fit which is why we see it happen so much that people will say oh this isn't a diet it's a lifestyle change when really at its core what is it it's a diet to lose weight maybe you're right john luca a diet is a diet but that begs a few questions one even if a lifestyle change is a diet why is that a bad thing and two why is the channel you're being interviewed on ca

lled the financial diet and to answer that question we have to go back to 2014 to find a blog that was first written by our host chelsea to document her financial journey hi i'm chelsea i'm a writer living in new york city and i have a problem a problem that i'm finally trying to be accountable for and to be honest about and hopefully change i spend money on stupid [ __ ] i spend money on a lot of stupid [ __ ] thus far my idiotic spending has mostly been limited to not saving that much money at

all and burying myself in massive credit card debt but that's not really because anything's smart or proactive on my part the main reason that i don't have a credit card is because like many pre-economic crash 18 year olds i was offered a credit card at my high school graduation that i promptly maxed out and didn't pay back for a good four years that's paid off now but the shoddy credit that lingered as a result enabled me to only get a credit card with a comically low credit limit that i am re

ligiously paying off hopefully if i continue this indefinitely eventually a bank might look at me as a reasonably sane adult who made some adolescent mistakes and not perpetual teenager who should be given one of those junior savings accounts that comes with a free hello kitty backpack this blog was meant to document chelsea's improving relationship to money after a lifetime spent of horrendous money habits and she called it the financial diet because the slow changes she made to improve her rel

ationship to money is similar to the long-term changes one needs to make to improve their relationship to food like for example a lifestyle change so in a slightly different world this original post could look something like this so i have a confession i have a terrible relationship with food just completely awful and i always have it started when i was a kid i was always a bit chubby but things really accelerated towards the end of high school without getting into too many boring details i didn

't make it onto the sports team i wanted and this led me to basically doing no exercise for the next eight or so years on top of that i have a junk food problem i'm not into sweet honey buns swiss rolls or chocolate bars my vice is salty foods chips cheese puffs and other savory snacks have this hole on me that i can't really describe but all those years of never exercising and indulging in whatever snack food suited my fancy that day have led me to being 316.1 pounds as of today for the longest

time i saw my weight as normal i was never that much bigger than the people around me or so i thought and it never caused problems in my life and i never had a full rock bottom moment but in the past year there have been a few nagging ailments and a few embarrassing experiences that really brought my bad relationship to food and exercise into perspective the worst one was a bachelorette party that ended with me crying in an alley because i was in so much pain trying to keep up during the bar cr

awl if i'm honest with myself that throbbing knee pain wasn't new and now that i'm in my mid-20s i think it's time for me to really take my physical health seriously it's time to focus on those food habits and lose this extra weight let's go [Music] the diet industry is just trying to stay alive it's not going to make a change i mean we have the statistics that over 90 of diets fail that's not changing just because you slap on a sticker of self-love that what they'd rather focus on is trying to

use your insecurities against you under this new smoke screen to try and ultimately get you to spend your money and continue to fail so that you continue to feed into it okay so 90 of diets fail that's less than the 95 statistic i hear all the time but still where is that number coming from there have been no comprehensive studies done in the past 30 years that show this number is anywhere near accurate and yet it's treated like canon among fat activists and yes there are companies and industrie

s made to capitalize on people's insecurities and sell scammy diet products but dieting doesn't have to mean buying pills or apps or a bunch of fitness equipment or wraps or anything like that you can improve your relationship with food and possibly lose weight without benefiting the diet industry this guy has this idea that the only type of diet that exists is going on weight watchers or joining herbalife and drinking protein shakes what if you just eat more vegetables consume less liquid calor

ies and go for a long walk every day that's still a diet if you're changing how you're eating right and it's also a lifestyle change that's objectively healthy i don't get this black and white thinking when it comes to what a diet is dieting can be healthy and in most cases it should be a lifestyle change why do they fail on average diets um it's there's a kind of a handful of reasons i think a lot of diets last for about two years i think it's at the two-year mark that you see most of them fail

and most of it is about sustainability right so when you're on a diet it's usually very restrictive it's something that you know a lot of times is not healthy and you're following a very strict structure over time as life gets in as you kind of adjust to a non-strict life uh you kind of go back to old habits so he said you're on a strict diet but after a few years you go back to old habits so you're saying that diets don't work not because the lifestyle change didn't lead to weight loss but bec

ause the person didn't sustain the habit that doesn't seem like a problem with the diet then that seems like an issue with the person doing it and that also doesn't mean we should encourage people to not change their unhealthy habits because they can really wreak havoc on your life and being able to acknowledge them and change them is important as written by chelsea herself about her unhealthy habits when it comes to the empty calories of spending i try to think of the first things that always e

nd in regret things that i get rid of without feeling like i've lost anything because their purchase was made out of habit laziness or some kind of emotional search that should have been answered with self-reflection and personal growth instead of charging some random item on my debit card it's important to at least call out the basic things that bring an immediate sense of regret unnecessary taxis this is probably the most upsetting of all of them because you actually get to stew inside the cab

as you watch the tigger go up watch the city go by and think of all the easy convenient ways you could have gotten home if you weren't so lazy to empty calories i've been thinking about what are my go-to's the things i consume out of boredom or laziness because i can't sleep or the warmer weather makes me want a fancy iced coffee drink number one danishes cheese danishes are my weakness they are the perfect combination of savory and sweet and there's a cafe right across the street from my apart

