Maintenance Phase - Diet Book Deep Dive： “How To Take 20 Pounds Off Your Man”

00:00:00.000 welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that wants you to be the best you you can be it's

00:00:17.460 like a self-help phrase in the context of this show that sounds very nefarious to me

00:00:23.860 your hackles are up i don't know uh i'm aubrey gordon i'm michael hobbs if you would like to

00:00:32.920 support the show you can do that at patreon.com slash maintenance phase you can also buy t-shirts

00:00:37.680 mugs tote bags stickers all kinds of stuff at t public both of those things are linked for you

00:00:44.260 in the show notes and today michael hobbs we are doing a diet book deep dive we are i i learned

00:00:52.620 this like three minutes ago because we were supposed to record something else yeah i have

00:00:56.960 changed topics for this episode twice i am the freshest so today we're actually going to talk

00:01:03.080 about a diet book that our listeners probably haven't heard of okay it was not a bestseller

00:01:08.960 it didn't have a bunch of celebrity devotees the diet itself is not an innovation it is a

00:01:17.300 straightforward low-fat low-calorie diet but it is an absolutely fascinating encapsulation

00:01:26.260 of a bunch of cultural ideas about dieting about being fat and about gender and sexuality

00:01:34.620 god is it like the phyllis schlafly diet or something where are you taking me you're honestly

00:01:41.960 you're so fucking close there is a bunch in this book that i think phyllis schlafly would 0.93

00:01:46.640 greatly enjoy we're in good hands the book is called how to take 20 pounds off your man 0.96

00:01:52.120 a life-saving guide for the man you love no this exists this exists it's stated intended

00:02:02.540 audience is wives who think their husbands should lose weight the sort of central claim of the book

00:02:09.360 is that the author says she facilitated her husband's weight loss of about 35 pounds does

00:02:15.180 he know about this does he know that she wrote a book he wrote the afterword what and his doctor

00:02:21.920 wrote the foreword it's not often on this show that i get offended on behalf of straight men

00:02:27.580 like this is offensive i mean it is and what i'm gonna do right now is uh i'm gonna send you a

00:02:37.960 picture of the cover of this book and you are going to describe it to our listeners 0.98

00:02:41.860 oh okay this has to be 80s right given the font it's 1984 so okay first of all it's like a fuck 0.90

00:02:54.360 ugly traffic light yellow just like a bright offensive yellow and then it says how to take 0.87

00:03:01.340 20 pounds off your man and then there's a photo of a couple and they chose like a suspiciously

00:03:08.080 attractive couple like they look like barbie and ken the photo on the cover is stock footage

00:03:14.720 sears photo magic and then it's her she's behind him and like putting her hands around his waist

00:03:22.040 and she's got a tape measure and she's measuring his waist and i'm trying to see i'm zooming in

00:03:29.500 to see what is the actual measurement it says 19 but that can't be right this man does not have a

00:03:35.660 19 inch waist no i think they're using this measuring tape as a prop i don't think they're

00:03:40.200 actually trying to get a measurement of this dude's weight he really looks like he should be

00:03:45.320 on la law oh and i just noticed okay and then there's a tagline on the photo like a little

00:03:51.200 caption that says surprise him with a felt new body his yeah that's right i am also gonna send

00:03:59.380 you a little bit of copy from the front flap of the dust jacket. How does this exist? I'm so

00:04:07.320 offended by this. Here is a quote from the dust jacket. Okay, good God. If his health and actual

00:04:14.540 lifespan are being threatened by his weight, and your Mr. Right has done little or nothing to help

00:04:19.920 himself or keep you from premature widowhood or reemergence on the single circuit, women, 0.99

00:04:25.380 it's time for you to take charge you don't want to have to take out the garbage yourself when 0.85

00:04:30.220 you're 65 do you you don't want to start worrying about getting a date for new year's eve this witty

00:04:35.680 waist shrinking book tells you how you can get your lovable teddy bear under control oh god so

00:04:42.460 it's also like deeply stigmatizing 100 and what we'll see sort of throughout this book is she

00:04:49.660 the author, whose name is Susie Coulter, and this isn't really an episode about her. I think I'm

00:04:55.540 much more interested in this book as an encapsulation of ideas about weight and gender.

00:05:02.660 I've decided you need to lose weight and I'm going to take charge of your size is a repulsive 0.82

00:05:09.760 way to treat people. And also to be super real, it is our default way of treating fat people,

00:05:16.020 especially very fat people right as a fat person if i go out to eat it is very common for at the

00:05:23.260 low end for people to like stare at me while i'm eating and at the high end for people to say

00:05:29.300 something to me about what i'm eating i have definitely had people take food off of my plate

00:05:35.800 and be like you don't need that right like so like this is both totally beyond the pale and i think

00:05:42.120 for many fat people. It's also still the way we get treated now. Yeah. Right. I am going to be

00:05:49.200 sleepwalking through this entire episode until we get to the part where he talks about this.

00:05:53.920 I am so curious. So basically, I'm going to skip to what he says about it because

00:05:59.400 his afterword is half a page. What? Yes, it's tiny. What? Here's the meat of it. He says,

00:06:05.740 my wife's amazing. She's totally determined. She set her mind to something and she did it 0.82

00:06:09.360 is sort of the vibe this is a uh the quote this is fully half of the afterword is what i'm about

00:06:15.440 to read you when i found i was still able to eat my homemade blend of cold cereal i began to

00:06:22.980 understand fully that it's not what you eat but rather how much when this revelation came i felt

00:06:29.400 like einstein relatively speaking what in fact reading this book has stiffened my resolve stay

00:06:36.300 tuned for making mike marvelous part two and hang in there you can do it i did with a little help

00:06:42.980 from my friend thanks suz mike blink twice if you're okay show me today's newspaper mike so

00:06:50.600 he's just like thanks you did it it's terrible his voice even her recounting of his voice is

00:06:58.380 almost entirely absent from this book it's because they won't even let men speak anymore it's wokeness

00:07:03.280 gone mad. PC cultures got overboard. My God. So just a little context. We're going to do a little

00:07:09.620 context about the author. We're going to do a little context about the diet. And then we're

00:07:12.880 going to dig in for most of the episode on sort of like, what are the core messages of this book,

00:07:19.280 right? Yeah, what is her fucking deal? Jesus Christ. So the author of this book is Susie 0.99

00:07:25.260 Coulter Gershman. She's published here as Susie Coulter. She was a career writer and author.

