July 29, 2024 • 46 mins
Ever felt like society's got a million opinions about how you should look and the right way to arrive at their ideal? Lately, Maureen has been receiving compliments, including the particularly grating, “Wow! Skinny Minnie!”. We're going to explore the root of those "compliments", and reflect on the emotional tightrope we walk- caring for yourself, while grappling with patriarchal beauty standards imposed on all of us. Maureen shares her decades-long medical rollercoaster; diets, diagnoses, medication, and a hot new injectable.
Join us for a real “before” and “after” and “here we go again” story. We’re unzipping one bag of body baggage to gain a better understanding of ourselves, self-forgiveness, and how to break free from the toxic body shaming cycle.
“You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin.” -Barbie Movie (2023).
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:26):
Music.
(03:05):
Music.
(03:40):
Fifth grade, that remained true. I knew I was a bigger bone chubby girl,
but I didn't feel self-conscious, that kind of thing.
And then a couple of things, and I think probably puberty was part of it.
Kids started teasing me for my weight.
And it culminated at the school I was at called All Saints in seventh grade.
(04:03):
But leading up to that culmination, which I'll tell you about,
which was incredibly cruel in a minute.
I would come home and I would be really upset. My mom would pick me up.
And I don't want to blame my mom. My mom's a dietician.
She's a certified diabetes educator. She has a master's in public health.
She's worked really hard to make a lot of people's lives better.
(04:24):
But she also has internalized all this stuff despite her training.
But I'd come home and she'd pick me up from school and I'd be crying.
And she would tell Tell me things like don't wear your heart on your sleeve.
Rather than you're fine the way you are, either don't let them get to you and
if they do get to you, don't let it show.
(04:46):
And then a number of times saying, well, maybe you could stand to lose a few pounds.
(05:13):
Music.
(05:45):
Cut off our hair and got tails and Brooke and I were tight. We were great.
Then she went out with mono for many months. Oh no. And it was just me and a bunch of cool kids.
They decided to form things like the cat club and not include me.
You know, I'd really was just sat and read at lunch because nobody would talk
(06:05):
to me because there were only like six people left, but it finally culminated
towards the end of the school year where I came into school one day before the teacher came in.
And the boys, there was this one guy named Darren, he was such a little turd,
had decided that they were going to, while we were waiting for the teacher to
get there, I don't know why he was late that day, to start marching around my desk in circles,
(06:28):
saying the names of foods, like donuts, cookies, like fattening foods. My God.
I went home. It sent me into a tailspin and I was a mess because it was just cruel.
School, I remember the teacher getting really mad at them and then taking,
but taking me down to the office to have my mom come get me because I wasn't
(06:50):
going to get any learning done that day. Oh my God.
I don't actually remember what she said to me that day, but I do know the next
year I was at a different school and this was towards the school year,
end of the school year with really nice kids, really nice girls. Yeah.
(07:14):
Music.
(08:12):
I was able to lose that weight following summer with her help because I didn't
have a problem with physics at that point.
Whereas I basically cut galleries and danced and the weight came off.
And she was super supportive in that because that's how she knew how to help
people. And so that I was really grateful for.
Music.
(08:34):
She followed her mom's advice and things normalized for a few years.
In my late 20s my hormones started going a little wacky i started losing hair i started,
getting hair where i did not want so i lost head hair but then i started getting
chin hair and breast hair fun fun in
(08:55):
my late 20s i started gaining weight uncontrollably no matter what i did.
Music.
So initially that diagnosis was an adrenal land thing
which was fixed with a pill called spironolactone and all my numbers went back
to normal and i've been taking that my whole life oh okay it's one of those
drugs that's been around forever but the weight gain didn't stop and so finally
(09:20):
my gp was like you need to go see an endocrinologist it took me a couple to
find a good one. That's its own story.
But when I finally did, my diagnosis was basically metabolic disorder,
possibly with PCOS, which is short for polycystic ovarian syndrome.
Polycystic ovarian syndrome and metabolic disorder is something that definitely plagues modern women.
(09:42):
There's a lot of reasons for that, but when you have a metabolic disorder,
it means you do not metabolize food correctly.
So what it usually means, which was true for me, is that it's really easy to
gain weight it's really hard to lose weight mm-hmm and that's what had happened
because I basically had gained a hundred pounds over like a two-year period.
(10:50):
Because you've got some of the stuff you get in polycystic ovarian syndrome,
which also can sometimes be like too much testosterone in the bloodstream for
someone who was born a woman.
There's a bunch of other things that happen. You end up with high blood pressure.
You end up with high cholesterol, that kind of thing.
You can also end up with cysts, which is where the polycystic ovarian syndrome comes from.
(11:13):
Now, I had been on birth control since I was 19 because my periods were so painful and awful.
And so it is likely that staved this off a little bit, at least the cyst part.
My mother had a hysterectomy for ovarian cysts. So it is entirely possible that
that was the path I was on, but
(11:34):
that being on hormones my whole life has basically controlled all of that.
And I avoided like the cysts and the endometriosis and all that mess that so
many women end up with. Right.
(12:16):
Protective of the pancreas. Interesting lately, people who want to try and live
forever have started to take metformin because it is an anti-inflammatory.
As we know, inflammation is the cause of all disease, just about all disease in humans.
And so it turns out it's not just protective of the pancreas,
it's protective of all the organs because it keeps inflammation levels down. Interesting. Okay.
(12:37):
So when she started me on that in my late 20s, I lost 50 of the 100 pounds, almost immediately.
And then I stopped. And then it became mostly the, like, you need to exercise
and eat right not to gain weight.
Aside from her freshman year of college, Maureen didn't struggle with eating problems or exercise.
(12:59):
She made good choices that she felt were good for her, and per the prevailing wisdom.
Though, of course, those directions change and continue changing and are often
harmful. But here's what she's done and learned.
I should say I'm a vegetarian. I actually grew up with a dietician.
(13:19):
I know approximately the right way to eat from that. That might be its own podcast
because what is the correct way to eat we're finding is different for everybody.
Absolutely. And how much. Yeah.
I have been on a journey of trying to make sure I eat good foods.
Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma was a huge book for me, really.
(13:40):
I'd already sort of started down this path of understanding how bad the American
diet was when I was trying to figure out what was wrong with me.
But reading that book made me realize how important it was to actually buy whole
foods from farmers, grow your own stuff, avoid processed food and ultra-processed
food and all of that stuff.
