Reid readily admits he is not a nutritionist or a dietitian but says he has done a lot of reading on the topic and offers his own story as an example. Bianca has very obvious red hair and is considered a geeky, socially awkward bookworm. It's implied that she could be 'cool' if she really tried, but she figures out early on she'd prefer to stay a loser than change herself to fit in with the 'Evernight types' (probably not a bad thing seeing how most of them are snobs and assholes who bully outcast students). It also doesn't stop the heroes from wanting her. This is usually played straight in Goosebumps, with the most notable example being Evan Ross in Monster Blood 1, Monster Blood II Monster Blood III and Monster Blood IV.

Heaven has an episode where Mary's high school friends tease a girl with frizzy red hair for wearing flannel and being fat. This was a question I was asked more than once over the course of my original weight loss journey, most often towards the end of it, as per Chapter 6 of The Fat Ginger Nerd: The Journey, part 2. I had a little over three years of true freedom. I’m just waiting for the world to open up again so I can get on with life."

Examples:

Sam from Revenge of the Island is an overweight video game geek who farted at his first and only date with a girl before Dakota and his first interactions with her are rather awkward. However, after Dakota becomes an intern, he soon starts to break through her shell. Dr Lucy Burns: Absolutely. Mary and I call it “food freedom”. And I think for any listeners that are thinking, “Oh, well I've been doing low carb and I don't have it yet, this magical “food freedom” that Lucy and Mary kept talking about”. Well, Brendan, you describe that it took you maybe four or five months to get to that point, so again, I think people if you're, if you're not there yet, just keep hanging in there. Like it will come, it really does. And you know then what happens is that you're, when you're not so obsessed, you know your brain is not so obsessed with thinking about and obtaining food, because that's what it's really trying to do, just get fuel for your body, it frees up space in your brain to do other things. The idea that I could ever lose any weight at all, let alone keep it off afterwards was, for so long, nothing more in my mind than an impossible dream. And yet, in under two years, that dream eventually, finally, become reality, and in the end all it took was for me to have found advice that actually tangibly worked. Miraculous Ladybug: Nathanael spends a lot of his time drawing, and is made fun of by Chloe for his crush on another classmate. This leads him to turn into a villain for one episode and attempt to get revenge on her.

At one point he lost several kilos by cutting out soft drinks for a time. But failure with diets established a pattern of "just eating whatever I want, whenever I want". It’s not that I’m against the energy balance model — calories in, calories out — because a lot of people can and do lose weight successfully with those approaches," Reid explains. Dr Lucy Burns: Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. So the book is “The Fat Ginger Nerd”, which again, I just, I think you're right, it has some sort of slight irreverence to it, but it makes me smile that you just own that outright. And the idea I think, Mary and I talk a lot about stigma that comes with being overweight and the fat shaming that occurs from the public and health professionals. And the fact that there's, I mean look, I could bang on about it for hours between, you know just navigating I think the world with diet culture, which is you know, you must be thin at all costs and if you're not, then you're not worthy, versus, well there's nothing you can do about it, you're overweight, you just have to learn to live with it and accept your body as it is. And there's actually a middle path, which you've just described beautifully, and the idea that you have lost, how much have you lost altogether? Brendan Reid: Yeah, well, now I have a trajectory. You know, in the past I wouldn't necessarily have cared so much about saving for retirement, because the expectation was I wouldn't necessarily live to see it anyway. But it's just opened up so many possibilities. There was a short sort of period of about three, three and a half years after I'd lost the weight, but before COVID, where I could do things like travel and get out there and see the world and attend conferences and meet people such as yourself and others. Engage with the world, learn to have conversations with real people, it's still something I'm getting used to. It's still quite new to me. But it's been good so far, just with the absence of what I used to have. I have to be careful about how I think about it at times because, you know I think, “Well, why did this have to take so long? You know, what life experience has my weight and health history cost me”? And I have to be careful about how I approach that. And what I try and do instead is rather than, you know be angry about the past, because you can't change it, right? Yes, it was a struggle, but I'm there now and part of my reason for writing the book in the first place was to help me process a lot of those feelings. It was very therapeutic as an exercise in self-healing if you like and coming to terms with what had happened. And what I like to do now is rather than be angry about the past, I can just be grateful and have gratitude for what I have now. I've had that brief window to be able to travel and see the world pre-COVID. I can't wait for COVID to be over so we can get out in the world again and do some more of that. But to have that freedom of opportunity to just live life that was just not an option for me before is something I can be grateful for. Joyride: Joyce is prudish to the point that even her only real ally in her circle of "friends" is prone to being agitated by her.Brendan Reid: Liberating, yes. That's the word I'm looking for, liberating. You know, it doesn't sound like much when you've never been there before, but when you're new to it, it's just awesome.