ment that has them and i find myself going there after work most days of the week for no other reason than i'm used to it i guess it's a bad habit that i have to work on number two brunch cocktails my friends love brunch and i love hanging out with them i don't regret the brunches i regret how plastered i tend to get at 11am on a saturday morning the drinks tend to be huge and because i get caught up in the moment with the intoxicating smell of hollandaise sauce and loud boisterous conversation

i end up ordering drink after drink after calorie-laden drink plus one or two of the restaurant's beautifully decorated desserts and the more drunk i get the more easily i'll order another picture of sangria for the table or for mostly me not the healthiest habit when it comes to calories or alcohol chelsea said previously that fat people are an oppressed group but if we can acknowledge that weight is a factor of lifestyle choices how are you going to say that fat people are oppressed as a whole

while acknowledging that it is chosen lifestyle factors that make people fat if you become fat because of changeable habits why is it oppressive to have to deal with the consequences of being fat like paying more for clothing would you consider it oppressive for 25 year old chelsea to have to deal with the defaulted credit card she took out due to her poor spending habits especially when she admits she was never in true poverty just bad at managing her finances so why should she be responsible

for her bad spending habits when she's had them her whole life that's the same line of thinking of someone who has been obese their whole life and says that they can't change it may not be easy but it is lifestyle factors that have led you to defaulting on credit cards when you have more than enough money to survive or over consuming food and i would never say that diet culture doesn't exist there's a huge market of selling people particularly women products that will quickly fix all of their in

securities whether it be their body size their skin their hair but i think the idea that diets are unhealthy which is alluded to by saying a diet is a diet and often diets are unhealthy is untrue many diets and particularly crash diets are unhealthy but a diet that includes introducing sustainable good habits isn't unhealthy again it's this really black and white way of thinking about diets that you're either eating whatever you want whenever you want or you're living off of protein shakes and t

here's nothing in between and your body goes back to its natural process it's natural metabolism that's not being changed because of a very low calorie regimen a very high exercise regimen it's going back to its normal state of being which for a lot of people is bigger and i think we have so many statistics now that show genetics play a huge role here some people are bigger they that is their natural state of being of being in a bigger body and you can't change that you might be able to change i

t for a few months a few years even but once you kind of fall back into your natural state of being your body is going to reflect that when you say some people are naturally bigger we need to clarify what bigger means because if you mean a little overweight yeah sure but previously he said he wanted representation for people who are size 30 and above nobody and i mean nobody is meant to be a size 30 based on genetics or metabolism or any metric you want nobody's even meant to be a size 20. those

are not natural healthy sizes for humans if that was the case if it is natural why were those sizes all but non-existent throughout human history until the last 30 years how do genetics all of a sudden make a bunch of people 30 larger and before he said that diets fail because people don't stick to them right but then he also said that it's genetic to be in a larger body so is our food size related to our size or is it all genetics or is there some weird work around where some people are large

because of food but for others it's genetic so they can eat as much or as little as they want and always end up at 250 pounds and i love how you said you can get back to your original size once you fall back into your natural state of being aka once you revert your eating and lifestyle habits back to the ones that made you overweight in the first place why don't you just say that instead of calling obesity your natural state of being when it comes to the the finances of it specifically you know

we talked at the very beginning about the quote fat tax that basically in all of these areas that we touch on and when we touch on the finances of them we will get comments along the lines of like but you have to understand this is very different for people in a bigger body so can you talk a bit about the um the specific costs that it that are placed on people in larger bodies um to overcome those things absolutely i think in my career so far i have had the privilege of viewing this from differe

nt aspects i started my career in theater and then went to entertainment to fashion to tech and so i've seen it kind of take fold in all these different industries and it's very similar in all of them for instance if someone is going for a job interview right and someone wears a size medium they can go to the mall the night before and find something in their size easily they have an array of options they can pick what fits them best what they want they can purchase that whether it's an expensive

garment or fast fashion they can pick that they're good when you're looking at someone who wears a 3x 4x a majority of those brands that cater to them which is about 20 of the entire fashion industry sells plus sizes of those 20 of brands only a handful and a small handful sell plus sizes in store so these plus size shoppers if they have a job interview the next day if they're going to work in tech where you know a lot of times people are wearing suits for these big meetings and all of that the

y have to go and order online well they can't do that the night before and if they do they're going to have to pay for that exercise of shipping and so already they have to go online it's an uttering feeling to begin with it's frustrating to not have that accessibility in store like people who shop straight sizes do there's a whole shipping cost then some brands who do plus offer free shipping for this reason some of them don't and so you have to pay for shipping if you need expedited shipping y

ou're paying for that then it could come and not fit so you're paying for it to go back if they don't have free returns then you have to order it again so all that time your interview's probably already gone you already missed out you probably didn't go i don't think any of these problems could be seen as a tax on fat people and here's why they're far from the only demographic with this problem they're probably the largest demographic with this problem but far from the only one as i mentioned be

fore i have a friend with a really small ring size and friends with really small shoe sizes that may not be held in stores so if they're starting a nursing job the next day for example and they wear a size 5 shoe they may not be able to run to the store to get the shoes that they need that day or a very petite woman or a very tall woman looking for pants there are so many demographics for which shopping is more difficult compared to other people and it's unfortunate but one it's not specific to

fat people at all and two it's far from being considered oppressive it's an inconvenience not an injustice so there's that whole aspect there of little costs that continue to add up it's things like flying on a plane if you're going for a job interview from new york to la and your plus side you might pay for another c oh no how dare they make you pay for two seats when you take up the space for two seats screw the person who may have to sit next to you and only get half the seat they paid for be

