'You Just Need to Lose Weight' aims to change your thinking about being 'fat'

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Author and podcast host Aubrey Gordon brings up an important reminder early in today's episode: In the United States, the average size is plus-sized. And yet there's an overwhelmingly negative connotation attached to both the word "fat" and to fat bodies. Gordon explores those societal taboos – as well as some of the misinformation surrounding them – in her new book, You Just Need to Lose Weight. She tells NPR's Juana Summers that there's a lot of power in reframing concerns about body image, especially when it comes to addressing judgments we may hold against ourselves.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Aubrey Gordon is on the pod today. She's co-host of the popular podcast maintenance phase, which digs into the science and history behind wellness and diet fads. She's got a new book out called You Just Need to Lose Weight and 19 Other Myths About Fat People. And in it, she unpacks the ways we, as a society, talk to and about fat people. And in it, she unpacks the ways we as a society talk to and about fat people.
0:24.2	And there's one point in this conversation with NPR's Juana Summers, where they start talking about seeing the very word fat as neutral, which is interesting, right?
0:33.6	Like, I've been guilty of pulling the whole like, oh, you're not fat.
0:36.7	Don't say that.
0:37.4	Stick to friends. And, you know, I was trying to be well-intentioned. But according to Gordon,
0:42.7	what I was actually doing was, quote, shadowboxing with my own assumptions of what it means to be a fat person.
0:50.0	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:54.7	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
0:59.2	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
1:01.2	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
1:05.0	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:08.5	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your
1:12.1	podcasts. This time of year, there's a lot of pressure to change the way you look. And a lot of
1:19.5	that pressure is rooted in what author and podcast host Aubrey Gordon describes as anti-fatness.
1:25.5	Anti-fatness is a sort of web of beliefs, interpersonal practices, institutional policies
1:34.1	that are designed to keep fat people sort of on the margins.
1:38.4	And along with that come myths, a whole lot of them about fat people.
1:43.5	Myths like being fat as a choice.
1:46.0	Researchers have been clear for years that our body size isn't solely or even primarily the
1:53.2	result of our own choices. Or that BMI, body mass index, is a reliable way to measure health.
2:00.0	The BMI was not developed by a health care provider.
2:03.1	It was developed by a mathematician, statistician, and astronomer working exclusively with data
	...

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