So I eat, I'm not, I'm far from a saint. I love a drink. I love a chocolate
(14:04):
cake, but I probably eat better than I ever would have if I hadn't read that book.
And my doctors are happy with the way I eat. And I know how to count calories.
(14:41):
Music.
Every day. And it was like the first generation of these new injectables.
(15:04):
Oh, yikes. Okay. And I lost about 20 pounds and then I couldn't handle it anymore.
And then in 2017, I stopped taking it.
That injectable made her feel terrible. So she dropped some weight and then went off it.
And then COVID hit. Then she maintained pretty well.
Yes, she had a little stress eating as most of us did, but she was also walking
(15:24):
a lot because there wasn't much else to do.
All was well until 2022 when her numbers started changing and i'm not just talking about the scale,
2022 i started packing on weight again and nothing had changed except my age
which of course i'm 52 almost 53 and so there's a lot of hormonal changes happening
(15:46):
right which are probably even like more
pronounced with your other probably issues yeah and
so my doctor dr bohannon who
i love was like well there's a lot of new stuff out there for you to try so
let's try it and if you don't like it then we can we can stop but we need to
(16:07):
do something because basically my numbers which had been good and she wasn't
doing it by weight it was by numbers and my numbers were good and And there's a thing called A1C,
which is the level of your sugars in your blood.
And your A1C needs to be under a certain amount or you're considered pre-diabetic and then diabetic.
And that's what type 2 diabetes is. And I had stayed under or right on the threshold
(16:29):
of pre-diabetes from 29 to 50 and was keeping under control.
And suddenly that number was rising too. So something was going on. I needed to lose weight.
And so she put me on an injectable.
And I have lost 55 pounds. Yeah. So I'm back down to the weight,
I'm back down to the weight where all of this started.
(17:45):
And when you can't lose weight, even though you're doing everything correctly
in terms of physics, because it's a physics thing, amount of calories in,
amount of calories expended should equal a reduction in weight.
Right. Which it doesn't for many people. No.
So, and when you have a diagnosis of a metabolic disorder, that is totally going to be the case.
(18:10):
Yeah. Some people, it might be the other way around where they metabolize food too fast.
Don't think the American diet really lets that to happen though.
So yeah. I was chatting with my doctor about something unrelated to weight and
she gave me an explanation and then I replied, okay, so it's normal.
And she said, no, it's common. That doesn't mean normal.
(18:33):
This is a hard pill for me to swallow at the Abbey Normal podcast where you're
weird and that's normal.
Normal what maureen has gone through is common many
many women especially have had this
journey up down try things give it all
you've got constant attention to this quote weight issue and then you eat one
(18:54):
fucking cookie and gain weight eating one cookie and gaining weight is not normal
meaning not the normal operating system of a human body even if you want to
be on this calories in calories
out, balance sheet from hell, one cookie does not and should not equal two more pounds.
(19:14):
Okay, getting back to how it went with this new injectable, Manjaro.
I hate these names. They're so silly. It sounds like a medicalized version of
mangiare, which is the verb to eat in Italian. That's terrible. It's terrible.
And so the other difference is
that it had changed from being a daily injectable to a weekly injectable.
(19:40):
And so I was like, okay, if I
only feel kind of crappy for one day instead of every day
out of every week you could do it i can
do it i can do it for a while the side
effects were a lot less bad than
the first time around though i still it's hurts
to inject it you really inject it yeah and i learned that it hurts because the
(20:03):
slow it's a slow release okay and slow release injectables are acidic and your
body is slightly alkaline so the sting is actually the difference between acid
and alkaline going into your system oh so i would numb up my leg and then,
stab it stab it okay then once it was it
wasn't the actual stabbing that hurt i mean i'm heavily tattooed needles
(20:23):
don't scare me it was actually the medicine going in the other
thing is i would get immediately a sort of malaise come upon me and i i would
do i learned very quickly that i would do this after dinner on like a monday
night and i would have just have like a tv program or something to watch and
some water because I basically would be on the couch the rest of the night.
(20:44):
It like took my night out. So was it like nauseous or fatigue or depression?
It was a fatigue, sometimes an insta headache. Okay.
A taste in the back of my mouth that wasn't quite nausea. And it was just like
this overall like, I need to lay down. Okay.
Generally the the next morning, it was fine. Sometimes I had a hard time sleeping.
(21:08):
I think I was kind of overall uncomfortable.
But then after two weeks of this, the weight started falling off.
Music.
(21:35):
But then she'll stop. That's like starvation style. Right, but that's not going
to do it. So here's the thing about these drugs.
You might only be eating 600 or 800 calories a day.
Really? But you feel sated because it basically makes you feel full when you're not.
How can you have enough energy with 600 calories?
(21:59):
I mean, it might be more than 600. I don't know. All I know is I would basically
eat half of anything that was put in front of me. Wow.
So these drugs help you feel satisfied. And that, they think,
is actually, in addition to making
you feel full, the fact that you feel satisfied is the game changer.
Music.
(22:24):
I wasn't supposed to lose weight at the dose I was on. I actually,
like, all of these injectables start very small, and you're supposed to ramp up.
I have never gotten past 2.5 milligrams a week.
Most people who are losing weight are on like 15 or 20 milligrams a week.
So we just kept it on this low dose. Weird.
And in a year and a half, I lost 55 pounds.
(22:46):
I didn't change anything else. What? I didn't change what I was eating.
I didn't change how I was exercising.
So all of my decent habits just basically got rid of my metabolic disorder.
Right. This particular drug.
Ozempic is the other injectable that everybody's heard about.
It just makes you less hungry by changing one little molecule in you.
(23:08):
The Manjaro does two things. It
makes you less hungry, but it also helps address the blood sugar issues.
(23:38):
Story. I liked that story. That was fun. I mean, I remember we must have gone
out for Stephanie's birthday. So is that July?
So she's January or February. So anyways, it must have been a year ago.
And I almost like didn't recognize you. Yeah. Like that's how fast.
It came off fast. It happened. Yeah. It came off really fast. Yeah. And it was weird.
(24:00):
Having, you know, having struggled with weight my whole life,
having been told it's not my fault.
Pretty hard to believe it's not your fault the society we live
in has a lot of opinions about
how people should look all the opinion all the
opinions and all that shit is internalized and as a
woman it is internalized in a different way there is definitely you know patriarchal
(24:24):
internalization of what the standard of beauty is even in a place like the bay
area that you know really embraces everybody letting their freak flag fly and
being whoever you want to be and being whatever size you want to be.
