Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Diet Culture

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

We’re baaaaaaack! We can barely record an episode of this podcast without a snack, so how are millions of people supposed to escape the "cult" of dieting when its mission is to keep everyone hungry, tired, and riddled with self-loathing? Let's count the red flags: a strictly controlled eating regimen, shame and peer pressure up the wazoo, false promises, hidden costs, viciously addictive cycles that offer no exit strategy... um, how is diet culture *not* a cult? In our highly requested relaunch episode, Amanda and Isa analyze the dangerous (and highly profitable) "cult" of dieting with special guest, actress and host of the I Weigh podcast, Jameela Jamil. To support Sounds Like A Cult on Patreon, keep up with our live show dates, see Isa's live comedy, buy a copy of Amanda's book Cultish, or visit our website, click here! Thank you to our sponsor! Go to Zocdoc.com/CULT and download the Zocdoc app for FREE Diet Culture Resources: Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings: https://nyupress.org/9781479886753/fearing-the-black-body/ What We Don't Talk about When We Talk About Fat Aubrey Gordon: https://bookshop.org/p/books/what-we-don-t-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-fat-aubrey-gordon/14443277  The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor: https://www.sonyareneetaylor.com/the-body-is-not-an-apology  I Weigh Community: https://iweighcommunity.com/  Hooked by Michael Moss: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246273/hooked-by-michael-moss/  NRP diet culture article: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1067210075/what-if-the-best-diet-is-to-reject-diet-culture  Diet culture podcasts: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/27/arts/podcasts-diets-healthy-living.html 

Thank you so much to ZockDoc for sponsoring this episode of Sounds Like a Cult. With ZockDoc booking an appointment with a doctor that suits your needs, fits your schedule, is in your network, and in your neighborhood is easy. Go to ZockDoc.com slash cult and download the ZockDoc app for free. Then find and book a top rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash cult. ZockDoc.com slash cult.

The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable facts. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. You know who never experiences fat phobia or the pressures of diet culture? Cats and dogs. Cats and dogs. Well, at least they don't know it.

Human beings project their fat phobia onto animals all the time. I even find myself doing it. Well, I feel like some animals do need to go on a diet, but they don't know that. And it doesn't matter. Like, they are thriving. And this just goes to show how arbitrary our beauty and body standards are, because everybody prefers a chunky cat. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow.

I'm Issa Medina, and I'm a comedian performing all over the country. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book, Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. Every week on our show, we discuss a different group or guru that puts the cult in culture, from the troubled teen industry to the Kardashians. To try and answer the big question, this group sounds like a cult, but is it really? What's up, bitch? Happy New Year.

Oh my God. Whoa. Whoa. Coming out strong, as we should, because it's been a minute. It has been a whole minute and a half, and it's literally a new year. I mean, 2023. Happy New Year. We made it.

Oh my God. By the skin of our teeth, we've had a time. Those who know what we're talking about still don't know what we're talking about, and you'll never even know what we're talking about. We cannot talk about it. We cannot talk about it. We're just glad to be back. You know, Sounds Like a Cult is ultimately a cult that does not release you that easy.

Baby, nobody can take us down. We're moving. We're moving. We're grooving. Just like they did back in the 70s. Taking cults into the modern day. And we don't plan on leaving you, people, okay? We are your leaders, and we take that very seriously.

All we'll say is this. We were not gone for two months because of a cult suing us. There's a lot of speculation out there, y'all. Don't worry. If you haven't seen the Reddit threads, Google that shit. It was hilarious. It also made us feel so special that people cared and were asking. I was like, no one cares about me like this in my regular life.

Yeah, no one flies Delta to Reddit to learn what I'm up to in my everyday life. Yeah, that was the funniest cult. Amazing comment. Someone was like, I broke my ankle racing to Reddit to figure out why Sounds Like a Cult is not coming back right away. Yeah, it's not what you think, and it's not what anyone will ever guess. It's something we could have never guessed, and that's all we're going to say about that. Yeah, but the good news is it's a new year, and we look hotter than ever,

but you don't know that because you don't know what we look like. But we're back in the new year, and we wanted to give you the best new year's episode with the best guest, so let's get into it. We're going to be talking about what is on everyone's mind this year. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we'll talk about it, diet culture. We do want to mention right up top here that we know this can be a very sensitive topic. It can be a triggering topic, and we're not experts in this space.

We are examining it through our own personal lens, through our cult lens. We're excited for you to hear from our well-informed guest, and we also know that plenty of you listeners are better educated in this topic than we are. So our DMs are open for a dialogue, and we've also linked some fantastic resources in the episode description for those interested in diving deeper. We know that we are. I would actually argue that diet culture is one of the cultiest cults we've ever covered. Yeah, I would agree.

I think it affects everyone, but in different ways, because it's a cult within a cult, within a cult, within a cult. There are so many different sects and denominations, and that's something that I actually want to mention, that we're not just talking about specific diets here, like Whole30, or Keto, or Veganism. We're talking about the larger cult of diet culture, and each of those individual diets is more a sect, and they each have sort of varying levels of extremism.

For some reason, it reminds me of the opposite of that quote. I think it was Lin-Manuel Miranda said that love is love is love is love. Diet culture is cult is cult is cult is cult. That, if I think about it for too long, makes no sense, but if I don't think about it at all, it sounds perfect. And that is actually this whole podcast. A lot of people don't know that. You just don't want to think for too much.

You learn little sprinkles of information. We have some facts and figures. We love to provide a data point, but when it comes down to it, just don't think too hard. Or think way too hard. This is all subjective, as I think the message here is that you can think yourself through a wormhole on this podcast and just land back at what your instincts told you. Yeah, you really can. But I think the aims of diet culture are really, really similar to the aims of super

destructive cults, like the fundamentalist Latter-day Saints or Scientology, which is, at their base, they want to control people's bodies, especially women's bodies. Like cult leaders like Keith Ranieri of Nexium, they want you to look a certain way, act a certain way, believe certain things, proselytize their message. I mean, Keith Ranieri literally put his female followers on starvation diets. And something that's really scary, which we'll talk about more later on, is that when you say they, who are we even thinking of? It's just scary because in order to change something that is so deeply rooted,

it needs to be attacked from every angle. And unfortunately, no one is ever on the same page. So that's why the toxicity of diet culture is so hard to change at large. Yeah, that's a good point. And it also speaks to the idea of exit costs. You know, I actually think that's one of the biggest red flags that something is cult like when there is no decent or dignified exit strategy. And in this culture, if you try to attack diet culture, you'll be vilified or exiled

or shamed not only by the larger media influencers, like sort of implicitly shamed by all these people that you follow, but you might also be shamed by other people who are critiquing it for different reasons. It truly is just so hard to defect from. And it's also such a personal thing. Like everyone has diet culture trauma, but it's different for everyone. Sometimes when people think it's not as problematic as it is, that's because like they've processed that trauma in like a different way.

