0:00:30
Ben Radford: Welcoming back to Squaring the Strange, the podcast that examines all manner of the mysterious to the mundane through a critical lens. So, let’s square the strange.

Pascual Romero: Welcome back to Squaring the Strange. This is Pascual Romero and with me as always is…

BR: The other co-host Ben Antford.

PR: And this week we’re at episode 39 which we have determined is divisible by three. So that has some significance I’m sure.

BR: Three and 13.

PR: Yeah yeah 13 is that number that a lot of people are a little sketchy on so it’s like

BR: It’s like in a way you could say it’s like you know triple bad luck.

PR: Yeah that’s maybe I don’t that’s but that might be a good thing for us because we work on the other side of superstition so yeah yeah maybe it’s maybe it’s triple good luck.

BR: Whatever we’ll figure.

PR: But anyway this week we’re on the the second half of our kind of Nears resolution episodes last week We had Matt the credible Hulk on we talked about diet and or well we talked about exercise And some of the woo around bodybuilding and gym woo and…

BR: I learned a lot on that show man!

PR:  I did too.

BR: It was like he’s using words that I’m like wow!

PR: Yeah I had to actually re-listen just with the dictionary and but what we what we’re getting to this week is gonna be some diet myths and and diet diet kind of skepticism and we’re gonna have Celestia on here in a few minutes so I’m really excited about that but first and what are you skeptical of this week?

BR: So this week I thought I would I would hearken if I may use a very old word hearken back a couple episodes to a strange mystery that sort of fell into my lap as you may recall I purchased a book on exorcisms and demonic possession I’ve got, think, four or five books on my shelf. And so I just like, Oh, I’m, know, recommended for you. I’m like, all right. know, apparently Amazon knows me. I always let her like give people like check like, you know, what exactly is, why, why are demonic possession recommended for Ben? Like, yeah, well, if you don’t know me, then anyway, so I, I, long story short, I purchased a used book on Amazon.com and there was a strange photograph that was sort tucked inside. Obviously, you can’t preview this on there. And it was a spring break, one of those touristy photos. And it was otherwise unremarkable, except that in the top left-hand corner was my name.

0:03:08
PR: Oh yeah, yeah, sure. And that was quite mysterious, considering, I mean, all the…  you ordering the book online, used, and just, you know, it happening to come to you from, it’s someone who presumably was in that picture, and, and, uh, yeah, and just have your last name right up in that corner, especially in that kind of rather, uh, unassuming print, too, because, you know, it didn’t, it wasn’t part of the, the artwork of the picture.

0:03:41
BR: It reminded me of a Found magazine. Do remember Found magazine?

0:03:44
PR: Yeah.

0:03:44
BR: I don’t know if it’s still around or not, but they had them. Just weird random stuff that was found. Anyway, so we bounced around a couple of ideas and theories about it was, my best guess was that it had to do with Radford University because of the spring break photo and there is a Radford University in Virginia, but knows, it could just be the previous owner’s name was Radford. mean, there’s a bunch of different theories. And I believe we may have found an answer.

0:04:13
PR: Oh, we have.

0:04:14
BR: I believe so. Well, I guess I could tell you about it, but instead of me blabbing on about it, why don’t we bring in Kenny Biddle of the Geeks and Ghosts show. Kenny, are you there?

0:04:29
Kenny Biddle: What’s up guys?

PR: Hey man, we’re good man. I’m really glad to have you on and I’m excited because I I did not Ask Ben or talk to Ben about this So I so this is all gonna be news to me and and this is kind of how I operate on the show is by being kind of Intentionally or unintentionally ignorant to what’s going on.

BR: It works out well. But no, as people know, we discussed it briefly on the show and then we also put it on Facebook, just sort of a curiosity thing. And if I’m not mistaken, you did some digging on it, and what exactly did you find, Mr. Investigator?

0:05:11
KB: Well, Ben, I actually peaked my interest because I’m the same way you are with old books with used books I love reading the notes and little surprises that you might find them when you get them because I buy a lot of used books from estate sales and it’s I’m always fun to stuff like that So when I heard on my show it really piqued my interest and of course I went to the website and saw the picture so basically what I did, it took about an hour really to figure it out.

0:05:44
BR: Just to be clear, you spend about twice as long as the guy that debunked the Amelia Earhart on the Discovery channel, built an entire special around it.

PR: And sometimes as long as I spend researching our show, as the correction last week will have you know. But anyway, so go on.

0:06:06
KB: I mean, this is kind of stuff that I love to do. So, I basically followed an investigative method that I learned from you, Ben. By reading one of your books, I made a list of all the clues that I saw immediately on the picture. uh, the first one was obviously the campusphoto.net website that I said talked about. So that was the first major quote, I was like alright, you know what? This is obviously where it’s from, so let’s find out what about this website and just like you guys said, it was like pretty much a 1990’s or early 2000’s style website where it was a membership only, it was to check for your photos on the progress. But they did have a contact button on the main page, which I clicked on and sent an email to them and basically said, hey, I need help with a mystery. I have a friend that has this photograph that he found in a used book, and I was wondering it was from you guys, if you had, say, like a photographer that was named Radford. Or if it was from Radford University, or what. I don’t know, I need help. You know, let me know. And I looked at that, and I spent about a half hour looking at other things. Like I looked at Radford, because that was another clue. And tried to look for a name of a photographer. Like, maybe there was a photographer named Radford in the Panama City area.

0:07:40
PR: Oh yeah, sure.

0:07:42
KB: And there are, there are a few. And I emailed all of them.

0:07:46
BR: Well, this is what I love about investigations is that, you know, I remember one thing that Joe Nickell told me many years ago, and he’s exactly right, that in retrospect, of these answers are obvious it’s like when you know the answer like well of course Madeline Tolentino’s you know saw the movie Species worth worth what it’ll come from right it’s like once you know the answer it’s like oh well it all it all lines up but when you’re in the middle of it you don’t know what direction to go right you’ve got three or four hypotheses and you know any any one of them might that be the right one So it’s a it’s I I totally know that this sort of sense of mystery and like oh, this is cool Let’s figure this out. I go ahead.

0:08:31
KB: Yeah, I mean it was really cool. I was keeping my interest So yeah, I emailed all the photographers named Radford in the surrounding Panama City Beach area in Florida. So just just for the record, there’s about 18 um, so none of them of which have responded to me.

0:08:50
BR: Us Redfords are a contrairian lot.

0:08:54
KB: After that, uh, I looked around Panama City to see if there was some kind of a event because the other clue on the picture is 2012 Big Break. And I thought maybe it’s Spring Break, but I’ve never heard it called Big Break before.

0:09:13
BR: That is an odd construction.

0:09:15
PR: Yeah, that’s a good observation. It didn’t really hit me, but that totally makes sense.

0:09:22
KB: That’s right, don’t forget it. So I started looking into that, and I did find a conference that was put on by, it’s called Crew. and it’s a religious facility, Campus Crusade for Christ.

0:09:41
BR: Okay.

0:09:43
KB: And as soon as I found that, I got an email back from the campusphoto.net people, and it was from a man named David Peck, and basically he said, hey, that’s one of my old photos. he took the photo and it was from students that were from as you said Ben, Radford University so all the students in the picture are from Radford University and what happens is every year this photographer David Peck goes down to Panama City Beach for this religious conference it’s a week-long conference where I guess –

BR: Things get wild. I see religious people you know go crazy on the beach.

0:10:31
KB: So yeah, they do this for a week, and he goes down and takes pictures, and then I guess he puts the borders around them, and decorates them up and sends them out. And it so happened that one of those pictures from those students ended up in your book which, we got a kick out of it. And it’s it’s like demons and exorcisms and it’s from a a book by a student from a religious conference. It was comforting it was great. I love that irony.

