
124. Accountability Is Choosing Your Consequences
In this episode Leo addresses the heat he recently received for his viral TikTok video and clears up a lot of misconceptions. He shares what he's learned from researching and reflecting with himself around the topic of fatphobia and internalized fatphobia. He also gives insight on approaches for getting brands to cater to more sizes and being more inclusive.
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Full Transcript
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a lot of people chimed in so I want to clear up a lot of misconceptions and explain some things that I've learned. First thing I want to clear up because I have a lot of eyes on me of people who do not know who I am and how I am.
For me personally character overrides physical appearance in every aspect. Treating someone poorly based off of physical attributes like their size, color, shape is never going to be okay with me and And I'm never going to condone that.
And I want to make it very clear. That's not what I was doing with the video that I made.
So the main thing that added to the controversy is the topic of fat phobia. I've now researched it and I did not understand that fat phobia and that entire topic has its own language and I did not know how to speak it.
So now I want to share what I've learned about it so other people can avoid making statements that make people look at them incorrectly. But for my research that I did, fat phobia does not take into consideration your heart, how you truly feel about people,
or the way that you treat people who are plus size. Someone can be considered fatphobic simply for rhetoric and words used with a negative connotation or association to being overweight or plus size.
And this was my biggest understanding because you can truly not treat someone bad or have any negative ill will in you toward people who are plus sized and you can still be stamped as fat phobic for words that you use or certain tones you say certain words with. And that is what confused the absolute hell out of me with the backlash that I received and the level of it and the harshness of it.
The last thing I want to clear up is my video that I made was not directed at anyone personally or any specific individual. I just want to put that on record.
So now with diving into the topic of accountability, I'm going to give a trigger warning. I am here to help the people who watch me feel empowered.
Yes, I fuck up sometimes with that. Do I always use the perfect rhetoric and vocabulary? No.
I try to make people feel empowered to the best of my ability. I am always learning and growing.
I will own up to when I fuck up or if I could have said something better. But the underlying message behind every single thing I say is to make you feel empowered and leave feeling better or inspired or motivated behind any perspective or thing that I share.
And feeling triggered or offended can either help you see the power that you do have and see something that you do have control over that you might not have seen before, or it can push you further into denial. Self-empowerment is not always comforting.
I don't always share things simply for comfort. I'm big on accountability and taking responsibility for your life and waking up to the power you have as a human being over your given circumstances, especially ones you do not like.
And that is because the truth is the only thing strong enough to rip through excuses. But But the thing to remember here is I am never opposing you I am opposing your limiting beliefs and perspectives that I have learned that kept me trapped in a place I did not want to be in that's what I'm trying to challenge and that's what I oppose with the things that I say that is always the intent there are people who enjoy and value this learning style that I use.
Some people call it tough love, but I need everyone to understand things that hurt you don't hurt other people and things that don't help you do help other people. If you are not someone who can hold on to the intent that I have, which is always to help you, if you can't hold on to that and see that through everything that I say, harsh or not, do not watch this.
And that's out of protection for you. It's not a threat.
It's not no petty shit. It's genuinely out of protection for you because you will run the risk of feeling attacked if you cannot hold on to what my actual intent is so if you are not someone who can learn from intentionally being triggered sometimes and you are not able to hold on to that i'm here to help you not hurt you anytime you see my face scroll do not watch anything i post tiktoks youtube videos my snapchat my instagram anytime you see my face swipe off from because my videos pop up where they pop Instagram.
Anytime you see my face, swipe off from it. Because
my videos pop up where they pop up. You can't control that, but you can control if you consume
them. So that's me giving you clarification.
And now going forward, if you are triggered by my
content, the power is in your hands. So with accountability, your feelings are valid.
Your
opinions are valid. But they are not valid as justification to continue living a life that you
Thank you. your feelings are valid your opinions are valid but they are not valid as justification to continue living a life that you hate and not putting effort into changing things that you want to change i want to make this very clear if you want to change something about yourself or your life it is completely okay and there is a way to do it without it being from a self-hatred standpoint and not from being in opposition to yourself.
And wanting to change yourself doesn't have to come from a place of self-hatred and self-rejection and opposing yourself. You can do it in a positive way.
This is a little bit of a harsh truth, but from my experience, you can't develop true self-worth while you are devaluing your life. Because certain actions contradict self-worth.
It's like if you have a plant and you love this plant, but you don't know how to care for it and you neglect it from sunlight and you give it more tequila than you give it water. The plant is going to die.
And if you ever wonder, would the plant know that you loved it or cared about it? No, because your actions are what killed it and hurt it. But sometimes it's not because you didn't care that you hurt it.