Or maybe they're just not looking closely enough. Or maybe their mom never called them fat. Yeah, there is the sort of explicit your mom calling you fat stuff, which is unspeakable and unacceptable. We do love you though. It's also like your mom making little comments like, you know, and I don't want to play like mothers are the victim of trauma too. No, for sure.

I mean, I love my mom. I did call her a bad parent yesterday for telling me that I work out more. But I love, I love her. I talk to her every day. But sometimes it's the little comments, you know, even if they're not calling you fat, they might be like, Oh, your cousin gained weight. You know, and it's like, it's those secondary comments

talking about other people that make you be like, Oh, I don't want to be talked about in that tone. I don't want to be that. Or the family all agreeing to go on a new year's resolution, whole 30 challenge or everyone preparing for bikini season because you don't feel like you have a quote unquote bikini body. Or if you're out to dinner with your friends and family and people are like, Oh, I'm going to skip dessert.

I just, I've been so bad lately. There's all this morality and virtue wrapped up in food and weight. And that above all else is, I think, one of the cultiest aspects. 10, 20 years ago, dieting was associated with weight loss. But I would almost argue that now it's worse because it's been rebranded as wellness. That's what diet culture is now. It's detoxing, it's cleansing,

but the message and the products are still oppressive. That's a really good point. If you feel bad and guilty constantly because you're not eating healthier, you're not doing more, you're going to feel shitty. Like that's why I feel bad right now because I just feel guilty that I'm not doing more for my own health. It does affect every single aspect of our lives, not just your weight.

Diet culture like MLMs is just so good at rebranding itself to meet the culture where it's at in order to never die. Like a goddamn cockroach. That just makes me triggered at how deep I am in this cult because I feel like my whole life has been associated to productivity. Like I always talk about this to my therapist. Like when I sit down to watch TV, I feel guilty,

like not doing anything. Same. And so that's because growing up, my parents on Saturday on their one day off a week, they would take the whole family, they would take us all to lifetime fitness. They would drop me and my sister off in the daycare center and then they would go work out.

That was like relaxing to them, which is like so great. But I was like in the little daycare with the other kid pretending to work out since I was fucking 10 years old. Saturdays were for working out. And so if I don't work out on a Saturday now, I'm like, did I do the weekend right? I totally relate to that.

My parents too had this... I love my parents so much, but they had this like somewhat cringe, like couples exercise routine. And I could tell a lot of the intention was to remain slim. Like they really wore that as a badge of honor. I think also in academia, because my parents are academics,

there's a lot of elitism and classism and pretension around being thin. It's like, oh, I don't prioritize food because I'm working so hard and I'm thinking such elevated thoughts. Like, oh no, I'll just have like a little piece of fish. Like there's so much classism and racism and patriarchy built into diet culture

that we're all raised with from birth. It is a cult that we are born into and it follows us until we die. Yeah, yeah, it is our shadow. Is that a thing? It follows us everywhere, except for at night when we're drunk and we get a little slice of pizza, you know?

And we're like, oh, you know what? Like, I won't feel this tomorrow. And then you do feel it. That's the vicious cycle, is the junk food diet, junk food diet, guilt, virtue, guilt, virtue, cycle. It's so, so toxic. I'm trying to let go of that guilt.

You know what I mean? Like, I just want to like vibe. I just want to like have a slice. I just want to like have a sandwich. I love bacon. I don't know if you remember when diet culture first occurred to you, but I remember it was middle school,

like sixth grade, when I realized that women were supposed to be sexy, that I was supposed to be sexy. And in order to be sexy, I had to be thin. I had to look like the Paris Hilton's and the Lindsay Lohan's and the Nicole Richies who were on their starvation, slim, fast motherfucking diets of the early 2000s.

I remember going on my first diet when I was like 11. I think the first time that diet culture occurred to me was when we moved to America because there are so many more plus-sized people in America. It actually was like a culture shock. I was like seven years old, we came here and like we would go to like Walmart. Everything's bigger.

The people, the cars, the parking spots. I remember my mom commenting on it constantly. Like, oh my God, look at that person, you know, like shocked. And so I think it created this fear in me because at that age, I was so young, I like lacked an understanding as to like why that might be. But at the time I just was like, I just don't want to look like that.

Yes, yes, that's the us versus them mentality that we always talk about being a major cult red flag. I don't want to be like that. I'm not even sure I have the vocabulary to talk about this topic without infusing it with shame. Like the culture does not provide one. That's the irony about America is that it has the biggest diet market for diet culture.

And if you just dig deeper, there are simpler solutions. Like provide more organic vegetables, less food desert. Like if you just look at other countries that have less resources, people eat healthier because it's cheaper to cook at home. It's ultimately capitalism that is keeping everyone sick because there is just so much straight up cult manipulation and lying that is involved with the cult of diet culture.

There is this very, very interesting book called Hooked, Food Free Will and How the Food Giants Exploit Are Addictions by an author named Michael Moss that spoke about how massive junk food companies have been known to buy up diet food brands so that they can be in control of the entire fucked up cycle of weight gain and weight loss. Like market junk food, market diet food.

Yep, yep. Like they are, these companies are purposefully and strategically perpetuating this life threatening soul crushing cult for profit. At the end of the day, this is big business. Like making people feel like shit about themselves and then promising that this diet, this cleanse, this supplement, this shake is going to not only give you flat abs

but is also going to make you a happier, more fulfilled person. That is a vicious cycle that none of us have defected from even if we're not actively dieting. It is very similar to the cult of skincare because they create the problem and then they provide a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Yeah, although I would argue that diet culture is worse. As we've been mentioning, diet culture is maybe the biggest cult

we've ever covered on the show. It's fucking massive. And despite the fact that it is the sort of big undefined concept, it does touch everyone and researchers have quantified its impact in a few different ways. Yeah, I mean, according to NPR, Americans spend over $30 billion on diet products and an estimated 45 million Americans diet annually. I can see that.

I mean, every year New Year's resolution vibes, what are you going to do, diet. And when I tell people that I want to go on a diet, they're like, oh, you don't need to lose weight. And I'm like, I just want to eat healthier. That's what I mean when I say diet. I just want to poop once a day. I don't, I like, I do snort athletic greens,

but you know, I want to poop naturally. My pooping is really actually, sorry. This is, oh my God, this is such an overshare. Am I talking about poop on sounds like a cult? I feel like my digestion is pretty good. Pretty good. I don't, we can, we can cut that. Oh, Amanda, I'll say it for you if you don't want to say it.

Amanda has really good digestion. She has a strong cortado in the morning and then after she just lets it all out. I know, if like a diaper, and if an adult diaper brand wants to sponsor this podcast, then I don't even need to go to the bathroom. I can just shit where I sit and continue writing. Speaking of productivity, I mean, that's great.

