I was immediately drawn to the chemistry between the hosts, Michael Hobbes ( You're Wrong About ) and Aubrey Gordon ( Your Fat Friend ), who basically spend the episode shocking each other with research about a topic. Maintenance Phase is a podcast that describes itself as “Wellness and weight loss, debunked and decoded.” The first episode I listened to was about Weight Watchers, which is why my friend recommended it. ![]() “Have you listened to Maintenance Phase ?” I hadn’t. Then, last year, a friend who’d done Weight Watchers alongside me that last time sent me a text. But, it was always wrapped up in the promise that it was going to unlock some kind of “new me.” And then I’d just end up eventually back to the old me. And there can be a certain calm in having a program to follow. I worried that someday I’d decide to do it again. I don’t remember much about it except that I was very hungry and we put lemon peels in low-fat ricotta cheese and convinced ourselves it was dessert. When I was in high school, I did the South Beach Diet with my mom. By introducing a third party, usually, an academic, listeners can extricate themselves from Gordon and Hobbes’ hive mind and gain insights from someone less outwardly opinionated.For years, I followed health fads just like much of the world. Perhaps this is why some of the duo’s strongest episodes- in terms of journalistic integrity- are those that include guest speakers with expertise in a subject area. Maintenance Phase is a journalistic project tethered to evidence-based certitudes, even if Hobbes and Gordon don’t always act like the ideal, impartial journalist. Oz, Rachel Hollis is firm and rooted in the desire to educate the public, not to mislead. Although Gordon and Hobbes make their biased stances clear, their commitment to uncovering the disingenuousness of Ed McMahon, Dr. Percentages and experimental findings bolster their argument that almost everything we know about wellness and fatness is wrong because, well, that’s the truth. However, it should be noted that much of their skepticism is objective, aligning with scientific findings that back their feelings (or, in the case of Gordon, her personal experiences), which they delineate clearly during each episode. Maintenance Phase is, essentially, an echo chamber for those who see the horror in television series like “The Biggest Loser” and roll their eyes at celery juice cleanses, and both co-hosts lean into serving their audience with gusto. Every episode digs into the junk science behind these health scams, as well as nutrition advice that has either been disproven by experts or has been deemed by the co-hosts as “nonsensical.” Gordon and Hobbes present their research and make sure to cover as much ground as they can but do so with snark and cynicism, thereby imposing their own biases and beliefs on the listener. While the amount of research each co-host amasses to tackle the topic at hand is extensive, the podcast episodes rest on the premise that fitness influencers and weight-loss apps are selling snake oil. Since then, Hobbes and Gordon have produced 26 episodes-and-counting, getting into the nitty-gritty on Snackwell’s Cookies, Moon Juice, and the Western obsession with protein. ![]() Hobbes and Gordon have covered an impressive amount of wellness guru terrain and fad-diet frenzy, starting with detailing how the President’s Physical Fitness Test came to be required at all public schools across America at launch, Oct. The other host comes in with no (or very little) knowledge of a said topic, and they switch off every other episode. One host does all the research on a specific topic, say, Marianne Williamson or the origins of the Keto diet. Their talents as writers, specifically writers who understand the importance of fact-checking and fact-finding, shine through during their hour-long audio episodes. The former senior enterprise reporter with HuffPost was with the digital publication for three years before moving to podcasting full-time, co-hosting the wildly popular You’re Wrong About with Sarah Marshall along with Gordon on Maintenance Phase. The author is now sharing her experiences as a fat person in an anti-fat world on Maintenance Phase which she co-hosts with Michael Hobbes.īoth Hobbes and Gordon have extensive writing experience - and for Hobbes, journalistic expertise. The Portland-based writer, who previously spent five years writing a column for Self Magazine under the pseudonym “Your Fat Friend” is shedding her anonymity. Aubrey Gordon introduces herself on her podcast as a, “Fat lady about town,” and she does so with no qualms.
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