ALL FIRED UP

BOYS ARE BACK TO GO OVER WEEK 1 NFL GAMES. WE'RE ALL GOING TO BE SOOOOOOOO RICH!!!!!!!!

We'reeeeeeeeee baaaaaaaaaack!! All the legends are back making their expert picks for this upcoming NFL season. Get some!!!!!!

MC lets everyone know why they are wrong while Klacks prepares for the road

Fired up 4 deli style!!!!! LETS GOOOOOOOOOOO

ABSOLUTE CLASSIC

Bucci joins the crew to tell us why we're wrong and why skiing is for real men!!

Power hour of some hilarious sports debate!!!

MY MY MY MICHELLE JOINS US TO DISCUSS EVERYTHING INCLUDING MC CUTTING PEOPLE OFF SINCE CHILDBIRTH

JAC JOINS THE CREW TO BREAK DOWN THE SUPER BOWL AND MORE

Like flies at a picnic, weight loss app Noom's relentless advertising is crawling all over our online spaces. AND they're SHAMELESSLY co-opting our powerful anti-diet movement! AND they're claiming that 'psychology' is the key to 'long term weight loss!' AND they're selling a particularly shitty diet! AND they're targeting vulnerable people including those with eating disorders! HOW VERY DARE THEY! I'm so incandescent with fury that I've coined a new term: NOOM-RAGE!! Join me on the latest ep of the All Fired Up podcast with my equally outraged guest Dr Alexis Conason @theantidietplan. She is also EXTREMELY NOT HAPPY. Grab a stiff drink (or a nice cuppatea) & gird your loins as we EVISCERATE this DISGUSTING company in a rip-snorter of an episode! Did someone say class action lawsuit??

Pre Super bowl predictions as well as a mid season NBA breakdown

SPECIAL GUEST BOB JOINS US (NOT SAGAT UNFORTUNATELY) TO DISCUSS BASEBALL HALL OF FAME, NBA, NFL AND MORE!!!

AFU IS HONORED TO INTERVIEW FUTURE NFL PLAYER AND CURRENT NFL DRAFT PROSPECT CHARLES TURNER. AMAZING PLAYER AND EVEN MORE AMAZING MAN

NY Giants beat writer and podcaster Spartan Mike joins us for an interview to discuss all things Giants. Much love is shown to Eli and not much love to Dimes

Carolina and Arizona debate hard as New York melts into the couch!!!! Fireeeeeeee it up

#6 RANKED SAFETY AND #1 ON OUR LIST FOR THE NFL DRAFT, MR JONATHAN ALEXANDER JOINS US TO TALK EVERYTHING FOOTBALL AND WHAT ITS LIKE TO PREP FOR THE DRAFT

"Just 5-10% of weight loss is all you need to improve your health" is one of those things that "everyone knows", only - it's complete and utter BS. My guest this week is the fierce and fabulous Ragen Chastain, fat activist, speaker, prolific writer, dancer, and marathon runner, and she's had a GUTFUL of health professionals hiding their fatphobia under a condescending veneer of 'health concern'. Do NOT MISS this inspiring conversation - Ragen's mind is like a razor-sharp encyclopaedia of ANTI-DIET PUSHBACK!

CRUNCH TIME WITH THE PLAYOFFS. LETS WIN SOME MONEY TOGETHER!!!

GREAT INTERVIEW WITH NFL PROSPECT TYLER WITT. STUD OFFENSIVE LINEMAN FROM PURDUE TALKS EVERYTHING FROM FOOTBALL TO FOOD TO TATTOO'S.

CLOSING OUT SEASON 3 WITH A BANG!!!! BEST DEBATES ON ALL OF THE INTERWEB

LAST 2 WEEKS OF THE YEAR FOR THE NFL. ALL OF OUR EXPERT PICKS TO WIN BIG MONEY THIS WEEKEND!!!

