Aubrey Gordon collects vintage diet books. She has amassed nearly 100 titles, together with the 1973 quantity “Slimming Down,” written by Johnny Carson’s sidekick, Ed McMahon. “Slimming Down” — which featured chapter titles like “The Breadstick Conspiracy” and “Two Martinis Into Connecticut” — is the guide that started Ms. Gordon’s assortment.
And whereas the concept of mixology as dietary technique might sound absurd to a reader at this time, Ms. Gordon stated that a lot of the present fascinated with what’s now generally known as wellness is simply as “hilarious and wacky.”
On the podcast “Maintenance Phase,” named after the idea of sustaining post-diet weight reduction, Ms. Gordon and the journalist Michael Hobbes spend every episode exploring what they name the “wellness-industrial complex,” debunking well being fads and dietary recommendation.
While well being, weight and wellness are necessary points, a lot of what Americans perceive about them is definitely hole advertising and marketing, Mr. Hobbes stated.
“Most of us have faith that we perceive these wellness points, however we don’t notice that we’re actually simply regurgitating issues that we noticed in a Nike industrial,” Mr. Hobbes added. “And wellness is the right encapsulation of that. Lots of the issues underneath wellness are simply rebranded or misconstrued information being despatched again to us by an organization, mainly.”
Wellness has two definitions, Ms. Gordon stated: One is new language being utilized by weight-loss firms which have discovered that “weight-reduction plan is much less common than it was once,” and the opposite lives as “a really amorphous time period that we connect all types of issues to.”
“Vitamin firms are promoting wellness,” Ms. Gordon stated. “Mattress firms are promoting wellness. Your work now has a wellness program. It’s kind of seen as this uncontroversial option to discuss well being.”
The present is No. 1 within the well being and health class on Apple podcasts. Episodes investigating the obesity epidemic and the problematic history of the body mass index led the podcast to its first million downloads on the listening app final month.
Since the podcast started in October 2020, the hosts have examined common food regimen meals, like SnackWell’s Cookies, Moon Juice and Halo Top Ice Cream (which is the 2010s’ reply to SnackWell’s, Ms. Gordon stated on that episode). They’ve performed deep dives into anti-fat bias, consuming problems and the roles each Dr. Mehmet Oz and Oprah Winfrey have performed within the weight-loss business. They have additionally investigated common diets, akin to keto, Weight Watchers, celery juice and the grasp cleanse (“You’re mainly consuming very tart, very spicy sugar water,” Ms. Gordon stated). One episode even explored how the search for good well being can lead individuals to QAnon and different conspiracy theories.
In the present’s introductory episode, the hosts discuss how few health-focused podcasts are skeptical of wellness. For Ms. Gordon, 37, her skepticism grew out of her private expertise of “20-plus years of straight weight-reduction plan and principally staying the identical measurement.”
“Being a fats girl and attempting to do all of the issues that fats women are speculated to do took me proper there,” Ms. Gordon stated. “I’ve been doing all of the issues, and it’s not likely producing the outcome that I’ve been promised for, you understand, nearly all of my life. And I’m additionally seeing different individuals who have been searching for that promise for almost all of their lives additionally not getting what they thought was going to occur. At a sure level, you form of bought to go, nicely, possibly it simply doesn’t work.”
For Mr. Hobbes, 39, who has performed extensive reporting on obesity, watching his mom’s struggles led to an curiosity in weight fixation.
“It was, like, this defining factor of my childhood that she was at all times on some fully nuts, unsustainable food regimen,” Mr. Hobbes stated. “She was at all times attempting so exhausting, like swimming 5 occasions every week and consuming a bowl of carrots. The discourse round weight problems was at all times like, nicely, they’re not attempting exhausting sufficient. I do know different individuals which might be attempting fairly exhausting and never succeeding.”
The present presents “comparatively radical concepts about this subject,” Mr. Hobbes stated, however nonetheless tries to keep away from alienating listeners. One approach the hosts do that is by turning the narrative on themselves, taking over matters and concepts they’ve private expertise with.
“At some level we’ll do CBD,” Ms. Gordon stated. “I’ve been a CBD individual, and I’ll be made uncomfortable by my very own analysis. It feels necessary to the present and necessary to me as an individual, to be like, we’re not truly above anybody. We’re not smarter than this. We’re not higher than this.”
Ms. Gordon and Mr. Hobbes stated they obtain a lot of optimistic suggestions, however the emails they get from researchers and clinicians are among the most significant.
Lisa DuBreuil, a medical social employee at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, additionally operates a non-public apply in Salem, Mass. She makes use of the weight-inclusive Health At Every Size method along with her purchasers, who embrace individuals with substance-use problems, consuming problems, psychological well being points and people who’ve developed issues after weight-loss surgical procedures and power weight-reduction plan.
She heard about “Maintenance Phase” on social media, and have become a daily listener. She’s not listening to something she doesn’t already know, however stated she loves how the present makes these matters extra approachable and “actually enjoyable to take heed to.”
“To have the ability to have these sorts of sources and get data in an entertaining, attention-grabbing, but in addition very factual approach is great,” stated Ms. DuBreuil, who’s in restoration from an consuming dysfunction.
Ms. DuBreuil added that the concepts and analysis on “Maintenance Phase” are ideas that many ladies, individuals of shade and L.G.B.T.Q. individuals have been speaking about for greater than 20 years, however that “it’s pleasant to see new individuals uncover it.”
Caitlin McDonald, a nonprofit administrator in Salt Lake City, stated that when she began listening to the present, it felt like being seen for the primary time.
“It was simply kind of a revelation,” she stated. “It was such a aid to be in an area the place I used to be being talked about as a human, and never a quantity or a statistic.”
Scott Cave, who lives within the Appalachian Mountains area of Virginia together with his spouse and toddler, is a historic researcher and stay-at-home father. He began listening to “Maintenance Phase” after studying about it on Mr. Hobbes’s different podcast, “You’re Wrong About.” As somebody with a doctoral diploma in historical past, Mr. Cave stated he appreciates the best way the podcast examines and evaluates main sources in a approach that’s enjoyable.
In an episode on the weight problems epidemic, the present laid out among the penalties of weight stigma, together with individuals’s delaying medical take care of worry of docs’ places of work. That resonated for Mr. Cave: Once, after injuring his finger, he went to an pressing care clinic the place he stated he was advised: “We don’t assume your finger is damaged. It could be, however you’re very fats, so you must most likely take care of that.”
As a outcome, Mr. Cave stated he spent years ignoring the signs of his autoimmune illness, simply to keep away from one other physician go to. “So I left with a giant swollen finger and an actual blow to my self-regard and my relationship with the medical occupation,” he stated. “When they introduced it up on the podcast, I spotted, ‘Oh sure, I didn’t complain about my signs for a very long time as a result of they had been wrapped up within the form of my physique, in fatness.’”
The pandemic has solely intensified America’s decades-long ethical panic about fatness, Ms. Gordon stated. But it has additionally intensified a counternarrative. She has seen extra conversations centered on physique positivity and extra well being professionals spreading the message that “it’s truly OK if you happen to acquire weight whilst you’re surviving a pandemic.”
“It’s been a extremely fascinating second of everybody kind of processing their very own physique picture stuff and their very own bizarre beliefs about fatness and well being on this very public approach.”