I've been saying lately that the reason I don't have depression is because I just push my feelings down and then I poop them out once a week. That's why your poops are so compacted. Yeah, and they only are once a week. I literally used to think that you pooped once a week and then I got into an argument about it with my cousin. She was like, dude, you're supposed to poop every day.

And I was like, I think you're pooping a little too much. Oh my God, you're pooping at the pace of a barren hibernation. Yeah, I texted my friend last night and I was like, I'm so constipated. I just turned over and I think some poop like went, like poked my rib. Oh my God. Another stat for you, according to this report from NPR and these numbers come from a statistic database,

in 2021, half of all New Year's resolutions in the US were based on fitness and half of those were based on weight loss. So this is just ubiquitous. I mean, it's omnipresent. But let's back up for a second and talk about what exactly is diet culture or how we're going to define it today. Yeah, you know, rather than giving one hard and fast definition because it is so complex, let's maybe talk about how it can be understood

from a few different angles. So diet culture is definitely about more than just diets. According to a quote from registered dietitian Christine Byrne in self magazine, diet culture can be thought of as an entire worshipful belief system that associates food with morality and thinness with goodness. A UK body image researcher named Nadia Craddock told NPR that diet culture is a collective set of social expectations, quote, telling us that there's only one way to be and one way to look

and one way to eat and that we are a better person if our bodies are a certain way. Yeah, and we've been talking about this a little bit, but the culture is so deeply embedded in our ideas about health and beauty that not only is it hard to avoid, it's often hard to recognize because diet culture is constantly rebranding. Now the messaging is, I don't know, you don't diet to be skinny, you diet to be healthy and health and thinness are often equated as one and the same, which is absolutely a flattened argument.

And I do agree with that. Maybe it is that thing about what language are we using, what does it mean? Like when I say I feel fat, I actually mean I don't feel good. Like why don't we just say what we mean? I feel like I'm unpacking a lot of my own shit right now and I'm glad we're doing this because it's so important to examine how we might be perpetuating the cult of diet culture and fat phobia with our own language without even knowing it.

It's just this equation between fatness and badness that is so insidious. I also honestly, like I feel bloated. When I say I feel fat, I just feel bloated and it's not like a feeling. Just say it, you just need to shit. You know what? I actually need to poop. I mean, yeah, you mentioned they're constantly rebranding. Something that also is so culty is that in that rephrasing of dieting, people create that idea that it's cool.

It reminds me a lot of veganism in general. Like I mentioned in the Cult of Vegans episode, when I went vegan for two weeks, I would not shut the fuck up about it. You felt superior. I felt superior and so when people go on a diet, they have to tell everyone about it. It's like the girl who is at brunch with her girlies and she's like, I'm just going to get a salad because I'm on a diet

and it's like what you really hear is, I'm just going to get a salad because I'm better than you. Totally, it is this sanctimoniousness that you see in religious cults and socio-political cults. It's just that you don't notice when you're communicating that messaging that you're in a fucking cult. Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with getting a salad at brunch, but relax.

You don't have to make a podcast about it. Roasted. And what's culty about these individual diets is when they demonize certain foods like all carbs or all sugar and use fear to recruit new members, not just the fear that you'll be fat, but the fear that you'll never be happy. You'll never find love.

It's all just dogma and fucking sanctimony. Yeah, and like you mentioned with recruiting new members, it almost becomes this thing where it's exclusivity. Like because diets these days are so rebranded to be a health thing, it's like you kind of have to figure out what the new diet is to be part of the cool group. Like you don't know what people are doing. Like the Kardashians are switching between like their tea diet

to their juice cleanse to their salad game. Now a lot of them are vegan. So it's like it's constantly jumping around to maintain that sense of exclusivity. Don't get me fucking started on the Kardashians with their heroin chic comeback. Like it is so destructive. And I know that they are also followers

of the cult of diet culture, but they are leaders as well. They know it because in their new show on Hulu, which I do watch, I'm sorry, but you know what? Season two, bad. I'm done. I'm done watching that show. Like I don't watch it. I don't, okay, I watch it, but I don't like it.

I shut down when you talk about watching the Kardashians. But what I was going to comment on is that they have scenes in the show where they like all go get lunch together and stuff. And it's so clearly like produced or scripted that they're like, oh yeah, we just eat whatever we want. We just like work out a bunch. And it's like, you clearly don't just eat whatever you want.

You just ordered a pizza, two pastas, and mozzarella sticks and took a bite of one of those things. Like you're not actually eating whatever you want, but you're making it look like you are. Which is very cult vibes because it's like they want to lead the cult. They want to be a part of the cult, but they don't want you to know

that they're literally doing everything that they can to like maintain on top of it. You know what I, does that make sense? That's the manipulation. Oh no, for sure. That's the hypocrisy. Like so often a cult leader will not actually practice what they preach

because they're just interested in power. And that's behavior that I see in them. Okay, but this is kind of my favorite part. I really want to talk about where our contemporary diet culture comes from because it's not out of the blue. It's not from nowhere. I learned while researching cult-ish

that like a lot of capitalistic cults in the U.S., diet culture has roots in the Protestant religion. Like one of the underlying ideas. Surprised. Not surprised at all. They only give us like the tiniest little snack at church. Of course, they're trying to starve us. Yeah, totally, totally.

So there is this link between health, food, morality, and virtue. And this stems from earlier American Protestantism. You know, gluttony is a deadly sin. And so this idea came to be that in capitalistic Protestant America, you can diet your way out of being a bad, sinful, defective person with the right shaker cleanse. I mean, just listen to that terminology cleanse.

It is so religious in undertone. I do feel like no one instilled this idea in me or maybe, I don't know, my Catholic upbringing did, but I do sometimes feel like maybe if I just like reset, I will feel better. I should just like drink water and like wash everything out of me. And it's like, we can't do that.

And now people are doing that with actual IVs. Not my OG fave, liquid IV, but like literally putting IVs in their bloodstream to hydrate themselves and feel better. And it's that idea of like flushing everything out and starting from scratch. Yes. It does have a sort of baptism vibe to it.

Or I just need to purge all of this bad in order to be born anew. I remember working in the beauty industry. I did a lot of this sort of like toxic diet culture wellness stuff. I mean, there are really fancy wellness clinics in like bougie shopping centers and many spas where like in the same day,

you can get a B12 IV and do like cryotherapy and do blood work where they'll tell you like every itty bitty little nitty gritty of why you're unhealthy and thus bad. I did that stuff all the time. I mean, I remember very specifically the cultural moment working in the beauty industry where we were called into an editorial meeting.