0:11:09
BR: IWho was almost certainly taking it quite literally, right?

0:11:16
KB: That’s basically it. mean, that’s the mystery. know who took the picture and where it was from. I just don’t know who the kids are in the photo, but honestly, don’t care. That’s not important. The mystery was where did it come from and we found out. So, there you go.

0:11:35
BR: Good job. I’m impressed that I love that story It’s exactly how you’re supposed to go about researching these things. So that’s a that’s cool.

0:11:43
PR: Yeah, that was a really impressive. I mean I definitely I think you know if If Ben had really gone into it, I imagine he would have he would have probably figured it out in the long run, but I certainly would not have!

BR: You should read my book.

PR: It’s already just two steps further than I’m trying to go But but no, so, know It was it was really cool to see that kind of from from someone who listens to the episode You know to get that much that much investment in figuring out the mystery so we definitely appreciate that and we were really good we’re really glad to have had you on…

KB: Hey, it was fun I mean I love I love the show I love you guys you guys are fun to listen to and and talk with and interact with even though you can’t hear me I’m listening to your podcast and I’m joining in the conversation so just know that for future episodes, on your time of discussion, I’m there. And I’ve learned, just personally, I’ve learned so much from Ben, that, you know, it’s a pleasure to actually do something like this for him and figure out a mystery for him, because, I mean, it’s all his technique that I learned from him.

0:13:06
BR: You’ve been in this for a long time and in fact, you’re mentioned several times in my upcoming book, Investigating Ghosts, very notably.

0:13:13
PR: Awesome. So where can our listeners find you?

0:13:19
KB: Well, several places. I do a podcast that used to be every week, but since my new job, it’s been like every other week or so. It’s called Geeks and Ghosts and we’re on YouTube we do a video podcast so it’s basically two idiots that argue over comics and movies and science and bigfoot and I’ve seen his stuff nice but it’s fun Ben was on it no I know we totally fun to him because he did stuff the first time.

BR: There’s a whole story behind that and it’s yeah not suitable for air but…

KB: It was a good yeah it was a good excuse so I’ll let you slide. And I can also be found on Facebook and YouTube under IamKennyBiddle. And that’s where I do my video and my blog posts on science and skepticism and paranormal claims. So, that’s where you can find me.

0:14:15
BR: Awesome, well thanks a lot, it’s great to have you on and good job solving the mystery, Scooby-Doo.

0:14:22
KB: Well, you’re welcome, Shaggy!

0:14:29
PR: We would like to thank our top sponsor, Amy Freshour-Kelly, for her long-standing support of the show. If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor or just throwing us a buck or two per episode, check out patreon.com forward slash squaringthestrange. Every bit helps us keep the lights on here in Strange Studios, and we could not keep bringing you content without the support of our generous friends. If you’re looking to provide moral support head on over to iTunes and give us a five-star review. Every positive review helps us move up the podcast charts. Thanks again strangers.

PR: So we’re here this week for the second of our New Year’s resolution episodes, and this week’s going to be about diet, and it’s going to focus on all the things. And we have a special, well, it’s not such a special guest, I mean it’s a co-host that we just need to have on more, think. Celestia, how you doing?

0:15:25
Celestia Ward: I’m still not special, stop calling me special.

0:15:29
PR: So, Celestia, what are we going to be talking about today?

0:15:35
CW: Well, I think all three of us have certainly done our homework sometimes over our entire lives, and we’ve also boned-up recently to give you guys some out there listenership, some facts and figures. Ben’s going to bring some information on whether or not America is obsessed with dieting, and then Pascual and I are going to go into our own experiences and what we have learned over years as fat people. I don’t know about you Pascual but I’ve done a lot of hands-on research with diets. I’ve done Weight Watcher, Slim Fast, Deal with Meal, Jenny Craig, Adkins, South Beach, Isagenix, Master Cleanse and probably a few others I’m forgetting.

0:16:13
PR: Yeah I could have dinged a few of those on that list and I’ve got a couple others but we’ll definitely, it’ll be kind of fun to talk about that at the end of the episode. But so Ben, let’s get into this. What do we have going on here with diets and what should we be skeptical of?

0:16:27
BR: Well you know it’s interesting, most of the research that I’ve done in terms of dieting is sort of peripheral to research that I did on anorexia.

0:16:43
PR: Oh okay.

0:16:43
BR: As you may know we’ve discussed a bit on the show and we’ll do a show on that at some point.

PR: Oops, I just used the beep instead of the ding. No, I’m leaving this in. There you go.

0:16:59
CW: I’ll put it down on the topics list and I’ll underline it in red.

0:17:03
BR: Exactly. But it’s interesting because one of the things that I like to research is, I did a book, The Media Myth Makers, and I’m always fascinated by the gaps between reality and the public perception, often that are seen through the prism of the news media, social media. It’s fascinating when you look at the statistics and the polls and surveys, it gives you a different picture than you see from a lot of the widespread reporting. So for example, oftentimes I see journalists cite statistics like that Americans spend 33 billion dollars a year on weight loss, everything from fad diets to exercise equipment, and this necessarily means that Americans are obsessed with dieting. And of course that’s a logical fallacy. Just because you’re spending money on it doesn’t mean you’re obsessed with it. It’s just, it’s just, there’s, you know, the size of a given industry is not necessarily a good measure of whether Americans are dieting, for example.

0:18:16
PR: Right.

0:18:17
BR: And another example, it’s slightly off topic, but for example, I often see the statement that America is obsessed with guns. In fact, two-thirds of Americans don’t own guns. It often turns out that people who own one gun own a of guns. just but just merrily on it it’s just not true that that most americans are gun-toting that’s actually not true and yet we all that all americans have such guns.

CW: We should definitely keep the people who are on diets from owning guns get really cranky when you’re on a diet so..

BR: Exactly exactly so so i want to get my thrown out of the some some some research that i’ve i’ve done over the years just looking at the statistics and the facts behind it. So for example, what you find is that contrary to this notion that Americans are obsessed with dieting, there was a 1993 Yankovic survey that found over half of Americans said they weren’t at all concerned about watching their weight. And studies showed that fewer than one quarter of Americans are dieting. again, 75% of Americans aren’t on a calorie-restricted diet in any given time. So, three-quarters of the people you see around you are not actively trying to lose weight through dieting. Again, that’s just the polls are there, you can look them up, this is not voodoo here. In fact, it’s interesting, when you go back and you look at different polls and surveys, was a 2002 Glamour magazine poll that asked 11,000 readers what they would give to slim down permanently. Now keep in mind the demographic of Glamour magazine readers, right? So Pascual, just off the top of your head, what do you think, if you asked 11,000 Glamour readers, what they would give to slim down permanently? What do you think they would, like, they would give a leg, they would give $10,000 in years of life, what do you think it would be?

0:20:27
PR: That’s a good question. That’s a hard one for me to answer because I feel like I would probably give more than the average person to permanently lose weight, but I mean, just from how media would sort have you believe, I would think that people would give, you know, would be willing to spend at least what they’d spend on some, like, gastric bypass or something like that, you know, maybe 50, 100,000 maybe, I mean, you know, or maybe, I don’t know, about years off to life. That’s a tough one. I don’t like answering with that one, for sure.

0:21:03
BR: Alright, well what do you think, Celestia?

0:21:06
CW: Um, you know, I’ve actually crunched numbers before when I looked into various more expensive weight loss options. I’d be like, okay, well, if I could lose 50 pounds on this, that works out to $35 a pound. I mean, certainly when you’re buying Jenny Craig sawdust meals, you got to do the numbers.

0:21:22
BR: And there goes out sponsor.

