New Year, Still Fat

Welcome to a new season of The Culture Of It All, and our first episode of 2025!

No need to sugar coat it, this first month of 2025 has felt like a metric fuck ton of hot garbage. Like so many of you, most days I’ve struggled to find the fuzzy line between staying well informed and falling into a spiral of sadness, empathy and anger at the state of the world.

Yes, I do talk about it in this episode, and if you’d like to skip some of it then skip 06:35 - 09:35… however, I’d also like to be transparent and everything I talk about in this episode and all episodes is of course political and a reflection on the state of the world we live in.

Diet culture IS political.

If we don’t like the state of the world right now, we have to ask ourselves how diet culture plays a part in keeping us quiet? How is diet culture distracting us from the important social issues? How do our Governments use fat folks as a scapegoat in their political policies, and cause more harm to marginalised communities whilst taking away basic human rights and access to care?

We don’t have the time to be distracted, and we need to be well fed and rested in order to fight. So, yes you can skip part of this episode but my political opinions, and where I stand is woven throughout it. Please take care of your mental health, pause, come back to it, do what you need to do in order to take care of yourself.

Chapters for Ep. 019

00:00 Navigating Parenting Challenges and Personal Growth

06:35 Reflections on Political Climate and Social Responsibility

10:35 The Intersection of Diet Culture and Social Media

23:24 Creative Outlaw: Embracing Authenticity and Self-Expression

31:10 Nurturing Relationships and Personal Development

Topics discussed in Ep. 019

• The rigidity and failure connected to goal setting
• The wave of ‘New Year New Me’ marketing and GLP-1 advertising
• The shifts in social media, and how this connects to diet culture
• My words of the year, and how they reflect my intentions for 2025
• How we can embrace being a creative outlaw 

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Support the show over on Substack! You'll find regular episodes along with monthly bonus episodes in our wonderful fat positive community.

Transcript

Melanie [she/her] (00:01)

Hello friends, welcome back to the culture of it all and welcome to our first episode of 2025. Now, granted I had hoped that this episode would have been airing like the second week of January, but things have not quite gone to plan. This month has felt very, long and here we are. It is what it is. It has been a nice reminder

that when I think I'm resting I'm really not. And I was forced to slow down and my ego did not like it but here we are. I yeah I've shared a little bit about it over on social media but essentially three days before my kid was supposed to go back to school after Christmas he came down with chickenpox and

Parenting anxiety is just next level. It's just all consuming at times. And I was just very focused on trying get him to feel as good as possible And he dealt with it really well, to be honest. I seem to remember from my childhood that having chickenpox was horrific.

But he was a real trooper, so he dealt with it really well. He was back in school like ten days later. But in between all that time I then got sick because I think I was just really run down. And I feel like I haven't slept properly for like two months. So it's been a lovely start this year. But it also has been nice to slow down and a really good reminder that I am not

great at diving into new goals and things in January. You'd think I'd learn this lesson by now, I've talked about it many times over the years, and I recognized it probably five years ago or so. I used to work in a lot of communities where coaches and people were so focused on like very rigid and structured

goal setting for a long time I didn't like the word goals. They felt like something that were out to catch me out, you know, it was going to fail. was something I couldn't achieve. And I just kind of avoided using that word and I avoided setting goals for a really long time.

And it became really like a safe place to not focus on things I want to achieve because I wasn't setting goals. And I really had to shift my relationship with how I want to achieve things in my life, in my career, versus them having to be structured, rigid goals. I want things to be flexible. And

Ever since my kid's been in school, I try to find ways that I can work with our school structure, how I can work with his school days and his terms and things like that. And of course, I kind of felt like I got to really good place and then COVID happened and then I had to relearn everything and we've got to a pretty good place and he starts high school in September. So we will, we will see what that brings, but

I know that it will bring some more independence, but I don't think he is really desiring as much independence as maybe some of his peers. I don't think that he is desperate to go off and do things on his own.

And yeah, so I don't know what that's gonna bring, but you know, we'll figure out along the way, we always do. But all that to be said, This is my first week. As I'm recording this, this is my first week in like six weeks. That is normal, as in I don't have to be anywhere, I don't have to do anything, I'm not going anywhere, no one else is at home, the house is pretty quiet. It's magical, I tell you, it's magical.

