Ep 29 🌈 WTF has the toilet ban achieved?

On a top, for example.

And by top, he means an item of clothing.

Yes.

Or did you?

Hang on.

Welcome to The Outlifting Lounge, the weekly show serving queer conversation,

news and no-nonsense fitness for gay, bi and trans guys.

I'm Alan.

And I'm Derec.

Coming up on today's show, we're going to give an update about our

three-legged dog, talk about learning Spanish, get angry about the trans toilet ban

in the UK, and in the fitness section of the show, we will

be talking about calorie banking to help you lose weight.

Let's start the show.

Welcome back to the show.

We just wanted to start off by saying that we

have been absolutely bowled over by all the lovely messages

of support that we had for our little dog, Haggis.

Yes.

Haggis, unfortunately, had his leg amputated and we've had so

many lovely messages of making sure that we're okay, making

sure that he's okay, and it's been really nice.

Thank you.

We're really touched by everybody that's reached out to us.

Yeah. Thank you.

And just for a little update, Haggis has had another great week.

Lots of little mini milestones achieved, including him

starting to jump up on the sofa.

The cheeky little shit that he is.

Which is fine.

He's allowed up on the sofa, but it's getting back down.

That's the problem because he only has one front leg.

Yeah. Getting up's okay.

Getting down, not so much.

So I have started the process of building a ramp up to

the sofa and I'm a bit like Bob the Builder, but I've

also bitten off a little more than I can chew.

So it's not going as quick as I thought it

was, but all of the materials have been bought.

I've cut all of the timber to size and I'll spend some

time over the next day or two putting it all together now.

So fingers crossed it works out.

There will no doubt be a picture of it up on Instagram at some point.

So you'll need to check it out.

Well, if it looks good, yes.

If not, maybe not so much.

But yeah, it's like a little ramp and we've got some

doormats from IKEA that are going on the top of it.

So that he has got some grip, which will hopefully help

him get up and down off the sofa a little easier.

Yes, because I can't be jumping up every

five minutes when he wants to jump down.

It just gives me a heart attack.

So yeah, that would be good.

If you could finish that this week, that would be amazing.

Yes. We want to do a special shout out to Ben and his little

dog Skip as well, because they have been absolutely invaluable when Haggis was

going through all this, because little Skip is also a tripawd.

He has three legs and Ben was giving us

so much advice on things to buy for Haggis.

Just everything that we needed to know, because

we were so overwhelmed by it all.

And he's been absolutely great.

So thank you so much, Ben.

Ben is a friend on Instagram.

We haven't met in person as is normal with friends on Instagram, but

we just wanted to give a special shout out to him.

So thank you.

Thank you very much, because there was a lot of stuff that

was shortcutted for us, which we would have had to figure out

ourselves, but he just gave us the answers straight away.

So yeah, thank you.

But there's also life outside of looking after Haggis, isn't there?

What have you been doing this week?

Well, yes.

Thankfully, we're getting back to a bit

more of a structured life and routine.

So I started my first Spanish lesson on Friday with Alex, my Spanish tutor.

And I also have started up a new Instagram page called Aye Hablo Español.

And that's A-Y-E.

A-Y-E, the Scottish aye, as in yes.

In case everybody's wondering why it's spelt like that.

Just to keep me accountable and keep me focused.

So my goal basically is to be fluent in Spanish by this time next year.

I think at the minute I'm kind of lower B1 level.

So there's like three levels, A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2.

So I'm kind of in the middle.

So I think I've got a long way to go, but I've

got a good head start on my Spanish, which is good.

Yeah, definitely.

Your Spanish, like I think our Spanish is at a similar level.

Your grammar is probably better than mine.

Whereas I think I've got more kind of vocab learned than you,

but we're both at a similar sort of stage in our learning.

But it's good to see you take this next

step into formal learning to really accelerate that.

And you've been so dedicated at it as well.

So I have no doubt that you will hold

yourself accountable and you'll manage to smash your target.

And give you a kick up the arse as well.

Well, I am quite competitive, so I'll see you breezing ahead

of me and I'll think, no, no, this won't do.

I need to accelerate things as well and learn a bit more.

So here's a target for you then.

We go to Madrid in about, what, five weeks' time.

So if you don't want to be left behind with me talking

to all the Spanish boys, you better step your pussy up.

Well, our Spanish is good.

It's passable.

But yeah, let's try and learn a bit more so we're

a wee bit more confident in Madrid next month, definitely.

So yeah, why don't you give me a follow on my page?

