Topics > Healthy Tipping Point
Healthy Tipping Point, or HTP, is the blog of Caitlin Boyle. Caitlin is also known as Katie (this is the name she used when bartending and partying in college) and A Lying Liar Who Lies. She quit her a job as an “urban planner” (actually an administrative/support staff position at an urban planning firm) to blog full-time about her healthy eating and exercise habits, even though she dislikes both of these things. She runs Operation Beautiful, a post-it note campaign whose M.O. is to end “negative self-talk”, or as she calls it, “fat talk” – because fat is the worst thing you can be!
She has a British husband who is a holistic doctor, Kristien (aka Snake Oil). Did I mention that’s he’s British? And a doctor? Caitlin mentions it all the time. Maybe not a “real” doctor, but still a doctor. I swear. With him, she claims to own somewhere between 1 and 823 businesses.
Kristien, or “The Husband” on her blog, has a Masters in Acupuncture, no Doctorate, and works at a clinic that his father owns and operates. The clinic offers services that Caitlin shills, including the spit test that “diagnosed” her “gluten allergy,” cupping, and acupuncture. Caitlin occasionally worked as a secretary at the clinic, prior to (and possibly during) her pregnancy, and she still considers this to be one of her many jobs and small businesses she runs.
They have a son, Henry. She resents the fact that she has to care for him and at one point even called her dog smarter than him. She insists that he walked early, talked early, and is generally more advanced than you. She likes to penny pinch when it comes to Henry, going so far as to make a “toy” out of an old coffee can while completely landscaping and sodding her yard.
Katie eats the same things over and over, and likes to post pictures of her food because she thinks they are interesting. These meals include: bowls of yogurt with raw oats, various nuts, berries, and nutbutters; precooked brown rice with tofu and kale, with Italian dressing on top of everything; precooked and prepackaged hard-boiled eggs; toast with scrambled eggs; toast with hummus; more brown rice, tofu, and kale, only with barbeque sauce; and bowls of cereal. She also likes to post pictures of her coffee mug, so her readers know she drinks coffee, and to remind her readers she has a small child and has to wake up early.
Caitlin hates exercise, but always has a race she is training for. She has completed two marathons, a half ironman, and numerous other races (which she counts and reports frequently), all without sticking to her training plan. Even though she has run larger races, she’s still very proud of getting out to run 2.0 miles. She is afraid of open water swims during triathlons, and writes a dramatic post about her fear before each race.
She calls herself “Type A”, but has numerous posts on to take the easy way out of everything. These include: covering your dirty dishes with a dishcloth, stacking kids toys behind the couch, and keeping business receipts in a crumpled ziplock bag. She also likes to write about how OMGbusy and frazzled she is, even though she doesn’t have much to do during the day. She is infamous for buying pre-cooked hard boiled eggs, pre-cooked lentils, and hosting dinner parties by trying to pass off Whole Food hot-bar as home cooked.
She is notoriously bad with money, although depending on whichever is more useful for her at the moment, she will say she is either fantastic with it or terrible. She’s documented overpaying and rushing into a builder-grade, AKA poorly-made house that was out of their price range, needing to sell personal items to fund her an (unnecessary) new bike for a triathlon, driving to the majority of her speaking events (often with Henry in tow, as to not need to pay for a sitter), and eating solely gas-station food or homemade sandwiches while traveling for speaking events.
The name “A Lying Liar Who Lies” began when Caitlin posted an answer to ‘what’s your biggest regret’ FAQ stating that she systematically cheated through a minimum of one entire college course. She wrote her roommate’s papers for her while her roommate helped her cheat on every Russian history test of the semester. After an uproar in her comments, including comments from her father, Caitlin deleted this information and simply stated ‘I cheated a tiny bit once and it wasn’t a big deal at all.’
Operation Beautiful has saved a frequently varying amount of people from committing suicide, as documented by hamcat ActualRunner:
December 2013 she said it was 2 people, only 1 in an elevator:
What have been some of the notes, or stories associated with them, that have stood out to you and made an impact?I’ve had two people email me who were on their way to committing suicide when they found an Operation Beautiful note and it stopped them and made them go get help. One person was getting into an elevator to get to the roof of a building to jump off and they found a note there in the elevator.
July 2013 she said it was 2 people both in elevators on HTP:
I’ve heard from two separate people that they were taking an elevator to the roof of a building and planning to jump off - but they found a note in the elevator, and it made them abort their plan.
April 2013 she said it was 3 people on HTP:
I’ve received three e-mails from people who were on their way to commit suicide when they found a note – and because of a kind word from a stranger, they halted their plan.
From the Operation Beautiful website, this person was saved from suicide by the words of a nurse and for some inexplicable reason this inspires her to post notes. Makes NO sense:
A wrote, “So I have had a problem with self esteem for a long time now, and I’m just now coming into myself and learning to love who I am. I’m 21 years old and in college. I was so down about myself and life that a day after my 20th birthday, I attempted suicide and nearly died. That’s when my eyes opened. A nurse, a complete stranger, came in to my ICU room and sat down and held my hand, she said to me “Child, you are so beautiful, and I can see you have a beautiful soul, now why would you want to go and deprive the world of your light?” And that’s when I knew… I was a good person and I am beautiful no matter what. So is everyone out there. No matter what. So I started posting notes around my college and challenged my friends on Facebook to do the same – let’s see how many lives we change!”
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