- 4 hours ago
Tell What You Really Think Season 01 Episode 02
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00:00Australia is getting bigger two-thirds of us are what science considers to be
00:07overweight and right now more than half of the adults in this country are trying
00:11to lose weight including me since I started with that I've lost about eight
00:16or nine kilos since June but something has shifted new weight loss drugs are
00:21rewriting the medical textbooks and public health policy with it there's
00:25been a staggering scientific breakthrough do these drugs mean the
00:29end of obesity or are they just heating up old phobias for a new era have you
00:34ever spoken to anyone about this like a cycle no I haven't actually no there are
00:39some things that you've told me that make me slightly concerned
00:47hello hello handsome you are over there my second mom I think you're over there
00:58you are all more than welcome to wait so if you can get up I'm not being polite let's let's go let's
01:04do this joining me tonight food rider and fat pride activist Mark Marianne but I'm from the
01:10Western Sydney area so black town thank you former Olympian Joanna Fargus my frame of reference is
01:16slightly different because I wasn't really the fat kid growing up I was an athlete tick tocker and
01:21father of four Mark as a party please thanks no no it's good weight loss drug veteran Donna Bray you
01:27just have to leave with it yeah yeah well there's that too and fitness influencer Brenda Key it's like oh look at that a curvy girl
01:34Mark most Australians are fat yeah if that's the case why is it still such a big deal I think
01:43it's just because fat is seen as like this big evil it's like the villain it's like to be fat is to be
01:50ugly to be fat is to not be beautiful to be fat is to be worthless which as we can very much see here it
01:56is not the case we are such gorgeous beautiful human beings fat is just fact it's just who you are
02:01somebody's will be fat some won't and that's just the way it's gonna be little darling yeah did you
02:08grow up being called fat at school yeah absolutely that and nerd and um sexy but um no yeah I've I've
02:18been fat from a very young age do you own the term like do you call yourself yeah I fully call myself
02:22out I I even introduced myself as proudly fat probably fat probably Filipino probably queer does
02:27everyone else feel that way about the term because I I grew up as a as a big kid and I often say I grew
02:32up as a vacuum so I think if you're fat you're okay with calling yourself fat but yeah if you do
02:37that it's everyone else is like no don't say that no you're not fat and you probably really are well
02:44they say no no but you're pretty and it's like I didn't say I was ugly I know I'm fat I have a mirror
02:53but yeah people try and sort of take it away from you because they find it offensive themselves I
02:58think interesting what about you Donna how do you feel about the term fat I identify as fat have
03:04always been the fat kid the fat person always around it's only in very recent times in this
03:10journey of health that I've become less fat I suppose yeah and more healthy and but it takes your
03:18brain a long time to catch up to that and I still feel like I can still say I'm fat because I'm that's
03:24how I've always been yeah do you feel like you get treated differently depending on what size you are
03:28yeah definitely I think even just in the shops even just going down to the shops and buying things
03:33like whatever it might be people just they look at you too or they don't look at you I think you're
03:38also different if you're thinner as well and so if you are more confident then you get treated better
03:43because you have that confidence whereas when you're a bit bigger sometimes you just want to like
03:47hide in the corner were you big as a kid yeah I pretty much gained 10 kilos with every age
03:53right that I turn okay so at 8 I was 80 9 90 by the time I was 10 I was 100 kilos and then as a
04:00teenager I got up to about 120 130 you know 15 16 years old so always the fat kid um so yeah I mean
04:09being fat is just something that I've always been used to I don't really know myself not fat is there
04:15a difference between how fat was seen inside your house versus the outside world oh 100% I'm very
04:20lucky that from a young age fatness wasn't this evil fatness was just who we are it was a beautiful
04:25truth like we just loved eating food we loved eating rice it's very Filipino of us and it was
04:31only really until like I guess I reached teenage age where the you know external pressures really
04:39sat in the social media like I blossomed a snapchat blossomed and Instagram blossomed but even then I
04:45think I think it changes everything when your roots are filled with love filled with this appreciation
04:52for a plumpness and a gorgeous chubbiness I've come from a family where it was very normal to comment on
05:01how big you are and how big you're getting and your my size was something that was always spoken about
05:06every time you would see someone that you haven't seen for a while it was always oh wow you know
05:10you've put on a lot of weight or look how big you are and and so yeah I come from a background where
05:17you do kind of pick at people other people's expectations is a really interesting component
05:22to us because Joanne used to be an olympic swimmer you've won gold at the commonwealth games
05:26yeah are people's expectations of your body different because of that background as a as an athlete
05:31oh definitely and I think my body was a tool so it was heavily commoditized we were
05:36poked prodded weighed measured you're constantly thinking about your body so when that body started
05:42gaining weight um yeah the expectations around me from people it was it was very hard to deal with
05:49because they couldn't understand how I could be an olympian and be fat um and yeah that was quite
05:55difficult does anyone ever felt discriminated against for being fat yeah for sure at one point I was trying
06:02to buy active wear because they tell you I was I was bigger than I am now so probably at least 20 kilos
