Body Shame to Body Neutrality: My Story Of Diet Cycling

In this episode, Melanie shares her personal journey towards body neutrality and fat acceptance, exploring the negative impact which dieting had on her physical, emotional and mental health from a young age. She reflects on her childhood, and the struggles of being a teen and trying to fit in and conform to certain stereotypes. She discusses the challenges she experienced when starting a business, making weight loss her career because it was the only constant in her life, and how her life of dieting impacted her success. You’ll hear how Melanie started to question different areas of her life, what led to her quitting diets all together and what she’s working towards now. 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Personal Reflections
07:35 Content Warning For This Episode
08:59 Childhood Experiences with Diet Culture
17:56 CW: hiding food, binge eating
19:33 90s Diet Culture, Teens & Conforming to Feminine Ideals
25:22 Married Life & The Pursuit of Thinness
29:43 Experiencing Body Privilege
32:42 Pregnancy & Body Image
38:08 Personal Development & Weight Stigma
43:15 Reflecting on a Decade of Change
49:32 Reminder That Our Thoughts Can Change, Just Like Our Bodies

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Transcript

Melanie Knights [she/they] (00:00)
Hello friends, hello my plus size pals, hello everybody. Welcome back to the culture of it all. If you are new here, thank you so, so much for joining us. I am feeling rested, recharged and ready to record. I feel very energized, very excited to be back in front of this microphone. I've just got back from a period of time away with my family. We had a little holiday and...

whilst I didn't do anything I planned to do and I'm not really one for sunbathing because I am 50 shades of red and I don't like the heat but anyway my family get a lot from it and I do like being in the pool and what it did give me was the opportunity to plan out the next few weeks of the show so I am very very excited to be back in front of my microphone and chatting with you all

So you may notice from the title of today's episode, it's a little bit of a different one. I was trying to figure out whether I had shared this in kind of one whole episode previously, and I have not. So today I'm going to be sharing with you my story. My story and the experiences I've had that have led me to this point in relation to Fat Liberation.

ditching diets, divesting from diet culture, and kind of how I ended up here. Because there is a lot. Let's be honest, there's a lot. It started in childhood, and I'm now 38. There is a lot that has happened over the last 30-something years that has led to this point. And to be quite honest, I've been very hesitant to share my story. Part of the reason is because I can sometimes overthink and

will stop myself from sharing pieces of my story where I don't feel like they're going to necessarily offer support. My friend Ali and I were chatting about this the other day and she put it so well, it's very easy to think that everything has to be like wrapped up in a little bow. That's kind of my history of working in online business, which I will get to later on in my story. That's what we're taught. We're taught that everything has to have this like story arc and everything has to be wrapped up in a bow. Well, I'm not at the end of my story. Yes, there are certainly...

you know, a beginning, middle and end to today's episode, but that's not the end of my story. And it's not wrapped up in a little bow. That's not life. It's not finished. So I decided that I'm ready to share that story. And the reason I felt ready to share this story is because I've recognized recently through my social media content that I've not been speaking up as loudly about the impact of diet cycling and how that impacts

weight gain, weight regain, and can impact us later in life. I heard myself in a lot of videos saying things like, well for some people, fatness is not a choice, because you know everyone likes to have that debate with me. And I started to question myself and out of curiosity, right, I was, wasn't being judgmental, I was asking myself, but who is it I think it's a choice for? And very quickly I recognized that I don't think it's a choice for anybody. I don't.

And so I went on record in a couple of videos recently and have said, it's not a choice for anyone. And of course, when I make that statement, it's always met with the same argument. Sometimes it's packaged a little bit differently, but the same argument is what is brought to the table or brought to the comments, I should say. And that is that, "no, no, it is a choice. You eat too much and you don't move your body."

