We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 10. OUR BODIES: Why are we at war with them and can we ever make peace?

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

TW // eating disorders 1. Glennon’s “final frontier”—her attempt to stop controlling her body. 2. The opportunity costs of a lifetime spent obsessing about our size and shape. 3. How we’ve been taught to fixate over every hair, wrinkle, and pound—but have never been taught how our bodies actually work. 4. How to quit conditioning girls to stay small in body, hunger, ambition, and desire. 5. The tyranny of the weigh-in at the doctor’s office—and why BMI is horseshit. 

So everybody, this episode has raw, real talk about disordered eating. If that kind of talk heals you, listen up. But loves if that kind of talk triggers you, skip this one or save it to listen to you in a safe place with safe people. Please first, take care of you. Hi, everybody. It's Glennon. Thanks for coming back to We Can Do Hard Things. Today we're going to get into some hard things about women and why so many of us seem to be trapped in an endless war with our bodies. I got this question a while back from Anne.

She said, gee, I'm struggling hard with food and body stuff, especially since quarantine. I look to you for advice on most things, but I don't know if you can relate to this one. You're so thin. I just want to get to a place where I feel acceptance and love for my own body. I felt so freed by untamed and I'm hoping you can help free me from my own body hate. So Anne, I can. I can relate. I've struggled my entire life to be comfortable in my own skin,

to understand my body to be as much me as my mind and my spirit. As a girl in this culture, I learned to be desired but not how to desire, how to be wanted but not how to want. To care about what I looked like more than I care about what I'm looking at. I learned that my worthiness was in my appearance, in my outer beauty, and that to be beautiful, a woman needed to stay small, to slowly disappear really in ambition and desire and appetite and emotion and voice and body. I tried hard to follow directions to somehow feel.

to feed myself and also to disappear. I was severely bulimic from age 10 to 26, and I stopped binging and purging when I got sober almost 19 years ago. And now I'm 45 years old, and just last month, I cried to Abby and told her that I bet that throughout a typical day for me, especially during COVID,

it felt like 80% of my thoughts were still about food and my body. What did I eat to do? Did I eat too much? Was I good? How do my thighs feel? What am I going to let myself eat tonight? How much do I weigh today? Why did I eat that ice cream last night? It's like being harassed constantly, but the call is always coming from inside the house. And it makes me embarrassed as a feminist. It makes me enraged as a human being because of the opportunity cost of spending half my time and thoughts on this stupid shit. Because I am a smart and powerful. woman. I cannot imagine the thoughts I would think and the art I'd make and the activism I'd unleash if I had those thoughts back again. And that's the cost of this cultural poison we ingest, right? The opportunity cost of obsessing about our size and shape is our time and energy and thoughts and potential and peace. It's our life. I want us to get our minds and bodies and lives back. I want us to

unlearn the self-hate and to begin to inhabit our bodies, to begin to love them and trust them, to, as Mary Oliver suggests, let the soft animals of our bodies love what they love. Let's try. We can do hard things. Okay, so the hard thing that I'm bringing today is my infuriating and never-ending extremely complicated relationship with food and body. And I started thinking about this differently recently because so Abby was talking to me one day, my wife Abby, was talking to me one day about my, as we've called them tiny, barely imperceptible control issues. And I was explaining to her how something should be done, but I felt like I was doing it

in a very precious way that she would never notice that I was really controlling the thing, but Abby is always able to notice when I'm doing the thing. So she stopped me and she said, honey, I see what you're doing there. And I need to tell you that when you try to control what I'm doing or decisions that I'm making, it really hurts me. It makes me really sad because because I trust you so much. I believe in you and I trust you. And when you try to control me, it makes me understand that you really don't believe in me

and trust me. And yeah. And so I thought about that so much and I realized that the truth of things seems to be in relationships that we can trust people Well, I guess I would say we can love people or we can control people, but we cannot do both. Okay, we have to choose. Are we going to love them or are we going to control them?

Because love requires trust. Okay. And we only control things we don't trust. Right? So in my marriage, in my relationship with Abby, it has become very clear that when I am controlling her, even when I'm doing it in my very, what I think are subtle precious ways. So subtle, yeah. Right.