It's still not really okay on a lot
of levels for people sure so i i still am working through some of these emotions
(24:46):
because i basically took a magic injection but it's not magic right it's science
it solved my metabolic disorder and actually i should be feeling really proud
because the fact that it fell off that quickly means that everything else i
was doing was actually living healthily.
Yeah. But I mean, even that makes it feel like you have to say that.
(25:09):
Yeah. I do. I have to explain. We have to prove to people we're doing the right things.
We're doing all the things that you told us to do.
Like, yeah. And it's frustrating that we even feel like we have to.
But here's the thing about food in this country and body and beauty standards. We eat like crap.
(25:29):
Music.
This is not a judgment of us. Maureen.
Has a lot to share about our food supply, aka the crap that we eat.
But I'm actually going to save that for the next episode, so we can continue
to focus on what she experienced after she was in a smaller body, including this treat.
(25:50):
I bought a bunch of new clothes. You went shopping. I went shopping.
I can actually go to thrift stores and garage sales and stuff and find stuff that fits me. Amazing.
I don't have to be in the plus size section anymore, which is mentally freeing,
even though I know it shouldn't.
Like, I'm still grappling with all this stuff, too. Yeah. As well.
Well, yeah, to be a size that you haven't been since you were 29,
(26:13):
right? I mean, that's weird. Yeah, I went from basically a size 18-20 to a 12.
I'm either an extra large or a large. Mm-hmm. So, but it's nice.
It's nice to be in that range.
Yeah, to not wonder if a store is going to have your size.
(27:19):
Right of time and seeing people but then a
bunch of people i definitely had not seen since i had started the injection
and even my mother-in-law who did know what was going on they all say the same
thing they go whoa skinny mini uh-huh and i'm like what is that and then you look great.
(27:41):
And what did you do wow and
it's very positive nobody would say
a fucking thing to me if i walked in the room and
had done what i did before i started this current medication wow
you've gained a lot of weight i would never say that to you you look great you
look great they would never say that but instead all of this ingrained stuff
(28:04):
comes out yeah and i actually snapped at my mother-in-law and we get along great
but I was like why did you call me that and she's like I don't know,
and I'm like I said that phrase skinny
mini has been setting me off and I've been trying to examine why
and really it comes down to the fact is yeah okay yes I lost weight it's positive
(28:25):
my numbers are good it's positive all these things are positive but I don't
need to be told that I'm beautiful because I'm skinny far from it yeah and so
why is that important that people need to say something.
And why would they never say something to me over the years when I know that
I've packed it on because I'm having a hard time maintaining the weight because
(28:46):
of my metabolic disorder?
I don't know if I have an answer, but man, I hate the phrase skinny mini.
Did sometimes that feel good that people noticed and said, wow,
or basically did it always just rub you the wrong way? It felt good for a second.
Yeah. Like the very first one, maybe. Yeah.
But then it was also just like, why does that feel good? Because the feminist in me is like, fuck you.
(29:13):
Why does that feel good, Maureen? And why does that person have to say that
we need to change this? Right.
This is the react. And the thing is, some people I know, and of course,
a lot of these folks were like more like tertiary people in my community that
I don't know super well or know a little bit.
But like folks that are not part of my core group that I hadn't seen and I would
(29:36):
see, they'd be like, well, wow, what that usually of because it was it is a
big difference. So I'm, yes, you're forgiven for noticing. You looked like a different person.
But then, you know, folks that I knew enough would mostly be like,
well, what happened? What's going on? Yeah.
You know, they really wanted to know what I what I did. Right.
(29:56):
It's just this like, at a girl.
Yeah. You lost the weight. Now you're good. Right.
Music.
(30:44):
To notice yeah instead of just noticing
a person's presence or a way of
being yeah right how are you you seem great you seem great yeah you seem great
yeah i the thing that did it for me was i realized that for example if you have
(31:05):
cancer and you are going through chemo you also lose weight you do.
So commenting on that and telling
someone looks great is actually really inappropriate and
unkind so like if you don't know
that they want you to comment on it shut your
mouth you don't need to comment so why is weight public right that's
(31:26):
the question right why is weight public yeah um
because that reminds me my mother-in-law's very good friend sue
had cancer and one of
the jokes she made when she was because she
had she ended up losing a ton of weight and you know she didn't beat
the cancer she ended up passing away from it but she had
made this joke which we kind of chuckled about i
(31:46):
knew her too where she's like oh i'm finally at the weight i want to be you know
and for a moment you couldn't other than
the turban you couldn't tell she was sick right right yeah
so you don't know what's going on
with people no so you don't need
to comment you don't need to comment but people do need to
comment because of all the things we've just talked about so yeah
(32:08):
how do we make it better how do what do i say to people when they when i still
haven't figured out what to say to people i'll just be like yeah i've lost a
lot of weight and i feel i'm i've just try and keep it like just the facts ma'am
yeah but also just like you know i feel a lot better and try and keep it about
how i'm doing health-wise versus.
(32:29):
Yeah how do we fix it is a good question which i'm glad i'm watching this oprah
things i think they're actually trying.
But I had a friend that called me on it. This was many years ago.
And I think I was talking about like, oh, I've gained weight or, oh, I feel so fat.
It was something about myself and my body. And she was like,
(32:50):
I don't want to have a conversation like that with you anymore.
We are not talking about our bodies like that anymore.
And initially, Initially, I was like kind of butthurt about it.
I'm like, it's my feelings. It's my body. I should be able to talk, you know, about this.
But as time went on and I processed it more, like I do think we need to be calling
(33:13):
each other out on that shit. Yeah.
So was she calling you out because she did not think it was something that you should be doing?
Upset about she did she just think it was a negative way
to yes she didn't want us to talk
about our bodies like that in
a negative way in a negative way yeah yeah she didn't want
(33:35):
to talk about her body she didn't want me to talk about my body like
that she didn't want us talking about each other i mean i can't tell
you the hundreds of conversations i have had with friends over the
years that's like i'm feeling fat i'm feeling fat too
like we should start working out and then like that whole
conversation and she didn't want to play that game anymore and
it's like i think that to stop the whole
(33:55):
cycle we need to start saying
things like that i think you're right i'm sure there's like a kind you
know way to go about it but i don't know
if we have the language we don't have this is one of the reasons i was like
why okay why is why are people complimenting me on my weight loss making me
so angry and i i i am gonna do an artist book or zine about this I still haven't
(34:18):
fully articulated how to reply.