cause you made lifestyle choices to get very large and that's another thing he said it's a lot of little things that add up yeah just like the little habits that lead someone to being morbidly obese remember when you said that people tend to fall back into old habits which is why they have trouble maintaining long-term weight loss yeah that's a bunch of little things adding up to you gaining a bunch of weight but to him if you fall back into old habits that caused you to become very overweight i

t's you falling back into your natural state but when those habits make it so that you are unrightfully taking up someone else's space that they paid for then that's oppressive to you did i get that right things like that it's everyday little things that add up these extra prices these extra costs of being fat continue to add up and to separate plus-sized people into this category that is difficult to navigate because it makes them think why should i even try why should i go for that promotion w

hy should i go for that job in new york city why should i even try these things when i know the odds are already against me okay does anyone else think this whole not going for a promotion in new york city thing is related to this dude specifically like that is far too specific of a scenario to not have come from close to home and i feel like it's a far leap to say that i struggle to find clothes in stores and i have to pay for extra airline seats so i'm not even going to try to advance my caree

r that seems like more than a bit of a stretch yes you'll have to deal with more inconveniences when you're very large but again it's all the little choices you made to get there and if you have enough money to buy an interview outfit on a day's notice or even fly on a plane you have enough money to deal with those bad habits go see a dietitian go see a therapist if being very large is causing that many problems in your life you can change it figure out the reasons why you overeat and work to ad

dress those problems so much of my frivolous spending can be traced back to going out for no reason whether that's hitting a bar after work making several coffee runs throughout the day or stopping in the way home to pick up takeout because i'm too lazy to cook and when i think about it a huge part of it comes from the fact that being at home feels in some weird way like a failure part of it is extroversion being alone can drain me particularly when it's repeated and not voluntary but part of it

is also not taking the time to make my home feel as luxurious comforting and refreshing as a day out can be an epiphany so much of the empty calories i consume are the result of boredom and loneliness i am a proud extrovert and as i've gotten into adulthood i haven't been able to socialize in the same way i could when i was a kid going to school every day seeing my friends after school activity socializing was so effortless but now i come home from work and realize i'm going to spend the rest o

f the evening alone in my desolate apartment and right as a small amount of loneliness is about to set in i think well there are chips in the cabinet let's zone out and watch youtube videos or the coffee shop across the street might have those spinach croissants i like and before i have time to sit down and bask in the emptiness of my apartment i have something else that brings me joy food but part of this week has been dedicated to subduing that habit i started getting black bean chips instead

of regular chips because i've heard they're healthier i also rekindled an old hobby knitting i know the idea of knitting to cure boredom may seem like a bit of a contradiction but i loved knitting as a kid so i'm hoping it'll be a good way to keep me occupied i think is really striking about the like executive and you know you speak about working in the tech space because it's an extremely male dominated space um but it does seem in these spaces and these more male dominated spaces that we're se

eing a move towards health and it's a question of you know we're we're getting healthy as a team that often again just redowns to weight but yet there is this very specific and strange paradigm of health that seems to be also in and of itself without appearance the way it is for women but yet is sort of under a different um a different moniker and maybe more socially acceptable um for sort of the masculine contingent um can you talk about that dynamic specifically and and how you feel that it's

sort of filtering into our professional spaces absolutely well i think there's this divide between men and women there's this huge gender divide on how they view health um and how this topic is kind of manifested in those circles i think for men health often means weight and that's it and then it you know if we're talking about strength then it means muscles it's very cut and dry there and so with all these men in charge of tech and all these other industries that's kind of the the message that

they're promoting is health means how much you weigh when really that's not the case and health is so much more complex in multi-layer than that but they really simplify it down to just that because that's what we've been told for so long right by the bmi and by all these different doctors and professionals is that what you weigh equals you know what your health status or level is really that's not the truth but that's what they focus on because it's tangible for men i think it all goes down to

that it's that cut and dry it's that if you're fat you're unhealthy you're unwanted you're undesirable so try to be skinny try to be you know very thin and ripped and as muscular as you can be for women it's a little different because women kind of understand the complexities of it more because the industries have marketed them that way um and i think women do a better job of just knowing their bodies than men will ever and so they kind of know the complexities there they know that you know it's

about more than health they know that there's you know different aspects that contribute to weight gain or weight loss there's more room for conversation there but when it comes to men who are in tech and in other industries are the people in charge they kind of simplify it down to just lose the weight get to that goal number and your life will be perfect and you'll be able to succeed and be successful and happy and healthy i am speechless over this entire explanation i don't i don't even know

where to begin the question was basically how is diet culture different for men and women and the response was if i understood it correctly that men care more about weight than women and have less knowledge when it comes to what is healthy this take goes against everything i've heard from fat activism up until this point i hear all the time that people only think being skinny is better because they think it's healthy which is something we need to fight to change but i've never heard the idea tha

t men believe small weight equals health more than women and now that i think about it that doesn't even make sense with the rest of what he said because he talked about how for men being muscular and ripped is considered beautiful and healthy which is true but being muscular especially for men is kind of the opposite of having a small weight men tend to be able to put on muscle way faster than women so they could put on 40 pounds of muscle and would be at a higher weight than before and most me

n would think that is a lot more healthy and more attractive than being 40 pounds smaller and less muscular so i'm really confused at this idea that men think a smaller weight is better and there's also this implication that men specifically men in tech look at weight and bmi more than other groups because they tend to be more data driven and more into numbers i think that was the point they were trying to make which also i don't i really don't understand that take either please people in the co

