The 2019 Crappy Awards

It’s WAY overdue, but the 2019 Crappy Awards are finally here! 2019 was a SH*TTY year of diet culture BS, with countless examples of gaslighting opportunism from profit hungry snake oil salesman. From fashion brands and Big “O” stealing body positivity, to medical negligence and library invasions, NOTHING is sacred to the weight loss wolves hungry to make a buck off body misery! Our listeners have gathered together the MOST loathsome examples of these bottom feeding b*stards in a magnificent rant-fest of epic proportions! If you’ve had a gutful of COVID19, tune in for some truly furious take downs of the weight loss industry! I strongly advise a large quarantini and headphones for this ep as the swear-o-meter is set to high! Featuring guest judge Alyssa, our carry over champ from the 2018 awards ceremony. Who will win???

Show Notes

Goodness me, we’re dealing with multiple layers of fear and uncertainty at this time. We’re going to get through this but bloody hell, what an absolute shit-fight. I hope you’re all staying safe, and that this episode and The Crappys give you a needed belly laugh. Announcement! Why should we wait until the end of the year for The Crappys? For the rest of 2020, we’re going to ‘rant as you go’. If you hear something from diet culture that really gets your goat and gets your blood boiling, you can submit a rant to me anytime. While it’s fresh, do a quick recording - around two to three minutes – introduce yourself, rant about the thing that’s pissing you off, and send it to me as an .mp3 or .mp4 to [email protected]. I’ll save them up until the next Crappy Awards. A warning for this episode – plenty of swearing! And without further ado, I’m going to introduce the 2019 Crappy Awards! Grab a ‘quarantini’ and let’s rant about diet culture. Alyssa won our previous Crappy Awards in 2018 with a brilliant rant about the ‘cookie diet’ and so joins us as a guest judge this year. 2019 was a huge year for crappy diet culture crap. Huge. And it’s seeped into 2020 – just a quagmire of shit to rake through to pick the crappiest of 2019. Even as a non-competing judge, Alyssa couldn’t help but submit a rant herself. Alyssa nominates the book ‘How Not to Diet’ by Dr Michael Greger. It mentioned weight loss multiple times on just the cover blurbs, and the kicker – this book is about the “ideal weight-loss diet”. IDEAL WEIGHT-LOSS DIET. In a book called ‘how not to diet’. SERIOUSLY! “A timeless proactive approach that can stand up to any new trend” … even his own new trend? There’s too many of them! “Chock full of actionable advice and groundbreaking dietary research. ‘How Not to Diet’ will put an end to dieting and replace those constant weight-loss struggles with a simple, healthy, sustainable lifestyle”. We’ve got weight-loss, weight-loss, weight-loss, then ‘lifestyle’, hence a nomination for The Crappys. Some consistency here with her 2018 winning rant objecting to being mansplained at with the ‘cookie diet’! Dr Michael Greger is another thin white male entering the ‘how not to diet’ space. Is this a joke? A how-not-to-diet-step-by-step-diet? Alyssa has some judging criteria for the official 2019 entries – laugh factor, sarcasm factor, and WTF or ‘mind blown’ factor. Entry #1 – from Anna Hearn, founder of Haven Wellness. It’s a unique fat-positive fitness and yoga studio in Sydney, Australia. Haven focuses on helping members build a compassionate relationship with their bodies which is very different to typical gym culture, and to build a resilience against diet culture out in the ‘real world’. Anna wants to rant about body positivity being co-opted for marketing purposes. Anna had a conversation with a friend who reiterated the idea that fashion brands use thin bodies because ‘that’s what sells’. But, remember campaigns like the Calvin Klein underwear ads that featured some bigger bodies, like rapper Chika? You might then think that you could go and buy Calvin Klein underwear in larger sizes – nop