Ep. 33 | Marketing Health, Selling Shame: Who Can We Trust?

In episode 33 of The Culture Of It All, we're digging into the diet industry's favorite disguise: health. But when "health" is actually code for thinness, who really benefits? And who gets left behind? I’m asking honest questions about trust, marketing, and the hidden shame of being sold weight loss in the name of self-care. If you've ever wondered whether that wellness product is helpful or harmful, then this episode is for you. I’m also sharing my personal journey in online business, the negative impact of bro marketing, and the manipulative tactics used in the diet industry. 

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Takeaways

• Marketing should not be involved in our health.
• Once you see the manipulative tactics, you can't unsee them.
• The diet industry thrives on creating problems to sell solutions.
• Being in a larger body is absolutely fine and should be accepted.
• Self-care is often misrepresented by the diet industry as weight loss.
• Diets are not a sustainable solution for health.
• Recognizing the tactics used in health marketing is crucial.
• The wellness industry often mirrors the diet industry's practices.
• Weight loss is not synonymous with health.
• We need to reclaim self-care for all body types.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Diet Culture and Marketing

13:54 The Dangers of Marketing in Health

23:39 Manipulative Marketing Tactics

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Transcript

Melanie Knights [she/they] (00:00)
Welcome back to The Culture of It All. This is episode number 33. Hello friends. Hello my plus size pals. Hello everybody. Today's episode, we are going to be looking at the intersection of diet culture and marketing. We're going to be exploring why it is so harmful and whether or not marketing should even be involved in our health. So some of you may recall that last year,

early on in the show, episodes three and four, I recorded and published a two-part episode looking at the intersection between diet culture, hustle culture, and business coaching culture. This was actually the original concept that I had of the show. The original concept was going to look at these three areas and look at the ways in which they work together. I decided against it. I decided that I really didn't want to continue pursuing

a marketing career of any kind and so I made it a two-part episode. But please know, I could talk about this topic for many, many episodes because I have quite a bit of experience within these three areas and particularly between diet culture, business coaching and marketing. As I shared with you in a previous episode, I started an online business back in 2015 and that online business

was essentially selling weight loss coaching. And from the very beginning, I hired a business coach who also happened, happened and happens still is a quote unquote fitness professional. And I hired a business coach because I felt like I didn't know what I was doing. And yes, I learned a hell of a lot very quickly, but I learned a lot.

in a very specific way. And I realized eventually that I didn't want to participate in a lot of the marketing strategies and tactics that were being used. So I'm going to link to episodes three and four in the show notes. So if you haven't listened to those, you can go back and check them out.

You've heard me say this before on the show you know, once you see it, you can't unsee it. You could choose not to look at it, but you can't unsee it. It's still going to be there, right? Once you see it, it's going to be there. And this is very much the case for me when I left and walked away from this. cult-like bubble around me.

in the first two or three years of starting and trying to build an online business. Everyone was working together. Everyone knew someone else who had a complimentary coaching program or product within the industry. They would talk shit about MLMs, but really they'd kind of created their own version of this. They were all selling each other's products and,

Again, once you see it, you can't unsee it. But as I walked away from that kind of bubble that I'd been in for three years, it really shocked me how much of what I had been taught was just regurgitated from other coaches, right? So a way in which this is being done historically is coaches coaching coaches to coach coaches.

This happens in health and fitness, this happens in the business industry, it happens in marketing, it happens across the board. Coaches will coach coaches to coach coaches. And it all drips down. And the ones who seemingly make the most money are the ones who play the game. They are the ones who participate, they play the game and they will work with one another.

There are some big names in marketing and business who participate in this way. And it's interesting to me because you see during 2020, they got called out hard. Not by me. I was calling out at that point all of the bro marketing tactics that I was seeing. And honestly, I was really talking about the tip of the iceberg. I did not know how bad it was.

