The Art of Slow Living (In A Fat Body)

In this episode, we’re exploring slow living and its significance in today's fast-paced world. I’ll be sharing my personal journey towards embracing a slower lifestyle, the challenges I’ve faced, and the intersection of slow living with diet culture. We’ll be discussing the importance of self-care, and how rest is an act of rebellion against societal expectations that dictate our worth based on productivity and appearance. 

Through personal reflections, I’m encouraging you to find comfort in your own experiences and to challenge the norms that often lead to burnout and dissatisfaction.

Takeaways

• Slow living, or intentional living, has various interpretations and meanings.
  
  
• Hygge is an atmosphere of coziness, comfort, and contentment.
  
  
• Choosing to slow down is a form of rebellion against societal norms.
  
  
• Diet culture thrives on our insecurities and encourages us to hustle.
  
  
• Personal satisfaction should take precedence over societal expectations.
  
  
• Slowing down can be challenging for folks in larger bodies due to the stigma and stereotypes associated with fatness.
  
  
• Resting is essential and should be prioritised over productivity.
  
  
• Our lived experiences are powerful and should be shared.
  
  
• Ditching diet culture is integral to embracing a slower lifestyle.

Chapters

00:00 Slow Living, and Hygge: Acts Of Rebellion

06:14 The Intersection of Slow Living and Diet Culture

09:51 Challenging Societal Expectations and Personal Goals

15:11 The Impact of Patriarchy on Self-Worth

19:40 Embracing a Slow Season and Personal Reflection

23:16 The Power of Lived Experience and Self-Acceptance

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Transcript

Melanie [she/her] (00:01)
Hello friends, welcome back to The Culture of It All, welcome to season 3 episode 20. I came into this season thinking that there wasn't going to be an overarching theme. I actually think the theme is Acts of Rebellion, which right now we need, and slowing down. There's a real gentle comfort to this season of the show and I'm really looking forward to it, I really love it.

So yeah, as you can probably tell from the title of this episode, we're going to be talking about slowing down, slow living in particular, and I'm looking forward to sharing this with you and talking about what it's kind of my experience of slow living and what that looks like living in a larger body, because trust me, there are some roadblocks, some things I've kind of emotionally and mentally come up against, and that's really what I'm going to be talking about with you today.

I am going to get into some of the details. I'm going to talk about what slow living has meant for me as a content creator, as a business owner, as a parent, and as a human being, really. And whilst I don't think there's really going to be any particularly triggering content, I do want to give a content warning upfront because I will be talking a bit about the stereotypes associated with larger bodies. But I'm really not getting into any details or sharing any specific experiences. It's more so kind of

context if you will. So slow living is also known as intentional living and I think there are so many interpretations of what this means. I always like to do a little bit of research before I start these kinds of episodes and what I discovered is like most people can't agree on anything which is unsurprising but there are some really beautiful

definitions of slow living and what that means. And for me, the place where I always come back to when it comes to researching slow living or trying to embrace slow living and what that really means is Hygge You may have heard of it before. It's spelt H-Y-G-G-E. So the first time I came across this word a number of years ago,

I was like, what is this word? And again, most people don't seem to want to agree on how it's supposed to be pronounced, but in the English language, the way we seem to pronounce it is Hoo-gah And I came across Hygge many years ago when I was kind of in my early days of, I guess, like reclaiming myself, figuring out what I actually liked, what I enjoyed.

and who I wanted to be. That was a really big part of this process. I've talked about this a little bit before, but back in like 2019, I just started to realize through the help of some coaching and through the help of some like serious personal development work off the back of some really awful coaching that I had experienced previously, I just started to recognize that there were pieces of my life.

personally and professionally that didn't really reflect who I was. I'd kind of just got sucked into this perception of who I should be and

2019 was this kind of start of reclaiming myself, figuring out who I am. And this also included really understanding how I wanted my spaces to feel, how I wanted my home to feel. And of course, sometimes that can be really hard because it costs money to redecorate or change the way your rooms or your spaces feel and look. And obviously what I started to look at was how could I create that atmosphere?

what I wanted without having to completely redecorate my home. And there are so many definitions and interpretations of Hygge as I said. My favorite is a definition that I came across a while back and I've kind of saved it on my Pinterest boards and I have the image saved on my computer and it says an atmosphere of

cosiness, comfort, and contentment. To relax, enjoy the simple pleasures in life, share time with loved ones and be in the moment. And then it says best served with warm food, drinks, candles and blankets.