00:07:31.580 She wrote for People Magazine, for Ladies Home Journal, for Cosmopolitan, for Travel and Leisure.

00:07:39.640 In addition to her sort of magazine writing, she wrote a ton of books on a ton of topics.

00:07:46.600 Perhaps her most popular series is a series of travel shopping guides called Born to Shop.

00:07:55.340 hell yeah in those travel guides she tells you like where to find the best shopping finds in

00:08:01.820 hong kong or paris okay it's like here's how to be a smart shopper when you're traveling

00:08:07.280 back when journalism salaries allowed you to go places oh god imagine and do things it's very

00:08:13.040 carbon dated to the 80s it is also carbon dated the 80s in that in addition to this diet book

00:08:18.660 she wrote two other diet books for which she is credited as a co-author never say diet and the

00:08:26.460 never say diet cookbook with richard simmons i like that they're already doing the thing of like

00:08:32.640 it's not a diet never say diet that's not what this is it's a life just trying to help you lose

00:08:38.260 weight she talks throughout the book about how she's a naturally thin person who has had weight

00:08:46.380 gain plans in the past and has struggled to gain weight. She talks about how people used to call

00:08:53.220 her olive oil growing up, like from Popeye, because she was so skinny and that that was

00:08:58.860 like a hurtful thing for her. She says all of that totally uncritically and doesn't do any

00:09:03.820 reflecting on. Also, I wrote three diet books, a thing I've never had to do and specifically have

00:09:09.160 tried to do the fucking opposite of it, but I'm definitely an expert in weight loss.

00:09:14.060 Yeah, it's like it's like taking financial advice from somebody who like won the lottery or something. 0.95

00:09:18.800 It's like, oh, you don't actually know how to scrimp and save.

00:09:21.300 So you shouldn't be you shouldn't be giving people advice on this.

00:09:24.500 You know what it is?

00:09:25.280 It's every one of those like how I bought my first home before 25 articles where they're like, my parents gave me a half a million dollars.

00:09:34.920 That's your advice.

00:09:35.680 Be born to a wealthy family.

00:09:37.400 Thank you.

00:09:37.980 Great.

00:09:38.240 Good job.

00:09:39.220 The diet itself is a very straightforward, low-fat, low-calorie diet for the purposes

00:09:46.060 of losing weight. That's it. There is a bunch of stuff in here about logging your weight every

00:09:53.320 week. There is a bunch of stuff about making healthy swaps, so eating fish instead of red

00:09:58.640 meat or brown rice instead of a baked potato. It is also straightforwardly about calorie counting.

00:10:05.100 she recommends wives cutting their husband's calories to 1,500 to 2,000 calories a day.

00:10:12.120 Okay. Like I say, like, this is like a very straightforward, low fat, low calorie, whatever.

00:10:16.820 The difference in this book is that it's not written for the dieter. It's written for the

00:10:21.300 dieter's wife, right? She advocates throughout the book repeatedly that the husband should not know

00:10:31.900 that he is on a diet oh so she's explicit about it she's very explicit about it this is a wife

00:10:37.160 project this is not a husband and wife project this is like you imposing something ab absolutely

00:10:42.960 so i am going to send you a short quote from the back of the dust jacket where she talks about this

00:10:51.060 forget prayer hypnotism biofeedback nagging here at last is the book which shows how using stealth

00:10:59.140 subterfuge trick and treat you can painlessly save the man you love from unsightly and unhealthy

00:11:06.440 pounds why is sneaky better this weight loss plan works because it requires almost no effort from

00:11:13.620 your man in fact if perfectly executed he will never suspect he's on a diet until he realizes

00:11:20.120 he's got only one love handle left one love handle left is a very strange image but okay

00:11:27.060 so this is literally like don't bother talking to him about it just like do it behind his back

00:11:34.060 yes absolutely i like you i assumed that she uh advocates for telling him in the end she doesn't

00:11:41.260 she advocates for telling him sort of midway through after you've seen some progress so that

00:11:47.920 when he observes like oh my pants are fitting a little looser she's like you're welcome

00:11:52.560 um i did that so when he has like one pack out of six you can be like don't you like this

00:11:58.620 just one lone ab if we're doing one love handle a pack of one this is like how

00:12:04.680 this is how you would treat a dog i mean yes you know when your dog has to take medication

00:12:10.740 and you like put the little pill into its kibble or whatever like this this is what she's proposing

00:12:17.400 yes this is what she's proposing the audacity not only of doing it but like writing a book

00:12:23.960 bragging about it is kind of incredible to me look at this look at this dope thing i did

00:12:28.900 and it's just awful truly fucking wild so she talks about she's like look you don't have to

00:12:37.400 do this my way you can tell him you can read the book together you can do what you want 0.78

00:12:42.020 but for my husband in my case i knew i had to lie to him the exact phrase she uses is

00:12:50.280 i knew that being sneaky was the only way to make this work look some of you might be in healthy

00:12:58.020 functioning relationships but for us this worked a lot better for us where we're in a constant game 0.99

00:13:04.620 of cat and mouse in our marriage like fuck man our marriage has zero trust so then she talks about 0.98

00:13:11.840 why she did it this way she has like a point where she just straight up lays out like 0.99

00:13:17.600 here's why uh so i'm gonna send you that quote okay she says here's why i definitely thought

00:13:24.880 the ends justified the means i clearly remember my mother saying that sometimes it's kinder to