And as I said, it gets repackaged slightly differently every time. Some people want to say, "I'm fat and I know about this." And some people are like, "I used to be fat and I know about this." And yes, I roll my eyes out very loudly and, you know, I've talked to no end about the fact that fatness is not a choice. And I am here to stand my ground and say it's not a choice for anyone. And with all of that and all of those conversations, I've...

in between that had lots of comments from people with similar experiences. When I've talked about diet cycling and fat shaming as a child over the past few months on my social media pages, there's been a lot of people who have resonated with those particular pieces of my story, have shared their own experiences, have talked about the first time they were fat shamed, have talked about who did it, right? They remember so, so clearly, as do I, as do maybe some of you. And

We've also had conversations about the impact of that bullying from a young age and how that led to diet cycling and then a lifetime of trying to make ourselves smaller. And I think this is an area of weight and fatness and fat liberation, I guess, that's not talked about as openly because

And I don't know why, I don't know why, I was gonna say because, but I don't know exactly why it's not talked about as openly. It's not as openly discussed. And I could see that even myself, I was not talking or speaking up about diet cycling in the way that perhaps we really need to be talking about it. So with that, I have a number of episodes planned over the coming weeks, and we're going to talk about different things in relation to diet cycling.

gonna talk about dieting red flags, the whole thing. But I thought that a good place to start was to talk about my experience and to share with you some of the things that have kind of led me to this point because as my friend Ali also said, I have kind of some unique pieces in this story from being a child who did not enjoy sports. I still don't enjoy sports. Never been into sports. Never participated in any.

activities like that. And then I became a personal trainer. And I've heard myself also say a number of occasions on social media, I've talked about my experience as working in the health and fitness industry and being a personal trainer, making weight loss my career. And I always say that's story for another time. Well, my friends, today is that time.

Melanie Knights [she/they] (07:37)
Hello, pals, it's Melanie from the future in the editing studio, if you will. I just want to let you know that I forgot to add a content warning to today's episode. And honestly, this is probably one of the more important times that we need to have this in place. So please take care of your mental health. Today's episode, I am going to be talking about childhood, diet cycling. I'm going to be talking about restriction, my binge eating disorder. I will be talking about bullying.

I get into like what happened, but I'll be talking about it. I'll be talking about restriction. Again, I'm not getting into details, but I'm going to talk about the impact that had on me. I will also be talking about some of the body image issues that I experienced. Even during a period of time where I had some body privilege, I'll be talking about some of the more ⁓ mental and emotional impact that that had on me.

won't be getting into any of like the finer details of what I was doing because I don't think that's beneficial or supportive to any of us but I will be talking about it so please take care of your mental health first please prioritize that if you need to pause come back that's fine if you need to skip today's episode that is also fine I'll be back next week also take a look at the chapters of the episode because I'm gonna do my best to make sure those reflect the different sections of these conversations so yeah

Thank you for listening and I appreciate you. Let's get into today's episode.

Melanie Knights [she/they] (08:59)
So before we get into today's episode, a quick reminder that you can subscribe to the Culture of It All on Substack by heading to cultureofitallpod.substack.com forward slash subscribe and you can choose between the free or paid plan. Subscribers get early access to episodes, regular bonuses, including creative resources, blogs, videos and more. You can follow the show on Instagram at Culture of It All Pod where I share episode updates and the stories, my fat thoughts and the odd Aquarius meme.

you can join me over on TikTok at Melanie Knights where we discuss plus size fashion without the diet talk, body image, parenting and fat acceptance.

Like so many of us, my experience of dieting, diet culture, body shame, fat shaming, and what felt like a lifetime of poor body image started as a child. Now, I have pictures of me from childhood and I look at them and I think, what was everybody's issue? I don't understand.

what people saw. Because I can't see it in those photos. I was never going to be a thin kid. Genetically, if you look at my family, I was never going to be a thin kid. But, or and, in those photos I see like just a regular kid. I don't see perceived weight issues. I don't know.

what started this concern. This prevention, right? That was kind of what I grew up with. was constantly this like, need to prevent me being fat. I was a normal active kid. I played. I did PE at school. I didn't love it, but I think that was for various reasons. But I was also a very indoorsy kid, right? I was an indoorsy kid. I was an indoorsy teenager.