And the reason I didn't is mostly because the colour of my skin. As a white person, I wasn't seeing the way in which they were doing harm. It opened my eyes up to what else had been going on in Facebook groups. In Facebook groups that people were paying to be a part of. Phrases like, this is a safe space. But it was only a safe space if you didn't question the head of the program.

was only a safe space if you didn't talk about politics. It was only a safe space if it was safe for certain people.

and a lot of these layers were peeled back. And this was really the start for me of when I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. I started to realise that a lot of the testimonials that I would read were actually overinflated. When I was actually behind the scenes of these businesses, you'd realise that isn't actually what happened. That isn't quite how it was done. People were paying clients for social proof. It was...

almost like a commission, right, to promote this program. Tell people how wonderful this program is and how quickly you made your money back.

pieces of the story were often left out and this really, really chafed me because I was in a lot of debt. And I admit that that was a choice, I didn't have to pay these people but I was very easy manipulated back then. And it really scared me that this was still happening because it was all smoke and mirrors. These sales pages,

the way in which they work together. And I started questioning everything. It started with online business, but I eventually started questioning a lot of other areas. I questioned marketing. I questioned the way in which people are working together. And eventually I started questioning diet culture. As I said, in 2020, I really was calling out lot of the, what we call bro marketing. It still happens now. I don't see people talking about it, but that might be because I'm not as much in the space anymore.

But bro marketing is essentially these tactics that were very male dominated areas and were very aggressive tactics, very manipulative, very like, I was gonna say car salesman, I apologize if that offends anyone. You know what I mean when I use that stereotype.

But yeah, it was very manipulative, very aggressive. And it led to me starting my first podcast in 2020 called Entrepreneurial Outlaws. I mentioned that on the show before, you can still listen to it, it's still available. And there's like a hundred episodes, I believe. And we're actually gonna look at an episode in a couple of weeks that I recorded.

way back in autumn of 2020, it was one of the first episodes that I aired of that show. And it was kind of the first time I discussed being a quote unquote plus size entrepreneur. And I thought it'd be really interesting to look back at that episode and see in the last five years, how much has changed. So yeah, I'm looking forward to sharing that with you. But I became really disenchanted during that time by online business, marketing.

And I just started calling stuff out. I started talking about the ways in which people were marketing their businesses. I wasn't being specific, but I was drawing a line of what kind of business owner I wanted to be, what kind of marketer I wanted to be. And yeah, it was the start of realizing that a lot of these goals that I'd had previously weren't really my own.

really started to peel back these layers. And what I discovered is that a lot of the people that I had previously worked with and a lot of these people who were participating in business and marketing in this way were also Trump supporters. And I mean, of course they were. So it really, really opened my eyes to what was actually happening around me. And I would say that that was kind of the start of like really ripping me open and realizing that I needed to put myself back together.

And it led to kind of who I became as a business owner and obviously now as a content creator and podcaster. And it's really reshaped, shaped how I see online business and marketing. And it's been really interesting to this year spend a lot more time on TikTok. And of course, with that, I've seen a lot of TikTok coaches.

And it's kind of interesting because they're not saying anything new. They're really not. And it takes a lot for me to not speak up about this stuff because I don't want to necessarily be a part of that space anymore, right? My marketing and business career are behind me, but I can't help but see it for what it is. And I really, I become very frustrated when I see these very...

manipulative techniques and tactics being used. ⁓ Let me know if you're interested in me talking about that specifically because I do have a lot to say and I do have a lot to say about this in relation to being in a larger body. ⁓ In relation to especially being on TikTok and some of the tips that are shared because I think it's really interesting the way in which

TikTok marketing coaches will talk about the types of content that get attraction. Yeah, they do, but it's actually also really harmful if you are in a marginalized body. Anyway, so let me know if you would like me to cover that in a future episode. But talking of TikTok, a few months ago, I mentioned in a video that my opinion, right, it was a very long video. This was like 20 seconds of the video. I just mentioned that...