And the higher ups were like, we're not saying weight loss anymore. We're not saying diet anymore. You can still write the same content that you've been writing, but now we're saying detox. Now we're saying cleanse. Just take a shower and take a shit. A shit and a shower and you'll be cleaner

than you've ever felt. It makes sense that religion is at the root of everything, but what is our religion today in modern day era? I mean, celebrities, right? So true. And so I remember when I was watching Oprah as a young gal, she was amazing. This like beautiful person had this amazing show.

And then I noticed she started to get obsessed with like her weight. And she kind of brought weight loss to the forefront of like daytime television. Kind of like what we were saying with the Kardashians. It's like celebrities are victims and followers of the cult of diet culture, but they're not martyrs, you know?

Like they ultimately want to meet the beauty standard. And in the 90s, we saw that with everyone from Kate Moss to Oprah. And obviously there are extremely varying degrees of privilege there. But now we of course see it with influencers and tiktokers. And the insidiousness is that now there's this sort

of pseudo body positive movement that on the surface feels like an improvement. Like we accept everyone and all shapes are beautiful, but the underlying message is like actually no, like you have to meet an even narrower standard that's like slim thick. It's like the best parts of being fat and the best parts of being skinny.

And you're no longer allowed to express that you don't like your body. It's like you have to feel guilty about not looking a certain way. And now you also have to feel guilty about feeling guilty. And I also feel like that toxicity also makes it so that you have to be in a box. Instead of like getting rid of the box,

it created more boxes. As someone who sometimes likes to dress feminine and sometimes likes to dress more tomboy-like, it is really hard for me to be comfortable in my own skin because I'm like, should I be showing legs or ass or I don't have a lot of those things? So like, should I get more of them or should I get less of them?

You know, I'm like, do I need to lose weight or do I need to gain weight? You don't know. And what makes it culty is there is morality associated with these body parts. You know, diet culture also has these deep roots in racism and anti-blackness. Dr. Sabrina Strings, who is the author of a book

called Fearing the Black Body, the Racial Origins of Fatphobia, told a publication called KCENTV.com that during the 18th century, there were prominent Europeans who believed that being thin and controlling what they ate made them morally superior. Dr. Strings also said that in the US, some of the earliest diets were undertaken by women

who identified as white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and they would say very clearly, we have to eat right for God and also because it's the proper thing to do for our race. And there's so much more to say about that, but when did that switch happen? Because I do remember that in the Middle Ages, when I was there, I do recall at some point

in learning that in the Middle Ages, like a plumper body was like found to be sexier and it was before it used to be associated that like if you had a bigger body, you were like wealthier and a higher status and then now it's switched. I feel like everyone who's grown up in contemporary society heard that fact.

I don't know when that switch ever happened. Don't quote me on this, but I feel personally that. Your guess, your guess. My guess is that the switch may have happened when capitalism kind of started to take over the farming industry in America and access to organic fruits and vegetables became harder and so fast food started to become the main source of nutrients for a lot of lower income Americans.

I actually think maybe my guess, and as a listener will surely fill us in on the truth, my guess is that once mass food manufacturing became possible, then all of a sudden it was like, okay, well now that everybody has access to more food, it's more prestigious to withhold, to have some restraint. With every type of trend, there's always like a ricochet away from the past extreme.

I could see it being a combination of both. Like it's prestigious to withhold from eating, but also the food that lower income folks do have access to is inherently less healthy. I do, of course, want to talk about the sinister quality of the language of diet culture and how it relates to those religious undertones. Detoxing and cleansing are basically just crash diets with a new name.

You see all the time calling food sinful or naughty or guilty or guilt-free. According to a Quartz article, quote, the mostly white gurus of clean eating have managed to make bland unadorned food appear more moral, but the use of clean to describe some foods is problematic and judgmental. That also reminds me of calling foods like superfoods or miracle foods. Literally my fucking breakfast bar this morning is called an organic superfood chaga and supergreens bar. Isn't that such a bullshit?

Yeah, it's so funny. I mean, I feel like the next level of this is going to be like packaging soups in like Clorox wipe containers, you know, like that's cleaning. I honestly just feel like it's like lazy marketing. They were like, hmm, how do we describe something that's really good? Super. Like that's it. That's all they could come up with.

It's so dumb. So up next, we're going to talk to Jamila Jamil. You probably know her from The Good Place or most recently, She Hulk. She's an actress and presenter and creator of iWay, an online community that talks about body positivity. Jamila also started an accompanying podcast to discuss that community called iWay. We could not be more jazzed to tell you about our very first sponsor of 2023, ZocDoc. ZocDoc is the only free app that lets you find and book doctors who are patient reviewed,

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desperate to find a new doctor for this terrible throat infection that I had. True story, I was sick, I was stressed, and ZocDoc just made it so easy to find someone professional who took my insurance and could schedule an appointment literally later that day. I was so relieved, I'll never forget. That is so important, especially when you're actively sick. Oh my god, thank you ZocDoc. We are super grateful to ZocDoc for helping us get our show back on its feet in 2023.

And when you support our sponsors, it really helps our show. There is literally no downside to checking out this amazing free service. Go to ZocDoc.com slash Colt and download the ZocDoc app for free. Then find and book a top rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. That's ZocDoc.com slash Colt. ZocDoc.com slash Colt. Jamila is I think one of the most important public critics of diet culture.

So we were just truly honored that she was available to talk about it with us. Okay, could you introduce yourself to our listeners and how you came to start critiquing the cult of diet culture? My name is Jamila Jamil. I'm an actress. I'm an advocate. I'm a writer. And I'm the worst thing that ever happened to Twitter.

I mean, that's competitive. That's a competitive honor. I know recently, recently I have been overtaken, but I feel like I'm one of the more annoying presences. And I feel proud of that because my annoyingness, however much trouble it gets me into has also been significant. Yeah. I mean, I think that like it's the best kind of annoying.

So like I would 1000% million times rather have like you existing in a quote unquote annoying sphere, but we have Elon Musk's of the world who are truly the problem. Yeah. Yeah. It's the rise of fascism, isn't it? But regarding my stance on diet culture, so like I've been obsessed with diets on a kind of swinging spectrum since I was about 11 or 12.

When I first developed what I didn't realize at the time was severe anorexia and orthorexia, which is a fear of food. If someone isn't familiar with that term. And so I starved myself. I mean, I went like sometimes years at a time without eating a full meal. I would just eat around the edges of stuff, or I would just eat like a mini bag of Haribo throughout the day, which is about eight sweets or chop up a red pepper and like put it in a bag

and slowly eat that across the day and then live on like liters of Diet Coke. And what happened is my period stopped, my fertility got damaged, my bones are damaged. So I'm in pain all the time now. My kidney doesn't work properly. My immune system's fucked. My thyroid is fucked. My metabolism is fucked.

