My Take on Body Positivity. Buckle Up.

The episode is also on youtube, I'd love your (constructive and kindly worded) thoughts! 

Partial Transcript: We are going to talk about something that is a little bit controversial. And my opinion on it is also controversial. Shocking. I know.  I know you guys don't come here for the vanilla bullshit, but we're going to get into it today. So. Before we start. I want to say that everything I say today, Is meant to empower you. It is not meant to make you feel less than it is not meant to make you feel like you are stuck where you are, and it is not meant to tell you how to feel about yourself. What it is meant to do is empower you, despite certain things that are set in certain narratives that I think are very, very common right now. And these thoughts that I think a lot of people are having, they won't say out loud. So I'm going to say them out loud.. They do not want to tell people that they think these things or feel this way or whatever it is. And yet so many people because of my job position are coming to me with these things. It's not uncommon at this point and it needs to be addressed. So we're going to dive into it today, body positivity. We're in talking about weight loss and how those two things play into one another. Are they mutually exclusive? Do you have to either love yourself or lose weight? Can you do both? Can you not do both? 

Why or why not? All of these things are all of the arguments that you hear, but body positivity, I think. As a movement. Was very good intentioned and like most movements. The second it got extreme shit. Stop making sense. 

 Body positivity. What even is it? What are we talking about? Body positivity as listed by Wikipedia. Body positivity is a social movement focused on the acceptance of all bodies, regardless of size, shape, tone, gender, and physical abilities. While challenging present day beauty standards as an undesirable social construct. That is what body positivity. Is according to the interwebs. Body positivity to me. Has become. A lot of other things. That is not that 

let's first talk about this idea of radical self-love because I think it's important. A lot of people walk around hating themselves. And that isn't good either. So how do we deal with the balance of this? 

As far as evidence goes...

