‘I Always Conduct Research on Topics That Genuinely Matter to Me’

Anastasiia Deeva studies the socio-economic consequences of excess weight in Russia. In an interview for the Young Scientists of HSE University project, she spoke about why beauty cannot be measured, her desire to write a novel, ‘Dostoevskian’ burnout, and working at the hotel where The Shining was filmed.

How I Got Started in Science

I have been interested in understanding the world since childhood—as most people are, I suppose. At school, I was initially most interested in languages and literature. But later, towards the end of secondary school, I became interested in economics. I enjoyed reading various economic newspapers, including those in English, and trying to understand how the world works.

My path as a researcher began when I was an undergraduate. In my second year, I took a sociology course taught by Olga Kuzina, Candidate of Sciences in Economics and PhD in Sociology. She was a fascinating lecturer, and our seminar tutor was excellent too. I became extremely interested in interdisciplinary research at the intersection of economics and sociology.

The Focus of My Research

In 2019, having already taken that sociology course, I went to the US on the Work and Travel programme. I lived in Estes Park, Colorado, and worked at The Stanley Hotel, where The Shining, based on Stephen King’s novel, was filmed. I even visited the room where King stayed while writing the novel. The hotel is still operating. Sometimes, especially at sunset, it looks exactly like it does in the horror film—very mysterious and eerie.

Since I was a teenager, I have been conscious of my figure, worried about my weight, and counting calories from the age of 13. I noticed that at McDonald’s in the US, you see the calorie count before you see the prices. You have to dig through the menu to find the prices. It was the same at Starbucks: instead of prices, the counter prominently displayed calorie information in large letters. And I started wondering: what is the connection here? Why are calories displayed instead of prices? Could there be some relationship between these two concepts?

I worked as a waitress and noticed that people reacted differently to information about calorie content. Of course, it would be wrong to judge a person’s income level by their appearance, but it seemed to me that people who were trying to save money more often chose the most calorie-dense dishes. Those who, on the other hand, were more conscious of their health tended to choose healthier food and order a greater variety of dishes.

I returned to Moscow, started my third year, and approached my sociology lecturer. I told her about my observations, and she confirmed that they could form the basis of a research project.

That is how my term paper came about—on how people with different levels of income respond to information about calorie content in food-service establishments.

It turned out that there really is a concept known as ‘calories per dollar.’ Studies have shown that people on lower incomes tend to maximise the number of calories they get for each dollar they spend, and subsequently gain weight. People on higher incomes, by contrast, pay more attention to the nutritional content and quality of their food.

My Master’s Degree Studies

I always conduct research on topics that genuinely matter to me. I was interested in whether there was a relationship between a woman’s beauty, her likelihood of getting married, and her husband’s income. My master’s thesis was titled ‘Income Distribution and Physical Appearance in Russian Couples.’ My hypothesis was: ‘The more beautiful the woman, the richer her husband will be.’ But I cannot say that I conducted the study particularly well.

The main problem is that beauty is subjective and impossible to measure. So once again, I tried to approximate beauty through thinness. Essentially, the study turned into an analysis of the distribution of thinness. But ultimately, I did not arrive at any convincing conclusions and returned to studying the consequences of excess weight. The topic of my PhD thesis is ‘The Socio-Economic Consequences of Excess Weight in Russia.’

What Are These Consequences?

There are many of them. What interests me most is discrimination against people who are overweight.

Traditionally, three types of discrimination are commonly identified: racial, gender, and age discrimination. But contemporary researchers, particularly in the US, increasingly speak of a fourth type—weight discrimination. It is referred to as fatphobia or fat shaming. These are not identical concepts, but they are closely related.

I am not outright claiming that this is discrimination, as that would be too strong a statement. However, my research shows that an increase in the body mass index of Russian workers is, on average, associated with lower wages. According to my findings, women are most affected by this. There are also some interesting industry-specific effects. In general, the largest decrease in wages is observed among women working in the service sector.

No such relationship is found among men. If we simply look at the data, men gain weight as they get older, and their incomes increase at the same time. It therefore appears that the greater a man’s weight, the higher his wages. But this is merely a visualisation of the data. If we conduct a full econometric analysis and take all other factors into account, it turns out that there is no statistically significant relationship between excess weight and men’s wages.

Accordingly, judging by my data, there is probably no discrimination against men at all in Russia. They grow older, gain weight, become wealthier—and everything is fine for them. But there is another side to this. Men are significantly more likely than women to die as a result of excess weight and obesity. And the economic costs associated with their premature mortality are almost three times higher.

Are There Any Benefits to Being Overweight?

I have not found any. But there are international studies suggesting that, on average, people who are overweight feel happier. For example, in a 2019 paper, the German researcher Hübler explains this by suggesting that overweight people may be less anxious, have a more relaxed outlook on life, and worry less altogether. That, in turn, may be why they gain excess weight.