WHO'S WINNING BIG THIS WEEK #QUATRO

In diet culture it's hard for most of us to feel comfortable in our bodies, let alone LIKE them. But what if it's possible to burst through this thin-ideal bubble and experience the joy, the light, the MAGIC of our bodies? My guest this week, artist and speaker Kathryn Max, has done just that, and you simply MUST hear their story! Kathryn's art is a powerful expression of tenderness, compassion & unconditional body acceptance. It's so beautiful - let's get all fired up with LOVE! Show Transcript Intro: Welcome to All Fired Up. I'm Louise your host, and this is the podcast where we talk all things anti-diet. Has diet culture got you in a fit of rage? Is the injustice of the beauty ideal getting your knickers in a twist? Does fitspo make you want to SPITspo? Are you ready to hurl if you hear one more weight loss tip? Are you ready to be mad, loud and proud? Well, you've come to the right place. Let's get all fired up. Welcome back to the podcast my delicious diet culture dropouts. Thank you so much for tuning in for yet another intriguing, deep dive down the anti-diet rabbit hole. I want to start with huge love to you all and thank you for continuing to listen and support this podcast, which as you know, is completely produced and put out by me on my lonesome, alongside a whole lot of editing. And I really appreciate your messages of love and support, especially during this year where things have become pretty rocky with getting the podcast out in a predictable way, I'm really pumped about 2022, and I've got big things of what I can't wait to share with you next year. But in the meantime, I really appreciate your listening. And if you love the All Fired Up podcast, help get the message out there by rating and reviewing. A five star review is always good, wherever you get your podcasts or preferably maybe with apple podcasts, because I'm really trying to target that. The more this message gets out, the more likely it is that diet culture falls onto its knees and I can go off and become a florist like I've always wanted. And if something about diet culture is pissing you off, let's get it off your chest, send it to me. Send your rage straight into my inbox - louise@untrapped.com.au. Tell me what's bugging you. It could be something that happening in your local community, could be a diet that's getting pushed in your social media or just something that you've heard around the traps that's really getting up your nose about living in diet culture. I want to hear it. I'm your agony aunt for all things diet, so send that to my email address. Free stuff, alert who doesn't love stuff that's for free. I have amazing E-Book called Everything you've Been Told About Weight Loss is Bull Shit, and that was co-written with the glorious Dr. Fiona Willer, dietician and amazing podcaster from the Unpacking Weight Science podcast. In this classic resource, we have stuff that's full of fun facts to help you push back against diet culture's bullshit. Essentially, we bust top 10 myths about the relationship between weight and health. And we give you heaps of scientific articles and resources and overviews, giving you the truth about the relationship between weight and health and just how much bullshit is being fed to us. It's an excellent resource. It's completely free. You can download it from the Untrapped website, untrapped.com.au. I encourage you, if you haven't already got a copy, to grab it and share as far and wide as possible; friends, family, health professionals, everyone needs to hear this message. More free stuff. If you have been living in diet culture and you find that you have found it difficult to be at ease in your body - ie. if you're a human living in diet culture, this eCourse called Befriending your Body is completely free. It's created by me and in it I send you an email once a day for 10 days. And it's like a little love letter to you every day for 10 days, giving you some small messages of self-compassion and practices of self-compassion, which are all designed to help you start looking at your body through a different lens, through the lens of compassion, support, friendship, appreciation, respect, and liberation. The befriending your Body eCourse is really easy, it doesn't take too much time out of your day, and as I said, it's completely free. So if you're tired of struggling and you're looking for something completely different and something pretty urgent; this can be with you in seconds. All you need to do to download the Befriending your Body eCourse is go to my Insta, which is untrapped_au and click on the link in the bio and you will see the Befriending your Body eCourse sitting there waiting to befriend you. Huge hello and big love to everyone in the Untrapped online community. Without Untrapped this podcast wouldn't be able to be produced. Untrapped is an online masterclass in the art of everything anti-diet. And it was co-created by me and 11 other health professionals working in this space. It's an incredible program. Very comprehensive, all online so you can do it at your own pace. And in it, we go through all kinds of stuff like recognizing and waking up from die-culture bull shit, reconnecting in with your body signals and repairing your relationship with food, with your body and with moving your body joyful ways. One of my favorite aspects of the Untrapped masterclass is the online community that we've created. We've been running since 2017. Can you believe it? And we have built up this incredible group of people we meet every week in a Q and A, and we've completely bonded. And I think most of the power of Untrapped is in this community. So if you are looking for a change and if you don't want to do it on your own, think about joining us in Untrapped. You can find out more from looking at untrapped.com.au and we would absolutely love to have you. So, on with the show, my guest this week, oh my gosh. I mean, this is a completely mind-blowing episode that I hope that you've got somewhere nice to relax and really take some time to absorb the awesomeness of what you're about to hear. So look, it's Christmas time, diet culture bull shit, no matter where you live on the planet, it's at an all time high at this time of year, the pressure is on. It is high season for the weight loss industry. And look, we are all feeling a little bit more fragile than usual, thanks to the ongoing bull shit of this year and living with this COVID pandemic. So it's been a complete mind-fuck, and look, you know, you all know how much I love to rant and complain about diet culture, but I think we need a bit of love, and that's what this episode is all about. In this Christmas season, let's pivot into something completely different. So my guess this week, Kathryn, formally Kathryn Hack, now known as Kathryn, or you might know her on Instagram as fat_mystic_art or Fat Mystic. This is an amazing human. Kathryn is a fat liberated artist and speaker, and they, sorry. And they are the pronouns. They have many intersecting identities including being fat, queer, disabled, poly, ADHD, lipedema and ex-evangelical. Are you fascinated? Because I certainly was completely fascinated by this human, when I saw their art in their Instagram feed. It took my breath away and like kind of hit me in many areas as you're going to hear about in our conversation. So, I really don't have more words and I don't want to give anything away, but I think your mind will be blown by this amazing episode interview individual. So without further ado, I give you me and the glorious Kathryn. Louise: So Kathryn, thank you so much for coming on the show. Kathryn: I'm very happy to be here, Louise. Thank you for having me. Louise: So tell me what's firing you up. Kathryn: Well, interestingly, I would say that being fired up, hasn't really been my lived experience recently with whether it's diet culture or any kind of oppressive systems. They definitely can feel discouraging, but I have a really deep practice of self-compassion. And what I have observed is that the more I live in a state of grace with myself, the more I am kind and consistently really gentle with myself, it's almost effortless for me to extend that kind of grace and compassion to other people while also having good boundaries. So I don't let people mistreat me because I live in a fat body or disabled body or because I'm queer or any of the identities that I live within. And yet, I don't feel fire about it. I don't feel anger exactly. I feel yeah, real contentment and peace and this journey and where it's brought me. And I feel a lot of joy in my life and the grace to handle the challenges that come in living in the body I live in. Louise: My goodness. Okay, everyone wants to know what cocktail is this self-compassion. This is so interesting. So you said you've got a really deep practice of self-compassion and that's what got you to this place of not being unimpacted, but not being affected in a negative way. Kathryn: And I think sometimes I might still be affected, but it's just that self-compassion is such an effective tool, that even if something does impact me negatively, I'm able to be present with that emotion with a deep resource of compassion and care, and so it just doesn't damage me. Like, I'll sort of let this emotion move through me. I'll feel it. I won't deny it. I won't suppress it. I definitely don't shove it down in my body like I used to. I just feel it, I'm present with it and then it sort of moves through. So the deep practice started a little while after I was first introduced to the fat liberation movement. It was intellectual information to me that, oh wow, some people are living in fat bodies and they're like, yeah, I'm fat, so what? And I was like, whoa, that was a revolutionary idea to me. I've lived in a fat body since puberty and I felt shame about it my whole life. Around the same time that I learned about fat liberation, I was also diagnosed with a chronic illness. The name of my chronic illness is lipedema. It's progressive, there's no cure for it, and it contributes to the size and shape of my body. It's understood to be a fat disorder, and it happens to accelerate during major hormonal changes. So most humans who have this experience, they see the onset around puberty. And then during childbearing years, during pregnancy specifically, there can be significant advancements, and then again around menopause. My experience was that I lived in a smaller but fat body for most of my life. And then after I had two kids, about 21 months apart, my body really changed radically. It impacted my mobility, I took up a lot more space in the world. And for the first several years, there was an incredible amount of shame there. Louise: I guess that built on the shame from puberty, you said like it had been there anyway. When were you diagnosed with lipedema? Kathryn: I was diagnosed in 2016. Louise: Okay, so that's fairly recent. Kathryn: It is actually. And that's kind of a fascinating thing. Like, I talk a lot on my art page about how much my life has changed, thanks to reconnect with my body and healing my relationship with my body. I would say that self-compassion is what helped do that. So first it was sort of the information, like there's humans out there and these brilliant activists that are brilliant feminist thinkers and like helping me to get new information about whether or not I'm allowed to exist as I am. I also want to say that humans in the disability justice movements are just so brilliant in how they articulate that dignity is not condition and ought not be. So, that was all really, really helpful information. And then what happened is I was able to apply the information by compassion, you know, like learning how to just sit with myself and feel my feelings and validate them and then genuinely out loud saying to myself, like "Kathryn, I'm so sorry." And then I'd be really specific; "I'm so sorry you don't deserve love because of the body you live in." And intellectually, I knew that sentence wasn't accurate, but in my body it felt true somewhere. And so, I would just acknowledge these things that were sort of limiting beliefs. And it was a limiting belief. I absolutely am worthy of love in the body I inhabit. And as I started to offer that specific lie, compassion and heal the pain that it caused, I suddenly was in relationships where I felt really loved and seen and valued and desired, and so it changed literally everything living in my body. Louise: How did you learn about self-compassion? Kathryn: Well, you know, it's interesting; it really first started with, with my body. So learning about fat liberation, I was reading everything I could get my hands on. And then also, I just am a very spiritually curious person. I spent most of my life inside Christian theologies. I was an ordained pastor for about a decade. And then I left that worldview because it was more and more confining, and I started to feel - even though I had sort of these incredible spiritual experiences, what I would now say is I think that divine doesn't care about dogma. I feel like the divine is willing to engage with us no matter where we are. And it really, really doesn't care about any dogma that we may bring into our desire to connect with whatever is out there, so as a Christian, and I was a Pentecostal Evangelical Fundamentalist Christian. Louise: Wow. Kathryn: Yeah, that's a mouthful, but yeah. And it's really rigid thinking, but also there's this Pentecostal element that is very metaphysical. There are a lot of interesting experiences. Things like speaking in tongues or getting sling in the spirit. And I had had an incredible experience after experience, after experience of feeling a sensation of being completely loved and accepted by what I would now call is just the divine or the universe, that something benevolent that loves me exists. And now I would even say like I'm part of it, like we're all sort of connected as consciousness, you know? I'm still very spiritual and I like to refer to myself as a Woo-Woo Bitch these days. Are we allowed to swear on this podcast? Louise: We encourage swearing on this podcast. Absolutely. Kathryn: That makes me happy. That was one of the first things that showed up when I stopped being a fundamentalist is I was aware of how much I had edited my language. And now swearing is my fucking favorite thing to do. Louise: It's my fucking favorite thing to do too. It's expressive. Kathryn: It is, and it feels freeing to me. So my body started to slow down kind of dramatically. I had had this outpatient surgery that was supposed to be a quick in and out kind of thing. And I had an incision rip and it meant that I was like literally in bed for about six or eight weeks. And then I finally am better enough that I can move around a bit, and then I immediately get vertigo. And it fascinating because in that particular window, I felt like my body was saying, "Kathryn, we're going to sit you the fuck down. We've got something to tell you." And it was an incredibly powerful time in my life where I stopped limiting my spiritual curiosity to what was sort of acceptable within Christian circles. And by that point, I was already no longer a fundamentalist, but I was still attending like a more liberal-minded Christian Church. And the person I was married to was a pre-devout kind of more liberal Christian. But I knew that Christianity was really important to them and our marriage. And it turned out if I allowed my evolution to take me beyond Christianity, that that relationship would end, and that is what ended up happening. But my body working so I could stop participating in culture, really. And I had two small kids, it was a really strange time. They had just kind of fend for themselves a bit more than their peers, because I just couldn't function. And my brain was like - my spirit, my brain, whichever was just curious. And we have like this amazing technology and our hands, and so I just was following my curiosity. Eventually, I mean, it took me lots of places. Like I did a little time of like, oh, I'm curious about tarot cards. And so I looked into that and then I was like, oh, I want to learn about like all of our chakras, and I even bought some like stones to like, you know. I took one of the online quizzes that talked about like, which one of my chakras needs more attention, you know, that's my clothes, I need to work on that. And so it was like a game. It was like fun. It was just following my curiosity. And in that space where I was just following anything that was shiny, I was reading more and more about self-compassion. And there was this very specific practice that I had read about and learned about that I started doing and telling my friends about and it was this thing where you literally say out loud to yourself, I'm so sorry. And then you be as specific as you can about the belief, even though intellectually, you know it may not true, but the painful thought and you just say, I'm so sorry, and you just hold space for yourself. And I don't know how it works, except that it does work and it just shifted those painful things. They just were allowed to move through me. Louise: Yeah. I love that because you're bringing like mindful kindness to the beliefs and thoughts that are happen in the moment, so I'm so sorry that you just thought, oh, I'm so disgusting. Kathryn: Yeah. Louise: And so you're pausing, you're not letting it kind of just sink in, and you're apologizing to yourself - so powerful. Kathryn: And it's really been the most affected, I would say, on the old beliefs that have sort of been sneaky. We've been very programmed by the cultures we grew up in. That's why fat phobia is so rampant, you know, anti-fat is everywhere. It it's like a global phenomenon that fatness is bad. That's kind of fascinating. What the hell? Louise: The world is wrong and fat is bad. Kathryn: Yeah. But actually, and I think that's so interesting, and one of the things I really love about the fat community is that we are an international global group of humans, that are going to push back on this really stupid presumption that our bodies are wrong. And I don't know, it creates this really interesting energy of when you choose your own inner knowledge over the projected information. It is powerful. It's an empowering transition. And so, you turn the volume up of your own inner space, above the chatter of culture and you start to realize, you can do whatever the fuck you want. You can have whatever. Louise: You can wear what you want, you can have sex, you can enjoy hell out of yourself. Kathryn: It's all of it. Absolutely. Louise: For how long has life felt like that for you? Kathryn: It just keeps getting better and better and better. So, when I was experiencing that period of time where I was recovering from surgery and then ended up with vertigo, that was like, it felt like explosions, like my body expanded and my brain and my spirit was expanding. And I'd had this sort of metaphysical experience where I had this profound sensation that my physical body that was inhabiting was an allegory to this spirit size I was meant to embody in this. And I don't actually even talk about that that much, but it was huge in shifting my thinking about like whether or not my body was allowed. And not only is it allowed, it's powerful. When people see me, it's not hard to see that I am also quite free, but I live in a body that we're used to people seeing shame. Walk around in bodies like mine and they there's just shame. I's hard not to, because of how much conditioning we've been taught about fat, but I just don't have that. I don't have that energy. And so, people interact with me and I'm not easy to forget. Louise: Do people just not know what to do with you if you don't kind of obey that is not expected shame. Kathryn: I don't know if they... I'm not having those kinds of conversations with strangers. The humans are that are close to me, like they just see me. I'm a full human person. I do have this deep spiritual practice, but like I have hard days too and I have sad days and I reach out for support when I need it. I get frustrated with my kids and I complain about that. So yeah, it's just the humans that are in my life really see me. And then when I'm out in the world, I just don't live. I just am not anticipating. I remember living in a way where I anticipated hostility for the body I lived in and I felt hostility. Now I just don't anticipate hostility directed towards me. It just doesn't occur to me anymore. I don't know how, except that it was all this self-compassion, but this very dramatic shift is, can move through the world and I'm not anticipating hostility. I just assume that I get to be treated with the amount of dignity and love and care that I treat myself with. And if that doesn't happen to be the case where someone doesn't treat me the way I want to or expect to be treated, it just doesn't wreck me like it would've before. It just is like, oh, that's an anomaly. Like, I'm sorry, that person, they must be having a rough time. Like, how sad that they would feel the need to project their shit onto me. It's very clear to me that that's theirs. It's not shit my. I'm good. Louise: Oh, that's it, right? Because the self-compassion has kind of sunk in and made you kind of unstoppable. Kathryn: And what's funny is like unstoppable how, because I have a lot of limitations living in my body. I have a lot of limitations moving through the world. Like, my body doesn't fit in most public seating. I've had to do the both end of doing this internal work of, I know that I'm allowed to exist in the world with full dignity and I'm also someone ADHD, and so sometimes I have low executive functioning. Which means, I can be overwhelmed with the amount of extra labor that's required for me to like, make sure that that restaurant I want to go to with my friends is going to have seating that's going to work for my body. And so, I've been able to like my circle of friends and people I date, I've been able to invite them into this sort of tender space of, hey, would you actually help do some of the labor here? And I was pretty tentative about it at first because it felt really vulnerable, and they were so happy to. They were just so happy to. They were like, "That is okay Kathryn, we love your presence in our life. And of course, we're going to try to streamline this and make it less hard for you. You shouldn't have to work this hard, just go out and be in the world." Yeah, and so it is the both end. Both things are at once; I am unstoppable and this world is still not built for, to welcome a body like mine, I have to do in a lot of extra labor. Louise: Which is terrifically difficult, but how nice that you can like share this with friends who will then go out and advocate and take care of everything alongside you; you don't have to do it on your own. Kathryn: Yeah. It's a really beautiful thing. I think the work of getting free and liberation is an internal spiritual work. And then what happens is we get to see it lived out in human relationships because we are social creatures and it's got to be the both end. We're not meant to be alone, most of us aren't. And so, yeah, and then that was just a really - that took some compassion too. It was very tender when I first started saying out loud to my circles, like I want to be out in the world a little more and I'm noticing I'm saying no to invitations because it will be too hard. And then I'm like, oh, actually I can ask for help. Turns out, asking for help is its own kind of superpower. And culturally again, especially in Western cultures, we have been taught not to do that. Louise: Yeah. Don't impose on people, don't have needs, don't... that's terrific. Out of interest, who were the fat liberation people that you read for inspiration? Who your community now that you...? Kathryn: Let's see. So Sonya Renee Taylor's work was really impactful to me and the book, The Body's not an Apology. I really liked what I read from the author who wrote Shrill and now Lindsay-Anne Baker, The Will author. I can't remember her first name. Louise: I can't remember it either. Kathryn: Yeah. And then I just started following like the hashtags on Instagram. Instagram was really helpful in my evolution as well, because I love how you can just follow hashtags, like disability justice and fat liberation, haze, so all of that was really impactful. So it became like this big, beautiful soup of just taking in everything that was sort of out there and allowing it to change how I thought about things. Louise: I love that; a big, beautiful soup, because Instagram can also be like a treacherous shark infested ocean. Kathryn: The thing is like curating our feed too. I mean, it can be. But I think that internet has served me so well because social media is can reflect back to us our own energy sometimes. And whatever you're drawn to are attracted to you, you can unfollow and start following the stuff that makes you actually feel good, so it doesn't have to be that. It doesn't have to be that. Louise: No, I love my little haze bubble that I have on Insta and social media, speaking of which that's how I found you. Because I think I was scrolling through Being Nourished, their feed, Hilary and Dana and I saw this amazing picture of lady and it was just lit up with flowers and it was glowing, like literally like no shit glowing. And I was like, I just stopped. And I'm like, that is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. So since then, I was trying to find it and I couldn't find out anywhere. And then I found you and looked through your feed and your art and it was like how I think self-compassion looks like in art. I can't explain it very well, but it's like it moved me in my body. It was so beautiful see. And that's why I kind of tracked you down and finally found the beautiful painting, which is going to be up in my new office. Which ironically the new office is called Flourish at [unclear27:54]. Kathryn: Wow. Louise: And then the idea is that it's a big, beautiful like greenhouse full of plants and growth and beginning for people. And so, I wanted to feel it full of like art that showed that. That painting that I had seen is called Flourishing, so I can't wait to put it up there. I just want to talk about your art because it's just like a mind bogglingly awesome. How long have you been doing it? Kathryn: Not that long. I started really making body art, figurative art in 2018. I was sort of dabbling in 2017. I was sort of experimenting. I was 38. I'm 44, almost 44 now, but I was 38 before I could even call myself an artist. It just was things were, again, we have these limiting ideas sometimes. Like the idea that I was an artist felt so gatekeepy, like I wasn't fancy, I'm just up hot. Yeah, so I was 38 and I was like, oh my God, I've been calling myself crafty my whole life. But like the truth is, is that I am an artist. And then when, like I said, I describe how in the same window of time I had this lipedema diagnosis, this chronic illness and there's no cure, so my body will continue to evolve. And then they're just like, by the way, all of our bodies are continuing to evolve. We're in a constant change. And then fat liberation, that I was allowed to take space and have the body