Transcript of AE 680 - Expression - Carry Weight.mp3

G'day, guys and welcome to Aussie English. My objective here is to teach you guys the English spoken Down Under. So, whether you want to speak like a fair dinkum Aussie or you just want to understand what the flipping hell were on about when we're having a yarn, you've come to the right place. So, sit back, grab a cuppa and enjoy Aussie English.

G'day, guys, how is it going? Welcome to another episode of Aussie English, the number one podcast for anyone and everyone wanting to level up their Australian English. So, today is another expression episode, but before we get into that, guys, let me mention that the Real English Discussions course is coming along nicely and it should be out tomorrow, on Monday. Fingers crossed!

So, I've gotten all my ducks in a row, all of my ducks in a line. I have organised everything and I'm hoping it'll be ready to launch by Monday. But I'm really looking forward to getting this out there to you guys, to help you level up your listening comprehension skills in three months.

The basic idea will be that you'll receive a lesson pack every single week for 12 weeks, as well as a few bonus weeks at the very end, and then you'll work through that material week after week in order to slowly and incrementally improve your listening comprehension. So, the lessons get harder and harder or longer and longer as the weeks pass, but yeah, I'm looking forward to getting it out for you guys.

There's loads of Australian content in there. Every single week is about a different aspect of Australian history, culture and news. It's me chatting with my dad, these are real spontaneous conversations. So, I think it's really going to help you improve your listening skills, especially when it comes to impromptu conversations between native speakers speaking at a natural quick pace. I know that you guys find it easy to understand me talking in these podcast episodes where I'm just presenting the content, but quite often you have trouble with multiple speakers, which is the reason I put this together.

Anyway, let's get into today's episode.

So, 'to carry weight', the expression is 'to carry weight'. I wonder if you guys have heard this one before? So, before I tell you about this expression, what it means, let me tell you a joke about carrying, right? Ok, so here we go.

Why do nurses carry red crayons?

And a crayon is like a sort of like a pencil, but they'll be coloured, right? Kids usually draw with crayons and they're kind of thick, crayons, crayons.

Why do nurses carry red crayons?

In case they have to draw blood.

Did you get it? In case they have to draw blood.

The joke here is on the word 'draw'. If you're going a draw, right? You could use a crayon, a red crayon to draw a picture of a red blood cell, right? You drawing some blood, you're drawing that blood cell. But we can also use the verb 'to draw something', meaning to extract something, right? So, if a nurse injects you with a needle and then they pull the needle, you know, they sort of extract liquid, they extract your blood with the needle, they're drawing the blood out of your veins.

They're drawing the blood out of your body, right? They're pulling it out. They're sucking it out, they're extracting it, they're drawing it out. So, why did nurses carry red crayons? In case they have to draw blood.

Alright. So, today's expression is 'to carry weight', 'to carry weight'. I wonder if you guys know what this means. I mean, it can literally mean to be carrying weight, right? If I pick up something heavy, I'm carrying weight. If a horse is in a horse race and it gets handicapped, it might have to carry a bit of extra weight. But in this sense, figuratively, it means to be influential, right?

You carry weight, whatever you think carries weight, your opinion carries weight, it is influential, right? It's very important. People should respect it because it carries weight. So, let's go through some definitions here for the different words.

'To carry something'. So, as we said, you could literally be carrying weight, right? If I put my backpack on, I'm carrying the backpack, I'm carrying the weight of the backpack. So, to carry something here is to support and move someone or some thing from one place to another. If I pick my son Noah up and put him on my shoulders, I'm carrying him.

I might carry him to the beach, you know, if he has a tantrum, I might pick him up and carry him home. To carry something. But in this sense, it is to support the weight of something, right? So, not necessarily to pick up and move something, but to kind of experience the weight of something on you, right? To support the weight of something. So, you could say the foundations of the house or the building are carrying the weight of the building, right? There, supporting the weight there, but they're not moving, they're in one place.

And 'weight', I'm sure you guys know what 'weight' means here. It doesn't mean 'hold on', right? As in W A I T, it is 'weight' as in W E I G H T. it is a body's relative mass or the quantity of matter contained by it, giving rise to a downward force. The heaviness of a person, the heaviness of a thing, right?