I liked being inside, I don't like the sun, I don't like the heat, I don't like bugs, I'm sorry. I would love to be more of a nature person, but I'm not. I was never into organized sports. And I think partially that was because I was never encouraged. From school, no one ever encouraged me to be more athletic, nobody ever encouraged me to participate in sports. I was already, already being kind of written off very early on. And I also grew up

Watching my mum focus very much on her weight and her dress size. I watched her try to reach certain size goals. Those were ingrained in my memory. I actually mentioned it to her the other day and it was almost like she'd forgotten. And she was like, well, I never got to that size. And I was like, you did because I remember you owning the specific type of skirt that you used to talk about.

But it's interesting now to think about the subtle impact that that had on a very young me.

So I watched my mum diet cycle my entire childhood. We always had diet products in the home. We did have very limited processed foods. That is something I'm very aware of. And we had a lot of like quote health foods, right? Foods that people would consider to be healthy, especially back in the 90s.

I remember not being allowed to participate in Tuck at my first school, so for any of my non-British listeners, if you don't know what that is, it's kind of like... I have no idea what the equivalent would be. Basically my first school that I went to, they had every break time there was... ⁓

little tuck shop. So basically you could go and buy sweets or crisps or you know whatever candy I can't quite remember, it was a long time ago, I don't remember exactly what was sold. But I know it was foods that I didn't have at home and I was never allowed to participate in this, right? Every break time this happened I was never allowed to participate. My parents refused to ever give me money. All of my friends were allowed to go and have sweets or crisps or whatever it was.

And feel like that was my very first feeling, like there was some kind of restriction being put on me, and me not fully understanding why. And I kind of got a little bit savvy as time progressed, and I came across some like loose change in our house, and I took it to school. I snuck the money into school and I bought some tuck that day.

I got in the car when my dad picked me up and I have this vivid vivid memory I can picture myself sitting in the car and him telling me or asking me somehow like catching me out that he'd found out basically that I had taken this money to school and bought Tuck.

I never knew how. How did he know? I never knew how he found out.

And I've often wondered, did the teachers contact him? Were they like in cahoots? Was there like some kind of like mark on me? Like don't give her this, she's not allowed this. I don't know. I was, I was so, so young, right? I left that school in year one. I was probably five or six. So this happened before the age of six and

Unfortunately he passed away when I was 16, so I'm never gonna know. My mum has no recollection of this happening. My dad was a stay-at-home dad when I was a kid, so he did the school pick-up and drop-off. I just, I don't know how he found out or why that happened, but it's like my first vivid memory of there being some kind of restriction in place when it came to food.

And I remember when I moved schools, I moved to a new primary school and I noticed how differently other kids would eat. That was also my first occasion of recognizing that a lot of people didn't follow the rules. So there was a rule at my school, and this again was back in the nineties. There was a rule that you were not allowed to take like chocolate and sweets into school. That's a rule that still applies now at my kids school. And my first day...

I sat down and I opened my lunchbox and... and you could picture this, right? If you grew up in the UK in the 90s you would know exactly what lunchbox I had. I think it was pink. I don't know what like specific design it was but it was one of those plastic square ones, uh-huh, with the little handle and the little thermos that came inside. Yes. I opened my packed lunch and there is a bar and I burst into tears because...

I thought it was chocolate and I thought I was gonna get in trouble, which is also really interesting to me because we didn't have chocolate in the house. So I don't know why my brain was like, my dad's packed me chocolate and I'm gonna get in trouble because we're not allowed chocolate at school. And I cried. And one of the lunch ladies came over to me and was like, what's going on? And I was like, I'm really sorry, I've got chocolate anyway. It was a cereal bar. It wasn't chocolate.

