Why Self Love Won't Save Us With Dr Lindo Bacon

01/31/21 • 55 min

There's no-one on the planet like my awesome friend Dr Lindo Bacon! It's been more than 4 years since we got to hang out drinking wine in a hot tub in the Napa Valley, and even though we can't see each other in person, I am SO HAPPY to kick off the new year and a new season of the All Fired Up podcast with them! Do not miss this fiercely loving wisdom from Lindo, who has NAILED the problem with self-love and is calling for a revolution - not of self-care but of BELONGING! We don't need to fall in love with our bodies - we need to work on healing our entire society, we need radical change - EQUALITY, and JUSTICE, and we need to ALLOW DIVERSITY! Basically, if all humans are welcome - if all humans belong - we can heal. Lindo has come a long way since their first book Health At Every Size, and we had an awesome conversation about how their perspective has changed - and all about their fabulous new book "Radical Belonging: How to Survive and Thrive in an Unjust World (While Transforming it for the Better). This is a not-to-be-missed episode!!

Show Transcript

LOUISE: Thank you so much for coming on the show, Lindo. Welcome.

LINDO: Oh, I’ve always wanted to do this, Louise. It’s always such a pleasure to hang out with you.

LOUISE: I know!

LINDO: So, I can’t believe we haven’t done this sooner.

LOUISE: I can’t believe it either, but I’m so excited we’re talking about your new book as the reason to have you here. But I’m just...I’ve got so much to say and talk about, but it is so awesome to get to chat to you. But, you know, before we kick off...it’s been like over four years since...because we hung out in like, live, when I came in 2016 which was just before Trump got elected.

LINDO: Oh, is that the timing? Yeah?

LOUISE: Yeah! And now I’m talking to you just a couple of days after that whole period’s ended and we’ve got a new president. Isn’t that weird?

LINDO: It is. I remember just relaxing in a hot tub with you in the Napa Valley, which is wine country in California, talking about the election.

LOUISE: I know, I know, right? What a wild memory now, thinking of...the fact that I can’t even get on a plane.

LINDO: Yeah, so...present tense, what are we talking about today?

LOUISE: Yes, so I want to know what is firing you up at the moment?

LINDO: What’s firing me up...lately I’ve been listening to all this ‘body positivity’ and what’s getting me is that everybody is preaching this ‘self-love’ message. And self-love, yeah, it’s a gorgeous thing and I wish it for everybody. But there’s this idea that that’s what’s going to save us, and we have to do all the internal work on ourselves. And it makes the whole ‘body liberation’ journey very individual. And that’s not what it’s about, because we can love ourselves fully and completely, and then we walk into a world where people tell us there’s something wrong with us. Whether it’s that we’re too fat, or we’re denied an opportunity because of our skin colour. So, I want people to know that as beautiful as self-love is, it’s not enough to save us. We also have to be working on social change. Because we’re individuals in a context, and if we forget the context then we end up blaming ourselves that we can’t love ourselves, and then it becomes problematic. But it’s hard to love ourselves in a culture that doesn’t support us.

LOUISE: Absolutely.

LINDO: That’s what’s on my mind right now.

LOUISE: Yeah, this is so absolutely necessary, and this is very much your book.

LINDO: Can I tell you a very funny thing? I was very proud to see that Radical Belonging, my book, is selling well. And it’s jumped up on Amazon’s best seller list.

LOUISE: Really?

LINDO: Yeah, it’s near the top of Amazon’s vest seller list. But here’s the thing, it’s the self-help best seller list. And I explicitly have a chapter in there that’s titled something like ‘why self-help is not enough’. You know? Just trying to get away from that. But it makes me laugh, I’ll take it, you know? I’m glad the book is getting around, and I’m glad the book is getting around to people who are interested in self-help. So that it can help to expand their horizons a bit.

LOUISE: It helps them hopefully to abandon self-help and start changing the world. Oh wow. You have led this whole...I wouldn’t say body positivity, I’d talk about Health at Every Size®, HAES®. You’ve done three books, you’ve done ‘Health at Every Size’, which a lot of people refer to as one of the original textbooks of HAES®. And you did Body Respect, which was co-authored with Lucy Aphramor, and then Radical Belonging is your third book. And like all of us, it’s such a process, this HAES® perspective. I’m interested to ask you how things have changed for you since you first wrote HAES®, up until now. That’s a big question.

15:48

LINDO: It is. I’ll keep it short, because there’s a shor...

Show Transcript

LOUISE: Thank you so much for coming on the show, Lindo. Welcome.

LINDO: Oh, I’ve always wanted to do this, Louise. It’s always such a pleasure to hang out with you.