0:21:29
CW: It depends on how rich I am at any given point. I’m an artist. My income fluctuates. Right now I’d be, I would happily give $1,000 or even $10,000 for some magical cure, which I know doesn’t exist. If it would just mean I was of a normal weight for the rest of my life, that’d be great.

0:21:45
BR: Well here’s what the survey said. Again, this is a 2002 Glamour magazine asked over 11,000 readers, three-quarters would not give up eating dessert.

0:21:56
PR: Would not give up eating…

0:21:57
BR: No, no, look it up. Three quarters would not give up eating dessert to lose weight. Now, think about what this means. Oh, okay, well, you know, you say you won’t lose a few pounds, are you willing to give up dessert? No. I want to keep that slice of pie. Don’t get me wrong. I’d like to lose about 10 pounds and I’ll take the key lime pie.

0:22:22
PR: Wow.

0:22:22
BR: Three-quarters would not give up eating dessert and only 41% would pay $3,000 to be thin forever.

0:22:29
CW: $3,000? That’s like a used Honda.

0:22:36
PR: I agree. I’d easily pay 10 times that.

0:22:50
BR: This is, again, look it up yourselves. 2002, Glamour Magazine, 11,000 readers. It’s all there.

0:22:58
CW: I’m really starting to think that this Glamour Magazine readership is composed entirely of like 14-year-olds, you know, teenagers who have no concept of money and $3,000, $7 like millions to them and they’re spoiled and can’t get the idea of giving up ice cream past their frontal lobes.

0:23:18
BR: Well, here’s the thing, so again, there’s a disparity between what we say and what we do. If you ask people, know, hey, you know, would you like to lose, you know, some weight? Everyone’s like, absolutely! The answer is not no, unless of course you’re one of the 11,000 readers who wouldn’t give up anything to do that. But most people are like, yeah, I got a couple extra pounds here.

0:23:51
PR: Sure.

0:23:51
BR: The question then becomes, okay, well, what are people doing about it? And therein lies the rub, my friends. Therein lies the rub. And the answer is that people aren’t doing much about it. And one reason for that is when you look at the psychology of it, there was actually a Gallup poll that came out a few years back, and it found that as our waistlines increase, so does our perceptions of our ideal weight. Men’s average ideal weight is up 14 pounds since Gallup first measured it in 1990, and the average actual weight is up 16 pounds. Women’s average ideal weight is up 11 pounds since 1990, and their average actual weight is up 14 pounds. So basically over the past two decades, people have consistently said they want to lose 10 or 15 pounds off their current weight, but current weight keeps getting higher and higher.

0:24:42
CW: There was something that came across my feed just the other day that was supposed to be a feel good about yourself sort of, you know, Avocado Wolfie sort of meme. And it just had this picture of a sunset and it said, remember, you right now are somebody’s goal weight. I thought to myself, well yeah, I know I’ve got somebody who’s 600 pounds right now, and their goal weight is me, but that’s kind of a dumb thing to tell yourself. It’s like, remember, give up!

0:25:16
BR: There you go, it’s all good. No, it’s actually, you know, so there was a poll that found that one third of men say they are at or below their ideal weight, and about one quarter of women say that they are at or below their ideal weight. So you know the idea that that that Americans in general or even we can even go women specifically are in a constant struggle to lose weight it’s just not true. We hear it all the time we see it in Bridget Jones we it’s everywhere it’s just taken as a simple fact.

0:25:41
CW: I’d be curious I don’t know if you looked into any some sort of comparison statistics over what other countries you know that you said about a quarter of America is dieting at any given point?

BR: According to according to this is according to Gallup poll only one clear response said they were seriously trying to lose weight.

CW: I’d be curious to know if in France or Germany or England the percentages were much lower and so by just having a quarter of our population trying to lose weight we are seen as diet obsessed and it’s just getting blown out of proportion by the American media or even as something comparing statistics across time like in 1965 what percentage of Americans trying to lose weight or reduce as they used to call it way back in the olden times.

0:26:46
BR: That’s a good question.

0:26:47
CW: In articles they want to give you the impression that absolutely everybody in America is obsessed with dieting and that’s just not the case.

0:26:54
BR: It’s not the case and you know in again the according to this Gallup poll the majority of Americans say their weight is quote about right as they have typically responded over the past 20 years. But the 60% who describe themselves about right is the highest that Gallup ever found. So it’s a paradox that Gallup and researchers called the weight denial paradox. So basically, most of us know that we should lose some weight. I mean, how can you not know that you should lose some weight? Doctors tell you this, it’s pretty common. and we would like to do it if it’s quick and easy and it’s not gonna take too much effort. But at the end of the day, deep down, we really figured that we’re fine as we are. There was a 2010 research study found that nearly 40% of overweight women believe themselves to be thinner than they are. Again, according to a 2010 research study, nearly 40% of overweight women believe themselves to be thinner than they are.

0:27:54
CW: Oh, so we’re fatter than ever, but we’re okay with it.

0:27:57
BR: Exactly. It’s fascinating. Again, this is where the statistics and the numbers contradict the popular perception. The study also found that contrary to most people thinking they’re too fat, only 16% of normal weight women in the study perceived themselves as overweight. So again there’s this notion that all women are constantly dieting, they’re all trying to look like Kate Moss, they all want to be a size zero. No, according to the research, 16% of normal weight women, only 16% think that they’re overweight. So it’s simply not true that most women who are of healthy BMI think they’re overweight. 85% don’t. They’re like, no I’m okay.

0:28:40
CW: See, the thing that surprises me about what you went over there is that there’s a large percentage of overweight women who when asked are like, nope, I’m fine, I’m at my perfect weight right now.

0:28:52
BR: Yes.

0:28:53
CW: Because that’s, see I often use this type of self-delusion as a hyperbolic example when somebody says, well I believe this, I believe X, like when you’re talking to somebody who’s not a skeptic, who is talking about anything, astrology, psychic powers, whatever, they say, well I really, I really want to believe this. What I sometimes hit back with as a snarky response is, well I want to believe I’m a size 2, but that’s not gonna get me anywhere. And you mean there really are a lot of women who just believe that they’re smaller than they are?

0:29:26
BR: It’s true and I’ll go on. I’m not trying to sandbag you guys on your statistics, but I’ve done my research. Let me throw out one more. There was a 2014 survey. It was at Gallup Poll and it turns out that 60% of men and 50% of women surveyed said their neither overweight. nor trying to lose weight. So half of women say they’re not overweight and not trying to lose weight. Now keep in mind that that the that that last time I checked about the two-thirds, 66% of Americans are overweight or obese just across the board. So yet you have two-thirds of Americans who statistically according to BMI and other measures are in fact overweight. And yet half of women say they’re not overweight. And because they don’t think they’re overweight, they’re not trying to lose weight because I don’t need to lose weight.

0:30:19
CW: So there’s a gap. There’s just like a gap there for sure.

0:30:22
BR: There is. There’s this perception gap. And so in other words, only half of those who report carrying extra pounds are trying to shed them. Overall, fewer than one in five people acknowledge being overweight and that they’re actually trying to lose weight.

0:30:35
CW: I guess the first step is recognizing that recognizing that there’s a problem.

0:30:42
BR: Right, it’s fascinating and it’s not just self-perception that you also see the same effect when parents are are asked about the health of their children and this is pretty a problem that’s really blossomed over the past basically 10 years is you know we’ve now got you know year old kids who have type 2 diabetes. Because the kids are getting fatter and fatter all the time. And part of the reason that the kids are getting… I mean there’s lots of reasons you can blame McDonald’s, you can blame the industry, you can blame the junk food makers, all that’s fine. But if you look at the statistics, nearly two thirds of parents underestimate their child’s weight, and half of parents don’t recognize their children are overweight or obese, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics in 2014. So when you have two thirds of parents thinking, oh my kid’s fine, he’s a little chubby, but he’s fine, and the doctor’s thinking, no, your kid’s going to be in serious trouble, if the eating patterns don’t change your kids gonna be in serious trouble you know 10-15 years down the road because this is when eating habits are cemented, is in childhood.