So, weight is actually intrinsically tied to gravity, without gravity your weightless. You have no weight, right? And your weight can change, if I were to be transported onto the moon, I think the moon has one sixth the gravity force that the earth has, so my weight would be cut down to one sixth of what it is here. If I go to Mars, it wouldn't be a sixth, but it would be less than what it is here on Earth. 'Weight'.

Alright. So, the expression means to be influential, to be influential. Let's go through some examples.

So, example number one: imagine that you are a leader in a certain field of research. You know, maybe you're a scientist, maybe you're a medical doctor doing research, maybe you're an engineer, and you have to go to a certain conference to give a talk to present your findings to all of your colleagues, to all of your peers. You know, show them your research, show them what you've been doing over the last year or so.

So, when you present your findings, when you present your research to the crowd, to the audience, because you're a big name, right? Because you're famous, you have a lot of expertise in this field, your findings carry weight. Your research carries weight. What you have to say carries weight, right? It is very influential. People respect it.

Example number two: imagine that you're the current prime minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, a.k.a. ScoMo, ok? So, you're ScoMo, the prime minister of Australia. You're currently fighting tooth and claw, you know, with as much effort as you can muster to deal with the current corona virus pandemic. So, you keep getting loads of advice from different members of parliament, from your friends, from your family, from other politicians as to how you should deal with this global disease outbreak, this pandemic.

However, you know that their opinions don't carry as much weight as experts in the field of, say, virology or pandemics. You know, the spread of disease, those experts who study that stuff. So, instead, you find experts whose opinions carry much more weight, and you follow their advice on how to handle this issue, how to deal with this situation, because their opinions, their advice, their views carry weight.

The third example here is that imagine you're overweight. So, you're a little fatter than you should be, you're carrying a little bit of extra weight. We can use the expression there literally to be carrying extra weight, to be a little overweight, to be holding onto a little bit too much fat. You know, that's sort of my situation currently.

And, so imagine that you want to lose a few kilos. You want to shed some weight, you want to lose some weight before summer comes. You know, you want to work on your summer body, you want to get that bod back for summer. You want to go down the beach, you want to strut your stuff. You want to have a six pack and show off to everyone. So, you join up to the gym, right? You get a gym membership, you sign up and you get your very own personal trainer, someone who's going to personally train you at the gym, right? A PT, a personal trainer, and you follow his instructions to the letter.

You know, you do exactly as he says. You really want to lose weight and you want to do it as quickly and effectively as possible. So, whatever he tells you, you do, right? You he says jump and you say, how high? Because his guidance carries weight. His opinions carry weight, what he has to say carries weight because of his expertise in the field of fitness. He carries a lot of weight.

So, there you go, guys. That is the expression 'to carry weight'. It is to be influential. You can often use this about someone's opinions, views, their expertise in a certain field, they carry a lot of weight.

By understanding that these numbers are not just numbers, but instead they're attached. They're tethered to pieces of the real world. They carry weight.

Your no needs to be a firm no. It may be scary, but people will come to respect you more for it. Why? Because they know that your yes will carry weight.

What I do in the kitchen isn't ridiculous, when I say something like this, it carries weight. Why does it carry weight? Why does it matter? Because of who I am.

So, as usual, guys, let's go through a little listen and repeat exercise here, where we'll work on our pronunciation. So, the idea here is that I'm going to say some words and phrases, you should find somewhere quiet away from everyone else where you can listen and repeat these off to me out loud to work on your pronunciation.

Obviously, also focus on things like intonation, rhythm, everything like that, ok? And if you want to level up your pronunciation, make sure to grab my Australian Pronunciation course at www.aussieenglish.com.au, ok? It's a really good course that'll help you sound much more like an Australian, It'll help you reduce your accent. Alright, let's get into it.

Carry.

Carry weight.

Carry weight.

Carry weight.

Carry weight.

Carrie weight.

My opinions carry a lot of weight.

Your opinions carry a lot of weight.