I lived in and I needed a way to marry these two ideas just to make peace with the fact that this is a reality of my life. My body is going to stay this way and progress. So up until that point, I just constantly was believing that like someday I would lose all the weight, you know, like most of us think, you know? So I had to decide, nope, if that never happens for me, I'm going to live my best life. So making art was the bridge and it was like, I wanted to see myself depicted beautifully in art and media, and so I just started playing around with it. And it's interesting because you know, you referenced the image flourishing and you said painting, it's actually not really a painting. It's digital. Louise: It's digital. I have no idea when it comes. Kathryn: We have these iPhones, and there's all these apps on there. I literally make all this art on my phone. Sometimes I like the aesthetic of mixed media, and so sometimes I'll do like mixed media art, like an abstract sort of thing. And then I can like take a photo of it and I can layer it into a silhouette. But yeah, we have all this software now where you can just like take a photo and then like strip away everything that's not the silhouette, and then I can layer and layer and layer. I can create a background, I can do all these things. I can just pull an image in and out of like 16 different phone apps, you know? And it was just plates. Something I can do while laying down and it doesn't require any art supplies that my kids are going to make a fucking mess out of. Louise: That is exciting. Kathryn: And it really helped me get into a state of flow where I could be like listening to an audio book and then like playing on my phone, making something beautiful. Here's the other interesting thing is that, in like summer of 2018, I started my Instagram and I was like, I'm going to make new art every day. I'm going to post something every single day, and I did that for six months straight. And there is really something powerful about adding creativity to whatever our work is. Like, what are you working on in your life human? Like, what's the thing that is asking for your attention, right? Is it body issue stuff, then find a creative outlet for that. It could be poetry. It could be writing short stories. It can be visual arts. It could be clay. I have this sculpture of myself that I made with, oh, I wonder if I can remember their name. There's this other, like the activist who I think is from Australia, actually. Louise: Yes, yes. And my God, what is happening to my brain? It's 6:00 AM. Ashley Bennett. It's Ashley Bennett from at bodyimage_therapist. Kathryn: She's delightful, and it was really fun to go to her class in San Francisco. And a bunch to us were in there with clay molding our own forms. And it was powerful to lovingly touch this clay, to like fill in where all of these fat roles are, you know, the volume of my big belly. It was just powerful. So whatever creative outlet attracted to, adding creativity to whatever your work is, somehow I think unleashes huge amounts of energy. It just opens us up in ways that I don't think just thinking about things could ever. Louise: I think you've nailed it. You're regularly visiting that place and reinforcing it, but just sort of intuitively finding this way of doing it. It shines out of it. I don't think I've seen art before, which embodies self-compassion, this stuff that you've done, I just love it. And I love how you've paired it with compassionate phrases, like be gentle with you. Kathryn: Yeah. Louise: And I love fat-trans queer loved, just full of love. It's too just incredible. And I particularly, yeah, I'll just keep blushing if I keep looking. I just encourage everyone to go and look at it. So this is really like a love story of you and your body. Kathryn: Well, okay. So maybe, right. My relationship, my body meant that my spiritual worldview shifted a great deal. How I interact with the world around me changed. It also meant that I ended a long term marriage that wasn't exactly a terrible marriage or anything, it's just we didn't resonate with each other anymore. I was no longer a Christian, that was really important to him. And as soon as I knew that that marriage was over, I was like, oh my God, I'm queer. Of course, I am. How did I not know that? You know? And so I spent so many decades in purity culture, I just was prohibited from exploring my own sexuality. And so, one of the things about being a late bloomer is the temptation to feel like a I've missed out on a lot of stuff. And again, like I felt all those feelings. I gave myself a lot of compassion. It would've been amazing to be having lots of gay sex when I was in my twenties, but that wasn't my experience. And so the cool thing is, is that I get to be a sexual being today in the body that I have, but as also as a person who's incredibly self-aware who is great communication skills, who is emotionally intelligent. And so, I'm navigating dating almost as if I'm a preteen or a teenager, but also I have all of this wealth of internal self-knowledge and self-compassion. Louise: So that's good make it like much more enjoyable than usual teen experiences. Kathryn: I'm having a fucking blast, yeah. And not that every date I go on is amazing. A lot of them are amazing. I'm also very interested in nontraditional relationship models, so I'm practicing solo polyamory. Another interesting thing to read about is something called relationship anarchy, which is just brilliant. It's just asking us to challenge all of these beliefs about what relationships are supposed to be and gender roles and like expectations we might have on a dynamic with another person. You actually get to invent that; you and that person get to make that up as you go, it gets to serve both of you, and it can be like anything you want it to be. I love that. I love the freedom of turning everything on its head. There's no external expectations on what my relationship with any one person needs to be. I get to decide that. They get to decide that with me. So yeah. Right out of the gate, you know, I came out as queer during the pandemic and then once enough of us were vaccinated, I'm out here dating, dating a lot. I'm having a good time. Louise: It's not easy to date in a pandemic. Wow, this is all so new. You're riding the wave. Kathryn: I'm riding this very big wave. Also one of the things that I've learned is that scarcity is a capitalist construct, and it fucks us up pretty bad, but we apply scarcity to everything. We definitely apply it to dating and it just doesn't feel true anymore. Like, people are coming out to the fucking woodwork to be like, hey, how you doing, can we date? And I'm like, yeah, let's go on date. Me and the body I inhabit, I'm a desired person that feels amazing. That feels amazing. Louise: Wow. That is the power of not limiting yourself. And that's the other kind of word that came to mind looking at your art is abundance. Kathryn: Yeah. Yeah. It feels so much better to live in this space. And I want to be really careful to say, it's not that I am in an elated state of being constantly. I really do have access to this like really high, high frequency sensation of joy and pleasure and abundance. But also, I still am inhabiting a human body that has chronic pain, that experiences big fatigue. I've had relationships end in a way that really hurt my feelings. And I've been afraid of things here and there too, you know? And so, it's just that in those times now I don't judge myself harshly. I can experience very, very big fatigue and just decide that everything I wanted to get done that day isn't going to get done and I'll go home and I will just rest and do whatever I need to do to get through that particular window. Louise: What would you offer yourself then? How do you stay compassionate in a moment like that? Kathryn: Well, what's interesting is that that's taken a while because I remember even just, I don't know, eight months ago I would have a fatigue spell and sometimes they would last up to like five days where it was just super hard to function for days. And the first day or two, I could be like, that's all right, I'm just going to roll with it. And then if it went on beyond that, it would start to feel scary because our brains have a tendency to be like, oh my God, this is my life now. And what I started to see though, was on the other side of a hard window, I felt more free somehow. And I don't know how to explain that. Sometimes we go through a hard time and then coming up out of it, there's just some kind of lift. And that had happened enough times that I started to trust it. So several weeks ago I had a rough spell and I didn't have that panic feeling. I just remembered like, oh, I've been through this before, like on the other side, I'm just going to feel more powerful. So in the time while I'm experiencing it, while I feel like really low energy, I just lay down as I needed to. My body is like, this is what's going to happen, this is how much rest we need and stop trying to qualify it. Like, I feel like I rest more than any human I've ever met, and I'm like, what? Really? More? How much more could I need? And my body's like, it doesn't need to be qualified like that. Like it's not about comparing it to other people, like you're going to need to lay down and rest somewhere. And so then I just keep myself occupied by listening to audio books or playing on my phone or meditating or whatever I want to do. That's a really powerful thing too. I stopped doing things that I was supposed to do. I literally only do what I want to do. Louise: I love this. Kathryn: There's some amount of privilege that comes with that. Like I'm separated, so I don't have to live with my ex anymore, but I was a stay-at-home parent before. And so, with child support and whatnot, I still get to like live as a stay-at-home parent and I have my art that I do and other things occupy my day and my time. I'm not needing to work 40 hours a week in order to live in the world, so I recognize that as a great privilege I get to have. But that being said, I still think being free on the inside is what's making me free. You know what I mean? Louise: Yeah, much more. I remember being at one of Hilary and Dana's retreats in 2016 and talking about how like... it was for embodiment, to be an embodied practitioner. About trying to get out of like the crowded city of our brain and down into the wilderness of our body - uncharted territory. And I remember us talking about that's where the freedom is, it's down there and it's not verbal, it's sort of felt. Kathryn: Yeah. And I would say that - like I said, I've been explaining who I am as a person, as someone who's quite spiritual, and that's true. But what I started to see is that in some spiritual communities, they would talk down about the body. They would say like, oh, this meat sack that we're in, you know, like your body is not who you really are, you are not your body. And I don't agree with that at all. I think our bodies are fucking magic. They hold so much intense wisdom. They will talk to us and teach us things. Our bodies have held all of our trauma our whole lives; just held it, just waiting for us to be ready to look at it again. And it has only ever been kind to us. And even when it's not working well or there's pain or any of those things, it's not out to get you, it's just trying to get your attention. And when we can turn into it and listen and believe that it's our friend I feel like it's multiverses within ourselves, like unending amounts of wisdom and love and compassion all in this physical form that we inhabit. Even if you just think about DNA, like our fucking DNA is ancient. You know what I mean? There's studies that talk about how like trauma can be passed down in your DNA. Like the stories that your body has, it's way more powerful than we give it credit for often. And so when we live our lives, we're not ruled completely by our minds, but we actually get to make decisions based on how does it feel in my body when I think about doing this thing? If we literally do the things that only make our body feel like, ah, expansive and open and relaxed, oh my God, your life will change. If you're constantly doing things to your body's like, "Oh, dread, dread, I don't want to, I'm going to make myself." Nope, nope, it doesn't serve you. Louise: This is an amazing conversation. I knew this would be an amazing conversation. There's so much in everything that you are saying, and it's learning how to do that I think that's difficult for people. Because like you said, we're so kind of stuck in our heads and so scared, and often I think it's that fear response that's in our body that stops us getting down or trauma cuts us off. So it is really interesting that you come to it in your late thirties and you come to it in a moment, like when your body just sort of calls it a day almost and says, oh, lie down for a few weeks, you're going to have to just be with me. Kathryn: Yeah. There's an account. I follow on Instagram called The Nap Ministry. And I can't remember who is in charge of it, but this really powerful black woman. And I just want to say too, like as a white woman in the privilege that I embody there, like the kind of freedom that I get to live in is absolutely because of the work of black women and fems and indigenous people. Like, I'm really grateful for all the labor and the work that they've done to help kind of illuminate the path forward. So this particular person who has the Instagram, The Nap Ministry, they just blew my mind when they talked about like rest as revolution. Capitalism has really indoctrinated us with the idea that our worth is connected to our labor or our productivity. And then we live in systems that you literally can't live unless you do labor for often someone else. And that's really wrong. Human beings are not designed for that. That's a system that we all have grown up in and it's impacted how we think about ourselves. There was a time where human beings existed without having to go to work and labor in order to just stay alive. So to nap, napping being resistance to those capitalist ideas was a revolutionary idea to me. And that rest was how we honored all the people that went before us that weren't allowed to rest. And it absolutely - I really do credit my body stopping working and requiring so much rest with my ability to disconnect with these systems that control our thinking. You know what I mean? So I was out in the world less because in my bed napping more. And what that meant is I was spending more time in my own energy and the things that I was just naturally feeling curious about. And then I could follow my curiosity to the next step and the next step. In a spirit paradigm, you might say like your higher self is always going to guide you towards enlightenment if that resonates with you. But I would also say that my body had a very key role in that. My body was the one that arrested me and got my attention, my body demanded rest and I said, okay. And before I said, okay, I spent years pushing through like most of us do. You like buckle in, you like buck up, you push through and that's stupid. We don't have to do that anymore. You know what I mean? The idea that you were good because you hurt your body in order to achieve some task is really stupid. We don't have to do that anymore. We don't have to hurt ourselves anymore. We can be kind to ourselves. Rest is revolutionary. Louise: I love that. Absolutely love that. And I think especially now, you know, the last two years have been pretty shit for most people on the planet. And I don't know if this happened over there, but as we are coming out here in Australia, there's a lot of like exhaustion and a lot of anxiety coming back into, and fear of what's going to happen next step. People do need to rest more. We can get these messages, like you said, from the structures and systems that we need to kind of pull up our socks and lose the COVID kilos and, you know, whatever. And I'm finding for my clients that that kind of message like let's get back to normal, just doesn't resonate as much, is maybe we've had a bit more time to spend in reflection. Kathryn: Normal was very toxic. It really was. Normal has never been good or kind to human individuals. It has served these systems that are oppressive and that's all. And I think the pandemic forcing most of us to slow down to some degree, it means that we get to become disillusioned with how it was really shit before too. And no, not fucking going back to that. No, thank you. No, we're going to have to create something new. A lot of the kind of things that I'm listening to and reading about now is all anti-capitalist stuff. And the idea that we're in late stage capitalism is a pretty widespread idea at this point. And so, how we going to cope with that? How are we going to cope end of capitalism? Those of us who are adults now are probably, I don't know that it's going to be easy or fun. And again, that's why we have to do the internal work of like, I'm actually, okay no matter what, I'm going to be okay, and I'm going to be really fucking gentle with myself, because I don't know what the future holds. And sometimes uncertainty can be very scary. And again, we can offer ourselves compassion for that, but the truth is the more I live in a state of genuine compassion for myself, I'm very present in this exact moment and you know, that's a spiritual practice that most of us had heard about like be present, be present in it; it didn't resonate until I started to live in a state of compassion. And it's not that I'm trying to be present; I just am. I just am here. I'm just present with myself because I'm so kind to myself. I don't have to escape into the future to think it'll be better then. Oh my God, I've spent years thinking it'll be better then, when my body is smaller - I would escape in the future all the time. I don't do that anymore. My life is beautiful because I am so fucking kind to myself. And when I am this kind to myself, somehow the world is just way less hostile. And it doesn't mean there's not still a ton of unknowns; I'm just not afraid of the unknown anymore. Louise: You're amazing. That everything you just said is just brilliant - so inspiring. No matter what, just keep doing what you're doing, because you are like your art. You're just like glowing. It's amazing. Kathryn: Thank you. And the thing that I kind of want to reiterate is like, I know I can speak eloquently about some of these things. I am very human too, right? There's the both end. But if I can come to this state of being, that means it's available, like the amount of freedom that I get to live in. I realized a long time ago that I kind of wanted to be of service to the world in some way, you know, I was in vocational ministry, and the world who I was a part of really made perpetuate to this savior complex. And then I had religious trauma and I had like childhood trauma and I was definitely someone who was codependent for a lot of years, was codependent in my relationship with my spouse. And I feel like I've lived a very normal life, but I've started to taste freedom, and then the freedom just brought more freedom. And then that freedom brought even greater freedom. And so, I would very much like to say that existing as I am in the world now, it feels like it's accessible to people. Like being alive and free in the body inhabit might convince someone else that, oh my God, what if I could be more free too? And now I no longer feel like it's my job to save anyone. It's just not. Like, I really trust people on their journey. I trust you to follow your own curiosity and see what path that takes you on. But I being free in the world, I think perpetuates the idea that freedom is available to all of us. Louise: Yeah. And I think that's why it's so lovely to speak to you, and to know that this conversation gets the listen to by so many people. I think this part like of like finding that freedom through self-compassion, connected to your body specifically and inhabiting - I think that's really tough for a lot of people, and that's a bit that we can get stuck on. Like, we can kind of talk about I love fat liberation, and I love haze, and I love anti-diet, but I still don't feel okay in my body. Like I still can't really accept it, let alone inhabit it, let alone feel freedom in it, let alone expand. What you're talking about is I guess, perseverance with that compassion until it doesn't feel like an innate trick, but it feels like it's the portal and then you just sort of go down and inhabit. Kathryn: Yeah. And our brains do change, right? So, like it's the default. It wasn't always, it took some time and I didn't make myself do it. Like, this was really born out of when I realized I was only going to do what I wanted to do. And so, my meditative practice is really like when I'm laying my bed, I'll just take some deep breaths and I'll let my brain just sort of wander. I don't like any kind of dogma or high structure at all. Some of that might be PhD, but also I spent decades in a lot of fundamentalism and so there was so much dogma. So, this is me sort of pushing all the way to the other extreme and it has served me. And I think the big message for anyone who's listening would be like, find out what serves you by following your curiosity and what you actually want. Sometimes we don't even know what we want because we're not embodied enough. But then you can try this little fun game of like think of something that you might want and then see how it feels in your body. Does it feel expansive? When you take a breath, do you feel like room or does it feel tight? And so, then we start to ask our body questions. Our body has our own individual truth. It really, really does. And what happens is you start to check in with your body more and more. Then you are sort of guided in your life. Eventually, it's not something you have to think about; it just happens. And then you will lead yourself to whatever is your best life. Louise: That is so cool. It's like the difference between thinking and knowing in your body, it's that language of knowing in your body or not the language, but it's that experience of knowing in your body that when [unclear52:02]. That is a cool trick. Kathryn: Yeah. They live in concert now, you know, so like our brains have been very subject to conditional cultural programming. Our brains are really susceptible to that because human beings want to belong and society tells you, these are the things you got to do to belong. And so you want to belong so you conform, right? And then when you are not in relationship with your body, again, that's why anti-fatness is such a destructive force because it separates us from our body, and it makes controlling your body the objective, and your body is not to be controlled. It's just to be loved and enjoyed and to be honored. So yeah, I think there's a lot of different ways we can just very gently, it doesn't have to happen overnight, but just a little to check in, like you just happen to be eating a meal and you just realize, oh, I'm going to take some deep breaths. I'm going to breathe really deep into my belly. And I'm going to experience this one bite of food and just relish every bit of pleasure. I'm going to feel it go down into my body. And then you you'll start to see you'll just do that a little bit more and more, and you can heal the relationship with your body by just actively engaging with it a little bit more and a little bit more until it becomes something you do without thinking Louise: So lovely. And all of that is stuff that we're not encouraged to do. Even a belly breath - oh gosh. You know, don't let your stomach pop out. Eating and feeling pleasure, like honestly, pleasure and eating is not something we even like - it's not on the radar. These things are radical, but so simple. And what is it that Dana and Hilary talk about body trust is our birthright. Kathryn: It is. It is our birthright. And you know, most of us have been around small children, they do not feel self-conscious in their bodies. Someone told me that they were having Thanksgiving dinner with a three year old. They were sitting next to the three year old and the three year old was going, "Mm mm." And so they were laughing about how, like, it almost sounded like orgasmic sounds from this toddler who hasn't been socially conditioned yet. And hopefully they get to live without that other stuff limiting their experience in the world. Louise: I'll [unclear54:13], right? Kathryn: Yeah, exactly. So as a parent myself, that's the thing I teach my kids more than anything is bodily autonomy and to make decisions based on what feels right to them in their body. That feels like the best gift I can give them. Louise: I couldn't agree more. And that connects to so many other experiences. Kathryn: It really does. Louise: Yeah. What a terrific conversation. I'm so grateful for you to come on and talk to me about all of this today, and I'm going to continue buying your work. Kathryn: Thank you. It's been such a pleasure for letting me share, and I really, really love talking about these things and thank you for getting up early so that the timing worked and all of that. Thank you for reaching out and finding me. I'm really delighted. Louise: Ah, right back at you. Thank you. Outro: What did I tell you? Is this an incredible interview and an amazing individual or what? I tell you what I could not stop thinking about that conversation for days afterwards. Kathryn's experience and way of expressing everything through their art, it's just mind blowing. So look, I'm a bit spent, I'm sure you are too. I feel little part of me feels like lighting up a cigarette and just laying back and just enjoying the after glow of that conversation. Thank you so much, Kathryn, for coming on and blowing all of our minds at a time when we really, really need some awesomeness. Thank you so much for delivering. If you like me are fascinated and a bit blown away by everything Kathryn-related, look at their Instagram, which is fat_mystic_art, and go to the Etsy shop and buy everything, which is kind of what I want to do as well. The Etsy shop is Fatmystic, and there's just so much terrific stuff there. Thank you everybody, and thank you, Kathryn. Look, we're going to sign off now and into the end of the year we go. Be very, very careful everyone, because like I said, it's diet culture high season, the weight loss wolves are after us. Remember that your body is awesome, magical, mystical and not something to feel ashamed about. There's just so much awesomeness sitting right here right now. Okay, so look everyone, I hope you take really, really good care of yourselves and I hope that there's some kind of break coming for most of us. I know I'm going to have a rest. I'm going to be back and absolutely raring to go early next year. We've got some, like I said, some really cool news and big news coming, but this All Fired Up podcast is going nowhere. You're going to be hearing from me a lot. I'm very, very pumped and excited. So look, look after yourself, everyone. And I'll see you in the new year. In the meantime, trust your body, think critically, push back against diet culture. Untrap from the crap!