0:32:04
PR: Sure.

0:32:04
BR: And so the fact that two-thirds of parents don’t think their kids overweight and statistically they are is a problem.

0:32:10
CW: Yeah I don’t know if you guys have seen some of them I’m you’ve it’s come across your your your radar just comparing the quote unquote fat kid in older movies compared to what you see these days it’s like you look at the old black-and-white movies and they’ve got a fat kid and it’s like well no wow that kid looks normal now most every kid on the playground nowadays looks like that kid and he was always you know and and there’s a huge difference in perception of what makes an overweight child these days.

0:32:41
PR: Yeah you look at like like Spanky from the Little Rascals you know and yeah you know and he was rotund but I mean he was not what you would you know if you were to cast that kid in a movie now the kid would be twice as fat and that’s I mean I’ve definitely noticed that.

BR: And the reason of course is because because in order to stand out as fat, because everyone’s getting fat. I mean again, it’s not… Most people are overweight. Two-thirds of us are overweight or obese. That’s 66% of us. So this is not, you know… It’s always odd to me when people act as if there’s this majority of thin people that are stick-thin and ruling us. No, no, no. Most people are chubby and need to lose some weight. So again, it’s one thing if you misperceive your own weight. Number one, that’s a problem and the data does show that people often do misperceive their own weight. But again, as I mentioned, people are also misperceiving children’s weight. And there’s a problem here because there are many health risks that are associated with overweight. of them is, of course, breast cancer. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, and obese women are up to 60% more likely to develop breast cancer as compared to healthy-weight women. of the problem is that there is, there’s sort of a, there’s almost, it’s been called the fat taboo. And there’s been research on this where doctors will sometimes be reluctant to tell, to encourage their overweight patients to lose weight because they figure, well they already know they’re heavy, I don’t need to tell them. But in fact, again, the data shows that they may not in fact recognize that are heavy, and so the concern is that that if you if you if you discuss a link between weight and breast cancer it’s sensitive to people because, you know, if you’re if you’re telling a woman that she should lose weight label, you know, I’m not trying to be came off No, no, it’s not about that. It’s about reducing your risk of breast cancer from 60% to 20% or whatever it is for that. there’s a concern that some people fear that if women are truthfully told that they have some control of their disease, they’ll blame themselves if they get it.

0:35:21
PR: Right? That’s a really interesting thing because, you know, I have a doctor who’s shoots really straight with me. In fact, she really pulls no punches about getting on me about weight and stuff. I mean, she’s very kind about it, but the interesting thing is, think, and this is just a guess from my own experience. that I think a lot of it comes from the fact that people in a social sense don’t want to point out people’s weight issues. And a person with any tact or consideration certainly wouldn’t just tell people they’re fat and need to lose weight. And as a person who’s dealt with being overweight in his adult life, it’s not something I care hear from people who are not in charge of my health. You know, so it’s like, just shut the f*** up about it because I don’t care. But, you know, so it’s interesting because I think maybe some of that is just doctors who, again, like that social pressure of not, you know, and rightfully not being a jerk about it in the social sense, you know, maybe it carries into their professional life a little too much.

0:36:36
CW: Yeah, I can speak to this because I am an overweight woman and I have breasts and I’ve been to, you know, I’ve had a number of family doctors over the years. I don’t think any single doctor has ever told me about the link between breast cancer and obesity. I have been told over the years is, well, you know, your health risks, you know, the overweight causes problems like XYZZZ, and you don’t have any of those. So yeah, I mean, you can absolutely diet, but it’s, you know, it’s nothing that you need to freak out about because my cholesterol is good, my blood pressure is good, I don’t have diabetes in my family at all, my blood sugars are good. I’m really one of those weird fat people, and I suppose it, you know, it can’t last forever. I’ve got health problems around the corner, but I’m just surprised that that’s the first time I’m hearing about the vastly larger risk for breast cancer that you get if you’re obese. And I’m surprised no doctor has ever mentioned that to me.

0:37:39
PR: Yeah, I’ve never heard that one. mean granted, no one would have told it to me, but I’m very…

0:37:45
CW: Men get breast cancer too!

0:37:46
PR: Yeah, that’s true, actually I would be kind of curious to see the link because I know that overweight men tend to the hormonal changes with estrogen and things like that may may contribute and so that you know I mean I obviously I don’t have that science in front of me but that may be something that you know the risk probably I would guess increases across the board but it’s interesting you say that because yeah I have the same thing. My doctor, she had me do a series of blood tests and other things for obesity and everything came back really good. And then my blood pressure is pretty good. mean everything, like on paper, I seem like a pretty healthy guy. And to my credit I don’t think, I don’t drink a lot, don’t eat a lot of sugar, and so there are some things I do that contribute to my health being better, but there’s no denying that I am overweight, and that still is going to be an issue for me, whether or not I develop issues because of cholesterol, or end up with diabetes or something like that, and that’s the part that I think, when you mentioned it, Celestia, that sort of is something that I think doctors need to be a little careful with too, because yeah, my doctor came back to me and said, everything looks really good, but you just need to lose weight, and I’m thankful that she said that, but it’s just like, yeah, I can see that happening a lot with people like us who don’t show those signs on paper, weight is weight, and that’s worth doing.

0:39:21
CW: Yeah, and if nothing else, my joints are gonna go, so I gotta look toward that. I wonder how much is also an effect of the shift lately in medical care to turning it more into customer service. You read these horrendous accounts of people giving their doctor bad Yelp reviews and doctors are gonna be a little… if it affects their practice if it affects their bottom line if it affects you know their their their patient base doctors are gonna get a little bit more timid about saying things that might upset patients and let’s say that there are a lot of wackadoo people out there gonna be like I didn’t like that doctor she told me I was fat what the hell why does she think she has a right to tell me I’m fat? I can imagine that. I work with the public. There’s a lot of people who are going be writing angry reviews because their doctor told them they were fat.

0:40:17
PR: That’s a good point.

0:40:17
CW: So, yeah. I’ve done no research into the correlation, I’d be curious if somebody has studied that.

0:40:24
BR: So let me just leave you with one more statistic because I haven’t dumped out enough of them in the last 15 minutes. So there was a study published in the March 2012 issue of the Journal of Women’s Health It was a University of medical study. Researchers tracked 466 women of various ethnicities over 36 months. They found that nearly a third of women did not notice a weight gain of approximately 4.5 pounds over 6 months. And a quarter of the women didn’t notice a weight gain of nearly 9 pounds over the same period. So again, it ties back into what I saying before, is that a lot of people, including women, don’t notice weight gain. It creeps up on us. We’re like, oh, know, pound here, pound there. And contrary to the public idea that, for example, that women weigh themselves twice a day, I’m sure there are some. I’m not going get angry letters. Yes, there are diet obsessed people, absolutely. I’m talking about most people. And the research shows that that most people number one are not seriously trying to lose weight they’re not exercising regularly they’re not dieting regularly and calorie restricted diets and and like like like everyone in the world they don’t notice a few pounds and the fact that some people gain nearly nine and didn’t notice it over six months, I mean, you would assume that if everyone is watching every calorie and every ounce, there’d be alarm bells going and people would be freaking out. Instead, most people, you know, they notice it, they make a note, whatever, and they just go on with their lives.

0:42:05
CW: Now was that was that specifically women didn’t notice the nine pound or was that people like men women?