mments explain that to me in a way that my brain can make sense of it to me a lot of this video makes it seem like this man lives in his own very small niche corner of the internet that is very fat positive and mostly full of women which is why so much of what they say seems to not reflect reality at all like talking about how clothing brands don't make clothes for plus-sized people and referring to a collective plus-sized community that brands need to relate to in some way or saying that all di

ets are restrictive and saying that men tend to rely on the bmi more than women and saying that women tend to be more educated on size diversity all of this screams to me that these are the things he is told and what is constantly reflected in whatever small social media bubble he lives in but he doesn't understand that he lives in a small corner of the internet and this isn't the way most people think we also hear a lot about you know when it comes to a lack of options in terms of shopping for

food for example food deserts like we often see these correlations between you know larger people often having more limited choices in terms of you know where they're buying almost all of their consumer goods and it's ironic that we talk so much about sort of reframing this through health um when you know the accessibility of huge amounts of the country to even access fresh produce you know things that are quote unquote the most healthy is so limited um can you talk a little bit about sort of th

e socioeconomic landscape and the consumer landscape of being plus size absolutely i think this the statistics show that a lot of people who are plus-sized come from a lower socio-economic background and like you said that's because of things like food deserts it's accessibility availability what can they get at a low cost point that is going to sustain them and then if they have family sustain their children sustain the people that they're taking care of there is so many factors there that we k

ind of often put blame on a person for right it's your fault you're this big you made yourself this way and we don't take into consideration everything else that's going on around here people who are kind of outside of these areas of availability and accessibility have to do the best with what they're given and oftentimes that means things like fast food it means things that are cheap easy these are also people who are likely working you know two three jobs they have to make ends meet they don't

have a lot of money to spend on food especially if they have the young children if they have families if they're making taking care of grandparents all these different aspects here money is tight people do not have x amount of money to just throw around on food they just need to make ends meet and make enough to sustain the people that they're taking care of including themselves and because of that they go to places like you know fast food places in places that are not quote unquote healthy but

that are available what's going to happen is what we see you know people are of a larger size people are unaware of this they don't have access to these things it's the whole cause and effect conversation once again okay so the crux of everything he just said was that food deserts and other socioeconomic factors can lead people being obese because they only have access to unhealthy foods that's true but doesn't that go against the previous statement he said that being thinner doesn't necessaril

y mean being healthier he said before that some people are genetically fat and implied that we shouldn't have nearly as big of a factor in determining health if it should be considered a factor at all but doesn't that contradict the sentiment that some people are fat because they only have access to unhealthy foods because if being morbidly obese on its own isn't healthy then why mention food deserts at all fatness isn't a health issue right i'm confused at the ideology this man has when it come

s to weight and size being fat isn't unhealthy but poverty can lead people to being fat and that's a problem okay this reminds me of the iway podcast episode i reviewed when the guest said that obesity isn't unhealthy but the food environment that caused obesity is unhealthy which is a hell of a contradiction because how can the food people are consuming be unhealthy but the effects of consuming too much of that food isn't unhealthy that's like saying lead-filled water is unhealthy but drinking

it isn't and those statements are very similar to the one this dude just made if food deserts that cause obesity are a problem then obesity is a problem and if obesity is a problem why are you telling people they shouldn't try to fix it this entire conversation about food deserts after so much of this video being about the problems that much more privileged fat people seem to face seems very virtue signally oh yeah there's these really sad poor fat people that live in food deserts that don't eve

n have access to fresh fruits and vegetables yeah i know it's really really sad but you know what oppresses the rest of us fat people skinny tea and another thing i want to mention about food deserts is the existence of food deserts go against so much of what was already said in this video when it comes to weight loss not being possible chelsea and john luca mentioned that the reason people in food deserts tend to be more obese is because they don't have access to healthy food so that must mean

they believe that if you gave people living in food deserts unlimited access to fresh healthy food then on average their body size would go down and the obesity rates would be lower but that contradicts john lucas many statements of saying dieting doesn't work what you eat doesn't work long-term sustainable weight loss doesn't make sense no matter what you eat but if you can say that if you give people living in food deserts this large group of people access to fresh healthy food that they haven

't had then over the long term the obesity rates would be lower due to access to this food then how do you square that with saying that you as an individual have no chance of losing weight you shouldn't try the way you eat doesn't matter and there's no chance of weight loss those two ideas can't really coexist together which is why i think the fat acceptance movement rarely mentions food deserts they're always mentioned as kind of an afterthought and that's because so much of the fat except rhet

oric is undercut by the existence of food deserts how can you believe on a population level that the food people eat can cause them to gain or lose weight but as an individual you believe that your body size is completely out of your control my like absolute all-time nemesis in terms of like personal finance memes are like the ones where it'll be um like a guy will go to the grocery store and get like a bag of dried beans a bell pepper an onion um like a thing of oil whatever and be like i'm fee

ding my family of six for 40 cents a day but also like how long does it take you to prepare that stuff like how long does it take you to portion it out to freeze it like do you even have the proper storage to keep all that stuff like it is just to me the extent to which people feel um empowered to shame um people for opting for convenience when as you put it many we're talking about a country where very few people are even paid a living wage at their primary job to not have to work more than one