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My guest this week is the fierce and fabulous Lindley Ashline, fat-positive photographer and body liberation activist, who has literally BANNED the weight loss industry from using her stock photos. In this glorious episode, Lindley tells how she pushed back when a diet company tried to do just that! The AUDACITY of diet companies and the weight loss industry is next level, but they were no match for Lindley! Join us for a completely fired up, inspiring conversation with a woman who takes no bullshit, AND takes staggeringly awesome photos! Show Transcript Intro: Welcome to All Fired Up. I'm Louise your host, and this is the podcast where we talk all things anti-diet. Have diet culture got you in a bit of rage/ is the injustice of the beauty ideal? Getting your nickers in a twist? Does fitspo make you want to spitspo? Are you ready to hurl if you hear one more weight loss tip? Are you ready to be mad, loud and proud? Well, you've come to the right place. Let's get all fired up. Hello, passionately pissed off people of diet culture. I am so excited for some episode of All Fired Up. And thank you to all of the listeners who send messages of outrage to me via email louise@untrapped.com.au. If something about diet culture is really getting your go, let me know about it, get it off your chest. And who knows, we might be able to rant about it here on All Fired Up. And if you are a listener, don't forget to subscribe, so you don't miss episodes when they pop out. And while you're at it, why not leave us a lovely five star review and rating wherever you listen to your podcast, because the more five star reviews we get, the more people listen, the quicker diet culture topples, and then I can go and become a florist. As the COVID crisis unravels, more and more people are banging on about the relationship between weight and health. And if that's really getting up your nose and you want a strong resource to help you push back against that, and you want something for free; look no further then now wonderful ebook, ‘Everything you've Been Told About Weight Loss is Bull Shit' co-written by me and the wonderful Dr. Fiona Willer, anti-diet dietician, and general all-round awesome person. In this ebook, we are busting wide open the diet culture bullshit myths about this relationship. Because when you look under the hood and scratch the surface just a tiny, tiny bit, we see that all of this BMI stuff is complete bullshit, and it's great to have a booklet in which all of the scientific evidence to support the health at every size and anti-diet approaches can be presented to people who are still upholding the greatest injustice when it comes to health. So have a look for the ebook, it's at untrapped.com.au, and a little popup will happen, and you can download it from there. Give it to all your friends and all your family. Put it in their stockings for people for Christmas, give it away, trick or treating for Halloween. Hell you know, give it away instead of Easter eggs, just get it out there to as many people as possible because just so over this groaning insistence that size is all accounts when it comes to health. If you're looking for more free stuff and you're struggling with your relationship with your body, because let's face it – who doesn't in diet culture. Have a look at the Befriending Your Body eCourse, which is completely free. You can find that on untrapped_au on Insta. In this course, basically you'll get like an email from me for 10 days. Every day for 10 days, you get a lovely little email from me talking through the wonderful skill of self-compassion, which is essentially literally learning how to become your body's best friend and become your own best friend as you wade through the of diet culture. So have a look for that course, as I said, it's on Instagram, it's completely free. What have you got to lose? Huge shout out to all of the Untrapped community. Untrapped is my online community and masterclass for all things anti-diet. Untrapped has been around since 2017. And we have built ourselves into this wonderful online group of fierce and fantastic people. If you are struggling with your relationship with food, with how you are moving, with your body, with just generally trying to get along in diet culture with all of the pressure that's heaped upon us every day and you're just absolutely sick of dieting; have a look at our Untrapped course and community because we would really love to have more people join us. You can find it at untrapped.com.au. Louise: Okay, let's get into the nitty-gritty. Shall we? I'm so excited in this episode, I'm having this awesome conversation with fat activist, photographer, author, and cat mom, Lindley Ashline. Lindley is the creator of Body Liberation Photos and does some really amazing ethically produced diverse stock photos of people in larger bodies. And, oh my gosh, how much do we actually need this kind of stuff. So I had the most amazing ranty conversation with Lindley. You are going to absolutely love her. So without further ado, here's me and Lindley. Lindley, thank you so much for coming on the show. Lindley: Oh, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Louise: Me too. So tell me, what's firing you up at the moment? Lindley: Well, when we were emailing back and forth talking about doing this podcast episode you had said, I want to hear what's firing you up, and I would love to hear you talk about stock photos, which are photos that can be used for marketing that people buy from other people. And also, wondering if you've experienced any diet culture co-opting of your work. And I immediately said, I have all that put together because I do have the stock photo website where I sell my photos. And most of my clients, my stock photo customers are health at every size oriented, or anti-diet, or body positivity folks who are marketing their small businesses. But the other day there is a diet that is probably familiar to you, that is very big here in the United States, that is called Whole30. Louise: Whole30, is that the Brene Brown one? Was she doing that? Lindley: Oh, I don't know. Louise: I'm sorry. Lindley: That's very, very trendy here. So, someone from Whole30, the company that runs that diet bought some of my stock photos. Louise: Oh no. Lindley: To use for an event. And I know this because I reacted to that. I'm a small business, so I do sell a decent number of stock photos, but I'm not at the point where I don't see every order as it comes in. So every time someone buys something from me, I get an email, of course, and I'm always curious, who's buying things. So I saw this such-and-such a name @whole30.com. And I said, wait a minute. Because not only do I not want… my photos are, they're mostly people in larger bodies or fat bodies. When I use the word fat, I'm using it as a neutral descriptor of people's bodies and not an insult. You don't have to use that word for yourself, but I have reclaimed it and many other people have too. Louise: That's such a beautiful way of putting it. Thank you. Lindley: Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's like saying that I'm a medium height, or if I were tall or short, I have long hair. It's just a descriptor. But the people who appear in those photos, they are in vulnerable bodies themselves. They are often people of color. They are people in very large bodies; people who experience a lot of discrimination and stigma just by living in their bodies. And not only do I not want those bodies being used to represent diet… Louise: Yeah, like they're not before photos. Lindley: Yeah. No, but also when I started creating stock photos, I worked with a lawyer to create my license that you are bound by when you buy these photos, you have to agree that you're going to respect this license to use the photos, and in the license, it specifies that you cannot use them to promote diets. Louise: You are terrific. So they're buying it in breach of your licensing already. Lindley: Yeah. If I'm going to set out to create body-positive and fat-positive stock photos, and work with people who are in marginalized bodies to start with; I can't allow those photos to be used in ways that will hurt people. Louise: How dare they. They have the audacity. Lindley: I was very fired up speaking into the theme. Oh, I was fired up and I said, no, how you. I immediately messaged my best friend and said, how dare they. And so, I emailed her, I issued her a refund. So here's what I did; I issued her a refund for the money that she's paid. I deleted her account. I couldn't delete the account, so I changed her password on her. I couldn't delete it, but I could change the password. And then I emailed her and said I have refunded your money, you may not use these photos, my license prohibits you from doing so. And that's that. Louise: So, did she respond to you? Lindley: Well, to make it even better, she had put her work email address in when she placed the order. But for her billing address, she was using a corporate credit card. So she had put as the email for the credit card, she had put in the corporate address. So I emailed her, but I CC'd the whole company. Louise: Oh my God. That's fantastic. Lindley: CC'd headquarters@whole30.com. I'm sure that maybe just a random assistance, someone deleted it, but like, I'm sure it didn't go to all the employees, but that was very satisfying. Louise: That is very satisfying. So she did email? Lindley: Yeah, she emailed right back and sent me kind of an indignant email. And she did say that they wouldn't use the photos. I keep meaning to go check and see if they actually did. But she was very indignant because she said we were going to use these for an event to promote body positivity next month, and I guess we won't. And I'm like, yeah, I guess you won't. Louise: What are you doing in the field of so-called body positivity if you're a diet company? Lindley: And that's the co-opting, that aspect of it. Because now, like Weight Watchers has changed its name formally to WW. What does that even mean? Like, we all know it's Weight Watchers, we're not stupid Louise: Well, they think that we might be. Do you remember in the eighties when Kentucky Fried Chicken decided to improve its brand by going to KFC, because then it wouldn't be fried. Lindley: But it's still fried chicken. Louise: Yeah. And this is still like, we want your money. Lindley: Yeah. And they've realized that people are wising up. Louise: We know that their diets are shit. Lindley: Yeah. They don't work, and in fact, they're worse for you, for your health than not dieting than being at a stable weight. Louise: Yeah. And then they're like, well, we can't have that, so let's launch into the field that grew around resistance to us, and let's nick everything, including their stock imagery. And how dare they run a body positivity event when they're in the business of shrinking bodies. Lindley: And as we move forward in time, you're going to see more and more of this because there is a lot of profit in telling people to love their bodies while selling them products because you made them hate their bodies. And in the body positivity movement, it's really rampant. If you look at Dove, Dove is one of the first companies to really monetize at a grand scale the body positivity movement. In the last decade, they've done a bunch of very high profile feel good, “love your body no matter what,” you can't see me, but I'm making really sarcastic hand gestures right now. Louise: Yeah, I'm loving it. Lindley: I mean, you can see me, but our listeners will be able to. But all these love your body just the way you are things, but at the same time, they're selling skin lightning cream to people of color. Louise: How dare they? Lindley: And they're selling wrinkle cream or whatever. Louise: Anti-aging, right? Lindley: Yeah, so it's very two-faced. Louise: Yeah, they were just changing the marketing where baiting and switching people on a global scale. And I agree. I think we're going to see more and more and more of it, but it's also like kind of core at the same time, because the fact that these big nasty wolves are coming to sniff at your door means that you are the one with the power, right. Body positivity movements are the ones who are driving the direction of – like the increasing level of diversity that's happening around the planet. I think they're just getting a bit desperate. Lindley: I mean, these are dinosaurs – that meteorite is coming. And I want to say too, for our listeners, I want to acknowledge, because you don't hear this stated enough, how traumatic, like full-on psychologically traumatic it is for both us as a culture and for people as individuals to be told for hundreds of years that their bodies, particularly fat bodies, and particularly women's bodies, but all bodies are bad in their natural states. And then have a generation of companies turn around and tell us that it's our fault for not loving those bodies. That's trauma. That is trauma – culturally and individually. So I want to be very clear that if you don't love your body, which most people don't, I have days I do and days I don't, but if you don't love your body, that is not on you, that is on hundreds of years of culture driving up and product power, so it's not you. Louise: It's the system. Lindley: Yeah. And you're not individually possible for fixing that, unless you want to. Louise: I'm so glad you're here. You are on fire and I love it. Lindley: I get so angry at the scam that's been perpetuated. Louise: Yes, that's exactly what it is. It's a giant gaslighting scam that turns us against ourselves and each other. And when we kind of hit body size as a measure of worth, it's really damaging and divisive. I really want to ask how you got to this point. Lindley: I got mad. Louise: Yeah, how did you get mad? Like, how did you come to have this amazing idea to start the body liberation stock photography stuff, and come to it with so much conviction to protect people who have been marginalized? Lindley: Well, it's been a process of about – it took about 10 years to go from being very, very sort of normal person invested in diet culture, sort of very mainstream, to being very passionately anti-diet and doing this activism work. In 2007, thereabouts, I discovered I had been on the website live journal for a very long time. At that point, it was like a pre-Facebook. Louise: The dark days of early internet. Lindley: Yeah. And I had stumbled across this group called Fatshionista. So like fashionista, but with fat folk. And it was such a revelation because here were these mostly women who were in large bodies in very large bodies who were being styling and confident and walking around in horizontal stripes. Louise: Oh my God. Lindley: And tight fitting outfits and colorful outfits and just living their lives confidently. And I just lurk for a really long time. But from there I started discovering… so the pre-cursor, these of foundation of the body positive movement is the fat acceptance movement, which started in the 1960s and has been the backbone of all of this. So this was a little bit before body positivity became a thing. And I found these fat acceptance blogs, where they were talking about the science of weight loss and why scientifically it doesn't work. And I had been in this state that I think many people sort of existed where they're like, well, it's fine to say, love your body, but my body is big. My body is not okay. Like, that might be cool for other people, like maybe other people deserve to be confident. But something about… Louise: Gosh, that is like, when you said that, that is like where so many of us are stuck. Like it's okay for everyone else and I love the idea of diversity and I love the idea that large and small and everyone in between can exist, but my body. I can't get there. Lindley: Yeah. And so, when I learned the science and the fact that somewhere around 98% of diets fail and that people gain the weight back, I started to feel like I'd been scammed. I'd been raised my whole life to believe that if I could just be good enough and strong enough and have enough willpower and do the right things for long enough, then I too would be thin and healthy and fabulous and have the life I'd always dreamed of and all those other things you see in diet ads, and it turned out none of that was true. Louise: It's bullshit. Amazing. Lindley: I started to get annoyed and then gradually I got mad, and then I got really mad. Louise: Excellent. Lindley: And then I started doing my own activism work because it was so tragic to see people that I love trapped in that system and be lied to. And so, I started speaking out – just a little bit, just a little bit. Like, I'd post something on my Facebook about, “Hey, we know that diets don't work because of science.” Louise: Yeah. I mean, like in tiny little writing. Lindley: Yeah. And that's really scary when you start doing it because it's so counter to what we think we know. So in about 2015, I was in a really crappy job, after a series of really crappy jobs, corporate full-time jobs. And I said, you know what, I got to a breaking point. And I said, “I'm done. I want to take my photography and turn it into a full-time business.” Louise: So you'd learned photography for a while. Lindley: Yeah. Well, I've done nature photography for many, many years, but I had never photographed people. Louise: Interesting. Lindley: So I took a year and I took a bunch of classes online and then I learned to photograph people. So in 2015, I quit that job. And I want to acknowledge my privilege here. I am a white cisgender straight woman who lives in the United States, and my husband is my financial safety net, so I was able to take that. I also have a part-time job as well, but I was able to take that leap because of my privilege. And so, I've always… Louise: Because you have some security, yeah. Lindley: There's not a lot of path that is open to everyone, and so I always want to acknowledge that. Louise: Yeah, it is really important, but I also think it's kind of fabulous that there are people who are able to do that because what you've done is create something for so many people. Lindley: And if you had asked me a decade ago, if you had said maybe in 10 years, how you feel about being a full time, small business person, photographer and activist, and I would've laughed in your face. Because at this point I have enough experience speaking out that I often sound very confident and powerful. Louise: You do, you sound really fired up and it's fantastic. Lindley: Which is wonderful, but that is not where I came from. Louise: So you took it on. Lindley: Yeah, I came from a very meek sort of very nice lady, southern sweet background, where you never disagreed with anybody to their face. Not to their face… Louise: Disagree behind their back with a cup of tea. Lindley: Yeah. That's how we do it in the south, the Southern US, we smile at your face and then snip at you behind your back. But like, I wasn't brought up in a way where I was allowed to access anger or to even believe that I felt it. Louise: It's part of the, like, part of the gaslighting of diet culture is that it uses other gaslighting of being raised female, and like, just be nice and shut up and don't rock the boat. And if you're mad, it's probably a period, right – it's not worthy. Lindley: Yeah. And it's very threatening to a lot of people, too, particularly when someone in a fat body is angry, that's very threatening because we are expected to shut up and take it. And so, I do get a lot of trolling. I've had some threats, but thankfully I'm not yet high profile enough to really be getting a lot of that. But it there's been some unpleasantness. Louise: It's really terrible. What you were saying about the science stuff and speaking up about the science, its that's sort of, my pathway was through the science as well, initially as well as like the massive sense of social justice and eating disorder work as well. But I'm so aware, and when I talk about the science, so if we were in the same room talking about the science, it's possible that my voice would be listened to more, even though we're talking about exactly the same thing, because our body sizes are different, which is ridiculous because actually you've got more lived experience alongside the science, so it's kind of like what the… Lindley: Yeah, yeah. We consider it culturally, we consider a thin body or a thinner body to be a credential, just like a degree. I was actually talking about this on Instagram literally last night that we consider thin body is to be a credential. So even though I live in this body and I have experience with this body, in general, I am considered as much of an authority on this body as someone who is in a more socially acceptable body. Louise: Which is so weird, it's like being like, oh, I'm the expert on same sex relationships, but I'm completely head show. Why would that credential be? Lindley: Yeah. Again, when marginalized people are allowed to speak and allowed to be angry and allowed to be believed, it's very threatening to the status quo. So it's easier to, I mean, again, both at a cultural level and an individual level, it's easier to assume that I am lying or that I'm exaggerating or that I am unacceptably angry or unacceptably sad or whatever, so that it blunts the impact of what I'm saying. Louise: Yeah, it's easy to dismiss something you don't agree with. Lindley: Right. I had someone who is in an average size body for here to the US. A maybe US 14, 16, which I think in Aussie size is about a 12. Louise: I have no idea because sizes confuse me. Lindley: I think the Aussie sizes run one size lower, I think. But anyway, at any rate, someone who is of average size here in the US. And often I find, again, I am speaking for my US experience. I'm not speaking for the whole planet, but I often find that folks who are of the average size because of the nature of our culture, think that they are much larger or much farther along that spectrum. So I often find that there's people who are of average size assume that the way that they are treated is the same way that people much larger than they are, are treated – which is not accurate. Louise: But it's about that unconscious, like they don't know the privilege they have. Lindley: Yeah, because it's a spectrum. I live in a very large body, but I am nowhere in near the extreme end of the fatness spectrum. There are many, many people who are larger than I am. And then I have privilege over those people because I can still get clothes that are… I can't get them in person. I mostly have to buy online, but I can still get clothing that's commercially made. Even if it's not the clothing I would prefer, and even if it doesn't fit very well, I can still find clothing somehow. But this was a person who I think wasn't quite ready to understand that that is a spectrum. Louise: And that's real. Lindley: And I had written this, I was recently diagnosed with a new to me health condition that has been quite challenging and that I am pursuing treatment for. And the treatment for that condition, it is a stigmatized condition. I'm not going to go into details, but it is a stigmatized condition, and it is a condition that is correlated with larger bodies. We don't have any scientific evidence that it is caused by being in a larger body, but it is correlated. And so, as someone who now has condition, there's sort of a double stigma and there it's been very challenging to get treatment. Louise: So you're stuck in the whole stigmatizing, like, medical condition stuff where they're like, “Oh, you've got this condition. If your body was different, you wouldn't have this condition,” Which is really not an interesting conversation, but it seems to be one that keeps on happening. Lindley: Right. Right. And so, this is something that I have been dealing with for a while now. Just pursuing treatment and it's taken much longer than it should have. And I was talking on my personal Facebook about the challenges of getting this health condition addressed and the ways in which some of those challenges have been caused by people reacting to my body size by fatphobia, plain and simple. And this person who has been listening to me speak for years and who is very earnest and was clearly trying very well intentioned. Because this was not the same experience that this other woman had had in her life, she approached me and wrote me a long message about how I was basically bringing all this on myself. Louise: Oh, bringing all of what on yourself? Lindley: That maybe I was just imagining that people were treating me poorly. Louise: Oh ouch. Oh dear. Lindley: Because I was putting out negative energy into the world, and so my poor treatment was my own fault. And there was a time in my life that I would've been devastated and I would've believed her. I would've gone, “Oh no, maybe because I'm in a fat body, maybe I am putting some kind of energy out into the world that maybe I just, oh no, it's all my fault.” Louise: Oh wow. Lindley: And my friend Brandy, calls this confidence magic. Louise: Good time. Lindley: Yeah. She said she calls it confidence magic because she is also in a very large body. And quite often, when we talk about the way we're treated it, the retort is, well, if you were just acted more confident, if you were just friendlier, if you just