When someone repeatedly describes themselves as the funny fat friend or the fat one or big guy, big girl, what does that tell us about what they've learned to understand, you know, about their body identity? And is humor just a coping mechanism?

Yeah, you know, this is deep.

And I think that we, and we got to acknowledge that right off the bat, because even what we were just discussing kind of leans into this.

And it's that reminder that, you know, weight stigma starts externally.

The person's repeatedly receiving messages.

They explicitly or implicitly, right? Intentionally or unintentionally.

And body size is one of the most important things that they think people notice about them.

How has fitness and wellness culture shaped the way that we talk about our bodies? And how do we move the conversation away from I exercise so my body becomes smaller and shift it more towards I exercise for my health?

[laughs] Yes

... to anxiety.

We can trust only metrics and not our own body.

And I think the big thing for me is, as someone who struggled with my own body weight, and the whole reason, which I shared with our audience today why I got into this, is I started exercising 'cause I wanted to change the number on the scale.

And then I started studying exercise to learn how to do that better and failed.

Failed patients, failed myself, failed a lot of people, and that's when I said, "Wait, I think there's something biological going on here, and my mental health is not okay.

I'm not making good decisions.

... not just for those of us that are adults looking at those kids, but for those kids themselves.

Right

...

they were feeling weaker, and that's something that we need to pay attention to.

And, and that's not surprising, right? We've seen that in, in bariatric surgery as well, post-bariatric surgery.

Anytime there's a large magnitude weight loss, you can maybe expect some of that, right? And we're also talking about folks that are primarily sedentary.

So us as exercise, you know, scientists, exercise physiologists, people that do this work, it makes sense, the correlation's there.

You're not moving, you're, you're experiencing these things.

But we're seeing it, and so we're paying attention to it at this point.