Realfoodology - 73: Evidence Based Body Positivity with Jonathan Bailor
Episode Date: December 22, 2021Jonathan Bailor has a new approach to the body positivity movement and I think it is a much healthier approach. What do you think? Check Out Jonathan: https://jonathanbailor.com/ https://bettermovi...e.com/
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On today's episode of the Real Foodology Podcast.
I think at the end of the day, it's a simple question that I would encourage everybody to ask themselves, which is, does your body enable you to do everything you want to do?
And if it does, F and high five.
Like, that's awesome.
Good.
Please go help other people achieve the same thing.
If it doesn't, you deserve better, period.
Hi, everyone.
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology podcast.
I'm Courtney Swan, your host.
If you're new here, I am a nutritionist with my Master's of Science in Nutrition and Integrative
Health.
My mission with Real Foodology is really simple.
I just want everyone
to feel really good in their bodies. So every week I aim to share information that maybe you
have not heard elsewhere that could really help you in bettering your health and just feeling
good in your body. That's my goal. If you have been listening to the podcast for a little while,
you will probably recognize today's guest, Jonathan Baylor. He is the founder
and CEO of the metabolic healing and diabesity treatment company called Sane Solution. He is
also the producer and starred in the film Better. And he's also the author of the book, A Calorie
Myth. If you have not listened to our other episode yet, all about diabetes, I highly recommend going back and listening to it.
It is such a great conversation.
And what I love so much about Jonathan is that he really
brings compassion to a subject that is pretty hard to talk
about.
And well, today's subject is also pretty hard to talk about.
I brought him back on today because I really wanted to talk
about body positivity with him.
And I wanted to hear him speak specifically to what he calls evidence-based body positivity,
which is simply just combining science with love and self-acceptance.
We really dive into this subject because we wanted to talk about what the body positivity
movement has gotten wrong.
And what I love so much about this evidence-based body
positivity is that it allows individuals to love themselves so much that they choose to live better
through proven science, practical habits, and powerful love. We eat, think, live, and move
better with no shame and no starvation. According to Jonathan, the key with evidence-based body
positivity is that individuals no longer have to choose between being shamed into an unhealthy skinny body or surrendering their body to the diseases of obesity and diabetes.
They can both end body shame and diabetes.
We do not have to choose between one or the other.
And this is what I love so much about his message.
Now, I like to sometimes give these disclaimers when I have a conversation that can be of
sensitive nature for some people.
So I guess consider this a bit of a trigger warning.
You know, Jonathan and I wanted to be very sensitive to this topic.
And we spent a lot of time preparing for this episode. He and I spent
a lot of hours on the phone going back and forth talking about this, emailing about it. We had
Zoom calls because we really wanted to make sure that we we treaded this conversation lightly and
that we came from a place of love and compassion because really that is what is missing about this
conversation is that there should not be shame. There shouldn't be pointing of fingers and it's
not about being right or wrong or good or bad. It's simply just about following the facts and
following the science while also naming that this is a very sensitive and emotional conversation. You know, the topic of food and our
bodies are just really sensitive conversations and they're pretty loaded and rightfully so.
There's no denying that. So we just wanted to make sure that we brought a lot of love and
compassion to this conversation. And I just wanted to say that before we went into the conversation.
Our goal is for everyone to feel
loved and accepted. And we do not want anyone coming out of this conversation feeling shame
whatsoever. So I just wanted to put that out there. And I really hope that you guys love this
conversation. As always, you can reach out to me on Instagram. If you have any questions or you
have some feedback for me, my Instagram is at real foodology. Did you know
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Hey guys, Drake Peterson here, Courtney's producer. There was a fantastic conversation
that happened after the interview between Courtney and Jonathan Baylor. I really thought
that you should listen to it. So I decided to put it in after the health non-negotiables. So
make sure you stick around towards the end of the show so you can hear this amazing story.
Thanks for listening to the Real Foodology Podcast.
Sweet. Well, I am so excited to have Jonathan Baylor back on today if you guys remember I had
him on a couple months ago on the podcast and it was such an amazing conversation that I wanted to
bring him back to have more of a conversation around body positivity in particular and what's
so funny is well one we were a little bit nervous to have this conversation like full disclosure
because we want to be really sensitive.
It's a very sensitive conversation.
And we really want to bring compassion to this conversation.
And both of us really care about health.
You know, we want to reduce human suffering.
And so that's why we feel like it's a really important conversation to have.
And this conversation has been a long time coming.
We've tried to do this multiple times.
We've had to reschedule.
We've had all these conversations on the phone about it, really trying to just make sure that we knew what we were
talking about and we wanted to bring compassion to it, like I said. So I'm very excited to have
you on to talk about this. Finally, we connected. Thank you, Courtney. Yeah, it's absolutely great
to be here. And I do think the universe had a plan for us here because as you mentioned,
we rescheduled this a couple of
times and some things happened uh between when we originally thought we were going to talk and
since being rescheduled and it's really changed even you know what i thought i would bring to the
show today so can i tell you the story that yeah changed my thinking about body positivity and this
this evidence-based body positivity that we've talked about previously. I'm excited to hear it. Yeah. Drop it on me. Let's go.
All right, cool. Cool. So as you, as you may or may not have seen, uh, I am the like official
personal growth advisor to the Miss America organization. Cause they're going through
a complete overhaul of their brand and their competition. There's no swimsuit competition
anymore. It's
about performance. It's about empowering great women for the world and empowering the world for
great women. And there was a lot of conversation about body positivity. And then I was given the
opportunity to help some of the candidates who are getting ready to compete on a nationally
televised event in December, create some social media
content. And I was like, okay, so what is some great social media content we could create together?
Maybe around body positivity. And I went on TikTok and I typed in body positivity.
The first 10 images I saw were of women in bathing suits.
Wow.
They were just maybe the women you wouldn't traditionally think would post pictures of themselves in bathing suits.
But they were still women in bathing suits.
And in that moment, like this is just hand to God truth. I got to take a step back here because if anyone thinks that I am telling Miss America competitors to post pictures of themselves in bathing suits on the Internet to be body positive, I'm done.
Like my career is over. I'm encouraging young women to post pictures of themselves almost naked on the internet. I can't do that.