0:42:11
BR: No that was 466 women.

0:42:14
CW: Women okay well I mean again as a woman. Oh my god I noticed I’m heavy.

0:42:21
BR: It was the journal of women’s health after all.

0:42:23
CW: Okay well as a woman again you if you even if you’re weighing yourself constantly you kind of go and down, there’s water weight and there’s the natural cycle where your body puts on sometimes up to an extra five to seven pounds just for your menstrual cycle.

0:42:38
BR: Sure.

0:42:38
CW: And it’s amazing what you can rationalize. So, oh wow, I’m a few pounds heavier. Oh well, I mean my period’s like three weeks away, it’s probably that.

0:42:47
BR: I had an after a hamburger last week. mean, it’s so easy to rationalize away these things and so again, I just want to leave people with the recognition that a lot of the things that we believe about what America is obsessed with, obsessed with dieting, obsessed with weight loss, obsessed with exercise, a lot of it’s not true and isn’t borne out in the data.

(MUSIC)

0:43:27
CW: Hey Squares and hey strangers, Celestia here with a skeptical fortune cookie. Let’s crack this one open. The heart of science is measurement. This comes to us from Eric Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. He holds degrees in mathematics and decision sciences from Harvard and a PhD from MIT in managerial economics, and he now teaches at both schools and has authored several books on the economics of technology, including 2014 New York Times bestseller, The Second Machine Age. Professor Brynjolfsson is not the only person to have expressed the importance of measurement. Being able to quantify anything from problems to substances, energy to opinions, is fundamental to understanding them. As William Thompson, also known as Lord Kelvin, puts it, when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind. Yet many journalists, politicians, and activists make this meager and unsatisfactory kind of knowledge into big stories, running roughshod over data, and forging ahead without much thought to accurate measurement. Alarmist headlines sometimes mask a story containing little to no real statistical meaning. Skeptics and scientists alike fight this trend every day, and we learn to spot it and ferret out the real magnitude of any particular health risk, public opinion, or social ill. Just like science, it’s not quick and easy, but it’s the way to get real solutions. Now, let’s get back to Squaring the Strange.

(MUSIC)

0:45:25
PR: So that was a really interesting kind of intro to everything a lot of numbers to think about so that that’s that’s I mean really just fascinating to me a lot of stuff I just wouldn’t have guessed but it –

BR: We’ll throw some links on the on the page and in the post.

PR: Yeah, so Celestia, you got something for us. You’ve been doing a little bit of reading. What you got for us?

0:45:49
CW: Well, yeah, I did some thinking about this particular episode, because as I’m sure everybody participating in this podcast has had this thought, you kind of feel like a hypocrite. You feel like, well, I’m a fat person. I should not be giving anybody diet advice, but I mean, and I’m overweight. not one of those gals who put on nine pounds and realize that I’m like, can’t ride certain roller coasters kind of fat. I’m overweight, obese rather. And I was thinking, now the experience of a fat person has some small similarity to the experience a person has when they’re diagnosed with cancer. I’m not saying it’s the same thing, but what you get is you get a lot of well-meaning friends and people that you’ve just met sometimes coming out of the woodwork giving you advice on some miracle weight loss cure.

0:46:37
PR: Right.

0:46:38
CW: And it’s and so as a fat person who’s been fat an awful big percentage of my life I have freaking heard it all. Oh my god I was told last week that alkaline water would be a great thing for me to try because I lose weight on alkaline water. But between the toxins, the cleanses, the Shakeology, the people who are doing life coaching and everything else, you just get hit with so much. And there’s a lot of it that I’ve tried over the years. And everything would work if you stuck with it. I mean, I’m not saying that the diet is flawed, but one of the things I hear constantly is that diet soda is what has made me fat. I am overweight because I drink diet soda.

0:47:19
PR: Okay, yeah.

0:47:20
CW: Now this has become a myth that is so entrenched. I mean, I believed it for a while. I actually gave up diet soda for a couple of months, and oddly enough, during that couple of months, I gained more weight than I had in a while.

0:47:35
BR: Well, let’s be clear… Yes, yes. you, no, look, it’s obvious, right? I mean, most people who drink diet soda are overweight.

0:47:51
CW: I’m glad you said that, yes.

0:47:53
BR: It’s all, what more do you need? It’s a fact, boom, mic drop, I’m out of here.

0:48:00
CW: And as I started doing my research, I found an awful lot of stuff on various health websites that say, if you drink diet soda, you are 10 times more likely to be overweight. And there was, that’s true, don’t have a problem with that logic, because the reason I’m drinking diet soda is because I’m overweight. And that’s true for a lot of people. you wear size 3x jeans, you are more than 10 times likely to be overweight, but the size 3x jeans are not what’s making you overweight.

0:48:37
BR: Are you saying the correlation does not imply causation?

0:48:41
CW: It implies it, but in this case it certainly is not a part of the problem. So I looked at it, I even asked my doctor about it, because you know I do talk to my doctor about losing weight, even if they don’t tell me I’m fat, I mention it. Oh by the way doctor, I’m fat. I said, I’ve given up diet coke and I’m still not losing weight, I need to work on my calories, blah blah blah. She said, well how much diet coke were you having? I said, well I’d get like a super big gulp and pretty much nurse it the whole day. She said, well do you put ice in it? And I said, well yeah. And she said, then you’re fine! The main health problem that doctors worry about with diet soda is if you replace every single ounce of liquid with a diet soda, then you’re missing out on, your body needs water. And diet soda also brings with it caffeine and sodium. and you know for instance if you eat if you if you drink 12 a day it’s not a good idea speaking of that that was recently in the news Donald Trump was raked over the coals for having 12 diet cokes a day which was interesting because I you know I don’t want to defend anything Trump is doing and the Mayo Clinic does say that if you if you drink more than 10 cans of diet soda a day you’re above the safe caffeine level and that’s a lot of sodium and I mean that’s fine if that’s all the sodium you’re getting is just the sodium from the the drinks and that’s not so bad but you’re probably eating other stuff too and and just because Trump was in the news about his 12 diet cokes day which by the way he also apparently has a button that he pushes which summons a diet coke like his butler brings him a diet coke when he pushes I want I want a button like that regardless about any information we’re gonna talk about today I want a diet coke button!

PR: Just as an aside I that I swear that sounds like a pitch for a 1980s diet coke commercial Donald Trump’s it is this he pushes a button that button brings him a Diet Coke.

0:50:52
BR: It’s too warm, you’re fired!

0:50:59
CW: But he’s got some tweets here that were dredged up from 2012, where apparently Donald Trump went on a rant against Diet Coke. Oddly enough, Donald Trump having two different positions and flip-flopping, I don’t know, crazy, huh? He said I have never seen a thin person drinking diet coke and then later he tweeted diet coke etc is inverse to reason it tricks your body into eating more and uh but then later on he did let people know that he was still drinking it he said uh the coca-cola company is not happy with me that’s okay I’ll still keep drinking that garbage.

PR: Okay.

CW: It almost sounds like he’s admitting he kind has an impulse control problem. Great, great thing to have in a president, I know, I know. But his concerns pretty much echo what the general consensus is online about Diet Coke and David Avocado Wolf has been no fan. He has gone so far as to say that if you drink diet soda thinking it’s healthier than the regular variety, fallen victim to the biggest marketing scam of all time. I mean that’s not hyperbolic at all right but it is pretty it is pretty crazy for him to imply that it’s diet soda is worse than drinking the regular sugary soda because 12 diet cokes a day is gonna give you more caffeine than you want and more sodium but if you were drinking the regular cokes it would be 1680 calories. That’s like almost getting your full caloric intake in just sugar water. And Dave Avocado Wolf seems to be implying that that would be healthier than drinking 12 diet cokes and having a balanced meal otherwise. Which, yeah, but anyway. So let’s take a look at this and break it down. Web MD article stated that in a recent search 49 out of the first 50 hits about diet coke or diet soda were stories warning people that diet soda would make you gain weight so people believe it’s pretty well established out there That there’s a consensus that diet coke makes you gain weight not that it’s correlated with fat people agree that it’s correlated with fat people, but that it makes you gain weight.