Transcript

0:07

Hello, love beautiful people. And welcome back to this shout. today. We are going to talk about something that is a little bit controversial. And my opinion on it is also controversial. Shocking. I know. I know you guys don't come here for the vanilla bullshit, but we're going to get into it today. So. Before we start. I want to say that everything I say today, Is meant to empower you. It is not meant to make you feel less than it is not meant to make you feel like you are stuck where you are, and it is not meant to tell you how to feel about yourself. What it is meant to do is empower you, despite certain things that are set in certain narratives that I think are very, very common right now. And these thoughts that I think a lot of people are having, they won't say out loud. So I'm going to say them out loud.. They do not want to tell people that they think these things or feel this way or whatever it is. And yet so many people because of my job position are coming to me with these things. It's not uncommon at this point and it needs to be addressed. So we're going to dive into it today, body positivity. We're in talking about weight loss and how those two things play into one another. Are they mutually exclusive? Do you have to either love yourself or lose weight? Can you do both? Can you not do both? Why or why not? All of these things are all of the arguments that you hear, but body positivity, I think. As a movement. Was very good intentioned and like most movements. The second it got extreme shit. Stop making sense. Body positivity. What even is it? What are we talking about? Body positivity as listed by Wikipedia. Body positivity is a social movement focused on the acceptance of all bodies, regardless of size, shape, tone, gender, and physical abilities. While challenging present day beauty standards as an undesirable social construct. That is what body positivity. Is according to the interwebs. Body positivity to me. Has become. A lot of other things. That is not that let's first talk about this idea of radical self-love because I think it's important. A lot of people walk around hating themselves. And that isn't good either. So how do we deal with the balance of this? As far as evidence goes. I have seen. So many countless people try to hate themselves into the body of their dreams. I can confidently say that not one of the people that I've seen hate themselves, shame themselves, whatever it is into their body that they've always wanted. None of them have sustained it. That's just my. This is just my little bubble. But not once. Have I seen it? Be sustainable. And I've seen it enough times. I don't think that's a coincidence. Your why has to be something, if you are going to lose weight, change about any anyway. Those those reasons that you sit with when you're by yourself at night. Those reasons being exclusively negative self-talk in a way. And that is really your motivation. It isn't sustainable because you are going to have days where your emotions are back and forth on a spectrum. So if you are hating yourself into the body of your dreams, what happens the second that you make progress? And you're like the last 10 pounds out, those last 10 pounds are classic because everyone can hate themselves into the new body until the last 10 pounds, because then they're close enough to the new body that the why no longer works. When you have a, why that's a little bit more solid. It's a little more intrinsic. It doesn't have to do with other people. It doesn't have to do with judgment. It's not judgment of yourself. That why carries you through the last 10 pounds? The hard times, the plateau, whatever it is. Not having that. Why I think is the whole basis of why unsustainable diets work. If you, if everyone had this very, um, Instagrammable, very quotable. Why? Everyone would have very pure motivation. They would have very pure actions because of it. They probably wouldn't do anything extreme. But we're all human and we all do. And we all have to start thinking about it in terms of that, instead of pretending that that's not the case, we have to do consider that our emotions are up and down. We have to consider that emotions are not logical and that emotions aren't even always true. If you're basing your plan or your life off of just your emotions, you're not going to get very far. And this is a loan, a very controversial opinion that I have that I didn't actually think was controversial until I went on the internet. But. I truly do not understand this absolute necessity to pretend like we aren't emotional creatures. Like we aren't going to make emotional decisions. I'm a big fan of planning. According to that. Not trying to run it and do things despite that. So that sort of brings us into this conversation. I don't think you can hate yourself into the body of your dreams. Longterm. I've seen it not work or over and over again. But I also don't think that loving yourself sick. Is the answer. And I say, loving yourself sick because the extreme side of this body positivity movement. If you are unfamiliar essentially, is that you cannot make changes or decide that anything has to be quote unquote like improved anything aesthetic or external. We have to love it so much that there's even the like very extreme, which I understand is not the majority. This is very extreme on the side of it, but that are like, you should be bigger. You should gain more weight. You should basically go so far against the societal norm and the societal grain that you make a statement of yourself. Nothing I've ever heard has made less sense than that. You should love yourself so intrinsically and so much because you don't care about society, but you should do it in such a big way that society notices and cares. Why, why are we still basing this on external feedback? It's the same problem that we originally had in why body positivity was created as it not. When we look at these things, the issue is the external environment, the standards, the horrible things that we're all fed. Day-to-day men, women, everyone. It's absolutely ridiculous. Everyone's an Instagram model. Everyone's Photoshopping. It's the norm. If we are trying to move away from