And what I then thought to myself is, well, interesting. So at the end of the day,
whether it's body positive or not body positive, it's still centering on appearance.
And I said to myself, and this was the breakthrough, like, why don't we just talk about performance, not about appearance?
And let me give you a concrete example, because we can have all sorts of debates about appearance, right?
Does your body enable you to do what you want it to do?
That's sort of the question.
That's not debatable. And that's,
that's nothing that would even upset anybody, right? Like if you want to walk up the stairs
and you can't, you would love if your body enabled you to walk up the stairs. If you wanted to
play with your grandkids, but you can't pick them up because your back hurts so much. Everyone would want their back to not
hurt. So body positivity, I think there's a lot of great, there's a lot of goodness to it. But at
the end of the day, if you think about it, it's still telling us that we should be focusing on
our appearance. Yes. I'm so glad that you brought this up. Because this is something. This is why
personally, I have not been able to get behind this, this new wave of body positivity, I really
believe that it started out with great intentions. Because, you know, of course, we're trying to say
F you diet culture, and yo yo dieting and all of that that comes with it. But like you said,
all we've done now is that we're just,
we're still focusing on the weight. We've just now given it a whole new range that's now quote
unquote acceptable. But where is the conversation about the health of your body? And this is what
I say on this podcast all the time that for me personally, health means like, I want to feel
good in my body. I want to be able to wake up with energy, show up to my life, be able to do the things I want to do. I love being active every day. That to me is where
true health comes from. And so why are we focusing so much on like the shape and the size of a body,
no matter what the shape and size is, you know, like that, that, that should be like,
why are we even focusing on that? Exactly. And an analogy that I was using to try to explain this to the miss america candidates
was that of let's look at an olympic female figure skater let's look at an olympic female
shot putter and let's look at an olympic female basketball player their bodies are all very
different and the appearance of their body is completely irrelevant to their objectives at life
like their bodies are there to enable them to be great period so what like and if you think about
this is like it's it's actually a really it's misogynistic as hell. Even the concept of body positivity, like if you
really think about it, because guys don't really talk about body positivity. They don't really
talk about being positive because men aren't evaluated based on their appearance. The more
attention we're giving to body positivity, the more we are ingraining, right? I have two little girls. I do not want them
to focus their lives on how they look, period. I do want them to focus their lives on achieving
that which they want out of life, which is performance, not appearance. So just, let's
just shift the conversation. That's what, that's that's what evidence based body positivity is. How do we enable our bodies
to lead to a positive life for us? I love that. Yeah. And then, you know, and I was thinking
about this as you're saying it, like, why are we not focusing on how you feel? And let's look at
lab work instead, because I've said this all the time with health, like, why are we not focusing on how you feel? And let's look at lab work instead,
because I've said this all the time with health, like, I can't really look at someone and give
anything any indication about their health, obviously, past a certain point, if you're
carrying a lot of extra body fat that the science shows that that's not going to be healthy for us.
But outside of that, like, I want to see people's blood work. So why are we not talking about the
inside because health comes from the inside, not the outside. I can't look at you and be like, oh yeah, you just look like
totally healthy to me. I would love to see blood work to really see where you're at. And then again,
the indication spot should be, how do you feel in your body? And are you able to do the things
that you want to do? And that indication spot to me is key because I think even, even health to me
has become a word almost like electrolytes,
but people use it. They're like, electrolytes are good. No one really knows what electrolytes are.
They put them in sports drinks. People, it's like, are, are you healthy? Well, let's define that in
a way that I think is practical to people. Are you able to do what you want to do? Because like,
let's say you're a professional sumo wrestler.
Let's say the way you provide for your family is by sumo wrestling. I love it. Right. You're, you're going to want a different body than if the way you provide for your family is by sitting at
a computer terminal for 16 hours a day. You, you, so it's, it's really, cause even, I don't know, for me, this is a,
not, not just for me, I know for a lot of people, this is a deeply emotional issue.
And when we start talking about things like lab work and so on and so forth, I think,
especially for me, cause I'm a scientist, I'm an engineer, I'll geek out and we start to have a
logical conversation about an emotional issue. And I think we can all get behind.
Does your body enable you or not?
If it enables you, awesome.
Keep going.
If not, you deserve better.
Period.
Well, and you brought up a really good point that I would like to go into
for a second. I think that the, also the piece that's missing is the mental, mental health aspect
of it. Because if you, if, if someone has gone through something traumatic or maybe not even
that traumatic, like there's just no denying that food is a comfort place for a lot of people.
And there's no shame in that. But if you are having some sort of emotional response to your
food, food is the first thing that you turn to, again, there's no shame, but let's get to the
root cause of that and address those issues first. And then it's going to make your relationship with
food a lot easier. Food is 100% a coping mechanism for everybody. And I think that
people frequently talk about emotional eating as if it is a bad thing or even a thing that can be
avoided. And I don't think it's a bad thing. And I don't think it can be avoided. I think unless
you are the most Spock-like individual in the world, or there's an old
joke that if you tell a professional bodybuilder to eat dog poop because it will help them
build muscle, they'll do it because they're just like, I eat food to, you know, or if
you're an Olympic athlete, but for everybody else, food is more than just fuel for us.
It's how we experience life. It's how we experience joy.
So, and the good news is there's no flavor. There's no like sweet, salty, bitter, umami,
like those are all available to us in healthy and empowering ways. So I think if we can simply
focus on eating better and, you know, shameless plug, that is the name of the film that we did
with some top doctors at Harvard Medical School, which tries to outline exactly this, you know, shameless plug, that is the name of the film that we did with some top doctors at Harvard Medical School, which tries to outline exactly this. You know, this is a
much deeper problem than just trying to will your way into eating less. And shame is not relevant
at all here. And frankly, this isn't even about appearance. It's about your ability to have a
glorious life and how you perform in that life, eat emotionally and eat empowering foods
emotionally. That's a really rich and enjoyable life to me. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and if we,
if we were to change the focus and put it more on, again, to performance and feeling better in
your body. So this is, this has been a driving force for me and my health and it helps
me and it drives my food choices because I've gotten to a place where I know the foods that
make me feel really bad. And I know like if I'm consciously making that decision, I'm like, man,
you know what, I'm gonna go for it. But I know I'm not gonna feel better, or I'm not gonna feel
good later. That's okay. Because there's also like making those conscious decisions and knowing going
into it, like, okay, I'm probably not going to feel that great or whatever, but it's totally
fine. I really wanted this one thing. And then I go back to it again. But to be honest, like
I don't, I don't choose those foods that often anymore. And this is why I believe the education
around this is so important because if we aren't focusing on health and also just educating people
on how to eat better to, uh, make their performance better, then we're doing a disservice to people.