Aye Hablo Español, A-Y-E underscore Hablo, H-A-B-L-O underscore Espanol.

E-S-P-A-N-O-L.

I didn't think we needed to spell that, but thanks, Derec.

And also, so one of our favourite shows in the

world that we always talk about is Drag Race.

Drag Race España comes back for, is it like the fifth or sixth season?

Fifth. I think it's fifth.

So, it's coming back next month, and then they're going

to have an All-Stars season, so All-Stars 2 after that.

We love the show, and it's really good for our Spanish

learning as well, because we learn lots of gay Spanish.

So, yeah, that'll be good.

That'll help with our learning, but also, it'll be interesting

to see how we are watching it this time, if

we can pick up more without relying on subtitles.

Yeah, because there's Spanish and there's

gay Spanish, and it's totally different.

It's very fast and animated, a bit like gay English. - Yeah.

But, yeah, it's going to be interesting to watch it and see, like you

said, if we can pick up on things without having to look at the subtitles.

Right, that's enough about us.

Shall we get into some topics?

We'll start with some news, maybe?

So, do you have a particular story in mind that we're going to talk about?

Well, I think we absolutely need to talk about the

big news in the UK this week, which is the

very discriminatory trans toilet ban that came into force.

Yeah, this has really, if you pardon the pun, boiled our piss this week.

Yeah. It's horrible.

It feels like we're going, like, way, way, way backwards.

The whole stupid debate, if you can even call it

that, has been framed about protecting women and girls, when,

in fact, this absolutely does nothing of the sort.

As we've spoken before, it puts some gender non-conforming cisgender

women in danger because people will now question them if

they don't look feminine enough, whatever that even means.

Stopping people going into toilets.

I actually saw a TikTok of a woman this week who

was stopped by security trying to go into portaloos with her

nine-year-old son, and they said strictly her son was not allowed.

Her and her son were not allowed to use the same portaloo,

and she was like, well, I need to go to the toilet.

He needs to go to the toilet.

I don't want him to have to stand in

that queue by himself, so what's the problem here?

And they point blank refused to let him

use a portaloo on the women's side.

This is how stupid it's getting, that it would actually

put her son in danger because her son wouldn't then

be supervised if he went to a different queue.

Yeah, it's fucking, oh my god, honestly, it angers me so much.

And their point about this is that it's about making women

safe in women's spaces, but the whole argument seems to be

focused on trans women, and they're saying that men are going

to dress up in women's clothes to go into women's spaces.

But because of this guidance, trans men now now have to use women's spaces,

which now makes it easier for cisgender men to go into a women's space

and pretend that they're a trans man and put them in even more danger.

Yeah, the whole thing's a farce and it does not make women safer.

Meanwhile, however, there are countless stories in the

media about women being attacked by men.

Sometimes, quite often, it's men that they know.

So this morning, I did a little bit of research.

I went on to the STV News website.

So that's specifically for Scotland.

And on the main page of the STV News website, I went through

and wanted to see how many stories were about men being violent or

abusive or committing unconsensual sexual acts against women and/or girls, right?

So this is just in the last few days, these news stories.

And this is what's on the main page.

So this isn't even an exhaustive list

of everything that's happened across Scotland.

But I'm actually going to read these stories out now because

I want to make a point that women and girls are

no safer now than before this stupid trans toilet ban.

So here's one: "Man sexually assaulted a vulnerable

15 year old girl in a ladies toilet."

Now it was a cisgender man.

He wasn't pretending to be trans, nothing of the sort.

Apparently he's a convicted drug dealer as well.

So he sexually assaulted a 15 year old girl in a ladies toilet.

Then there's another headline.

"Health board needs to carry out a full review after

a violent child rapist was able to flee their escort."

Another one.

"Police remain on the scene after girl found dead in water in woodland park."

Another one.

"Glasgow rape investigations ongoing months after attacks."

Another one.

"Domestic abuser who murdered partner with hammer jailed for life."

This next one is particularly chilling.

"A dad has been charged with murdering his nine year

old daughter who was found injured at an industrial site."

I am not done yet either.

There's more.

"Teen girl's life stopped after rape by man who picked her up a taxi rank."

That girl was 14 years of age.

14 years of age.

And then the last story that I found, the headline

is, "Man jailed for predatory sexual assault on young woman."

Now, these are just from the last few days.

And these are just the stories that were on the main STV News page.

So how many hundreds and hundreds of stories like this

are happening every week right across the UK and beyond?

Yeah.

And the media is just focusing on the trans toilet.

debacle, which is just absolutely ridiculous.