Music.
So this conversation is helping, but yeah, it's.
Yeah, right. Could it just be like, yeah, there's got to be like a thank you for the compliment.
And. Right. Like what is the little. What's the and? Yeah. The little piece
(34:42):
of like information about this actually hurts me.
Yeah. Yeah. Because I think inherent in the compliment is always at least the
implication that I was disgusting beforehand.
Exactly. What does that mean I was before? Correct. And that you noticed I was
disgusting. Right. And now I am more appealing to your eyes. Right. Yeah.
Which doesn't feel good. Which doesn't feel good. And, you know,
(35:04):
I think about all the things that I said growing up about,
like, and these are all the things that we were told, like, you're Rubenesque,
you're, in certain periods, you would have been the perfect body type.
She has such a pretty face.
Oh, yeah. Love that one. Yeah, that's a good one. Such a pretty face.
(35:26):
But, like, there's a lesson here, right? Like, beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
but never before has it been so supported by capitalism and the need for profit.
And so how do I say that? Thank you for noticing. Please don't let your internalized
patriarchy and capitalist training inform this compliment.
(35:49):
Okay, how do we make that into something nice? Because that was not an elevator pitch.
We got to boil that down. Exactly. I'm like, please send my TED Talk. Yeah, right?
There you go. Please see the podcast. You could just have a little QR code.
They can just scan for more information.
Yeah, here's Abbey Normal's podcast. This is just the beginning of the conversation.
Music.
(36:33):
I got a coupon for about the first three or four months. After that,
the full amount kicked in, which is about $1,200 for four weeks. Oh, what?
It's crazy. And they would not cover it because I am not diabetic.
She gave it to me so I would not become diabetic. So I would lose the weight.
And so it is untenable long term currently to continue taking it because who
(36:58):
can afford basically 20 grand a year for a drug? Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
And also, it is so frustrating that they're like, oh, FYI, you're pre-diabetic,
which means you're for sure going to get diabetes if you don't make big changes in your life.
And then you have a drug that basically fixes that.
Right. But they're not going to pay for that. They're not going to pay for that.
(37:19):
So they're just going to wait. Yeah. Until you have diabetes.
Yeah. And we appealed it about five times. That is frustrating.
So. So. So I took it until about two months ago. Okay.
I told my doctor that I needed to stop for a while because it had started to
(37:41):
actually make me feel, I had tapered off from once a week to twice a month.
And I was doing fine, like wasn't gaining weight. And then I was like,
okay, three weeks, wasn't gaining weight. Every four weeks, still wasn't gaining weight.
But every time I took it, I felt worse. and
the last few times i took the shot i just felt terrible and
so i have stopped and i'm going
(38:02):
to see if i can because according to my labs i no longer have a metabolic disorder
so now i am trying to live without the injectable though i know the numbers
aren't in my favor most people who stop this injectable will gain it all back
right i'm really hoping i can figure this out So far, so good.
I gained about five pounds back, and then I stopped gaining.
(38:25):
And I feel like in the last four weeks, I haven't gained a pound,
and I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what I can eat every day and
the amount of exercises.
Music.
(39:36):
I had done something wrong, right? What is really interesting is that now that
I technically don't have the metabolic disorder anymore, I still,
when I did gain those few pounds, when I stopped taking those a couple of months
ago, I was having those feelings.
Now that it's under control and now I know how I feel every day and I feel different.
I feel differently than I did before I started taking the drug and I'm still,
(40:00):
was still on all those other medications.
So it has actually allowed me to forgive myself a little bit because I now realized
that my internal feeling is different than when I was on this other stuff.
And then it really was necessary to control how much I was eating and how I
was metabolizing food. Now I'm like, I'm not having blood sugar crashes.
(40:21):
I don't get hangry. I don't need to go grab a bunch of food.
And even with all those other drugs, I would still get that stuff.
So it's made it a little little easier for me to start to let it go. Yeah.
I mean, you've gained clarity about yourself, right?
Like how you operate, you know more about yourself. Absolutely.
And it's not something that I minded talking about, but internally I was always a little sad.
(40:47):
I don't know why I was sad, but I knew that I would never be normal,
quote unquote quote, normal. I'm doing air quotes here.
And I don't know why that still mattered, but it did. I was just, it's exhausting.
It's exhausting. I didn't want to get sick. I didn't want to,
and I just really wanted to, and I, you know, I love clothes.
(41:09):
I just really wanted to go buy clothes and look good.
And, but I didn't always feel good.
And I had a problem. It like, since that happened, my self-esteem took a big
hit and it's been, it was really hard to work, work back to a place where that
self-esteem was back and it was before it started the weight loss.
Most of the time like when you were gaining you
(41:31):
felt like when i was gaining i felt like shit again yeah even
though i knew it wasn't my fault and that stuff
is really hard to grapple with you know i had a moment when we
were all at the house in pasadena
altadena up in the hills i hadn't worn a bathing suit in public for a long time
i was even though you're all people and you didn't give a fuck it was really
(41:53):
hard for me to put that bathing suit on and come out i it is really nice not
to have to feel that badly about myself anymore and that's the forgiveness,
no i you know i i don't really totally care anymore like i'm like pretty excited
that we're gonna go to the pool and you got your cute new vintage swimsuit but
(42:16):
55 pounds ago i don't know if I could have done it. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You know what I remember about sitting in the hot tub?
Is we have a male friend, and I don't know why I asked him this,
because this is a stupid-ass question to ask, but I think I asked him something
like, what kind of girl are you into? You did. I remember this conversation.
(42:41):
I said something like, someone who's fit.
Which, that is a thing many dudes out there would say, and I think he's a lovely
person, but I'm just filled with rage at that kind of answer.
Like, fuck you. What does fit even mean?
Right. You mean fucking skinny. With probably big boobs. Probably.
(43:01):
That's what you actually mean.
Yeah. Because there's people in this hot tub right now who are hella fit.
And this is not the body type that you're talking about. So shut up. Exactly.
I didn't say any of that, but. No, I kind of, I did an inward eye roll.
And I also love him. But yeah, it's like. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. But those are the kind of, back to kind of what you were talking
(43:23):
about as far as your attitude towards yourself.
Right. Those are the attitudes that are ingrained in us.
Internalized. Not just him, women too. All of us. Yes. That's what I was going
to say. He learned that that was the correct answer.