Because if we can teach people how to make these better choices to feel better in their body, you're going to automatically start going towards those healthier choices because you start recognizing like, oh, wow, when I eat these things, they make me feel better. And it's a very deliberate and conscious and
empowering choice rather than this moral issue. Because so often we do moralize food, right? I'm
bad because I ate a cupcake versus I didn't perform well in that meeting because I ate a cupcake.
And now you're not good, bad, right or wrong. What is the data? The data is I ate a cupcake. Now, and now you're not good, bad, right, or wrong.
What is the data? The data is I ate a cupcake and I was up all night on the toilet.
Do I want to do that again? Yes or no? It's your choice, right? And that's if you prefer the, uh, if you prefer smoking cigarettes to experiencing the quality of life you could
have without smoking cigarettes, right? Like that's your choice. And I think that if we can
just talk about performance rather than appearance, we, we can, if we present a problem in a certain way,
we can never make forward progress. And this is sort of a tangent, right? But if you,
if you tell someone like, controversial issue, we're not going to talk about it in this podcast,
I'm just giving an example. Abortion, very controversial issue, right? So if you ask
someone, like, why do you think killing babies is okay?
Nothing else can happen.
The way you presented the problem will prevent any sort of forward progress or momentum.
I think, and this is the big break.
I've been doing this for a long time. And this was like one of the most watershed moments of my entire career of doing this.
Until we completely abandon appearance as a benchmark, we will not actually make meaningful progress.
We have to go, we have to move to the benchmark as simply, does your body enable you to do what you want to do? And honestly, for some people, they might say, all I want to do is sit on the couch and watch television. That
is literally what I want to do with my life. As long as you're not harming anyone else,
I have no problem with you sitting on your couch. More power to you.
And no good, bad, right or wrong.
But what does break my heart is when people that I love and care about and who people that I know want something out of their life and can't get it.
And they could if they just ate different foods.
That breaks my heart.
Because anytime we see someone suffering and not having what they want, it doesn't matter what I want for them. It's what they want for them in their life.
And they could have it and they don't.
If we're an empathetic person, that breaks our heart.
And I think that's why we're here,
because we want to say, look, if you are not getting out of your life what you want,
if you're not getting out of your body what you want, there are ways to do that that are enjoyable
and that are available to everybody. And I can promise you, it has nothing to do with shame.
It has nothing to do with starvation. And it has nothing to do with diet culture. So I'm okay, I'm trying to think of how to say this very
sensitively, because I, I genuinely curious on what you have to say to this, because I just want
to say thank you so much for bringing such compassion to this conversation, because it's
really what is needed. Because like we said before, there's a lot of emotions involved. And
it's just it's a very emotional subject. And this is where it's hard, right? Because we have science intersecting with emotions
and we need to be more just in reality with the science of it, but we want to be compassionate
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off. Thank you so much to lumen for sponsoring this episode. So, okay. So we don't want it to
be about looks, but there is one marker about health that past a certain point, I want to be very
careful and say this, that like, um, we do know the science tells us that if we have a certain
percentage of body fat and more that we're carrying around, it can lead to a lot of diseases and
problems. And this is something that, um, that is going to affect your performance. If you are
diabetic or, um, have cardiovascular disease, whatever it is, it is going to affect your performance. If you are diabetic or have cardiovascular disease,
whatever it is, it is going to hinder your life in some ways. And what we're trying to do is
reduce that suffering and allow people to do what they want to do with their life.
So how do we address that part of the issue without making it about looks? Because again,
it's not about the look of the body. It's not about being obese in the sense of how your body looks.
It's about what it means and what's going on on the inside.
So how would you kind of address it from that angle?
For me personally, I think the distinction is that, so it goes back to what is the definition of performance for that
person, right? So let's use smoking as an example, right? At this point in time, everyone who smokes
knows it's bad for them, very bad for them. They know it's going to chop decades off their life. And they say, I would rather smoke than not smoke.
Now, once smoking starts to impact other people, we do have to intervene, right?
That's the basis of our country, right?
Is if your choices start to limit the choices of other people, now we have to have a conversation.
But if your choices don't harm anyone in any other way, then they are your
choices. So I think like the way I approach this is if you, just like if someone chooses to smoke
cigarettes and then they get lung cancer, like I'm not going to shame them, but they make,
they're an adult, they're a big boy or a big them. They're an adult.
They're a big boy or a big girl.
They chose to take actions that predispose them to getting lung cancer.
And then they will have a life with lung cancer.
And that is their choice.
And then we could get into the political conversations about like, well, healthcare costs and blah, blah, blah.
But we can get there if we need to.
The same thing applies here, which is does anyone other than the individual have the right to force them to care about something they don't care about?
I do think we have an obligation to inform people.
There's a concept in medicine called informed consent. So if you think giving your children grape juice is good for them,
it is our job to make sure you know that ounce for ounce grape juice has 50% more sugar than soda.
So you have to have that information. You have to know that smoking is bad for you.
And once you have that information, unless your choice will harm someone else, it's your choice. So that's how I look at it. Now you could say, well, great, Jonathan, but the choices do
have impacts on other people. So that, okay, now we have to have the real conversation, but
I'll stop talking now. No, I mean, and like I said, you know, and I keep saying, cause I really, um, I wanted to have this conversation because I really do care because I think what has happened in the body positivity movement is that, and again, it's because all we're doing is putting, um, the emphasis on looks, but it feels a little bit like now we're, we're, we're lying to women. I believe that. And it's really, it's doing a disservice to women because I am of the mind, this is how
I believe, you should love your body no matter what point you are on in your journey.
And that is what I love about the body positivity movement.