And here we are, I'm able to actually sit down and record this episode. yeah, nice deep breath and exhale. And I'm so excited to dive in to recording and getting these episodes out into the world again. So this is season three of the show and I decided that we're going to really stick with seasonal releases. I've actually been doing some planning the last couple of days in terms of looking at my year.

looking at how I want to produce and share this podcast and I'm really excited for what's to come. This season is going to last into March. I have a number of episodes already planned out. I'm very excited for the things we're to be discussing. There is no kind of overarching theme. I think I shared with you at the end of last year that I really want to focus on what this show was supposed to be about in the first place before I got a little scared and panicked. This show was always supposed to be about talking about what it's

like to live life in a larger body whilst ditching diet culture. And for me, and I think for many people, ditching diet culture and living life in a larger body is about so much more than dieting. It's about so much more than not dieting. It's about so much more than food and movement. And I think it's really easy to focus on those things. It's really easy to focus on numbers and data and look at that. And that's super important, but it's not really my...

It's not really my favorite things to talk about. I feel like I'm a real storyteller. I love to share stories. I like to connect and that's really important to me. And it's one of the things I really want to focus on this year. And I want to really kind of inject that into the podcast because that was what it was always supposed to be. When I planned out this show last year, you know, almost a year ago, a big focus for me was on making it more of a personal, almost blog style podcast. That's what I really want to bring.

I don't want say bring back because I don't really know if I ever did that but there's been moments, there's been moments and I think sometimes I overthink, of course I do, I overthink what I'm sharing or I worry that no one really cares and I'm just trying to be kinder to myself, have more compassion and remember that there are people listening. Thank you, hello, I appreciate you so much. So...

Before we get into kind of this first episode back, what I've been doing, what I'm working on, what I have planned, and really it is a reflection of the state of the world right now. I am in the UK. I am not naive enough to believe that what is happening outside of my country does not affect us here. I have many friends in the US.

Of course I speak to the people I know on a frequent basis. I hear from them in the last few weeks how scared they are, how scared they've been for months. And I don't want to spend a huge part of this episode talking about the political climate. not because it's not important, it absolutely is, but I think like many of us, I'm spending

so much time consuming content on different platforms. I'm spending so much time looking at the news, listening, paying attention, that there is already so many people who are kind of able to share their perspective and what is happening. I am physically distanced from what is happening. Emotionally I'm not, but physically I am.

And it's not my place, I don't think, to have a conversation about what is happening there right now. What I can say is I stand with you. I do not agree with what is happening in the world right now. I have not agreed with what is happening for many, many years. I think once...

I started paying attention because there was a really long time where I didn't. But to be honest, 2016 and 2017 were really the years where I was like, huh, I didn't expect that to happen. And the reason I didn't expect it to happen was because I wasn't paying attention. Brexit happened. He Who Shall Not Be Named's first presidential...

term started and I didn't expect him to win then. This time we didn't have the, I had hope, but we didn't have the privilege I guess of being naive to what was possible and

I was so hopeful and I kind of sat with my friends back in November and was hoping and wishing and was holding on to as much faith as possible.

It was more a faith in humanity, a hope that people would see the truth and what is really happening. And so I wasn't surprised, but I was really disappointed.

It is painful. It is hard to watch. It is so sad. And I just really, really hope that there are some people learning their lessons. I really hope there are some people who are realizing that they really fucked up.

And that perhaps they're feeling some regret. I think that's wishful thinking, but I really hope there are people regretting the decision they made. It's harrowing to hear my friends, how they're struggling. And so I just, you know, I wanted to be very clear about where I stand.

I stand for racial justice for Black, Indigenous and people of colour. I'm committed to being an inclusive business. I'm committed to that both internally and externally outside of the work I do. I stand for LGBTQIA plus equality, personally and professionally. I am pro-choice. I...

believe the overturning Roe was an extreme, is an extreme act of violence and oppression against all people who have a uterus. And I think it's... I hope that it's a given when this is a Fat Liberation podcast that I am for dismantling the structures which oppress all people.

And I have felt so many different types of way in the last few weeks.