06:08heavier what and they told me I needed to get active so I went for to buy active wear walked in
06:14and uh one of the girls who was the assistant in the store said we don't sell anything in your size
06:21and that was devastating so I do a lot of work to try and help people um feel comfortable in the body
06:28that they have and to be able to uh enjoy the body that they have I've done things like uh a Burke
06:35street mall walk in my lingerie to try to try and uh demonstrate to others that this is what bodies look
06:45like this is what bodies really look like and the reaction from the crowd um was amazing men cheering
06:51no one called us fat no one was horrible it's I've really done quite a few things to try and make sure
06:58that I feel comfortable in my body as well wow can I ask about dating and relationships like what is it
07:05like dating at a bigger size yeah not great I would not get as much you know swipe rights on on the dating
07:11websites and things like that um it's been interesting after losing the weight that I have
07:17the people that are coming out of the woodworks that I used to speak to in my past what do you
07:22think of those people like what goes through your head come on be honest I mean it's laughable
07:26yeah right because I'm exactly the same person I'm just carrying 30 kilos less weight I'm nothing
07:32about me has changed except for that um and so yeah it's laughable like if you didn't like me then
07:37you don't deserve me now would you judge somebody mark for for coming to you and talking to you
07:41differently after you lose weight uh no I don't think so no because I I get it I understand it
07:49it's more attractive to be thinner and if they're not attracted to me bigger I get it yeah I totally
07:55get it I mean that's not my preference I don't really care what someone looks like but I do know
07:59that people do care mark you've written a lot about dating whilst a bigger size and you've actually
08:06given like really practical advice over the years like what are the sorts of things that you tell people
08:11about um being intimate when you're bigger size well I think just to like not be afraid to touch
08:16just get in there like they're called love handles for a reason uh you gotta you gotta love them you
08:21gotta hold on to them I love you that's amazing that people want to be touched too like and it it's
08:27really difficult if someone goes to touch you and then they feel your roles and then they might
08:33concentrate on your roles so it's like giving them that sort of advice too like enjoy it and caress it
08:38but don't concentrate on it don't think it's a spot that you should be you know like it's not
08:44play-doh no no exactly I'm looking at your face mark I'm trying to work out what's going through
08:49your head no are you rethinking sexual experiences what's going on I'm just yeah I'm just thinking
08:54it's okay if you're doing it yourself like I think about what I do with my body just for fun
08:58and like I'll be moving a titty over here in your playground flopping my tummy up and yeah I don't
09:05know I think if you have a partner that you're comfortable with and you know you share a bedroom
09:09with you might shower together get ready together in the bathroom together once you've got that level
09:14of comfort I just think yeah who cares what I look like you know what I mean like she's seen me in the
09:19worst possible ways so the queer male body standard is like next level it is next level it is uh muscular
09:28it's white it's thin it's twinkie uh don't google that um at least not at the table not at the table
09:35on your own time another time um and I feel like so when I first entered the dating apps um it was just
09:42very clear like um that I wasn't welcome there was a lot of like fatphobic comments there was like
09:47random people just sending me like pig emojis oh wow yeah just like on the app they would just
09:52they would send me a pig emoji and then make sure I saw it and then delete it block me get rid of me
09:59I feel like my struggle now is that you know I feel like I'm desired but only in secret I'm only
10:08desired in the middle of the night at 2am I'm not I don't want to be they don't want to be seen with
10:14me out for a coffee do you feel like you've been fetishized oh 100% some people are comfortable
10:19with being fetishized some aren't for me it's like if a person is willing to see me as a human being
10:25first and foremost if they're able to respect me and communicate well and be an adult I'm okay with
10:31being the object of their sexual desire I definitely know I've been fetishized for my boobs right I have
10:37bigger boobs because I'm a bigger girl in the workplace I've had you know men actually say
10:43things inappropriately and things like that so I know that those sort of things happen has anyone
10:48else ever felt like they've been fetishized as a bigger person no I wish
10:52yeah no does anyone else ever feel judged for eating in public yes all the time um and you know
11:08you could be eating the same food as your friend who's thin you get the looks or you get you know
11:13it's not overt but you can you can notice it you can see when it's happening it's really bad if you're
11:21in a shopping center or something like that and you haven't eaten pretty much all day you're starving
11:25but if you're alone and you're at a food court and you're eating it looks really bad yeah all of that
11:31leads us to the wonderful world of regret and self-flagellation diets
11:36the first diet book in the world came out in the 50s the 1550s that is it is the arts of living long
11:48by italian luigi conaro who suggested that each day you just needed 300 grams of food
11:53and three glasses of wine then in 1862 a retired london undertaker by the name of william banting
12:02popularized the first low carb diet it was so popular that bant became slang for dieting
12:09as in do you bant good sir since then the battle of the bold has become a battle for big business
12:15today the global weight loss industry is worth over 450 billion dollars a year vast global empires
12:24have been created telling us we could sweat it out starve it out hell some of us even tried to pray it