You know, like learning to love your body in your skin, no matter where you are in your
journey, but while also at the same time, it is okay to strive to want to do better and doing better for some people. It depends on
where you are in your life and your journey and whatever it is for some people that means
losing a little bit of weight. And that is the reality of the situation. If, if your end goal
is performance, feeling better in your body. Um, again, this is not about looks and, but I think where we kind of get caught up is
that, um, you know, everyone was comparing themselves for the longest time to the like
super skinny, you know, five, 10 supermodels that were all over the magazines.
And that's not realistic for almost anyone.
And that's okay.
We should all admit that like,
we really messed up there and we're trying to do better, but at the same time, and you know,
and again, it's also like my, my body, I'm six feet tall. I'm naturally going to look longer
than someone who's like five, one, I'm going to carry my weight differently than someone that's
five, one. And this is again, what I love about the body positivity movement, because we are
accepting, um, all shapes and sizes.
Where I don't like is that I think it's gotten to this point now where we are just kind of having, for lack of a better word, like a free for all with no conversation on the impact of what this may have on your life and your body, your ability to develop disease. I think making sure that we can have a
objective scientific conversation about what the consequences of people's choices are is
extremely important. And let me use another analogy, which is, I believe this is still true.
It was definitely true at one point in time. So if you want to audition for an orchestra,
let's say you play the oboe and you want to audition for an orchestra, you will be asked to
play a piece of music. You will play that piece of music behind a curtain so that they cannot see
you while you play that piece of music. Why? Because how you look has nothing to do with whether or not you can perform on stage playing the oboe up to the orchestral standards you need to.
Period.
So why am I giving you this analogy?
Appearance and the correlation between your ability to have the life you want is spotty at best.
Right? I mean, and if we really want to
talk about appearance and your quality of life, let's talk about height. Taller people have a
better experience of life than shorter people. If you look at economic indicators, if you look at
job hiring, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's discrimination. That's height
discrimination. So we shouldn't have that. Skin color is your appearance. And that has a huge impact on your quality of life. Right. So I think everyone can agree that your quality of life being contingent on your appearance is not good. Right. If it's if we're not if we don't agree with judging people based on the appearance of their skin and we don't agree with judging people based on the height of their body, then judging people based on the width of their body
is also not productive.
It is reasonable to let someone know
that if you are two feet tall,
it's not safe for you to ride this roller coaster.
That's just a fact.
It is useful to let somebody know
that if you weigh 700 pounds, right?
No human body was meant to weigh 700 pounds, period.
If you weigh 700 pounds, the likelihood of you having the following eight diseases is
5,000% higher.
But we'll never get there until we bypass the appearance conversation completely
because it gets stuck there. And, and I, I'm like, this is why I, I want the whole conversation to
change because if the conversation even has the word appearance come up, it devolves and it doesn't make forward
progress because we've tried. We've tried. We tried for 50 years to shame people into changing
their appearance. That didn't work. Now we're trying to say that whatever the body positivity
movement is saying, which is inconsistent, depends on who you're asking,
but it's still about appearance.
That is true.
Why don't we just say, and this is a gendered issue,
because a lot of men, a lot of them, not all of them,
a lot of them, the idea of them saying,
I love my body sounds absurd. It's not even a consideration for them.
And that is so not fair. Like that is the baseline of misogyny. Like the baseline of misogyny
is that women are their looks and men are how they perform in the world.
Women be pretty, men go earn money, right? That's the baseline of patriarchy. So if anything,
the more we talk about appearance, the more we are empowering the patriarchy and the more we
are suppressing women because men by and large are already
evaluated based on their performance. Nobody cares about their appearance. So that's interesting.
Yeah, it's a great point. And I hadn't thought about it like that. And I was also thinking
about this too. It's interesting that body image is always kind of a trend, right? Like look back
at really old paintings and statues and the women were, you know, voluptuous and, um, had,
or had bigger bellies and like weight on them and stuff. And then, you know, we went through,
we've gone through all these different phases basically of it. And what bothers me is that
once again, it's like, it's trendy and And it's we're talking about the shape of the
body and not about health. Like, health is not trendy. Health is always and should be forever
be in the forefront of all of our minds. Like that should be number one. Why are we
so obsessed with this image? And and your ability to function, right? Your ability to perform. I've seen it very easily go both directions.
What I mean by that is my ability to perform.
So I am a very appearance conscious person, right?
I was that's so I'm not like the average male
and that I had for a long time
very much cared about my appearance.
And I like wouldn't go on vacation
because I couldn't go to the gym every day.
And I couldn't go out.
So my, my focus on quote unquote health actually impaired my ability to perform.
And I'll give a specific example of this.
So I'm a father now, right?
I have two young, young daughters and I also run three companies.
So there's a lot of things.
There's a lot of other people who depend on me, right? For their mortgages, for their wellbeing, yada, yada, yada,
yada. If I spent four hours a day on quote unquote, my health, that wouldn't actually
enable optimal performance in my life. It doesn't mean I don't care about my
health. It does mean there is actually, there is a difference between health and performance. Ask
any mother what her health is like the first year after she has a child. It's, it's not so like,
again, we, we need to pop up a level and it's, it's hard because it's, it's like, it's really, there's an old saying, a fish doesn't know what's in water, right? Women in our culture,
appearance has been so, and like, this really means a lot to me because I have two daughters
that don't yet know they're in water. One's three and one's one. So I'm like, I have the
opportunity to potentially not dunk them in this pool of you are defined
by your appearance.
Women in our culture have never not been defined by their appearance if they're old enough
to listen to and understand this podcast.
So like that, like that, that is the key.
That is so even like we got to challenge every aspect of this.
So even when we say like your health, there are times in our lives where actually are
my A1C levels are not always the best, but that might because I'm doing, let me use a
different analogy.
A soldier fighting for their country does not put their health above
everything else, right? They're actually saying, I will sacrifice my health completely to enable
the health of others. So I don't even think health is the objective. I think you accomplishing what you believe you were put here to do is the objective.
Like if you're religious, call that glorifying God. If you're not religious, it's your vision
statement. It's your mission statement. And if your vision statement is, let's be really clear,
if you're a professional model, or if you're an actress actress or if you, you know, if your objective
in life does, if you're a politician, you probably should care about your appearance.