And I was fucking miserable for 20 years, which is how long it took to fully get rid of this eating disorder. The body dysmorphia might never go, but the eating disorder has. And that means that I am in a very small only 30% of people who ever recovered from eating disorders. And anorexia is the highest cause of death in any mental illness.

So it's something I've been like painfully aware of my whole life. And when I was 26, like having been a very, very like slim and celebrated and glorified for my thinness, celebrity in England between the age of about 22 and 26, I was put on medication for, I was put on steroids specifically for problems with my chest, like asthma and pneumonia. And steroids make you expand at light speed.

And so I gained about 75, 80 pounds within a few months. And that's many, many dress sizes. And because I was in the public eye, I was the paparazzi became obsessed with me and started photographing me constantly in a way they never had when I was thin. And waiting until I would bend over to pick something up, photographs, they would always isolate me

from the other people in the photographs that I was with to make me look like I was lonely. Only photograph me if I look sad, but I'm English. I have a resting sad face. I wasn't actually sad at the time. And all of the, I was breaking like, I was making history as the first female solo host of one of the bigger shows and the BBC radio one and history.

I was doing all these, I had all these sell out clothing lines. I was really happy. I was the most successful I'd ever been. But all you could read about me in the papers that year was just that I'd gained weight. So I just thought, I can't let this be a reality for my 11 year old self. It's been 15 years.

I have to fight back. I can either take all the deals that are being offered to me and which weight loss companies are approaching me saying, hey, we'll pay you loads of money if you take a personal trainer from us and you go on a massive diet and you take humiliating photographs of you at your biggest that make you look even bigger.

And you'll be in a swimsuit that several sizes too small. And you'll be eating a burger while running at the beach, as we all do. Yeah, famously. Very natural. Spilling out all over the place. And then six months later, we'll show a photograph of you very thin and you'll attribute it to our diet product.

So I could either do that and take the money and be obedient or I could stay fat and fight back and go after the fashion industry once and for all. And that's what I did. So that was 10 years ago. I've been in this fight for 10 years and it only got elevated to a global fight when I was on the good place because that was on Netflix.

But I've been doing this for a really long time. Back when I was a fat activist, it's just that people think I only started speaking about it when I was a thin actress. Yeah, I mean, that is like so admirable because it's, as you said, something that you've been dealing with your whole life. So it's not just a deeply personal issue,

but then it's like a public issue that you're talking about with strangers, essentially. Honestly, thank you for talking about those things because I feel like it's not easy to deal with it on your own, let alone in the public eye. It was very hard. It was very humiliating at first to have those photographs of my bottom

and they would also put them next to thinned out photographs. You know, when they elongate the photo, so you look longer and thinner. So they put the pictures of me looking thin and happy right next to a picture of me that they'd widened out, looking sad and alone, like bending over with my arse out, you know, and I was a respected broadcaster. And these were photographs that humiliate me.

The fucking patriarchy working over time, it's so interesting that you use the word obedience because that's a word that comes up in diet culture all the time. It's also a word that comes up in cults all the time. And I think you've earned your Twitter annoyingness by simply being a woman who dares not to obey. Yeah, yeah. And it was helpful, you know, like the work that we did

alongside the work of many amazing activists and the whole like community that I work amongst called IWAY, I started this movement called IWAY that is against body shaming, it's against diet culture, it's pro-mental health, pro-advocacy, pro-freedom. And it's, you know, it's like one, one and a half million of us basically. And so together we were able to change the global policy

policy at Instagram and Facebook regarding showing diet and detox products to miners. And so now we're going after TikTok. And we're, we've been working on Twitter, but I don't know if Elon is now going to be as receptive as the previous people. Diet culture itself is like fairly hard to define. You mentioned a little bit about what it means to you,

but how do you think it is similar to a cult? Well, I think it's this like, again, it's this us and them, you know, which I know Amanda talks about a lot and her book and you guys talk about. And I love this podcast, by the way, but I think that it's very definitive. Like, you know, we have a tribal fear of being ostracized and we have been taught by patriarchal media.

And like, however many women are the editors or women are the writers, the men own the publications, they own the publishing houses, they own record labels, they own the movie studios, almost none of these. In fact, I think none of these are owned by women. And it's almost all white men. And so we are being forced into this white supremacy stereotype of what an attractive person is.

And that is a person who has no curves. Obviously that has now that shifted temporarily when, you know, alongside the Kardashians. The slim thick phenomenon. Yeah, they're like racial cherry picking. The Frankensteining, yeah, of racial minorities. You know, everyone's having the fox lift on their eyes all of a sudden, like everyone's trying to be Asian.

And everyone's trying to be black. And everyone's trying to have brown skin all at the same time. It's just this odd, yeah, Frankensteining, I think, is the perfect terminology. But in order for you to be accepted and for you to be a good girl and for you to have enough discipline, you better not take up too much space.

I think it was Catherine Ryan who was like, don't take up too much space, stay small, because a man might want to build a golf course there. Oh my gosh. And if you break away from that, and if you are disobedient, you will be shunned, you will be erased. Like we saw that in the media until recently.

Nobody with bodies that are bigger than a certain size, like nobody of a different ethnicity. It's like you get erased. That is the way in which you are punished. You are treated like you are not even human. You are not worthy of being seen. You get shadow banned on the internet. There's all this messaging that like you will be left behind.

Nobody will date you. Nobody will love you. You will not get employed. Fatphobia is a cult. Yeah, yes, yes. Punishing cults that if you leave it, they will punish and abandon you. It's highlighted by the extremes too. Like the entertainment industry is so much about putting people in boxes

that it's like you have to either be in one box or you have to be in the other. But it's like that's where like a lot of people are erased as well. But also it's a giant cult culture. And it has these kind of subcults within it that keep rising, right? So that could be keep the cult of keto, the cult of paleo, the cult of these new weight loss injections. Like it's just again and again and again

where everyone falls in line. I remember the Atkins diet so vividly and like Yes. Fucking stank. Everyone was just disgusting. What like meat sweats? Yeah, meat sweats and their breath was like metallic and everyone was like so constipated

because they hadn't had vegetables in so long. Evil farts of a shit that hadn't been done in like eight days. Like it was just horrendous. Everyone was miserable, their hair was falling out, they were anxious and shaking all the time. Like we see these mini cults like crop up all along and then we have these kind of leaders in those spaces be that a Gwyneth Paltrow or a whoever online or a Kardashian

and they become the kind of guru and everyone starts talking to them and listening to them and listening to the gospel they preach about this thought. Like look at the diet teas like in the shakes. These bitches weren't even fucking drinking these teas and these shakes, they were getting surgery and like having personal train this nutritionist and like they're not even drinking the drink in the videos.