00:13:30.040 tell a white lie than to tell the truth i'm very big on kindness i wasn't at all sure mike would

00:13:35.040 cooperate if i laid my cards on the kitchen table he'd been violently opposed to other weight loss

00:13:39.840 methods and i had no hope that he might have changed his mind i thought we'd both have something

00:13:43.720 to be proud of when we had some results and nothing to motivate us until there was progress

00:13:48.500 it's so gnarly i love it so she's basically like i brought it up with him and he was like i don't

00:13:55.240 feel comfortable and then i did it anyway yeah and she's like look you might think this sounds

00:14:02.380 really horrifying but if i didn't do it i wouldn't get what i want i knew he wouldn't say yes because

00:14:10.400 he's said no in the past because he doesn't so i needed to override his lack of consent

00:14:15.880 and his specific rejection of this specific idea and i needed to force him to be thinner

00:14:22.280 so she does talk about the stages that she went through while her husband was not losing weight

00:14:30.840 oh and then she lists out a series of fucking direct interventions that she has attempted with 0.76

00:14:36.580 him okay so one is she straight up nagged him and then called his parents until he was like 0.93

00:14:42.340 can you get my parents off my back about my weight she called his parents yes then when that didn't

00:14:48.940 work she called his doctor what then when that didn't work she took him to an exercise class

00:14:56.380 quote but the instructor made fun of him so we quit so like everyone in his life is like this

00:15:02.340 isn't a big deal and she's like decided to make it a big deal she's organizing around him she is

00:15:08.900 making this in escape she is engineering the entire environment around him right to indicate

00:15:15.120 that he is fat and that he needs to lose weight she starts initiating fights with him she says

00:15:21.880 that was the end of our sex life is like one of the things that she says when she starts 0.90

00:15:25.540 fighting with him and i'm like what are you doing she starts blaming herself for his size

00:15:31.320 then she goes into a phase that she calls the zen phase where she sort of lets go for a while

00:15:37.540 and she's like actually it's his decision and you're like oh maybe she's landing in a place

00:15:40.960 no the final stage of these sort of six stages is quote fury and determination okay quote zen 0.82

00:15:50.700 was bullshit if he couldn't do it i could do it for him i love that she reached a point of maturity 0.77

00:15:57.580 of just like it's his body it's his autonomy and then she just breezed right past it then she was 0.87

00:16:03.540 like just kidding burn it down she's like i'm in charge here why would i respect his boundaries

00:16:10.740 when I could not do that unbelievable so much of the book is about how do you keep him in the dark

00:16:18.900 she has this whole section where she talks about like okay you're going to be serving him less

00:16:24.040 food it's going to be slightly different food but you don't want him to feel like it's different

00:16:28.260 and you want him to feel like it's a real treat whatever meal he's getting so like you should

00:16:33.540 like focus on your food presentation and you should like jazz up the dinner table and set

00:16:39.240 it really nicely i'm gonna read this whole quote it's a little bit long but like it's wild quote

00:16:45.280 if your husband does ask what the hell's going on you can tell him any number of truths or half

00:16:51.280 truths and then in parentheses or lies you're taking a cooking class and are doing your homework

00:16:57.780 you saw the dish in a magazine and wanted to try it you got bored with your lifestyle and wanted

00:17:02.540 some cheap thrills your fantasy is to run a restaurant you're trying the art of presentation

00:17:07.400 out on him i went for the i'd like to run a restaurant routine combined with our life is

00:17:13.160 so boring he fell for it and now our life isn't quite so boring because he's slimmer and divine

00:17:19.680 looking okay that's all of that is gross but i'm stuck on this thing that her actual plan because

00:17:25.780 we know that the reason why diets don't work is because people can maintain it for a little while

00:17:31.340 and they go back to their previous habits and then they go back to their previous weight because

00:17:34.840 that's how bodies work what she's proposing here is that for the rest of his life yes you decide to

00:17:42.100 like make fancy meals for him and like you know you're like chopping chives to sprinkle over top

00:17:48.820 of you know the chili with the sour cream to like make it look nice forever yeah her thing that she

00:17:55.180 tells him she has a fantasy to run a restaurant you have been married for how many years yeah i

00:18:03.140 don't and now all of a sudden out of nowhere you're like you know what i've always wanted to

00:18:07.480 be a chef that feels like a bonkers lie to reach for there's no way he didn't understand what was 0.90

00:18:13.560 going on there's simply no fucking way if it's your husband he's gonna notice that like we used 0.99

00:18:18.340 to have dessert at dinner every night now we don't have dessert he's gonna notice something 0.99

00:18:21.980 like that like you can't you can't cover that with chives this is like a master class in lying

00:18:27.080 but it's not sorry i should say it's not a master class it's not good enough to be a master class 0.93

00:18:32.400 it's not good it's totally parent trap shit she talks about a whole section that she calls 0.91

00:18:40.120 the great kitchen lockout oh no that whole section is about how to restrict your husband's 0.99

00:18:45.800 access to food at home she talks about hey you might have kids and you might have to have some

00:18:51.080 kid foods in the house if you do hide those in a separate part of the house tell your kids where

00:18:59.220 they are and make it clear to them that those foods can't leave that area of the house so your

00:19:05.340 dad doesn't find out wait what tell your kids to lie to your husband yep there are like different 0.99

00:19:11.900 strategies for how you control what your husband eats she talks about a woman who quote took weight 1.00

00:19:18.360 off her husband by actually locking him out of the kitchen she put padlocks on each of the cupboards 1.00

00:19:25.100 while i find this expensive troublesome and indecorative it did work for her i prefer the

00:19:31.780 modified lockout which operates with words rather than hardware i told my husband we were beset by

00:19:38.540 some kind of grain fly what so she's like we have an infestation we have to get rid of everything in

00:19:43.960 the cupboards we have to replace it all again you can only pull that trigger once you can't just

00:19:50.240 maintain that forever oh grain fly infestation again also i mean like the other thing about