That I am not loving her. Right. Which is baffling and paradigm shifting to me because I have always believed that my job, the way that I love my people is that I just, you know, I help them make all of my dreams for them come true. Right? Like my job is to be like, I am here to support you in creating the truest, most beautiful life for you.

So I'm just going to show you what I have diagrammed as the truest most beautiful life for you. And then together we will get, right? So this idea that allowing her to lead the way for her is interesting and a new process for me. And honestly, quite scary because I'm not someone who believes that things just work out. Right. I just feel like I have to work them out. Right.

So the way this relates to body is that what I figured out recently is if I can love, people are always talking about loving their bodies, right? I just want to love my body as self-love, love, like, what is self-love? Whatever the hell that means. Well, exactly. What does that mean? Like, does that, does loving my body mean I love the shape of my body? Does it mean I love the way it looks? Does it mean I love the way it feels? Does it mean, like, what does body love mean? And so, well, I sure as hell know, I have never had it, okay, like as someone who's dealt, got an eating disorder when she was 10 and has been figuring that out since then. But here's what I want.

Okay. I want to love my body in this way, in the way Abby described. I want to trust my body. Okay. I want to stop spending my one wild and precious life controlling my body. And what I mean by that is I have had times in my life where I feel like I have gotten healthier, like I've gotten more normal with food and body, although I can't remember them now because after COVID, and I think that with the book tour, preparing for the book tour,

I just got weird again. And what I think, what I mean by getting weird is I just start obsessing more. I start thinking constantly about food, about what I've eaten, what I haven't eaten, about, I obsess with working out. So I'll start up, I start on the elliptical for a half hour. Then I'm on it for 45 minutes. Then I'm on it for an hour. And when I'm working out, I am not doing it with the same intention as I know some people do. Like some people are like, I am here to get strong. I am here to be healthy. No. I am here to deal with my anxiety and to control the crap out of this body I've been given. to make sure that it does not get one millimeter bigger, that it stays small, right?

I'm controlling the crap out of my body. I would say that on a given day, 50% of all of my thoughts the entire day are about food working out my body, which is so humiliate. It's so embarrassing as like a feminist, as somebody who, is out in the world talking about women and freedom and joy and power, it's embarrassing. It feels like I should have freaking figured this out by now. I'm 45. I don't know what I'm waiting for.

But also it's infuriating because I am a smart, powerful woman. And when I think about the art I could have created, the activism I could have unleashed, the love I could have been a part of if I had those 50% thoughts back, right? It's the opportunity cost. That is, you know, the cultural conditioning that little girls get the second we're born on this earth about staying small, about controlling our appetite, about controlling our desire, about not being hungry, about not being, about staying small. That's the price of it. It's the opportunity cost. It costs us life.

Right. It costs us life. And I just, I feel like, you know, I started to get weird. And then Abby, she's trying to help, trying to help, trying to help. She brought over this woman who is a local person in our area. And she started working out with us in the driveway during COVID. Okay. So this was Abby's thought, like, if this is, if this body thing is taken away from you,

maybe you won't obsess about it. Maybe if we give you the structure and we think about getting strong, instead of getting small. And you're like lift weights and we turn it all over to her. It's just every time I have a weirdness, there's always, I'm certain that some structure will fix it, you know? You're just missing something. You're just missing something.

Yeah, just missing something. I'll just get one answer and all, we'll be fine. So this woman starts coming over. And Sissy, you know this, because I started talking to you about it. I'm out in the driveway, three days a week, kicking my own. ass, right? Just kicking my own ass three days a week. And one day I just looked at this woman. I was like, I am 45 years old. I don't want to kick my own ass anymore. I don't care. I want to not care, right? I want to stop trying so hard to control this body or change it or make it some idea that

somebody told me it should be. And just be gentle and kind to it, right? Just like, find a way to just eat what it wants to eat, to move how it wants to move, and then love and trusted enough to let it become whatever it wants to become, right? Because I don't care, like when I look at women now, I know we all have different goals and dreams and vibes, right? But when I look at women now who I can tell spend a ton of their one wild and precious life controlling their bodies, it no longer looks aspirational to me. It just looks kind of like sad. The women, like the kind of bodies are women that inspire me now are people who look like they actually are enjoying their life, who allow themselves to indulge sometimes, who don't. spend all day kicking their own ass in order to create somebody that our culture has told us

is aspirational for a woman. You know? Right. It's like that, I think it's that old quote that says, thinness is not about beauty. It's about obedience. Like, it's just obedience. It's that somebody, a million people told me, a million people told me when I was little that a woman's worthiness.

is beauty and beauty is staying small. And I have just been really freaking obedient every day of my life about that. And I'm so tired of being a good little soldier. I just want to enjoy this next part of my life and just let myself be. I mean, I think, so you haven't worked out in like a month, right? You decided to just stop for a while? Yeah. Well, I quit the personal trainer.