did X, Y, Z. But mostly, if you just acted more confidently, then people wouldn't treat you that way. And it's entirely possible that for someone who is in a smaller than ours body, that works. Maybe it does work if you're in a smaller body. But I want to be very that there is nothing I can do or not do that will make my body not an oppressed body. It doesn't matter what kind of energy I put out into the world, I don't deserve to be treated poorly, especially for the size of my body. Louise: It's putting emphasis back onto you, it puts it back onto you and it takes the focus away from the person who's being the dick head. Lindley: Right. My oppression is never my fault, period. And so now I asked her to sit down and really look at that discomfort because the problem was that she had reached a point where she couldn't imagine that people actually get treated the way that I was describing. And so, it was so uncomfortable to realize that her experience was universal, that she sort of flipped over into this default state of, oh no, you must have done it to yourself, because it it's so hard to think. It is hard to think about people you like being mistreated. And it's easier to think that it must somehow be under their control it, that it [unclear28:21] behavior. Louise: Exactly. I was going to say that it's a locus of control problem. If we can locate the problem within us, then we feel like it's controllable and that we can do something about it. But to actually kind of recognize that this is structural, this is big. And we can be as kind and nice and put as much positive energy crystals out to the universe as possible and it won't change fatphobia. Lindley: Yeah. And unfortunately, this particular person was not receptive to being asked to reevaluate what she was saying, and so she wandered off and I haven't seen her since. But it really illustrates that when we start learning about systems of oppression, it can be really uncomfortable. As an America, I have had to do a lot of work around racism and a lot of learning, and as a very white person, that is very uncomfortable. But also, I feel like it's part of my job on this planet. Louise: We're not always supposed to be comfortable. Lindley: Yeah. And it's okay to be uncomfortable, especially when you're learning; you have to learn to sit with it. Louise: Yeah. Gosh, like there's so much that you have to deal with, when all you're really wanting to do is get on Facebook and talk about it. Lindley: I just want to whine on Facebook, and now too, my personal Facebook, because I have so many professional connections there, it is up being a hybrid. It is a hybrid space. When I'm speaking there, half of the folks who are in my sphere are there because of my work, so it's never really personal. And that is a boundary that I chose. I could choose to maintain my Facebook to be much, much smaller and more closed, and so I do have to be aware that I'm sort of speaking to a hybrid audience there, but sometimes you just want to get on Facebook and gripe too. Louise: You want to have a good old Facebook page and just get supported. That's kind of what we want to. Lindley: Right. But yeah, it's so important that all recognize that when we are treated badly for something about ourselves or related to something about ourselves, that's not ever our fault. Louise: Ah, such a good message. And the solution isn't to be kinder to the person who's being the dick head. Lindley: Yeah. I don't owe someone who is oppressing me, who is treating me badly based on the size of my body. I don't owe them in anything. I don't owe them an explanation. I don't owe them kindness. I don't owe them education. The only thing I owe is to myself to minimize the harm done to me. And if I give them anything beyond that, that's a gift. Louise: Yeah. Ah, God, what you're saying is so important, it's going to resonate with so many listeners. I just know it. Lindley: I hope so. It's time to stop blaming ourselves for the way that we're treated. Louise: Yes. Yes. And just last week, one of my clients was talking to me about a health interaction here in Australia with yet another person who is kind of locating the problem, same story. There's a person who's lived for a very long time in a larger body, tried every diet under the sun, the body's not going to change size. Now there's a health condition that needs urgent attention, and this person has been told very nicely that the problem is their body size. And they're actually experiencing delays to the actual treatment, while they are referred to a “obesity clinic” to address the problem of their size. And the emphasis there for this person, this health profession was being kind – it was being said to me in a nice way, which was a revelation for this person, because they've been treated so unkindly, but people can still be kind and still be a dick head. Lindley: Yeah. Oh yeah. Like a doctor, many years ago now; the doctor who lied to me about my health numbers so that she could put me on an off-label medication to try to make me lose weight. And so, she told me I had a condition that I did not have so that she could prescribe me a medication to actually try to make me smaller. She was so nice about it. I assure you; she was kind and sweet and gentle while she lied to me and gave me an unnecessary medication for a decade. Oh, she was very nice though. Louise: I have no words, that is dreadful, but this brings us right back to that Whole30 thing, right. I'm sure their body positive event would be full of kindness and niceness and fairy wings. But what the fuck are they doing? They're selling a diet. Lindley: Yeah. And you can, you can put as much lipstick on that pig as you want, but it's still going to be a pig. And I understand that pigs are smart, sweet, intelligence animals, they're still going to be a pig. Louise: That's right. You know, shit rolled in glitter is still shit. Lindley: Yeah, it's still terrible. Louise: So I've looked at your website and there's the most beautiful photo of a woman in a larger body, in a chair, in a garden, and oh, it is stunning. It is such a beautiful photo. And there are many, many photos like that. And I really want to talk to you about your photography, like how you got… so you got angry at the science, you got all fired up, you started to take pictures of people and now ended it up in this body liberation photography. So tell me about that and how you feel that photographing larger bodies is such an important piece? Lindley: Yeah, there are two sides to the photography. The one side is the stock photos, and for that I'm finding people who most of those folks are not models. They're just regular folks that I find in various ways. And then I'd also do offer client photo sessions; boudoir photography and portrait photography and business branding like business photos, and so there's sort of the two sides of it. And I started out doing the client photography because when I quit my full-time job, that seemed like the most obvious path to take income-wise at the time. And a couple of years later, there's a stock photo company, a very famous one called Getty images, based out of New York – when you see red carpet photos and you see really high quality stock photos that big companies use, those are often from Getty. They are very large and powerful. And they released, I think it was in 2017, they released a special stock photo collection. That was a body positive collection. And it got a ton of press. And I got really excited because we need – the more of that in the world, the better. But I went to go look at the photos and it turned out that they were mostly people who are again, in the US average size, which again is much larger than model size body. It was still different, but it wasn't particularly representative. And also, the photos were very expensive and they were also for editorial use only. And in stock photo lingo, that means that you can't use them for marketing. Louise: Okay. Lindley: What on earth was the whole point of that? Louise: What are they folding? Lindley: What a wasted opportunity. And so once again, I got mad and I said, I can do that, so I did. Louise: And you went like the full spectrum of body sizes, and identities, and cultures and genders, it's like everything, basically humans. Lindley: Yeah. When I am looking for models for the stock photos, and again, most of these people aren't trained models, but when you pose, you become one. So now these folks can all say that they're, that they're models too, which is cool. But I am always looking for the largest possible bodies to represent because I'm the only one on the planet doing this work right now, photographing very fat people – the only one. And I look forward to the day when that's not true. I look forward to the day when I have tons of competition. Louise: When it's not a niche or a specialty. Lindley: Yeah. And it turns out that many of the people who come to work with me on that basis are also people of color, are also LGBT+, or they're folks, or they have a mental illness, or they have a disability. They bring these other identities with them, and so I have the honor of being able to represent those things as well. Lots of folks in eating disorder recovery. Louise: Yes. And so, how did someone, like, if someone wants to do a stock photo with you, do they approach you or do you like follow people in shopping centers and ask them? What do you do? Lindley: It's been a combination. I have an email list that I maintain. And if you would like to be on that list, I am in Seattle, Washington in the US. But if you're ever visiting or you want to be on my list just in case, you are welcome to contact. We'll put that in the show notes, but I do have an email list that I send out model calls to, at least in non COVID 19 times. And then, I did once follow a coworker into a work bathroom; I was doing a corporate contract at a big company, and I had kept running into this woman, she was just lovely and seemed, I don't like you can tell when you're washing your hands at a bathroom sink beside someone, but she seemed very nice. And she was right in the demographic I represent. And so finally I followed her into the bathroom one day and I said, “I'm so sorry if this is creepy, and you can tell me to leave at any point and I will leave and never talk to you again. But I do photography and I'd love to have you as a model.” And she came and modeled for me, and it was wonderful. Louise: That is so gorgeous. Lindley: But yeah, it's a combination. When I started out, I was finding people on Craigslist, which is an American website, the classified ads, so it is just been a combination. Louise: Fantastic. Have you heard of Obesity Canada? Lindley: I'm aware that they exist. I've tried not to get tangled. Louise: That's pretty gross. It's pretty eww. Well, actually, I'm not sure who has released it, but they're kind of like this O organization up there who have this stock photos collection. Lindley: Oh yeah. It's another one of those weird co-opting things. Louise: Yeah. Yeah. And they work very closely with our friends at Novo Nordisk who are releasing all the weight loss drugs, and trying to take over the whole world. Lindley: Of course. Louise: Yes. But those I guess they're competition for you in a way. Lindley: Well, yeah, in a way. There's also a free collection on a website called Unsplash of our own bodies. And those photos are lovely and they are free to use, unlike my photos, which are not free because I need to eat. Louise: Imagine that! Lindley: Yeah. My models have the choice of, they can either choose a living wage money or for every hour that they are modeling or they can choose to be paid in photos. Many of them are very poor and they need the money, so I'm happy to pay them. But everybody involved in mine gets paid a living wage, which is why the photos aren't free because I get paid a living wage too. But yeah, there are some collections out there that do compete, which is fine. Again, we need all the representation we can get. Louise: We too, but I guess it's ethics, isn't it? And because I think that some of the people who are being photographed for those stock photos associated with the O organizations use members of their so-called patient groups, who are people who – that's another kind of section of my podcasts, people who are being encouraged by the weight loss industry to promote body positivity in the name of getting better public healthcare for weight loss surgeries and the like. So, it's really nice to hear about the ethics of you treat the people that you work with. Lindley: Yeah. When I'm photographing people, because again, almost everyone who comes to me… now, sometimes I'll get people who are just like, I'm ready. Let's do it. I love my body. I'm ready to show it off. Let's do the thing. Louise: How often does that happen? Lindley: It's rare, but it's cool. That's fun too. But most of the people who come to me, they're nervous. These are bodies – we live in these bodies that are not considered okay. And now here's this girl with a camera pointed it at you going, “No, you're great.” That's very disconcerting. And so, we do a lot of coaching. We do a lot of… I tell people like they get to control when they're done, whether they need a bathroom break or they're hungry or they just need to not have a camera pointed at them. It's a very warm and friendly environment because that's the only way to be ethical about this. And if nothing else, if you're unhappy, it's going to show in the photos. Louise: Yeah, of course. Lindley: So I have a vested interest in keeping you relaxed too. But these organizations releasing these photos is another example of this smiling oppression because it doesn't matter. Louise: What a beautiful way of putting it. Lindley: It doesn't matter how nice you are about it; if you're trying to erase me, and if you're trying to get me to pay you for surgeries or drugs or meal plans or meals or whatever, or weigh-ins, whatever that are not evidence-based. And you can tell I'm all fired up about this, come back to our theme again, because it doesn't matter how nice you are about it. Louise: You're still a dick head. Lindley: I know all about nice, but nice is not kind and kind is not anti-oppressive. Louise: Yeah, we've got to stop this bullshit. Yeah, I love that term “smiling oppression”. Yeah, if people are being nice to you and trying to represent you, and simultaneously trying to eradicate you; that's bullshit. Lindley: Yeah. I mean, again, I talk about being Southern because it's very relevant here because I have an ancestor who owned a slave, who owned another human being. That was a couple hundred years ago, so I had no idea whether that person was nice to their slave. I wouldn't have any way of knowing. Louise: It doesn't matter. Lindley: Yeah, it doesn't matter. In the south, one of the things that I was taught in history classes in school was that slavery wasn't it really all that bad because people were nice to their slaves and let them live in the house, and I'm not going to repeat the rest of it. It is very… Louise: Oh my God, that's just, yeah. Lindley: Yeah. And I had to learn better as an adult. But just because, and I'm not comparing slavery and fatphobia, they are not the same thing. They are not the same oppression. It doesn't matter how nice I am to you' if I am hurting you, if I'm stepping on your foot while smiling and asking you about the weather, the proper response is, “Hey, get off my foot.” Louise: Yeah. Right. Oh God, so many people need to hear this, and it's so good to hear how fired up you are. Lindley: We're being lied to, and we're continuing to be lied to by people who want to present, particularly weight loss surgery is now the big new thing, but it's still not evidence-based. We know that the side effects are really horrific, that a lot of people die. And then most people who even have that surgery gain the weight back. I know somebody who's had it twice and the doctor is pushing her to have it a third time because it didn't work. I mean, she lost the weight and then she regained it right back because that's what human bodies do – they protect. Louise: Our bodies are amazing. They're smarter than the weight loss surgeons. Lindley: Yeah. My body says, “I see a famine coming. We're hungry, I need to protect you.” That's what our bodies are doing. Louise: And I love that the photography that you do highlights the beauty inherent in diversity. And like that picture of the woman in the backyard, she is by no means small and she is just absolutely, like, there is just such beauty in that photo. A lot of the people that I work with really can't see that beauty in their own body and really don't even look at their own body, and that's where I guess photography can open up. Like, what are you trying to do for people when you take their photo, when you're aware of that much, like avoidance or disgusted or all of that stuff that people get stuck on when it comes to their own body? Lindley: Well, again, there's, there's kind of two facets. There is often when client come to me, generally the folks who are modeling for stock photos, because they are aware that those photos will be used publicly and sold, so there's an extra layer there of not only being willing to see yourself, but to know that many, many, many other people are going to see these. So generally, the folks who model for stock photos are maybe a little more ready for that. But a lot of the clients who come to me, maybe they haven't had a photo of themselves since their wedding day, or maybe they haven't had one since high school, or maybe they're always in the back of photos, or they're the ones behind the camera because they can't stand to be in front of it. And for those people, when I started doing this, I didn't know the term for it, but the term is exposure therapy. This is not a process that I'm qualified to coach at this point, generally, this is ad hoc, people do it for themselves. But people will often take their finished photos, and we've always look at them together. We always go through them together, both from that's… I mean, it's part of my sales process. It's business, we look at them together because people are buying products with them. But also for support, I think your photos are amazing, and I know that you will too, but I'm still going to be there to metaphorically hold your hand while we look at them. But then people take them home, and they'll look at them for just a minute. And then the next day they'll look at them for two minutes, and they will expose exposure therapy themselves. That's the coolest thing because they're teaching themselves to look at their own bodies. And then the other facet of that is that you saw that photo of the woman in the chair, in my backyard. I'm very lucky to have overgrown backyard to put people in. Louise: You have a nice backyard. Lindley: And we had the behind the scenes of that photo is that I had sheets hung up all over around her because the back of my backyard is open to the next area behind, so I had sheets hung up all over for privacy because she is very nude. So, you saw that photo on the website and it made a difference for you. You remembered it. And so the other facet is that you can… I don't know what the verb is. You can expose your therapy yourself by finding photos of people who are either look like you, like have your similar body type or are bigger or have visible disabilities, or basically by exposing yourself to all kinds of bodies, not just the ones that you kind of get forced fed by the media. You can do this process for yourself without necessarily having to look at photos of yourself. Although eventually you will also want to look at your own body, but you can do so much just by looking at people of actual bodies; look at them. Louise: Not in a creepy way – maybe in a creepy way. Lindley: I mean, maybe don't go staring at people in the grocery store. Louise: Don't follow people into the bathrooms at pools. Lindley: Yeah, please don't follow people around staring at them, but the internet is a wonderful place to stare at other bodies. Louise: Yeah. And actually, you raise a really good point because I think it's, well, 20 years into my foray into like the non-diet stuff. And I think me, even in the mid two thousands, looking at that same photo, I wouldn't have had the same reaction of just like being struck by the beauty because I hadn't done all of that. Like, I do surround myself with lots and lots of pictures of, like we've got naked women all over this house and my kids make a point of warning their friends, and I'm pretty sure my dad does think I'm a lesbian, which is okay, because I'm exposing him to diversity, but it's the exposure, exposure to diversity. If we see ourselves everywhere, represented everywhere and see other people represented everywhere, nothing strikes us as wrong, and then the beauty can grow. Lindley: Yeah. You know, what we are exposed to inn our regular lives, without taking efforts otherwise is a very narrow slice of humanity. And the more we see people… the more we see all different kinds of bodies, the more normal they become. The more we can see the beauty in those bodies as opposed to those bodies and out of bounds, or wrong, or transgressive, and the more you can expose yourself, the faster it will work. Louise: Yeah. And do you think that the last place that that kind of appreciation happens is your own body? Lindley: I think it depends for people. I think for some people, yes. I think for some people, body is the least, like theirs is the last place that happens. And I don't know, you know, I'm not in other people's heads, so I don't know whether that correlates with how outside the mainstream your own body is or not. Louise: Yeah, I do think there's something in that, but to keep going. So you are basically encouraging us all to take modes of ourselves. Lindley: Oh, yeah. Take some new selfies, seriously. Start in the bath. Like if you have access to like a bubble bath, because then you can like take pictures of your toes, like pointing delicately up from the bubbles and it's the least offensive nude in the world and it's really safe. And then you turn that camera around or use your use the other camera on your phone. Don't electrocute yourself please. Louise: Don't live stream it. Lindley: You take a photo of like if you have cleavage and you want to see that cleavage, like you do the bubbles and the cleavage. Again, I'm making hand gestures that you can't see so you don't imagine. And you do like the coy bubbles and the cleavage and you like camp it up. And then from there, you get out the bath and you dry off or not, I don't know your life. And you start putting that camera on a timer and you do whatever makes you happy if that's nudes or a costume or a Godzilla suit, I don't care – as long as you're seeing yourself. Louise: I love it. It sounds really playful. Lindley: Yeah. It doesn't have to be… like, there is a lot. And if you are an eating disorder recovery there a chance that you have been exposed to some of these exercises already on body image. There is a ton of resources out there on things like mirror work, where you're looking into mirror and seeing yourself and lots of… like, I have a whole book of journaling prompts about body image. There's a ton of resources out there, but just taking a selfie and deleting it, you can delete it. You don't have to keep it. Louise: You don't have to put it on Facebook. Lindley: You don't have to share it. I know that some people will start like a secret Instagram that is just them sharing selfies just to have them out into the world, but you don't have to, you don't have to do any of that. Louise: You don't have to perform this. Yeah, this is fast, this is good stuff. Lindley: Just like anything you can do. But again, you're not obligated to, this is not a moral imperative. You don't have to do selfies. You don't have to do nudes. You don't have to love your body. It's great if you can respect your own body, but there's no particular moral good in it other than that, you deserve it. None of these – I'm not giving you marching orders. I'm giving you some options, but like we get to do you. Louise: Lindley, thank you so much. This conversation has been immense and everything and awesome. Thank you for everything that you're putting out there in the world and for being so fired up. Lindley: Yeah, thank you. Such a joy to get to come in and talk about what I'm really head up about. Louise: Yeah, it's truly terrific. And I hope that your health condition gets properly addressed and that you feel better soon. Lindley: Thank you. Louise: All right. Thank you. Outro: What a dead set legend. Thank you so much, Lindley, I just adored that conversation and thank you everybody for listening. So if you are looking to learn more about Lindley and all of her amazing work, you can find her at bodyliberationphotos.com or on Insta @ bodyliberationwithlindley. And don't forget that her name has a silent D in it. So it sounds like Lindley, but it's L I N D L E Y. Okay everyone, that's all for this week's episode, I will see you soon, I promise. Take really good care of yourself in the meantime, trust your body, think critically, push back against diet culture, untrap from the crap. Resources Mentioned Find out more about Lindley here Follow Lindley on Insta @bodyliberationwithlindley