They're not even doing videos. Sometimes you could tell that they'd photoshopped the drink into what was just a regular photoshopped gym photograph. Oh my god. I do famously watch the Kardashians when I'm very bored. I apologize. Oh, I've heard that episode. In the latest episode I saw that like the whole narrative

of the episode was that Kim had to lose weight for the Met Gala and like the whole narrative was she was like, I'm going to work my hardest and I'm going to make it possible. She literally had to lose like 20 pounds in a week. I was like, that is so unhealthy to push forward a narrative that like you did everything in your power to fit into a dress. This isn't a movie.

This is like a real life. You're convincing little girls at home that like if they want to be perfect or they need to be perfect then like they can do it too, but that's not healthy. No one is angrier than me about how that family puts it out there but I also think it's really important to acknowledge that they are traumatized. They're the same age as me.

Like we grew up in the same era. They were affected by heroin sheet. They are ethnic girls just like me. We were born with bigger bones and curvier bodies and we were told we are not beautiful. We are not acceptable because we are not skinny. And then they became famous and then the world picked on them for 15 years about their bodies.

So they live for this pick me approval of like, am I thin enough for everyone? Yep. We have to also be accountable for how the public and the media has treated them. So true. Why now? Like in spite of everything they've achieved,

like an empire unlike anything, basically the royal family of the United States, but with more reach than the monarchy because they're global. Yeah. Like it's still the most important thing to them. It's like their new thing. And a lot of these celebrities now, like you notice this sudden like huge weight drop in Hollywood

where like I'm at the party and I'm like, whoa, I'm never normally the biggest person in the room. I'm normally just sort of like same size as everyone else, but there's a drastic drop in everyone. And there's a kind of like speedy energy of everyone. And I know that everyone's like, a lot of people are taking these injections, right? People who have never been able to change their size,

suddenly have rapidly changed their size dramatically. And some of these injections are diabetes medication. And they're used for diabetics. Oh, you didn't hear the diabetes. Wait, Jameela, can you explain the diabetes medication, hullabaloo? So there are like, it's a tricky thing, right? Because it's a part of me that's like,

don't spread information about them. But unfortunately there are articles cropping up. And I just wrote a paper actually for paper magazine about these injections and the dangers of them. So they are for people with diabetes and one of the side effects can be extreme weight loss. The other side effects can be kidney damage, thyroid damage, spleen damage, liver problems, digestive issues.

You have horrific nausea and diarrhea constantly. Again, putrid, putrid farts. And so you don't eat, right? So it doesn't actually make you suddenly have a fast metabolism. It changes your like body's relationship with glucose and insulin, but it doesn't actually make you have a fast metabolism.

You're just starving yourself. Yeah. Now these drugs, if you don't have an insulin problem, are not very safe. They're not good for you to go on them because you don't actually need them. So that means that it's very rare that someone can sustainably be on these forever.

So when they eventually have to come off because of the health complications, their metabolism has come to a complete standstill. So they gain the weight back plus some and then they can't lose it again because they've bucked their metabolism worse than any diet they've ever done before. So on top of the fact that it risks your life

and these are like parents who are doing this. So you're like, you might not be around for your kids for what? Didn't want to buy a bigger pair of fucking jeans. I get it. I'm not, I had an 18 sort of 20 years. I'm not trying to dismiss it as vapid. And what makes me the angriest

is that now there is a global shortage in this medication for diabetics because rich people are able to buy it off prescription. This is supposed to be a time of body acceptance. And also you'd think that after the pandemic and everyone who like sang the song and whatever, blah, blah, blah, like give people a vaccine.

Collectivism, you know? Then like what are they doing now? They're like literally buying up medication that like people need. That's so unfortunate. I'm getting thousands of messages from people all over the world who are saying that their husband

can't get his diabetes medication. One woman said that her husband tried to get diabetes medication. He went to the pharmacy to pick it up and the two girls working at the pharmacy offered him a thousand dollars to buy it off him. What? Cults famously coerce you into doing things

and acting in ways that are totally morally in conflict with your former self because you're just, it's like a drug. You're just so under the spell of this cult. And this is like a perfect example of that kind of behavior. Think the way that you mentioned the creeping up of this new wave of skinniness.

It is, I've noticed it too. And it's this thing that like no one is talking about. But I do think it's because of the, a new wave of younger celebrities who really are teenagers. And not all children are like that, but then these adults are comparing themselves to children's bodies.

I sense it too. And I'm not even in the same spaces as you, I don't think. But I feel that. Well, it's also really weird to have children basically advertising expensive clothes that they can't afford. Someone who's worked their whole life to be able to afford, who can afford that,

I don't know, $500 pair of sunglasses or $1,000 coat or $5,000 fucking dress, whatever. Like they're looking at a 14 year old daughter of a supermodel wearing it. And a 14 year old who, by the way, has probably been dieting for years by that point because diet culture is one of those cults that gets people really young.

We read a stat earlier that said, and you probably have stats on this too, that said by ages seven or eight, 50% of little girls already think they need to change their bodies. Yeah, the eating disorders, the youngest eating disorders being recorded as of the last sort of 24 months of four years old.

Fear of fat is coming up in four year olds who'd like to eat less, which is just unimaginable because you understand so little at that age. So for that to be one of the things that creeps in and scares you is absolutely devastating. But there's so much, it's so much about control and I really believe like full tin hat

that it's a conspiracy because if we're tired and we're hungry and we're distracted and we are just staying at home soaking in our own farts, shitting on the toilet, worrying, consumed, thinking about calories, consumed, thinking about the genes we were when we were 18 and how we can put into them, consumed with self-hatred, we don't have the time, space, energy,

or motivation to go out and fight for our rights. That's right. Already having reproductive rights taken away. So now to teach us how to self-destruct is fucking genius of the patriarchy. It's their best move yet. It's a genius move. It's something that Keith Ranieri did on a micro level.

You know, if those who've watched The Val will remember how Keith Ranieri would put all of his disciples on diets, he would coax women into losing enormous amounts of weight and we can see that as an outsider and be like, oh my God, how could you not see that was a cult? It's like, bitch, it's happened all of us right now. A lot of people when they hear me going on and on

and on and on for now a decade about diet culture, they're just like, what's the big deal? You don't have to be that thin. You don't have to drink the shakes. They're not forcing you to take the injections. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't about me and my elders. This is whilst acknowledging that like people my age

and older are still susceptible, but fucking teenagers, kids don't know. They don't have the high insight of I can reject this. This is patriarchy. This is misogyny 101. I can't imagine the depth at which teenagers are being affected today when I look back on my childhood and the way that I was affected just by comments

that my mom may have said in passing and how deeply those affected me, how these kids are so deeply entrenched in social media and these apps and these filters, how that is even affecting their psyche in any capacity. Yeah, and it's like mastercultury, isn't it? Convince people that it's good for them, that actually what they're doing makes them happy

and it's good for them. And they're going to actually be autonomous about it and they're going to take the steps and stuff. They're going to spend their own money. So they're going to give up other things. They're going to isolate themselves from their friends and family because they can't go out to eat.

