Healthzzz and Sciencezzz (and GAINZZZ)

Some stories about GAINZZZ or lackzzz thereofzzz.

The New York Times frets that Christian women are "Thin, White, and Right."

Do they not know that Real Health is a three-bill black woman doing simple stretches on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine?

Conservative Christian influencers are reshaping beauty standards and promoting diet culture -- and their messages are resonating with women. In this episode of "The Opinions," the Times Opinion editor Meher Ahmad speaks with the columnist Jessica Grose about how religion and weight loss culture intertwine and why this pairing is gaining traction.

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Meher Ahmad: I'm Meher Ahmad, an editor in the New York Times Opinion section. There's been a resurgence in explicit "be thin" messaging and culture. With the Ozempic boom, we see the body-shaming of actresses like Sydney Sweeney and red carpets that were already filled with thin actresses becoming even thinner.
On the right, there's been a focus on body size that's been bundled up not just with health and wellness but with religion, morals and politics. And so when everything is political and we're more divided than ever, should the size and shape of our bodies be any different? I'm here today with the Opinion writer Jessica Grose to understand why the right is obsessed with thinness and why that message is winning over women.

Jess, I want to start first by asking you what the messaging on diet and thinness coming from the Christian influencer spaces is -- what do you see there?

Jessica Grose: So it's really encapsulated by some things that the wellness influencer Alex Clark said at the Young Women's Leadership Summit.

Audio clip of Alex Clark: Look around this room, let's just be honest. It's never been hotter to be a conservative. You are in this room and you are witnessing a cultural revolution. We've got the girls who lift weights, eat clean, have their hormones balanced, have their lives together. Less Prozac, more protein. Less burnout, more babies. Less feminism, more femininity.

Grose: And by contrast, liberals are TikTok activists with five shades of autism, panic attacks and a ring light. So it's really defining what is "normal" as a very narrow ideal of womanhood. It's all tied up with not just body size, but also behavior.

Ahmad: Even in that clip, Alex Clark is sort of describing a foil to what she describes as a liberal body type. How much of this is a reaction to a left version of a body type, and what even is that?

Grose: So I think it's a reaction to the body positivity movement, which I would say peaked about 10 years ago. It was the idea that weight is not tied directly to health and that you can be healthy and not rail-thin.

No, the idea was not that you had to be "rail thin." It was just that morbid obesity was not healthy and should not be promoted as such. (Note that many of the "stars" of that fat acceptance movement died in their thirties.)

I remember at the time, parents of teenage girls were like, yeah, the body positivity movement has not reached this middle school. So I don't ever think that it was dominant and it wasn't just liberals, but I think it was liberal-coded.

Ahmad: Who are some of the big names, specifically in the Christian diet trend or conservative women diet trend? Who are the voices that you're seeing?

They still can't cope with people eating... protein.

Protein is Nazi-coded.

Grose: I know they sell products from their store that are emphasizing a meat-heavy lifestyle as healthy, which again, it is part of mainstream culture. I mean, you can't throw a rock without hearing somebody talking about protein, which I've also written about before, but it's just putting the conservative gloss on it.

Ahmad: What about the messaging is putting on the conservative gloss? Because I think, as you said, a lot of this feels familiar territory, especially the fixation on protein. I mean, Khloe Kardashian came out with a protein popcorn. I'm curious about how it overlaps with Christianity in particular and like what makes these influencers pair diet cultures with more of a religious or moral tent.

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Ahmad: That's one thing I'm interested in with these particular influencers is the desire for the way that they look or how they behave should be in line with certain values that are politically aligned with the conservative movement. How do you see the political aspect of it pairing with the way that these women are presenting themselves physically, online and in the world?

Grose: It's all traditional gender roles. That litany of things that Alex Clark listed, it's marriage, babies, fitness, protein -- it's all one very narrow image. Anyone who is not conforming to that image is sort of outside the circle. It's also in a moment where we do see fewer female leaders across the board -- I would say Democrats and Republicans. So the idea that women should be physically smaller goes along with the idea that they're not going to be the ones out front taking up space.

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Ahmad: ...

When I look at these Christian diet influencers, in a way, the appeal to me is totally apparent because especially when it comes to things like food, American food culture is so confusing. There's so many options. What you're meant to eat, or what powders you should be taking, changes day by day, week by week. There's so much decision making that has to go into everything.

And the guidance on what you should eat, especially with MAHA becoming more part of our culture, there's an inherent distrust of a lot of information. Having just a clear set of guidelines based on something like religion almost feels like a relief. Sometimes I'm envious; I wish I believed in something that just told me how to live my life.

This is a liberal claiming that she wishes she had a religious-like structure that will tell her what to think about everything.

The religion -- You're soaking in it.

This will not surprise any of you, but a new study links cellphone use by kids with mental illness.

Owning a smartphone before age 13 is associated with poorer mental health and well-being in early adulthood, according to a global study of more than 100,000 young people.