12:31out i'm teaching people how to transfer a relationship with the refrigerator to a relationship with god
12:39food is a parasitic leech it's a false god speaking of false gods a report into australia's weight loss
12:47industry has found evidence of deceptive practices and risks to consumer safety eighty percent of
12:54dieters enrolled in centers failed to lose weight or keep it down by the time we got to the 1990s some
13:00new ideas slowly began to emerge in contrast to the widely held belief that obesity is caused by
13:07gluttony and sloth there is now a recognition that it's not simply related to lifestyle and that medical
13:14intervention is needed to bring obesity under control but diets even the batshit ones never really
13:21went away so you're probably wondering what we've put in front of you this is diet bingo
13:30oh no we've gone back over the turgid history of diets to take you through them one by one donna
13:40this brings back memories from a very long time ago of something in the realms of a kickstart
13:53cabbage diet where you made some form of vegetable soup that included a lot of cabbage and you could
13:58eat as much as you wanted i think the terms of it was like for seven days and they claimed you could
14:03lose something like five kilos and all you had to do was eat that three times a day how are your farts
14:09i'm sure they were awful atomic atomic so the cabbage soup diet it goes back to the 1950s but
14:17it became really popular in the 1980s and yes the idea is that you just eat cabbage and cabbage based
14:23foods although eventually just stop eating altogether because all you have to eat is cabbage yes mark
14:29do you want to go next
14:30oh glasses x-ray vision goggles
14:36this was the vision diet and the idea is if you wore that you would only eat colorful
14:44vegetables and fruit and you wouldn't eat brown fried food it's still appealing
14:49which brings us to joanna very gently remove your cloche
14:57so this is the 1977 australian vogue champagne diet yep my gosh i'm going to read it out to you so
15:09basically a couple of eggs some black coffee four glasses of champagne and for dessert a glass of brandy
15:17and i'm not going to lie of all the diets this one i can get down i feel like i do this on a weekend
15:22already but they actually published this in vogue in 1977
15:26it's a very nice nice fragrant on the bouquet
15:29my turn okay
15:32oh
15:35oh is this baby food it is baby food
15:38can i have some of course is that okay i haven't had baby food since i was a baby so last year
15:43yeah that's bland as shit
15:49i can see a baby loving this not me sorry
15:53i think that's kind of the point so the idea is you would replace a few meals with baby food it
15:59it goes back a while but quite recently it became quite popular in hollywood circles apparently oh wow
16:05well that brings us to you lucky last oh
16:12just eating apples for every meal did you do that yes done just apples
16:20apples for every but you can have them any way you wanted so you could stew them you could do other
16:25things with them but it's a lot of apples how many years of your life do you reckon you lost to dieting
16:31well probably from when i was about 20 to i was about 45 so 25 years but i was bulimic as well
16:42trying to lose weight because that's how society wanted me to be
16:46when you think about the years that you spent doing some of this stuff do you how do you look back from that time
16:52that it was wasted because i should have just been enjoying life participating in life
16:56i don't have photos of me with my kids when they were littler because i felt too fat to be in the photos too too big
17:03and back then i didn't like myself so it i feel it you know that society's value on how we look and the fatness that we have
17:13can ruin people's lives you're a personal trainer now right i am a personal trainer so what advice
17:19do you give clients about diet i personally don't think you need to give up any food i think it's
17:26more about the moderation and just you know today i felt like a macaroon and i had a macaroon and
17:32that was enough but you know if i wanted two more i would have them and and those sort of things so
17:36i it's more about the movement and things that i i concentrate on and that's been sort of that
17:42incidental way that they lose the weight what sort of reactions do you get okay let's no no the
17:48elephant in the room yeah okay i'm a fat personal trainer who goes into group train people don't
17:54think i'm there to run the class they think i'm another participant because i'm i don't fit the mold
17:59i don't have abs being fat doesn't mean that i'm not fit and i think we need to get beyond the idea
18:05of the gym as somewhere to be thin you know the gym is for you to get strong it's to get healthy it's
18:11great for your mental health it's great to have fun it's to meet friends i think just labeling gym
18:16as somewhere that we go to get thin is really problematic yeah mark this collection of diets is on
18:24the extreme end but we do have a culture where people do keep coming back to dieting why why do
18:30you think there is that draw i think because people gain their weight back very easily i think that the
18:37body i think once you've been big we're like a balloon i think it just bounces back and i know that
18:43i've yo-yo dieted my whole life as well and i've dropped big lots of weight multiple times it could be
18:5030 kilos 40 kilos at one point i lost 50 kilos but it always comes back and and usually a lot more
18:57um when i was about 21 i had a lap band um because that was what the biggest weight loss surgery was
19:04back then um and i had the band in there for about 10 years ended up with a whole bunch of complications
19:11um and then from that it eventuated into me getting a gastric bypass what was the impact on
19:17your actual body like did it work i am eight months post surgery um so it's still pretty fresh for me
19:25and i'm already down something like 42 kilos so it does work um this to me feels like the most
19:33sustainable thing that i've ever had in my life um in terms of dieting and you know the way i eat
19:39uh because i feel like i can still eat and uh yeah it's a lot less and i'm more conscious of what i put