You didn't know how to take care of it or you didn't realize what it actually needed and that these things were damaging. This This is a big thing to see about actions you take in your own life.
Sometimes you do not understand you are devaluing yourself by taking certain actions.
But with this, you have the freedom to choose to do and live and be however you want. And I don't think that's grounds to attack somebody for how they want to personally live their life and how they want to treat themselves.
But the thing to get is there are positive and negative consequences with everything that you do. And just because you are not aware of certain consequences does not mean you do not have to face them.
I am going to hit on the fact that seeing certain actions that you've been taking or that you do take as what's keeping you from self-love is hard to face because a lot of things are comfort and you might not be aware that certain things you choose for comfort devalue you. It's hard to face that once you're aware of it.
It sucks ass. None of us are exempt from it.
So when I say comfort, eating, drugs, drinking, smoking, sex, a lot of these things are comforts and they can have negative consequences. But the real bitch here is it's going to ruin your experience of acting on these comforts.
And that's why a lot of people don't like to look at consequences. They just like to pretend like they're not there or blame it on something else.
Because when you see the actual consequence that's coming from an action you're taking that brings you comfort. So when you see a comfort is actually devaluing you, you're not able to continue forward acting on that comfort without guilt or without the awareness that you are devaluing yourself at the same time.
And you are fully allowed to still choose that. No one's shaming nobody over here.
You're allowed to choose whatever you want. The focus here is it is a choice and you are choosing the positive and the negative by choosing to do it.
And some people do value the relief of the comfort over the consequence of maybe harming themselves or being detrimental to themselves. They don't care because sometimes the relief is better and keeps you going versus, oh, I don't want to like damage myself a little bit.
Sometimes you're willing to take on that damage and everybody's human and everybody deals with that. But with this, I want everybody to realize you can only feel as valued as your actions allow.
So example, say you're dating somebody and they're beating the shit out of you, but they're saying, I love you. You cannot send yourself the message that you love yourself while you choose to stay in that situation.
I'm not talking about situations where you can't leave. If you actually can leave or you leave and then you keep going back and you keep getting your fucking ass beat, that is a vibrational contradiction to saying that you love yourself.
You can't send yourself the message, you're worth this, you deserve this, and continue to put yourself through harm, but say, oh, I love myself at the same time. You can say it.
Are you going are you gonna feel it are you gonna be a match to actual self-love as an emotion in you and as a vibration no and that's where the uncomfortability hits where you gotta face what you're not changing you're choosing I know that went to bitch I know know. But that's where you have to ask yourself the question,
what are you more committed to?
Are you more committed to comfort or accountability
and taking control of your life
and doing what you can for your circumstance?
Which one are you more committed to?
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Additional terms apply. But the funny thing with accountability is the emotional kind of vibrational scale you got to go through with it.
So self-blame is usually where a lot of people will get. And self-blame is a very, very low point to be at vibrationally because you beat yourself up for a lot of things that weren't in your control over something in the past.
A step up from self-blame is to blame others because it's less attack on you and it's less harmful to you. That's actually a vibrational level up.
But a lot of people get stuck at that step. The actual step up from blaming others is cutting your losses and seeing what you do have now and what you can do from your given situation moving forward.
It's no longer about blaming yourself or blaming other people. It's cut your loss, see the piece you're left with, see what you got, and then moving forward with that.
And that is accountability because it's seeing the power you do have. You're not caught up in the past.
You're not blaming yourself. You're not blaming people anymore.
You got to accept where you're at, whether it sucks ass or it doesn't. It could be awful, but that's what you have to do.
You have to cut your loss and continue forward because when you stay stuck in the whole blaming others aspect, that's a powerless life to live. Everything in your life is dependent on other people.
You do not see any control that you have, and you can't be a match to it because that's up a level. I am going to use the example of weight loss because it's very prevalent with everything going on right now with the topic of accountability for this episode.
So if you're someone who genuinely is okay with not exercising, paying little attention to the amount of calories you eat and the way that you eat, if you don't want to worry about it, if you want to eat intuitively, that's totally fine. If you want to drink alcohol, if you want to not look for any control you do have over your actions, that is totally fine.
Because some people are totally okay with doing heroin. They will take any consequence that comes with it.
They value doing that over everything else. They don't care.
And I don't believe someone should be bullied or shamed for that choice. If they want to do it, go do it.
If they don't want to be helped, I don't condone harassing them and bullying them into trying to force them into getting help. Some people just want to do heroin until they die.
They're free to live however they want. But facing consequences for the action you choose to take is not an attack on you.