00:19:55.840 the grain fly infestation thing and the like completely wipe out all your cupboards get rid

00:20:00.100 of all of your food and replace all of it that is so expensive what are you talking about and also

00:20:06.560 like you're presumably going to restaurants together where like he presumably orders what

00:20:10.720 he wants to eat oh and i'm assuming this man has a job and he probably eats whatever he wants for

00:20:15.540 lunch the only way to do this is to like prevent him from consuming food in all of these other

00:20:21.540 venues too which again just does not it seems like if you're feeding him less at home he's

00:20:26.880 going to be like more hungry and he's going to like have you know an extra slice of pizza when

00:20:30.960 he's out with his friends or whatever michael you're saying all these things like she hasn't

00:20:34.820 thought about them and given you contingency plans for what to do when he goes to the office

00:20:39.600 he goes out to eat that's so dark that's so dark it's i am this is discomfort laughing 0.98

00:20:46.760 because it is so ridiculous and ghoulish and fucking horrible i'm so excited for the details 0.97

00:20:55.460 of this plan she says that if you have told him she has this whole thing where she's like 0.99

00:21:05.540 notify him a few days ahead of time that he's going to be going out to eat so that he can quote

00:21:13.740 hoard a few extra calories okay he's like essentially like under eating or eating fewer

00:21:19.840 calories in the lead up to this so that he can sort of she talks about calorie budgeting okay

00:21:25.340 in the book quite a bit so she's like he just needs to budget some more calories which means

00:21:28.860 eating less she also suggests getting a copy of the menu from the restaurant remember this is 1984

00:21:37.440 so this is pre-internet get a copy of the menu from the restaurant and then mark it up and rank

00:21:46.160 the top low calorie choices so that he has a list of what he can order utterly deranged this is i

00:21:54.700 thought it was gonna be like order for him which is super patronizing but it's way less work than 0.98

00:22:00.740 this this is like a part-time job at this point hang on let me find this find this fucking quote 0.91

00:22:08.480 oh no earlier you mentioned like what happens when he goes to the office here's her advice 0.95

00:22:13.740 she says if you need assistance observing during office hours enlist a little help does he have a 0.95

00:22:20.740 secretary or office chum a woman will be a better help to you than a man and for heaven's sake don't

00:22:26.700 make it look like you're asking her to spy i mean you are asking her to spy tell me everything my

00:22:31.800 husband eats in a day but don't worry you're definitely not spying on him and this is certainly

00:22:37.880 not crossing any boundaries and then what are you supposed to do with this information too right so

00:22:42.580 like say your spy says well he had three pieces of pizza for lunch or he had a hamburger and fries

00:22:48.240 or whatever what do you do when he gets home even if you want to keep it secret do you just like not

00:22:54.060 give him dinner right it's it's just gonna be carrot sticks again tonight sweetie it's just

00:22:59.180 awful i mean like i think here's the other thing again enlisting a co-worker to monitor your

00:23:05.060 partner is a thing that abusive partners do yes we have talked before on the show about how

00:23:11.700 oftentimes when i hear things that morally offend me my like involuntary response is laughter

00:23:18.080 oftentimes because like my emotions don't know anywhere else to go the problem i'm having

00:23:23.300 throughout this episode is that like this is this is straightforwardly abusive behavior yeah but

00:23:27.780 there's something about the combination of this utterly reprehensible behavior the total lack of

00:23:35.120 self-awareness in describing that behavior and bragging about the behavior in like a how-to book

00:23:43.800 that is genuinely challenging my brain and my body to know how to react. Because everything,

00:23:50.320 I mean, everything we've talked about so far is like completely indefensible. But it's fascinating

00:23:55.640 to me that it's packaged as like, here's a self-help tip, life hack, call his office and

00:24:02.240 spy on him like there's something so not funnily funny about it right so like all all of these

00:24:12.540 solutions you're gonna manipulate and control what he eats you're gonna enlist his doctor his

00:24:18.500 parents and his co-workers you're going to disregard what he specifically tells you about

00:24:24.380 this specific thing because you know best because you're the thin one this is a type of abuse

00:24:32.040 that happens in intimate partner relationships.

00:24:35.360 It happens in parent-child relationships.

00:24:37.560 It happens all over the place

00:24:39.360 that people think that it is like a loving act

00:24:42.800 to restrict the food and try and manipulate the body

00:24:46.560 of someone that they say that they love, right?

00:24:51.040 I can't tell you the number of fat people

00:24:53.040 who have written into me and told me about

00:24:54.540 their parents putting padlocks on the refrigerator

00:24:57.980 or kitchen cabinets when they were growing up.

00:25:00.260 Yeah. Or a partner getting them a pair of jeans that's two sizes smaller to like motivate them.

00:25:07.340 Yeah. I absolutely had a friend in high school who thought that the supportive thing for her

00:25:15.520 to do would be to keep a log of what I was eating. No. Yes, absolutely. She was like,

00:25:24.780 I'm helping. Right? It was also like the late 90s. I'm in high school, there is zero counter

00:25:31.480 messaging. And also, that friend of mine, her mom had modeled some of that stuff. Yeah, this is a

00:25:39.860 real hurt people hurt people kind of moment. Like, it feels very cliche to say, but is also like,

00:25:46.980 many of the people who are enacting this kind of abuse have also been abused themselves,

00:25:51.460 which is true of lots of abusive dynamics.

00:25:54.300 It's part of the former fat people dynamic that we talk about, right?

00:25:57.720 Do you remember what you said to your friend at the time?

00:26:00.640 Like after she told you she had been tracking your habits?

00:26:03.800 At the time, I really felt like, oh, she thought she was helping.

00:26:07.620 And it wasn't. 0.99

00:26:08.400 I think if someone did that to me today, I feel like I would hit the fucking one. 0.99

00:26:13.980 I think somebody did that to me. 1.00

00:26:15.180 I would be able to hear you yelling fuck off from Berlin. 1.00

00:26:18.960 Yes, from an ocean away, you would be able to hear my fucking unhinged wail. 0.99

00:26:26.840 But I mean, I think one of the misconceptions about anti-fat bias is that the worst forms of it come from strangers. 0.99

00:26:36.700 Yes.