job if they're raising a family like the shaming that happens for just like opting for something that is relatively convenient is just mind-boggling yes people who lack resources shouldn't be shamed for choosing convenience but two-thirds of the us population is overweight so lacking the time and money to buy in bulk is not the reason most americans are overweight it makes sense to say there are a lot of factors that can make it difficult for someone to eat healthy but those factors have to do

with access to money like being in poverty so if someone lives in a food desert and is fat due to lack of access to healthy food their fatness isn't why they would be considered oppressed it would be the lack of money that caused them to live in a location with no access to fresh food classism and poverty is the problem not being fat fatness is a symptom of the problem so if you have enough money to cook food ahead of time buy in bulk and take flights around the country what's your excuse as to

why you are oppressed for simply being fat those people that are affected by food deserts and lack of time to pre-plan meals are not the same ones complaining about plane seats and having to buy interview outfits the day before or not being able to climb the corporate ladder those are privileged people issues so all the problems previously stated as a fat tax sound a lot more like consequences of lifestyle if by your own admission people do have control over their weight and could manage it if t

hey have the financial and time privilege to focus on their diets as you mentioned the vast majority of diets fail it is very difficult for people to change their body size on a very long term basis and so by every sort of data-driven metric body types are they're features that are at least to a very large degree innate to us the way other sort of physical or genetic features might be i would like to see this data please because yes most people that do overly restrictive diets fail but many diet

s don't fail and as i mentioned before there have been no comprehensive studies done on this in the past 30 years and there's no data to show that our weight is determined genetically the same way our height or eye color or other physical attributes are so yes i would really love to see this data you know we have the data we have this you know body positivity movement like we should be better about this why do you feel that there is still such a persistent myth that this is something that people

should always be in the process of changing yeah it's something that i always think about and i open my book with the sentence that we live our lives aimlessly chasing the concept of self-improvement it's something that we're taught that we can change we can't this idea of well i can be like this if i try hard enough if i do the best that i can i can get there it's just not true it's true for other things which is i think why people want to try it they want to continue to attempt it for as long

as they can until they fail because it's like if you work hard enough you can accomplish anything they apply that to their bodies then and they don't take into consideration the fact that bodies are not things that can just be moved and changed and sculpted or whatever you what you want they're living things that will be changed naturally throughout your lifetime we're talking about body weight right we're not talking about facial structure or height or skin tone we're talking about body weight

which is something we absolutely have control over and this was so much defeatism he's like you've been told that weight loss is possible it isn't but also he said earlier that diets have a 90 failure rate which seemed to be pulled out of nowhere but is still far from impossible in this statement that bodies are not changeable by our own intervention and yet they are living things that will naturally change over our lifetimes what does that mean the whole point of this clip was to say give up w

hich is a really depressing message to give people on a goal that is achievable by most people celebrity weight losses you know it's very difficult because you know for example when adele lost a lot of weight there was this really i think very very tedious discourse about like oh people are mad at her for losing however i do think for most celebrities who who lose a very very substantial amount of weight we're talking 100 pounds or more and maintain it there there is a sort of collective delusio

n that we have to engage in that this was done by totally above board methods that are accessible to the average person that can be reproduced that are not very expensive that don't involve you know surgical interventions that don't involve you know very heavily monitored eating working with a trainer all of these other things that are totally inaccessible and i i do feel like the really sort of maddening part of it for me is that we're not allowed to be honest about what these things actually t

ake i think someone like rebel wilson for instance who lost weight and then kind of went on a whole press tour about it and talked about how great it was and how much better she is it's doing a harm here i think you know if you want to lose weight and many celebrities do for many different reasons that's fine go ahead and do that if that's your personal choice go ahead how they then market that and speak about it is the harm and so someone like adele i think handled it very well in the way that

she spoke about it and really didn't care and didn't want to go out and promote it she just said yeah i did this because i wanted to and that's it and i think that's the way it should be right if you want to lose weight go ahead and do it ah yes we're back to the rebel wilson hatred first of all rebel didn't promote weight loss she said that if people want to improve their lives they can that's not her saying hey fat people you all should lose weight because i did and i'm happy i did it she neve

r said that the only egregious act she committed against the fat activism movement was saying that she was happy she lost weight that's it the idea that rebel promoted weight loss to her followers is a lie rebel lost weight and she said she was happy she did it and adele on the other hand lost weight and said it was because she wanted to why is one of those offensive and one of them isn't because you'll see it's not oftentimes just eating less right these people are like you said using drugs and

using trainers and having very strict regimens and people prepare prepare their meals for them they're having all these things that a normal person has no time money or resources for okay so they said when you pull back the smokescreen these celebrities that lose weight do it not because they eat less but because they have trainers nutritionists private chefs and drugs all of those things aside from the drugs lended the idea that weight loss is about what you consume if you have chefs making he

althy calorie sufficient meals and you're exercising regularly then the weight loss you achieved is still because you consumed less calories than you were burning and yes it's probably easier to lose weight with extra additions like personal trainers and dietitians but that's not justification for saying that it's not possible for the average person to do the same thing most things are easier when you have money but that doesn't mean it's impossible to do it without money it's the difference bet

ween having a personal trainer teach you how to use a cable machine and learning via a youtube video yes one is less efficient and will probably take more time but it's far from impossible and to say that drugs are helping people lose weight what drugs the only drugs that might help with weight loss are amphetamines and that isn't something only celebrities have access to there aren't some magical diet pills that help people lose weight and if you believe that you are far deeper into diet cultur