And of course there are some physical attributes to this kind of feeling, right? I always think of blankets and candles when I think of Hygge but the reality is that it's an atmosphere, it's kind of how we create that feeling. And for me, it's so much more than just that feeling in that space. But I think, especially since 2020, I have become a real homebody.

I have really chosen to spend more time at home than ever and sometimes I feel a lot of shame over that but I'm also reminded that like why would I not want to be in a space where I've created coziness and comfort, a place where I feel really safe? Why would I not want to be there? So you might also have heard, I feel like this is a more recent

recent word that has been used which is to romanticize our life. I see this a lot on TikTok as well, people romanticizing their day, romanticizing their life. I think that's really lovely. romanticizing feels so much more ethereal to me. It feels like I get very different vision or visual when I think about romanticizing something versus hygge But it is what it is, it's all kind of the same thing really. It's about creating that kind of space that we want.

And you might be wondering what the hell does this have to do with diet culture? But the reality is that slowing down and finding pleasure in rest, it's an act of rebellion. And for me, ditching diet culture, divesting from diet culture, that is an act of rebellion in itself, right? It's an act of rebelling against this industry.

that makes so much money, like I can't even fathom, an industry that thrives on our insecurities. And what I recognize is, again, we've talked about this on the show, there are so many intersections, and for me, hustling and not finding pleasure in rest, not slowing down, not actually taking the time to ask myself what I want and need, that doesn't benefit me. And...

So choosing to slow down, whether that's physically or mentally, it is an act of rebellion. And it is... it's no different to rebelling against diet culture. It is one in the same that when we are going against the norms, the standard expectations of our lives and what people externally want us to be, we are rebelling against those beliefs, those...

those shoulds. We live in a world that really wants us to feel a lot of shame. It asks us to be ashamed of not being enough or not doing enough. And more than ever, that our lives should look like this perfect Instagram grid or this beautifully staged Pinterest image. And I feel as though we've gotten further away from what kind of normal looks like.

I feel like growing up in the 90s here in the UK, there was definitely some external influence over what I expected life to look like. But I also remember thinking how wildly different, like, the US was and how wildly different people's lives seemed to be. And obviously most of what I got that from was TV and movies and maybe magazines. But when I speak to friends, I realized like actually, yeah.

your life was really different growing up to mine and I feel as though the rise of social media has really influenced that. You know, I see it in the way my kid interacts with social media or not really social media but I guess content, specifically YouTube, that's YouTube kids is the only thing he really participates in. But the things that he understands, the things he's aware of and

the things, the standards that we expect of each other are so different. And I just worry that this will continue with the growth of AI and what I predict to be a return of, you this perfect social media presence from a select few people who seem to have this massive influence over what we think our lives should be like, you know, what we forget what normal looks like in our lives and everyday lives and

This also includes, you know, consumerism and capitalism and the ways in which we invest our money and our resources. Because I spent so many years chasing dreams that weren't really mine. I was chasing goals that weren't reflective of my actual life.

A friend and I were chatting recently about the ideal day visualization. And in case you haven't done this before, it's something that was very popular among business coaches a few years ago. It may still be, I don't know. But it was this idea that you would sit down and kind of go through this day and you'd picture what your day looked like and when you were working and how you were working and who you working with and like your idle clients. And that doesn't sound like a lot, but actually when it was

of put in front of us. It was very dreamlike, it was very unrealistic, and my friend and I were saying that whenever we used to do that, neither of us actually had these like visualizations of a day that was reflective of our actual lives. Like mine would always be just me, I'm like well where's my husband and where's my child? But it was this belief that I could have this like amazing life as if I'm a single woman.

versus my actual life, which was school run and responsibilities and errands and the kid who relies on me and all these things. And I feel like there was this real confliction of what I thought I should want versus like actually how I was living my life. And it was all about how others would essentially perceive my business, right? And my success. It was never about what I actually really wanted. It was just all about perception. And I think

I take responsibility for my part in that, but I also think that a lot of the business coaches I worked with in early days, they really, really focused on this idea that it was about how others perceived us, this idea that you could fake it till you make it, and that you could just kind of lie your way to success. Now, that worked for them, unfortunately, but that was never going to work for me. But when I used to visualize this person, she was always thinner.