His opinions carry a lot of weight.

Her opinions carry a lot of weight.

Our opinions carry a lot of weight.

Their opinions carry a lot of weight.

Its opinions carry a lot of weight.

Great work there, guys, great work. So, before we get into the little fact here at the end, if you want to get the Premium transcripts, you want to get the downloads and you want to be able to use the Premium Podcast player, make sure to sign up for my premium podcast membership at www.aussieenglish.com.au, and if you want to get access to all of my other content inside the Academy, as well as three times 30 minute weekly speaking calls with teacher Ian, and there are hundreds of courses in there designed with videos, with lessons, with audio lessons to help you level up your English, join the Academy again at www.aussieenglish.com.au.

So before finishing up here, guys, I thought we could talk about overweight Aussies, right? Obesity in Australia. So, worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. In 2016, nearly two billion adults across the world, 18 years and over were overweight. And of those, 650 million were obese. Most of the world's population now actually live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than being underweight, right? Then being thin, being suffering from malnutrition.

The sad thing is obesity is preventable. Australia is no exception. In 2017/18, the Australian Bureau of Statistics National Health Survey showed that approximately two thirds of Australian adults were overweight or obese, nearly twelve point five million people. And that was an increase of four per cent from only a few years ago in 2014/15.

The survey also indicated that nearly a quarter of children in Australia aged between the years of five and 17, were overweight or obese. So, what's the cause? The fundamental cause of obesity is an energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended. Globally, there's been an increase in the intake of energy dense foods that are high in fats and sugars. An increase in physical inactivity due to the increasingly sedentary nature of many forms of work, changing modes of transportation and increasing urbanisation.

Changes in dietary and physical activity patterns are often the result of environmental and societal changes associated with development and lack of supportive policies in sectors such as health, agriculture, transport, urban planning, environment, food processing, distribution, marketing and education.

So, what are the ramifications of obesity? If you have a raised BMI, that is body mass index, a measurement designed to tell you whether or not you're overweight, not at your ideal weight, if you have a raise BMI, it's a major risk factor for non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, right? Heart disease and stroke, diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders such as osteoarthritis. Some cancers, including endometrial, breast and ovarian cancers.

What's the country's plan of attack then for dealing with this beast that is the problem of obesity? Addressing overweight and obesity Down Under requires a multifaceted and community wide approach. The Department of Health has implemented a wide range of preventative health measures to tackle obesity in Australia. The biggest issue is encouraging sustainable long term behavioural change, where individuals and families are empowered to take charge of their own decisions regarding things like what they eat and their physical activity.

At the individual level, people can limit energy intake, so the total fats and sugars that they consume, they can increase the consumption of things like fruit and veggies, as well as legumes, whole grains and nuts and engage in regular physical activity. Ideally, 60 minutes a day for children and 150 minutes spread through the week for adults. However, individual responsibility can only have its full effect where people have access to a healthy lifestyle.

Thus, things need to also change at a societal level, including both governments and industries of countries. For example, the food industry can play a huge role in promoting healthy diets by reducing the fat, sugar and salt content of processed foods, ensuring that healthy and nutritious choices are available and affordable for all consumers, restricting marketing of foods high in sugar salts and fats, and ensuring the availability of healthy food choices and supporting regular physical activity at the workplace.

So, there you go, guys. Hopefully you found this episode interesting, if you want to learn more about obesity and how to deal with obesity, check out the WHO, the World Health Organisation and the Australian government websites. So, with that aside, guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Stay tuned for the Real English Discussions course, it'll be out tomorrow. Fingers crossed it'll be out tomorrow, ok?

And with that, guys, I hope you have a ripper of a weekend. See ya!

G'day, mate! Thanks for listening to the Aussie English podcast. If you'd like to boost your English, whilst also supporting the podcast and allowing me to continue to bring you awesome content, please consider joining the Aussie English Academy at www.aussieenglish.com.au. You'll get unlimited access to the Premium Podcast, as well as all of my advanced English courses. And you'll also be able to join three weekly speaking calls with a real English teacher. Thanks so much, mate, and I'll see you soon.