this, I understand. That, that makes a ton of sense to me, I'm in the fitness industry. Like I have been commented on, like, let's just say that. Moving away from that into a place where it's intentional. Exasperations of these societal norms and the things that we're criticized for and making sure that you represent those things. It's still external. It's still very much based on the opinions of others. Now, if someone calls you fat, okay. It's good. But does that actually make you feel good? This is the core of the issue that I have with this is that. I don't believe one of you motherfuckers. I don't buy it. I do not buy that. You are so happy with yourself. You are so obsessed with being overweight, that you think that everybody should experience this freedom of being overweight and the power that that gives you. Cause you are not conforming. There are. So many things you can do to actively demonstrate that in your life, without destroying your health. My issue with this is not that you're going against the societal grain. It is not that you are proud of yourself for having a little bit of extra weight or a lot of extra weight. It is not that the issue is that you are now creating a narrative of being unhealthy is good for you and the people that are actually being negatively affected by this are the people that are the most vulnerable. That's the fucked up part. It's not taking these super confident people who have never had an issue. It's people that this is a core issue to them. This is something they think about daily. We're going to get into the like skinny versus fat thing, because I cannot fucking take it. If you are too skinny and you take to the internet and you're talking about how fucking hard it is, please know that everyone hates you. Everyone hates you. No one does not hate you. I promise you because that's the most annoying thing I've ever heard. It is not hard to be skinny. It is hard to get your body commented on. I have recently lost a fair amount of weight. The comments have really fucked me up. Everyone's on my ass about it. Everyone tells me, just eat a burger, everyone I've heard it a million times. However. At the end of the day, I just let those comments roll. If you think for a fucking second, that I would react the same calm way. If the comments were about me being overweight or fat or commenting on me in that way. That's delusional. This thing where these Instagram models that weigh a hundred pounds soaking fucking wet. It's six feet tall. Are crunching themselves into this weird hunched position and going. I am you. We are one. I too have fat rolls and then they dare. They dare show you a hardworking mom of four who has a job and a husband and a house to take care of. Hey, dare. Show you on your timeline. You are guerrilla warfare with this image of them hunched over with these skin rolls one on top of another telling you that they have roles to. What are we doing? This does not make any sense. It is so crazy. Why are we letting these people get away with this? This is the other side of the body positivity thing. Being overweight is a very sensitive topic in the sense that I think there are so much self-hate that overweight people experience that anything that gets a little bit of that off is in some way. Good. There are good parts of it. No matter what, I don't give a fuck. If you are just like naturally skinny and like, you have been your whole life and it's like really hard and you don't have any issues, you have no health issues. You have no eating issues. You have no issues. You just want. To fucking talk about yourself. It is not helping anybody. Thank you. That's it? No, it's not the end of the episode, but it should be because honestly, these are the real villains. These are the people we need to be against. Do we need to go and actively. Be anti skinny Instagram model, pretending she has roles. It is not enough to just scroll past. The other end of this being actually overweight, having to buy an extra airplane seat. Wondering if the seat at the place you are going to is going to hold you being. Truly by definition, morbidly obese. This is where it gets dicey. Real dicey. People do not. Become overweight. For no reason. There is the calorie argument. I am very much on that side. I think. That if you are eating too many calories. That is causing your weight gain. There's the calorie argument. Factually, if you are eating too many calories. You will gain weight. To pretend that calories are the entire painted picture. Is delusional. It's not, there are many reasons people are overweight and it doesn't mean that they're not eating too many calories. And this is the little sentence that for some reason, no one just says and everyone argues over if it's calories or not. Calories in versus calories out are what make you gain weight or lose weight. But I'm going to use my sister as an example because she's number one, just a phenomenal human being. And she's been through so much in life that I love her takes on things and the way she thinks about things. And this is something that we've talked about. So my sister. For those of you who do not know. Has had some medical issues, her entire life, my entire childhood, that was sort of what the family theme was. I imagine that it's where a lot of my insecurity comes from.. I imagine it's the reason I'm in health and fitness. And I also imagine that it's the reason that I really do not take much bullshit because I think a lot of people try to bullshit a very serious situation to me my entire life. And I didn't like that. So with her specifically, She is going to burn calories at a rate that is maybe half you and I. Because of her specific case, she does not have regular functioning hormones not like, oh, it's a hormonal imbalance. No, she has. She has, Bland's taken out physically that she takes artificial hormone that is acting as those stimulants or depressants or whatever, and keeping her going and having that normal adrenaline up and down cortisol responses. All of that. But because of those things, she's not going to maintain a level of muscle mass that most people do and her output is going to be kind of dampened. So she finds it very difficult to lose