19:46in my body because there's not much space in there so i have to be more aware of what i eat
19:50limited real estate yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah so you just have to make better choices
19:55i just i mean i'm 35 now i probably didn't even know that i would even get to 35
20:01um but now that i am in my 30s uh and i've got kids and i'm a lot healthier i am kind of worried
20:09about my lifespan so now my mind has kind of changed and i'm like hmm maybe i should make better
20:14choices so that i am here for a longer time um because yeah i think i've got people now who
20:20want me around for that amount of time after the break i make the questionable decision to let cameras
20:26film me at a doctor's appointment i've grown up sort of with an expanding contracting body and i've at
20:33no point have i actually spoken to a doctor about it really yeah and we dive belly first into the
20:39divisive world of weight loss drugs we don't know the long-term effects of these drugs but
20:44we do know the long-term effects of obesity and they are catastrophic sounds like a rich person's
20:49drug like cocaine i don't think it's cheating and i don't think it's a magic cure
20:54if you're overweight or obese you're in a trap we were raised in a trap these drugs are a trap door
21:07they are a risky rusty trap door some of us should go through them some of them shouldn't in my view
21:13but they give us more options than we had before and everyone is overweight or obese i think should
21:19take a moment to really think deeply about the options these drugs open up british author johann
21:26harry is a bit like the james bond of health issues he takes a subject like depression or addiction and
21:32then he flies around the world to untangle the web of underlying causes now i first met him about a
21:38decade ago and well we both looked a little different oh thank you very much his most recent target is
21:47obesity and our relationship with food and this time it's personal you write really viscerally
21:54about one particular food stuff i can see where you're going oh the magic the dream
22:04okay firstly describe for me what we're looking at here
22:08heaven well so when we first met nine years ago this would have looked like heaven to me
22:15now i know what we're looking at is um grotesque jokes of like breaded filth basically but this
22:24would have been my staple diet basically from the age of three to the age of 44. it's so weird i i
22:30literally don't want it now it's it's the weirdest thing so what's changed for johann well for the past
22:36couple of years he has been injecting himself with ozempic a prescription drug only approved
22:42in australia for the treatment of diabetes but which johann and many others around the world have
22:47been taking off label for weight loss it's a complex story about these drugs but this is not a fan this
22:52is not a gimmick there's been a staggering scientific breakthrough ozempic wagovi monjaro sixender
23:00they're all drugs that have been around for about 20 years to treat obesity and diabetes they're what's
23:05known as glp1 agonist so glp1 is a naturally occurring hormone in the body think of it as
23:11being part of your body's email network for managing food and energy when you eat your gut
23:16produces glp1 which starts firing off emails to your brain telling you that you're getting full
23:21but some people have problems with their glp1 signal it's like emails are getting stuck in the
23:26outbox or going straight to spam so the message never gets to your brain and you stay hungry that's
23:31where the glp1 drugs come in they mimic the naturally occurring hormone but turbocharge
23:36the signal so then the emails start flowing to your brain so you know when to stop eating and can
23:42control your food cravings at other times as one of the scientists who works on these drugs put it to
23:47me we've cracked the code of what controls human appetite actually i wonder if we should put this
23:52weight this way like these dead chickens i knew you'd change your mind i've cracked get it away from me
23:57as i sit in front of you right now i am classified as obese in fact i actually have the same bmi as
24:02you had when you decided to start to go on these drugs what would you say to a person in my position
24:08who's weighing up the choice well the first thing i would say is as you know i'm not a doctor so people
24:12should talk to their doctors and they should weigh that much more heavily than anything they take from
24:16me but we don't know the long-term effects of these drugs but we do know the long-term effects of
24:21obesity and they are catastrophic so i've had a little think about what johan harry said and i've
24:27decided to take his advice and go talk to some actual doctors not just to weigh up the risks but
24:31also the potential rewards of this new generation of weight loss drugs
24:38just background for me um i'm a fat kid like i was i've i've been big my entire life and i've grown
24:46up sort of with an expanding contracting body and i've at no point have i've actually spoken to a
24:52doctor about it really yeah so what have you been doing then when you say expanding contracting you've
24:58clearly you're aware oh yeah yeah no so usually if i go down it's because of like like lots and lots
25:05and lots of exercise and then we had kids and that was just like not a thing you could do um and only
25:12recently have i gotten into like tracking every single thing that goes inside my mouth since i
25:19started with that i've lost about eight or nine kilos since june what's your motivator here i turn 40 this
25:26year right okay so it's probably the first time i've really considered what the next 40 years of my
25:32life are going to look like yeah you know it was at this point that you know my parents started getting
25:37cancers and things like that and so there's a sort of defensive position i want to take where i'm
25:41like i want to put myself in good stead for that okay but if i'm being honest it's the the biggest
25:47driver for me is the body i look at in the mirror in the morning okay but there's two aspects here yeah
25:52and i don't think we should ignore the fact that you want to feel good when you look in in the mirror