0:53:18
PR: Yeah, I’ve seen a number of those in my own trying to, you know, get to the bottom of things. I’ve seen, it’s, it’s, the second you, you Google it, it’s just like, it makes you fat. And there’s various arguments for it, but I find that really interesting.

0:53:36
CW: Yeah, many of the people writing these articles, they don’t really have a clue about a proposed mechanism for what it does to make you gain weight, but they have a series of vague hand-waving things saying it fools your body into thinking there’s sugar coming and when none comes, you get an insulin spike. And there are some studies that they’re pulling on. Psybabe did a wonderful breakdown of this just this past year. It was one of her more popular articles. Diet Coke is not killing you. She does a quick overview of the studies and there aren’t that many. There’s like the recent study about six months ago back in June by Megan Azad suggests that there’s a possible link with diet soda and belly fat. But she, the researcher, flat out says it needs more study and the causal link may go the other way. People with belly fat and other habits that are making them fat are the ones choosing diet sodas. That tends to be what I found when I looked into these studies, that the people who are doing the studies, the researchers, are like, well, we found this, but whoa, the sample size was really small, or it was observational and reported by people who aren’t telling us the rest of their diet. And so we can’t put too much stock in this and the correlation might go the other way but the articles don’t report that. There was one study that involved feeding rats Coca-Cola like liquid than offering them pudding and even the lead researcher herself said that she was stunned it got picked up everywhere It was really a really small study and then there are some larger observational studies cited there’s a San Antonio study and a Boston study the San Antonio one had 5,000 participants And there was one in Framingham that involved 9,000 women. They were both observational and not controlled. So these were hardly double-blind, these were hardly controlled, they weren’t controlled at all, they were just self-reporting. And so it really is impossible to say what, if any, role the diet soda specifically had.

0:55:49
PR: Yeah.

0:55:50
CW: One of the things that was brought up psychologically is that it could be, and this sounds as a person who likes diet soda myself, which I should let people know I have that bias, I do like Diet Coke.

0:56:01
PR: Same here.

0:56:01
CW: It could be that people are using diet soda as a band-aid to their terrible diets. And so people, once they realize, oh my gosh, I’m putting on belly fat, I’m getting heavier, I better make a positive change, they go to the same drive-thru and they say, I will have the Big Mac and the extra large fry and a Diet Coke will change things for me, I’ll have a Diet Coke instead.

PR: Sure, sure.

CW: So that is a very easy change to make and it might make you feel like you’re accomplishing something in your diet, if you’re still eating all the crap, then all the crap is going to still be on you there. So, yeah, Psy Babe, I highly recommend her article about diet coke if you’re questioning whether or not you should give it up or add it to your diet. There was actually a study that showed, let me see here, there was a study back in 2013 by the Global Food Research Program and as part of a controlled weight loss program, it had participants drop regular soda and switch to either water or three diet sodas per day. And the group that got the diet sodas, interestingly, they opted to have fewer desserts than the water group. that study really kind of indicates, or it certainly hints at the result that adding a couple of diet sodas could kind of satisfy your sweet tooth and make you not crave other sweet.

0:57:29
PR: Definitely.

0:57:30
BR: That’s a good point. I’m glad that you brought up the problems of the different studies. That’s one of the big problems with science communication, of course, is that if you want to find studies saying that coffee will kill you, you can find them. If you want to find studies saying that coffee will save you, you can find them. Everything’s out there. I want to quickly quote Harriet Hall, who’s one of the great skeptics and a friend of mine. She wrote a piece for Skeptic Magazine, Volume 19, Number 4 from 2014, and she did an article on food myths. And I’m just going to read a quick quote from her, because she makes a really important point about the difficulty in getting solid science behind this. She writes, Unfortunately, bad information is mixed in with the good. The only reliable guide to reality is science, but when it comes to food, there’s a problem. It’s hard to do a gold standard double-blinded randomization control study on diet. We could learn a lot if we could divide up infants into two groups, insert feeding tubes, put competing diets directly into their feedomics throughout their lifetimes, and see which group lives longer and has fewer illnesses. But that’s not feasible. So we have to rely on less conclusive forms of evidence. We can compare two groups who eat different diets, such as vegans vs meat eaters, for example, or Mediterranean vs Americans. But those groups almost always differ in other ways that can affect the results, ways that we didn’t think to control for. We can ask people what they eat, but we can’t trust their answers to be accurate all the time. People tend to misremember or misestimate portion sizes and to misreport what they eat in the direction of what they think researchers will approve. We can tell people what to eat for a study and even provide the food we want them to eat, but compliance is a problem and studies are time-limited. So there’s much more to the piece. Again I always recommend Harriet’s work. It’s fantastic. I believe she has a whole article in the magazine. I think it’s important to… it’s a good reminder as to why it is so difficult to get conclusive rock-solid answers about, you know, is this food additive good for you? Is it bad for you? What does that mean? There’s genetics there’s portion sizes, there’s so many variables that it’s hard to get rock solid science that is going to be the gold standard. In some ways it’s frustrating, and you know what? One of the problems is that people like Dave Avocado Wolf and the food babe and these other people, they exploit that. Yeah, they exploit the natural uncertainty of science. Science does not have all the answers. It never claimed to. And it’s almost like the conspiracy theory. Well, what about this? What about that? Okay, well, you cited 80 studies here, but there’s these two other studies here. It’s like, okay.

1:00:41
CW: Yeah, I definitely got a sense of scapegoating happening. people were not so much happy. Diet soda really just seemed like it took on the role of a scapegoat like pinning your lack of weight loss on the fact that you’re drinking diet soda is ignoring the fact that you haven’t changed your diet. So if yeah that would be my one piece of advice to people. Don’t just switch out your drinks to diet soda. Don’t quit diet soda. Use diet soda the way it’s meant to be used as a substitution for real soda. And also lower your calorie intake in other ways.

1:01:19
BR: I think one of the things that we’re seeing, and this is certainly not news to many skeptics, but of course, the simple fact is that you can lose weight on any diet. There’s essentially no diet that you can’t lose weight on.

1:01:33
PR: Yeah, you could eat like three doughnuts a day every day for a year and you’ll probably lose a ton of weight. If that’s all you eat.

1:01:39
BR: So I mean it’s important for people to remember, actually to my mind I liken it to hypnosis. You’re probably wondering where I’m going with this, but I was talking to a friend of mine and he was trying to quit smoking. And he said, yeah, I’m trying to quit smoking. I said, okay, a lot of people have a time with it. How’d you do it? He said, well, I went to hypnotist and I resolved, I’m gonna do it and I went to hypnotist and I paid $300 and I was there for five sessions and I haven’t picked up a cigarette since then.

1:02:20
CW: He can’t afford them. He’s spending $300 on a cigarette.

1:02:25
BR: And I said, well, and but to him this was this was clear evidence that hypnosis works.

1:02:30
PR: Sure.

1:02:30
BR: And I said, well, it could be I mean, I know something about hypnosis and you know, background psychology and stuff. It’s I’m not saying it doesn’t work. But I said, you know, you need to understand that, that your motivation could be enough in and of itself, you could decide that you had enough. And by God, you were gonna you were gonna finally end This once and for all sir, and it’s entirely possible that had he done something else Meditation or you know self is a self-help book mean is so it’s it’s difficult to say that that that you know his his smoking cessation was due to hypnosis. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but it’s not necessarily the cause of link. And you see the same thing with diets, right? Where, you know, oh, I tried this diet, I lost 15 pounds, okay. And it reminds me of not just hypnosis, because I’m bouncing all over the place tonight, but also Jack the Ripper. Here’s where I’m going with this. So here’s where I’m going with it.