Published today in the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, the study found that 18- to 24-year-olds who had received their first smartphone at age 12 or younger were more likely to report suicidal thoughts, aggression, detachment from reality, poorer emotional regulation, and low self-worth.

The data also shows evidence that these effects of smartphone ownership at an early age are in large part associated with early social media access and higher risks of cyberbullying, disrupted sleep, and poor family relationships by adulthood.

A team of experts from Sapien Labs, which hosts the world's largest database on mental well-being, the Global Mind Project--where the data for this research was pooled from--are calling for urgent action to protect the mental health of future generations.

"Our data indicates that early smartphone ownership--and the social media access it often brings--is linked with a profound shift in mental health and well-being in early adulthood," says lead author, neuroscientist Dr. Tara Thiagarajan, the founder and Chief Scientist of Sapien Labs.

And once kids become mentally ill, don't count on psychologists to help them. They're focusing laser-like on Woke Cures.

Therapy's Identity Politics Problem

The field has embraced left-wing racialism.

Psychotherapy used to be a refuge from politics, but it's become another front in the culture war. Therapists once helped people face reality. Today, more and more, they urge patients to interpret it through a hierarchy of oppression.

As a psychotherapist with more than two decades of experience, I have observed this shift firsthand. Hundreds of patients have come to me after being frustrated or even harmed by previous therapists, who encouraged them to interpret their struggles through the lens of identity politics.

A black man, for example, came to me after a failed round of therapy with another provider. He wasn't just anxious; he was disillusioned. "I went in for help managing anxiety," he said. "But the therapist kept steering the conversation back to racism, even though I never brought it up. I left feeling like I was being treated as a black person first, and a human being second."

A gay man told a similar story. "I wanted help managing stress at work," he said. "But every session focused on supposed shame over being gay, even though that wasn't why I was there. I felt pushed into a narrative that didn't fit me."

Graduate programs are no longer producing healers, but political activists with therapy licenses. Instead of teaching students to treat anxiety, depression, or relationship issues using evidence-based methods, many programs now encourage trainees to develop "critical consciousness." That means guiding clients to interpret their distress through the lens of systemic oppression, rather than addressing individual agency, patterns, or choices.

At the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, for example, the Master's in Counseling program is "grounded in principles of social justice." Its mission is "to prepare and inspire a diverse student body to provide culturally sensitive mental health services that support resiliency, recovery, and social justice."

Similarly, Antioch University boasts that it teaches trainees to confront "oppression" and become agents of "racial, economic, and environmental justice." In 2023, a graduate student sued Antioch, alleging that the school trained counselors to label white clients as "privileged" and minority clients as victims.

This activist mindset is taking over the field. The American Counseling Association--one of the profession's largest organizations--instructs therapists to "employ empowerment-based theories to address internalized privilege" and "engage in social action to alter laws and policies."

I missed this from a few weeks back: Two "bioethicists" -- they're actually political extremist mad scientists -- propose infecting humanity, without its consent, with an incurable disease which will render them unable to eat meat.

They want to spread this disease... via ticks.

A case in point--and there are many others, including those approving ghoulish experiments on children in "gender affirming care," "death with dignity," and experiments on aborted fetuses--is this pair of Western Michigan University "bioethicists" who want to infect human beings with a disease that makes people allergic to meat. Because ticks transmit the disease, they called their paper in the journal Bioethics "Beneficial Bloodsucking."

How appropriate. Here is the abstract:

The bite of the lone star tick spreads alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a condition whose only effect is the creation of a severe but nonfatal red meat allergy. Public health departments warn against lone star ticks and AGS, and scientists are working to develop an inoculation to AGS. Herein, we argue that if eating meat is morally impermissible, then efforts to prevent the spread of tickborne AGS are also morally impermissible. After explaining the symptoms of AGS and how they are transmitted via ticks, we argue that tickborne AGS is a moral bioenhancer if and when it motivates people to stop eating meat.

We then defend what we call the Convergence Argument: If x-ing prevents the world from becoming a significantly worse place, doesn't violate anyone's rights, and promotes virtuous action or character, then x-ing is strongly pro tanto obligatory; promoting tickborne AGS satisfies each of these conditions. Therefore, promoting tickborne AGS is strongly pro tanto obligatory. It is presently feasible to genetically edit the disease-carrying capacity of ticks. If this practice can be applied to ticks carrying AGS, then promoting the proliferation of tickborne AGS is morally obligatory.

Yes, they claim that infecting people with a disease is "morally obligatory," therefore, ticks should be bioengineered to spread the disease to all of us.

"But we're the experts!" the lunatics babbled in their padded cells.

And do you know who is "super focused" on normalizing obesity, Rachel?

Leftwing women like you, Rachel:

Anyone got any GAINZZZ?

Me, I'm pursuing GAINZZZ and proud of doing so, but I'm not actually making GAINZZZ. I'm doing most of the inputs but I'm not getting the outputs I'm looking for.

Might be because I finally turned 29. Your metabolism really changes at 29.

posted by Ace at 05:20 PM

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