A 2019 paper in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, by Prof Timothy Noakes, concluded that while blood cholesterol levels needed to be monitored (because they varied considerably from person to person), a low-carb, high-fat diet consistently improved all other warning signs for cardiovascular disease. Reid resisted, not only because diets had not helped but because the consensus of opinion was that a low-carb, high-fat diet was unhealthy and did not work. The Art of Starving: Matt is a redhead who's bullied for being gay and whose Only Friend has moved away before the story started. Through the novel, he becomes more popular thanks to his new-found powers and his relationship with the school's soccer star Tariq.Otago-born and Canterbury-raised, Reid says photos of himself as a toddler show a child of ordinary proportions. Brendan Reid: I write in the book, there's 12 chapters in the book all together and the second chapter is called The Escape. And it's a chapter about the various video games that I got used to playing over those years, and how I describe them as being collectively kind of like, you use the word sanctuary, I use the expression coping mechanism. You know, I lose myself in this virtual world. If the real world is just rejecting me as it seemed to be, then I don't want to be part of that. I will find my own world, invent my own world. You know, explore the imagination, explore video games, you know the internet, whatever, so that you don't have to deal with this reality of the situation. And yes, I do write a little bit about that.

He worked in community access radio, then studied and worked in IT, shifting south after the Christchurch earthquakes. No longer a slave to hunger and not feeling people’s subtle, or not so subtle, rejection of him because of his weight, Reid met people, travelled in New Zealand and overseas, started discovering who he was and what he liked. Dr Lucy Burns: Oh, that's funny and you're very funny, as a nerd. So your nerd is a reference to your ITness. Is that what that is? Yes, I can gain weight from eating other things as well. But here’s the added dimension to it all. For me, those foods higher in carbs, whether refined or whole, don’t leave me satiated for as long as foods that are lower in carbs, and higher in protein and fat. The lower the carbs, the longer I can go between meals without hunger. The longer I go without hunger, the less I need to eat overall, and so the more stable my various markers of metabolic health – including my weight, of course – ultimately remain. I was convinced I wasn’t likely to live a long life ... so I thought ‘let’s just get out into the world and live what life I can hope for’."

Advance Praise

Dr Lucy Burns: So wonderful, because I think also what you're being able, you're describing therefore is that, you know yes, you've lost weight, which is wonderful. But you have, you know changed some major parameters of your life in that you're no longer hungry, so food is probably not something that you think about all the time, and that you no longer have pain. So you know, such important measures for, you know quality of life. As Told by Ginger: Ginger is presented this way, especially in early episodes, however her being unpopular doesn't stop her from being a Dude Magnet or befriending the most popular girl in her middle school. Brendan Reid and an old pair of trousers. PHOTO: SUPPLIEDAt 17, weighing 120kg, Reid, who was academically bright, left school a year short of completing his secondary education. Whether it is called Atkins, keto or something else, there are fierce critics of low-carb, high-fat fat diets that turn the "healthy food pyramid" upside down, promoting a daily intake virtually devoid of carbs, lean on vegetables and dripping in fat. It flies in the face of common sense and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, they say. I had chronic chest pain. To tie my shoelaces I had to ... grab my stomach and shift it to one side so that I could reach around it.