I feel the way weight loss drugs are being marketed is incredibly dangerous and manipulative. And it's not just causing harm, but it's also leading to the worsening of fatphobia that we are seeing, right? That we are witnessing around us. And, you know, of course, of course, this has to mean that I am like some sort of public health super villain. This happens a lot. As soon as I talk about the fact that I have issue,

with medical weight stigma or talk about health in a very minute, micro way and I'm talking about it specifically in terms of, you know, being a larger body and not having health complications correlate to weight or something like that. Somehow people interpret that to mean like I want to take down the public health system, which I, you know, is laughable and just hilarious. And I'm like, I don't think I have that kind of a clout, but sure.

But people assume that I'm like some sort of public health supervillain. And this guy, we'll call him William because that is his name, asked me, well, how should they market a healthy body? Because I presume you're not advocating oshmicity as a viable option for health. He also said a lot of other stuff and ⁓ luckily I screenshot his nonsense at that moment because he did, after I called him out, he actually blocked me.

He didn't like being told. I explained very clearly to him that I actually don't think marketing should actually be involved in our health whatsoever. And so today we are going to talk about why that is.

Before we get into today's episode, a quick reminder that you can subscribe to The Culture of It All on Substack by heading to cultureofitallpod.substack.com forward slash subscribe, and you can choose between the free or the paid plan. Subscribers get early access to episodes, regular bonuses, including creative resources, blogs, videos, and more. You can also join me on TikTok at Melanie Nights, where we explore what it really means to ditch diet culture whilst living life in a larger body.

I share the good, the bad and the fatphobia. You'll find fashion and style inspiration, casual outfits and all of my fat positive thoughts.

So this guy asks me, you know, on TikTok, what's the way to market a healthy body then? Right, assuming that of course being fat is not a viable option, which by the way, spoiler alert, it absolutely fucking is. ⁓ But that's a whole other topic. I want to focus on marketing specifically today. Like how do you market a healthy body? And as I shared, I told him that I don't think marketing should be involved in health or, you know,

healthy bodies. ⁓ One of the reasons why diet culture or the diet industry continues to make so much money is because of the way in which they market their products. you know, marketing as an industry, it has a very specific purpose and that is to sell things, right? That is to sell things. One of the very, very early on when I started my online business,

the things that you are taught is that you need to solve a problem. That is essentially what businesses do, right? If you are selling something, it should solve somebody's problem. And so of course, from my own personal experience and obviously from probably everyone listening's experience and just knowing how the diet industry works,

And of course, the diet industry consistently tries to sell us on one very specific problem. And it does it in a few different ways, right? The diet industry doesn't just talk about weight loss specifically. Yes, that is obviously a very strong component of its marketing. But it also it talks around weight loss. And it also talks about

what we want to be as individuals. It uses that as its marketing tactics, right? We wanna be healthier, we wanna be stronger, we wanna be fitter, we wanna be more toned, we wanna be all these things, right? These phrases that we hear and that are used consistently, not just within the dye industry, but within the wellness industry, within the health and fitness industries. It crosses over into all these areas and they use these kind of

words because these are the most common things that people will talk about when they talk about wanting to like quote unquote get healthy right it's the same things that i was hearing back in 2015 2016 2017 when i started my business these are the things people want to achieve yes people want to lose weight but even if you try to dig a bit deeper the reasons why come out as these other answers now

I always remember a few years ago hearing Brie Campos position this question, like kind of reframe it and it continues to give me goosebumps. And the way in which she said this was, okay, so you want to get stronger and you want to get fitter and you want to be healthier and you want to, you know, again, another one of the tactics is like, you want to be able to run around with your kids, like all these things that we're told we should want. And I'm not saying we shouldn't want them. I'm just saying like they used as marketing tactics, but she...