PR: What it’s like getting stabbed, that’s a good way to lose weight!

1:03:39
CW: But it’s the Jack the Ripper diet!

1:03:41
BR: No, no, no, here’s where I’m going with it. So if you’re a ripperologist, and I’m not, I know, you know, some of the, I’ve done a little bit of research into Jack the Ripper, it’s so cold a case it’s never going to be solved. But what you find is that are of course dozens and dozens of suspects. And there are books and TV shows and authors who have built their careers around one particular… Oh well, it’s the Mad Butcher, it’s the Jew, it’s the Sickert, and any number of people. is that when you read their books, it’s pretty convincing. It’s like, yeah! Well, when you put it that way, yeah, absolutely, yeah, it all makes sense! Sure, it’s like, you laid out this perfect case, and yeah, you know, there’s things we don’t know, and there’s supposition, there’s speculation, and at the end of the day, it’s like, yeah, you know what? But the thing is, if you then go read another book that’s suggesting that a different person is Jack the Ripper, it’s like, wow, that makes sense. I’m following along here, I’m with you, right? And so it’s the case of where it’s sort of a version of a confirmation bias, and you see this with these diets. You have someone who gets the idea, the paleo diet, the, I mean, there’s, you know, the, take your pick, the Scarsdale diet, I mean, and you have hundreds of diets, and you have a doctor and or, and or a, you know, a hype man proponent who’s selling this, and you’re like, yeah, that makes sense, yeah, I could see that when you put it that way, you know, three donuts a day, yeah, I could see that, cause you’re, you’re cutting out all these other things, well, that’s, point here is that there is no diet that is so absurd that someone can say, I can kind of see how that would work. And you can’t find some nut job or some study somewhere that might somehow tenuously support it. And this is why we have literally hundreds and hundreds of diet books and diet programs that are often essentially contradictory. I mean, one says you need to cut down on carbs, in words, they eat nothing but carbs. Or one says it’s all raw foods. I mean, there are all these different theories, and when it’s packaged and promoted and marketed in a certain way, it’s like, I could see that, yeah, you know. There’s a medical doctor, you know, or alleged medical doctor endorsing this. so my point here is that it’s easy for the public to get confused. And it’s like, I don’t know, there are all these dites, you know, go to your local bookstore, go to the diet shelf, there’s dozens and dozens, they all say some version of, you know, this is why this is the so-called science mind, and the same thing with Gary Taube’s book. And I’ve never met the guy, I think I may have interviewed him once years ago, but yeah, so I’m sure he believes what he’s saying, and then there will be books that will say exactly the opposite, by just as sincere people and researchers who are sure that they’re way is right. So I think that’s sort of the thing to take from it, is that like Jack the Ripper, is that when people frame a particular diet and you their worldview and well if you look at it this way and you know you’re like all right and again you know any one of those diets will work absolutely!

CW: Your analogy yeah your analogy works in in the fact that yes they all sound plausible i think jack the ripper we know that all of the all of those theories can’t be right you can’t have 20 different jack the rippers you’d way more victims. But so there is a literal correct answer to who is Jack the Ripper. With the diet thing, it’s not so much that one of them really will work, but that all the others sound plausible. Everybody’s a little bit right. All of the diets are a little bit right.

1:07:51
BR: Well, but keep in mind, that’s not how they’re promoted. The diet authors don’t say, we’re a bit right. This is the program, this is cutting edge science, you know, look we’ve got this celebrity who lost, know, Louis Anderson lost 500 pounds on this, you can barely see him, and he’s here to, I hate myself, right? So the diet people, they will tell you that’s how they’re making their bread and butter, Their whole promotion is, this is the best for you.

PR: I guess I’ll speak from a little bit of a personal place in trying to give a final word for my end. You know, for me, it’s always been a battle my entire adult life. I’ve been up and down, and and right now I’m in a point in my life where I’m heavier than I, much heavier than I’d like to be, and a lot of it I’ve found probably relates more to, you know, the things that are going on in my life than, I mean, well, how I’m eating and how I’m conducting myself is obviously affecting my weight, but what’s causing that to happen is a little more important. I think that a lot of people, I don’t want this to be advice to people in general, but I think that I find that you can’t really approach the idea of losing weight effectively until you kind of assess your personal life a don’t like to talk about that a lot of people like to think they can fix it with the general behavioral change and not address the things that are maybe leading to these behaviors and and I think that you know to our listeners anyone out there looking for that kind of you know those answers for for weight loss and getting in good health like definitely don’t don’t take your mental state out of the equation. You should definitely see if you can, if you need to address something else in your life you can really approach these healthy lifestyle changes.

BR: I think you’re exactly right. And I, you know, I’ll share my personal tip. I actually don’t have that hard time losing weight if I do what I tell myself to do. No, I’m serious. I mean, it’s like, I’m not blaming my thyroid. I mean, I have a pretty good idea of why I’m overweight, and the answer is, oh, drumroll please, that I snack after about 10 o’clock. I got candy around, I got some popcorn. You know, I’m not a glutton, but I’ll, you know, have a little bit here and there. And I know for a fact that that’s a big part of my problem. When I remind myself not to eat after 9 o’clock, suddenly I’m dropping a pound a week. So it’s frustrating to me personally because I have a pretty good handle on what the problem is. It is not beyond my locus of control. I’m not blaming the government experiments, or the junk food industry. It’s not Wendy’s. It’s me saying, you know what, I’m done for the night, I’ll drink some sparkling water and be done with it. And you know, again, it’s all, a lot of it’s self-discipline. And it’s, that’s what it comes down to. And certainly, I’m not speaking for everybody, I’m just speaking for me. And again, it’s both comforting and frustrating to me. Because it’s comforting because I’ve done the sort of self-analysis to identify a big part of the problem. And it’s frustrating because even though I know what to do, you know, my resolve on Mondays starts to wane by Thursday and suddenly I’m having another slice of pizza.

1:12:24
CW: I don’t know, I’m probably gonna, there’s so many different ways to look at this and there’s so many different ways it has been looked at. Pascual, I’m actually kind of in opposition to you in terms of my own mindset I tend to gain weight when I’m happy when I’m in a good mindset I just freaking love food I like eating it and my hunger levels are like I’ll eat a small portion and that’ll just make me a little more hungry and I’ll enjoy myself eating the rest of whatever it is. So for me and again this is a tie it into skepticism because this is a skeptical podcast um it’s being constantly aware of the data you’re not letting yourself go on feelings I had I had a skinny friend I have to preface this with she was a skinny friend give me the advice just I think you just have to listen to your body listen to your body.

1:13:24
PR: That’s got me into this situation.