e than you think and all of this seems like a good time to bring up that chelsea here has lost and maintained a considerable amount of weight loss three years ago i lost between 20 and 30 pounds in about a half year period more accurate to say that i dropped about four dress sizes and when i lost that weight it was because i knew if i was being honest with myself that i was not healthy in that body by the age of about 25 the combination of my sedentary office lifestyle and the fact that we got f

ree lunch on seamless every single day at my office and the fact that i no longer worked out basically at all including my commute which was literally walking two blocks i had very rapidly packed on a good amount of weight and of course it happened kind of slowly in the four years between those two periods but really in my 25th year i started to notice how different my body was and how i didn't feel good and i knew if i was being honest that it was mostly because i was really inactive and not ea

ting stuff that was great for me so i decided to lose weight which i did almost entirely through intermittent fasting and it's also something i still practice to this day it's basically just how i live i don't look at it as any kind of diet it's just how i eat food all in all i feel much much happier in my body today than i did those three years ago and while no one's personal situation can automatically work for other people it should be said that i've been able to maintain this body more or le

ss for three years without really having to try for it so chelsea you implied that adele's 100 pound weight loss couldn't have been done by aboveboard means like diet and exercise but your 30 pound weight loss has been sustainable long term with diet and exercise why is that maybe it's because she believes the larger the amount of weight someone would need to lose in order to be in a healthy weight range the more unrealistic that amount of weight loss is if that's the case what is the threshold

between when someone can lose weight by above bored means and the ones that can't or maybe she doesn't believe adele's weight loss is possible because adele has a lot of money for trainers and dietitians and all the things she said but she was able to lose and sustain weight loss for far less money without all those things so why is she attributing adele's weight loss solely to her millions of dollars i'm genuinely curious what rationale leads chelsea to believe that weight loss was possible and

sustainable for her by accessible means i.e working out and consuming healthier foods but it's unsustainable for a large demographic of other people and even if you want to say that maybe chelsea wasn't purposefully trying to lose weight she's clearly been able to maintain the lifestyle habits that led her to lose weight to begin with and what's strange about this interview is that chelsea not once pushed back against the idea that weight loss is impossible why did she do that and i'm not talki

ng about if someone should lose weight i'm not even talking about if it should be considered healthy i'm talking about the ability to lose weight because john luca mentioned multiple times in this video that weight loss is impossible you should never try your body doesn't want to change diets never work all of this while chelsea is over here knowing full well that she has lost and maintained a considerable amount of weight over six plus years with diet and exercise alone is she some sort of unic

orn i don't i don't get it not to bring it back to capitalism um my fave so much of this [ __ ] is cognitive dissonance like especially when you consider the numbers do you feel on some level that it all falls and some in some way to the fact that it's very lucrative to keep america on this hamster wheel um or do you think it's more than that if i interpreted this question correctly you just said there is a financial incentive for the diet industry to keep the dream of weight loss alive but my c

ounter question is do you think there is a financial incentive for the processed and fast food industries to make and keep the us population overweight i would say yes because the fast food and processed food industries are worth multiple times what the diet industry is worth people that promote the idea that obesity is normal always demonize the diet industry while conveniently ignoring that there are much stronger industries that not only created the obesity epidemic but have a vested interest

in keeping it around because it is very profitable capitalism did create the diet industry but it also created the fast food industry i believe that is the issue 100 i think capitalism is the issue will always be that's why i do not have as much hope as some people that we're going to see a lot of progress and solve these issues because i think capitalism runs everything and i think that is what the main issue is here the term cognitive dissonance has come up multiple times during this intervie

w and it seems kind of ironic how can you recognize that there is a capitalistic diet industry made to tell people to get skinnier but just accept as fact that the rise of obesity within the past few decades is just what a natural change of evolution not a strategic lucrative move by the fast food and processed food industries to sell their products no no it couldn't be that it's because of the increased uv rays due to the dying ozone layer that's what it is nobody in fat activism ever has a rea

son as to why the us population has increased so dramatically in size within the past 40 years because they refuse to acknowledge the processed food industry as a problem their anti-capitalist spirit only awakes when they get to crap on the diet industry but if you can acknowledge the harm of the diet industry but you can't do it with a fast food industry who's really experiencing the cognitive dissonance when you talk about the medical incentives specifically um why is it do you think that it i

s so much easier in many cases for to default to treating treating the sort of issue of a larger body did you just put issues in quotes ma'am obesity does cause health problems the issue isn't a myth also do you work in medicine what credentials do you have to go against the well-known fact that obesity is unhealthy defaulting and redounding to losing weight um then to explore what health really means in all of these different bodies weight is a metric for health and based on the fact that you j

ust put issue in quotes when referring to weight i have a feeling you don't believe that but since you mentioned data previously i'll give you some basic information obesity leads to higher rates of coronary heart disease strokes type 2 diabetes osteoarthritis high blood pressure many types of cancer and countless other health problems and this type of information about obesity is widely accepted well researched and easy to access by every major public health organization in the united states so

do you either one not know about all of the well-researched reasons why obesity leads to health problems or two you think the idea that obesity leads to health problems is a conspiracy because i will say pretty confidently that believing there are no health issues associated with obesity despite the mountain of evidence that's available from every public health organization in the country is a conspiracy you said earlier you believe in data but you seem to be blatantly ignoring any data that do

esn't suit your narrative i think it's easier to look at it from that perspective i think the medical industry has used the statistics about you know how your weight how your body operates at a certain way as kind of the scapegoat for a lot of problems and so instead of digging deeper they know kind of cut and dry that if you are of a higher weight you are more predisposed to these problems that's probably the problem let's try that first if that doesn't work maybe we'll see something else they'