She said, okay, so you want to achieve all these things, but what if you could to achieve them without changing the size of your body? Would you still want to achieve those goals? And that hit me and it still continues to be, it lives right free in my brain, right? It's one of those like Roman Empire things. I still think about that because ultimately at the end of the day, most people will say these are their goals, but they also want to change the size of their body.

right. And I think that comes from believing that we have to change the size of our body in order to achieve these things, but also because these things are actually just kind of expected as a outcome of weight loss. And these are some of the ways in which the diet industry and health, fitness, wellness, whatever we want to call it, all of these industries, how they

continue to market and sell us their products. They had to rebrand in the late 90s into the early 2000s, people started to go, actually, you know what? I don't think diets work. This whole like calories in calories out thing, we've been doing this for a while and it's not, it doesn't seem to working. And that's when we saw Weight Watchers rebrand. We started to see the rise of the wellness industry. The wellness industry is still the diet industry.

it's still selling you the same things diets have sold previously. It just often is more expensive and there's a lot of like gimmicks and bullshit involved. And it's really, what I think is that it's really difficult at times to be able to see through what is bullshit, what could actually be helpful? Do I actually need this? What is this actually for? Like, ⁓

If you look at the trends and I've witnessed a lot of them and I don't know how kind of globalized they were but there's been a lot of trends like apple cider vinegar we all remember like the apple cider vinegar craze, coconut oil, like these things were products that I certainly didn't grow up knowing about and they suddenly became like household products. They became things that we knew about whether we were buying them or not they were everywhere and

It happens a lot within this specific industry. There will be these trends, these things that suddenly become very popular and, you know, it's great marketing, right? It's great marketing. And of course the trends might ebb and flow, but, I still see some of these like products that were around a decade ago, 10, 15 years, and they're still being sold in the supermarket.

I happen to work in the industry around the whole YouTube fitfluencer ⁓ and fitness vlogging became really popular, Gymshark was just growing. All of that stuff was coming up as I started my business. And so I came into this industry at time when everyone was obsessed with weightlifting and ⁓ bodybuilding and

Protein everything, like putting protein everything, which hasn't really gone anywhere. I've noticed that it's like still everywhere. You can go to a grocery store here in the UK now and you can find protein powders and protein shakes and different protein products, which is interesting because a decade ago you couldn't, I was having to, at that time when I participated in this, I was having to buy stuff online from specialist places. You couldn't just access these things. Now it's everywhere.

and it's readily available. And I think it's what's really noticeable is with this kind of these trends and with the rise of TikTok and social media and everyone talking about this stuff, everyone has an opinion. And also too many people think they're experts. Too many people think they're experts because they've watched a few TikTok videos or YouTube videos.

like people go to university for their stuff. And it's, it's scary how many people want to kind of.

hand on heart preach about very specific ways in which we should like be healthy quote unquote be healthy and I'm reading these comments in my and I'm just like mmm okay no and they think what they've they've suddenly learned from somebody on the internet is like brand new information and I'm like this isn't new this has been around for years and it's just the first time you've heard it

But yeah, it's really fascinating stuff to me because like with any trend, right, they come and they go And this happens obviously across the board, not just within the dye industry, but when we look at the dye industry in particular, there are certain trends that haven't seemed to die as quickly. yeah, protein and putting protein in everything is one of those things. In fact, it seems to just become more readily available. And also, let me just say, I'm not demonizing protein, right? It's a food group.

Like it's fine. It took me a really, really long time to stop moralizing protein. And so I'm certainly not demonizing it, but it's just my example that I'm using in this episode. So yeah, marketing as itself has a purpose, right? It's there to sell things. It's there to either sell us things we don't need, or it's there to solve a problem or to sell us on this solution to a problem. And so when it comes to health,

I think we have to ask ourselves what are the tactics being used? What are the tactics that people are using in order to solve this quote unquote problem? Because obviously if we don't believe that being in larger body is a problem, if we go back to William and say, actually being a larger body is absolutely fine. It's absolutely fine because it doesn't mean that I'm anti health and

It also doesn't matter whether it's a choice or not because bodies come in all shapes and sizes and et cetera, et We have to look at the way in which these tactics are being used, right? If they are manipulating us and preying on our insecurities, we have to assume they don't have our best interests at heart. We have to assume that they are out to make profit. And because many of us are experiences that...