It's such a distraction.

And because so much resource and so much focus has been on

that, it has been allowing the real issue of violence and sexual

violence against women and girls to go off largely unnoticed.

So I am done ranting just now, but what we wanted to say,

so it's the EHRC is the body that's responsible for this new guidance.

And I don't know if you saw, but the chair

of the EHRC gave an absolute car crash interview

about this new trans toilet guidance on Channel 4 News this week.

It was absolute cringe.

So the interviewer had asked her, so what happens if, you know, someone wants

to challenge someone from using a toilet, a space, whatever it might be.

And she said, oh, you have to

ask them discreetly and sensitively as possible.

I mean, how do you do that?

How do you ask someone discreetly and sensitively what genitals they have?

It's just absolutely ridiculous.

And then she said, oh, they need to

check, but there's no actual way of checking.

So the guidance is not worth the paper that it's written on.

She was challenged quite rightly on why service providers would be

confused and how you're meant to know what gender somebody is

or, you know, what sex they were assigned at birth.

And she said this.

I'm going to roll the clip.

Generally speaking, human beings are very good at telling

the sex of somebody that they're talking to.

We've evolved over, you know, thousands of years.

To be able to do that.

And we do that on multiple points of information.

I mean, absolute ignorance.

Total ignorance.

Because we know, we know that there are cisgender women who

are being challenged in toilets because they don't look feminine enough.

Like I said at the start, boils our piss.

Boils our piss.

And then not only that, but this whole

debate has centred around protecting supposed single-sex spaces.

So then when she was pressed further about what

service providers are meant to do, she said this.

Very many small providers might, for example, have two

individual lockable rooms with sinks in them.

One of them marked male, one of them marked female.

It would be very straightforward to make both of them unisex.

So according to her, what this guidance is going to achieve is just

the removal of lots of single-sex spaces and being turned into unisex spaces.

It is so stupid.

They have tied themselves up in knots over this

nonsense, which doesn't actually serve women or girls

in the slightest.

In fact, things are now worse for women

and girls because they're losing these spaces.

It's just a way for them to be transphobic, isn't it?

Yep. Pretty much.

Pretty much.

And they're funded by the evil billionaire.

She who should not be named.

So that was a bit doom and gloom, but some good news, or

some potentially good news, is that the Good Law Project have now backed

a legal challenge to the government and the EHRC over this transphobic guidance.

Yeah, we love the people over at the Good Law Project, don't we?

They're always championing LGBTQ rights.

So it's good to see that they are challenging this as well.

Yeah, it needs to be challenged because it

basically excludes transgender people from public life.

Like, how are they meant to even leave the house at the moment?

It's just stupid.

And do you know what the problem is with this transphobic view?

It does not represent what most of

the UK actually think about LGBTQ people.

And there's a great story here from Mull and Iona Pride,

where more than 70 businesses, organisations, and community groups across Mull

and Iona have issued a rare joint statement because, unfortunately, they

had some hate comments when they were organising their pride there.

And a joyful pride event in Tobermory was overshadowed by a small

number of highly offensive and extremist comments, including images of swastikas.

Yeah, it's absolutely disgusting that we're still dealing with this.

I would actually say that it's got worse.

Things were good for a long time and things have really gone

backwards and there's so much more hate out there directed at us.

But this story is really nice because it shows such a small community

in a small part of Scotland, which might often be considered maybe rural.

People might have a view on it that it's because

of that it's maybe a bit backwards, where it's not.

It's actually quite open and progressive and we're seeing lots of

local businesses and organisations really stand up to this kind of

hate that's being directed at the LGBTQ community at the minute.

With all the doom and gloom, we need to absolutely latch on to the

good and spread that news of the good stuff that's happening where we can.

And the thing is, these are islands just off the west coast

of Scotland, you know, they're tiny little communities, but for 70 businesses

to come together to support a community is just absolutely amazing.

It kind of is a little bit reminiscent of the miners

back in the 80s when the Welsh miners, you know, from

the film Pride that supported the LGBTQ community, you know.

So yeah, it's lovely to see.

So this makes me very proud to be

Scottish that they are supporting our community.

And speaking of pride, the title of their

declaration is An Island to be Proud of.

And do you know what?

They've absolutely done themselves proud.

They've done us proud.

So thank you very much for everybody who has shown that support.

You're amazing.

So let's wrap up the news.

As ever with the podcast, we have a regular fitness section.

So we'll keep this brief, but this is something that we

saw on our favourite subreddit community, which is beginner fitness.

There is always lots of good advice and

support in that group when people ask questions.