But from the perspective of modern psychology and social research, such an interpretation can itself be viewed as a form of stigmatisation.

What I Am Proud of

Above all, I am proud to have managed to find a balance between work and rest. It took me many years to get there. When I first started at HSE, I found it psychologically very difficult. My studies were incredibly intense, with a huge number of deadlines, and I had to give up nearly all my hobbies.

At the time, I was not in a serious relationship either. Perhaps that is why the topic of my master’s thesis eventually emerged.

But over the years, I managed to find inner balance. After completing my master’s degree, I got married. And I even feel that this has helped me achieve more academically.

Now I am writing papers very productively, making good progress with my PhD thesis, and teaching a lot. No area of my life is suffering. I feel a sense of inner harmony, and I understand that this is the result of a great deal of hard work. At the moment, everything in my life is going well.

What I Dream About

I had long dreamed of teaching at the Faculty of Economic Sciences and at ICEF. And quite recently, I was offered the opportunity to do so. If everything works out, I will be teaching econometrics and quantitative finance in the new academic year. I have dreamed of this for a very long time—probably since my third year as an undergraduate. And I am incredibly excited about it now.

But my dreams do not end there.

During my undergraduate years, I had to give up almost all my interests and hobbies. And now I really want to return to them.

I write poetry. Although during my studies, I almost stopped completely.

I would like to start writing again—and perhaps even find the courage to write a novel one day. In general, I dream of trying my hand at being a writer. I have noticed that many well-known writers were also teachers. So perhaps my chances are slightly above average.

I have been keeping notes on my phone since about the time I started counting calories—since I was around 13. Apparently, that was when I developed a certain level of self-awareness. I have about 2,500 notes now. I feel that if I put them all together, they would amount to at least 1,000 pages of text. There may even be enough material for more than one book. Of course, there would need to be an overarching storyline, but if I have enough perseverance, hard work, and inspiration, I would really like to go through all of this, organise it by topic, and see what comes of it.

For a very long time, I could not bring myself to take writing seriously. Although, if I think about it, there was actually nothing stopping me. Perhaps it is no coincidence that I chose academia and teaching. It is important to me to understand how everything works first, learn how to do things properly, find out how other people do them, and build up a huge knowledge base.

That approach is very useful in research: I double- and triple-check everything, sometimes a thousand times over. But in creative work, it tends to make things more difficult.

My Favourite Writer

I do not have a favourite scientist. But I do have a favourite writer, philosopher, and thinker—Fyodor Dostoevsky. I consider him a genius and genuinely admire him.

I discovered him quite early, when I was about 14 or 15. As soon as I became interested in self-development, I immediately started looking for answers to my questions.

At first, they were ordinary teenage concerns: why do people behave the way they do? Why do they act in one way rather than another? I observed and analysed, and at some point realised that I simply did not have enough information.

Then I thought: who is considered the most complex and famous writer? I asked my parents. They replied: ‘Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.’

And there I was, 13 years old, opening an 800-page novel… Of course, I understood far from everything.

But the book did give me some kind of explanation for what was happening in my life. I put it aside for about a year. I realised that I needed to grow up a little more. So I turned to Leo Tolstoy instead. I started with Anna Karenina. And, to be honest, I was very angry with him for throwing Anna under a train.

Later, I learned that Tolstoy had quite a complicated attitude towards women and suppressed his wife’s talent. But even then, I sensed something of that intuitively.

I read the novel with enormous pleasure. I loved everything about it, but in the second volume, the heroine’s life kept getting worse and worse. And in the end, she ended up under a train. I really wanted a happy ending. But Tolstoy did not give me one.

So I returned to Dostoevsky. After The Brothers Karamazov, I decided to start with some of his easier works.

In fact, I first came across the novel The Humiliated and Insulted. I found a quotation from it on VK, and it really struck a chord with me. After that, I read the entire novel. Then, gradually, I moved on to his major novels: Demons, The Idiot, The Adolescent… Demons absolutely stunned me.

Why I Feel Close to Dostoevsky

There are many reasons. First of all, he has an enormous number of storylines, and each one is developed in great detail. I like to delve deeply into things myself, and he also explores his characters’ inner worlds with extraordinary depth. As a result, his characters feel completely alive. I think he must have been an exceptionally observant person. I can even imagine him sitting somewhere in a café with a cup of coffee, watching people without them noticing.

I also feel very close to his concept of nadryv. At some point, I read that Dostoevsky is extremely popular in France, Germany, England, and other countries. And it turned out that the word nadryv is not even translated into other languages—it is simply written in Latin letters. I started reading scholarly research and realised that, for literary scholars, nadryv is indeed one of the key concepts in Dostoevsky’s work.