Where do I want to be on social media? Where do I want to create? Can I continue being on these platforms which are removing fact-checking and just using misogyny to continue to perpetuate their messages? And...

I'm seeing people talk about the fact that if we all leave, if we all leave social media, if we leave these platforms, there is an element of them winning. There is an element of we're not there to talk to each other. And I think that's one of the strongest messages I've really paid attention to in the last couple of weeks is no matter what happens on these platforms, no matter what happens.

because social media we saw during COVID was, and in the last few years, especially like on TikTok, has been an incredible place for people to communicate and for us to really see what's going on in the world, the truth of what's going on in the world, not just the propaganda. And I think...

That's the one thing that keeps me coming back to platforms like Instagram is I have true connections there with people. There are people who I enjoy connecting with,

I don't want to lose those connections because it would be so easy. It would be so easy to isolate during this time, and it would be so easily, so easy to feel cut off from the world. I already spend a huge amount of time at home, working, creating.

my online spaces, my online connections and communities are hugely important to me. And to be honest, I think I just have to see how it goes.

in terms of social media, my personal thoughts, I think, and I'm saying this from like a marketing background and having spent a number of years talking about a lot of the bullshit that

appears especially in the online business spaces and content creation spaces and marketing spaces is that we are going to, with the changes in fact checking or meta, with whatever the hell is happening over on TikTok, whatever happens, what we're going to see is people who have built their businesses and are probably selling coaching, they're probably selling us on like

books and like things that are gonna change our lives, whatever that may look like, whether it's diet culture or productivity or a course or program that's gonna help you build a quote successful business, those kinds of areas in particular, they are going to thrive right now. And that's really scary from a, from my point of view looking at it, like we got, like so many of us hated that, so many of the people I worked with

We talked about our feelings towards bro marketing, the ways in which these people were creating businesses off of complete like lies, fallacies, and inflated testimonials, and were promising people the world, and like, when you didn't get the results, telling you it was all your fault, right, blaming you. People

have spent thousands of dollars investing in these kinds of programs and courses without seeing results. And I think unfortunately we're going to see potentially a rise in that. We're going to see a rise also in in particular women owned businesses who will kind of jump on the bandwagon almost off the back of these men who are growing these businesses. There are a number of them.

who already are in those circles, and

I guess they have almost like that control of the fact that they're the women in the "boys space". But like, don't be fooled. They are playing that game just as much as everyone else. And I actually saw, it really pissed me off. I saw an advert from one of those women in particular, just recently on, I think it was on Pinterest. And she's doing this whole like, if you've been through social media and she's listening off the different phases. And like, let me tell you, that was so relatable.

I have been through all of those phases. I was like coming up in the online business world when she was already finding some success. So it's really interesting to now see how she's kind of playing that. Anyway, those are my two cents about that. But I just think that social media and diet culture are so deeply connected. Like...

It has been wild this month, the amount of diet culture marketing, especially like drugs related marketing that I'm seeing. It's this weird thing, I talked to my friend about it a couple of years ago now. Once I started really divesting from diet culture, because I wasn't in any circles kind of connected to it, I didn't really see any of that kind of January...

fitness and diet and weight loss related stuff. Like it wasn't in my feed, it wasn't showing up. And then as I started to learn more about divesting from diet culture, I started practicing intuitive eating and I was following more and more people in the anti-diet space, in the body liberation space.

because everyone was talking about it, I was very aware of what was going on. And so when there was the initial rise of GLP-1s, I wasn't seeing any kind of content about it. I wasn't seeing adverts. I wasn't even really hearing about it, but I was hearing about it third party from other people. Other people were talking about what was going on. When I tell you we had like, Christmas was done.

And instantly I started seeing adverts and content related to health and fitness goals. Walking in particular was a big one over on TikTok and the amount of adverts I have seen more recently for GLP1s. And the marketing is...

Like it's really, really good in a really bad way. Because you have to take a second to go, what is this? no. But of course, like that like two, three seconds you've spent figuring out what the hell you're looking at, it just, it grabs you and then you're seeing more of it. Same on YouTube. The way that they are positioning these drugs as a "miracle."