And it's not you being singled out, especially when people voice these consequences or they voice concern. They're not attacking you.
You might feel attacked because you have to face the fact that you did have a little control into contributing of the negative consequences that you didn't want, that you didn't see before. And a lot of people like to blame the messenger or the thing triggering that awareness.
But I want to make sure everybody knows you're not bad or wrong when these consequences pop up and you're not being attacked. I want to point out some things about the human condition when it comes to weight gain and loss.
If you eat 10,000 calories a day, your body, this is science, will store the excess calories that are not burned as fat on your body. That's not something you can choose to subscribe to or choose to identify with or choose to believe or not.
It is the human condition. If you break your arm, the bone is broken.
You can't disidentify with the fact that you have a broken bone. So another thing with the
human condition, when you add weight to a human body, you add more and more fat stores to the body. There are things that come along with that that are not special to anybody.
Everyone will experience them. I made a little list.
Limited mobility, increased difficulty with daily tasks, lower chances of finding clothes in your size that you like, increased risks for health concerns, increased chances of unfair treatment in public by society. Not saying it's your fault, but that is something that happens.
Decreased chances of fitting places and having more difficulty with travel. And a big one is mental and emotional fluctuations dependent on the food, the quality of food, and the type of food that you consume.
These are not consequences that are specific to anyone. Certain foods have certain effects on everybody.
Like alcohol. Everybody has decreased cognitive function when you consume alcohol.
It's not specific to one person. These are just things that apply to everyone.
But these consequences are up to every single person, whether they perceive them as negative or not. I'm not here to tell you if they're negative, if they're bad, wanted, unwanted.
That's for everyone to decide on their own. But I will say there are actions that you
can take that contribute to you experiencing these consequences. And if you do not want to experience them, you do not have to.
You can take actions that decrease them. And that is what I want plus size people to understand and hear from me from my heart genuinely.
You no longer have to cope and try to convince yourself to just be happy and accept where you are because you feel like you cannot change your circumstances. I promise you can change them.
And that's what I'm here to shine a light on is you no longer have to cope and you no longer have to try and convince yourself to be happy with things that you're not happy with. There are things you can do to ease your situation and go for things that you do want and experience less of what you don't want.
And I'm about to tread very lightly on a couple things because I think the body positivity movement and the whole body positivity community is great. But there is something that concerns me because this community is accepting of people who do not have the typical standard body type.
And sometimes the people in that community will make it seem like it is bad to want to change yourself or change your body. They will act like it is self-hating and they will turn against you if you try to make changes.
A lot of people from what I've researched have experienced feeling a decrease in the amount that they feel loved and accepted with their weight decreasing. They don't feel accepted by these people anymore because they look at you like you hate yourself and they think that you hate them because you're changing your body because you hate it.
Basically, being overweight in certain communities will guarantee you safety and acceptance in that community and you will be promoted and encouraged to stay the same or increase your weight. And this is why it's really, really important in my opinion to check in with what you truly desire because a lot of unhealthy lifestyles are promoted in these communities i'm not saying all of them or by everybody but a lot of unhealthy lifestyles are promoted in these things and there is a way to change the way that you look without it being self-hating so that's why i say check in with your desires and what you truly want because it's exhausting trying to convince yourself to stop wanting something that you do want.
You can never get rid of a desire you have to want something. You can't make yourself not want it.
And sometimes it does feel like relief to just give up on it. You can't stop wanting it but it feels like relief to just give up on it.
But when it comes to your weight as a human being, that requires you to give up any power and control you do have about the situation. You have to stay blind to it to continue feeling the relief of basically accepting defeat.
And I want everyone to know who does want to live a healthier lifestyle and experience the consequences that come with that. I just want everyone to see who does have a desire to see a change in their weight, either up or down.
There's nothing stopping you besides your own lack of knowledge on how to do it. Commitment from to do it, and also convincing yourself that it's impossible.
These are the only things stopping you from it. I want you to see and hear it and believe it.
You can create a change. You can impact it.
You do have things you can do and things that are in your control that can bring about the change you want to see. And based on the knowledge I have as a nurse, unless something has changed that I'm unaware of, feel free to correct me in the comments.
There is no medical condition that makes it possible for you to only gain weight or only lose weight. There's not a condition to my knowledge that makes either one the only one that's possible.
Are there conditions that do have an effect on the ease of gaining or losing weight? Absolutely. But does that mean it's impossible? No.
It just means that your situation needs specific consideration and specific actions taken with it. But you can accomplish the goal that you have with the weight you want to be.
And that is the key. It is possible.