EXPERTS TOP PICKS FOR THIS WEEKS GAMES......AND MC'S PICKS TOO!!! TWO SPECIAL FIRED UP 4'S TOO

Gambling breakdown for NFL week 8 with special guest REDNECK JAMES!!!!

Bucci is back for his contractually obligated 12 shows for the year. Great debate, comedy and an Emmy winning producer extraordinaire

LUCKY NUMBER 13....BEST DEBATES IN SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT!

All the best picks from the AFU experts to win big this week for the NFL!

Passionate debates and hilarious arguments with a full crew! Breaking down NFL, MLB, Boxing and more

HEATED DEBATES OVER EVERY MATCHUP THIS WEEK INCLUDING A LITTLE MIKE TOMLIN MAYHEM!!

Fox is back with the boys to debate all things sports and entertainment. MC still has no eyebrows

Heated debates on all things sports and pop culture

SPECIAL GUEST AKSEL G JOINED THE CREW FOR SOME NFL Week 3 PICKS TO HELP STEAL SOME MONEY FROM VEGAS AND FANDUEL THIS WEEK!

The crew is all fired up for this one with some heated DANNY DIMES talk

THE VREW IS BACK WITH THEIR EXPERT PICKS TO WIN BIG MONEY FOR THE NFL WEEK 2 GAMES

WEEK 1 NFL BREAKDOWN, SEPTEMBER BASEBALL TALK AND A LOT MORE FIRED UP TAKES

ALL OF OUR HOT TAKES AND TOP PICKS TO HELP YOU TAKE MONEY FROM VEGAS!!!!!

THE FRENZY OF OUR AFU FANTASY DRAFT LIVE, LOTS OF TIPS OF WHO TO GO WITH AND WHO TO STAY AWAY FROM!!!

KLACK ATTACK! KLACK ATTACK! ........ hilarious debates on all topics

Some big time NFL,MLB and NBA debates as well as a FIRED UP 4 discussing the best foods to eat while watching football!!