00:26:37.340 You know, we've all heard these stories of fat people having someone yell at them from a car or say something horrible to them in like a restaurant or a grocery store.

00:26:46.040 But when you look at the actual survey data, what actual fat people say is that the most hurtful forms of discrimination come from loved ones.

00:26:55.100 It comes from family members.

00:26:56.540 It comes from romantic partners.

00:26:57.680 It comes from friends.

00:26:59.460 And I think one of the lessons from this form of abuse is that like when you're close with somebody, you have to be more careful rather than less careful.

00:27:08.740 Yeah. 0.66

00:27:09.180 this is a book that is enlisting women in policing the bodies of their partners. And sort of

00:27:17.420 throughout the book, you get a real sense that she's like, also, you should probably do this

00:27:21.820 for everybody. Right? She talks about like, your duty as a mother is to not let your kids grow up

00:27:26.720 to have quote unquote weight problems. It is truly like, I think part of what makes this book so

00:27:31.940 interesting to me, right? And we'll get into this later is like, there is this belief that thin

00:27:36.900 women sort of pay the ultimate price for anti-fatness that's how we treat it culturally 1.00

00:27:40.860 that like the worst thing you could do is call a thin woman fat not treat a fat person like shit 0.99

00:27:45.540 right right you can see this in like the amount of media that we get when lizzo deals with anti-fatness 0.98

00:27:51.660 versus when like someone calls britney spears fat right we collectively center thin women's

00:27:59.880 experiences so thin women center themselves but they do that in a way that is totally uncritical 0.98

00:28:04.940 of this shit which is the ways in which they are actively policing other people's bodies 0.99

00:28:11.260 actively judging other people and trying to manipulate them these are absolutely abusive 0.99

00:28:17.340 things to do these are not things that you do when you respect someone's boundaries these are 0.89

00:28:20.820 not things that you do when you fucking love someone and want to treat them as an autonomous 0.99

00:28:25.440 person this is like girl boss fucking diet abuse shit did he write a book called like 1.00

00:28:32.440 what to do when your wife is trying to kill you it reminds me of you know how there's munchausen 1.00

00:28:38.840 syndrome where you sort of fake having illnesses and then there's munchausen syndrome by proxy

00:28:43.660 where you fake the illnesses of someone else like a child or a friend or whatever so that you can

00:28:48.340 spend more time with doctors yes this feels like eating disorder by proxy total you don't have one

00:28:55.300 yourself but you're like imposing them on other people and you're appointing yourself the fat

00:29:00.920 police? Yes, absolutely. For people in your life, and especially for people in your life whose food

00:29:05.420 you control. It's just wild. In this book, I found, I would say, six core messages. The first

00:29:14.700 core message of this book, which is just false, is being fat will kill you. From the intro,

00:29:23.160 she is very clear that like being fat will kill you. She says, quote,

00:29:26.460 Sure, my husband lived for 35 years before he met me and possibly could have gone another 35

00:29:31.780 without my help. But frankly, I was worried about him. I thought he was a walking case for General

00:29:37.460 Hospital, a living dare for Heart Attack City. I figured he'd kick the bucket if he didn't lose

00:29:43.380 some weight and keep it off. You've got the same worry about your man, right? Probably with good

00:29:48.660 reason it's time to take charge woman weird ending but okay it's so weird um she's talking

00:29:57.760 about a 240 pound man she's talking about that guy just like dropping dead before 65 those are

00:30:05.740 the terms that she keeps using does she use any statistics at all or it's just like the assumption

00:30:10.160 that obviously he's gonna die so one of the statistics that she uses this is oh we're gonna

00:30:15.340 get into some michael hobbs catnip are you ready zombie stuff i want to hear zombie numbers quote

00:30:19.780 i read it an unnamed survey in the health and fitness handbook that announced these shocking

00:30:26.440 figures only 50 of the overweight women surveyed realized they were overweight only 25 of the

00:30:34.380 overweight men realized they were overweight only 10 of those surveyed were planning to reduce

00:30:39.980 i don't know if this means that women have better eyesight than men but it is a dramatic commentary 0.96

00:30:45.060 on why your husband is overweight oh but that's some bullshit bmi stuff that there's like technically 0.97

00:30:52.120 lots of people are overweight according to the bmi but it's like you wouldn't look at them and 0.99

00:30:56.900 be like there goes a fat person i mean this is just like the bmi being bullshit i think you 0.96

00:31:00.560 might be going too deep on this the opening of this sentence is i read an unnamed survey in the 0.99

00:31:06.880 health and fitness handbook that announced these shocking figures it's garbage it's just like man 0.99

00:31:13.940 half of fat women don't know they're fat and most of them aren't even trying to die yeah just a 0.98

00:31:18.480 it's a buzzfeed quiz right and there's no citation there's no footnote she doesn't say who wrote the

00:31:24.400 health and fitness handbook i tried looking around for a little bit and then i was just like this is

00:31:29.140 from 1984 and i don't know what she's talking about it's not you're not gonna find it and like 0.61

00:31:34.040 why am i fact checking this thing that is so clearly like absolute bullshit and she doesn't 0.61

00:31:39.420 want you to fact check but then i i think that what she's doing here with this death obsession 0.97

00:31:45.040 is her husband's weight is giving her ammunition for this like level of judgment about his looks 1.00

00:31:52.520 yeah i think she just wants a thinner husband and like this is what this is the rhetoric that 0.99

00:31:57.460 she's using to make herself not feel like a huge piece of shit for like lying to her husband about 0.98

00:32:02.500 this yes i think that i can totally see that and also she does not mention at any point in the book 0.98

00:32:10.300 well we had to come to jesus with his doctor right here's what his risks were for heart disease or he