Sure. Sure. I mean, you know, he's in his 40s. That actually might be what floats
his boat now. But where did that come from?
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and this idea that somehow thin equals fit,
(43:46):
equals attractive, equals right, equals taking care of yourself, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah. Right. Right, it's very frustrating.
(45:05):
Music.
(46:11):
Music.
Music.
(03:05):
Music.
(03:40):
Fifth grade, that remained true. I knew I was a bigger bone chubby girl,
but I didn't feel self-conscious, that kind of thing.
And then a couple of things, and I think probably puberty was part of it.
Kids started teasing me for my weight.
And it culminated at the school I was at called All Saints in seventh grade.
(04:03):
But leading up to that culmination, which I'll tell you about,
which was incredibly cruel in a minute.
I would come home and I would be really upset. My mom would pick me up.
And I don't want to blame my mom. My mom's a dietician.
She's a certified diabetes educator. She has a master's in public health.
She's worked really hard to make a lot of people's lives better.
(04:24):
But she also has internalized all this stuff despite her training.
But I'd come home and she'd pick me up from school and I'd be crying.
And she would tell Tell me things like don't wear your heart on your sleeve.
Rather than you're fine the way you are, either don't let them get to you and
if they do get to you, don't let it show.
(04:46):
And then a number of times saying, well, maybe you could stand to lose a few pounds.
(05:13):
Music.
(05:45):
Cut off our hair and got tails and Brooke and I were tight. We were great.
Then she went out with mono for many months. Oh no. And it was just me and a bunch of cool kids.
They decided to form things like the cat club and not include me.
You know, I'd really was just sat and read at lunch because nobody would talk
(06:05):
to me because there were only like six people left, but it finally culminated
towards the end of the school year where I came into school one day before the teacher came in.
And the boys, there was this one guy named Darren, he was such a little turd,
had decided that they were going to, while we were waiting for the teacher to
get there, I don't know why he was late that day, to start marching around my desk in circles,
(06:28):
saying the names of foods, like donuts, cookies, like fattening foods. My God.
I went home. It sent me into a tailspin and I was a mess because it was just cruel.
School, I remember the teacher getting really mad at them and then taking,
but taking me down to the office to have my mom come get me because I wasn't
(06:50):
going to get any learning done that day. Oh my God.
I don't actually remember what she said to me that day, but I do know the next
year I was at a different school and this was towards the school year,
end of the school year with really nice kids, really nice girls. Yeah.
(07:14):
Music.
(08:12):
I was able to lose that weight following summer with her help because I didn't
have a problem with physics at that point.
Whereas I basically cut galleries and danced and the weight came off.
And she was super supportive in that because that's how she knew how to help
people. And so that I was really grateful for.
Music.
(08:34):
She followed her mom's advice and things normalized for a few years.
In my late 20s my hormones started going a little wacky i started losing hair i started,
getting hair where i did not want so i lost head hair but then i started getting
chin hair and breast hair fun fun in
(08:55):
my late 20s i started gaining weight uncontrollably no matter what i did.
Music.
So initially that diagnosis was an adrenal land thing
which was fixed with a pill called spironolactone and all my numbers went back
to normal and i've been taking that my whole life oh okay it's one of those
drugs that's been around forever but the weight gain didn't stop and so finally
(09:20):
my gp was like you need to go see an endocrinologist it took me a couple to
find a good one. That's its own story.
But when I finally did, my diagnosis was basically metabolic disorder,
possibly with PCOS, which is short for polycystic ovarian syndrome.
Polycystic ovarian syndrome and metabolic disorder is something that definitely plagues modern women.
(09:42):
There's a lot of reasons for that, but when you have a metabolic disorder,
it means you do not metabolize food correctly.
So what it usually means, which was true for me, is that it's really easy to
gain weight it's really hard to lose weight mm-hmm and that's what had happened
because I basically had gained a hundred pounds over like a two-year period.
(10:50):
Because you've got some of the stuff you get in polycystic ovarian syndrome,
which also can sometimes be like too much testosterone in the bloodstream for
someone who was born a woman.
There's a bunch of other things that happen. You end up with high blood pressure.
You end up with high cholesterol, that kind of thing.
You can also end up with cysts, which is where the polycystic ovarian syndrome comes from.
(11:13):
Now, I had been on birth control since I was 19 because my periods were so painful and awful.
And so it is likely that staved this off a little bit, at least the cyst part.
My mother had a hysterectomy for ovarian cysts. So it is entirely possible that
that was the path I was on, but
(11:34):
that being on hormones my whole life has basically controlled all of that.
And I avoided like the cysts and the endometriosis and all that mess that so
many women end up with. Right.
(12:16):
Protective of the pancreas. Interesting lately, people who want to try and live
forever have started to take metformin because it is an anti-inflammatory.
As we know, inflammation is the cause of all disease, just about all disease in humans.
And so it turns out it's not just protective of the pancreas,
it's protective of all the organs because it keeps inflammation levels down. Interesting. Okay.
(12:37):
So when she started me on that in my late 20s, I lost 50 of the 100 pounds, almost immediately.
And then I stopped. And then it became mostly the, like, you need to exercise
and eat right not to gain weight.
Aside from her freshman year of college, Maureen didn't struggle with eating problems or exercise.
(12:59):
She made good choices that she felt were good for her, and per the prevailing wisdom.
Though, of course, those directions change and continue changing and are often
harmful. But here's what she's done and learned.
I should say I'm a vegetarian. I actually grew up with a dietician.
(13:19):
I know approximately the right way to eat from that. That might be its own podcast
because what is the correct way to eat we're finding is different for everybody.
Absolutely. And how much. Yeah.
I have been on a journey of trying to make sure I eat good foods.
Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma was a huge book for me, really.
(13:40):
I'd already sort of started down this path of understanding how bad the American
diet was when I was trying to figure out what was wrong with me.
But reading that book made me realize how important it was to actually buy whole
foods from farmers, grow your own stuff, avoid processed food and ultra-processed
food and all of that stuff.
So I eat, I'm not, I'm far from a saint. I love a drink. I love a chocolate
(14:04):
cake, but I probably eat better than I ever would have if I hadn't read that book.
And my doctors are happy with the way I eat. And I know how to count calories.
(14:41):
Music.
Every day. And it was like the first generation of these new injectables.
(15:04):
Oh, yikes. Okay. And I lost about 20 pounds and then I couldn't handle it anymore.