25:56yeah because because i'm a little bit competitive um i do tend to weigh myself most days pretty much
26:02every day and i'm looking for controlled decline and if and i and you know if i'm being really honest
26:10with you if i don't see a decline week on week i i'm fucking angry when you're a fat kid it it never
26:15leaves you you know even if i'm in really good shape you still mentally feel like the fat kid and
26:21i feel like that's the thing that i'm probably fixated on more than anything have you ever spoken
26:26to anyone about this like a psychologist no i haven't actually no no this is all and so this
26:32is all very it's all intertwined well it is yeah given everything you know about me and my bmi
26:41do you think drugs like ozempic are something i should consider so you would qualify certainly
26:48qualify as in would it be indicated to put it on the platter of options sure these meds that you're
26:57describing are really effective for a lot of people and you know most of the stuff that we're
27:04seeing suggests that they're quite safe there are side effects nausea you know people can feel quite
27:09terrible on them you know constipation a lot of tummy upset there could be some rarer adverse side
27:15effects to do with the pancreas but by and large they appear to be quite safe
27:24i might see someone who's you know 150 200 kilograms they start on these medications and
27:29they can lose 80 to 100 kilograms so they're still very big people um but suddenly they can come into my
27:35office they're smiling they can breathe um one man celebrated the fact that he could put his seatbelt
27:41on so there's the medical setting where people are very unwell and you're getting massive wins and
27:45then there's the the broader sense where we're using them to um i guess health be healthier in
27:51general although that's a bit more of a gray area if you're a completely healthy person um that has
27:56no specific family history and there's a lot of nutrition and physical activity gains to be made
28:01probably you should pause and focus on those other things first i don't think i'd want to be on
28:05these drugs if i didn't need to be on them um because they do have side effects they're not you
28:09know um and there are potential short and long-term side effects that we don't fully understand
28:14there's one risk that really played out for me in particular but i wish i had been warned about
28:21the pattern of my eating so i wasn't someone who like loved food and craved the taste and the flavor
28:27i stuffed myself to calm myself down and when i started taking a zempic i couldn't do that
28:34being deprived of that underlying psychological coping mechanism was really hard actually it was
28:41really difficult so if i was going to write you a map yeah and the platter of options you can't
28:49underestimate the power of the lifestyle interventions but they're hard to implement which is why
28:54i i would get in experts exercise physiologists dietitians but i do think if we were even going to
29:07chat about medication options it would have to be with the caveat of with a psychologist who
29:15specializes in this area and i can arrange all of it but the reason is mark that i
29:22think there's a lot of unexplored stuff here you've told me you've never spoken to anybody about it and
29:26there are some things that you've told me that make me slightly concerned and i don't want to
29:33perpetuate harm with your relationship with your body or food no i'm just like i just like something
29:40realizing i'm too crazy for a zempic not my words not yours i know you would never say those words
29:46and i don't i look and we can consider it but i just don't want to cause more harm
29:49and make sure you're best supported that's really what it's about
29:52fun fact i'm technically considered obese and as part of doing this i went to go see a gp and it
30:04became very apparent in this conversation that i absolutely qualify for the new weight loss drugs
30:09i haven't necessarily gone down the pathway yet but it was like oh okay i can get this now donna
30:14you're interesting here because you were on some of these weight loss drugs years before everyone is
30:19is that right yes so i'm in my fourth year of uh being on glp1 uh weight loss medication i started
30:25in 2021 uh before it all had a big hype about it and yes i'm still going i don't think that at this
30:33stage there will be a room for me to stop the medication as i have just become the healthiest person
30:37i am and have just had to accept that i needed some help in doing that so how much weight loss are
30:42we talking about so in total as of today i've actually lost 50 kilos and in the first nine or
30:4910 months i lost 40 of those kilos i then maintained until this year and i've just dropped the last 10
30:54kilos in three months that's huge a lot of that recent weight loss will definitely be contributed to
31:01the amount of steps i've taken to change my diet and lifestyle so as it gets further along i've had to
31:07incorporate more things more exercise um watching my diet even more closely to help push that along
31:14you went off the drugs for a period of time when you went off the drugs what happened to your body
31:20so for the time that i went off the drugs was when i was hoping to continue the lifestyle change and
31:25manage it on my own unfortunately that wasn't the case and i did start to regain some of the weight i
31:31ended up regaining about eight kilos in three months what's the thing you most want people to
31:36know about the journey that you've been on that there is help out there and there's no shame in
31:41taking that if you need it joanna you've been on some of these drugs as well how has it changed
31:47your relationship with food um i mean it's changed my entire life it just it's made my life so much
31:54easier in that i'm not constantly panicking and worrying and thinking about food so i still enjoy food
32:00i still eat it i think it's very important that you maintain that when you're taking one of these
32:04medications that you're still putting food into your body um food still excites me i still you know