00:32:15.840 had a family history of x and such thing she does recommend by the way gathering your husband's

00:32:21.140 medical history surreptitiously great i don't even know how you would do that but okay i don't

00:32:28.700 either even if she does believe that he's going to die as a result of being fat this is a wild way

00:32:36.980 to deal with that and it's probably not fucking true she has offered us no evidence right everything

00:32:44.940 in this book is just like i noticed my husband behaves in this way and i think that means this 0.73

00:32:50.500 so i'm gonna change it by doing this she talks about like one or two conversations with him

00:32:56.240 in the entire book but also yeah because even if his health markers were like objectively bad

00:33:02.440 that would obviously be a conversation that you would have with your husband about his own health

00:33:06.840 yeah what lifestyle changes are you interested in making what are you able to do how can i support

00:33:11.180 you in that people's health is pretty personal and people get to decide this sort of stuff for

00:33:16.440 themselves so just like deciding that your husband is like a terminal case and you're gonna fix it

00:33:23.100 even after he's like, no, thank you, is a move in a marriage.

00:33:27.680 There are a few times in the book where she tries to bridge this idea and sort of acknowledge

00:33:31.080 the idea that actually like your husband is his own person. So I just sent you a quote about her

00:33:36.900 approach to that. Okay, she says, your job is not to run your husband's life.

00:33:42.540 If he's interested in being in prime physical condition, that's his business.

00:33:47.000 Your business is feeding him low calorie, healthful foods and keeping his weight at a safe 1.00

00:33:52.320 level i know you can mind your own business and help your man live longer none of what she's

00:33:58.280 talking about is minding your own business it's just pure contradiction like sentence to sentence

00:34:05.580 it's like that's his business but your business is meddling in his business his business yeah

00:34:11.420 exactly exactly so that actually gets us to the second sort of core message of this book

00:34:18.940 is that fat people's narratives of their own bodies are lies she writes extensively in this

00:34:27.220 book about like oh your husband's gonna give you all these excuses she has a whole section where

00:34:31.360 she talks about like typical male excuses he's gonna tell you he's deeply uncomfortable with

00:34:37.480 the act of manipulation that you're doing typical husband behavior typical male excuses so like

00:34:45.740 the typical male excuses quote unquote are things like i'm not overweight you're skinny or this is

00:34:52.060 protection against the cold or that old favorite i have big bones a thing that i've truly never

00:34:58.380 heard a fat person ever say yeah she does like a little bit of you and i've talked about this that

00:35:04.680 i'm like you know if you want to make a compelling case part of the way that you do that is by

00:35:08.980 acknowledging what other people might say, and then you sort of rebut it, right? So here is her

00:35:15.260 attempt to do that. Actually, I would like to say that my husband's body is none of your business,

00:35:21.440 but that's not really the case. Because if your husband's body is anything like my husband's,

00:35:26.740 then you too have a problem. My husband is built like his parents, which is to be expected.

00:35:32.020 Genetically speaking, he could never look like Abraham Lincoln or Ichabod Crane. But still,

00:35:36.600 he could look like a thinner version of his parents and be a lot healthier so he comes from

00:35:42.080 like big folk and he said like i'm just like supposed to be big and she's like no you're not

00:35:48.960 so she also has i just sent you so i just i just sent you there's a chart so throughout this book

00:35:57.400 she has a number of worksheets where you're filling in she genuinely has one for like for a

00:36:03.020 couple of weeks before you start write down everything your husband eats oh my god you're

00:36:08.500 like monitoring your husband we have not even scratched the surface of how much you're monitoring 0.99

00:36:12.840 your fucking husband so it's so rough in the chart that i just sent you she's got a weigh-in 1.00

00:36:20.560 like a weight charting thing over the course of the diet over the course of 12 weeks is what she 1.00

00:36:25.720 lays out it's called chart his progress chart his progress and it says day one guesstimate his

00:36:35.380 current weight and then i guess the end of this she's calling the tell all day you confess he

00:36:43.020 weighs in i'm imagining how to tell my boyfriend that i've like surreptitiously been feeding him

00:36:52.240 less food to change the way that he looks without his consent, how I break that to him and also get

00:36:58.260 him to step on a scale in the same conversation. The whole book is just a roadmap to disregard

00:37:05.360 whatever objections your partner has and proceed regardless, right? There's no point at which she

00:37:11.040 says, actually, if he says this, or if he objects really strenuously, then you should just drop it.

00:37:16.540 Like there's no point at which she even acknowledges, maybe this isn't the right plan

00:37:21.360 for you even like perfunctory nope nope nope do it no matter what credible there's one point at

00:37:26.800 which well actually there is one moment where she acknowledges that and it is in our next section

00:37:34.000 okay the next sort of core message of this book is that if someone looks too fat then they are

00:37:42.900 too fat at least at least she admits it it's like this is about physical appearance yeah this is

00:37:48.220 about how people look she says repeatedly throughout the book that if someone is quote

00:37:52.960 unquote cosmetically overweight then they are quote unquote medically overweight what even are 0.86

00:37:58.720 these terms fully making shit up so here is one of her suggestions when she's like how do you figure 0.93

00:38:06.120 out if you're too fat or if your husband is too fat oh no i just sent you the quote she says i've 0.98

00:38:11.760 also heard of the mirror test which is simple enough you stand in front of a full-length mirror

00:38:16.560 naked and take a cold hard look at yourself if you are cosmetically overweight you need to lose

00:38:22.540 weight this test does not work for anorexics please note because no matter what they weigh 0.82

00:38:26.820 they still think they are fat but i must assume you would not have bought this book if your man 0.99

00:38:31.220 was anorexic besides most anorexics are women okay right okay in a fucking suggestion to get 1.00

00:38:40.200 naked and stare at yourself in the mirror and list your flaws and decide if you're too fat 1.00

00:38:46.660 she's like oh also you probably shouldn't do this if you're anorexic but i assume you're not 0.98