So now she comes over and works with Abby. because Abby's on a different journey. I mean, that's the thing. There's no, there is zero. If there was one answer to the body stuff, I promise you I would have found it. There's no, it's like different for every person in every season of their life. And so Abby's out there with the personal trainer. I hide now. I just like hide in my house from her. I decided that it wasn't for me. And then I decided, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go for a walk. every day. I'm going to stop kicking my own ass. I want to be nice to my body. I've put my body through hell. Right. I want to be gentle to it. I want to be, I want it to feel good.

So I decided to go for a walk every day. I've been going for a two to three mile walk every single day. And I've been doing this 20-minute thing of yoga. There's something about yoga that is really good for me. Not hard yoga. I freaking hate hard yoga. When I, when somebody starts a yoga class and then it gets hard and sweaty, it makes me so upset. It's like ruining it. It's like turning ice cream into frozen yogurt or something. It's just like not correct. But I love, so there's something about getting on a yoga mat and breathing and the way yoga instructors tend to like talk about our bodies that makes me feel very loved. I don't know. It makes me feel like, remember. how precious and good my body is to me and it just helps me. Well, I guess it's that idea of

I'm not controlling it. I'm just in it and I'm remembering. It's the closest I get to loving, loving my body, not the shape of it. It's not what I'm talking about. But like trusting and honoring. Yes, honoring being present in. And, And listen, it's been three weeks that I've been doing no sweating, just walking and yogaing. And I don't know. I'm so far so good. I haven't missed that freaking elliptical. I am not, I don't know how many more years I have on this earth.

And I am not spending any more hours in a dark room on an elliptical machine. It's just, I'm just not doing it anymore. Have you ever hit a point at work where I, everything just feels heavy, not just a bad week, but the kind of burnout where you're staring at your laptop thinking, I can't keep doing it like this. You're not alone. Strawberry.me is career coaching that helps you get to the real root of your burnout, whether it's workload, boundaries, a tough manager, or feeling disconnected from the work you used to love.

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Do you need to control them because you think they're going to go off and like do something crazy? Clearly, that's not the level of trust we're talking about here. We're talking about help me guide your decisions with the benefit of my wisdom, which can sometimes feel like control, right? Exactly. And this whole of your body, it's this trusting that your body has wisdom equal to or more particularly attuned than whatever wisdom you have. So like in order to trust Abby, I have this actual question because I struggle with the same thing. You have to go say, or at least practice, saying you have a wisdom for yourself. You go do your thing and I'm not going to impose my wisdom on you. And is it the same with body?

Is it saying you body have a wisdom and a power and a purpose? And I'm going to trust you to return to what you need to be. Yeah, that you have a wisdom. I mean, I would say, I don't think that Abby Mines, when I share wisdom, like I don't, first I'm never going to stop doing that. But I don't think that's it. I think there's an energy that comes with my wisdom that she senses that is fear based. It's not, I want to accept wisdom from other people. I want people to, I want to be able to share ideas, but there's an energy that controlling people like you and me don't think other people can feel and sense, and they always can. And it's outcome, it's outcome focus, too. It's outcome focus. It is. Yes, I'm trying to get you

to make this decision. So here's the three pieces of evidence. I'm wisdom. I'm showing you to try to get you to this point. And everyone, John knows when you do it. Abby, knows when I do it. I know when you're doing it. You know when I'm doing it. Like, there's a way of being that people will always sense that you're not honoring me and my own wisdom and my, and you're not just contributing what you can to help me, that you already know what you want. And you're just trying to get me. And that makes the person feel mistrusted and used, right? And just kind of like a means to an end. It's just two different approaches. But when it comes to the control thing with the body, what you just said is what I'm trying to believe.