re kind of going for the easy answer a lot of that attached to the stigma that is faced against these larger bodies and so these doctors look at these patients they see they're of a larger weight their instant reaction based on that bias and stigma is to offer weight loss because they think based on everything they know that that will be the cure for a majority of the problems that they are predisposed for so let's try that first and then we'll dig in deeper and so i think they judge by the way

first because they look at things like the bmi and and what those kind of studies show them um that yes maybe if you are of a higher way you are predisposed to x y z you can't have a higher risk of all of this that is all true however that doesn't mean that it's going to be the problem there can be another problem there that a thin person is experiencing as well but if you can't look past the weight and not consider the weight there then you're not going to see that but people can't look past th

e weight first of all i want to acknowledge that john luca the fat activists in the scenario actually said something that is far more reasonable than our financial expert chelsea at least they acknowledge that yes having a higher bmi on average leads to more health problems and aside from that yes doctors can sometimes be neglectful when it comes to obese patients widespread obesity is a pretty new concept and it is known to cause everything from aches and pains to organ dysfunction to eye and s

kin issues so figuring out a diagnosis as a doctor is a lot easier without the added complexity of a patient being obese and doctors could be better as a whole about looking deeper into medical issues of their obese patients but what i would like to point out when it comes to this weight and health discussion is that weight absolutely does play a role in health being overweight often does lead to health problems so why are you pushing the idea that weight loss is something nobody should strive f

or because it's difficult by doing that you're telling people to give up on their health is that the message you want to send but i shouldn't even have to address this man's health claims because this man works in fashion not in health he has no credentials to be talking about nutrition and the health risks of obesity with authority especially when it goes against all of the widely held knowledge people already have when it comes to obesity and it's ironic because chelsea has previously made vid

eos saying she doesn't agree with people who talk confidently on subjects they don't have expertise in devastating collapse of expertise uh on the internet which has been a huge huge factor the past few years and you look at like for example like you know jordan peterson to me is one of the big all-time all-stars of the death of expertise in the sense that this man who is a clinical psychologist um who has you know a very very narrow field of personal expertise and most academics most legitimate

academics will go as far as they can out of their way to minimize the things that they have real expertise on and you know qualify their statements and make sure to really limit the scope of what they're talking about and he has so widely and you know sort of chaotically spread around the the breadth of things that he will speak on authoritatively and you have him on you know the joe rogan experience like climate is everything so climate is nothing and people are still looking at that and think

ing well because he is an academic in this one respect the things that he's saying about this other subject which have zero relation to his subject of expertise must be legitimate and you see a ton of that with these scammers okay that's reasonable enough on the internet it's easy to get away with saying things you have little to no expertise in as long as you say it confidently enough and especially if you have credentials in some aspect but what credentials does jean luca or chelsea have for m

aking health claims about obesity and nutrition again this woman is a financial expert of sorts and this man works in fashion how can you say you're against people confidently talking about subjects outside of their scope of knowledge while also heavily implying that obesity has no health risks as a financial expert and giving a fashion expert a platform to say the same things when it comes to someone who is watching this and feels like they're on a hamster wheel of consumerism driven around fee

ling like they need to change their body to have the career that they want or to um you know be perceived a certain way or to shop at certain stores or whatever it might be um how do you advise people to as best they can unplug themselves from that matrix my best advice is to surround yourself with people who can help you through that it is an incredibly difficult journey an incredibly difficult battle and it's so complex i think that's what frustrates me is when people don't talk about the comp

lexity there that it's so up and down there's never going to be this moment of peak body positivity of peak self-love it is such a journey because you're force-fed these messages for so long it's so hard to pull away from them my biggest advice is to really find those communities so coming to terms with your body size is a really big up and down process it's a long journey today spent the afternoon walking around the upper east side an area which despite the infinite familiarity i've gained from

following charlotte's york storyline i rarely visit to me it's always been a foreign land of under sex old ladies and fur coats and the men they nag into an early grave but as it turns out yeppery side is actually a fabulous place to be there's something joyous about walking into a restaurant or bakery which has been operating for 100 years serving the same clientele and refusing to change a single thing about their service because well [ __ ] you and as the rents have declined in the upper eas

t side along with its relative trendiness nothing has ever felt more luxurious walking down big tree-lined streets passing by hundreds of perk louis french baby clothing stores you feel truly rich in the way you can never feel in an urban outfitters sponsored area of brooklyn i feel more rich today than i have in a long time rich in design rich and stunning views rich in wide streets and open possibilities and endless window shopping to be done i feel rich sitting by a window with crumbly pastry

and crusty bread and hot coffee i feel rich taking my time with things and seeking out the best of them in a way that is neither ostentatious nor painfully trendy it turns out that spending nearly endless disposable income on chic brunches or exposed bricks or mixologist-approved cocktails feels at the end of the day a bit cheap today is saturday and i did a different type of brunch the place my friends and i usually go to had a small flood so instead we went to this cute coffee shop a few bloc

ks away they didn't have a lot of food but i ordered a ham and cheese croissant and a black coffee my friends and i sat on the patio and just talked we discussed the latest episode of the bachelorette and all the drama that went with that and played a new game of guessing how long each of the couples that passed by us had been together surprisingly fun there was no alcohol no rounds of beautifully frosted desserts no large expensive plate of mediocre food just a calm afternoon with my friends th