00:38:50.960 anorexic because you bought this for your husband and you wouldn't buy this if he was anorexic come

00:38:54.820 on people with eating disorders famously never buy diet books honestly now that all the people

00:38:59.800 with eating disorders are gone we can have a nice romp through this diet book that's that's her

00:39:05.600 logic. The message here is if you, a thin person, think that someone looks too fat for your taste,

00:39:13.980 then not only do they need to lose weight, but you need to manipulate their behavior to make

00:39:20.840 them thin. Right. It's a license. I would say a core underlying message of all of this is that a 0.96

00:39:26.440 good partner manipulates their spouse. Nice. Like a core tenet of what she's arguing is manipulation

00:39:33.260 is critical to this and you're doing it because you love him right so she advocates throughout

00:39:40.060 the book for monitoring your partner's food without telling them yeah i paid attention and

00:39:45.380 i noticed my husband always had a snack at 10 a.m with his coffee and then one before bed

00:39:50.500 so when i was building out his diet plan i made sure that he had snacks at those times

00:39:54.800 but i just made sure they were other things she's also like i always made sure he had dessert and

00:39:59.320 then you look at the list of desserts and it's like a Weight Watchers frozen dessert thing or

00:40:05.080 a half a pound of cherries. Half a pound? I will say also the other recipe that really stuck with

00:40:12.140 me. I'm just going to tell you about the recipe now because it's really something. Most of the

00:40:15.760 recipes honestly look fine. They look like sort of standard issue, low fat diet shit. There is 0.99

00:40:22.720 one in particular where i was like absolutely not and that recipe is a recipe for cornish game

00:40:29.340 hens you roast the cornish game hens whole when they come out of the oven you take the skin off

00:40:34.580 because it's the 80s right oh my god and then you top them with a sauce that is made of two

00:40:40.560 ingredients those two ingredients are canned cherries and grape juice wait what no you warm

00:40:47.920 some canned cherries

00:40:49.920 Aubrey you drain the canned

00:40:52.060 cherries and rinse them off so they don't have

00:40:53.940 the goo on them don't go wild 0.99

00:40:55.820 that's a fucking typo 0.99

00:40:56.900 you put them in a saucepan 0.99

00:41:00.500 that can't be real

00:41:01.720 it's so gross

00:41:03.660 it's like a melted popsicle 1.00

00:41:06.300 on top of a fucking 1.00

00:41:08.100 pigeon anyway get out your canned 1.00

00:41:10.100 cherries and grape juice

00:41:11.140 because the other thing is this is

00:41:14.060 all 80s diet foods

00:41:16.280 So there is 100% a recipe in here for like enchiladas that you make in the microwave.

00:41:23.120 And she's like, you'll be amazed at how fast it cooks in the microwave.

00:41:26.680 Oh, no, sweetie.

00:41:29.920 You're not going to run a restaurant like that. 1.00

00:41:32.500 One of the core messages also is that it is women's job to make sure that everyone is thin, including their own husbands. 1.00

00:41:41.300 Right. 0.60

00:41:41.740 There is a section where she talks about, the header says, man fat as a feminist issue.

00:41:49.360 I'm dying to know what she says here. 0.63

00:41:50.880 She talks about how feminism was supposed to liberate us, but now most of us have jobs 1.00

00:41:56.400 and then we also have to come home and do all this work.

00:41:59.200 And she says, life is hard, but it's harder still without a husband.

00:42:04.520 Oh no, that's like her angle?

00:42:07.380 That's her angle. 1.00

00:42:08.340 somebody missed the entire movement she in this book is talking to ostensibly straight ladies who 0.99

00:42:17.740 are married to ostensibly straight men uh and is talking about sort of how women are responsible

00:42:23.700 for men's weight because women do the cooking and serve up the food she talks about how at one point

00:42:30.300 she says she gives him larger portions of food because that's what you do with men oh yeah right

00:42:34.580 and she says quote i cater to his food needs because he's the king of the castle even independent

00:42:42.080 women make sure the cabinets are stocked with their husband's favorite foods why does this

00:42:46.960 feel like this was written in like 1937 she has a job she's a she's a magazine reporter

00:42:52.800 it's weird that she's just just accepting the fact that it's her job to treat him like again

00:42:59.760 a dog that she's supposed to have all of his favorite treats in the house.

00:43:04.140 I would say overall, this book is as much a treatise on heterosexuality as it is on weight

00:43:10.320 loss. Like genuinely.

00:43:12.000 You'd love it.

00:43:12.800 Oh my God. I fucking love it. 0.99

00:43:14.040 You get to use the word heteronormative in your notes like 300 times. 0.99

00:43:16.860 Oh my God. The number of times that I typed out compulsory heterosexuality, Michael.

00:43:21.800 You're like queering the diet book. 1.00

00:43:24.340 I sure am. This is my undergraduate thesis. Here we go.

00:43:27.600 this whole book is about this author's husband but she does talk quite a bit about like how

00:43:34.100 it's a mother's job to make sure that their kids don't grow up to have quote-unquote a weight

00:43:38.020 problem she talks about how when she met her husband she liked what they both describe as

00:43:46.180 his quote-unquote pudgy body she says quote i found his weight rather appealing and just as

00:43:52.440 Some women like to marry alcoholics and then quote unquote cure them.

00:43:57.260 Oh no. 0.98

00:43:57.660 I was certain that under my tender tutelage,

00:44:00.940 Mike's weight would either remain stable or be reduced.

00:44:05.100 She thought she was getting into like a fixer upper.

00:44:07.300 Yes.

00:44:07.960 She talks about being attracted to him.

00:44:10.480 And then she's also like, and I was going to fix him.

00:44:13.060 I was going to make him look different than the person I'm attracted.

00:44:15.780 I was like, this is so weird.

00:44:16.960 Every part of this is so weird. 0.95

00:44:18.140 To stage the closest thing to a defense of her, as I am comfortable doing, one of the, like, extra layers of toxicity on top of this is the fact that, like, women are blamed for the size of other people.