His novels almost always follow the same emotional trajectory. At first, the story unfolds calmly. We gradually get to know the characters and gain a deeper understanding of their personalities. Then, out of nowhere, like a whirlwind, events begin to accelerate rapidly, and more and more connections, conflicts, thoughts, and emotions emerge between the characters.

It is as though a piece of music starts quietly, then becomes louder, moves into forte, then fortissimo, and finally reaches a full crescendo.

Even in The Brothers Karamazov, which I read when I was very young, the courtroom scene in which Dmitri Karamazov is tried made an enormous impression on me. There is an incredible emotional explosion, and then everything becomes quiet again.

Almost all of Dostoevsky’s works are structured according to this principle. And although the compositional pattern is similar, the characters, events, ideas, and thoughts are completely different each time. I find that incredibly compelling. I already have a rough idea of what emotional experience I am going to have while reading him, but that only makes me want to read him even more.

I suppose, more than anything in the world, I would like to meet Fyodor Dostoevsky himself.

Let me go back to my own example. I counted calories for many years, but I could never understand why I sometimes lost weight and sometimes gained it. Obviously, if you eat less and exercise more, you lose weight. But I could not work out exactly how much exercise I needed. Did all the walking I did actually affect my weight or not?

So, quietly and patiently, I spent seven or eight years collecting data using FatSecret. It started out as a website and is now an app.

From the age of 13 to 20, I recorded what I ate every single day. If I exercised, I recorded that too, including the type and duration of the workout. Then my iPhone automatically started counting my steps. But I still could not work out whether walking that much was actually beneficial for me.

Then, in my third year, I discovered a new favourite subject—econometrics. It is the science of methods for processing, as a rule, economic data. At the end of the year, we had to do a project on a topic of our choice. I kept wondering what I could do my project on. One day, I was walking through a park when it suddenly occurred to me: what if I downloaded my seven years of data and simply analysed them using econometrics?

It was difficult, but I collected the data and designed a small research project. My variables included sleep, calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates, weight, the number of steps I took, and the number of workouts I did per week and per month. I walked 10,000–15,000 steps every day, sometimes as many as 20,000. And I found that the number of steps I took had no effect on my weight! Exercise, however, did.

I also received an excellent mark—10 out of 10. My project was one of the three best on the course, even though there were around 240 students. I think that was the first time I really started to believe in myself as a researcher. From then on, I fell completely in love with econometrics. I even told myself that one day I wanted to teach it.

Later, one of the lecturers on the course wrote to me: ‘Anastasiia, I am amazed. You collected all this data and analysed it. It is a very interesting and original piece of research. In all the years I have been reviewing student projects, I have never seen anything like it.’

And I thought: ‘This is amazing!’ Before that, I had thought it was simply my own quirk. But then I realised that you can turn your quirks into strengths. And perhaps if I had not been so preoccupied with my weight, I would never have become a researcher. Sometimes I even think: perhaps I should stop worrying about my weight? And then I catch myself thinking: what if the inspiration disappears along with it?

If I Had Not Become an Economist

Probably I would be a physicist or a doctor. After Year 9, when I had to choose my academic track, I took chemistry and physics and seriously considered becoming either a doctor or a physicist. But my mother, who is an economist, asked me: ‘Why don't you give economics a try?’ I read about it and realised that it really excited me and that I found it fascinating.

I also really enjoyed making coffee. That was actually one of the reasons I went to the US through the Work and Travel programme. It was unfinished business for me. I wanted not only to work as a waitress, but also to make coffee. And that is exactly what I ended up doing.

I also love making cocktails. I have always enjoyed it, more as a hobby. So perhaps I would have become a barista, bartender, or waitress.

I absolutely loved working as a waitress. First of all, you are constantly moving, so you automatically get your steps in. I also liked the feeling that I was doing something useful. And I enjoyed interacting with people. In general, I really like communicating with people, whether I am teaching or working as a waitress.

The service industry in the US is organised somewhat differently from that in Russia. There is a concept known as fine dining. I spent a long time wondering how to translate it into Russian. ‘Dining with style’? A waiter there is not simply someone who brings and clears plates. They get to know the guests, ask how they are doing and what kind of mood they are in, and tell them about the dishes and the chef. It is part of the culture.

And the tips are huge. Ten to 20 per cent is perfectly normal, and sometimes it can be as much as 40 per cent. Once, my tip was actually larger than the bill itself. That is probably why I enjoyed the job so much. You immediately see the results of your efforts: if you provide good service, you receive instant appreciation—including financial appreciation.

My Ordinary Day

Since my third year as an undergraduate, I have had a routine that I cannot—and have no desire to—give up. I always go to Azbuka Vkusa. I have coffee and breakfast there, usually a sandwich. It is an essential part of my day. Only after that do I start checking my work email, replying to messages, and dealing with various tasks.