weight. It is not because hormones and crazy, and it makes everything crazy. What actually happens is because she burns so much less than the average person, every single day. She has to eat much less than the average person every day to get that same weight loss effect. It's not that calories are not the same on her. It is that there's a different circumstance that is outside, that is contributing. This is the core of all of the arguments at hormone insulin Boba. I understand this so well because I've watched it and it's not complex. It is incredibly, incredibly nuanced. It's incredibly difficult to navigate. It is not complex to understand. And by the way, my sister is not overweight. She wants to lose like 10 pounds. Like she's not in the situation that I'm referring to, but nonetheless, she's an example where she has a specific situation that makes it more difficult and those situations exist. It doesn't change the fact that calories calorie, but they exist. So whether you are overweight because you had a very hard life circumstances because of financial reasons, because of really stressful, whatever, Because of medical reasons. Like my sister, there are a lot of reasons. Unfortunately, I am a big fan of playing the fucking card you're dealt because if you don't go at some point, you're never going to go. You've got to keep it moving with the cards you're dealt, because there's always going to be someone with a better hand. And there's always going to be someone that didn't even get dealt into the game and still comes up on top. So let's stop talking about the cards we're dealt and start talking about what we're going to do with it. I think that body positivity for very, very overweight people. Gave them a way to, if they are not understanding why they're overweight or they don't know how to fix it. For example, my sister doesn't know how to fix that. She's not listening in fitness and nutrition. Like she came to me because that's a very difficult situation to navigate. Like she didn't know that as a core. When you have those reasons and they're very legitimate. Body positivity and the movement and the support and all of that, that is needed. It's needed for people who are at that place. That's very, very challenging to get out of when you are very overweight and you have 50, a hundred plus pounds to lose. The idea of starting that journey. It's like cleaning out your entire house top to bottom after not doing it for 25 years. It's so much, and it's so absolutely jarring to look at the entire spectrum of everywhere. You have to go in order to reach this goal on everything you have to do. But in the time that they are in that before they start that journey, if they start that journey, that is, I think, where this was born. I think, I don't know, but I imagine that that place that people are in, where they haven't figured it out yet. It is so challenging to wake up every day and not like what you see that I, I imagined that this could have been a great support for that phase. What I don't agree with is staying in that phase for the social virtuosity of it. I don't understand it because I don't think that treating your body in a way that isn't respectful to its natural way of being healthy. Is ever a good thing. Like we all do this on a day-to-day basis. People smoke, people, drink people, whatever.. It's just a different version of that. Like being overweight is bad for your body. Do not get it twisted. Do not let people tell you otherwise, what is worse for your body is waking up every day and thinking that you're stuck because you were fat at one point, and now you have to be fat forever, or you hate fat people. That is bananas. That's crazy. You are not fat phobic because you want to feel better. You're not fat Bobek if you literally just want to look better, purely for aesthetic reasons. Why? Because wake the fuck up. Look around and unfortunately,, until humans massively become this evolutionarily better being. That's the way it's going to be. So instead of keeping yourself in this marginalized group to prove a point. I would really encourage you if you are in this stance of I cannot improve, or I am betraying other people that are overweight, or I'm saying that that's bad. By trying to improve. You are letting everybody that made being fat, a bad thing. When, because they still have the power. Take your power back. You are not a bad person because you want to lose weight. You're not a bad person. If you don't want to lose weight. You're a bad person. If you start telling other people how to feel or think or do about their weight. This is why it's toxic. Body positivity, loving yourself, being accepting that we all don't look like airbrushed models day to day. That is incredible. That is a movement I can get behind. Talking about, oh, it's so hard to be skinny. Oh, you can't lose weight or you're betraying the movement. You kept a love yourself. And if you got that, you have to stay fat or it means you hate that people. I am not going to sit here and let people talk banana ass, bullshit. This is crazy. None of these things make sense. None of them serve the greater good and none of them serve the individual and my sort of bubble of life that I live in. I say this in the least high horse way possible, because it took me so long to learn. I very selfishly now have realized that if it's not a win-win, win-win all around in a situation, especially in business, but kind of in general, there literally is a better answer. There just is. Nobody has to lose quote unquote to make a point to make money. Ju blues white. Nobody has to lose there's no, trade-off that has to happen. We're acting like there is there isn't. I would argue that most people are not under the impression that gaining weight as a recreational sport to prove a point is normal or something you should spend more time on. I also believe that most people. Agree, you should love yourself. You should not hate yourself into changing and you definitely shouldn't just hate yourself and do nothing about it either. So. Why does it exist? Like why did it get so radical? So fast? Anything. Can be traced back. If you follow the dollar dollar bills, y'all so pandering to insecurity. Who's