diets don't work long term, they don't actually give us the solution that we were looking for, we've been promised. And we continue through this cycle of either trying the same thing or trying something different because they still exist, these companies still exist, they're still out there selling their products. So we're like, well, surely this means it must work. They couldn't make money otherwise, right? We kind of get into this belief, we start to believe that it's ourselves. And this is one of the really

really harmful and toxic ways in which the dye industry continues to work and make money, or not work and make money, is that it's always the individual's fault. It's never the product or the program. And that's definitely true within the wellness industry. You know, they make these very expensive and elitist and classist products and you have to buy all these like, this stuff to be able to

follow the quote rules or the framework and then when it doesn't work well it's because you didn't do this or you didn't do that right it's it's never the actual program that didn't work it's you as an individual and you know the tactics are often like well you just need to do this just drink this just buy this product just do this exercise i see these videos a lot on social media where it's like a very very fit and slim person

doing like an at home workout and they're like, just do this and commit with me for like 30 minutes a day for three months and you'll have, I don't know, insert some kind of body part, flat stomach, I don't know, whatever it is. And obviously now I look at that and roll my eyes. There was a time when I wouldn't have, there was a time when I would have been like, oh my gosh, sign me up, 30 minutes a day, I could do that.

no, turns out I probably couldn't do 30 minutes a day and also even if I did do 30 minutes a day that would not be me. And again this is kind of the repetitive narratives that we've seen these narratives for decades which is you know you can achieve these these kind of aesthetic changes to our bodies just by doing this.

And there's a lot of manipulation and a lot of words that get used in marketing and phrases that lead us to believe that something is possible when it's not. So when we see somebody on social media,

promoting some kind of workout and it's like you only have to do this for this amount of time every day for three months and you'll get this body. The reality is that most of us are not going to do 30 minutes every day for three months. Who's gonna get blamed for that? Right, us, because it's like we didn't follow the programme. Even if we did follow the programme, that wouldn't be achievable or realistic for most people.

And I just, it's these like, it's these things, these marketing tactics that really, really concern me across the industry. Because as I said, how do you trust anyone who is marketing health when as a society we correlate health to thin?

If we correlate health as thinness, then they don't have our best interests at heart. And I talk about this as well in terms of like medical weight stigma. It really is concerning to think that even within the medical profession, even within this field, there is medical weight stigma and that is going to influence the lack of care given to fat folks, right? The assumption that everything is down to weight.

It might be, but it also might not. And instead of listening to a patient, instead of listening to that person, they apply bias. Well, that's really scary if we're then talking about taking drugs, medications, perhaps pursuing surgery. Those things are concerning when...

the patient's best interest may not actually be what's being considered. If there is a bias that will you'll be healthy because you will be thin. And I know that's not the case for everyone. And I know that's not, I can't apply that across the board, but it's still something we have to consider. We have to consider how people's bias and stigma affects the way in which they market their products.

or way in which they give their skills, expertise, et cetera.

So one of the things that really stands out to me is like words that we can look out for. So I think things that I'm very aware of is like, I don't, I've always been a little bit cynical, right? It's kind of like part of who I am. Even as a young person, I was just always a little bit cynical. And now I use my cynicism to just dig a bit deeper. If I see somebody talking about something and it's a little bit vague,

I'm like, hmm, interesting, this could go either way. And I will ask a question to see, well, what do you mean by that? What do you think the solution is? what do you, you know, people will comment on my videos and it'll be unclear what side, you know, where exactly they're falling or it'll be unclear what exactly they mean. Or I see people selling things and it's unclear what they're referring to. I remember...

Couple of years ago now, I was on YouTube, advert pops up and I wasn't really sure what this company was. They were talking about like health, but they were just, they were talking around this topic and they were talking about it in such a like flowery way. I was like, what are we, what is this? And it was one of the first adverts I ever saw for GLP ones.

and it's a clinic called Juniper ⁓ here in the UK. And they've recently had some of their ads banned because of the way in which they are talking and promoting their private clinic. But yeah, like, and I've seen adverts of their since and it's still just as manipulative and just downright harmful.