And then in 2017, I stopped taking it.
That injectable made her feel terrible. So she dropped some weight and then went off it.
And then COVID hit. Then she maintained pretty well.
Yes, she had a little stress eating as most of us did, but she was also walking
(15:24):
a lot because there wasn't much else to do.
All was well until 2022 when her numbers started changing and i'm not just talking about the scale,
2022 i started packing on weight again and nothing had changed except my age
which of course i'm 52 almost 53 and so there's a lot of hormonal changes happening
(15:46):
right which are probably even like more
pronounced with your other probably issues yeah and
so my doctor dr bohannon who
i love was like well there's a lot of new stuff out there for you to try so
let's try it and if you don't like it then we can we can stop but we need to
(16:07):
do something because basically my numbers which had been good and she wasn't
doing it by weight it was by numbers and my numbers were good and And there's a thing called A1C,
which is the level of your sugars in your blood.
And your A1C needs to be under a certain amount or you're considered pre-diabetic and then diabetic.
And that's what type 2 diabetes is. And I had stayed under or right on the threshold
(16:29):
of pre-diabetes from 29 to 50 and was keeping under control.
And suddenly that number was rising too. So something was going on. I needed to lose weight.
And so she put me on an injectable.
And I have lost 55 pounds. Yeah. So I'm back down to the weight,
I'm back down to the weight where all of this started.
(17:45):
And when you can't lose weight, even though you're doing everything correctly
in terms of physics, because it's a physics thing, amount of calories in,
amount of calories expended should equal a reduction in weight.
Right. Which it doesn't for many people. No.
So, and when you have a diagnosis of a metabolic disorder, that is totally going to be the case.
(18:10):
Yeah. Some people, it might be the other way around where they metabolize food too fast.
Don't think the American diet really lets that to happen though.
So yeah. I was chatting with my doctor about something unrelated to weight and
she gave me an explanation and then I replied, okay, so it's normal.
And she said, no, it's common. That doesn't mean normal.
(18:33):
This is a hard pill for me to swallow at the Abbey Normal podcast where you're
weird and that's normal.
Normal what maureen has gone through is common many
many women especially have had this
journey up down try things give it all
you've got constant attention to this quote weight issue and then you eat one
(18:54):
fucking cookie and gain weight eating one cookie and gaining weight is not normal
meaning not the normal operating system of a human body even if you want to
be on this calories in calories
out, balance sheet from hell, one cookie does not and should not equal two more pounds.
(19:14):
Okay, getting back to how it went with this new injectable, Manjaro.
I hate these names. They're so silly. It sounds like a medicalized version of
mangiare, which is the verb to eat in Italian. That's terrible. It's terrible.
And so the other difference is
that it had changed from being a daily injectable to a weekly injectable.
(19:40):
And so I was like, okay, if I
only feel kind of crappy for one day instead of every day
out of every week you could do it i can
do it i can do it for a while the side
effects were a lot less bad than
the first time around though i still it's hurts
to inject it you really inject it yeah and i learned that it hurts because the
(20:03):
slow it's a slow release okay and slow release injectables are acidic and your
body is slightly alkaline so the sting is actually the difference between acid
and alkaline going into your system oh so i would numb up my leg and then,
stab it stab it okay then once it was it
wasn't the actual stabbing that hurt i mean i'm heavily tattooed needles
(20:23):
don't scare me it was actually the medicine going in the other
thing is i would get immediately a sort of malaise come upon me and i i would
do i learned very quickly that i would do this after dinner on like a monday
night and i would have just have like a tv program or something to watch and
some water because I basically would be on the couch the rest of the night.
(20:44):
It like took my night out. So was it like nauseous or fatigue or depression?
It was a fatigue, sometimes an insta headache. Okay.
A taste in the back of my mouth that wasn't quite nausea. And it was just like
this overall like, I need to lay down. Okay.
Generally the the next morning, it was fine. Sometimes I had a hard time sleeping.
(21:08):
I think I was kind of overall uncomfortable.
But then after two weeks of this, the weight started falling off.
Music.
(21:35):
But then she'll stop. That's like starvation style. Right, but that's not going
to do it. So here's the thing about these drugs.
You might only be eating 600 or 800 calories a day.
Really? But you feel sated because it basically makes you feel full when you're not.
How can you have enough energy with 600 calories?
(21:59):
I mean, it might be more than 600. I don't know. All I know is I would basically
eat half of anything that was put in front of me. Wow.
So these drugs help you feel satisfied. And that, they think,
is actually, in addition to making
you feel full, the fact that you feel satisfied is the game changer.
Music.
(22:24):
I wasn't supposed to lose weight at the dose I was on. I actually,
like, all of these injectables start very small, and you're supposed to ramp up.
I have never gotten past 2.5 milligrams a week.
Most people who are losing weight are on like 15 or 20 milligrams a week.
So we just kept it on this low dose. Weird.
And in a year and a half, I lost 55 pounds.
(22:46):
I didn't change anything else. What? I didn't change what I was eating.
I didn't change how I was exercising.
So all of my decent habits just basically got rid of my metabolic disorder.
Right. This particular drug.
Ozempic is the other injectable that everybody's heard about.
It just makes you less hungry by changing one little molecule in you.
(23:08):
The Manjaro does two things. It
makes you less hungry, but it also helps address the blood sugar issues.
(23:38):
Story. I liked that story. That was fun. I mean, I remember we must have gone
out for Stephanie's birthday. So is that July?
So she's January or February. So anyways, it must have been a year ago.
And I almost like didn't recognize you. Yeah. Like that's how fast.
It came off fast. It happened. Yeah. It came off really fast. Yeah. And it was weird.
(24:00):
Having, you know, having struggled with weight my whole life,
having been told it's not my fault.
Pretty hard to believe it's not your fault the society we live
in has a lot of opinions about
how people should look all the opinion all the
opinions and all that shit is internalized and as a
woman it is internalized in a different way there is definitely you know patriarchal
(24:24):
internalization of what the standard of beauty is even in a place like the bay
area that you know really embraces everybody letting their freak flag fly and
being whoever you want to be and being whatever size you want to be.
It's still not really okay on a lot
of levels for people sure so i i still am working through some of these emotions
(24:46):
because i basically took a magic injection but it's not magic right it's science
it solved my metabolic disorder and actually i should be feeling really proud
because the fact that it fell off that quickly means that everything else i
was doing was actually living healthily.