You're more likely to get elected if you're attractive. Fact. You can look at the data,
right? So maybe appearance should matter for you because appearance is critical to your performance,
but we just need to look at what do
you want out of life and do you have the information and tools necessary to get that? And to your point,
Courtney, if my daughter grows up and she's 15 and she weighs 400 pounds and she thinks that weighing 400 pounds will give her the same experience of life
that weighing what would be healthy for her to weigh would, she, she needs to be educated
because, because it isn't, she isn't, it doesn't mean she's good, bad, right, or wrong. It just means just like if she had one leg rather than two, her experience of life would be different.
If she has 300 pounds of surplus fat on her body, her experience of life will be different.
And her ability to perform will be different.
So let's talk about that.
Absolutely.
And what's really important here,
and what you just said is that we need to stop moralizing it. Because what it doesn't mean
anything about the individual, you know, your weight doesn't mean anything about you. The way
that you eat doesn't mean anything about you doesn't say you're good, you're bad, you're
whatever. And I think that is really where we need to change this. We need to stop moralizing it. And just like you said, turn it
back around onto like, how do you, how do you feel? And are you able to accomplish the things
that you want to do? And then also too, like you just said, it comes down to education because I
will argue that I don't care if you are training to be an athlete or if you are, I don't know,
like, let's say for me, for example, like as a podcaster, yeah, I could be 400 pounds and be
sitting here podcasting and be, um, you know, existing and living, but like, I don't, I don't
want to live that way, you know, because when you, when you're able to reduce the body fat that
you're carrying around, everything in your life improves. And that is just a fact that is not,
um, I, I, I want to be truthful with people, with people. And that's a fact you get sick,
less your chronic pain goes away. Um, you know, people that are carrying extra body fat tend to
have like arthritis and all sorts of other chronic pain. You have energy to do the things that you want to do. You are in a better mood. You have a better
sex life, better digestion, better bowel movements. Like I could go on and on and on and on.
And this is again, where I believe that we are doing a disservice because we are not being honest.
And when we're not being honest, we're lying to people. And I think if we want to actually be
compassionate, we really care. You don't lie to the people that you care about. And if we really want to bring compassion and care
back to this, we need to be honest and truthful and we can do it in a compassionate way. And again,
it doesn't mean anything about you as an individual. That is not what this is about.
This is about helping everyone get to a place where they can live an amazing life and
feel good. 100%. And let's, let's, let me use an analogy that I think will really drive that home.
I love your analogies. Thank you. They're great. I was worried because the sleep deprivation with
the two little ones, my analogy game has gone down a little bit, but no, they're great. So
you just mentioned body fat. Let's talk about
muscle on your body, right? So I think most people would, would agree. And there's no like
moralism here is having strong muscles, more advantage, like, will your experience of life
be better with strong muscles than it would be with really weak muscles? I don't mean like
bodybuilder muscles. I mean, muscles that work. So think of someone who has like muscular dystrophy or someone who has a
disorder which prevents their muscles from working. Or imagine you're just a full grown adult,
but you have the strength of a three-year-old child, right? You can't open doors. You can't
do those types of things. First of all, we would really have compassion for that person.
We would say this person's muscles don't function.
They can't really get around in the world.
What can we do as a culture and as individuals to create a society that will empower that
individual to have muscles that are strong enough to enable them to live the life that
they, that they want to live.
Similarly, if you, and let's think about tumors, little growths on the body. If you had a 20 pound tumor or a 100 pound tumor growing on your back, I think everyone would agree that your experience of life would be better, that you would have more opportunities, that you would be able to help others more if you didn't have a hundred pound tumor growing on your back.
You're not good, bad, right or wrong.
It just will make life more challenging for you.
Life's hard enough.
I think we can all agree on that.
So if there are things we can do
to not make our lives unnecessarily harder, we should absolutely do them. And having
mass on your body 24-7, 365, that serves no advantageous purpose. Just like if you were to say, I'm going to wear
a hundred pound weight vest around just for the rest of my life, just for fun. People are going
to be like, what, really? Are you sure you want to wear a hundred pound weight vest around for
the rest of your life? I mean, if you want to build up really strong leg muscles, maybe that's
a cool thing. All good. I don't know. But like, just again, taking a step back, like you said, we're just going to look at
your body as a beautiful vehicle.
It's a gift that's been given to you.
And let's make sure that you're able to get all the benefits that gift has to offer.
Let's, let's make sure it performs as you deserve.
And as you were just saying all
this, I was thinking about, you know, what the real issue is, and we don't have to go like deep
into this. But the problem is fat phobia. It's not like this body positivity thing, like we're
so focused on that. And like I said, we've been moralizing it so much that that's where this
needs to change and we need to not make it a moral issue. It's similar to, um, on the other
podcast that we talked about this, where you were saying, um, you know, we would never shame someone
for having cancer. We would have compassion and be like, this is horrible. You're going through
this horrible disease. We want to support you. We want to help you get through this. We want to help
you, you know, give you all the tools that you need in order to
be able to fight that off. And we need to be treating obesity with the same kind of compassion
because it is, it is a definite defined disease. And again, that does not mean anything about you.
You're not good, bad, right, or wrong. It just means that this is something that we want to tackle so that you can feel better. So let's tackle it.
Let's get to the bottom of it. I agree with you. And so here's my, here's, here's my hand. Uh,
I, I, a dear friend of my mother recently just died from cancer and she she decided to not do a second round of chemotherapy
like she just decided to say look the treatment for me the the cure is worse than the disease
or whatever you know the saying is so uh is obesity a disease as characterized by the american
medical association it 100 is 100 that's just a fact they define it as a disease as characterized by the American Medical Association? It 100% is.
That's just a fact.
They define it as a disease, right?
Just like diabetes is defined as a disease.
Anyone I know and love that has type 2 diabetes or the one you're not born with,
I would love if they could experience life without type 2 diabetes.
I would love if they could.
