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It's a podcast from New Zealand-- the 05-03-14 entry, from 5:00 to 20:00.
A while ago, I did a casual survey about what people have done to lose weight, and what the outcomes were. I'm interested in the subject because I was getting one narrative from the fat acceptance community (trying to lose weight is very likely to make your life worse) and another narrative from everyone else (trying to lose weight is a reliable way of making your life better).
The interview is at a fat-friendly venue, and I was told I couldn't mention that some people lost weight successfully. I was concerned that I wouldn't have 15 minutes worth of material, but Cat Pause (pause-AY) is a good interviewer, and the interview went well.
I can live with the no-diet-talk rule which exists in some venues. Some people are just sick of diet talk (it's very repetitious), and quite a few have had very bad experiences with trying to lose weight, up to and including eating disorders.
To my mind, a lot of fat acceptance venues have formal rules that limit the conversation, and the mainstream has customs of saying that people only fail to lose weight because they're doing it wrong and/or not trying hard enough which also have a considerable silencing effect. Nuanced discussion of various ways speech gets limited.
One angle the interview reminded me of is the possibility of expanding the survey. Any recommendations for venues? I've been thinking Metafilter. Facebook isn't satisfactory because I want someplace where it will be easy to find the survey again.
Another question is whether it would be possible for anyone to do a big formal survey with random samples-- Cat Pause thought that no one would pay for it. I think it would be expensive, but I don't know how expensive it would be.
Also, any thoughts about questions which would be worth adding? I'm thinking about including age of first attempt to lose weight.
A while ago, I did a casual survey about what people have done to lose weight, and what the outcomes were. I'm interested in the subject because I was getting one narrative from the fat acceptance community (trying to lose weight is very likely to make your life worse) and another narrative from everyone else (trying to lose weight is a reliable way of making your life better).
The interview is at a fat-friendly venue, and I was told I couldn't mention that some people lost weight successfully. I was concerned that I wouldn't have 15 minutes worth of material, but Cat Pause (pause-AY) is a good interviewer, and the interview went well.
I can live with the no-diet-talk rule which exists in some venues. Some people are just sick of diet talk (it's very repetitious), and quite a few have had very bad experiences with trying to lose weight, up to and including eating disorders.
To my mind, a lot of fat acceptance venues have formal rules that limit the conversation, and the mainstream has customs of saying that people only fail to lose weight because they're doing it wrong and/or not trying hard enough which also have a considerable silencing effect. Nuanced discussion of various ways speech gets limited.
One angle the interview reminded me of is the possibility of expanding the survey. Any recommendations for venues? I've been thinking Metafilter. Facebook isn't satisfactory because I want someplace where it will be easy to find the survey again.
Another question is whether it would be possible for anyone to do a big formal survey with random samples-- Cat Pause thought that no one would pay for it. I think it would be expensive, but I don't know how expensive it would be.
Also, any thoughts about questions which would be worth adding? I'm thinking about including age of first attempt to lose weight.