She was always doing a million things. She was always hustling. She was always trying to conform to society's standards. And this chase of these goals, these things I didn't really want, they eventually burned me. Like I was in serious debt by the end of it and it really burned me out. And after that, I became much more intentional about my time and I tried to slow down mentally and physically. And that meant, you know, leaving my work at the gym.

scaling back how I was working and really like getting back to basics is kind of how I took it. I cut back on all of like the bells and the whistles and the things I thought I should have and the investments that I'd made that really weren't worth it. They weren't investments. I was just spending money and there is a difference. There is a difference between investing in something and spending money and I just kept hoping that at some point something would happen and the really funny thing is

all the things I had wanted, all the things I'd hoped would happen, happened when I stripped everything back. When I got back to basics, when I slowed down, when I actually figured out who I was and what I wanted to talk about and I started being really honest about that, that was when the things really shifted for me as a content creator, as a business owner, and of course in my personal life as well. And

Part of that was just having a bit more space to actually reflect and figure out what I wanted.

And what I found is that I came up against a lot of the associated stigma of choosing slowness and softness, especially being in a larger body. This idea that if I wasn't always striving for more, then I'm not ambitious enough. And that was really hard. I grew up with a very ambitious and hardworking mother who doesn't know how to rest.

Resting and slowing down were not a regular part of my upbringing. That was not something we did. And I always felt like I just had to prove myself and that I had to work harder than everybody else. And I guess as I got older, what I realized is like working harder than everyone else wasn't going to make me any more successful. It really wasn't going to do what I hoped it would do. And...

I felt like if I was resting instead of working on a deadline, then I was lazy and I have a really negative relationship with that word. And so I would end up in such a spiral of body shame and feeling a lot of guilt about, you know, myself and my energy and what I wanted to do.

And it felt like such a messy web of stigma and stereotypes. And I didn't necessarily have the tools, the resources, the language back then to really think it through or process how I was feeling. What I can now see is like choosing to think outside of like the norm, challenging these stereotypes. Like it's an act of rebellion. And I think whenever we do things, you know, like divesting from diet culture, whenever we choose to push back against what society is telling us we should do.

that's always going to bring with it some discomfort and feelings as though we might be wrong. Because, you know, like with diet culture, if there's like this $70 billion industry and then there's like little old me going, I don't really want to diet. I don't want to lose weight. I'm quite content in my larger body. It's really hard when everyone on the internet is telling you that you're wrong. And I do understand that. I understand how complicated that can be.

I also felt like there was this sense that I'm like letting down feminism. It was really weird. It was like by not showing up in this way, by not setting goals and like smashing them and not finishing my year strong, which was so much of the language that used to be put in front of me, I felt as though I was like letting down other women, which is ridiculous.

And what I realized is like, not only is this complete bullshit, this feels like such a lie. It feels like another way of controlling how I spend my resources.

And as I've pondered before on the show, I started to ask myself the question, who benefits from this? Who benefits when I'm working myself into burnout? Who benefits when my mind is running at a million miles an hour? Who benefits from my self-doubt, my overthinking, and my loud inner critic? And the answer I come up with is the patriarchy. Time and time again, that is who benefits from my insecurities. That is who benefits from...

me being in this spiral of trying to chase goals that aren't mine to make myself feel more worthy. And so often this is about being more and doing more and associating my self-worth to all these external factors and to people's expectations. And I feel as though for me, when I think about slow living, it is this sense of contentment, which was my word of the year for last year.

it's about satisfaction. But like personal satisfaction rather than it being like other people being satisfied by what I'm doing. It's about having more space and like whatever that might mean to you. For me it's like having more space in my day to work on the things that really help me to make an impact. And that could be in my personal life, that could be having the space to

support my kid as he transitions through high school and as he struggles with like his friendship group. Like I have a sense of peace knowing that I am able to help him with those things. But it could also be about having more space to then also when that parenting anxiety is too much to be able to like put myself in a space that feels cozy and you know sit with a book or meditate or listen to music or whatever it might be.

And I know those things come with a privilege. And I also think that it's, again, it's an act of rebellion to be able to like, take those moments. You know, for me, it's about comfort. Self care, which I know is a very taboo topic for folks in larger bodies. I know that...

self-care can mean so many different things. Yes, it can be a bubble bath. Yes, it can be like getting a massage, but it can also be what we choose to say yes and no to, how we choose to live our lives. That is an act of self-care as well.

And it's also about resting for me. And I think that's one of the things I'm choosing to pursue more this year is working with my energy. Listening to my gut feeling, my intuition about how I want to create and how I want to work. And yeah, I feel like I'm in... I don't know if I'd call it a slow season. I feel like it's a comfortable season.

I don't want to get stuck in periods of low energy and feel like I can't get out of them. And I came across this... I don't know whether it's a poem, but this piece of writing that really resonated with me about a slow season and what that means.