Anyone in my life who has cancer, I would love if they could experience life without cancer. Anyone in my life who has a disease of obesity, I would love if they could
experience life with obesity. Based on my spiritual beliefs, I only think we get one
shot at this. This is the only life we get. We don't get to do it over. So I want you to be
able to get as much out of it as you possibly can. And that's why compassion is so important. And that's why
we really need to delineate the disease of obesity from not having a six pack. They're very, very,
very different things. And I think my mother is actually, you know, she taught me a lot here
because my mother clinically is overweight. Like if you look at her BMI
measurements, she's overweight. This woman has so much freaking energy. Like she, I'm like,
mom, you got to slow down. Like she's, I don't know. She's like 75. We can't keep up with her.
She always wants to do stuff. We're just, it's exhausting because she has so much energy. She's
like, Jonathan, my body, I may be overweight. I'm not clinically obese.
I may be overweight, but I'm able to do every freaking thing I want in my life.
And that's beautiful.
And that's great. And we just have to be very clear that clinical obesity is a disease that will significantly
compromise your ability to perform and get the most out of life.
It's a fact.
It's just that that's a fact. It says nothing about you as of life. It's a fact. It's just that that's a fact. It says
nothing about you as a person. It's a fact. And it should be treated and it should be treated
with compassion. And nobody should be evaluated based on their appearance. Period. Good, bad,
right or wrong. Like I don't want my daughters posting pictures, selfies of themselves in bathing suits at any point in time for any reason.
Because that's like when I and I would just get a little mushy.
I'll try not to cry. Right.
So as a father, when I look at my daughters, I don't even see their bodies. Like I literally don't.
It's hard to use words because this is like an animal part of your brain, not the part of your
brain that creates words. But when I look at my daughters, I see something else, like spirit,
something, I don't even know how to put it into words, right? They could be purple. They could turn purple. It wouldn't like, I see you, Avia. I see you, Kira. I don't even
see your body. It's so irrelevant to me. Even my wife, we've been together for 15 years.
She could literally, you know, our house could catch on fire. She, every aspect of her body could get burned. She could look like Freddy Krueger on his worst day. And that wouldn't change. I mean, I would,
I would objectively be less physically attracted to her, but my experience of Angela, like the,
the reason I married her, the reason I committed my life to her, the reason I've enjoyed 15 years with her and hope to enjoy another hundred with her has nothing to do with her appearance. Her appearance
did matter to me originally, you know, you know, getting with her, but like, let's go deeper.
Like, let's think about this. Like, think of yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you and try to treat yourself that way. Treat yourself as a being who is deserving of unconditional love and not an object that is to be judged based on the visual perceptions of others. Does that make sense? That
was like a lot of word salad. I don't know. I mean, that was amazing. I'm almost speechless
just because I think, well, one, that was so beautiful. And I agree with you, you know,
I mean, like you said, looks and appearance can only get you so far,
you know, it's, it's obviously the way you present yourself in the world and it's what people first
see. But very similarly to what you said, I feel the same way about everyone in my life that I
love and care about. I don't notice a girlfriend will say to me like, Oh my God, I'm feeling,
you know, like I've gained like 10 pounds and I feel so fat or whatever. And I'm like,
I don't even see, like, I don't even see you as your body and, you know, look at you objectively
like that. And, and that's such an important thing for, I think all of us to remember that
at the end of the day, it's, it's so appearance is so fleeting and think about we age and we will
probably gain weight over time as we get older, just because that naturally happens as our
metabolism slow down. But, but that doesn't. Because what really matters is what is on the inside.
You know, and this is why we need to stop focusing so much on appearance. And we know this to be
true in our own lives. But then we still somehow get caught up in this like media shitstorm of
images and you know, everyone's bodies. And it's just, yeah, it's overwhelming. And it's hard to
not to pay attention to it. And it's when you go like super, super, super deep. I, I, I, sorry to
keep bringing back like misogyny and the patriarchy, but I love it as a man. I feel like I can speak as
a man. I've lived my entire life as a man. And what's interesting is this sort of world, this, what might seem like a
fictional world in which you're not judged primarily based on your appearance is not a
fictional world. It is, my understanding is like when heterosexual women look at heterosexual men, they notice how they look, but it's not the primary determinant of whether or not they sort of
interact or hire or engage with that man. Like it is politic. When, when a man runs for president,
there are zero articles about what he wears. That is true. Zero. I will say though, initially,
I would say that I found for me and my girlfriends, initially you do notice looks like very
first, if you're just like looking across the bar kind of situation, you know, but my girlfriends
and I talk about this a lot that, um, oftentimes what will happen is you may not be initially that attracted
to that person, but the second you have a conversation with them and their personality
comes out, you're like, Oh my God, he's the hottest guy in the room to me because of his personality.
Because of your experience of him, because of his performance, his ability to engage with you. So
this is why like we, we have eyeballs. So until we, as a species,
no longer have eyeballs, appearance is a thing, right? Right. So, yeah. And we're never going to
be able to talk our way out of that one. 100%. The question is, is it your defining characteristic
or not? Is it the thing that we should be continuously talking about? Is it the thing
that we should be focused on? To me, it's like the old, don't judge a book by its cover. You don't want the book cover to be
nonsense. Like that ain't going to help. That's not going to help book sales. Like it's just not,
you know, if you want people to read the book, having a cover that is the best cover that we
can have is a good thing because then hopefully the cover will not
stand in the way of anyone reading the book. Good. But you know what? Any book review I've
ever read in my life doesn't talk about the cover of the book. Talks about the contents of the book.
I would be curious if we could create a world like that. Frankly, a world which is a little
bit more reflective of the way that heterosexual women look at heterosexual men. This is,
this in some ways is men, men's fault a little bit, right? We're very visual creatures.
We do, we're, we're, we're more prone to make appearance a higher criteria, but I do think we're getting better. I think,
I think that if you compare the average man today versus the average man in the fifties,
we're, we're less bad. I won't say we're good. I'll say we're less bad. And I think that women
can help us get even better by, by at least taking 51% of the population and uniting in saying we will not judge each other primarily based on our appearance.
We will hold ourselves to the same standard that men hold each other to, which is performance.
Because we do, like, I do think, here's where
I'll put my foot down. We were put here for a reason. This life is a freaking gift. This world
has a shitload of problems that we need to fix. So we need to perform. We have a moral obligation
to make this world a better place than we found it. And if you can't perform, you can't do that. And your appearance
has very little to do with your ability to do that. So let's, you know, men already have sort
of given an example of the way they judge each other, often cases, is based on performance.