Just like I believe Abby has a wisdom and a way that is better than mine for her. I have to believe that my body has a wisdom and a way that is better than my controlling plan for it. Because by the way, my controlling plan for it isn't, was never my plan for it. It's a patriarchal idea that has been planted in me that now I'm imposing upon my body. and have been forever, right? And that is the idea of control for women. It's like, you know, by the, we're born and everybody tells us we can't trust any part of ourselves. Like, you can't trust your ambition. You can't trust your anger. You can't trust your envy. You can't trust your hair. Like you can't trust your skin. You can't trust your forehead wrinkles. You get like

change, change, change, change, control, control, control, right? Like, change everything, control everything. you as you are is wrong. And it's just like the weirdest little things. Like, you know, trying to fix and change and control my depression and anxiety, actually. Those are two things are what contribute to making me a really good writer and artist, right? Like stupid things. How long, sister, did I straighten my hair? I spent so much of my one wild and precious life. Like someone told me along the way that straight hair was prettier. So I used to fry straight my hair every day for 20 years. And one day I was like, screw it. Like, I'm just going to chop it and leave it curly.

It knew what it wanted to do. Right? Like I could have left it alone and had better hair in my whole damn life. So it's just this idea of what if we don't have to control our people or our body or freaking anything? I don't know. The body thing is a final frontier for me. And it's a, and we never find out. You know, if you never trust your partner, you never find out if they're worthy of trust.

Yes. Because they never go and make their decisions for themselves that then you can see and say, damn, wouldn't have done that, but good on you. If we don't trust our bodies, we will never know the power of our bodies. And I think I also just find it. mind-boggling that of all the people say, oh, no, you need to live in your body and know your body, and this is for the good of your body, getting it healthy. I mean, I feel like every woman would be able to tell you 10 things about their body that are, that they have tried to control or that

they have noticed or they've obsessed over. But we don't actually know our bodies. How, How in this country, how many women can tell you about the dramatic decade-long process of peri menopause and menopause? Like, that is literally the way our bodies are made. How many people can tell you the parts of their body that can consistently and effectively give them an orgasm? That's an incredibly important part of our body. Like when we say we actually know the tiniest hair of percentages about our bodies and that is intentional. Yes. Like for whom and for what?

The only parts of our bodies are that we understand and know how to use effectively are the parts that are made to be controlled for the purpose. of keeping us under control for the purpose of 50% of our time being spent doing that and not doing something else. So or to please someone else. Like what parts, we don't know how our body works, bodies work in the way you just described. But we've spent years obsessing about our what, stomachs or our cellulite or what, because that's for other people's viewing as opposed to actually understanding how our bodies work for us. And to be fair to women, like if we're telling the whole picture here, we control ourselves to make ourselves in the short run more effective, more successful, more palatable.

Because very unfortunately, women who are, because of fat phobia, women who are those things, who do follow the rules, in the short one. Have privilege. Have that privilege. So at the end of the day, like, we're doing it because it's quote unquote smart for us to do it. Okay. But in the process of getting that privilege, we lose ourselves. We lose the wisdom of our bodies. The same wisdom of our bodies that tells us we want to eat that, that tells us that we want to indulge in that is the same wisdom of our bodies that when we walk in a room and says, get me the fuck out of here. This ain't right. We lose. that too, by the way, because we are so used to denying what we know, denying our hunger, explaining away what our body's telling us and telling it to shut up, that we lose all the

benefits of that wisdom of the body. That's right. And we lose in the long run. That's right. And you're right that it's not our fault. It's like the don't hate the players, hate the game. It's the game. Oh my God. I can't. I can't believe we have you on tape saying don't hate the players, hate the game. I mean, is that not the case of patriarchy? We don't hate the individual women or even men who have contorted themselves to be efficient pawns in the game of the patriarchy. But let us be clear that that's what we're doing. Right?

When we're winning, we're losing. Like they set up the game. We are winning, but in the process, we have seated our power, our inherent power. And our lives, and our joy. Well, I'm going to try to reclaim some of that power just by reclaiming some freaking time in the day is what I'm doing. I'm not going into a dark room and getting on a machine to keep myself small anymore. And that is my little teeny, huge, political, personal act. of revolution for this month, and I'll let you know how it goes. But it's a big deal. It's not little. It's not little.

