Can Spirituality & Fat Liberation Co-Exist?

In this episode, I’m exploring the multifaceted nature of spirituality, sharing my personal journey and how it intersects with fat liberation. I’ll be discussing the evolution of my spiritual practices, particularly during the pandemic, and the challenges of reconciling these practices within spiritual spaces often permeated by diet culture.

I’d like to note that these practices are often individual and interpersonal, and I recognise that we need community and structural changes to fight back against the injustices we are witnessing today. I also know that right now many of us are trying to find that balance between informed and overwhelmed, finding comfort, slowness, peace in practices on a personal level allows us to be better equipped to fight back against these systems of oppression.

Takeaways

Practices should be flexible and adaptable to individual needs.
Spirituality can coexist with activism and personal values.
Diet culture often infiltrates spiritual spaces, creating challenges for fat positive activists.
Spiritual practices can serve as acts of rebellion against societal norms.
Self-care rituals can be supportive for navigating overwhelming times.

Chapters

00:00 Exploring Spirituality: A Personal Journey
05:32 Navigating Spirituality and Fat Advocacy
08:54 The Intersection of Spirituality and Diet Culture
13:51 Witchcraft and Rebellion: Here We Go Again
16:28 Finding Individual Practices Amongst The Noise

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Transcript

Melanie [she/her] (00:01)
Hey friends, welcome back to The Culture of It All, welcome to this brand new episode. Thank you so much for joining me, thank you for being here and listening. I'm looking forward to today's episode, I think I always say that, but one of the really interesting things about this season of the show has been the kind of overall themes, and that really wasn't planned.

However, it is absolutely expected because the themes of this season have really been a reflection of society right now. They have been a reflection of my own experiences and journey over the last few years from, you know, pre-pandemic to the last five years navigating this pandemic and then this kind of landscape. And

With all of that, one of the things that's really struck me in this last... has it really only been seven weeks? Six, seven weeks? I have been struck by the deja vu. How familiar this all feels. It's worse, but it's familiar. It feels very reminiscent of 2020, which is so interesting, and I have many thoughts.

and I'm going to be getting into a lot of those in the next season of the show. But what that has meant is as we've come into 2025, as I started to plan out these episodes for season three and recording, I realized that without even trying, there has been this overarching theme and that theme has been rebellion.

that theme has been challenging the stereotypes and the status quo. It's been standing up for what we believe to be right, not just doing what's easy. And because of that, I think there's some really interesting conversations that I've wanted to have with you for a while. And I finally feel ready and also comfortable to have them. And as you may be able to tell from today's title,

going be talking about spirituality and I think that is for many people there's different interpretations of what that means so I'm going to kind of share with you what that means to me and I'm going to share with you why the last year really has been a real journey for me in figuring out whether my spiritual practices and rituals can coexist with fat advocacy.

So to give you some context with what spirituality means to me, I'm not a religious person. I wasn't brought up in a religious family. I was always very much allowed to make my own decisions when it came to religion and for me spirituality is not so much about religion, it's more about practices and things that ground me. It's about, I guess...

almost self-help, self-care. It's a way of helping me come to decisions. It's a way of helping me make progress personally and professionally. It wasn't always that. When I was younger, when I was a teenager, I have always had a huge fascination with astrology.

the moon. I've always been fascinated. I bought my first astrology book back in like 2003. I remember getting it and it was just something I really held dear to my heart. I now have many books on astrology and tarot and witchcraft and things like that because they things that really interest me.

doesn't mean that I'm practicing a witch or any of those things. There are people who I see doing that on a regular basis and I think it's incredible and I'm so fascinated by it. But for me, as I said, it's more about grounding. It's like a gentle reminder every day. And you will hear me talk about them as practices and rituals. They're not habits for me, it's not routine. And the reason being is because I don't like a lot of structure.

in my spirituality.

I find that I work better when there is some flexibility around everything in my life because we cannot control everything and I am a little bit of a control freak at times. So when it comes to spiritual practices and rituals, for me those words are much softer. It also means that I don't have to stick to the same thing every single day. It means I can choose how I want to start my day, knowing that these practices, these rituals will help me to...

feel more grounded. They'll help me to think clearly about what it is I'm working on or kind of come back to maybe a bigger vision I have for this podcast or my career, things that I'm working on personally or professionally. So my connection to spirituality, as it were, has really evolved and developed over time. I think that really grew and made a bigger impact in my life.

during the pandemic. It was something that I really leaned on heavily throughout the pandemic. And one of the reasons being is because at the time my business was very different and I was, overworked in, like, let's be honest, I was working way too much. And also I was finding this success that I felt like I'd always wanted and it was happening so quickly that I needed to be reminded.

slow down, I needed to be reminded to pause, I needed to really reflect on what was happening and where I was going. So it's definitely evolved and changed over time, but there are things that I still come back to. There are things I'm still always interested in. You will find me every single month. I will be working with the full and the new moon. I don't necessarily pay as much attention to everything in between because I have lots of other things going on.