What if we could create a world in which not just 49% of the population, but a hundred percent of
the population was, we're also judging creatures. We'll never have a world where you don't judge
each other. That's human nature. That's like saying we have a world where you don't breathe.
We are judging creatures. We will always judge, but why not judge based on that,
which actually matters, which is your ability to have a positive impact on this world or not. Yeah. Wow. I love that. I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to drop a little bit of a bomb in here
because I think this is also a part of the conversation that we are quote unquote,
not allowed to talk about anymore. There is no, what, what I, another thing I don't like about the body positivity movement is that we're no longer allowed to say that we like feeling fit and feeling good in our bodies.
And I want to take that back a little bit because I believe that there is a world in which we can have everything that we have talked about where appearance is not everything and we should not be focusing on appearance. Health should be the focus and your performance should be the focus.
But also I do believe that it should be okay to say, you know what? I work really hard. I exercise
every day. I really prioritize my health. I prioritize my sleep. I prioritize my eating.
And I like the way that I look and I like the way that I feel. And I believe that
it's okay to say that and also have everything else that we have said. Oh, I agree completely.
If you're like, I think that gets back to one thing we said earlier, which is like, if, if
that, which is if performance to you is having six pack abs. Like if you want that, just like if some people love to paint, like if I love to paint and
I want to post a picture of my painting on social media, F off if you have a problem
with that.
I can post a picture of my painting on social media, right?
And if people see me in public and all I do is post pictures of my paintings, they will
probably define me by my ability to paint.
So let's just keep that in mind. But yes, I mean, saying that someone can't, like I made the earlier statement,
I hope my daughters never post pictures of themselves in bikinis online. I don't, because
I do know they live in a world which right now does judge women based on appearance. And the
more they focus on their own appearance, the more people will focus on their appearance. And if they decide to be
fitness models, and that is how they provide for their families, then I would highly encourage them
to post pictures of themselves in bikinis on the internet, because that is their purpose.
And they need to understand the consequences of doing so.
People will judge them.
I hope people judge me on my ability to raise my girls. I hope people judge me based on my ability to accomplish my business goals because that
is why I'm here.
So just I would say yes, and also understand just the impact that will have on other people's
perception of you.
Yeah, that's a great point. Actually, I didn't even think about it from that perspective. And
I love that perspective. And, you know, I, this is going, this is deterring a little bit,
but I did want to make sure to say this, because, you know, a lot of the reason that we are in this
situation right now. And, yeah, the reason we're here is not anyone's
fault. And this goes back to, you know, kind of not moralizing it or placing blame on everyone.
And I really like to bring this up because our food palates have been hijacked. We have a broken
food system that is not serving us. And we have made it very confusing on what it truly means to be healthy in this country.
And we've made it really confusing what to eat, how to eat, what is actually healthy,
what's not healthy. And what I have found that's so amazing about focusing on my health and feeling
good in my body is that everything else has fallen into line after that. My performance got better.
I felt better in my body. I'm very happy with the way that I look. And I'm proud line after that. My performance got better. I felt better in my body. I'm very
happy with the way that I look and I'm proud to say that, but you know what? It wasn't a focus
on my body. It was a focus on providing my body with nutritious foods that I know will serve me
and will feed my cells that will feed my performance, feed my energy, getting sleep.
That will also help with all of that and prioritizing these things. And again, this is where I believe that the education piece comes into it. And we need to
be able to have those conversations, no matter how hard they are. Because if we're not doing that,
it's a disservice to people. And we're lying to them, like I said.
And it makes this so much simpler, because I get questions every day, right? Like,
is veganism good or bad? Is paleo good or bad? day, right? Like is veganism good or bad?
Is paleo good or bad?
Is keto good or bad?
Is gluten good or bad?
Have you do it?
Have you tried it?
Does it further your ability?
Like if you perform better doing that, I mean, this is the most sort of obvious statement
one could make, but sometimes obvious statements don't
stick in our heads. So it's like, if you do something and it takes you further to your,
if it moves you towards your goals, keep doing it. If it moves you further away from your goals,
stop doing it. And the question is then just, what are your goals? So when we focus on performance
rather than appearance, this whole like good, bad, right, wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Look, there are some people like this is, it is what it is. 90% of people who smoke don't get lung cancer. Most people
don't know that. Most people think smoking causes lung cancer. So if that was literally true, right,
jumping in a pool of water causes you to get wet. That means 100% of people who jump into a pool of
water will get wet. That's the definition of causality.
So smoking doesn't cause lung cancer.
If smoking caused lung cancer, everyone who smoked would get lung cancer.
90% of people who smoke do not get lung cancer.
Smoking greatly increases your risk of getting lung cancer.
Why am I saying all these things?
Everybody's got that anecdote of their friend who drinks Mountain Dew and eats potato chips
and it doesn't have any negative impact Mountain Dew and eats potato chips and it
doesn't have any negative impact on them and they're fine and their performance is great.
Well, they're fine now, but yeah.
They're fine now.
Or they're Warren Buffett and they continue to be fine.
Somehow, I don't know, most successful investor of all time eats like garbage and he's 100
years old.
I would love to see that blood work because I'll have to say it, but continue, yes.
Like his investments could be even better. I actually think, but that's no, but that
is the key point, right?
Just because it doesn't hurt you doesn't mean you couldn't be even higher performance, right?
But long story short, the point of all of that is when, by focusing on performance rather
than appearance, one, you become the arbiter, right?
Because appearance is subjective.
I don't care how beautiful you are.
Someone's going to think you're not beautiful because it's completely subjective there.
You can't win.
You can win in the performance game.
Did I do today what I wanted to do?
Yes or no.
That is completely about me.
I am the only judge.
I am the only evaluator.
All I'm fully empowered.
Yeah. And then I would take it a step further and say on those days where you're like, man,
I didn't perform as well as I wanted to, practice compassion and kindness with yourself and say,
you know what? We didn't do that great today, but that's okay. It doesn't mean anything about me.