It's a very big deal. All right. I love you. And I love this conversation. And let's just take a little break. And then when we get back, we'll answer some hard questions. This show is sponsored by Midi Health. Perimenopause and menopause aren't personality flaws or phases.

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So my hard question is, I have a daughter, and she's nine years old, and she is overweight. I even hate saying that term, like there's a weight well supposed to be. but I just you know she's healthy and she's active she plays sports and she eats the same things all my other kids do and she seems to be the only one

who has this issue I from someone who's suffered from eating disorders my whole life at body image issues have made such a mission to never talk about my body or anybody else's body or comment on my children's bodies because I just don't want that for them

but now she's getting to an age where of course she's getting teased for being fat and I tell her she's perfect and beautiful but I guess I'm starting to wonder if I should be helping her try to perhaps change her body just to avoid the name calling and the troubles that inevitably are going to happen in life. If you have any advice on what to do, I would so appreciate it. I love you guys. Thank you. Okay, first of all, I love Katie. What, uh, Fantastic, mom. You are, Katie. First of all, I guess I want to say thank you for being a mom who is just knows to not comment on other people's bodies and to tell your baby that she's perfect over and over

again. Well done. I guess I was listening really closely to what you were saying, Katie, and some things that I noticed is that you said that your little girl is healthy and active and eating what your other kids are eating and happy. And so I guess what I would say is, first of all, it feels like there's an issue, right? We're having an issue. But I wonder if the issue is her issue or if it's the world's issue. Right? You said it's an issue, but I guess I would at first ask whose issue is it, right? Because if your little one is healthy and active and happy and it doesn't sound like she has an issue, maybe it's the world's issue because our world is so unbelievably fatphobic, right? There are all different kinds of bodies, but we all have soaked in this

idea that there's only one acceptable kind of body, right? And so because we all soak that in, we get afraid when our children's bodies fall outside of that very ridiculous, narrow, restrictive cultural ideal, right? And then that fear, it just, it's contagious from us to them, right? So I remember in my family feeling very, very clearly the energy of fear that my parents thought that my body was too big. I remember that. And it wouldn't have been said to me directly. it was just in the tips and the reminders and all of the little things that they said that made me understand, oh, my body's not okay, right? So, so first of all, maybe your little girl is perfect as is your intuition. And maybe there is an issue, but maybe it's the world's issue. Maybe the,

the world's issue is that the world is fatphobic. And maybe there's nothing wrong with your little girl's body. And I bet you know that. It sounds like you know that. But then there's this other part that's like, okay, that's fine and good. Like we're all, our kids are perfect. It's the world's problem. But then your baby, our babies have to go out into the world and deal with the world's problem. So Katie is hearing that her little girl is being teased by the fatphobic world. right? So if we don't, there's this feeling as a parent that, okay, I can decide that my baby's perfect and tell her that she's perfect, but am I sending her out without the armor she needs to deal with a world who will tell her over and over again that she is less than perfect? And is that being a good parent? Right? And I understand that deeply. I mean, when I have a son who's gay and I know through every bit of my being that he is, absolutely and utterly perfect. And that there is an issue, but that it is the world's issue.

It is not my family's issue. And that there is homophobia in the world and that that is the issue. And that's the world's problem and not my family's problem. But when my son goes out into the world and things happen over and over again, as you know, sister, where he is called names or, yeah, that it's like that part where it crosses over and the world's problem hurts my baby. And what I know about that, Katie, is that as a mom and as a teacher, I was a teacher for a long time. And so I saw over and over again parents whose babies were different in outside of the narrow cultural expectation, whether that

was body size or personality or sexuality or or or or or, right? there is an approach where you try to change your baby for the world. There is that. And I understand it. I get it. We're just, we don't want our babies to be in pain. So we try to change our baby to make them more inside this narrow window of

acceptability. And then our babies feel that. Now the world is telling them they're not okay. And then in some way, their parents are telling them they're not okay either and everybody now is telling them to change. Right. And then there's this other way of going about things, which is like this thing that I saw that it felt to me like the babies who did the best. The babies who were a little bit different but did the best were the ones who whose parents were vehemently and militantly and relently.