They're going to isolate themselves because they have to tire exercise that night instead of spend time with friends and family or with their kids. Like it is genius. Abuse rebranded as like you are chosen, you are empowered is you're absolutely right. Such cult mastery.

I've tried it all, by the way. I've done every diet. I have done every laser. I've done everything apart from liposuction. Like I did it all before my mid-20s. And I remember thinking that it would make more people attracted to me. I want to be around me,

but actually I was just miserable and depressed. I had zero sex drive. That shit, my vagina was drier than the Sahara Desert. Just like these lips were just, I was not interested. I hadn't like no estrogen in my body. I was isolating from everyone. And then I would wear the fabulous dress to the fabulous event

and everyone would tell me how fabulous I looked. And then I'd have to go home half an hour later because I could barely fucking stand. Yes. Oh my God. That's such a good point is that diet culture really pushes you to be very lonely. It like it forces you to be lonely. Yeah. And then also like you often snap at some point, right?

The reason that all these things are always fads is because at some point the brain breaks and goes, I can't do this anymore. And then you go into binging. And then binging has all this shame around it. Yes. And it's just, it's just extremely lonely because there's so much shame around it.

And it's incredibly sad because like we see, we just see these snapshots of their lives. Right? We see an Instagram post or we see a photograph on a red carpet and we think she's smiling. Look at all these selfies of her with these other women that I would like to meet. They all look so happy.

It's like you would think we would have learned the lesson with like Britney Spears. I knew you think we would learn. But even I, I mean, I just have a very close relationship with my Instagram mute button and the unfollow button. But you'd think that like having the awareness of this cultish manipulation of social media. And I'm not even blaming the people who post.

I'm really blaming the powers that be. You'd think that the awareness would be enough to allow you to escape this cult. But we have these really deep seated reactions when we see someone who appears to have something that we don't. 100%. But also like, I just want to address that some people might have heard what I just said as like patronizing of like, they're not happy.

They just look happy. Guys, I'm at the fucking events. All right. I'm standing next to them when these photographs are being taken. I see the face they make after that photographs taken. It's back to anxiety. Do I look thin in this? I'm fucking tired.

I really want to eat one of those canapes but I can't because I'm not loud. Like it's, I'm here. That, I mean, the self-control alone is like shocking to me. Like I, it's a full-time job. It's your other full-time job. It's insane. And what pisses me off is that it's like this extra homework

that men simply don't have to contend with at the same level. And gay men, I think, are reaching a similar level of body shaming and diet culture. But straight men do not have to. They're kind of like generally encouraged to try to be muscular, but if not, that dad bod is sexy. He has a mystic 20 dad bods that we love.

Like let me climb that dad bod like a tree. No female equivalent of a mum bod. I think my relationship to this has more been like, I've always eaten whatever I've wanted, but then I've had to like deal with the arguments and the fights with my family of them commenting on the fluctuation of my weight and them being like, oh, you've been eating a lot this semester.

And I'm like, fuck you. Yeah. No, it's very, very, very damaging. And it's sad. And they're just projecting their own shit onto you. And it's true. That's very like cultish, isn't it? It's like the evangelical spreading of the gospel of like,

look at how thin I am. And like, I think you'll see of this, by the way, when I was younger. So I did a 28 day juice fast when I was 24. I turned orange. 28? I tried to do a juice guns in college with my college. Dorm mates, I lasted two hours.

Those specific diet fads have no problems straight up lying to people to get them to join, to stay, and to become addicted. What do you think is the biggest and most compelling lie that diet culture tells? I think that fitness will make you happy. Yeah. That to me is the one where it just, it just doesn't, it might make you fit into some clothes that you wanted to wear.

And that's like nice for a minute, but it doesn't make you happy. And it doesn't fix your problems. And it doesn't really make your life better. And it controls you. You know, it really does take over your life. It's very dogmatic. And so I think that's one of the biggest lies that it tells you and the other lies that it's going to work.

But 95% of diets fail. Oh, my fucking God, we've known this statistic for 10 years. It's like MLMs. 99% of people who enlist in MLMs never make a dime. Why isn't the math enough? My argument is that because the language is so compelling. Yeah. It's also, as you know, as you've talked about,

like the, it's the power of optimism. It's our like relentless hope and optimism. And also our impatience, a generation of impatient people, you know, we need like instant wifi, instant delivered on a text, instant response, instant like access to, you know, all of the fucking people we could possibly date on a fucking dating app, treating everything like a menu, like everything's so quick, like delivery apps getting quicker,

Amazon Prime now meaning you get the same thing, the same fucking day that you order it. Like we're just speed, speed, speed, speed, speed. We love instant gratification. We want fast results. And you know, partially when it comes to weight loss, that is because fat has been treated like it's a literal emergency. Yeah.

How ridiculous is that? Which specific diets do you think are the cultiest and why? Oh God, they're all kind of equally culty. But I think the one that keeps slipping through the net of us saying this is really fucking problematic is keto. I totally agree. Keto, like they put like a higher price on the same products just because they've put the word keto on it.

The fact that no one really talks about the stress on the kidneys from having that many ketones in your blood or like what it does to the fact that your brain needs carbohydrates to survive. When you were saying that like those people aren't happy that like that are dieting and it made me think of like, when am I the happiest? I'm literally the happiest after I have like a delicious meal with my friends, you know what I mean? Yes, absolutely. Oh my God.

Pizza on my couch with my best friend, gossiping. Yes. Yes. Because food is social connective tissue. Like we're social creatures and food is an adhesive in that equation, you know? Also life is fucking shit. It's shit. Like everything's hard.

Like God, let's just have some fucking pleasure before this world burns down. Like we don't know how much time we have left. The fucking glaciers are melting. Have a fucking cake. Like during the pandemic, I gained like a ton of weight and it was fucking fabulous because I decided to complete Uber Eats. I was like, everyone was like, I'm going to learn Spanish. And I was like, I'm going to complete my catchment area of Uber Eats.

And then by like the lie of lockdown, like lockdown number one, I was like, fuck, I've kind of eaten everywhere in my catchment area. So I started going to like my friends' houses, but not going inside because we couldn't see each other. So standing in their front lawn and ordering from their catchment area because it was different to mine. So I ate Los Angeles again, bringing you back to cults. Like we are taught to not respect our autonomy.

And most important, we are taught to not respect our instincts. A cult wants you to abandon your own instincts, just to kind of give in to someone else's or something else's belief. And so you don't make intuitive decisions. Because no one in those restrictive situations are following their intuitions. And also, like I do feel like we were talking about just a second ago, like food and community. It reminds me so much of like home.

