Welcome to The Waves, Slate's podcast about gender, feminism, and the tricky topic of

weight loss.

Every episode you get a new host to talk about the thing we cannot get off of our minds.

And today you've got me, Shannon Paulis, a senior editor at Slate.

Recently, I ran an essay by someone who was on ozembek, a hot new drug that has been used

for weight loss.

This writer was prescribed the drug because of her BMI, and she describes the horrible

fat phobia that made her want to take it.

But she also now feels shame for taking a weight loss drug.

In the essay, the anonymous writer asks, am I vain for wanting to lose weight through

a doctor-recommended method?

Is it my responsibility to be well-adjusted enough to be unaffected by societal fat phobia

and misogyny?

This is the double-bind, maybe triple-bind, so many of us find ourselves in.

To think through some of the sticky questions around it, I wanted to talk to Tamara Haspel.

She's been a journalist for over 20 years and is the author of books including To Boldly

Grow, Finding Joy, Adventure, and Dinner in Your Own Backyard.

She thinks about food and health from a lot of different angles.

She writes a column for The Washington Post about food and nutrition.

One of her recent columns was specifically on weight loss, and how there are tons and

tons of different strategies from cutting carbs to intermittent fasting.

They all have fancy, sciencey explanations, but they all obscure what to her mind is the

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