32:09like going out to dinner but it's just taken the thought and the all of that noise inside of my head
32:15is gone so what is what is food noise like what does that feel like it's all consuming constant thoughts
32:22about food so thinking about when your next meal is what you're going to have how many calories you had
32:27in the morning so how many calories you have left for the day should i eat now should i eat when i go
32:31out you know all it's it's non-stop never-ending right can you relate to that absolutely to have
32:37that switched off and not have to think about breakfast lunch dinner meals and just take them
32:42like as they come pretty much uh is just a phenomenal experience so you're not a diabetic i'm not which
32:48means you've had to pay full price for this haven't you absolutely i have paid private price the whole time
32:53how much money do you reckon you spent on this drug i really don't want to think about that okay
32:58anywhere from uh upwards of 150 a month to to zapatite is now 699 for a one-month pen
33:07that's a lot it is a lot but my house has come 180 i was constantly um being monitored for high
33:14blood pressure i was pre-diabetic um i just yeah was very much struggling and now all of that has
33:21basically gone away insulin resistance is not no longer affecting me i'm not pre-diabetic and i've
33:27not had to be on blood pressure medication for three years wow mark would you ever consider
33:33no why not sounds like a rich person's drug like cocaine i'm kidding i'm joking
33:41i'm just thinking you'd want to hope that you never go broke because the minute you can't afford the
33:47medication it's just like what happens then you know like what happens once you get off the medication
33:53for me i was trying to source a zempic because i needed it for diabetes and couldn't get it anywhere
33:58like i was like the crack cocaine person going around to all the pharmacists have you got the drug
34:04and no one had it so what happens if all the drugs start dry up do you ever worry that it's an ongoing
34:09commitment that you are going to be with it forever i don't worry about it at all okay i think like
34:14much like any other disease heart disease you'd be on statins for life um i don't have any qualms
34:20about it and i think as well i did the maths and worked out that when i go to maintenance on this
34:25medication it'll work out to 70 a week which was a big takeaway right like and i'm not eating the
34:31takeaways i'm not eating as much food i'm you know i'm making better choices so for me financially
34:36it also works out so much less on food yeah yeah even just like looking into it just telling
34:43people that i was looking at it i got a really interesting reaction from some people who were
34:46like well it's cheating what do you think about this idea that being on these drugs is is cheating
34:52weight loss because it's around right i say i say so what so what number one but also i have pre-diabetes
35:01i had insulin resistance had degenerative back issues caused by carrying excess weight so
35:07for me it's it's um yeah it's it's treating a disease but i think at the same time you don't
35:13win prizes for suffering you don't win prizes for you know who's put in the most work and at the end
35:18of the day when we're on our deathbed i'm not going to look back and regret taking this
35:22mark what do you think about the idea of these drugs or even your surgery is cheating
35:27uh yeah i mean you hear it all the time anytime someone has a gastric sleeve or a bypass or jumps
35:35on these drugs people do think it is cheating but it's usually people that haven't really lived
35:42a life of being a fat person and they don't really understand you know if there's a chance that you can
35:49get yourself healthier and take away all the back pain and all of the issues that you've got from being
35:55bigger because i do think that it's a disease if there's a chance you're going to take it and
36:00that's the reason why i had my surgery probably the reason why you guys are on these medication
36:04because it's just that chance of getting some of your life back again so if they think it's cheating
36:10let them yeah yeah let them but i think the other thing too is it's not about just taking the drug
36:15and that's it and magically you're thin you've had to change your diets you've had to do the work you
36:23do the exercise so you were saying you walk you know i don't think it's cheating and i don't think
36:28it's a magic cure but it's interesting i was putting in the work before yeah i went on this
36:33medication i was going to the gym and i was doing all the things they say you know eat healthy and do
36:38all of this um give up alcohol you know do a personal training 12-week course um and it didn't move
36:46it didn't budge the scales yeah is there a lot of pressure to kind of out yourself to it to say that
36:52that you're on ozempic when people come up to you oh my god you look amazing you've lost weight do you
36:55do you feel like you should say how you've lost the weight i don't think it's anyone's business
37:00how you lose weight put on weight do anything for me i made the choice quite early on to tell people
37:06because i you see so much in the media you see so many celebrities and the horror stories and you don't
37:13see the millions of people that this medication is helping on a daily basis and so for me i wanted to be
37:18really transparent about it because i wanted everyone in my life to know that there are options
37:23out there for you you don't have to suffer anymore um you know you don't have to eat cabbage soup
37:29for every meal there are there are other alternatives and even just thinking about
37:33maybe it's not this medication but just knowing that there are other things out there for them to
37:37do mark obesity is a disease oh still to come can you balance body positivity with health i just i
37:47love being fat which i think is such a radical thing for people to hear and for people to say
37:52can you be healthy at any size i don't think so i think there's a size where you're not really very
37:58healthy anymore and will the new weight loss drugs turbo charge fat phobia the fat phobia that i feel
