Confessions of a Fat Girl: On Diets, Distraction & Daring to Exist

This is a very special bonus episode for you to enjoy in between seasons. Season 4 will be arriving around April 8th.

Below is a snippet of the written versions of today's episode, to get the full blog join us over on Substack.

These are not confessions of a former fat girl, or a fat girl who lost 100lbs and wants to preach about how nothing tastes as good as thin. I’m not a fat girl with a somewhat acceptable larger body, curves in all the “right places”. 

I don’t fit into society's beauty standards.

You’d think that it would hurt my feelings, but it was actually a breath of fresh air, to realise that no matter what, I will never fit in.

On an exhale I simply asked myself, then what’s the point in trying? Who is all this for? This being the hunger, the mental arithmetic, the hatred towards myself for simply existing in this skin. 

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Transcript

Melanie Knights [she/they] (00:00)
Hello friends, welcome back to a very special episode of The Culture Of It All! This is a bonus episode that I am airing on all platforms, so you can listen in. It is something to carry through to the new season of the show, which is going to be starting in April. I'm also recording this on video for the first time. I'm not going be looking at the camera. There's a good chance that it's going to be horrendous. So if you don't see the video anywhere, that's why.

But I thought I'd give it a go because, you know, in case you haven't seen, I had a new haircut and I'm really feeling myself currently. Really, really, really am. So we have this new season of the show coming up. Season four will be coming very, very soon. You know, I know it's only been like a week since I said, hey, it's coming on April 8th and hey, I'm going to have a whole theme for the show. Well, you know what? I've learned a lot can change in a week. This past week. Ten days.

It's, it's, it's, it's been interesting. A lot has been going on. So just to give you a little rundown, my kid and I both got fat shamed by one of his peers. That was just an experience in itself. Something that I knew was probably going to happen at some point. And I was somewhat prepared. Also, not the first time that he has heard that word.

used maliciously against him in some way. He's very aware of what I do, he's very aware of the fact that I have these conversations, he's not oblivious to the fact that I exist in a larger body. Like that's not some... I'm not pretending, right? I'm always very honest with him, which it turns out he tells me he appreciates, which made me cry quite a lot. It was just a really interesting situation because

He was more bothered about how I was going to react, and he was annoyed, but was more annoyed that... and hurt, but he was... he felt that way because he used to be friends with this person. I think this just really solidified to him that I don't want to be friends with these kids. He's 11, by the way.

So I'm very happy that at 11 years old he has recognized things that it took me decades to figure out. Yeah, I'm very, proud of him. And if there is anything I'm doing right as a parent, I know that it is this stuff. And we're okay. But it was still a lot. And I didn't sleep that night. And then I got up at the ass crack of dawn to go look at the moon, which is beautiful. And...

Just parenting an 11 year old, 10 year old this year, this final year of primary school has been very, very hard. And I was told people warned me. Other parents I know, warned me. They told me this was going to happen in this last year. So I am actually going to do a whole episode on that experience in the coming season because there's just so much to talk about.

around that whole experience and that situation, but just know that we are fine. Then two days after that happened, I made a little old TikTok video that kind of went viral, at least viral for me. Tens of thousands of views, still has people liking it, sharing it, whatever.

For someone who you may remember a year ago, if you've been here from the beginning, I was very, very scared to start having these conversations publicly, to call out the things, not because it's not the right thing to do, but because that means I'm putting my body out there and demanding better. And I've said this before, it's far safer to be a fat person who is trying to make themselves smaller than it is to be a fat person who is divesting from diet culture and doesn't want to diet because people are like, why would you not do that?

What? But you could do that. And that's a whole other topic for another time. But yeah, I was really nervous about being visible. In fact, last year when I first started the show, my coach and I Hi Naomi. We worked through my feelings of visibility and a lot of that coming from the binary and like binary thinking and...

know, what was it that I thought was gonna happen or not happen, and just being very afraid of what could be said to me. And whilst I will still say that not the worst things have been said to me, I did not feel... things were said, people tried to argue, and I just used that block button, like it was... I was Wonder Woman and I was like fighting off these comments and haters.

I did feel this really strongly to protect my commenters, the people within my community who follow me. That was really important to me. I learned a lot. Again, I'm going to do a whole episode on this little video, but just know that it wasn't as bad as I thought it could be, or I didn't feel the way I was worried I would feel. I was worried that I would hide. In fact, I just got more sassy. And yeah, I just, I just...

was like no, I am not fucking standing for this anymore. And as I said in one of my follow-up videos, I was like I'm done being fucking nice. I am done being nice when it comes to asking for just a little bit of respect for my body, for my fat community. I'm done being nice. You're not being nice to me, I'm not going to ask nicely. And the expectation that I should be nice and ask nicely... no, I'm done. I very much am in my like fuck off, fuck it.

Fuck you era. So yeah, we're in a sassy place. Anyway, so yeah, I had this video make me really visible at a time when I was like, holy crap, like, I don't know. This is what I need right now. And somebody commented and said fat shaming doesn't exist, which was just somewhat amusing because literally the video was about the chubby filter that had suddenly done our TikTok feeds.