LOUISE: I know!

LINDO: So, I can’t believe we haven’t done this sooner.

LINDO: Oh, is that the timing? Yeah?

LOUISE: Yeah! And now I’m talking to you just a couple of days after that whole period’s ended and we’ve got a new president. Isn’t that weird?

LINDO: It is. I remember just relaxing in a hot tub with you in the Napa Valley, which is wine country in California, talking about the election.

LOUISE: I know, I know, right? What a wild memory now, thinking of...the fact that I can’t even get on a plane.

LINDO: Yeah, so...present tense, what are we talking about today?

LOUISE: Yes, so I want to know what is firing you up at the moment?

LOUISE: Absolutely.

LINDO: That’s what’s on my mind right now.

LOUISE: Yeah, this is so absolutely necessary, and this is very much your book.

LINDO: Can I tell you a very funny thing? I was very proud to see that Radical Belonging, my book, is selling well. And it’s jumped up on Amazon’s best seller list.

LOUISE: Really?

15:48

LINDO: It is. I’ll keep it short, because there’s a shor...

Previous Episode

Jillian Michaels' Igno-Rant About Intuitive Eating

There's nothing more infuriating than when people throw shade at the anti-diet perspective without bothering to actually research it. When "The Biggest Loser" trainer/shameless fatphobe Jillian Michaels arrogantly released a Youtube clip trashing the 10 principles of intuitive eating, WITHOUT EVEN READING THE BOOK, she REALLY pi***ed off the community! And none more so than my guests, anti-diet fitness trainers Anna Hearn and Shreen El Masry, who have been dying to come on the podcast and set the record straight! Finally the COVID window opened just a crack so I could record the very first IN PERSON podcast! Join us as we dissect Jillian's often hilarious inability to comprehend a life beyond diet prison. WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS 'PERMISSION TO EAT!!' It seems the lady doth protest too much - could it be that the Queen of Diet Prison is sensing the paradigm-shifting power of the anti-diet revolution? That's right folks, the unrivalled reign of Biggest Loser-esque terror is over!! Vive La Difference! Please note - this episode comes with a hefty side serve of calorie count discussions, so if you're in recovery from an eating disorder please consider your level of spoons to hear the diet talk. But, if you've had a gutful of igno-rants about anti-dieting, it's time to get ALL FIRED UP!

Show Transcript:

LOUISE: So, here I am with Anna and Shreen. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

ANNA: Thank you for having us.

SHREEN: Yeah, thank you so much.

LOUISE: It’s so exciting to be alive with actual humans in the room, and slightly weird. Why don’t you guys tell me all about what is firing you up?

ANNA: We’re really fired up about Jillian Michaels and her aggressive fatphobic rant on intuitive eating.

LOUISE: (sighs) First of all, I have to say I love how you say ‘rant’, it’s very proper and awesome. But yes, Jillian Michaels – Biggest Loser trainer in the United States. Horrendously fatphobic.

ANNA: Yeah, I mean ... she got her living, she makes her living from shaming fat bodies. I think that tells a lot about her character and where she’s going to go with her intuitive eating rant.

LOUISE: So, she was on the Biggest Loser for years and years and years. Her website ... well, she’s touting herself as the world’s best trainer. Like, the biggest expert in the world on all things fitness. Which, well ... this is just a hunch, but I could find people on the planet who are more qualified.

ANNA: Well, if you want to break down her qualifications, I think it looks like she’s done a couple of personal training qualifications, a couple of fitness qualifications and ...

SHREEN: One ‘woo woo’ nutrition qualification.

ANNA: There is a nutrition qualification there too, but it doesn’t look like there’s any degrees or anything. So, when it comes to intuitive eating and looking at all of that, when we go into it you’ll realise, I think, that she hasn’t really done her research. She doesn’t understand it. And I think it’s interesting that somebody without that nutrition background or lived experience with that sort of thing talks about it the way that she does.

SHREEN: I think as well, not only does she come across really aggressive and shaming, also I think her insecurity is really coming out in this video. Intuitive eating is a movement that’s really starting to take off, and she’s clearly threatened by it. You can see her defence mechanism is up, and she’s ... you know, really, just ... her demeanour is just awful.

LOUISE: It's hard to tell, though, if her demeanour’s just awful because she’s defensive or because her demeanour’s just awful.

SHREEN: Yeah, that’s true.

ANNA: I kind of picked up on that and thought she was sensing a threat because intuitive eating is becoming more mainstream, people are becoming more aware of it. So that could threaten what she does, because she makes a living forcing people to lose weight.