I'm using air quotes, you can't see me. The way they're positioning it is like self care and

the conversation about

using these being a way of asking for help. That one really hurt my soul. I was like, no. And again, like, you do you. If you, like, everybody ha- I want everyone to have bodily autonomy. So like, what you choose to do with your body is up to you. I also think that to have bodily autonomy, we have to be informed.

And I think seeing celebrities take this medication and talk about why they're taking it and then seeing comment after comment backing that up. I don't think that's necessarily being well informed. I think that is opinion. it's not fact. I also know from firsthand experience of like 20 years of dieting and trying to make myself smaller, we will do anything to do that. And also we will ignore real health issues.

if we are getting the results. And that's one of the things I'm hearing from people who aren't praising it, but they're like, I don't care, I've lost weight, so I'm gonna keep taking it because it doesn't matter that I have digestive issues or whatever else. And that's scary in itself.

And I'm just...

I think the thing I keep coming back to is it's okay because at some point we're gonna come full circle

one of the things I keep reminding myself is that just because we see it doesn't mean that everyone is doing it. Not everyone is taking them. Not everyone is doing it.

And one of the biggest struggles I've had is the self-doubt. I've talked about this before on the show, but I suffer with like chronic self-doubt. And it's very easy for me to assume that like I'm the problem. And I know that most of us joke about that, but it's, it's, it can be really bad. I've spent a lot of time trying to heal that and figure out where does this come from? And I've done a pretty good job of it.

But in the last couple of years, it's been very easy for me to go, maybe everyone on the internet is right. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I've got this all wrong. And I have to kind of work through and say, no, no, not everyone is doing it. There is science to show why this could be harmful and damaging. We know that we've been here before and it doesn't work long term.

and my lived experience of being someone who has

taken extreme measures to be in a smaller body, my lived experience tells me it doesn't work. And we know that there is no long term solution to fatness. So like, yeah, I just have to like work through it, but it can... If you are also feeling like it is overwhelming and it's so noisy, firstly it's because it is. And I feel as though we are...

being pulled in a million different directions in terms of like, pay attention to this, pay attention to that, pay attention to me, pay attention to them. It is so much. And I think for me that's one of the reasons why I'm very cautious of being on social media right now, because it's very easy for me to get sucked into that. And at the same time, I don't want to stop using my voice. I don't want to stop sharing my stories. And really, as I said at beginning of this episode, that is what this show is always supposed to be about.

it was always supposed to be about me sharing stories. And we're leaning into that. So I ask you to keep your bullshit lens squeaky clean, pay attention to the bro marketing.

I will be doing an episode this season talking about that intersection again between diet culture and bro marketing, so I'm going to kind of dive into that a bit more in that episode, and it will be applicable whether you are a content creator or in marketing or not, like it will be relevant.

But yeah, I'm just really focusing on trying to break the rules and not conform. my obnoxious Aquarius self, I don't like to conform. I like to break the rules in a really like, break the rules but not in an illegal way obviously. Somebody actually recently asked me what the story was behind

being an outlaw. A friend of mine, she hosts a journaling community and she was celebrating everybody's birthdays, or will be, and my birthday was just recently and she was celebrating my birthday and said I am her resident outlaw. And somebody was like, what is that, you know, what's the story there? And I was like, there's always a story with me. And I shared it and it was actually quite a short version of the story.

And I've talked about it again here on the show. I used to have a podcast called Entrepreneurial Outlaws, and that was born from the fact that just a few years ago, I started talking about the realities of being in the online business space, the realities of online marketing, and the struggles I had experienced. I talked about my weight gain. I talked about the shame that I felt from business coaches. I talked about

experience of like constantly feeling like I'm not enough in the online space.

And for me, being an entrepreneur outlaw, just being an outlaw in that creative outlaw has really been about taking back my creative identity, taking back what I want to do and not losing my creative integrity in the process. It's not a new story. And I think that's one of the things I came to realize is like the stories that I was reading about outlaw country music.

kind of inspired all of that. That is not a new story. So many artists feel like they have to lose their creative integrity to make money. I think one of the big changes and shifts that can happen is when we, if money doesn't drive us. I think for most of us, money is a necessity, but it's not something that drives us to create change. It's very helpful. It's great to, you know, back up and invest in creating change.

