r/MaintenancePhase

Edit: not a perfect solution as they eventually started feeding me the same glp1 ads targeted towards men, but it was less frequent than before (2 of these ads/episode vs 5-6).

I saw a while back that there was a post about the rampant glp1 ads on HBO max, and I just recently got HBO Max myself and JIMINY CRICKET y'all were not kidding. It's so bad!

I went into my account settings and changed my gender from non binary to male and they haven't shown me a single one since. I'm getting lots of Rick and Morty and Lego ads instead. It's so much better!

I know this is a somewhat dystopian solution, but if changing your gender in your profile won't be as upsetting as these shitty ads, I recommend giving it a try.

My dad has been pushing me to start taking creatine to help with strength training recovery and general “being over 40” issues, and it seems to be everywhere these days. I’m obviously skeptical of all supplements, and I can’t get a good read on hype vs science on this one! What are others’ thoughts?

Learned about Melanotan I or II while watching an old season of Botched and the way these medications were developed, shortly marketed, and then limited for distribution in the US market is kind of wild. The development of the gen 1 drug (Afamelanotide) supported discoveries that also led to the development of the female viagra (Bremelanotide/Vyleesi). Would make for a fascinating episode.

I recently found an ad for this "health insurance" that a MAHA influencer promoted. Has anyone heard of CrowdHealth? It is literally socialized healthcare that members pay into to cover large health expenses.

I saw this from another Reddit thread:

• Crowdhealth is explicitly a community of health-conscious people. It maintains some restrictions/standards on who they allow to join. From their site: "The Crowd is not currently open to tobacco users (defined as daily use for a period of 3 or more months, past or present) or those who weigh over 220/260 pounds (female/male)."

As a female who at my largest was 193 lbs, I was still wearing straight-sized clothing, so their max limit of 220 lbs. is quite low, and definitely disqualifies many (if not all) fat men and women.

wondering if anyone else noticed this?

I am LOVING the book overall, but having some big thoughts around the discussion of weight. Not at all to judge her or condemn her for discussing it this way, but I’ve noticed this: she keeps talking about thinness as a preferable state. Throughout the discussion of her illness and addiction there is constant reference to her small body size. There is also a comment (or two?) about how she had been too high when she was thin “to even enjoy it” or appreciate it or something. And how if she’d known she wouldn’t be that high/thin again, she’d have savoured it more.

Lovingly, I say: for all her thoughtfulness and progressiveness on the massive topics of fame, feminism, breaking into the industry as a woman, chronic illness, reproductive illness, substance issues, etc. and how her body as she portrayed Hannah was such a focal point of her feminism (and the ire lobbed at her from fkn losers) it really shocked me. As someone with experience from both sides of the therapeutic space in the ED world, I heard the very familiar talk woven through the whole book, and constantly. To me, I caught a whiff of verbal body-checking in it, the perpetual highlighting of thinness at various points in the story, almost like it was another character.

Knowing only a sliver of what she went through in terms of public shaming for her body, I can also hear into it (or perhaps project into it) the desire to not be further criticised by lauding a thin body and shaming a bigger one, explicitly or implicitly. Sidling up to the thin-preferring world to feel safe, a sort of fawn response. I have nothing but empathy for that feeling.

Love her work overall and SO moved by it, so I hope she finds a way home to her body from the weight perspective that is shrouded in love and wonder and a big old “fuck that” to female body image standards (read: female obedience standards).

EDIT: To further clarify, not at all surprised that she had had a desire for thinness (in this culture, who hasn’t?!) Rather, saying that she framed everything in this book with great intentionality, e.g. drug use and dependency, where she made clear that while drug use could have been easy or pleasurable or desirable at the time she was not still talking as though drug dependency was a good thing. With the thinness, as one commenter said, it felt at many times glamorised in the way that someone still very ‘in it’ does not question it at all. And no shade on that - I very much get being ‘in it’ with body image, I was just surprise that the diet culture narrative never felt questioned by the actual book.

I just recommended this to someone in my city’s Subreddit who was looking for a weight neutral PCP, and it occurred to me that it probably deserved its own post here! Ragen Chastain writes this substack about weight stigma and healthcare. The archives are full of resources for both patients and providers. She also does very in-depth academic article reviews of studies that are relevant to the topic, including which studies are pharma industry funded. Just thought I’d give it a shoutout since I thought there might be some people here who would be interested and haven’t come across it yet.

How does Michael imagine powdered cheese being made? Like, you have cheese, then you divide it very finely and dry it out. It is not magic!

Michael mentioned a study that showed that ultraprocessed food consumption as a percentage of total diet correlates significantly with health outcomes only when it is measured by grams of food, not by calories. Of course this could be a statistical fluke, but it also seems like it could essentially be a measure of vegetable and fiber consumption. A lot of vegetables are so much less calorie dense than foods that would be classified as “ultraprocessed,” so eating lots of vegetables wouldn’t show up strongly in the calorie metrics, but it would show up in the mass metrics, with people who eat lots of vegetables reporting processed foods as a lesser percentage of their diet by mass but having a similar percentage of their diet by calories made up of processed foods compared to people who don’t eat vegetables. More generally, fiber doesn’t provide any calories accessible by the human digestive system, but it is so important for both gut health and metabolic health. So, I wonder if that study is more a measure of the effects of not eating vegetables/fiber and less a measure of the effects of eating processed foods. I haven’t looked up the actual study to see how the authors discussed the results, though.

Michael has mentioned a database, site, or service he uses for evidence-based info and recommendations and I can’t remember the exact name. Id love to search through it myself. It’s something called “Carver Reviews” or something similar. I can’t remember which episodes he mentions it in, otherwise I’d just go back and relisten. Does this sound familiar to anyone, and can you help me remember the exact name of this database?

I’m surprised they haven’t done an episode about chronic Lyme disease yet. It’s very controversial and seems like it would be right up their alley. I would love to hear they research and thoughts on it!