I want to plant this seed in your mind because it's going to fester. My intention with saying all of this is to get this internal opposition to stop.
But now I want to talk about the topic of losing weight without shaming yourself and it coming from a place of self-hatred. The phrase you're going to live by is, I want to love myself, value myself, and live a healthy lifestyle.
Because this is going to take you down a path of improvement in every area. And weight loss will simply be a byproduct, a consequence of the actions you're going to now be taking.
It is up to you to determine if weight loss as a consequence to these actions is negative or positive.
So your goal can be to treat your body like something you care about.
Like I said before, food impacts your mood.
It affects your mental clarity.
It has an impact to your overall health.
And switching to healthier foods is going to result in a change in weight. Like I said, up to you to decide if it's good or bad.
Alcohol is the same thing. It can decrease your overall sense of well-being, your mental state, mental clarity, and damage your body.
It's literally a poison. So if you take that out, a fluctuation in weight will occur.
Removing drugs is another one. Treating your body like something you care about.
Putting drugs into it. I'm talking street drugs, not medicines and things that are prescribed that you need for positive changes in your health and things that you need to function optimally.
I'm talking about things for extracurricular purposes. Removing these things to treat your body like something you care about is going to cause a clearer mind and more level and consistent emotions that are not being impacted by hormones and chemical imbalances.
And the decisions you make and the actions you take from a more stable and consistent emotional and mental space is going to have a big impact. It's going to be very different.
You're not going to be looking for comfort things as often. Example, unhealthy food.
And saying unhealthy is not fat phobic. There are foods that are healthy and unhealthy.
That one is science. Exercise is also something you can do to treat your body like it's something that you care about.
Every human being needs exercise. We need physical movement.
We need activity. That's science.
Go fight with God about that one. I don't make the rules.
But with suggesting all of these things, you are still free to choose either thing you want, whether you take on these actions of treating your body like something you care about or not. Like I said before, the things that you do that are not these are not going to be guilt-free anymore because you're now aware that choosing to do the opposite sends your body the opposite message.
And it is the opposite of taking care of your body. And the bitch here is you can't mentally avoid the awareness of what's actually going on.
So if you go eat more calories than your body expends and burns, you are now aware of the fact that you are not exempt from the rule that applies to everyone. The excess calories will be stored as fat on your your body and being aware of these things and not being able to mindlessly run into comfort and take actions mindlessly is a fucking headache it's annoying for everybody like once you have the awareness of the consequences you don't want come from the actions you're taking it's not a fun place to be in for any of us, but it's reality.
But I can assure you from being on both ends, being aware of everything and choosing your consequences is a way better feeling and a way better life than feeling like a victim and feeling singled out and wondering why you deserve to suffer and comparing the contrast and being hurt by everyday life because it seems like other people who don't have to live this way don't experience the negative consequences. They're not special.
They're not exempt from it. They're putting effort into it also.
But you can get stuck thinking that the people who aren't facing the negative consequences that you don't want to face but are facing, you can start to think that they're privileged, but it takes intentional effort from them too, some more than others. The only privilege people have when it comes to their body and changing the fluctuation in size is the recognition of the power that you do have over the actions you are taking.
The recognition of the power is the privilege and I want everyone to know you have that ability. The last thing I want to address with this episode is the topic of being catered to by brands.
When brands do not make clothing or items in your size not dependent on physical disabilities or race. You are free to attack them as much as you want, as little as you want.
You can do whatever the fuck you want. You can literally voice anything.
I don't think that should be taken from anybody. You can do what you want.
What I do want to suggest is questioning how justified it is to attack and cancel a company or a person over things before you do it. Just make sure it is as justified as you feel.
And then ask yourself what the actual goal is for attacking a brand or criticizing a brand or a person.
And what is the best route to get there? Some people respond to bullying. Some people don't.
And one big thing I want to clear up is a lot of people attacked me for defending brands. Most of
them don't make my size anyways. And a lot of people were saying brands are not people companies and corporations are not people are we forgetting that people are who run these things I just want to make sure we're all on the same page because that genuinely baffled the fuck out of me companies are companies yes but if you want to talk about achieving things and attacks if you go attack a building the building is not taking an action the people who are inside of it running the building and the brand are the things that you can get in with emotionally and have them act in your best interest that's the whole point there with seeing the best approach to take to get a brand to cater to you, I want to share some things that I've learned because I am a size 16 shoe and I face not being able to find my size in things a lot.
Shoes, clothes, pants, my waist is a certain size and my length is a certain size. Tank tops, these are all custom.