Imagine being 13 years old, standing in front of a judge, accused of the "crime" of being fat. Imagine the incredible pain you would feel as the judge announces that in the interests of your 'health', you will be removed from your family. But there's no need to imagine. During the height of the UK COVID-19 pandemic, two children were removed from their loving home and put into foster care. The ONLY reason was that both kids were fat. This harrowing story raised the ire of the fabulous Fat Doctor UK, who advocated and pleaded and offered to help educate the social workers, judge, and anyone who would listen, but her valiant attempts have so far been ignored. Two kids have lost their families, thanks to fatphobia. Join me and the fabulous Fat Doctor UK as we get UTTERLY fired up about this travesty of justice. This is a tough listen so please make sure you have adequate spoons. Show Transcript 0:00:12.7 Louise: Welcome to All Fired Up. I'm Louise, your host. And this is the podcast where we talk all things anti-diet. Has diet culture got you in a fit of rage? Is the injustice of the beauty ideal? Getting your knickers in a twist? Does fitspo, make you wanna spit spo? Are you ready to hurl if you hear one more weight loss tip? Are you ready to be mad, loud and proud? Well, you've come to the right place. Let's get all fired up. 0:00:40.3 Louise: Hello, diet culture drop-outs. I'm so pleased to be with you again and very excited about today's episode. Okay, so first of all, I wanna say a massive thank you to all of the listeners who are so faithful and loving. And I love all your messages and emails, so keep them coming. And if you love the show, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the episodes as they pop out on a roughly monthly basis. And if you love us, give us five stars because the more five star reviews we get, particularly on Apple Podcasts, the louder the message is, the more listeners we get and the quicker we can topple diet culture. And that's the objective here. 0:01:24.7 Louise: If you're looking for some free stuff to help you with your anti-diet journey, gosh I hate that word. Let's call it an adventure. Anti-Diet Adventure, 'cause that's what it is. It's rocking and rolling. It's up and down. It's not predictable. But if you're looking for a resource where you might be going to medical visit, you might be trying to explain just what you're doing to friends and family, look no further than the free e-book; Everything You've Been Told About Weightloss Is Bullshit, written by me and the Anti-Diet Advanced doctor dietician, Dr Fiona Willer. In it we're busting the top 10 myths that float around diet culture like poo in a swimming pool, about the relationship between health and weight, and we're busting myths left, right and centre. 0:02:06.8 Louise: It's a really awesome resource. It's crammed full of science and facts and it will really help steel you and give you the armour that you need to push back against diet culture. So if you wanna grab a copy, it's absolutely free. Like I said, you can go to Instagram which is untrapped_ au and click on the link in the bio and grab a copy there. Or you can go to the website untrapped.com.au and a little pop-up will come and you will grab it there. More free stuff, if you are struggling with relationship with your body during the last couple of years in particular, Befriending Your Body is my free e-course. All about self-compassion, this amazing skill of being kind and befriending your body. And it's like a super power, self-compassion, because we're all taught from the moment we're born, practically, to disconnect and dislike and judge and body police ourselves. Not exactly a recipe for happiness and satisfaction. 0:03:05.9 Louise: So, this little e-course will help build the skill of self-compassion, which is absolutely awesome because if we can learn to connect with our imperfect bodies, we can learn to inhabit them, to look after them and to push back against the forces that are still trying to get us separate from them. You can find the Befriending Your Body e-course from Instagram. So, untrapped_au. Click on the link, Befriending Your Body, it's all free, it's beautiful. It's just so lovely to practice self-compassion meditations. Self-compassion is built for difficult times. And my friends, we're in a difficult time. So, get hold of that if you haven't already. 0:03:47.6 Louise: Big shout out and hello to all of the Untrapped community, the Master Class and online community, who we meet every week. We push back against diet culture together. We share our stories, we've been supporting each other through the various challenges of lockdown and it's just a wonderful community of awesome human beings. So, if you're struggling and you want to join a community, as well as learning all of the skills of how to do things like intuitive eating, returning to a relationship with moving your body that doesn't feel like hard work. Understanding weight stigma and weight prejudice, relationship with body, all of that kind of stuff is covered in this comprehensive course, Untrapped, which I co-created in 2017 with 11 other amazing anti-diet health professionals. 0:04:39.9 Louise: So if you wanna grab a hold of this program and join our online community, please do and now's the time. We're meeting weekly. So every Saturday, I meet with the whole community and we have an awesome chinwag about everything that's going on. You also get all of the material. And there's other things that happened throughout the year like events and retreats. Well, if they're not scuppered by COVID. [chuckle] In usual times, we are able to do that. Well, if that's not being scuppered by COVID, of course. But in ordinary times, we do extra stuff. So find out more about Untrapped on the website, untrapped.com.au. You can also find a link from Insta. So, I think that's a run through all of the preamble. 0:05:23.5 Louise: Now, we arrive at the exciting time. I am so excited to bring you today's episode. You would have heard of the Fat Doctor UK by now, because she burst onto the internet a few months ago. And it seems like she's everywhere and she is loud and she is angry and she's a GP. So, here we have a very fierce, fat-positive voice, straight out of the UK medical profession, which is sorely needed. And I've just got so much admiration for Natasha and everything that she's doing. And I was actually listening to the Mindful Dietician podcast when I first heard Natasha being interviewed by the wonderful, Fi Sutherland. And during that conversation, she mentioned an awful situation in the UK where two kids were removed from their family for being fat. 0:06:13.9 Louise: And I'd actually seen that story and was so horrified that I kind of shelved it a way. But hearing Natasha talk about it and what she decided to do about it herself, it just inspired me. I just knew I had to talk to her. So this episode is everything. It's a long one, and it's a bloody rollercoaster. We go a lot of places during this epic, fantastic conversation. So you are going to laugh, you are going to cry. You're gonna cry more than once, because I know I did. You're gonna be absolutely furious, because just what we're talking about is just so horrific. We are in the 21st century and kids are being removed from loving homes simply because of BMI and a failure to do the impossible, which is lose weight and keep it off via the epic fail of dieting. 0:07:06.8 Louise: So look, this is really a challenging episode to listen to. It's a horrible story but the conversation with The Fat Doctor, Natasha herself is nothing short of inspiring. This woman is on a crusade. She has got heaps of other people involved in changing the landscape in a meaningful way. She is a real champion in the UK and across the planet, and I know you're gonna enjoy this conversation, but have some tissues close by and keep your slow breathing going to help contain the rage 'cause it's real. So without further ado, I give you me and The Fat Doctor herself, Natasha Larmie. So Tash, thank you so much for coming on the show. 0:07:49.0 Natasha Larmie: Thank you so much for having me, I am so excited. Due to the time difference, it's past midnight now and I've never been this awake past midnight before, so I'm really looking forward to this talk. 0:07:58.8 Louise: Oh my god, I am so impressed with your fired up-ness. [laughter] [laughter] 0:08:04.6 Louise: Tell me what is firing you up. 0:08:07.3 NL: Just in general or specifically about this case? 'Cause obviously a lot of things are firing me up, but I mean, obviously... 0:08:11.7 Louise: Yes. 0:08:12.5 NL: We wanna talk about this particular case that's firing me up. 0:08:16.3 Louise: Yes, what is this case? 0:08:17.9 NL: Yeah, what's going on with this case. So I think it was back in September, October last year that it happened, but I became aware of it a few months later, where two young people, one was actually over the age of 16 and his sibling, his younger sibling is under the age of 16, had been removed from a very loving home, for all intents and purposes, a very loving, happy home and placed into foster care by a judge simply because they were fat, and there is really no other reason at all. There was no other signs of child abuse, neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse, nothing. It's just because they were fat and they failed to lose weight, a judge removed them from a loving home and placed them in foster care, and the older sibling, I think he's 16, 17, didn't actually have to go in because he was too old and the younger girl, she's 13, and she was removed from her home. 0:09:11.5 NL: And when I read about it I think I was so disgusted, it sort of broke... One newspaper reports on it in the UK, and it was several weeks later I guess, because the court transcript had come out, and I read it, I read the article, and I just thought, "Well, this is just the press over-exaggerating." And then someone said... One friend of mine sent me a text message saying, "No, no, no, just read the court's transcript. Transcript, read it," and sent me a link to the court transcript. I read the whole thing and within an hour I think I read the whole thing, and I was in tears. I was so full of rage that I just felt like something had to be done and started a petition. Have tried really hard to get answers, to push people to look into this case but unfortunately, haven't got very far because we're dealing with people who have very much kind of shut us down and have said, "It's not your concern. This is a judge who made this decision and there's nothing you can do about it." 0:10:05.4 Louise: Really? 0:10:05.7 NL: So I'm pretty fired up. Yeah. 0:10:07.2 Louise: Oh, god. Oh, I mean, when you say it out loud, like my whole body is responding. When I read the court transcripts last night, I put it off because I knew that I just probably would have a massive reaction and I was crying too, because this transcript is literally fucking heartbreaking. 0:10:26.5 NL: Tears. 0:10:27.2 Louise: That they're all admitting that this is... No one wants to be split up, they love each other but there's this stupid idea, as if everybody is completely unaware of science and weight science and how fucked dieting is. 0:10:41.5 NL: Yeah. 0:10:42.2 Louise: And how it doesn't fucking work. 0:10:44.4 NL: No. 0:10:44.7 Louise: And it's in a pandemic. 0:10:46.0 NL: Yeah, yeah. 0:10:46.7 Louise: If I fail to lose weight in a lockdown, when the world was going mad... 0:10:51.6 NL: And I mean, actually, the story begins I think 10 years previously, the story begins when they were three and six. These were two children, a three-year-old and a six-year-old who were picked up most likely because... I don't know if it's the same in Australia, but in the UK we have a screening program, so in year one, which is between the age of five and six, you are weighed and measured by a school nurse, and they... 0:11:13.4 Louise: Really? 0:11:13.9 NL: Yeah. And do you not have that? No. 0:11:15.6 Louise: No. 0:11:15.7 NL: We have. This is the National Child Measurement Programme, there's a acronym, but I didn't bother to learn. 0:11:21.2 Louise: Oh my god. 0:11:21.6 NL: But it happens in year one, which is when you're between five and six, and again in year six, which is when you're between 10 and 11. 0:11:29.0 Louise: Oh Christ. 0:11:29.2 NL: Two of the worst times to weigh people... 0:11:30.0 Louise: Correct, yeah. 0:11:32.0 NL: If you're think about it, because of course, especially around the 10, 11 stage some people are heading towards puberty, pre-puberty, some people are not, and so those that are heading towards pre-puberty will often have gained quite a bit of weight because you know that always happens before you go through puberty, you kind of go out before you go up, and that's completely normal, but they get penalised. But anyway, so I imagine... I don't know, because that's not actually in the transcripts but I'm guessing that at six, the older sibling, the boy was shown to be grossly overweight or whatever they call it, morbidly obese. They probably just measured his BMI, even though he was six, they probably measured it, which is just ridiculous 'cause that's not what BMI is for, and rather than looking at growth charts, which is what we should be doing at that age, they will have just sent a letter home and the teachers would have got involved and somewhere along the line, social services would have been called just because of the weight, nothing else, just because of the weight, and social services... 0:12:25.8 Louise: Just because of the percentile of a BMI. 0:12:28.5 NL: That was all it was. It was just weight. There was literally no concerns of ever been raised about these kids apart from their weight. And at the age of three and six, social services got involved and started forcing these children to diet, and they will say that's not what they did, they tried to promote healthy eating, but when you take a three-year-old and a six-year-old and you tell them... You restrict what they eat, you force them to exercise, and you tell them there's something wrong with them, you are putting them on a diet at the age of three to six, and we know, for sure, with evidence, you know, I know, and everyone listening should know by now that when you put young children on a diet like that at such a young age and you make such a big deal out of their weight, they are going to develop disordered eating patterns, and they are going to... 0:13:06.8 Louise: Of course. 0:13:07.8 NL: Gain weight, so... 0:13:09.3 Louise: They're going to instead, that's a trauma process happening. 0:13:12.2 NL: That's true. Yeah, it's... 0:13:13.8 Louise: A trauma to get child protective services involved. 0:13:17.8 NL: Yeah, and live there for 10 years, and then... 0:13:21.4 Louise: Ten years? 0:13:22.5 NL: Got to the stage where they took the proceedings further and further, so that they kept getting more and more involved. And eventually, they decided to make this a child protection issue. Up until that point, child social services were involved, but then, about a year before the court proceedings, something like that, before the pandemic. What happened then was that they gave these children a set amount of time to lose weight, and they enforced it. They bought them Fitbits so that they could monitor how much exercise they were doing, they bought them gym subscriptions, they sent them to Weight Watchers. [chuckle] 0:13:55.9 Louise: Fantastic, 'cause we know that works. 0:13:58.4 NL: We know that works. And of course, as you said, it was during a lockdown. So, Corona hits and there was lockdown, there was schools were closed, and for us, it was really quite a difficult time. And in spite of all of that... 0:14:13.0 Louise: I can't believe it. 0:14:14.9 NL: When the children failed to lose weight, the judge decided that it was in their best interest to remove them from their loving parents. And dad, from what I can tell from the court transcripts. I don't know if you noticed this as well. I think mom was trying very hard to be as compliant as possible. 0:14:26.9 Louise: She was, and even she lost weight, the poor thing. 0:14:30.0 NL: Yes, but I think dad almost seems to be trying to protect them, saying, "This is ridiculous. You can't take my kids away just because of their weight," and I... 0:14:38.1 Louise: Seems like he was in denial, which I fully understand. 0:14:41.1 NL: I would be too, I would be outraged. And it sounds like this young girl... I don't know much about the boy, but from what I can see from the transcripts, this young girl really became quite sad and low and depressed, and obviously, shockingly enough, her self esteem has been completely ruined by this process. 0:14:58.7 Louise: I know, I know. I really saw that in the transcript. This poor little girl was so depressed and getting bullied. And in the transcript, the way that that is attributed to her size and not what abuse they're inflicting on this family. 0:15:13.3 NL: Right. Yeah, really quite shocking. And then of course, the other thing you probably noticed from the transcript is there is no expert testimony at this court proceeding. None whatsoever. There is no psychologist. 0:15:24.0 Louise: Actually, there was. 0:15:25.8 NL: There was... 0:15:26.6 Louise: Dr... What's her name? 0:15:29.4 NL: Yes. You're right, there was a psychologist, and you're absolutely right. She was not an eating disorder specialist or a... She was just a psychologist. 0:15:37.3 Louise: She's a clinical psychologist. Dr. Van Rooyen, and she's based in Kent, and she does court reports for child abuse. Yes, and I can see her weight stigma in there. She's on the one hand acknowledging that the kids don't wanna go, that the kids will suffer mentally from being removed, but you can also see her unexamined weight stigma. And that you're right, where the hell are the weight scientists saying, "Actually, it's biologically impossible to lose weight and maintain it"? Because in the transcripts, they do mention that the kids have lost weight, failed to keep it off. 0:16:16.5 NL: Exactly, exactly. And it's just shocking to me that there would be such a lack of understanding and no desire to actually establish the science or the facts behind this. If I was a judge... I'm not a judge, I'm not an expert, but if I was a judge and I was making a decision to remove a child from a home based purely on the child's inability to lose weight, I would want to find out if it was possible that this child simply couldn't lose weight on their own. I would want to consult experts. I would want to find out if there was a genetic condition. I'm not saying she has a genetic condition. You and I know that she doesn't need to have a genetic condition in order to struggle to lose weight, that actually, the psychology behind this explains it. But even if you've not got to that stage yet, there was no doctors, there was no dietitians, there was no... No one was consulted. It was a psychologist who had no understanding of these specific issues, who, as you said, was clearly biased. There was social workers who said, "We've done everything we can because we've given them a Fitbit and we've sent them to Weight Watchers and sent them to the gym, but they refuse to comply." 0:17:24.9 Louise: I know. It's shocking. 0:17:28.4 NL: Yeah, it strikes me that we live in a world where you just can get away with this. It's just universally accepted that being fat is bad, and it's also your fault, your responsibility. The blame lies solely on the individual, even if that individual is a three-year-old child, it is. And if it's not the child, then of course, it's the parent. The parent has done something wrong. 0:17:52.1 Louise: Specifically the mother, okay. 0:17:53.5 NL: The mother, yeah. 0:17:54.4 Louise: The one with the penis, okay, let's not talk about him, 'cause that was absent. It was the mom. And the only possibility that was examined in this is that it's mom's fault for not being compliant, like you said. That's the only thing. Nothing else like the whole method is a stink-fest of ineffective bullshit. 0:18:13.5 NL: And there's the one point in the transcript when they talk about the fact that she had ice cream or chips or something in the house. 0:18:19.7 Louise: That's Ms. Keeley, their social worker, who went in and judged them. And did you notice that she took different scales in during that last visit? That last visit that was gonna determine whether or not they'd be removed, she took different scales in and weighed them. And they say, "Look, we acknowledge that that could've screwed up the results, but we're just gonna push on with removal." 0:18:43.0 NL: It was their agenda. 0:18:45.0 Louise: It was. It's terrifying, and it's long-term foster care for this poor little girl who doesn't wanna leave her mom. I'm so fired up about this, because the impact of removing yourself from your home because of your body, how on earth is this poor kid gonna be okay? 0:19:05.7 NL: This is my worry. How is mom going to be okay? How is that boy going to be okay? And how is that young, impressionable girl... My oldest son is a little bit older, and my younger son is a little bit younger, she's literally in between the two, and I'm watching what the last two years or last year and a half has done to them in terms of their mental and emotional well-being. And to me, even without social services' involvement, my children's mental health has deteriorated massively. And I cannot even begin to comprehend what this poor girl is going through. I cannot imagine how traumatized she is, and I cannot see how is she ever going to get over this, because she's been going through it since she was three, and it's not at the hand of a parent, it's at the hand of a social worker, it is the social worker's negligence. And what's interesting is a lot of social workers and people who work in social services have reached out to me since I first talked about this case, and they have all said the same thing, the amount of weight stigma in social services in the UK is shocking. It is shocking. It is perfectly acceptable to call parents abusers just because their children are overweight. 0:20:21.8 Louise: Jesus. 0:20:22.2 NL: No other reason, just your child is over the limit, is on the 90th percentile or whatever it is, your child is overweight and therefore you as a mother, usually as you said, it's a mother, are an abusive mother, because you've brought your child up in a loving environment but they failed to look the way that you want them to look, that's it. 0:20:41.0 Louise: Okay. So, that's me, right. My eldest is in the 99th percentile, so I am an abuser, I'm a child abuser. 0:20:47.3 NL: Child abuser, I can't believe I'm probably talking to one. 0:20:49.3 Louise: I know. [laughter] 0:20:49.9 NL: I can't believe I'm probably talking to one. And you know, the irony, my son's been really poorly recently and he's been up in... I mean we've spent most of our life in the hospital the last few weeks, and... 0:20:58.1 Louise: Oh dear. 0:20:58.3 NL: Went to see a paediatrician and they did the height and weight, and he is on the 98th percentile, my son has a 28-inch waist. He is a skeleton at the moment because he's been really ill, but he is mixed race, and we all know that the BMI is not particularly... 0:21:12.9 Louise: It's racist. 0:21:13.2 NL: Useful anyway, but it's massively racist, so my children have always been, if you weigh them, a lot heavier than they look, because I mean he's... There isn't an ounce of fat on him. My point is that BMI is complete utter bullshit and it doesn't deserve to exist. The fact that we've been using up until now is shameful and as a doctor, I cannot accept that we use this as a measure of whether a person is healthy and certainly as a measure of whether a child is healthy, because until recently, we were told you don't do BMIs on anyone under the age of 16 but that's just gone out the window now, everyone... 0:21:48.5 Louise: I know. 0:21:48.6 NL: Gets a BMI, even a six-year-old. 0:21:50.1 Louise: You get a BMI, you get a BMI. [laughter] I think it's not supposed to be used for an individual anything, it's a population level statistic. 0:22:01.1 NL: And a pretty crappy one at that. 0:22:02.3 Louise: It's a shitty one. 0:22:02.6 NL: It is like you said. 0:22:04.2 Louise: Yes. 0:22:04.6 NL: It's based on what European men, it's not particularly useful for men, it's not particularly useful for any other race, it's just useful perhaps. Even when it came out, like even when... What's his face? I forget his name right now, Ancel Keys. When he did that study that first look, brought in the BMI into our medical world as it were, yeah, even he said at the time it was alright. It's not the best, it's not the worst, it will do. It's the best out of the bunch. I mean he didn't even have much enthusiasm at the time. He said specifically it's not meant to be used as an individual assessment. And even the guy who kind of didn't invent it, but he sort of invented it as a measure of "obesity" and yet... And even he didn't have much good stuff to say about it. If he was selling the latest iPhone, Apple would have a lot to say about that. [laughter] I just... This fact that we've become obsessed and we know why this is. We know this is because of the diet industry, we know this is because of people trying to make money out of us and succeeding, very successful at making money out of us. 0:23:02.9 Louise: It's actually terrifying how successful this is because when I read this transcript, I've been doing a lot of work against the Novo Nordisk impact and how our modern oh, narrative has been essentially created by the pharmaceutical company that's producing all of the weight loss drugs, they have 80% of the weight loss drugs market and they've shamelessly said in their marketing that this is their drive to increase... That it's to create a sense of urgency for the medical management of obesity. And here it is, this is where it bleeds, because they're telling us this bullshit that it's going to reduce stigma. No, it's going to create eugenics. This is hideous what's happening here and I can't believe that the world didn't stop and that the front page of newspapers aren't saying like get fucked, like get these kids back. There's no outrage. 0:24:04.2 NL: No, there is none whatsoever. We got just over 2,000 people supporting the petition and as grateful as I am for that, that's just what the fuck, that's 2,000 people who live in a country of 68 million and only 2,000 people had something to say about this and, we... That's how much we hate fat kids and how much we hate fat people. We just don't see them as worthy and nobody wants to defend this young girl, nobody sort of feels sorry for her and I just... I can't get my head around this whole thing. It's funny because I didn't really know about it, a year ago I was completely clueless. It's all happened rather quickly for me that I've begun to understand Haze and begun to understand who Novo Nordisk was and what they are doing and what Semaglutide actually is and how it's going to completely change the world as we know it. 0:24:56.5 NL: I think this particular drug is going to become part of popular culture in the same way that Viagra is, we use that word now in novels and in movies. It's so popular and so understood, nobody talks about... I don't know, give me a name of any drug, like some blood pressure medication, they don't talk about it in the same way they talk about Viagra. But Semaglutide is going to be that next drug because they have tapped into this incredibly large population of people who are desperate to lose weight and they've got this medication that was originally used to treat diabetes, just like Viagra was originally used to treat blood pressure and have said, "Wow, look at this amazing side effect. It makes people lose weight as long as you run it. Let's market this." And the FDA approved it. I mean, no... 0:25:45.1 Louise: I know. 0:25:45.8 NL: No thought as to whether or not this drug is gonna have a massive impact on people in their insulin resistance and whether they're gonna develop diabetes down the line. I don't think they care. I don't think anybody actually cares. I think it's just that everybody is happy, woo-hoo, another way to treat fat people and make a good deal of money out of it. 0:26:03.9 Louise: Right? So, Semaglutide is... It's the latest weight loss drug to be approved by the FDA from Novo Nordisk and it is like the Mark II. So, they were selling Saxenda, Saxenda's here in Australia, they're pushing it out and this Semaglutide is like the Mark II, like I think of Saxenda as like Jan Brady, and Semaglutide is like Marcia. [laughter] 0:26:29.3 Louise: 'Cause it's like, "Oh my God, look at Semaglutide. Look at this amazing one year trial." [laughter] Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, like oh my God, we can make so much weight loss happen from this intervention. Why? Why do we need all of this weight loss, all these percentages? And, "Oh, we can lose 15% and 20%," and we don't need to for health, but okay. 0:26:53.3 NL: Yeah. The other thing that we have to remember about it, I don't think it's actually that much better. I've used all of these drugs in treating diabetes. So many years, I used these drugs. The beauty of it, of course, is that it's a tablet, and Saxenda is an injection. I'm assuming you have the injectable form, yeah? 0:27:09.9 Louise: That's right. You have to inject, and it's very expensive. 0:27:14.0 NL: It's extremely expensive, as will... Marcia Brady will be more expensive, I'm sure. 0:27:18.6 Louise: So high maintenance. [chuckle] 0:27:20.2 NL: Absolutely, but she is easier to administer. A lot of people don't like the idea of injecting themselves, but taking a tablet is dead easy. So, that's what makes this special, as it were, because it's the only one of that whole family that is oral, as opposed to injectable. 0:27:37.6 Louise: Well, that's interesting, because the paper with all of the big, shiny weight loss was injectable, it wasn't tablet. 0:27:43.7 NL: Oh, really? Oh, but they're marketing it as the oral version, definitely. That's the one that's got approved. It's brand name is... 0:27:51.3 Louise: Wegovy. 0:27:52.2 NL: Oh no, well, I have a completely different brand name. Is it different, maybe, in Australia? 0:27:57.1 Louise: Well, this is in America. In Australia, they haven't cornered us yet. I'm sure that they're trying to do it, but it was the FDA approval for Wegovy, [0:28:05.4] ____. 0:28:05.9 NL: So, they obviously changed the name. That's not the same one we use in diabetes. Clearly, they've had to revamp it a bit. Irrespective of oral, injectable, whatever, I think that this is going to... Novo Nordisk is sitting on a gold mine, and they know it. And it's going to change our lives, I think, because bariatric surgery is quite a big thing, and it's something that often people will say, "I'm not keen on doing." And the uptake is quite low still, and so, in bariatric... 0:28:35.2 Louise: In the UK, not here. 0:28:36.2 NL: Yeah, [chuckle] yeah, but bariatric surgeons are probably very afraid right now, because there's drugs coming along and taking all of their business away from them. 0:28:43.5 Louise: Actually, you know what Novo were doing? They're partnering with the bariatric surgeons. 0:28:46.2 NL: Of course they are. 0:28:46.9 Louise: And they're saying to them, "Hey, let's use your power and kudos, and our drugs can help your patients when they start to regain." 0:28:56.4 NL: Oh my gosh. 0:28:58.0 Louise: It's literally gateway drug. Once you start using a drug to reduce your weight, you have medicalized your weight, and it's a small upsell from there. So, I think this is all part of a giant marketing genius that is Novo Nordisk. But I'm interested to hear your concerns, 'cause I'm concerned as well with the use of diabetes drugs as weight loss medications, and I read about it being that they're hoping that people will take this drug like we take statins. So, everyone will take it preventatively for the rest of their lives. What's the long-term impact, do you think, of taking a double dose of a diabetes drug when you don't have diabetes? 