But there's change that we can create without having to actually spend money. And I realized that using my voice is one of those things and has been for a really long time. And I want to continue that kind of creative outlaw story. I want to continue sharing that. And that's kind of this podcast and the content I now create is a part of that. It's a part of my self-expression. It's a part of that identity. And I want to...

to help people to see that it is possible to break free from diet culture. And it's not easy and it's even harder if you're then in a marginalized body. And obviously the more marginalizations you experience, it makes it even more difficult. And I think one of the really interesting things as well that I've noticed in the last year is how I can feel so much safer in like my online and that kind of bubble.

I can wear an outfit that gets so much praise in my corner of the internet. People will like and share and ask questions and will tell me how amazing that outfit looks. I wear it in public, in the real world, and it's suddenly this change of energy, this shift of energy, and I'm like, shit, like this isn't actually as safe. Like being in the real world, for me, is not as safe as being in my online bubble.

And so really trying to recognize that energy and I think for me personally, it is easier for me to show up, or has been, who knows now, has been easier for me to show up in my corner of the internet and talk about my fat body than it has been for me to show up in real life on the school run at, you know, I don't know, social events or

whatever it might be, those places feel less safe. And it's not that it's a safety, like a physical safety, it's more like an emotional safety.

But through all of that, I also recognize that I'm choosing to stay fat. And I've gone back and forth and like, am I choosing to stay fat? Like there's part of me that's like, this is just what it is. I'm like, well, no, am because there is things you could, you could do, but they don't work and they're harmful and they are toxic behaviors and they're dangerous and the things that I've done in the past that are not going to help me. And so I'm like, no, at this point I'm choosing to stay fat.

I'm choosing to learn how to live my life in this fat body. I'm choosing fatness. I'm choosing happiness. I'm choosing contentment.

I'm choosing patience. You know, patience with myself, patience to learn and unlearn, patience with my body, patience with others as well, because to be honest, I need a lot more people to kind of catch up with, like, what is happening. My voice is still powerful. Even when people fail to see or hear it.

Right? And it's the same for yourself. Like, your voice is still powerful, your voice still means something, even if people fail to see or hear it. In some cases, even if people choose to not see it or hear it. But I think... yeah. It's okay to stay fat. It's okay to stay fat. And yeah, it's the new year and I'm still fat.

I'm really learning to love that about myself. yeah. So before we wrap up this episode, which has been, I know, probably a like a chaotic episode, but I haven't recorded for a while. I haven't sat down and chatted with you and I wanted to just get out everything I've been thinking and feeling. So I also wanted to share with you my words of the year

This is something I talked a little bit about at the end of last season. I did a workshop again. It was really enjoyable and it was a word of the year workshop and I went into it thinking, but last year's words were really good and really powerful and I really held onto those and like, what if I can't come up with anything? And I was feeling a little bit frantic about it. And I remembered that like, it's okay. There's no right or wrong answer. You can change your mind.

And I had some words in the back of my mind kind of coming into the workshop. I didn't think they were my words of the year, but they were words that I'd been thinking about. And so I wrote those down and we went through the process of like an hour or so. And I won't go through it all, but I ended up with three words, two kind of main words and then a kind of a supporting word. And so my word in terms of my career, the word that I'm really focusing on is create. And yes.

you know, create as in creativity and creating, but create as in create my own opportunities, create the spaces that I want to be a part of, create the collaborations, create the intentions and take action with those. Like for me, it's more of a career-based word

If I want to get this podcast in front of more and more people, I need to take control of creating those opportunities for myself. And then if I want to be a part of more fat liberation spaces, I may need to create those spaces. I may need to collaboratively. That was hard to say. So yeah, my kind of career focused word, my content focused word is create. And then more professionally, personally, sorry.

My word is Nurture One of the questions that was asked during the workshop that she asks us to kind of explore is, and I always found this question really hard, because like, what do we know is definitely happening next year or this year in 2025? And I was like, ooh, I don't know. I was like, the one thing I knew was that my kid starts high school. And for me,

And know for him as well it will be a big transition, but for me I'm aware of the transition because I've done it. He hasn't, so he has no idea what to expect. And I've been trying to calm myself down because it's far too easy for me to take all of the emotion I had throughout high school, all of the things I felt, all of the experiences I had and kind of worry about him in that way. He's already starting in very different place to me because I went to a high school where I didn't know anyone.

