 My fellow fat people out there, it seems like there was quite the dispute going on between James Corden and Bill Maher because Bill Maher made some insensitive comments which could be deemed as fat shaming. So in this video, as a fat guy, I want to share my thoughts. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution. If you're new to my channel, what I try to do here is take different topics going on in the YouTube community or pop culture and try to see what lessons we can learn to improve our own mental and emotional well-being. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And if you're new here and you don't know me, hi, my name is Chris. It is a pleasure to meet you. But yeah, I am a certified life coach and something I'm really passionate about is mental health as well. We'll be talking about some mental health in this video but if you're interested on improving your mental and emotional well-being further, go check out my website, TheRewiredSoul.com. It'll be linked down in the description and down in the pinned comment. But I have a few books out, e-books and audio books. One is Rewire Your Anxiety. One is Rewire Your Anger and I also have some books on addiction as well as YouTube cancel culture. But anyways, if you struggle with anger or anxiety, make sure you check out those books. I even have a bundle. All right? But anyways, let's talk about what's going on. So this weekend, I think it might have even started on Friday. I saw James Corden trending on Twitter and his video kept getting recommended to me and it was, you know, James Corden responding to Bill Maher's comments that were, you know, fat shaming. All right? So Bill Maher, as many people do who are not overweight, you know, they're like, you know, get out there and do something and lose weight and everything like that. And James Corden, like, he took some offense to that and he was like, someone needs to speak up about this. He's like, I'm going to speak up about this. And I do believe that. Like when we have platforms, you know, and obviously James Corden's platform is a million times bigger than mine. Not even a million times bigger. It's like 20 million times bigger. Like, dude's famous. But anyways, yeah, I think we do need to have these discussions. So anyways, I want to talk from both sides of this and discuss my experience as a fat person, my thoughts on the whole fat shaming and body positivity and everything like that. So James Corden talked on some very good subjects, right? So one of them is the idea of shaming. So it's a tricky situation when it comes to shaming. We do know that shaming mostly does not work. All right? So for example, those of you who don't know me. Again, I'm seven years clean and sober from drugs and alcohol as well. A lot of my weight that I actually put on, like over 200 pounds of this, I put on in my drug addiction. All right? And I spent seven years and I'm still working this thing off. But something they realized years ago when it comes to drug addicts and alcoholists is shaming is not the answer. And that's one of the reasons why I speak up and advocate for, you know, like prison reform and, you know, treatment rather than, you know, punishment and things like that. Anyways, like James Corden brings up a good point when talking to Bill Maher in his response, like if shaming worked, you know, there would be no fat kids in school, right? If bullying these kids worked, there would be no fat kids, right? And it's true. Like shaming doesn't work, but I'm going to somewhat contradict myself in a little bit because we do need some people like Bill Maher. But like as somebody who struggled with my weight most of my life, like I said, like, you know, a lot of this weight was put on in my addiction. But in high school and things like that, like I wrestled heavy weights, which was like 215 or 225 to like 275. And I was at the lower end of that. I think I was like 220, 230, something like that in high school, right? Like, but I've always struggled with my weight. And, you know, in high school, I was a triathlete. And even though I was playing sports all year long and trying to eat right and everything like that, like I just, I was naturally bigger. And if you are a fellow fat person, like I probably get some resentments towards people in your life who, you know, a lot of people are just born with this great metabolism. Like I remember just like dieting and, you know, working out and then like my friend who has like the body of a great God, like literally his entire family has done modeling at some point or another, right? And like, I'd be watching him scarf down like 20 tacos and I'm sitting there like eating a salad and like, I've hated that. I've hated that, right? Like just seeing people who can eat whatever they want and put a minimal effort and just have the perfect body. Whereas some of us, you know, we do put in that work, but we're always going to be overweight, right? So that's one factor that I don't think that people like Bill Maher are taking into consideration. And I empathize with it. Like it's hard to even conceive of that. If you've never had weight issues your entire life and you've been able to eat whatever, like it's hard to kind of know that, right? It's kind of hard to know that some people do have these struggles. The other thing that we need to talk about is the mental health, the psychological aspect of it. So many years ago, Kaiser Permanente actually did a study where they found that many people who were overweight actually had some form of trauma. A lot of it was sexual abuse or, you know, uh, other physical abuse or verbal abuse that stemmed from childhood. Okay. So they have something called the adverse childhood experiences test to kind of see where you fall on that. But anyways, one of the reasons that many people struggle with their weight is psychological issues. All right. And that's something that we need to take into consideration as well. Like not everybody has had this like nice, perfect life. There are some people who are self-medicating with food rather than drugs or alcohol, but they're self-medicating with food as a way to deal with some of that pain. All right. But now let's talk about the other side of it. Okay. So don't get me wrong. Bill Maher was a dick. All right. And I'm glad James Corden replied, but something I want to discuss is sometimes we need that. All right. So Bill Maher, um, also many of you know of Nicole Arbor. She had the Dear Fat People videos. She not one, but two videos on it. There's another channel that I made a video about not that long ago called Every Damn Day Fitness, and he makes a lot of videos about, um, overweight people in the public spotlight and talks about how