And I made another video calling out this person and saying, all right, challenge accepted. I invite you, if you've ever experienced this, to comment. And I had like over 60, maybe more people, comment and engage and share their experiences of body and fat shaming. And yeah, it was really, really...

heart-wrenching and beautiful and sad but like knowing we're not alone that was really important. So it was just this whole thing of like being fat-shamed, then being told it doesn't exist, being really visible. So it was just, it was a lot. And by the following week I was going to London for a show and I just didn't want to be visible.

I was like, I just need a minute to like, protect myself and just hide a little bit. And so we did that and was really tired when I came home and I don't know, I just wasn't feeling quite myself. And I was also nervous because I had my haircut on Friday. So if you haven't seen my many, because I've been hair spamming everybody on social media, I had my haircut short and

I haven't had my haircut short in 26 years, like not this short. And it was what I wanted to do in January, but I talked myself out of it. I talked myself out of having the haircut I want because when I was 12 it was a disaster, but it was a disaster for a multitude of reasons and I'm not 12 anymore. And so I asked for the haircut I wanted and my hairdresser, luckily she and I have had many a conversation about the work I do and...

she understands and she's like, look I'm not afraid to cut your hair off so if you want to cut it we will cut it. And I was like, you know what it will grow back. I'm fortunate enough that it will grow back if I don't like it. I walked out of that hair salon, you couldn't tell me shit. Like I was a different person, I still feel that way. It's like I... Who knew?

Who knew? I have not had my hair cut short in 26 years. Who knew I could have been walking around this level of confidence? I don't know what's happened. I'm sure it will ebb and flow, but yeah, I'm loving it. So I'm excited to play around with it and see what I can do. But yeah, that is the last 10 days. So all of that to be said, in between all of this, this kind of highly roller coaster, I was gonna say highly emotional roller coaster of...

experiences over the last 10 days. I've just taken a moment to think about the conversations I've been having on TikTok, the fashion content I've been really, really sharing consistently over there, and how much fun I'm having.

And I want this to just be a lesson that it's okay to plan things out, it's okay to try to prepare and get ahead of yourself, which I've done, but it's also okay to change your mind. I've said this for many years now because I think we're told that we should make a plan and that we're told if we change our plans or change our minds that we're flaky. And like, yeah, okay, there could be situations where changing your mind is not okay, right? Or it could affect others, but...

also okay to change your mind, it's okay to decide that you want something different. And it's kind of where I'm at. I decided that this coming season is actually going to look a bit different. I'm going to extend it through to the summer because I want to also start our summer series earlier. The weather is kind of warming up here and I've already been aware of the fact that I'm getting a little bit warmer. I'm needing to

get back into and adopt my like summer routines, my personal hygiene routine, something I talked about lot last year. So if you're new, you don't know what I'm talking about and I want to kind of review that and share that with you. So this next season of the show is actually going to be a mixture. It's going to be kind of summer content, summer themed content and all these other conversations that I really want to have with you. And it's going to carry us through until the summer, until kind of the height of summer when I will then be taking a break.

new episodes. I may replay some episodes, I'm not quite sure what I'm gonna do there yet, but I'm on vacation for some of August and I'll be getting my kid ready for high school. So I just need to be able to take a step back. And there will be a break, a two week break in the middle of this season, I'll let you know when it's coming up, but I'm on holiday and I need a week to get back into routine. After that my husband is moving, his office, his business is moving, so I need to also...

be kind of just aware of that. So yeah, there's a lot going on, but fuck I'm happy to sit down and chat with you all. So as I've said, this is going to be a kind of a bonus episode that I'm going to publish on all platforms. So hello, welcome. If you're new here, thank you so much for joining us. This is The Culture Of It All where we talk about what it's like to divest from diet culture whilst living life in a larger body. And this year I started a segment over on Substack.

called Confessions of a Fat Girl. And when I initially started this, I wrote a blog and this blog post was kind of an introduction to that theme, so to speak. I'm gonna be honest, nobody really read it. So I thought what I would do is go back, review it. I made some edits, gonna be honest. And I thought I would read it to you, right? I thought I would read you this.

confessions of a fat girl. This, I wanted to have these conversations, some snippets of why I'm here, how I'm here, my own experiences, and especially right now in the political climate and where we are as a society and how this affects fatness and the fat community. So get comfy, grab a drink, and I'm gonna read you confessions of a fat girl.

Confessions of a fat girl. These are not confessions of a former fat girl or a fat girl who lost 100 pounds and wants to preach about how nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. I'm not a fat girl with a somewhat acceptable larger body, curves in all the right places. I don't fit into society's beauty standards. You'd think that it would hurt my feelings, but it was actually a breath of fresh air to realize that no matter what, I will never fit in.