LOUISE: So, during the 90’s and the early 2000’s, like ... it was a free-for-all with bullying people with larger bodies, as we saw. World-wide, the Biggest Loser was the number one show, and everyone thought it was okay. So, she’s had this unfettered ability to be horrible about body size and really belittling of people in larger bodies. And now, I think she’s realising it’s not okay to keep on doing that.

ANNA: The backlash about it.

LOUISE: So, just to set the stage. What we’re seeing ... because I did see the internet blow up. It was a while ago now, but let’s face it - we’ve all been in iso and unable to talk to each other. So, she has like a YouTube channel and one of her YouTube little presentations - I don’t watch what she does, just for my own mental health - but this one was Jillian Michaels talking about intuitive eating. Which, oh my god ... let’s just get Donald Trump talking about sexism.

ANNA: That’s a great analogy.

SHREEN: S...

Next Episode

#Please Stop Inspiring Me With Summer Innanen

The news media are a major source of diet culture BS. Every day there's an apparently "inspirational" story in which diverse bodies are shrunk down to diet culture's version of acceptability. We're literally brainwashed into viewing increasingly disordered, bizarre and downright dangerous behaviours as "#inspirational". Join me and my guest, anti-diet warrior and coach Summer Innanen as we present some truly epic examples of "SHITSPIRATION" from Australia and Canada. You will not believe how ludicrous they are! Grown up humans are supposed to be #inspired by a 'doubledown diet' which reduces calorie intake to almost nothing, a BARBIE DOLL (I am not joking), and....a Malamute? You have to hear this to believe it, it's next level #ridiculous. Trigger warning for this episode - very explicit language and we're discussing diet, calorie counts, etc, in (critical) detail. This one's not for the faint hearted! But if you're ready to get your rage-o-meter cranked up to ALL FIRED UP, this episode's for you!

Show Transcript

Louise Adams: Oh, Summer, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Summer Innanen: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here with you.

Louise Adams: Tell me, what's firing you up?

Summer Innanen: Well, I saw an article recently in Women's Health, and it's about... it's supposed to be like a, you know, quote unquote 'weight loss inspiration story'. And it's about a woman who had a very significant weight loss experience by doing a very disordered diet. And I think what fired me up so much about it was not just the content within it, which I'm sure we'll you know, dissect and talk about it. But the fact that in 2015, in December 2015, Women's Health came out and it was a huge... we got a lot of headlines, a lot of publicity around the fact that they were taking the words, 'bikini body' and 'drop two sizes' off of their covers.

So they sort of made this like quasi- body- positive stance. Like, 'hey, we've heard you, our readers. And we've heard that, you know, you don't like us sort of using this very patriarchal, sexist language'. Yeah. Yeah. And so, like I remember at the time this was shared, like even people within the sort of anti-diet community were sharing it, saying 'this is great, like nice to see a major publications sort of making these changes' and then, you know, to, to look and see here we are five years later and it's the same shit.

Louise Adams: It's back.

Summer Innanen: Worse. Like I would argue what this what's contained in this article is so terrible from the perspective of promoting disordered eating and like really what this person is talking about is like, the way that they eat to me sounds like a, like an eating disorder, which obviously like I'm not here to diagnose or go...

Louise Adams: it's disordered eating practices. Right? It's promoting starvation.

Summer Innanen: Yeah. So it's a combination of keto and intermittent fasting. So it's like keto isn't bad enough on its own. So it's like, we're going to make intermittent fasting onto it.

Louise Adams: It's an unholy marriage.

Summer Innanen: It is honestly, and that's like, for me, I think why I was so fired up about it too, is because when I sort of reached the end of the line with my own disordered relationship with food, I was doing, I was trying to...attempting, it would only last like three days...to do something kind of similar.

And it's what absolutely destroyed my body. Like just... like put me into amenorrhea, even with like a higher body weight percentage, and like completely disrupted my hormones. And when I work with clients, I see the same kind of behaviors really being kind of the end of the line for a lot of people.

Like the one that really, really kind of messes up their head and their physical, like their actual, you know, physiology a lot worse than other diets that they have done previously.

Louise Adams: Oh, this is an awesome thing to get completely fired up about because like we have Women's Health magazine here, which is... it's not health, it's women's starving magazine. They did no such thing as like...to tell us that they're not going to do the 'bikini body', but how gaslighting to say, 'Oh, we're not going to do that anymore. Hello, here's something worse'. And like to use that kind of little bit of that... they just wanted the publicity of that. 'We want to perform the idea of body positivity, but like, hell no, we're not actually going to stick to that'.

Summer Innanen: Yes, yes.

Louise Adams: It's going to go back to this apparently inspirational behaviour of this lady. Who is doing the very thing that tipped you into...