that's not healthy and everything like that. And like, here's the thing, like we need people like that. We need, like I, I believe that we need everybody, like everybody who's on planet earth, like pretty much we need all of them. We need, we need the people who are super compassionate and super like, oh, you know, I'm going to be there for you and call all you. We need those people, but we also need the people who are just going to be blunt and tell us what it is. Right. Like I remember like when it came to Nicole Arbor and her Dear Fat People videos, there were quite a few people who were inspired by her video and they've lost weight and Nicole Arbor has promoted those. Like was she a jerk about it the way she went about it? Absolutely. But I think we also need to realize like some people respond to that and we can't discount the fact that some of those people need that. So like, listen, I got myself like an Apple watch to keep track of my, you know, steps and, you know, all these other things and some of you who follow me on social media, you know, I was doing great hitting the gym in the past few weeks. I've gotten really busy and I'll be honest with you, it's been two and a half weeks since I've been to the gym. Okay. Sometimes I need somebody to just kick me in the butt and be like, yo, Chris, what are you doing? Right. So let's get back to the psychological aspect. So something that is very important when it comes to your own mental and emotional well-being is understanding the psychology of locus of control. So this internal locus of control and external locus of control, external locus of control, those types of people have more depression, more anxiety because they believe they have no control over their circumstances. People who have an internal locus of control, they're happier, they're more motivated, they're less depressed, less anxious because they believe their actions will have results, right? No matter what it is, positive or negative results. And that's what we need to take into consideration. Like, I'm never going to sit here and ever just defend my weight like that, you know, I'll talk about the reasons and everything like that. But something I ask myself all the time and I hope you ask yourself too is like, am I doing everything in my power to try to lose weight? All right? Like, I think it's cool. Like if your body positive, do you, baby girl, do yo thang, all right? But like for me, for example, I'm a father. Okay. I have a 10 year old son in there and a couple of things like one of them, I need to be an example to him about weight, you know, and everything like that, but also like, I need to be healthy so I could be around for that kid. So like, although I love myself at the weight I'm at, I also need to understand that it is causing me some physical harm. And those are things that I need to improve. And I can't just keep making excuses and just saying like, oh, well, I'm fat and I'm proud. Like that's cool. You can love yourself at any weight. But for me personally, I have to look at the physical harm that's being done. Like I'm on two different blood pressure medications. Now high blood pressure runs in my family and my parents aren't even really that overweight. So, so that's something I might have to deal with no matter how much weight I lose, but I always have to remember and have that internal locus of control that I'm not doing everything in my power. So if you were watching this video and you realized you have some psychological issues that are, you know, contributing to your weight, are you doing everything in your power, right? Are you going to therapy? Are you on medications for depression or for anxiety, right? And those are even tricky when it comes to mental health medications because some of those make you gain weight, all right? But I talk about, so another example in my books, I talk about how medications are not nearly as helpful as we believe they are. So there are a lot of different ways and therapy is a great one. If you can't afford therapy, like read books. Like I have read so many books. I'm in therapy now too, but I've read so many books to educate myself about my mental health and I use all of those tools to improve my mental health. And I'm hoping, you know, making this video and speaking to everybody out there, it's going to get me more accountable so I can find time to get back in the gym. And that's another thing, like we make these excuses, like I don't have time. I don't have time. Like we have time, like me and my girlfriend watched like almost the entire first season of The Good Place this weekend, all right? Like I could have found the time to go to the gym, you know? So I do appreciate people like James Corden, you know, speaking up about these things and the shaming, but we also need to take this personal responsibility and have this personal accountability and understand when we're making excuses and we're not doing everything in our power. Again, don't get me wrong. If you are happy at the weight you're at, do your thing. That's totally fine. But if you know that it's causing health issues, if you're worried about your life expectancy because it like, like look in your life and say, am I doing everything possible to lose this weight? Because I can honestly look at myself in the mirror right now and say, no, Chris, you are not doing everything possible. Not only not going to the gym, but my eating habits, they've kind of gone downhill recently and everything like that. And this is a cycle that I've been on for years now and it's just something where I don't give up and I don't think anybody out there should give up either. Like we do our thing, we see what works, we see what doesn't and we just keep moving forward, all right? But this video is a little bit longer than I thought it was going to be. But if you want me to make more videos on this or do a podcast episode and just discuss this a little bit more, actually, if you check out my podcast, I have one because I'm a vegetarian and I talk about what it's like being a fat vegetarian and I talk a little bit more about weight in there. But yeah, let me know your thoughts, your comments down below, like your thoughts on, you know, like fat shaming and things like that. But also, like let me know, like do you think that you make a lot of excuses for yourself? Like we just need to be honest with ourselves, you know what I mean? But anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on Patreon. And when you buy my books and all those things, like it helps support the channel as well. So go get yourself a copy of Rewire Anger or Rewire Anxiety, link down in the description below. All right. Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.