On an exhale I simply asked myself then what's the point in trying? Who is all this for? This being the hunger, the mental arithmetic, the hatred towards myself for simply existing in this skin. Throughout my teens and into adulthood I've existed somewhere on the fat spectrum. From the age of 10 I started participating in extreme behaviors to shrink myself.

and fit in with my peers. I grew up in a loving and caring family, parents who supported me and also didn't want me to be fat. By the time I was 10, I was aware of my body. I believed that fatness was something to avoid at all costs. My youth spent trying to prevent the inevitable. Sometimes it's hard to swallow the idea that I became the very thing my parents tried their damnedest to prevent.

sadness threatens to consume me when I remember the pride in my mother's eyes when she showed off my slimmer body, when she believed I'd figured out the things she'd spent a lifetime chasing.

I hid food as a kid, learning that if I wanted to eat something my parents would consider bad, I needed to figure out how to hide the evidence. I developed a secret binge eating disorder which led them to be even more concerned and strict over my foods. When my friends were getting chocolate at Easter, I was being told I didn't need it.

I'd shopped the shoe department whilst my friends tried on the latest trends in Topshop, River Island and New Look, complaining that the clothes made them look fat. I'd wonder what they'd of my body if they saw their bodies as fat. I refused to wear a strappy dress without covering my arms for my 13th birthday, uncomfortable about how much bigger I was than everyone else. Recently I came across a picture from that party, and unsurprisingly, I really wasn't as big as I believed I was.

And I wonder what would have happened if everybody had just left my body alone. If they'd let me grow up, learn and figure out how to live in this body. A body that was always going to be soft, round and somewhere on the fat spectrum.

What if I'd never dieted? What if I'd never been body shamed or bullied at school? What if I'd not tried to prevent the inevitable?

Spoiler alert folks, fatness happened anyway. No matter how hard I tried, the gimmicks, products and systems, they didn't work. Or perhaps they did because they didn't. And I was left to pick up the shattered pieces of my body image and confidence over and over again.

Well it turned out my body was never the problem. It still isn't, and yours isn't either. Diet culture is the problem. And the diet industry wouldn't be worth quite so much if diets didn't work. And by worked, I mean long term, lasting results for folks in larger bodies, the promise they continue to fall short on, time and time again. There are no, I repeat, no, long term solutions to fatness.

Maybe it's because we're not an equation to be solved. We're not a work in progress, nor is there a thin person within me screaming to get out.

We wouldn't need to go back to, insert your diet here, because it would have worked the first time. They wouldn't need to create silly little names for calories or challenge the most basic facts about nutrition. Like so many of you, I've tried almost everything, and one day, a few years ago, I decided I was done. I didn't want to spend any more of my life at battle with my body, and I wanted to make sure I ended the generational impact of diet culture within my family.

When I started this show, The Culture of It All, my intention was to share more personal stories. Truthfully, I got a little scared, worried I'd be too much for people, or worse, learned that I was actually on my own with these experiences.

But my fears are nothing compared to the state of the world right now. As I watch my friends across the Atlantic have their rights stripped away repeatedly and lose access to the most basic forms of support and care, now is not the time for us to be silent. During these times we need to create, collaborate and build communities to support one another. We can rely on each other's voices and creativity so that when one of us rests, we still keep fighting for autonomy, diversity, equality and equity.

And darling, I know that skinny is fashionable again. It feels like we've time traveled back to the late 90s, but here's the thing we didn't have back then, a way to connect globally.

Back then I was alone, in my purple bedroom, sitting in my bubble chair, reading a copy of Seventeen whilst Backstreet Boys played on my stereo. I was alone with my thoughts, my feelings and my questions. Now we have one another.

Staying fat is an act of rebellion. It's political and challenges the belief systems of millions of people. We will see an ongoing rise in diet and wellness trends, a hard push from trainers and coaches who make their profit from your insecurities. Why? Because when the world is a dumpster fire, things fall apart and seem out of our control. They will prey on that. They will use willpower and motivation, the desire for personal responsibility, to distract you from using your voice.

We cannot fight when we are tired, hungry, overwhelmed or distracted. Now is not the time to lose weight when we are losing our rights.

Melanie Knights [she/they] (17:53)
Thanks for listening to this special bonus episode of The Culture of It All. If you'd like more episodes, just like this one, during off weeks, you can support The Culture of It All for free on Substack, where each episode will be sent straight to your inbox. You can also choose to listen in the Substack app or via your preferred podcast player. You can find out more about how to support the show and subscribe at CultureOfItAllPod.substack.com forward slash subscribe.

Season four is coming very, soon and next season we'll be exploring what I learned from going semi-viral on tech talk, my approach to parenting a kid in a larger body, why former fat folks are mean to the fat community. Plus I'll be sprinkling in summer themed content to help us navigate the warmer weather. So be sure to subscribe to the show and you won't miss a thing. In the meantime, follow the podcast over on Instagram. You'll find me under at

Culture of it all pod, where I share snippets from the show, fat positive thoughts, of course, Aquarius memes. Until next time friends.