But I'm always aware. I try to pay attention. I try to start my day off with a journal prompt when I sit down at my desk before I do anything else. Whether I write it down in my journal, whether I sit and think about it, whether I respond in the journaling community that I'm a part of. I try not to put too much pressure on myself to make it look a certain way.

What I find is that when I try to create these rules around my journaling in particular, I don't do it. And that was something I came up against last year. So this time last year, I was thinking about starting a podcast and I had this idea of what I wanted to do.

And I really threw myself into the fat liberation space. It was really interesting and challenging. I was already there, but my, the way I positioned myself in the space was very different at the time.

And I found myself consuming more and more content created by fat activists fat liberationists. My place within this space shifted slightly. I was still learning and I continue to learn and I will always be learning from other people. And also I wanted to start sharing my stories. And...

For some reason I felt that there was this, I guess, conflict as I divested further from diet culture. There was this conflict between my anti-diet work and the spiritual practices that I had once leaned on.

And I wasn't really sure at the time why or what that looked like or what was going on, but all I knew was I just kind of stopped journaling or really doing anything that was going to help ground me. And I don't want to tell you that that was a bad thing. It really wasn't. It's really OK. I just accepted it for what it was at the time.

What I now recognize, having gone through last year, is that I really needed to reassess. I needed to check in with myself and establish how my spirituality, my spiritual practices and rituals could coexist with my fat advocacy work. The reason being is because from my own experience, there were so many spaces, especially online, where

mindset work and spiritual practices have been weaponized. There were so many spaces where coaches were using these techniques and these things, but they were manipulating them to really sell their products, their packages, their work, right?

And I think that mindset work, personal development, spirituality, these things can absolutely coexist in these spaces. But what happens so often is things get weaponized, things get taken out of context. And I felt like that was something I had experienced way too often. And I wanted to really reflect on how I was going to

allow space for both of these things in my life.

If you follow me on social media, you will possibly have seen me share the Aquarius memes and different astrology quotes and pieces. And I was really nervous to start sharing that within the context of kind of this podcast and social media. But what I realized is that these two things can coexist because they are both something I am interested in. Me being interested in astrology and tarot and witchcraft.

doesn't change the fact that I'm still anti-diet. I still am actively divesting from diet culture. What I did recognise is that it runs a lot deeper than that, and the reason being is because what I've noticed in the spiritual space, whether it's meditation, yoga, journaling, tarot, astrology, weight loss and diets continue to come up. They continue to occur during spiritual practices. Whether I'm on

insight timer looking for meditation and there's meditations about dieting and weight loss. Whether it's yoga practices and the way in which yoga has been misinterpreted or how people would continue to use yoga as this kind of, this badge of worthiness and like there are many yoga practitioners out there who are in larger bodies and I love to see that.

One of my favorites is Jessamyn Stanley. I absolutely love the way in which they talk about moving our larger bodies and they were one of the first people I really started to follow on YouTube who didn't ignore my larger body or their larger body. And would have us like moving our stomachs and like actively talking about

our bodies during the practice. Like that was so powerful for me and that was years ago and yeah I love it. So that you know that shows to me the stark difference between yoga practices that I've had or experiences I've had where it's been about who can do it the best, who could hold this the longest, who's thinnest, who's strongest.

And like, like those things are important to people, fine, like that's their choice. But that wasn't why I wanted to practice yoga. It's never been that for me. I first became interested in yoga when I was in my late teens. And it's still this, this thing that I find hard to put into practice because again, so much of what I've seen has been about controlling my body and people not understanding that at times.

Things I can't do are not because I'm not flexible, it is because of my body, it's because of the size of my body and that shouldn't be seen as a barrier. And it shouldn't be entirely my responsibility if I'm working with a yoga practitioner, a coach or whoever. There needs to be more understanding around bodies of all sizes and shapes. But what I found is that so often it comes up as like...

I'm not built for yoga, which is not true. But it's hard to let go of that stuff. And so for me, so many of these things kind of got taken over by the very thing that I was trying to divest from. And I noticed that even in communities and groups that I was a part of, diet culture would come up, whether it was about weight loss or diets or people manifesting their weight loss or whatever it might be. That was really, really triggering for me.

and I think I just had to back off completely. Because Diet culture and gender stereotypes do not have a place in my spiritual practices. So when I hear people connecting spirituality to weight loss,

I found that really, really hard to navigate. I wasn't able to establish whether that was a personal... a personal struggle that I was going to have to navigate and how I reacted to it, or was this a space that I just didn't want to be a part of? And I'll be honest, I'm really not sure at this point. But one of the things that came up for me was, you know, I don't think that, like...

our ancestors and you know the witches who were put on trial were even remotely bothered by their weight. And I see people talking about this all the time like...

from what I've learned, you know, they didn't conform to gender and heteronormative stereotypes. You know, that goes towards why they were put on trial, right? It's why people, men, got their knickers in a twist, right? Because spiritual practices are an act of rebellion. You know, this is why over time

witches have been depicted as green, as dressed in all black, with dramatic features that don't conform to beauty standards. It's why they're seen as loners and outcasts from society. Because

The witches who were put on trial were the people who couldn't be controlled.