I do not know who the original creator was. It came up as an image on Pinterest with no external links. It says, "When I said slow season, I meant dreams, not resolutions, hopes, not rules, rest, replenishment, honouring yourself, not hustling for worth. I meant pockets of peace, one thing at a time unhurriedly, slowly, intentionally. I meant returning home to yourself so that you have the energy to bloom when it is time."

And I really feel as though that's very representative how I felt this winter as well.

I really like to embrace the seasons and what they mean and the reality is that winter is not a time for like doing it all. But again, society tells us that it is a time for like setting and smashing goals, finish the year strong, start strong. And I'm like, when do we rest? When is it that we get the opportunity to slow down?

So as we head into this year and into 2025, I am really embracing this slowness, this comfort in my work and creativity. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to work on the podcast this year, what I wanted that to look like. I thought about that when I was planning and just the practice and the intentions around creativity right now, it can be...

really hard because it's so noisy out there and I get that. For me, I am working with what I have. I'm planning my options. I'm like figuring out what my options are, what's available to me, and then I will make decisions based on that.

But in reality, in my own life, in my personal life, for me, it's going to be about creating those spaces that I feel.

I feel a sense of comfort in. You know, I've spent a lot of time creating a home that is cozy, that reflects mine and my husband's interests. Our home is a reflection of us as individuals and as partners.

And my intention by embracing slower living is to become calmer. I have a tendency to react and not think about how I'm feeling. I want to learn to rest. I always think that I...

am resting and then I'm reminded like I was in January. like resting is productive but like resting needs to be resting. I didn't grow up in a family of people that rested. We didn't take naps. I always remember my dad towards the end of his life I remember... I don't even know where it came from but he was like, you know, just walked through the pain.

And I feel like that really sums up my parents. And I'm like, yeah, that's fine. But I don't really want to walk through the pain. I would like to just, you know, take a moment, sit down, have a rest. And like at times I think that could be good advice. I was just thinking like the state of the world politically right now. Yeah, we have to walk through the pain, but we also can't do that on our own. And to do that, we also have to rest. We also have to...

take the time to decide how we feel in those moments. I also know that I want to feel less overwhelmed, often by myself, you know, by my own expectations. And one of things I noticed last year was I would get stuck in these periods of low energy. So I track my cycle and

Even though I track it, I wasn't paying attention and then I would get stuck in these periods of low energy. My inner critic would become very loud. And so I want to pay more attention to that this year and allow myself to really feel my low energy, get comfortable with it, which means I have to work with myself and not try and push back against myself

becoming comfortable with a slower pace because I think there is it's going it's it's challenging at times to

slow down physically when you're in a larger body, even though that's what we need. And I know that for me that is about the stigma and the stereotypes that come with larger bodies and reminding myself that just because there's a lot of people on the internet who

don't agree with me or don't believe me, my lived experience is actually more powerful than their nonsense. And you know, that's the same for all of us. Like, it's so easy to question ourselves and doubt ourselves even when it's our lived experience because we can feel really isolated and alone at times.

But your lived experience is so powerful and if you ever feel the desire to share your stories, like your voice is so important and people want to hear that and there's so much relatability in those moments. So yeah, slowing down, slow living, hygge whatever you want to call it.

in a larger body can be challenging at times. There is this desire to keep pushing and don't get me wrong, there is a, I think, a fine line between working hard and ambition and burning out. But I think, I guess how I will finish this episode is by saying

That fine line is a mental fine line. It is associated more with where we or how we or who we attach our self-worth to. And I think because we live in a society that tries to attach our self-worth to our physical bodies, to our size, to our weight, to how we look, the color of our hair, the...

you know, the texture of our skin, the colour of our skin. There's so many ways in which society is trying to just destroy us in every which way. And our insecurities are the things that fund the products they ask us to buy, the ways in which they, you they want us to invest all of our resources, time, energy, into...

trying to fix these perceived flaws when in reality they are what makes us human, are what makes us different. And they are beautiful.

it only ever benefits other people. Our insecurities only ever benefit other people and attaching our self-worth to our productivity or how hard we can work or how much we can hustle, that doesn't benefit us as individuals, it doesn't benefit us as a collective either. And as I said, I just, this is my kind of...

experience of slow living and slowing down and hygge but it is open to interpretation. It is open to whatever we want it to be. And that's really kind of the conclusion I came to from doing research before this episode and just reminding myself of

how we've interpreted it. Yes, I think visually there is a certain expectation, but in reality, in real life, it can cost nothing and it can be... we can create atmosphere by who we spend time with and how we... how we live our lives. And for me...

ditching diet culture and divesting from diet culture is a part of that, it's a part of slowing down because diet culture wants me to be in this constant state of chasing and fuck that.