And that's why I think like the Uber Eats thing is probably such a comforting thing because it's kind of like you're gifting yourself a meal that like someone else is taking care of entirely for you, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It really like it was the final nail in the coffin of diet culture for me where I was like, oh my God, like we might, I might die soon. Like this deadly fucking virus is here. Like my friends might die.

I don't know if this is ever going to get better. It was really scary at that time, right? And we didn't have a cure. We didn't have any end in sight. And so I was like, oh, I don't want to die having eaten so much fucking lettuce. You know, we all learned how precious life was in that time. And I feel as though that was my final break away from the cult. So before we go, we're going to play a quick game,

the game that we're going to be playing with you today. It's just a classic would you rather cult of diet culture edition. So we're going to read you two scenarios and you're going to have to pick the one that you'd rather engage with. Would you rather have to read Gwen Shamblin Lara's The Way Down Diet Book cover to cover? If you don't know what that is, we can explain. The Way Down Workshop is this culty Christian weight loss regimen. It was the subject of the HBO docu series, The Way Down,

God Greed and the cult of Gwen Shamblin. She was this woman with like a sky high beehive who told people don't eat too much. It's a sin. If we are to lift holy hands to God, then these hands cannot feed our faces. What fucking Jesus with the fucking 40 day fast? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's abs, you know, even at death. Those were there.

Yeah. That's a reimagining. I mean, I was at a grocery store not long ago where I picked up a fucking frozen mac and cheese that was labeled guilt free. I'm like, I'm a Jew. Don't bring, don't bring hell into this. Now that we have the background, would you rather have to read Gwen Shamblin Lara's The Way Down Diet Book cover to cover?

So this very problematic extreme Christian diet book or only be able to eat communion wafers and sacramental wine for the next three days. You know, I think I take the wafers and wine. I think it would do less damage to my mind and body in the long term. You would be pretty drunk, you know, because if you're only eating wafers, at least you're going to be having a good time. Okay, next question. If given the superpower to snap your fingers, which would you rather eliminate?

The cult of diet culture or the cult of social media? Yeah, the cult of diet culture. Social media can be amazing. Social media is why like so many movements have risen up. Like social media is how we were able to still communicate with each other during the pandemic. Social media is how a lot of my disabled friends are able to communicate with each other. It's the fucking multi, multi, multi billion dollar evil predatory cunt diet industry. And also if diet culture industry didn't exist, then social media would be so much better too.

It would be a safer space, it's currently a dangerous space for kids every 15 seconds. There's a different app or fasting technique or celery juice or just other fucking bullshit being sold to these people. Although I do think that we should rebrand the word cunt to be a compliment and we should call the cult of diet culture an evil ballsack. Fine, yeah. Happy with that. In England, cunt doesn't really mean...

I know. And it is sometimes in a term of endearment, like you cheeky cunt. We use it massively often. Last, would you rather, would you rather have the magical ability to time travel into the past in order to tell your teenage self all the wisdom you now know about how culty dieting is or time travel into the future to hear what your 80 year old self would have to say about it? I think I'm probably going to feel the same way forever now about diet culture. So I think the 80 year old self is going to agree with where I am now.

I'd go anything to go back and tell that 12 year old not to do it and how nothing's going to work and how she's going to lose two decades of her life. And I think when people are like, she's just doing this for intention. She's just doing this for money. I'm like, you don't get good attention. Companies come after you and spreads mere campaigns and plant them on the internet about you. And I don't get most campaigns because I can't do them because people insist on photoshopping me and so therefore I can't do most campaigns.

This isn't for money. I do this because I fucked up most of my life and I'll never get it back. And I'm dying for no one else to make the same mistake. And I'll just keep going on about it. Wow, Jamila. Thank you so much for doing this interview and bearing your mind and your soul and roasting the cult of diet culture with us. If folks want to keep up with you and your movement and all that you do, where can they do that?

Oh, well, you can find me on my podcast. It's called I Way with Jamila Jamil. It's not just about diet culture. It's about mental health and advocacy. And we're just not going to make you feel like an asshole if you don't have all the answers. We're here to learn. I'm here to learn. I don't know fuck about shit.

So I'm learning from people much smarter than me on the podcast. And you can learn with me and we're not going to make you feel bad about it. You can follow me on Instagram at Jamila Jamil. No point from me on Twitter anymore. It's left. And find me on TikTok. That's your message. Well, that's it.

So Amanda, out of the three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out. What do you think the cult of diet culture is? I truly think it's the get the fuck out. Really? Oh, yeah. I think it's a live, no. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Sorry for any flip. Sorry. I think it's a watch your back. I think diet culture, the way that we have described it and the way that so many other experts in the space have described it as this ethos that equates thinness with morality and food restriction with goodness is just like absolutely awful. You know what? I feel like you are right in that the way that it exists now and the cycles that it continues

to go through are so toxic, and we need to get the fuck out of that. Like we need to move to a new era when we say I want to eat healthy. We genuinely mean I want to eat nutritious foods for my body. And resources that can actually help us do that aren't trying to manipulate us. Yeah. I think the reason I said watch your back is because to me, maybe I've been working on trying to move past that in even a better version of diet culture. It still is important to watch your back because you have to read your body.

You have to be able to know how you're feeling and be okay changing your routines to adjust for your body needing to feel better. There must be a way to improve your eating patterns or find something that works for you that isn't culty. Like there has to be a way. I just don't know what that is because diet culture isn't get the fuck out right now. Yeah. I mean, I do agree, but I am going to do a little rising situation.

I think it's a watch your back son, get the fuck out, rising and moon. Okay. Fair enough. I mean, that just goes to show that there is nuance here. These are our opinions. I'm sure there are people listening who will disagree and we encourage you to engage in this dialogue. Disagree in our comment section. Yeah, hit up our comment section, but be respectful.

Great. Well, that said, I'm hungry. I'm so hungry. Sorry, this episode like got a little gross, but you know, intimacy. That is our show. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week, but in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty.

Sounds like a cult was created, hosted and produced by Issa Medina and Amanda Montell. Our research and social media assistant is Noemi Griffin. Our theme music is by Casey Colb. And a very special shout out to our loyal Patreon culties. Feel free to hit us up there on patreon.com slash sounds like a cult. To join our cult, follow us on Instagram at sounds like a cult pod. I'm on IG at Amanda underscore Montell and feel free to check out my books, Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism and Wordslet,

a feminist guide to taking back the English language. And Issa here, you all know, I'm a standup comedian and I perform all over the country. And if you don't know, now you know. So you can go to my Instagram to buy tickets to my live shows or tell me where to perform. My Instagram is at Issa Medina, ISAA, M-E-D-I-N-A-A. We also have a Patreon and we appreciate your support there at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult. And if you like our show, feel free to give us a rating on Spotify or Apple podcasts. And if you don't like our show, rate other podcasts the way you would rate us.