It is very important for me to have my morning coffee there. By then, I have already had a chance to interact with people, feel part of a community, and properly wake up.

Then, as a rule, I answer my work emails and get various processes under way. After that, things are fairly standard for a lecturer. If I have classes, I go and teach. If it is a free working day, I go home and work on my research.

In fact, I hardly ever take a break from research. I never really stop thinking about it. I am constantly noticing things, coming up with new ideas, and thinking about what else could be studied. Even when I meet up with friends, we often discuss my research. I ask them, ‘What do you think?’ And, strangely enough, people who have nothing to do with this field sometimes come up with brilliant ideas simply because of their life experience.

And in the evening, I always make time to relax. Harmony is very important to me. I meet friends, spend time with my husband and family, or go and play volleyball. During the warmer months, I like to take a book and go down to the river.

Whether I Have Experienced Burnout

I have not experienced it since I started my PhD. But I went through severe burnout during my master’s degree. I would call it ‘Dostoevskian.’ It was probably a transitional period. As an undergraduate, I understood what I was doing. I do now as a PhD student too. But during my master’s degree, I had absolutely no idea. I eventually managed to answer that question for myself, but at the time I could not. And now I am even wondering: why did I experience burnout then, but not now?

Probably because now I feel that I am among people who share my interests. I am doing something I genuinely enjoy. Everything in my life is in its proper place. I am always interested in what I am doing. I have a clear understanding of my goals and tasks—for the day, the week, the next six months, and the year. And that is why I do not experience burnout.

My Hobbies

Volleyball. During the warmer months, I simply play in the park; when it is cold, I go to training sessions. I really enjoy spending time with friends. In fact, this area of my life has never suffered—I have always made time for it, regardless of my studies. I suppose interacting with people could be described as one of my main interests.

I also enjoy reading. And I would really like to try my hand at writing. I do not know whether I will succeed. But today, for example, I am going to a session at the Luch literary studio to discuss poems I wrote seven years ago.

What I Have Been Reading and Watching Lately

At the moment, I am reading The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life by Edith Eva Eger, who also wrote The Choice: Embrace the Possible. She is a Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned in a concentration camp. In The Choice, she tells her own story, while in The Gift she focuses on inner freedom and self-acceptance. There are 12 chapters—12 keys to inner freedom. I really like the book. But I do not read more than one chapter a day, and sometimes it takes me two days to get through one. After each chapter, I want to stop and think, and reconsider some things.

I am generally a slow reader. I am constantly underlining things and writing down thoughts. So the process takes time. Now I want to read The Choice as well.

I really enjoyed the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights. It is one of my favourite books. I read it when I was about 12, and it made an enormous impression on me. Since then, I have watched many adaptations, including the one starring Tom Hardy. And now there is a new version starring Margot Robbie.

The director said that she wanted to make the film the way she herself saw the book when she was 12 or 13—through the eyes of a teenager. When I saw the trailer and read the interview, I immediately thought I would like it. And I was right: for me, it is the best adaptation of the novel. It even changes the ending. In this version, Cathy dies together with her child. I understand the director’s logic. When I was young, the whole story revolved around the love between Heathcliff and Cathy for me. When Cathy dies, the story essentially ends. Yes, Heathcliff continues to suffer afterwards, but the main story is already over.

Advice for Aspiring Scientists

As I said earlier, I have not experienced burnout in recent years because I am doing something I genuinely enjoy and feel that I am in the right place. It is an amazing feeling: you wake up happily, look forward to getting on with your work, and are happy to go to work.

So my main piece of advice to early-career researchers is to do what you genuinely enjoy, rather than what you feel you ‘should’ do.

I remember that even during my undergraduate years, many of my friends and classmates chose subjects based on how useful they thought they would be. They would say, ‘I would rather take sociology, but law is more useful.’ As a result, they studied without much enthusiasm, generally got rather low marks, and often skipped classes.
 

I chose sociology. And in the end, I became the top student on the course because I was genuinely interested in it. I suppose the same thing happened with my research. I could have studied macroeconomics or finance, but I chose to focus on excess weight. There are virtually no publications on the socio-economic consequences of excess weight in Russia, apart from the work of my academic supervisor. There is, of course, a great deal of medical research, but the socio-economic side of the issue has barely been studied.

When I first started working on the topic, people often asked me, ‘Are you sure? Is this even a scientific topic?’ But in the end, everything has worked out for me, I find it genuinely interesting, and I am very glad that I chose not what was considered the right or useful thing to do, but what I genuinely wanted to work on.

My Favourite Place in Moscow

Although I am a native Muscovite, I am still fascinated by the city. I love the centre most of all—the area within the Garden Ring. I can walk around there for hours. I feel that I know almost all the routes. I also love Moscow’s parks, especially Serebryany Bor nature reserve, because you can swim there.