Yeah. But I mean, even that makes it feel like you have to say that.
(25:09):
Yeah. I do. I have to explain. We have to prove to people we're doing the right things.
We're doing all the things that you told us to do.
Like, yeah. And it's frustrating that we even feel like we have to.
But here's the thing about food in this country and body and beauty standards. We eat like crap.
(25:29):
Music.
This is not a judgment of us. Maureen.
Has a lot to share about our food supply, aka the crap that we eat.
But I'm actually going to save that for the next episode, so we can continue
to focus on what she experienced after she was in a smaller body, including this treat.
(25:50):
I bought a bunch of new clothes. You went shopping. I went shopping.
I can actually go to thrift stores and garage sales and stuff and find stuff that fits me. Amazing.
I don't have to be in the plus size section anymore, which is mentally freeing,
even though I know it shouldn't.
Like, I'm still grappling with all this stuff, too. Yeah. As well.
Well, yeah, to be a size that you haven't been since you were 29,
(26:13):
right? I mean, that's weird. Yeah, I went from basically a size 18-20 to a 12.
I'm either an extra large or a large. Mm-hmm. So, but it's nice.
It's nice to be in that range.
Yeah, to not wonder if a store is going to have your size.
(27:19):
Right of time and seeing people but then a
bunch of people i definitely had not seen since i had started the injection
and even my mother-in-law who did know what was going on they all say the same
thing they go whoa skinny mini uh-huh and i'm like what is that and then you look great.
(27:41):
And what did you do wow and
it's very positive nobody would say
a fucking thing to me if i walked in the room and
had done what i did before i started this current medication wow
you've gained a lot of weight i would never say that to you you look great you
look great they would never say that but instead all of this ingrained stuff
(28:04):
comes out yeah and i actually snapped at my mother-in-law and we get along great
but I was like why did you call me that and she's like I don't know,
and I'm like I said that phrase skinny
mini has been setting me off and I've been trying to examine why
and really it comes down to the fact is yeah okay yes I lost weight it's positive
(28:25):
my numbers are good it's positive all these things are positive but I don't
need to be told that I'm beautiful because I'm skinny far from it yeah and so
why is that important that people need to say something.
And why would they never say something to me over the years when I know that
I've packed it on because I'm having a hard time maintaining the weight because
(28:46):
of my metabolic disorder?
I don't know if I have an answer, but man, I hate the phrase skinny mini.
Did sometimes that feel good that people noticed and said, wow,
or basically did it always just rub you the wrong way? It felt good for a second.
Yeah. Like the very first one, maybe. Yeah.
But then it was also just like, why does that feel good? Because the feminist in me is like, fuck you.
(29:13):
Why does that feel good, Maureen? And why does that person have to say that
we need to change this? Right.
This is the react. And the thing is, some people I know, and of course,
a lot of these folks were like more like tertiary people in my community that
I don't know super well or know a little bit.
But like folks that are not part of my core group that I hadn't seen and I would
(29:36):
see, they'd be like, well, wow, what that usually of because it was it is a
big difference. So I'm, yes, you're forgiven for noticing. You looked like a different person.
But then, you know, folks that I knew enough would mostly be like,
well, what happened? What's going on? Yeah.
You know, they really wanted to know what I what I did. Right.
(29:56):
It's just this like, at a girl.
Yeah. You lost the weight. Now you're good. Right.
Music.
(30:44):
To notice yeah instead of just noticing
a person's presence or a way of
being yeah right how are you you seem great you seem great yeah you seem great
yeah i the thing that did it for me was i realized that for example if you have
(31:05):
cancer and you are going through chemo you also lose weight you do.
So commenting on that and telling
someone looks great is actually really inappropriate and
unkind so like if you don't know
that they want you to comment on it shut your
mouth you don't need to comment so why is weight public right that's
(31:26):
the question right why is weight public yeah um
because that reminds me my mother-in-law's very good friend sue
had cancer and one of
the jokes she made when she was because she
had she ended up losing a ton of weight and you know she didn't beat
the cancer she ended up passing away from it but she had
made this joke which we kind of chuckled about i
(31:46):
knew her too where she's like oh i'm finally at the weight i want to be you know
and for a moment you couldn't other than
the turban you couldn't tell she was sick right right yeah
so you don't know what's going on
with people no so you don't need
to comment you don't need to comment but people do need to
comment because of all the things we've just talked about so yeah
(32:08):
how do we make it better how do what do i say to people when they when i still
haven't figured out what to say to people i'll just be like yeah i've lost a
lot of weight and i feel i'm i've just try and keep it like just the facts ma'am
yeah but also just like you know i feel a lot better and try and keep it about
how i'm doing health-wise versus.
(32:29):
Yeah how do we fix it is a good question which i'm glad i'm watching this oprah
things i think they're actually trying.
But I had a friend that called me on it. This was many years ago.
And I think I was talking about like, oh, I've gained weight or, oh, I feel so fat.
It was something about myself and my body. And she was like,
(32:50):
I don't want to have a conversation like that with you anymore.
We are not talking about our bodies like that anymore.
And initially, Initially, I was like kind of butthurt about it.
I'm like, it's my feelings. It's my body. I should be able to talk, you know, about this.
But as time went on and I processed it more, like I do think we need to be calling
(33:13):
each other out on that shit. Yeah.
So was she calling you out because she did not think it was something that you should be doing?
Upset about she did she just think it was a negative way
to yes she didn't want us to talk
about our bodies like that in
a negative way in a negative way yeah yeah she didn't want
(33:35):
to talk about her body she didn't want me to talk about my body like
that she didn't want us talking about each other i mean i can't tell
you the hundreds of conversations i have had with friends over the
years that's like i'm feeling fat i'm feeling fat too
like we should start working out and then like that whole
conversation and she didn't want to play that game anymore and
it's like i think that to stop the whole
(33:55):
cycle we need to start saying
things like that i think you're right i'm sure there's like a kind you
know way to go about it but i don't know
if we have the language we don't have this is one of the reasons i was like
why okay why is why are people complimenting me on my weight loss making me
so angry and i i i am gonna do an artist book or zine about this I still haven't
(34:18):
fully articulated how to reply.
Music.
So this conversation is helping, but yeah, it's.
Yeah, right. Could it just be like, yeah, there's got to be like a thank you for the compliment.
And. Right. Like what is the little. What's the and? Yeah. The little piece
(34:42):
of like information about this actually hurts me.