38:04is directed at one person and that's me i don't think that i'm more positive about my body
38:09i thought it was then and i think it's now
38:16mark obesity is a disease oh um i personally have spent a lot of time trying to separate fat from
38:26health and separating sort of bigness from being unhealthy i am also type 2 diabetic i was diagnosed
38:36in 2017 both my parents are diabetic and so it was just a predisposition as well um at the very
38:42beginning i was placed on a hunger suppressant oral medication and um you're right it did drown out the food
38:50noise but it also drowned out everything else and so for a long time i didn't feel like myself i didn't i
38:55didn't feel cheery i didn't feel sad i just didn't feel anything um and so i quickly went off that um
39:02and i have been suggested not prescribed but suggested a zempic and i remember that first
39:07conversation and just being so uncomfortable with it and mostly because you know my dad he he was one
39:13of the also one of the early early people who had access to it in like 2022 and i remember the first
39:19conversation i had with him was like oh my goodness you've lost so much weight and he's like yeah i'm on a
39:23zempic but i've got to stop because i can't access it anymore there there's we're out of stock there's
39:28no one no one sucks it in our area anymore um so for me when i think about a zempic i can acknowledge
39:35you know its ability to change lives and its ability to you know manage sugar and that's its first and
39:42foremost function but then i think about the the people who don't have access to it who um aren't
39:49financially stable who can't do that and that's when i feel like when people are using it for
39:53vanity for other reasons not for health but for vanity that's where i have an issue with things
39:58like ozempic i feel like a lot of like early 2000s late 90s sentiments are coming back heroin chic
40:04crack chic where it's like this drug that'll make you thin and desirable and and your you know your
40:09problems will go away but they won't go away you can lose all your weight and still have problems
40:14it's interesting as part of this we i want to go talk to a journalist by the name of johann harry
40:20and uh he himself has been on ozempic there was this one thing that he said that has stuck with me
40:26you know the most difficult uh moment for me and all the research for the book
40:30was about six months into taking the drugs i was facetiming with my niece erin she was sort of teasing
40:36me she was saying like oh i didn't know you had a neck before right uh but i was sort of saying i look
40:40good and um suddenly she looked down and she said will you get me some ozemp because she's a perfectly
40:46healthy weight she always has been and i thought she was kidding and i laughed and suddenly i realized
40:50she wasn't joking and i thought oh have i undermined every lesson i was trying to give her since she
40:57was a little girl and i'm many worries about these drugs but one is that i worry that they will set in
41:03train a dynamic of a kind of hyper thin norm becoming massively promoted again and i think
41:11that's a real problem will it accentuate the stigma against being overweight or obese i think it
41:17probably will and that is not good mark we've done all this progress as a society to become more
41:24comfortable with our bodies more accepting of our bodies do these drugs have the risk of undoing
41:29all of that work oh 100 percent whatever route these medications take whatever new fat comes
41:37up i think the larger issue here is just how society treats fatness and how society views fatness
41:44and how if people just open their minds a little little tiny little petite little bit
41:51that i don't know we'd be a little bit more understanding of each other and over each other's
41:55circumstances um because fatness isn't always a choice um and it will remain that for a very very
42:02long time regardless of where these medications i think it's really hard though when our fat role models
42:10are dropping like flies like there's been a boom of all these drugs and we had the rebel wilson's we
42:17had the lizos of the world who were preaching body positivity and but now they're all skinny because
42:23they're on a zempic i'd argue that lizzie hasn't she hasn't admitted to taking a zempic so that's
42:28speculation i think fat shame is one of the last widely acceptable forms of discrimination in our
42:33society and i think these drugs might entrench that further potentially even though i think they're
42:38really helpful clearly they're helpful i i worry that they might entrench that idea further you're implying
42:46that people taking this medication will become the evil that we've all you know been fighting against
42:54in terms of discriminating against people that choose not to take it and i think that that might be a
42:59little bit of a narrow view i think you know i all of the pressure that i placed upon myself about
43:05being overweight i have never directed it externally i don't care what anyone looks like um the fat phobia
43:12that i feel is directed at one person and that's me but were you ever on the receiving end of it
43:16though i guess it's like there is still a societal expectation that everybody's navigating here yeah
43:22yeah mark why is it so important to you to maintain your body size as is i just i love being fat
43:30which i think is such a radical thing for people to hear and for people to say i love my fatness i love
43:35that i'm soft and i love that my fatness brings comfort to other people i love fatness on other people as
43:41well i think it also came with a love of you know you mentioned those celebrities i love queen latifah
43:47i love melissa mccarthy i love huey he is one of my favorites um one of his quotes that stuck with me
43:55was um never trust a skinny chef which i was just like yeah preach thank you so much for putting it
44:02into words if i ever meet him i will pass away um but i just i want to honor my self-honor that this is
44:10and trust that this is the body that i'm supposed to have when i was on those medications and when
44:15i'm taking my diabetic medication um my weight there was never a point where my weight was heavily