1:13:27
CW: It’s a liar. It’s a greedy bastard and it’s paranoid that it’s going to starve and that’s what evolution has turned it into. So you don’t want to listen to your body or your mood or that little voice inside you that wants another cookie. Lock onto the data. The best thing that I have come across as a tool is my little app that where I have to input every single thing I eat and it tells me all the calories and I keep a log because if you if you just kind of gloss over the data you’re gonna be glossing over a bunch of calories people and I’m a people you’re a people we’re all people – people underestimate how much they eat it is proven fact portion size is one of the ways that people lie to themselves constantly I when I first did Weight Watchers as like a 12 year old, I was allowed to have an ounce of cheese every morning with my toast and that ounce of cheese was like, oh I probably got two ounces out of a block of cheese. And yeah I was just listening to Penn’s podcast. Penn Jillette was saying that he allows himself a spoonful of peanut butter and he goes, and a spoonful I figure some nights is a half of a jar and and and you know we are we are also inundated by large portions everywhere from the average Chili’s ad to I one of the rabbit holes that went down is that there was a study in 2010 that looked at 52 different paintings of the Last Supper by these two brothers one of them is a food guy over at Cornell who studies obesity and the other brother studies the New Testament. And they looked at 52 paintings of the Last Supper and found that the main dishes that the artists painted had increased in size by 69% over the past 700 years. And the bread portions had gone up by 23%. And the increase in the past like 50 years was way more than in previous years. It was almost like the climate hockey stick but it was renaissance painting food. The portion just went way up so rather than just saying oh this feels like a good meal I’ll have this. No you have to measure you have to keep measuring spoons and measuring cups and be aware what four ounces of meat really looks like.

1:15:56
PR: Right, right.

1:15:57
CW: That would be, yeah, that’s advice that I need to take more often. Sometimes you get too busy to measure things, but if your New Year’s resolution includes losing weight, as mine does, and I’m sure many others out there, don’t lose track of data. Keep a handle on your measurements.

1:16:14
BR: And not just measurements in terms of portion sizes, but also measurements in terms of the amount of exercise needed to get rid of those calories. I remember being shocked when I would, you know, I’d eat, you know, one of those little mini candy bars. It’s like, oh, whatever, it’s 60 calories or something. And I’m thinking, well, you know, I’ll probably burn off 60 calories, you know, like, walking to the office and back. And then I just realized, like, no, 60, you gotta, you gotta like jog for like a half a mile to like, to even begin to work that off, right? So, people, they don’t have any sense of just how many calories need to be, just how much exercise you need to burn off the calories. And of course there’s an issue with exercise machines, or overestimating, oh you just burned 800 calories, like really?

1:17:14
PR: Yeah, yeah.

1:17:15
CW: Ben, you’re referencing, I’ve specifically texted Ben, I go to the gym, I’ve been going to the gym a lot lately and I’ll do literally 750 calories, quote, calories of exercise. And I know, Ben, I have texted you going, ha ha, this machine just said I burned 750 calories. Fat chance, you know. We could do a whole show on exercise machines and how they lie to people.

1:17:41
PR: Yeah, yeah.

1:17:43
CW: Yeah, anyway, be aware of the numbers and be aware of when the numbers are lying.

1:17:49
PR: Agreed. And I think that really shows the three of us talking about our own experiences with it. There is no one answer. There are some basic principles that tend to apply. And I think it’s important to keep your eye on those. The things that we know do and don’t work. I mean, things we know work, scientifically, are pretty minimal, but they’re there. it’s an intake and output of energy. And so, you know, keep those in mind. And again, you know, everyone has their reasons why they have trouble losing weight. You know, me personally, it’s a mental health issue, really, above all else. And I’m dealing with that. And, you know, this year I have resolved to lose weight and I’ve really done a lot to deal with my own issues and my health from everything from physical to mental health. I think that for some people it’s just being conscious of things and paying attention to the numbers and paying attention to what their impulse is to do late at night, which for me sometimes is an extra large pizza bite. Maybe not so much these days, but that’s the kind of thing that we were talking about. I think that overall there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this, but there’s no reason to be discouraged. Just look at yourself, really be honest with yourself and try to figure out what you need to change because it’s there and you can do it. You definitely need to address what what what’s causing the issue for you,

BR: I think that’s right, that’s and that’s you know, what I began talking about was was self-awareness I mean a lot of times Again, we all sort of know generally invaded that we should lose weight. Yeah, we all we we all know that this is not rocket science It’s not a huge revelation and yet, know back on mine’s like well, yeah, but there’s someone over there going I’m not as big as he is like right I’m not you know and you see like you know the TV shows you know the biggest loser and you compare yourself to those people like well hell you know I’m half his size right yeah and he’s two steps away from your heart attack so so comparing yourself up is not going to help you out okay so love it is self-awareness you know be cognizant of when eating, recognize what your patterns are, you know, recognize when you are in fact, you know, when you’re overweight or when your children are overweight. And don’t let it be a taboo topic. Talk to your doctors, tell your friends. I mean, I’m not suggesting people need to tell everybody how much they weigh and what their diet plans are, but self-recognition and sort of self-awareness in terms of, again, how your body reacts, what you eat, what your patterns are, that can go so far to getting healthier.

1:20:47
PR: Definitely.

1:20:47
CW: Well, that’s a skeptical mantra, is using your own skeptical toolbox on yourself, because that’s really what any good skeptic should be doing, is identifying things. I was a coach for Curves many years ago, like 10 years ago, and one of my jobs as a Curves gym coach or whatever for these older, fatter ladies which Curves catered to is you had to measure them and weigh them each week. And I remember asking my boss, well, what do I do if I’m weighing somebody and measuring somebody and they aren’t losing weight and they don’t know why? And my boss just looked at me and said, no, if they aren’t losing weight, trust me, they know why. And I’ve remembered that people know people you just you know It’s just an exercise in not fooling yourself anymore and come into grips with things and keeping track of the data and your own behavior.

(MUSIC)

1:21:26
PR: So that about does it for us this week. I know this topic, I mean we’ve pretty much just covered the tip of the iceberg and my plans are to continue to stick to my resolution, see how long that lasts, and I’ll be checking um throughout the year on the episodes just to uh let people know how my progress is doing I think that will also hold me a little more accountable. So uh, so guys hold me accountable, but uh…

BR: I will I’ll ask you in opportune moments, so

PR: So yeah, we’ll just have a tape measure here to wrap around my stomach every time I walk in But uh, but that that does it for this week and like I said, we’ll we’ll be going back to this stuff a little bit throughout the year. But next week we’ve got a really interesting topic that I think has really gotten kind of overlooked as a topic in the skeptic world and that’s curse removal. We always hear about curses or we hear about hauntings or any real tried and true topics of skepticism but curse removal.

CW: I thought we were allowed to curse anymore yeah the whole episode is gonna be one long beep

BR: But yes curse removal curse removal so that’s how it’ll be interesting there’s a you know, it folds in with psychology and psychics and all sorts of stuff, and I’ll be, we’ll be talking about several things, but including, as you guys, as you know Pascual, I don’t know if the listeners know, but I get people contacting me probably a few times a year who are apparently genuinely concerned have their vision cursed. Yeah, and it’s, so I mean at this point I’ve probably done, I probably had maybe a dozen or so, maybe more, and it’s strange to have that, I mean to have someone contact you, again I’m pretty sure that I’m joking, it’s not a hoaxing thing, and trying to understand how do I best help these people? And you know, what is the best? How does one ethically approach that as a skeptic, as a researcher and someone with a background in psychology and trying to bring a lot together? So it’ll be interesting.

1:24:22
CW: I’ve read that the most common way to remove a curse from somebody is to take all of their money. That appears to be the most common approach that many psychics have.

1:24:36
PR: Curses tend to attach themselves to the money. So anyone listening, go over to our Patreon and remove a couple bucks. But anyway, so yeah, really excited to cover that topic. It is really fascinating. But until then, we’ll see you next time.

1:24:59
bye bye spring strange is a production of chronos creative lc copyright 2017 theme music by shrek additional music by memory guitar and feather and paul ramero content producer so let’s your work audio engineering producing and editing provided by paul ramero chronos creative studios additional support provided by ashley ramero and of course our listeners and patrons The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of those wearing strange and not necessarily reflective views and opinions of cross creative, center for inquiry, our advertisers, or any affiliate organization of employers.

Transcribed with Cockatoo