insecure. Oh. People that are told every day that they don't fit into normal society. Oh, that could be a group. Cool. Let's now tell them that they actually have to be fat or they're bad people. Oh, that was fun. Now they're paying us more money and now we have more awareness. This is great. What can we sell them? It is the entire reason this show exists is that I saw so constantly. How emotionally vulnerable people are. When they're talking about even the issues they've had with their body or their health or anything like that. I see it every single day. And I was that person. I there's nobody that works in fitness that wasn't massively insecure at some point. It. It doesn't exist. Why would you work in fitness? It doesn't make any sense. Everyone that works in fitness has been massively insecure at some point. However. I saw that and I was like, this has to stop. I created the show. I, this has been sort of, my mission. Professionally is stop letting people pin you into something, identify you as something, slap a label on it and then sell you accordingly. That's not fair. And when we're talking about something like your health, it's no longer just advertising. It's manipulation. I truly, truly from the bottom of my heart, believe that. That is the reason I made this episode. It's not to hate on anybody. It's not to any of that. I really hope that I got that through that. I want you to love yourself. I want you to love yourself so much that you change because you want to feel good and you want to live in this body longer. Hating yourself into change. Is number one, not going to accomplish that longterm. Number two. It is so much harder to do it that way. Tormenting yourself and just ragging on yourself every time you're not perfect. It's no way to live. And then you're going to take this layer on top of this heavy ass thing we already carry, and we're going to smack a layer on top. That you're a bad person. If you try. To change that. The only loser in this situation is that person. And the only reason you would ever think in your head that you should, or anybody else should stay very overweight to prove a point. It, that is not born out of nowhere. These people are not crazy. Like this is not born because nothing bad happened. When you are made fun of, or just shaming yourself, even for something like being overweight. That heaviness over time. Whereas on you. It's not something that just goes away. So instead of fighting every single day, this feeling of, I shouldn't look like this, I should try harder. I should, whatever your narrative is. Let's give you a break and here look, everyone just lets you be. You don't have to torment yourself every day. They failed to fucking tell you that you don't have to torment yourself anyway. There's no requirement of torment zero. You don't have to. It is not required to be even being just a normal, healthy weight. Let alone reach your goals. It's not required across the board. When you love your life and you love the person that you are. You are going to be motivated to live as long as possible and feel good every day to go do and enjoy those things. I don't think we have a body positivity problem. I think we have a. Extreme judgment of ourselves and others, anytime a body changes problem. And then I think we have a, everything is capitalistic on top of that. And unfortunately, This is an insecurity and security sell better than any other product on the market. So people are going to capitalize. It's just the way it is. What I want to do today is essentially give you a framework to think through that allows you to make your own decision and be empowered by it and decide what you think and what you want and what body positivity means to you and not be told by these crazy people online that you're doing something wrong or you're a bad person or you're fat phobic. Like it's. It's ridiculous. In a perfect world. I would also have all of the Instagram models that have ever bent over and showed a video of their quote unquote roles March, and like a shame, shame, shame, safe situation, like game of Thrones style. But I don't know that I can make that happen quite yet. I will keep you posted for tickets on that. But if you enjoyed the show, my goal is to simplify health and fitness for 1 million or more people. If you could leave a review, a review helps other people find my show. If you could share it and tag me so I can share whatever I really appreciate anything you want to see on the show. Any feedback when you guys like DME? I think sometimes people forget that podcasting, you sort of just throw it into the universe and then you just wait and it's just numbers taking up. There's no feedback. There's no comments. There's nothing like that. So this is posted on YouTube. So if you don't follow me on YouTube, you can go find it there and you can comment and stuff there. But if you have something that you learned or you really liked, or you want to hear about, or you have questions about DME on Instagram or anywhere, just because I really, really do want to make this show. Exactly what you guys want to hear about. And I talk about the same shit every single day with all of my clients. And so I sort of just pick the most common themes of that. And you guys seem to like it, but. If you have something more specific, please do let me know. And other than that, be fucking nice to yourself. It's not deeper than that. It doesn't have to be, you don't have to solve all of the world's problems. You just have to solve yours. And really the problem is not your body. It's are you happy? Focus there don't focus on your body itself. It will come as a side effect of being happy and living a healthy life in which you are happy. There are not too many people who love their life and are happy and doing all of the things they love every single day that are torturing themselves over their weight every five seconds You are all incredible. I hope I portrayed this accurately. I hope you leave this episode feeling in charge of your own life because you are. And for some reason we're told are not. It's bullshit. And you all, honestly, you deserve a lot more credit than that. I will see you guys in the next one. Bye guys.