And the reality is that we are here again. We are in this position where society is wanting to silence voices, take away access to everything, control bodies, decisions, finances, investments. You know, it's one of the reasons why I'm seeing so many small independent businesses closing. It is really hard.

because the moment we speak up, the moment we speak out...

and do what is right.

they now have even more ways in which to control our voices and who hears or sees us.

And we have to find ways in which to navigate that and ways in which we can challenge that. And I don't have the answers to that, by the way, and I don't think it's going to be easy. But I think that we will get through that. I think we will find our ways in which to communicate with each other. The reality is for so many of us up until January, TikTok was that place.

There's no denying that TikTok was this place where, yes, there was a lot of misinformation. There was still a lot of misinformation. And yes, you can't believe everything you hear or see on the internet. And also, it was a way of really seeing what was actually going on. People actually telling you. And even if, you know, my data-driven brain looks at certain pieces, I'm like, there is a vast difference between the way in which content is consumed in these places.

And why is that important? Well, because we want to see more than just the perfection of a Instagram grid. We want to see more than what we are being told to see. Right? So who knows what that future looks like? Who knows where that is going right now? But what I know for certain is that

For me, my spiritual rituals practices, these are things that I hold on to. They are the things that I can turn to when my brain is too full, when it's full of ideas and I need to just have a day with my journal. I did this just last week. I had this idea for this next season of the podcast.

and just realised my brain was feeling very heavy. So I just sat, I put some TV on my iPad and I just sat at my desk with my journal open and I just had these like bursts of ideas and thoughts and honestly if you look at it, it often looks like a murder board. There are like

There are spider diagrams and there are labels and words and sentences that probably make no sense to anybody else, but it helps me to get really clear. And for me, that's a form of journaling. It's a form of, you know, brain dumping, journaling. It is a practice that helps me to stay grounded. And I guess one of the things to take away from this episode is that

When we think about practices and rituals, it can look however we want it to be. It doesn't have to be tarot and astrology if that is not what you're into. But now, more than ever, I think us having these grounding exercises, if that's what you want to call them, these things that we can hold onto during this time that can, you know, give us a minute to breathe, to take a moment to think about what it is that we

are doing, what we want to do, the direction we're heading in, it helps me to make decisions. Because sometimes it can be really hard to make decisions. I find that if I'm working with my values at front of mind, I'm focusing on things that are really important to me, things like community and connection, it's easier for me to make those decisions.

And so I guess this is almost like a call for people to find spiritual practices, rituals, and you don't have to call them that. Find grounding exercises, whatever it is, that's going to help you during this time. It feels really fluffy. I do get that. And that is one of the reasons why last year I really struggled to lean into these things that I've always been passionate about. Because although the things I've always been passionate about,

there were times when they got really fluffy, there were times when they could have easily been like rose-tinted glasses, and it was about navigating the middle and finding how these two things can work in harmony, how I can have both in my life and how they can work for me. Because at the end of the day I think that these practices, these rituals,

They can work for us as individuals and they can work for us collectively. And that's been really powerful because again, as a collective, as society, as the people in society who want to divest from diet culture and want to challenge the status quo and want to fight back against what we are seeing happening in the world, the injustices right now. We need to be able to

take time for ourselves. We've all talked about finding that line between being well informed and being overwhelmed.

And I don't have the answer right now. I think that it's really hard, again, in this kind of world of misinformation, it's hard to find that line between well-informed and overwhelmed. But there's this quote that I came across a while back on Pinterest. And it is that,

Empathy without boundaries is self-destruction.

Empathy without boundaries is self-destruction and it really resonated with me. I really understood in that moment that I need to be okay with finding that place for me personally where I can be informed, where I can ensure that I am paying attention.

to what is going on outside of my little tiny piece of world, because that's the reality is like for me, where I'm living and my day to day life, it would be very easy to forget that there are things going on in this world that are absolutely atrocious. And at the same time for me to essentially survive the day to day world.

I need to have those boundaries in place. And for me, journaling, tarot, meditation, whatever it might be, these pieces offer those boundaries. They offer me a boundary between being completely overwhelmed by the state of the world and keep me grounded so that I can also continue to fight alongside you and with you.

So all of that to be said, diets and weight loss do not need to be present in spirituality and astrology and even within journaling, they don't need to be there. If that is what you want to do and that is what people want to teach, that is fine, but they don't have to be a part of our individual practices.

Gender stereotypes don't have to be a part of our practices. finding that sweet spot that is going to work for you and with you is really, powerful.