It just means tomorrow I'm going to do better. I'm going to, I don't know, get more sleep,
whatever it is. And that's also what helps us improve in our life is constantly doing these reevaluations
where we're like, okay, you know what, that actually didn't really serve me. So like,
I'm going to try something different. I'm going to try doing this over here and see if I can,
you know, perform better and do better. I mean, it's similar to how I was, I'm, I have had,
I'm notorious for having a horrible sleeping schedule and it's, I blame it on my traveling for all the years that I worked as a travel. I worked with traveling musicians.
And so my sleep schedule was just all over the place. And you know what I, when I finally quit
that job, I was still all over the place. Cause I was trying to recalibrate and it was not serving
me. I was going to bed at like 2 AM. And even if I was sleeping till nine or 10 and getting those
eight hours of sleep, it is not the same feeling as when I go to bed at like 10 PM and I get up at seven and I
had to make that choice.
And I didn't moralize it.
I didn't say this makes me a bad person because I'm going to bed at 2 AM.
I just started being like, you know what?
This just doesn't make me feel good.
So I'm going to reevaluate this.
What are the things that I can do that make me feel better and be kind with myself on
the nights that like I messed up and I went to bed at 2 a.m.?
It's all about practicing kindness and compassion with yourself while also being like, I'm going to strive to do better tomorrow.
That's how we better ourselves.
That's how we grow.
I love that striving to do better because anyone who's had the privilege, and it is a privilege, especially in today's world, of playing sports or playing an instrument at like a high level, anything where there's like
a true, like the way we would traditionally define performance. Let's use American football
as an example. So even if you're not super familiar with American football, most people
know what a quarterback is. The quarterback is the person who throws the ball. And if you throw
the ball to the wrong team, it's called an interception. That's not a good thing. The worst thing that can happen,
you know, if you're a quarterback and you throw the ball in the game of American football,
and there's an interception, is you don't want that bad play to affect the rest of the game.
That's the word, like the, the, the keystone of a good performer is one, they know they're not
going to perform optimally all the time. That's impossible, right? There, for there to be good
days, there has to be bad days. Light only exists because of darkness. So it's inevitable. It's
going to happen, period. And your success is enabled by your ability to learn from it and get better because of it,
not to dwell on it or shame yourself because of it.
Yeah, I love that.
It's so important.
So before we wrap this up, is there anything that we haven't talked about or addressed
that you feel is really important to this conversation?
I think at the end of the day, it's a simple question that I would encourage everybody to ask themselves, which is, does your body enable you to do everything you want to do?
And if it does, F and high five.
Like, that's awesome.
Good.
Please go help other people achieve the same thing.
If it doesn't, you deserve better, period.
God, I love that so much. It's such a great way to end. And I know I asked you this last time,
but I want to ask you again, in case if you have added anything, do you have any new health
non-negotiables that you do every day or maybe every week to just better your health
and better your performance? My daily meditation practice, even if it's only for 10 or 15 minutes,
has become way more important. At the time of this recording, we are attempting to sell our
house and there's been a whole like rigmarole involved with that. And it's been extremely,
extremely stressful with two young children and such. And I have found, right, you know, this is not healthy. Um, there's only so much caffeine you
can drink in a day. And, but I have found that there is no amount of caffeine in the world
that if I'm able to just, I put on my eye masks, I put on my, I put on earplugs and then I put on
noise canceling headphones and I literally
just like sensory deprive for just 10 minutes.
My experience of the rest of the day, like it is literally a miracle pill.
So that, that's, that's been my experience.
Wow.
That's great advice.
I'm going to start trying to do that.
Thank you.
So for everyone listening, where can they find you?
Please go to better movie.com. That is the movie about better. It's a movie that really embodies a
lot of what we talked about today. We recorded it on location at Harvard Medical School. A great,
a great film, just truly it's not it's not like an infomercial. It's an actual movie. So better
movie.com. And then if you want to learn more about me, it's just jonathanbaylor.com.
Hey, guys.
Drake Peterson here, Courtney's producer.
Jonathan and Courtney had a great little conversation that happened after the interview was over,
and I really wanted you to listen to it.
So I'm going to pop it in right here before the show's over.
Thanks for listening.
So it was earlier this week.
My three-year-old daughter, Avia, said, Daddy, I want to do cuddles.
I said, awesome, before she goes to bed, right?
So she gets in the bed with me, and we're laying literally like one inch in between our noses, just looking into each other's eyes.
And for me, this is in and of itself an interesting thing.
It's very hard to stare into another person's eyes for a sustained period of time.
It is easy as hell for me to stare into another person's eyes for a sustained period of time, it is easy as hell for me to stare into my daughter's eyes. So that's just sort of an interesting thing to begin with.
Maybe it's because I don't know, extension of me, but anyway, so I'm staring in her eyes,
this beautiful little girl. And she says, daddy, I see you i literally like just i know she didn't mean it the way that i took it but i just
just and then she's like and then she didn't even then here's what's even like little tiny
buddha next to me so i'm i'm now just tears or I'm like, like sloppy crying, trying to hold
it in because my daughter is this close to my face, but I can't control the tears. And she just
says, daddy, I see you again. Like she didn't say, daddy, it's okay. Why are you crying? Daddy, don't be sad. She
literally just held space and repeated herself. And I mean, this whole time we've been talking
about appearance, appearance, appearance, appearance. You never truly see somebody
if you're looking at their appearance ever, ever. And that's like in that moment,
it was amazing because I, I get so passionate about this because like, if you can, if it were
possible for people to see each other the way that in that moment, I saw my daughter and my
daughter saw me, like we would have no, that's heaven on earth
on some level, you know? And you said something, you said, I don't think she meant it the way that
I took it, but I don't agree. Kids are a lot smarter and a lot more aware than we give them
credit for. So I think she really meant it. I think she meant that she really saw you, which is really beautiful.
Yeah, well, I will ask her
when she gets home from daycare today.
Like, did you really mean what you said
when you saw daddy the other day?
And then she'll say, I'm hungry.
And I'll be like, okay,
well, this conversation isn't going anywhere.
I'm just kidding.
Thanks for listening to today's episode
of The Real Foodology Podcast.
If you liked this episode,
please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a resident media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Chris McCone. The theme song is called Heaven by the
amazing singer Georgie, spelled with a J. Love you guys so much. See you next week.
The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a
substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute
a provider patient relationship.
I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist.
As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first. you