00:44:32.760 Yes. 0.91

00:44:33.200 In a way that is, like, extremely gross, right?

00:44:35.220 Yes. 1.00

00:44:35.840 That, like, mothers will be blamed for the size of their, especially daughters.

00:44:39.900 Yes. 0.99

00:44:40.180 But, like, she's just internalized this and been like, and that's why you have to make them skinny, right?

00:44:46.600 Yeah, yes.

00:44:48.140 As opposed to all the other ways that she could have reacted to that.

00:44:52.280 I love my husband and I married him when he looked like this.

00:44:55.240 And I like how he looks.

00:44:56.640 Right. 1.00

00:44:56.960 And if anyone gives you shit, be like, fuck you. 1.00

00:44:58.780 I love my husband. 1.00

00:44:59.500 I think he's cute the way that he is.

00:45:00.820 Yes.

00:45:01.420 I love my curvy husband. 1.00

00:45:05.100 Write an Instagram post, Susie. 1.00

00:45:07.500 Put it on Instagram. 0.93

00:45:09.840 Yeah.

00:45:10.240 I mean, like, there is no world in which she's just like, hey, maybe your husband's fine.

00:45:14.740 Yeah.

00:45:14.920 No, she's articulated this whole thing as this incredibly high stakes venture where it's like, if you don't succeed in manipulating him, he will die and it will be your fault. And then your life will get harder because you're going to have to take out the trash.

00:45:29.380 Right. 0.97

00:45:29.860 She frames basically like almost all of the husband's eating that happens off the diet as binging. 0.95

00:45:38.400 Well, it probably is. He's probably hungry all the time, this poor guy.

00:45:40.940 Right. So like, yes, binging is a very natural response to restriction. Like he is having a

00:45:47.260 normal, natural response to like, you are restricting how much food he has. He is accustomed

00:45:53.000 to consuming a certain amount of food. He's not having that fucking amount of food. Of course, 0.99

00:45:57.640 he's going to eat more. He might be hungry and eating to the point of satiety. And she might be

00:46:02.360 horrified at him eating enough food to feel full. We just don't know. But she has decided that this

00:46:09.640 is self-destructive that it's a death wish that this is gonna like lead to his untimely demise

00:46:14.740 it is awful and i hate it it seems like uh it would be like living in a prison living with

00:46:20.960 somebody like this because one of the most belittling things you can do to a person is like

00:46:25.720 criticizing their eating as they're eating yeah are you sure you want to order that i'm like um

00:46:30.360 are you gonna eat all of that really those comments stay with people for a really long time

00:46:35.540 they're incredibly hurtful yeah she's setting up a regime where it's just like this poor guy is just

00:46:40.460 under 24 hour surveillance you mentioned earlier like you know especially if this person has an

00:46:45.740 eating disorder this is like extra ghoulish and what i would say is even if they don't have an

00:46:48.920 eating disorder this is a pretty fucking good way to give somebody one yeah when you comment on other

00:46:53.560 people's foods what you are doing is installing disordered eating practices and installing a bad 0.95

00:47:00.920 body image for that person, right? What you are doing is you are doing the work of creating

00:47:07.120 destructive patterns for them, you are deciding for them, that they're eating is actually not

00:47:12.980 disordered enough that they're not thinking enough about what other people are thinking

00:47:15.980 about what they're eating. They're probably focused too much on like, am I hungry? And

00:47:19.880 what sounds good to eat and other bullshit measures like that, right? Like, it is a thing 0.98

00:47:25.580 that because we have these really strong cultural scripts around like, allowing for and in some

00:47:31.760 cases, encouraging people to comment on other people's food choices, you don't really think

00:47:36.300 about like, you are very actively creating issues for that person. And I would say, even if you don't

00:47:44.000 have an eating disorder, even if you're not at risk of developing one, even if those comments 0.99

00:47:48.380 don't create all of that shit for you. If you are a fat person, they follow you everywhere, 1.00

00:47:53.720 regardless yeah like the number of fat people who i have talked to who are like oh i've started 0.92

00:48:00.900 eating at drive-thrus not because i want fast food or i like fast food but because i can eat 0.97

00:48:08.340 it in my car where no one can watch me and stare and say anything yeah and i've totally fucking 0.79

00:48:14.920 done this that you go to a drive-thru again not because you're like oh that sounds good today 0.99

00:48:19.100 But because you're like, I can't fucking deal with somebody giving me shit about eating a meal right now. I just need to be able to eat the meal. Right. Right. When people pipe up about like, you're eating this thing. I don't think that they have any fucking sense of the fullness of that picture and about how deeply dehumanizing it is to treat everyone with one kind of body type as your personal project, as your personal fixer upper, as you said earlier. 0.98

00:48:48.200 right? That's a horrible way to treat people. But what if you wrote a book about it afterwards? 0.98

00:48:55.000 Wouldn't that, then does it make it okay? What if you bragged about it to the whole country?

00:49:01.440 The central message, I would say the core fucking message at the end of this book is 1.00

00:49:06.800 thin women, your judgments of people who are fatter than you are correct. And your core failing is 0.99

00:49:14.340 that you haven't acted on them enough right your bias is correct your judgments are correct if

00:49:20.180 you're grossed out by somebody that's like an important instinct to listen to if you think

00:49:23.680 somebody's too fat and like it's your job to make them thin right so there is a complete displacement

00:49:30.840 of any actually fat people in this book there's a complete displacement of men which feels weird

00:49:37.300 like in a book about men she's like don't listen to what he has to say you just listen to you as

00:49:43.160 a way to be in the world that is a horrifying way to me i like that she's treating men the way that

00:49:48.500 male writers treat women what are their thoughts i'll just use some generalizations it's fine

00:50:13.160 Thank you.

Maintenance Phase - May 10, 2022

Diet Book Deep Dive： “How To Take 20 Pounds Off Your Man”

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