0:29:43.5 NL: Well, first of all, they don't know. Nobody knows, because they've only done a study for a year, and just how many diet drugs have we put out there into the universe since the 1970s, and then taken them back a few years later, 'cause we've gone, "Oh, this kills"? If you've got diabetes and you take this drug because you've got insulin resistance and this drug helps you to combat your insulin resistance in the way that it works, you've already got diabetes. And so, there is no risk of you developing diabetes, and this drug does work, and so, I have no issue with the GLP-1 analogs in their use in diabetes. I think all the diabetes drugs are important, and I'm not an expert. But you've really got to ask yourself, if you take a healthy body and you act on a system within the pancreas and within the body, in a healthy, essentially, healthy body, healthy pancreas, you've got to ask yourself if it's going to worsen insulin resistance over time. It's actually going to lead to increased cases of diabetes. Now, they say it won't, but... 0:30:47.4 Louise: How do they know that? 'Cause I've read a study by Novo, sponsored, in rats, that showed that it did lead to insulin resistance long-term. 0:30:57.6 NL: Right, I think common sense, because we understand that the way that the body works, just common sense. The way the body works suggests to me that over long periods of time, taking this medication in a healthy person is going to lead to increased insulin resistance, which in turn will lead to diabetes. That is what common sense dictates. But of course, as you said, we don't know. We don't have a study. Nobody has looked into this. And it makes me sad that we are using a drug to treat a condition that isn't a condition. 0:31:30.2 Louise: I know, yeah. [chuckle] 0:31:32.4 NL: And inadvertently, potentially giving people a whole... 0:31:36.0 Louise: Creating a condition. 0:31:36.6 NL: Creating an actual medical condition, which we all know to be life-threatening if untreated. And so, I cannot fathom why... Well, I can, I understand. It's for financial reasons only, but I can't understand why there are doctors out there that want to prescribe this. This is the issue that I have. I'm a doctor, and I can't speak on behalf of drug companies or politicians or anyone else, but I can speak to what doctors are supposed to be doing, and we have a very strong code of conduct that we have to abide by. We have ethical and moral principles and legal obligations to our patients. And so, doing no harm and doing what is in your patients' best interest, and practising fairly and without discrimination, and giving people... Allowing them to make an informed choice where they are aware of the risks and the side effects and all the different treatment options. 0:32:28.0 NL: When it comes to being fat, again, it seems to have gone out the window. None of these things are happening. We wouldn't dream of addressing other issues this way, it's just fatness, because it's just so commonly, widely accepted that fatness is bad and you've got to do whatever you can to get rid of it. I've had someone tell me today that they are pregnant with their first child and they had their first conversation with the anesthetist, who told them they had to do whatever they could to lose weight before they had their baby. This is a pregnant woman. 0:32:58.1 Louise: Whatever they had to do? 0:33:00.1 NL: Whatever they had to do, and she said, "What do you want me to do, buy drugs off the streets?" And the anesthetist said... Wait for it. The anesthetist said, "It would be safer for you to use a Class A drugs than it would for you to be fat in pregnancy". The anesthetist said that to this woman. She told me this and I just went "Please just... Can you just report him?" 0:33:21.7 Louise: Shut the front door, Jesus Christ! 0:33:24.6 NL: Can you imagine? First of all, that's not true. Second of all, he is saying that it is better to be a drug addict than to be a fat person. This is no judgment on drug addicts, but you do not encourage your patients to use Class A drugs to lose weight. That's stupid. Imagine if he'd said that about anything else, but in his... And it was a man, in his world, for whatever reason, his ethics just abandons them all in favor of fat shaming a woman. 0:33:52.4 Louise: This is where we're at with, it's self examined. It's like there's a massive black hole of stigma just operating unchallenged effortlessly and actually growing, thanks to this massive marketing department, Novo. It's terrify... That poor lady, I'm so glad she's found you and I hope she's not gonna go down the Class A drug route. [laughter] 0:34:19.3 NL: She's definitely not, but she was quite traumatized. She's on a Facebook group that I started and it's great because it's 500 people who are just so supportive of each other and it was within a few minutes 50 comments going "What a load of crap, I can't believe this," "You're great, this doctor is terrible". But it just stuck to me that one of my colleagues would dare, would have the audacity to do something as negligent as that. And I'm gonna call it what it is. That's negligence. But I'm seeing it all the time. I'm seeing it in healthcare, I'm seeing it in Social Services, I'm seeing it in schools, I'm seeing it in the workplace, I'm seeing it everywhere. You cannot escape it. And as a fat person, who was in the morbidly, super fat, super obese stage where she's just basically needs to just be put down like a... 0:35:16.3 Louise: Oh my gosh, it's awful. 0:35:18.5 NL: And as that person, I hear all of these things and I just think "I'm actually a fairly useful member of society, I've actually never been ill, never required any medication, managed to give birth to my children, actually to be fair, they had to come out my zip as opposed to through the tunnel." But that wasn't because I was fat, that was because they were awkward. But this anesthetist telling this woman that she's too fat to have a baby. I was just like "But I am the same weight. I am the same BMI as you". And I had three and I had no problems with my anesthetics. In fact after my third cesarean section, I walked out the hospital 24 hours later, happy as Larry, didn't have any problems. And I know people who were very, very thin that had a massive problems after their cesarean. So there's not even evidence to show how dangerous it is to have a BMI over 35 and still... And then caught when it comes to an anesthetic. This isn't even evidence-based, it's just superstition at this point. 0:36:12.8 Louise: It's a biased based and the guidelines here in Australia, so I think above 35 women are advised to have a cesarean because it's too dangerous. And women are not allowed to give birth in rural hospitals, they have to fly to major cities. So imagine all of... And don't even get me started on bias in medical care for women. It's everywhere, like you said, and it's unexamined and all of this discrimination in the name of, apparently, healthcare. It's scary. 0:36:43.9 NL: It really is. Gosh, you've got me fired up, it's almost 1:00 in the morning and I'm fired up. I'm never gonna get to sleep now. [laughter] 0:36:51.7 Louise: Okay, I don't wanna tell you this, but I will. 'Cause we're talking about how on earth is this possible, like why aren't there any medical experts involved to talk about this from a scientific basis, and I'm worried that even if they did have medical people in the court, they wouldn't have actually stuck up for the kid. I found this JAMA article from 2011. It's a commentary on whether or not large kids should be removed from their families, and it was supportive of that. 0:37:18.0 NL: Oh gosh. Of course it was. 0:37:22.0 Louise: And in response to that commentary, the medpage, which is a medical website, a newsletter kind of thing. They did a poll of health professionals asking should larger kids removed from their families, and 54% said yes. 0:37:40.7 NL: Of course. 0:37:41.3 Louise: I know. Isn't that dreadful? One comment on that said "It seems to me the children in a home where they have become morbidly obese might be suffering many other kinds of abuse as well, viewing in the size of a child. 'Cause we've all gotten bigger since the '80s. We're a larger population and viewing that as abuse and as a fault of parenting. Unbelievable. I also had a little dig around Australia, 'cause it's not isolated in the UK, there's so many more cases. 0:38:16.9 NL: They have. Yeah. 0:38:17.8 Louise: And I think actually in the UK, it might be a lot more common than in Australia. 0:38:22.1 NL: Yeah, I can believe that. 0:38:23.5 Louise: But it did happen here in 2012, there was some report of two children being removed from their families because of the size of the kids. And the media coverage was actually quite dreadful. I'll put in the show notes, this article, and the title is "Victorian authorities remove obese children, removed from their parents". So even the title is wrong, couldn't even get their semantics right. There's a picture, you can imagine what picture would accompany... 0:38:55.2 NL: Well of course it can't be of the actual children, because I think it leads to lawsuit. I'm assuming it's a belly. Is there a belly? Is there a fat person in it or a fat child eating a burger? 0:39:06.2 Louise: Yes. [laughter] 0:39:07.1 NL: Sorry, it's either the belly or the fat person eating the burger. So, a fat child eating the burger, sorry. 0:39:11.9 Louise: Helpfully, to help the visually impaired, the picture had caption and the caption reads "Overweight brother and sister sitting side by side on a sofa eating takeaway food and watching the TV." So not at all stereotyped, very sensitive, nuanced article this one. And then we hear from Professor John Dixon, who is a big part of obesity Inc here in Australia. He told the ABC that "Sometimes taking children away from their parents is the best option." In the same article, he also admits "There's no services available that can actually help kids lose weight", and he says that it's not the parents fault. Helpfully, this article also states that "Obesity is the leading cause of illness and death in Australia." [laughter] 0:39:58.7 NL: I love it when I hear that. How have they figured that out? What do they do to decide that? Where does this... 0:40:08.4 Louise: They don't have to provide any actual evidence. 0:40:10.5 NL: Right. They just say it. 0:40:12.1 Louise: Got it. 0:40:13.0 NL: Just say it. 0:40:14.4 Louise: Diet. And I checked just to make sure, 'cause in case I've missed anything. 0:40:18.4 NL: Yeah. 0:40:19.6 Louise: The top five causes of death in Australia in 2019; heart disease, number two dementia, number three stroke, number four malignant neoplasm of trachea bronchus and lung. 0:40:30.4 NL: Lung cancer. 0:40:30.9 Louise: Lung cancer. 0:40:31.5 NL: That's lung cancer. 0:40:32.3 Louise: And number five chronic lower respiratory disease. 0:40:38.4 NL: So translation. Heart attacks, dementia... In the UK it's actually dementia first, then heart attacks. So dementia, heart attacks, stroke, same thing in the UK, and then lung cancer and COPD. Both of those are smoking-related illnesses. And I can say quite safely that they are smoking-related illness because the chance of developing lung cancer or COPD if you haven't smoked is minuscule. So what the people are doing is they're saying, "Well, we can attribute all of these heart attacks and strokes and dementia to "obesity". And the way we can do that is we just look at all these people that have died, and if they are fat we'll just assume it's their fat that caused their heart disease. 0:41:20.0 NL: To make it very clear to everybody that is listening, if you have a BMI of 40, we can calculate your risk of developing a heart attack or a stroke over the next 10 years using a very sophisticated calculator actually, it's been around for some time. It's what we use in the UK. I'm assuming Australia has a similar one, don't know what it's called there. In the UK it's called a QRISK. So I've done this. I have calculated. I have found a woman, I called her Jane. I gave her a set of blood pressure and cholesterol, and I filled in a template. And then I gave her a BMI of 20. And then I gave her a BMI of 40. And I calculated the difference in her risk. I calculated the difference in her risk, and the difference in her risk was exactly 3%. The difference in her risk if she was a smoker was 50%. She was 50% more likely to have a heart attack if she was a smoker, but only 3% more likely to have a heart attack if she had a BMI of 40 instead of a BMI of 25. 0:42:15.0 NL: To put it into perspective, she was significantly more likely to have a heart attack if she was a migraine sufferer, if she had a mental health condition, if she had lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, if she was Asian, if she was a man, and all of those things dramatically increased her risk more than having a BMI of 40. So it's just very important that doctors will admit, 'cause it's about admitting to a simple fact, this calculator we use to predict people's risks. So if we know that weight only has a 3-4% impact on our cardiovascular risk as opposed to smoking which has a 50% impact, as opposed to aging which is why most people die because they get old and let's face it everybody dies some time. 0:43:04.0 NL: So what's happening is the... Whoever they are, are taking all these deaths from heart disease which was likely caused by the person aging, by the person being male or just being old and being over the age of 75, your risk of heart disease goes up massively irrespective of your weight. So instead of saying, "Well, it's just heart disease", they've gone, "Well, it's heart disease in a fat person and therefore it was the fatness that caused the heart disease." And that is offensive to me to the point that now, I have heard... And this is awful in this year, our patients that are dying of COVID, if they die of COVID in the UK, it's actually quite heart breaking, it's happened to someone that I was close to. If they die of COVID in the UK, and they happen to be fat, the doctor writes "obesity" on their death certificate... 0:43:51.8 Louise: No way. 0:43:52.4 NL: As a cause of death. They died of COVID. 0:43:55.2 Louise: What? 0:43:55.5 NL: They died of COVID. That's what they died of. They died of this terrible virus that is killing people in their droves but people are under the misguided impression that being fat predisposes you to death from COVID, which is not true. It's not true. That is a complete gross misrepresentation of the facts. But we've now got doctors placing that on a person's death certificate. Can you imagine how that family feels? Can you imagine what it feels like to get this death certificate saying, "Your family member is dead from COVID but it's their fault 'cause they were obese." And how can the doctor know? How could the doctor know that? 0:44:34.2 Louise: How can they do that? 0:44:35.6 NL: How can they do that? And this is my point, this doctor that's turning around and saying it's safer for children to be removed from their loving home. Obviously, this person has no idea of the psychological consequences of being removed from your family. But it's safer for that person to be removed from their home than to remain in their home and remain fat. What will you achieve? Is this person going to lose weight? No. I can tell you what this person is going to do. This person is going to develop... 0:44:58.9 Louise: They even say that. They even say that in the transcripts. We don't think that they'll get any more supervision. 0:45:03.1 NL: Yeah. In fact, we're gonna get less supervision because it's not a loving parent. You're going to develop, most likely an eating disorder. You're going to develop serious psychological scars. That trauma is going to lead to mental health problems down the line. And chances are you're just gonna get bigger. You're not gonna get smaller because we know that 95% of people who lose weight gain it all back again. We know that two-thirds of them end up heavier. We know that the more you diet, the heavier you're gonna get. And that actually, this has been shown to be like a dose-response thing in some studies. So the more diets you go on, the higher your weight is going to get. If you don't diet ever in your life, chances are you're not gonna have as many weight problems later on down the line. So, as you're saying, we are living in a society that's got fatter. And there's lots of reasons for that. It's got to do with the food that we're eating now. That we're all eating. That we're all consuming. 0:45:55.1 Louise: Food supply. Only some of us will express from there the epigenetic glory of becoming higher weight. 0:46:02.0 NL: Right. And that's the thing, isn't it? Genetics, hormones, trauma, medications. How many people do I know that are on psychiatric medications and have gained weight as a result, Clozapine or... It's just what's gonna happen. You name it. Being female, having babies, so many things will determine your weight. 0:46:21.0 Louise: Getting older. We're allowed to get... We're supposed to get bigger as we get older. 0:46:25.1 NL: And then you know that actually, there are so many studies nowadays, so many studies that we've labeled it now that show that actually being fat can be beneficial to you. There's studies that show that if you end up in ICU with sepsis, you're far more likely to survive if you're fat. If you've got a BMI over 30, you're more likely to survive. There's studies that show that if you have chronic kidney disease and you're on dialysis, the chances of you surviving more long-term are significantly higher if you're fat. Heart failure, kidney disease, ICU admissions, in fact, even after a heart attack, there's evidence to show that you're more likely to survive if you're fat. And they call this the obesity paradox. We have to call it a paradox because we cannot, for one moment, admit that actually there's a possibility that being fat isn't all that bad for you in the first place and we got it wrong. Rather than admit that we got it wrong, we've labeled a paradox because we have to be right here, we have to... 0:47:18.0 Louise: Yeah, it's like how totally bad and wrong, except in certain rare, weird conditions, as opposed to, "Let's just drop the judgment and look at all of this much less hysterically." 0:47:29.5 NL: Yeah. And studies have shown that putting children on a diet, talking about weight, weight-shaming them, weighing them, any of these things, have been linked to and have been demonstrated to cause disordered eating and be a serious risk for direct factor for weight gain. And that, in my opinion, is the important thing to remember in this particular case, because as I said, social services start in weight-shaming, judging, and talking about weight when these children were three and six, and they did that for 10 years. And in doing so, they are responsible for the fact that these children went on to gain weight, because that's what the evidence shows. And there's no question about this evidence, there's multiple papers to back it up. 0:48:14.1 NL: There's an article published in Germany in 2016, there was an article published last year by the University of Cambridge, and even the American Academy of Pediatrics agrees that talking about weight, putting children on a diet, in fact, even a parent going on a diet is enough to damage that child and increase their risk of developing disordered eating patterns and weight gain. 0:48:37.9 NL: And so, as far as I'm concerned, that to me, is evidence enough to say that it's actually social services that should be in front of a judge, not these children, but it's the social workers that should be held to account. And I have written... And this is something that is very important to say. I wrote to the council, the local authority, and I've written a very long letter, I've published it on my website. You can read it anytime, anyone can read it. And I wrote to them and I said, "This is the evidence. Here are all the links. As far as I'm concerned, you guys got it terribly wrong and you have demonstrated that there is a high degree of weight bias that is actually causing damage to children. I am prepared to come and train you for free and teach all of your social workers all about weight bias, weight stigma, and to basically dispel the myths that obviously are pervading your social work department." And they ignored me. I wrote to politicians in the area. They ignored me. I wrote to a counselor who's a member of my political party, who just claimed, "Yeah, I'll look into it for you." Never heard from her again. Yeah, nobody cares. 0:49:44.0 Louise: It's just such a lack of concern. 0:49:45.7 NL: I didn't even do it in a critical way. I had to do it in a kind of, "I will help you. Let me help you. I'm offering my services for free. I do charge, normally, but I'll do it for free for you guys." No one is interested. Nobody wants to know. And that makes me really sad, that they weren't even willing to hear me out. 0:50:03.0 Louise: I can't believe they didn't actually even answer you. 0:50:06.5 NL: Didn't answer me, didn't respond to any of my messages, none of the counselors, none of the... Nobody has responded, and I've tried repeatedly. 0:50:14.4 Louise: So, this is in West Sussex, yeah? 0:50:16.7 NL: That's right, West Sussex, that's right. 0:50:18.0 Louise: You know what's weird about that? I've actually attended a wedding at that council, that my ex-father-in-law got married there. And when I saw the picture there, I'm like, "Oh my God, I've actually been there." So, I had a poke, and I don't know if you know this, but hopefully, in the future, when those children, C and D, finally decide to sue the council, that they can use this as evidence. There is a report from a... It's called a commissioner's progress report on children services in West Sussex from October 2020, which details how awful the service has been for the past few years, and huge issues with how they're running things. And it says, "Quite fragile and unstable services in West Sussex." So, this family who've had their kids removed were being cared for by a service with massive problems, are being referred to programs that don't work, and that there's a massive miscarriage of justice. 0:51:17.3 NL: And I'm glad you're talking about it, and I'm glad we're talking about it. And I wish that we had the platform to talk about it more vocally. I'd want to be able to reach out to these... To see patients... They're not patients, child C and D. I want to be able to reach out to mum as well, and say... 0:51:36.3 Louise: I just wanna land in Sussex and just walk around the street saying, "Where are you? I wanna help." 0:51:40.2 NL: "Where are you? And let me hug you." And I'm very interest to know, I'd be very interested to know the ethnic origin of these young people. 0:51:48.9 Louise: And the socio-economic status of these people. 0:51:50.2 NL: Socio-economic status, 100%. I would very much like to know that. That would make a huge... I think that I can guess, I'm not going to speculate, but I had a very lovely young woman contact me from a... She was now an adult, but she had experienced this as a child. She had been removed from her home and was now an adult, and she had been in foster care, in social services, for a few years, and had obviously contact with her mum but hadn't been reunited with her mum ever. So it wasn't like it was for a time and then she went back. And we talked about this. She was in a London borough, I shall not name the borough, but I know for a fact that her race would've played a role in this, because she was half-Black, half-Turkish. 0:52:39.2 NL: And there're a few things in that court transcript that caught my attention. I don't know if you noticed there was a mention of the smell from the kitchen, and they didn't specifically said, you know, mould, or you know that there was mould in the kitchen, or there was something in the kitchen that was rotting, something like that, 'cause I think they would have specified. It was just a smell. And that made me wonder, is this to do with just the fact that maybe this family lived in poor housing or was it the type of food that they were cooking for their children? Is there a language issue, is there a cultural issue. What exactly is going on? 'cause we don't know that from the court transcript, so that's another thing that... Another piece of the puzzle that I would really be interested in. Is this a white wealthy family? Probably not. I don't think they are. 0:53:27.2 Louise: Yeah it didn't struck me that way either. Yeah, yeah this is potentially marginalization and racism happening that... 0:53:35.1 NL: Yeah. 0:53:35.9 Louise: And here in Australia, we've got an awful history of how we treated First Nations people and we removed indigenous kids from their families, on the basis of like we know better, and I just... Yeah honestly, elements of that here, like we know better. 0:53:51.5 NL: Yes. Right, this is it. We know better than you have to parent your child. I am have always been a big believer of not restricting my children's feed in any way. I was restricted, and I made the decision when we had the kids that there would just be no restriction at all. I have like been one of those parents that had just been like, that's the draw with all the sweet treats in it. They're not called treats, they're just sweets and chocolate and candy, there it is. It's within reachable distance. Help yourself whenever you want, ice pops in the freezer, there's no like you have to eat that to get your pudding. None of that. 0:54:27.6 NL: My kids have just been able to eat whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, I never restricted anything, I wanted them to be intuitive eaters. And of course they are, and what amazes me is now my teenage son, when we were on lockdown, and he was like homeschooled, he would come downstairs, make himself a breakfast, and there was like three portions of fruit and veg on his plate, and not because someone told him that he had to, but just because he knew it was good for him and he knew it was healthy, there was like a selection, his plate was always multi-colored, he was drinking plenty of water. He would go and cook it, he cooked himself lunch, he knew that he can eat sweets and crisps and chocolate whenever he wanted to, and he didn't, he just didn't. Like it was there, that drawn, it gets emptied out because it's become a bit... But no, they don't take it, and sometimes they do, 'cause they fancy it, but most of the times they don't. And that is my decision as a parent, I believe that I have done what is in their best interest, I believe that I will prove over time that this has had a much better impact on their health, not restricting them. 0:55:26.4 Louise: Absolutely, Yeah. 0:55:27.6 NL: But the point is they're my children, and it was my damn choice, and even if my child is on the 98th percentile, it's still my damn choice, nobody gets to tell me how to parent my child. That is my child, I know what's best for them. And I believe that my children are going to prove the fact that this is a great way of parenting, and I know that actually most of their friends who had, were not allowed to eat the food that they wanted to eat used to come over to our house and just kind of like wide eyed. And they binge, they binge, you know, to the point that I have to restrict them and say I actually I don't think mom would like that if I gave that to you. 0:56:00.0 Louise: We know that that's what we do when we put kids in food deserts, we breed binge eating and food insecurity, and trying to teach our kids to have a relaxed and enjoyable relationship with food is what intuitive eating is all about. And without a side salad of fat phobia, we're not doing this relationship with food stuff in order to make sure you're thin, we're doing this to make sure that you feel really safe and secure in the world, and you know health is sometimes controllable and sometimes not, and this kind of mad obsession we have with controlling our food and the ability it will give us like everlasting life is weird. 0:56:39.0 NL: Yeah. 0:56:39.7 Louise: Yeah. Gosh, I'm so glad you're parenting those kids in that way and I've noticed the same thing with my kids. Like my kids, we are a family of intuitive eaters and it's just really relaxed, and there's variety, and they go through these little love affairs with foods, and it's really cute. [chuckle] And they're developing their palettes, and their size is not up to me. 0:57:05.8 NL: Yeah. 0:57:06.4 Louise: Yeah. 0:57:07.4 NL: Right. 0:57:08.1 Louise: It's up to me to help them thrive. 0:57:10.7 NL: That's right. And when people talk about health, I often hear people talking about health, and whenever they ask me that question, you know, surely you can agree that being fat is not good for your health, well, I'll always kinda go, "Oh Really? Could you just do me a favor here and define health?" Because I spend my whole life trying to define health, and I'm not sure that I've got there yet, but I can tell you without a doubt that this for me, in my personal experience as a doctor... And I've been a doctor for a long time now, and I see patients all the time, and I'm telling you that in my experience, the most important thing for your health is your mental and emotional well-being, that if you are not mentally and emotionally well, it doesn't matter how good your cholesterol is, it doesn't matter whether or not you've got diabetes, that is irrelevant, because if you're not mental and emotional... I'm not saying that 'cause you won't enjoy life, I mean, it has an impact on your physical health. And I spend most of my day dealing with either people who are depressed or anxious, and that's what they've presented with, or they've presented with symptoms that are being made worse or exacerbated by their mental and emotional pull, mental and emotional well-being. 0:58:19.1 NL: So giving my children the best start in life has always been about giving them a good mental and emotional well, start. It's about giving... It's not just teaching them resilience, but teaching them to love themselves, to be happy with who they are, to not feel judged or to not feel that they are anything other than the brilliant human beings that they are. And I believe that that is what's going to stand them in the greatest... In the greatest... I've lost my words now, but that's what's gonna get them through life, and that's why they're going to be healthy. And how much sugar they eat actually is quite irrelevant compared to the fact that they love themselves and their bodies, and they are great self-esteem, we all know that happiness is... Happiness is the most important thing when it comes to quality of life and happiness is the most important thing when it comes to length of life and illness, all of it. Happiness trumps everything else. 0:59:07.0 Louise: And to you know what that comes from. Happiness comes from a sense of belonging, belonging in our bodies, belonging in ourselves, belonging in the community, and all of this othering that's happening with the message that everyone belongs unless they're fat. That sucks ass and that needs to stop. This poor little kid when, in the transcript it mentioned that they found a suicide note... 0:59:29.9 NL: Yes. 0:59:30.1 Louise: And some pills. And she's fucking like 13. 0:59:34.8 NL: Yeah, and they called it a cry for help. 0:59:36.0 Louise: They called it cry for help 'cause of her body. 0:59:38.1 NL: Yeah. 0:59:38.4 Louise: They didn't recognize it since they've been sniffing around threatening to take her off her mom, and because she's being bullied for her size at school. This is like a calamitous failure to see the impact of weight stigma. 0:59:52.9 NL: She's been told that it's her fault that she's been taken away from her mum. They had told her that because she didn't succeed in losing weight, that she doesn't get to live with her mother anymore. Can you imagine? 1:00:02.4 Louise: So her mom. I can't even wrap my head around that. I can't. 1:00:07.2 NL: Well, she feels suicidal, I think I would too. I felt suicidal at her age and for a lot less. It's terrible, it's terrible. And I hope she's hanging on and I hope that... 1:00:14.6 Louise: I wanna tell her that she is awesome. 1:00:17.4 NL: Yes. 1:00:17.9 Louise: If she ever gets to listen to this. But I know the impact. So like when I was 11, my mom left and I remember how much it tore out my heart. 1:00:26.4 NL: Yeah. 1:00:26.9 Louise: You're 11... 1:00:27.5 NL: Yeah. 1:00:28.3 Louise: 12, 13. This is not the time to do this to kids, and this whole idea... The judge said something like, "Oh, you know, gosh, this is gonna be bad... " But here it is, I will read it to you. This is... She actually wrote a letter to the kids. 1:00:42.5 NL: Oh, gosh. 1:00:43.7 Louise: "I know you will feel that in making this o

RETURN OF THE BUCCI AFTER A 9 YEAR HIATUS!!!!!

The boys are back discussing everything sports and pop culture. Wear a diaper because you might laugh so hard you piss your pants!