and relentlessly on their children's side about who they are, right? So it felt to me and still feels to me like little ones can deal with the whole world telling them they're not okay. If in their home, if their most important people are over and over again saying, yes, you are. It's them. It's not you. I feel like there's no perfect answer and there's hardship on either side. It's like, this is hard, that's hard. Choose your heart, right? But to me, the right kind of hard is staying relentlessly on your child's side as they are in teaching them to see it as the world's issue and not theirs. To me, it's like, okay, my baby will be able to handle it if the entire world disapproves of her, if she knows that her mama approves of her, right? And instead of

changing her, I'll use all of that nervous, terrified energy to go out. and change the world for her and let her watch me. Yeah. I mean, there's literally nothing harder than this impossible situation of sending our precious, perfect people out into a world that doesn't deserve them. Like there's, it feels like it might actually kill me. Yes. At certain points to do that over and over again and just have them be vulnerable in a

that is cruel and doesn't see them the way we see them. And I think I agree with everything that you've said. And I think there's also this kind of math part of it to me that is, you could Katie, have a potential short-term relief for your precious daughter and teach, because the world is so fatphobic, to teach her how to be thin now. And you might have some short-term relief. But you also might have a long-term disaster because, as you know, you said that you dealt with eating disorders. And I myself, who was like, quote unquote, safe with the world by my thinness and sameness throughout my life, never, never saved me from feeling quite unsafe in my own skin. And I think that, you know, if she receives those messages from the world and from you,

she might be temporarily safe out on the playground and in school and whatever, but she might spend decades of her life being unsafe inside of her head. And I think, oh, that's good. When I think back over my life, I really think that I would have traded unconditional internal safety and peace inside my mind and head and body for the conditional and precarious safety that the world granted me because my body was palatable. And I just, when she was talking, I kept thinking of that phrase, all the water in the world can't sink a ship unless it gets inside. And I just feel like it's a very, very brave parent who will seal the ship. You know, I mean, it's just because it is true, Katie, that the world doesn't deserve your daughter. But she deserves you. She deserves a mother who will see her as perfect, tender treasure that she is and refuses to pass along the world's incessant messaging that she needs to intervene to

help her daughter as early and often be as controlled and contorted to be safe in the world's rules. Amen. And that will teach her every day in a million different ways. ways that the world is wrong and her daughter's body is right. Yes. And the, I mean, it takes a very, very fierce mother to be willing to withstand that because you can feel it. You can feel it in the air. You can feel other people's discomfort with your child's body. You know it. But, but like let us just please let our daughters just, just understand that the world is confused and let them never be confused about the value of their own bodies.

Just because truly, I mean, if your kids are going to have any peace at all in life, it is going to start from the inside out. The outside in does not work. So just God love Katie and it's hard and brave. But don't let the water in and don't be the one to pour it in. I love it. I love it. What in one sentence do you want to wrap it up and say to Katie? That if you know and believe your daughter is perfect and that there is nothing, not a hair on her head that you would change, you just relentlessly and shamelessly continue telling her that and continue believing that. Yes. Because they will sense if you're saying, but you don't actually believe.

if your fear about the world is making you doubt your belief that she is perfect, she will sense that. So your only job is to continue to believe that your daughter is perfect and worthy of love and acceptance and celebration every day and telling her that. As she is. And if you need to put all that nervous energy somewhere, you change the entire world before you change one hair on her little head, Katie. We love you. Okay, we have a last question, and it's a write-in. Hi, I'm Leslie. I just turned 50 and came home for my annual physical,

and for the first time in my life, my doctor told me I am officially overweight. I don't even know what my question is. I am just down and feel awful and don't know what to do with my feelings about this. Okay. Well, let's see. How do I address this from my perspective without getting in all kinds of trouble? I love and respect doctors. I have had some very tricky situations involving weight and bodies and physicians in my life. Many, many. Many times where I have felt like what a physician was telling me about my body was not right. Many situations where I felt like what a physician was telling my children about their bodies was not right. I actually got to the place a few years ago where I started going into the doctor's office before my kids' physicals. Well, let me tell you one specific time. I went in to the doctor's office and said, I do not want you to say anything to my girls about their weight or their bodies.