Yeah. Yeah. Because I think inherent in the compliment is always at least the
implication that I was disgusting beforehand.
Exactly. What does that mean I was before? Correct. And that you noticed I was
disgusting. Right. And now I am more appealing to your eyes. Right. Yeah.
Which doesn't feel good. Which doesn't feel good. And, you know,
(35:04):
I think about all the things that I said growing up about,
like, and these are all the things that we were told, like, you're Rubenesque,
you're, in certain periods, you would have been the perfect body type.
She has such a pretty face.
Oh, yeah. Love that one. Yeah, that's a good one. Such a pretty face.
(35:26):
But, like, there's a lesson here, right? Like, beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
but never before has it been so supported by capitalism and the need for profit.
And so how do I say that? Thank you for noticing. Please don't let your internalized
patriarchy and capitalist training inform this compliment.
(35:49):
Okay, how do we make that into something nice? Because that was not an elevator pitch.
We got to boil that down. Exactly. I'm like, please send my TED Talk. Yeah, right?
There you go. Please see the podcast. You could just have a little QR code.
They can just scan for more information.
Yeah, here's Abbey Normal's podcast. This is just the beginning of the conversation.
Music.
(36:33):
I got a coupon for about the first three or four months. After that,
the full amount kicked in, which is about $1,200 for four weeks. Oh, what?
It's crazy. And they would not cover it because I am not diabetic.
She gave it to me so I would not become diabetic. So I would lose the weight.
And so it is untenable long term currently to continue taking it because who
(36:58):
can afford basically 20 grand a year for a drug? Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
And also, it is so frustrating that they're like, oh, FYI, you're pre-diabetic,
which means you're for sure going to get diabetes if you don't make big changes in your life.
And then you have a drug that basically fixes that.
Right. But they're not going to pay for that. They're not going to pay for that.
(37:19):
So they're just going to wait. Yeah. Until you have diabetes.
Yeah. And we appealed it about five times. That is frustrating.
So. So. So I took it until about two months ago. Okay.
I told my doctor that I needed to stop for a while because it had started to
(37:41):
actually make me feel, I had tapered off from once a week to twice a month.
And I was doing fine, like wasn't gaining weight. And then I was like,
okay, three weeks, wasn't gaining weight. Every four weeks, still wasn't gaining weight.
But every time I took it, I felt worse. and
the last few times i took the shot i just felt terrible and
so i have stopped and i'm going
(38:02):
to see if i can because according to my labs i no longer have a metabolic disorder
so now i am trying to live without the injectable though i know the numbers
aren't in my favor most people who stop this injectable will gain it all back
right i'm really hoping i can figure this out So far, so good.
I gained about five pounds back, and then I stopped gaining.
(38:25):
And I feel like in the last four weeks, I haven't gained a pound,
and I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what I can eat every day and
the amount of exercises.
Music.
(39:36):
I had done something wrong, right? What is really interesting is that now that
I technically don't have the metabolic disorder anymore, I still,
when I did gain those few pounds, when I stopped taking those a couple of months
ago, I was having those feelings.
Now that it's under control and now I know how I feel every day and I feel different.
I feel differently than I did before I started taking the drug and I'm still,
(40:00):
was still on all those other medications.
So it has actually allowed me to forgive myself a little bit because I now realized
that my internal feeling is different than when I was on this other stuff.
And then it really was necessary to control how much I was eating and how I
was metabolizing food. Now I'm like, I'm not having blood sugar crashes.
(40:21):
I don't get hangry. I don't need to go grab a bunch of food.
And even with all those other drugs, I would still get that stuff.
So it's made it a little little easier for me to start to let it go. Yeah.
I mean, you've gained clarity about yourself, right?
Like how you operate, you know more about yourself. Absolutely.
And it's not something that I minded talking about, but internally I was always a little sad.
(40:47):
I don't know why I was sad, but I knew that I would never be normal,
quote unquote quote, normal. I'm doing air quotes here.
And I don't know why that still mattered, but it did. I was just, it's exhausting.
It's exhausting. I didn't want to get sick. I didn't want to,
and I just really wanted to, and I, you know, I love clothes.
(41:09):
I just really wanted to go buy clothes and look good.
And, but I didn't always feel good.
And I had a problem. It like, since that happened, my self-esteem took a big
hit and it's been, it was really hard to work, work back to a place where that
self-esteem was back and it was before it started the weight loss.
Most of the time like when you were gaining you
(41:31):
felt like when i was gaining i felt like shit again yeah even
though i knew it wasn't my fault and that stuff
is really hard to grapple with you know i had a moment when we
were all at the house in pasadena
altadena up in the hills i hadn't worn a bathing suit in public for a long time
i was even though you're all people and you didn't give a fuck it was really
(41:53):
hard for me to put that bathing suit on and come out i it is really nice not
to have to feel that badly about myself anymore and that's the forgiveness,
no i you know i i don't really totally care anymore like i'm like pretty excited
that we're gonna go to the pool and you got your cute new vintage swimsuit but
(42:16):
55 pounds ago i don't know if I could have done it. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You know what I remember about sitting in the hot tub?
Is we have a male friend, and I don't know why I asked him this,
because this is a stupid-ass question to ask, but I think I asked him something
like, what kind of girl are you into? You did. I remember this conversation.
(42:41):
I said something like, someone who's fit.
Which, that is a thing many dudes out there would say, and I think he's a lovely
person, but I'm just filled with rage at that kind of answer.
Like, fuck you. What does fit even mean?
Right. You mean fucking skinny. With probably big boobs. Probably.
(43:01):
That's what you actually mean.
Yeah. Because there's people in this hot tub right now who are hella fit.
And this is not the body type that you're talking about. So shut up. Exactly.
I didn't say any of that, but. No, I kind of, I did an inward eye roll.
And I also love him. But yeah, it's like. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. But those are the kind of, back to kind of what you were talking
(43:23):
about as far as your attitude towards yourself.
Right. Those are the attitudes that are ingrained in us.
Internalized. Not just him, women too. All of us. Yes. That's what I was going
to say. He learned that that was the correct answer.
Sure. Sure. I mean, you know, he's in his 40s. That actually might be what floats
his boat now. But where did that come from?
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and this idea that somehow thin equals fit,
(43:46):
equals attractive, equals right, equals taking care of yourself, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah. Right. Right, it's very frustrating.
(45:05):
Music.
(46:11):
Music.
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