So I'm just trying to remind myself that his experience of high school, his transition to high school is not going to be the same as mine. He's not going to a school where he knows nobody like I did. He's got plenty of friends, he knows plenty of faces. He's really...

he's great at making friends. I found it pretty easy to make friends or at least connect, but I'm also very introverted and was very shy and had a lot of self-doubt even back then, whereas he doesn't have that. He has a lot of passions that are very, he finds easy to kind of create common ground. And yeah, he's not me. We're very similar, but he's not me. And so I'm trying to recognize kind of where my...

history ends and like where his experience is beginning and I want to really help him, I want to really nurture him through this experience.

I'm biased, but he's an incredible fucking kid and I don't want him to lose that spark. I don't want him to dim his light like everybody told me to. So I really want to help him nurture that as we go through.

this transition into high school. And so I'm kind of paying attention to that. And so my word, my other word is nurture because I want to nurture my relationships, nurture my relationship with him, And nurture just, it felt like the really, a really good word for kind of my personal progress this year.

And nurture myself, of course, like I want to ensure that I'm nurturing myself, nurturing my creativity, things that are really important to me. And my support word is actually the same support word I had last year.

assurance is my support word because through it all, I know that I've got myself like it's, it's good. It's fine. yeah, my intention for this year is to be nourished, like to nourish my mind, body, soul. That's on my vision board. keep glancing over at my vision board and

Yeah, mind, body, soul is a big part of that. I know that can sound very like woo it's not about balance, it's not about perfection, it's just about what I need, like recognizing what I need in the moment, because I'm really good at helping other people recognize what they need, but I forget to ask myself. And I've talked about that as well on here, but...

I think the biggest question we can ask ourselves, the most important question we can ask ourselves in a moment is like, what do I need right now? What do I need this year? What do I need right now? What do I need this week? What do I need from this person? What do I need for myself? Like we can use it in so many different ways, but we're so often asked, what do you want? And that's not what we need, right? What we want is really easy and it's usually very easy for us to come up with

But like what you need, I always feel like it's much more connected to who we are. It's like a deeper meaning.

So that's kind of what I'm working with this year. And I really have been reminded the last week or so as I've been thinking about getting back to podcasting, recording this episode, planning out this year of content. And whilst I'm not being rigid with it, I wanted to have an idea of like, what am I working with this year? Like, what would be good for me? And one of the biggest things I'm going to be doing is trying to work with my energy. I've been tracking my personal cycle for a good few years now and

It still fascinates me that every month I can completely be oblivious, even though it's on my calendar, to what is going on. I'm like, why am I tired? Why am I grumpy? Why am I wanting to scream and cry? And like, why am I crying over the dishwasher? Why does my back hurt? And like, all these things can happen. Then I'm like, okay, that's why. And so I want to pay more attention on a regular basis to it because I'm probably good for like 16 days out of the month.

That's probably all I have, like, where I'm really on it. And I'm like, 16 days is still a lot. Like 16 days of like good energy is a good amount. So I really want to lean into that and use that. So I'm definitely shifting how I will be producing and recording content and figuring that out as I go. But I will definitely share more about it as I go,

So even though I've talked a lot about not wanting to be on Instagram, I really, I think I'm just gonna see. I'm gonna see. Because as I said, I have a number of people I'm connected to on that podcast, on that platform. There are people who I connect with, there's content I consume. I don't wanna lose those connections. I'm

going to be shifting all of my website across the sub stack. That will be happening in the next probably month or so. And yeah, just going to get back into this flow of recording with you. So...

If you made it this far, thank you so much for listening to this episode. Thank you so much for being here. Your support means so much to me. It is the new year. There is a whole fuck ton of noise out there and I appreciate you for listening. And I'm choosing to still be fat and I will be staying fat and it's okay to be fat and it's okay to stay fat. And I know it can be really hard at times.

to remember all of those things. I know it can be really hard and noisy and feel like everyone is doing the opposite. But again, I promise you that even if it was just you and I, it's not you and I. Like, we are not the only ones who are holding our middle fingers up high to Diet Culture. There are others. And hopefully...

We will continue to grow as a community and there will be more of us.

So thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for being here and I will see you next time, friends.