You do not have my permission to offer any sort of opinion or commentary on their weight, and I don't want you to talk about it. That particular time, the doctor said, okay, thank you for that information, and then sat with my girls and said, nothing to my older girl. And then to my younger one, who happens to be smaller and lighter, said, oh, your weight is perfect and smiled, which then, of course, my older one understood exactly what that meant about her. And your younger one understood not to change her weight at all, unless she be imperfect. Whatever the hell perfect means for a body. So I'm just telling you that after that, I said to the doctor, you have no, you do not have my permission to comment positively or negatively in any way to my children about their weight.

Because I don't know what's going on here, but whatever you're using as a barometer for what makes a perfect body is not right. I can't describe it, but I can feel it in my bones that they are getting just as much poison in this office as they're getting out in the world. Do you want me to describe the barometer to you? Yes. Because I always want you. I always want you to tell me that I'm not crazy.

I'm a goddamn cheetah. Okay. I'm so excited we're talking about this because this whole, it's as if we have decided that there is an obesity epidemic based on this certain criteria and no one has has bothered to interrogate the criteria that we are using. So can we just start with this idea of fat? Like at what point we started quantifying people as fat or not and how we started to equate fat with health?

Okay. Because this is actually a relatively very new phenomenon based on a very flawed rubric. So weight was not considered a primary indicator for health into the early 1900s. For 50 years after that, doctors started assessing weight in earnest in the 1900s. And it's because they had new data to use. And do you know who that data was from?

It was from life insurance company actuaries who had started building these lists of height and weight to optimize their profits. So the doctors started using the lists from the life insurance companies. And then, like, 35 years ago, the... scientists got together and we're like, we don't have a reliable way to talk about body and height and to assess individuals. So BMI was actually was only coined in 1972. This whole rubric that we use to decide whether people get life insurance, whether people get health insurance, whether you walk into the doctor's office and they say you're overweight or not. Whether Whether schools send freaking letters home telling you that your little perfect child is overweight.

Okay, go ahead. Sorry. It's ridiculous, by the way. There's no business in that. Okay, so the BMI, this tomfoolery of BMI is based on a theory literally from 200 years ago by a Belgian astronomer. Okay? My man is a Belgian astronomer from 200 years ago. and he was obsessed with identifying the characteristics of the ideal man.

So incidentally, his theory was also used to justify eugenics since it was only studying white Europeans. But that aside, he also explicitly said that it was never to measure an individual person's body fat or health. It was always supposed to be like assessed the makeup of an entire population. So when modern researchers couldn't find a workable measure to identify individuals' body and health, they said, what the hell. Let's go back to this 200-year-old theory that was specifically not for that purpose. We'll call it BMI and we'll use it for the rest of our lives. No one will ask any questions. I know who we can pick to tell us about our bodies an astronomer from 200 years ago who's work was used to justify eugenics. Okay. So it's completely illogical. I'm not saying

we don't have an obesity epidemic. What I'm saying is that we have collectively decided that there's this objective referendum on whether our body is okay or not based on this incredibly flawed metric. It is, so if someone is obese, they will have a high BMI. If someone has a high BMI, it does not mean that they are overweight or obese. It does not take account at all for bone density. It grossly overestimates for black folks. It underestimates for Asian folks. It is this one size fits all tomfoolery. And we use. it for everything. And so what I'm what I am saying to Leslie is that you it's like it's like they have this

thou is overweight. And I would just like to say they probably took your BMI. You are probably maybe you're 20, maybe you're 30, maybe you're 31. You know what the average American woman's BMI is? It's 29.6. the average American woman is overweight. Okay? Is the average American women overweight?

Right. Or is overweight criteria not in line with what our bodies are? Yes. It's like once again they're telling us we're too much over and over and over again based on flawed criteria, not on flawed women, Leslie. Not on flawed. not us. Do you know the other thing? Talk about the, the, we're flawed.

Okay, the average American woman wears a size 14 or 16. Do you know what the average clothing line size stops at? 12. What in the, we are literally not making clothes for the women who exists. So the average person. is bigger than the highest average size of clothing. We are literally not accommodating the women you have. I see what you're saying, Sister.