I've had to cater to myself and have things made. It is a pain in the ass everywhere.
I share that frustration with all of you but I used to feel very justified for shaming and just feeling entitled a little bit and feeling justified in attacking brands and companies and the people who run them for not making my size in things. But this information gave me a little bit more to take into consideration.
So I want to share it. I'm going to give the example of shoes.
Something I did not know that I was informed about is each size of a certain shoe style requires a mold to be made. Each mold is around $20,000.
So for a size nine, 10, 11, it's a $20,000 fee to make the mold for each size. So just to make a size 16 in one style of shoe is $20,000.
Then you have to take on each style of shoe requires a new mold. So that's an extra $20,000 to make another style in a size 16.
Then there's an added cost with getting the materials to make the shoe in the mold. People who run these companies have to factor in profit.
Is paying $20,000 for one style of shoe a risk they want to take? Do they have the demand for it? Do they believe they can make a profit or even make their money back? Will it be a loss? These are things people are paid to evaluate. Not that many sizes of a 16 shoe are going to be sold to even cover the cost of the mold itself for that single size to be made.
And then you got to add on the cost for the materials.
For a lot of companies and for a lot of brands, that shoe size being made would be nothing but a financial loss. Now I want to hit on clothing to be made in more sizes.
There are a lot of added costs for the people who own these companies to make certain sizes. Like I explained with the shoe thing, but clothing might not be such a drastic increase because there's not many molds, but there are things that go into making more sizes of clothing so one is hiring people to create it they're going to have a higher workload which is not dependent on the size of the clothes it's just about creating more clothes there's going to be more hands on deck needed to make it in the same time frame or it will be delayed so there's new h hires that need to happen.
There are new models that need to be hired to represent and show off and promote the clothes. Then there's an added cost of paying for bigger locations and bigger stores to accommodate more products.
My point here is to share that there are a lot of costs a lot of people don't think about with brands making certain sizes and all kinds of things there's a lot of costs associated and people were thinking that I was promoting brands and encouraging brands to exclude people that's not my intent behind what I was saying at all and I didn't mean to shame anyone for wanting to be included my whole angle and what I should have communicated better
is there are a lot of unforeseen cost expenses and things that need to be done in order to have this be made. And sometimes you are asking a company and the people who run it and own it to take a financial loss just to incorporate a certain size.
I don't think it is fair and justified to choose to live a certain way. Like for myself, I choose to make myself more muscular.
For me to choose that and then go and demand a brand, cater to that because of choices that I made. And in certain situations, to make certain sizes take hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash hits simply to cater to me because of what I choose to do with my body, I don't think that is fair.
I do think it's a different conversation when it comes to things you cannot control. The size of your body is something you do have control over.
So I don't think it is fair to demand and feel entitled to turn a blind eye and just expect companies to take on costs and consequences to cater to every size.
And I'm speaking from someone who is in a situation where I cannot change the size of my
shoe and the size of my foot. But that brings in the question, who is most likely to help
accommodate me and cater to me? And this is where we have to talk about people who are solely driven by money. People who are only driven by money and care about profit margins are the least likely to help you or to accommodate to you.
It's going to take someone who genuinely cares about certain types of people.otion from a person who runs one of these companies or corporations is what is going to be required to make the sacrifices to make sure certain people are catered to. And this actually is very disappointing because people have to care.
And that's my whole point with saying companies are run by people, brands are created by people. And that's where I say, what is the best approach with being catered to when you know companies are going to have to take on a big financial cost? Going at them with the financial route and how it's going to make them money, a lot of companies are not going to see how it's going to make them money.
And if're driven solely off of profit they're not going to want to engage in it to get someone to emotionally care or to fight an injustice is the best approach in my opinion and that's what I want to encourage is checking the approach you have to trying to get people to cater to you but one other thing I want to point out that I feel like frustrates and disappoints a lot of people and they don't know what to do and where to point the emotion. One of the saddest things is to see someone who your support has made rich or wealthy and they no longer have to face the struggle that you face regarding any of the consequences of size and finding sizes and clothes that fit you because they shared that struggle they know what it's like but the fact that they can now afford an easier path and more accessibility to the things that cater to them it's very disappointing to see people sitting there with money that came from your support of them and they show a blatant disregard that they do not care that you still have those struggles because they no longer face them because now they have money and accessibility.
And the disappointment and frustration of that is fully valid. And I think that should be aimed at the people who share the same struggle as you.
Because like I said, the best way to get catered to is to get someone to care and want to fight for an injustice.
So you can do with that what you will.
That's all I've got for this podcast episode.
I'll talk to you guys next Sunday.