44:22fluctuated it just stayed in this warm this was my body this is how it is i've always been a big boy
44:27and i will carry that pride hopefully for the rest of my life yeah so how do you go about balancing
44:32that that pride and who you are as part of your identity with the health concerns i will obviously take my
44:38blood sugar very seriously i will always be mindful of what i'm eating but i don't want to take the joy
44:44away from anything i don't want to take take the joy away from looking the way i do and loving the way i
44:49do i know that when you go for a doctor's appointment something that always happens
44:56for me not not every single time but a lot of the time is that conversation around if you lost
45:01if you lost weight this might not be an issue like everything medically is that they want you to
45:08lose weight like that's the conversation a lot of people bigger people don't go to the doctor because
45:13that's what they're going to get told you if you lost weight 100 yeah yeah i feel like it's like the
45:19number one thing you that you can present with it almost any medical issue yeah yeah i think it's
45:26doing a lot of carrying and i think health as well as being used as a weapon against fat people it's
45:32that faux concern for your i'm just worried about your yeah you don't even know me why are you concerned
45:37about my health like it's a very it's it's being masqueraded has everyone been told that i'm just
45:43worried about your health has everyone heard that yeah right brenda can you be healthy at any size
45:49i truly believe you can so um you know health the the way you look and the size is not an indication
45:58of health there are a lot of skinny people who have heart attacks running marathons and things like
46:03that sporting events um i think the healthy the health is all about um moving your body making sure
46:10that you're eating you know a balanced diet those sorts of things so definitely is possible mark i don't
46:16think so no um i just think for me personally it got to a point where i started to get so big
46:24that everything was just starting to shut down on me i was having constant back pain shoulder pain neck
46:30pain constant headaches just feeling sluggish i could barely breathe getting up the stairs i don't
46:38think that that's very healthy and i was i was a big person but there's a lot of people that are a
46:44lot bigger than i am and i can only imagine how much of a struggle it is to lug around that much weight
46:50so i think maybe for a short period of time and especially if you're younger and you're more able
46:55to carry all that weight but as you get older i just don't i think there's a size where you're not
47:01really very healthy anymore i am interested though donna yes since you've lost weight how has your
47:07relationship with your body changed now i see it as a much stronger vessel as in i can do things i
47:14couldn't do before and i can go to the gym i go to pilates three times a week um and i'm not afraid to
47:21go and work out for you joran yeah i think you know i'd love to say that my weight loss journey was 100
47:29about my health um it was very strongly about my health but um i'd love to say i'm strong enough to
47:34not care about what people think about how i look um i'm not that strong so um but i think for me
47:42you know being able to get out of bed uh without back pain being able to go on a long walk without
47:48my hips hurting being able to go to the gym and lift and just be kind of more active and happier
47:54um and also i mean the side effects of of the medication that i'm on my anxiety has gone my
48:00depression has gone the inflammation in my body has disappeared so you know weight loss is one
48:05element of it but the other benefits to this medication are are incredible mark how do you feel
48:11about your body now um well when you lose a whole bunch of weight you end up with a whole bunch of
48:17other problems so you end up with excess skin here and it's all goopy here and it's gross over there so
48:24it just feels the same honestly i don't think that i'm more positive about my body it's just a
48:28different i thought it was shit then and i think it's shit now just shit in a different way yeah yeah
48:35brenda how do you feel about your body now most days i'm very very happy with my body i um didn't
48:41always feel like that so i used to hate my body absolutely absolutely hated it um but now i'm happy
48:48with it i love the things that i can do as well so i can go for long walks with with the dog on the beach
48:54i've gone i've entered into you know like um triathlons those sorts of things i like my body
49:02as it is now it's not perfect a lot of people won't like it because it does have all the rolls
49:07and the cellulite and everything like that but i like it it's amazing for me and you know it's done
49:13amazing things well there's a market for that thanks is it called body positivity i think i'll have a go
49:20at that mark when you look in the mirror if you could tell your body something what would you say
49:25don't i'm getting emotional um if i could speak to my body i would say thank you for keeping me alive
49:32and you know thank you for being my best friend like i'm gonna do my best to continue loving you to
49:41the best of my ability um that will change um i hope not often but that will change
49:46um but yeah let's do our best friends thank you so much for coming having dinner with me and uh cheers
49:55to our bodies cheers for keeping us alive yes cheers cheers
50:01coming up next week get old or die trying i just want to be alive forever every day i wake up and
50:08think bugger i'm still here meet the seniors doing things differently i am getting stronger and i'm
50:14feeling stronger i am amazed at some of the weights that i'm lifting now i become a human lab rat to see
50:20just how badly my body is aging okay so this is a measure of your basal metabolic rate and we talk sex
50:28after 70. i haven't been laid for about 15 years no we've got to go there because i'm a sex therapist
50:37i go there a lot cucumbers are better than me no you tell me that's next week on tell me what you really
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