I see if you guys can see what her face right now, she's about to explode into thin air. Okay. What we're saying here, Leslie, is that we don't know you and we can't see you and we don't know your BMI. But our bet is that you are goddamn perfect. Okay? That is what we believe.

Okay. Let's come back with our next right thing. If you're a business owner who knows nothing about AI and feels really out of the loop, you're not alone. In today's data-driven world, you really need to understand your customers. And NetSuite can deliver those insights with zero fuss. No more waiting. With NetSuite, you can integrate AI into your operations today. NetSuite is the number one AI Cloud ERP, trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into one single source of truth.

And now with NetSuite AI connector, you can use the AI of your choice and connect it to your actual business data. So you can finally ask every question you've ever had. Who are key customers? What's our cash on hand? What's trending in our infrastructure? inventory, and you can automate all those manual processes no one wants to do. Right now, get our free business guide, demystifying AI at netsuite.com slash hard things. The guide is free to you at net suite.com slash hard things. NetSuite.com slash hard things. We're going to try something different with the next right thing today. I'm going to read to you a little something that I wrote about our bodies, years ago. I think I pretty much wrote it to myself. I am always writing what I need to hear and

teaching what I need to learn. So take a listen and I'll follow up with a little job for you this week. Your body is not your masterpiece. Your life is. It is suggested to us a million times a day that our bodies are projects. They aren't. They aren't. Our lives are. Our relationships are. Our spirituality is. Our work is. So stop spending all day obsessing, cursing, perfecting your body like it's all you've got to offer the world. Your body is not your art. It's your paintbrush. Whether your paintbrush is a tall paintbrush or a thin paint brush or a stocky paintbrush or a scratched up paintbrush is completely irrelevant. What is very relevant is that you have a paint brush, which can be used to transfer your insides onto the canvas of your life where others can see it and be inspired by it and be comforted

by it. Your body is not your offering. It's just an instrument which you can use to create your offering each day. So don't curse your paintbrush. Don't sit in a corner wishing you had a different paintbrush. You're wasting time. You've got the one you've got. Maybe even be grateful. Because without it, you'd have nothing with which to paint your life's work.

Your life's work is the love you give and receive. and your body is the instrument you use to accept and offer love on your soul's behalf. It's a system. We are encouraged to obsess over our instrument's shape, but our body's shape has no effect on its ability to accept and offer love for us. Just none. So maybe we continue to obsess because as long as we keep wringing our hands about our paintbrush shape, we don't have to get to work painting our lives.

Stop fretting. The truth is that all paint brush shapes work just fine. And anybody who tells you different is trying to sell you something. So don't buy it. Just paint. But first, stop right now. And say thank you to your body. Say thank you to your eyes for taking in the beauty of sunsets and storms and storms

and children blowing out birthday candles and say thank you to your hands for writing love letters and opening doors and stirring soup and waving to strangers and say thank you to your legs for walking you from danger to safety and for climbing so many damn mountains for you. Then let's pick up our instrument and start painting this day, beautiful and bold and wild and free. And you. So how about for our next right thing? We just think hard about the masterpieces we have created in our lives that our body has helped us create. That's all. Just think of a couple beautiful things, a couple beautiful relationships, a couple beautiful pieces of work, a couple, anything we've

ever been a part of creating that is beautiful, that we would never have made. We would never have without these bodies of ours. And when this week gets hard, you just remind yourself that we can do hard things. We'll see you next week. I am so excited to announce that by Pod Squad Popular Demand, our theme song by Tish is now available for streaming and download. How fancy and exciting is that?

she is beyond thrilled. Search We Can Do Hard Things or Tish T-I-S-H-Melton on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, or YouTube. And now I give you Tish Milton and Brandy Carlisle. I walk through fire. I came out the other side. I chased it. desire I made sure I got was mine and I continued to believe that I'm me because I'm a lot where adventurers and heart breaks are met a final destination stopped asking directions to place Some places they've never been And to be loved

Be known We'll finally find Can do a heart A brand new star Things fall apart And I continue to The best people are free And it took some time

But I'm finally fine Because we're adventurers and heart breaks on that. A final destiny. They stopped asking directions. To places they've never been. And to be too, can do hard. Adventureers and some play never been to do. Yeah.

We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn't, don't worry about it. It's fine.