Because one of the issues we have is also phrases that are being taken by weight loss brands or drug companies and used almost against the fat community. So for example, one of the ones that I've talked extensively about, we're actually going to get into in next week's episode is self-care. Self-care is continually being weaponized by the diet industry to tell us that

weight loss is self-care. When I talked about this on TikTok, let me tell you, it upset people, unsurprisingly, because this is a taboo topic. It's often a very taboo topic for folks on larger bodies, for the fat community. And so to suddenly see self-care being presented as weight loss, it's really, really dangerous, really harmful.

But there's phrases that often get taken and manipulated, you know, like body positivity is a movement that has kind of been co-opted. And really, for the most part, people are talking about it, not knowing its actual like roots, not knowing where it came from, not knowing where it started, same as like fact acceptance, things like that. And so we have to look at the way in which people are using.

these terms, these phrases, these movements to promote work or promote their products. So phrases I tend to look for things like weight neutral, right? If somebody is talking, if like, I don't know if it's in their bio or their sales page or on their website or they just use that phrase somewhere in their work, weight neutral. If they are saying that they are a weight neutral therapist or weight neutral trainer.

that tends to be like a green flag for me, right? Yes, I'll do, I'll dig deeper, but that's like a good sign to start with. Anti-diet is a fairly, I would say it's an amber flag because again, anti-diet can be a bit iffy. What does that mean to people? Because I've just, I kind of discovered that, and this was early on in my intuitive eating practice, is that ⁓ a company can say that they are

anti-diet, right? They could talk about, they can say that they don't have diet talk within their business, they don't have diet talk within their fitness workouts, but that doesn't mean that they're actually size inclusive. That doesn't mean that they are actually fully understanding how to include all bodies within that space. And that was something I learned very early on.

working with a particular business and I was like, ⁓ those two things are different. You can be anti-diet. Doesn't mean you understand how to work with fat bodies. And that's fine. Like everyone's doing their best. And I offered my feedback in that situation because I was like, look, you are doing such a great job because here's like something that I've struggled with being a part of this space. so, yeah, anti-diet.

Amber flag. Fat liberation, green flag. ⁓ Intuitive eating, again, do your research because I have seen so many pins on Pinterest of intuitive eating for weight loss. And that doesn't really make a single bit of sense to me because intuitive eating, the framework itself, is literally anti-diet.

part of the principles, part of the framework is ditching the diet talk, ditching the diet mentality. So yes, your body weight could change whilst pursuing intuitive eating as you practice intuitive eating. However, promoting intuitive eating under the guise of weight loss kind of isn't intuitive eating at all. ⁓

You know, these are things that we can start to be aware of and be aware of when we are looking at taking care of our own health as individuals or looking after our, you know, self-care, health, whatever we want to call it. The ways in which we choose to do that as individuals, these kinds of words and phrases are really helpful when we're thinking about working with someone or looking at a program

And I think it's really important that we are able to recognise that for ourselves, kind of have our bullshit lens squeaky clean because there is so much. There is so much and unfortunately we are currently in the thick of it and I don't know at what point it's filter out. But yeah, I have so many thoughts about the way in which these companies

and the way in which this industry in particular markets. But it is certainly becoming more manipulative So I hope this episode has been helpful for you. As I said, if you are interested, go back and listen to episode three and four. It's a two-parter. And I cover the intersection of diet culture, hustle culture, and online business coaching. So if you are someone who is a content creator, perhaps you have an online business, perhaps you...

have been thinking about working with a business coach, just maybe go listen to that episode and just, you know, for some kind of context of the way in which. ⁓

some of these practices are...

are kind of harmful and dangerous in the way in which they all work together.

And next week, as I said, we are going to be talking about self care. We're look at why it is a taboo topic for folks in larger bodies. And we're also gonna look at how we can take a weight neutral approach to self care and reclaim it for ourselves in our fat bodies as they are right now.

Until next time friends.