And this one just so happens to be one of Alan's favourite topics ever.

Yes, it is.

And it's funny because a client actually messaged me

on Thursday to ask something very similar to this.

So this is in r/beginnerfitness.

Does calorie banking for the weekend actually work?

Here's my short answer.

Yes, it does.

So what they've went on to say is if my goal is

to eat 2000 calories per day to lose weight, 14,000 calories per

week, could I instead eat 1500 calories a day from Monday to

Friday and bank those extra calories for the weekend?

Since I'm usually very disciplined during the

week, sticking to 1500 calories isn't difficult.

That would leave me with 6,500 calories for Saturday

and Sunday, which is 3,250 calories each day.

As long as my total weekly intake is still 14,000

calories, would I lose the same amount of weight?

It almost sounds too good to be true.

Is calorie banking really that simple,

or is there something I'm missing?

So, essentially, short answer, yes.

And that's what lots of people in the comments are saying.

This is specifically for somebody who is trying

to lose weight, to lose some body fat.

Now, that could be for multiple different reasons, but yeah, if you

ever find yourself in the position where you think you want to

lose a little body fat, calorie counting is absolutely the gold standard.

That's the way to do it.

Yeah, think of your calories as a budget.

So if I told you, you had £2,000 to spend a day and

you decide to go out and splurge £1,500 on a top, for example.

And by top, he means an item of clothing.

Yes.

Or did you?

Hang on.

So yeah, it's all about just budgeting your calories over the week.

Now, in this example that they've used, they're saying that they would then

have 3,250 calories on a Saturday and a Sunday, which they do.

But the important thing is you still need to track your calories because

you're just like, woohoo, I've got all these calories, let's go for it.

But that's you then in the danger zone to

then be above your 14,000 total for the week.

So although you're going to bank them, it's still super,

super important to make sure you're tracking on those days.

One other thing I would say as well is if you're

going to eat more calories on the weekend than what you

normally do during the week, do not weigh yourself on a

Monday morning, because you're going to think, oh, fuck it button.

I put on weight, you have put on weight, but it's just because you're

storing more energy because you've eaten more on the Saturday and the Sunday.

And that's normally when that cycle of restriction comes in, or you

just fuck it and you're like, oh, well, what's the point?

It's just because you're holding on to more energy.

Yeah, and you could also be holding on to water as well, because

if you've been going out and you've been eating food in restaurants, there's

probably going to be more salt or a higher salt content.

So that means that your body will retain a bit more

water as well, because there's more sodium in your body.

Little things like that.

So as we say with all of these things,

it's all to be taken over a long period.

The other thing I would say is that, yeah, don't fall into

the trap either of thinking that you've written yourself a free cheque.

Like you say, you still have to calorie count at the weekend.

Sometimes that can be difficult, especially if there is alcohol involved.

Sometimes there will be some guesstimation, but maybe

try to plan in advance where you can.

Try to estimate things as best you can.

But yeah, you haven't written yourself an

absolute free cheque for the weekend.

It doesn't work that way.

So don't come to us screaming and shouting that you've

listened to our advice and you haven't lost weight.

Because yeah, chances are you're not following the advice.

Yeah.

If your calorie target, for example, in this is 14,000 and

then you're eating 17,000 over the week because you went fucking

mental at the weekend, then yeah, that'll be why.

So just stick to your calories on average over

the week and you will be absolutely fine.

Okay, there we go.

Short and sweet advice for anybody who is trying to lose some weight.

Now, if you feel, though, that you could benefit from

a little extra help to just get your nutrition working

for you, why don't you think about joining Outlifting?

So that is the service that Alan and I run.

It is specifically for gay, bi and trans guys who want to

reach their fitness and nutrition goals, all while building unstoppable confidence.

We do that through online personal training,

nutrition guidance and resources, and accountability coaching.

If that sounds like the kind of thing that you might benefit

from, we offer free, no pressure, no obligation, discovery video calls.

You can book in for one of those, have a chat with

one of us about your goals, what you want to achieve, you

can ask us questions, and then that gives you an opportunity to

figure out whether our service is the right fit for you.

So to book in for one of those, click the link

in the show notes, select your chosen date and time in

the calendar, and then we look forward to meeting you, answering

your questions, and hopefully working with you to achieve your goals.

And don't forget, if you want to get in contact with

us, why don't you drop us a message on Instagram?

It's @outlift.ing

or you can send us an email, and the address is podcast@outlift.ing

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Until next time, over and Outlifting.

Until next time, over and Outlifting.