inking about it now i didn't realize how much i used food and alcohol to make social situations feel real and adult instead of just sitting in the moment enjoying other people's company i've always had a very sex in the city carrie bradshaw-esque view of my 20s i should be out there enjoying the world doing whatever i want eating whatever i want drinking cocktails with my friends because that's the way you're supposed to live in your 20s right it's a very self-indulgent way of looking at the wor

ld i think a new rule of only one pastry or drink per social outing will be a good idea for me so unplugging from the idea that you should lose weight is a process with a lot of ups and downs just like chelsea's journey to improving her relationship to money and just like the journey of improving your relationship with food it seems like no matter where you are in life in some aspect meaningful change is going to take a lot of work john lucas advice is to simply give up on the idea of losing wei

ght and accept being overweight but he said before that lower bmi individuals have less health problems so if you're going to embark on some long-term journey why not make it one that also improves your health along the way i'm guessing the entire point of calling this channel the financial diet was to draw comparison between going on a food diet and a financial diet and what do you need to be financially secure and overall good with money you need to save more than you make it's pretty simple j

ust like the process of losing weight or going on a diet is simple eat less calories than your body uses but if being good with money is that simple why are there almost 700 videos on this channel it's because the simple strategy of save more than you earn is very hard for a lot of people because of the emotions habits and societal pressures people have when it comes to money and this channel seems to dissect and break down all of those barriers that make it difficult for people to save money an

d it's the same with food the idea of eating less is very simple but in practice it can be very hard because of the emotional baggage people have when it comes to food but that doesn't mean the answer is just to accept that weight loss or improving your relationship to food is impossible which is the answer that was heavily implied throughout this video there were statements like long-term weight loss isn't achievable some people are genetically larger 90 of diets fail etc etc but i would ventur

e to say that 90 of the people who have never made a budget before will fail on that budget the first time they do it or a figure somewhere around there is that a reason to never make a budget but what is the financial comparison of losing weight when you're overweight when it comes to bad finances it's being poor or being in poverty but how would chelsea feel if i said that poverty is fine and natural and that poor people shouldn't even try to improve their finances yeah for some people becomin

g not poor is easier than others due to countless circumstances that are out of your control just like the fact that some people have food addictions and breaking that might take some serious intervention and therapy but that doesn't mean that one people shouldn't try to improve their circumstances and two their bad situation should be normalized people can lose weight people can improve their finances in some capacity and to tell people they shouldn't even try is horrible because you're telling

people to give up on themselves what if 25 year old chelsea who started making the financial diet blog had been told you know most people with your bad financial habits that you've had your whole life never get to the point where they're financially stable that's a true statement but what would have happened her life if she had taken that advice to heart and something else i want to acknowledge is that overeating is expensive especially if you are morbidly obese you are spending at least 50 mor

e on food than necessary not to mention all of the increased medical costs and the other ways that money will have to make up for your poor health the larger you are for example if you're very large and walking is uncomfortable you're probably going to have to have everything you need delivered you're probably going to have to spend more on clothes regardless of the actual price of the clothes compared to smaller clothes because larger people tend to sweat more and have increased friction on the

ir bodies which leads to their clothes wearing down and then having to buy clothes more often or if walking short distances is hard you might spend more on shorter distance transportation because of the discomfort that comes from walking at that size there are countless ways that being overweight can be financially prohibitive especially in the long term and as a finance channel you should be able to acknowledge that in this video where i clipped chelsea talking about her weight losses from a vi

deo where she talks about the ways people spend money when they aren't happy with their bodies seven things i wasted money on when i wasn't happy with my body number one is diet foods yes sometimes people spend money on diet products but sometimes people cope with insecurity and discontent in their bodies with food in fact a lot of people do a lot more than most people will admit binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder in the us and while not everyone with a disorder dislikes th

eir body there is a huge amount of people that cope with stress with food there's an old buzzfeed video yeah buzzfeed is unhelpful but there are a few gems here and there but in the video a woman talks about how she feels bad in her body and it leads her to want to eat even though it's counterintuitive because she's insecure about her larger body size so i ordered a dress to wear to hawaii it was the largest size i had can't believe i'm going to show you guys it doesn't fit like oh my god at all

that was in the back of my mind when i went to go get dressed the next morning i just it was a spiral from there normally at this time i would binge i feel so to say that because it's embarrassing because it's like okay well logically if the dress didn't fit and you don't like the size you are why would you binge great [ __ ] question i don't know it's like a bit of self-destruction that i can't hide this type of coping with overeating isn't uncommon and this type of disorder can lead to health

problems as well as financial problems and you are being remiss as a financial educator to not address the detrimental effect obesity and overeating in general can have on your finances overall this entire interview was a mess an absolute mess i didn't show all of it obviously the entire video was an hour and 15 minutes long so i'm gonna leave the link to it in the description in case anyone thinks i took anything out of context or whatever you can go watch it but from top to bottom a mess but

i put most of the blame for this horrible interview at the hands of the host from asking questions about anti-capitalism only is it pertaining to the diet industry and not the fast food and processed food industries to saying she believes people shouldn't confidently talk about subjects outside of their area of expertise while also letting a fashion expert give nutrition and health advice to agreeing that long-term weight loss is impossible while also having lost and sustained weight loss hersel

f like i said a whole mess but anyway that's the end of the video if you've made it this far in the video please like and check that you're still subscribed or if you weren't subscribed subscribe now and i'll see you in the next video