Which I think is very interesting right now looking back at it how my brain was like freaking out because of this chocolate that wasn't chocolate. Anyway, there was a lot of emotion. There was a lot of emotion for me around food already at a very young age. And as I got older, I started to spend my dad went back to work and I spent a lot of time in my grandparents house after school because my parents were both working and

My grandparents' house was full of all the things I wasn't allowed to have. It was full of biscuits, as in like cookies, ⁓ chocolates, sweets, everything. My grandmother, she was very old-fashioned. She would cook everything within an inch of its life. She made the best baked potatoes. They were delicious. They...

were so ridiculously cheesy, but yeah, they were delicious anyway. But she cooked in a way that my parents didn't cook, right? So this, was very clear now as an adult, I can see how my dad, because these are my dad's parents, how he definitely deviated from like the way they were, the way they prepare food, the kinds of foods they ate, like he didn't do that. He tried to kind of do it differently. And she always had.

so many biscuits and cookies and chocolates and sweets in the house. And so at some point in that time where I would spend my after school hours at their house doing homework and sitting in their spare room watching the tiny little black and white television, being quite bored, ⁓ I learned to sneak into the kitchen. They couldn't hear me. I unfortunately used that to my advantage and I would sneak cookies.

and chocolates from the kitchen and I would hide the wrappers in my bag and I would take them home with me. That was my first kind of experience of binging and I was in primary school. That was the first time that I started to hide food.

Now this was happening on a very regular basis, so I think at this point I probably did gain some weight. I remember in primary school my mum taking me to have my thyroid checked. I remember very clearly understanding this was to do with my weight, like being told that I was having my thyroid checked because my family has a lot of endocrine issues and it being connected to, like my uncle had thyroid problems, my, ⁓ I think my aunt does as well, and so that was kind of

my first experience of being taken to the doctors for that purpose. I was probably nine, maybe younger, I was very young.

And when I went to high school, you know, I continued this, I continued this restriction, I continued this binging, I continued to try and diet and control my body. It became that much more overwhelming in high school because there's so many more hormones and so much more, I'm trying to fit in so much more. ⁓ During that time, my mum and I...

the very typical 90s bonding mother and daughter we went to a fat club together.

I also had a lot more independence over my food choices because I would eat at school. My parents were both working full time at this point, so there was just a lot more independence on my part. And obviously I started to, you know, walk to and from school and things like to and from the bus and things like that. I also was consistently being bullied from primary school through high school. I was being bullied for how I looked, my size, not being athletic, whatever it was.

And I was constantly trying to fit in as well, right? I don't think that's really anything new. I think a lot of us just want to try and fit in during high school. And by the end of high school, I had lost some weight, very much through restriction and exercise, And I was conforming to as many feminine beauty standards as possible. Like, I was just on that path. I was so determined.

just fit in, I wanted to just... I just wanted to look different, I wanted to be this different version of myself.

And what I just kind of discovered is in my final year of high school, I started to receive interest from boys, which I would now say, ew. That was really important to me at the time. ⁓ It was this very weird experience. People who had never, he'd either bullied me or they had never even given me the time of day. All of a sudden I was visible.

Which was really awkward because I was still very very shy and awkward. So that was really difficult to navigate. But yeah, that like one or two year period of time was very interesting because nobody had ever ever even noticed me and all of a sudden I was thin-er, ⁓ thinner and conforming to all these beauty standards. ⁓ So I don't think that helped.

in any way, of course it was kind of my goal to some extent, but it didn't help because I then just needed to control myself even more, right? I was furthering myself down this path of needing to control myself. I couldn't let myself gain weight or look different, out of place. And unfortunately, a few months after this, my dad passed away and I was 16, almost 17, and I slowly gained...

weight. I remember there's a of very significant moments I can remember in the months after him passing away where I noticed that I'd gained weight, something that I hadn't necessarily noticed in myself but like certain clothing didn't fit me and things like that. And I just remember feeling a lot of shame over that which is so incredibly sad when I look back at it because I was grieving.

and I was grieving for a very long time. That grief is never gonna go away for me. And I then spent the next 17 years cycling through diets. I would lose weight and I would gain weight. I would try every possible diet there was in order to try and control myself.

During those 17 years, I never stayed the same weight for very long. was never learning about nutrients or personal preference or how to respect my body. I continued down this path that felt like I was putting off all of these life events until I was small enough, until I was thin enough. I wasn't going to try and do this or that until I was this size. I wasn't going to buy clothes until I was that size. I...

would consistently be looking for the next thing to try and put me in that 5%. That was my life. That was, you know, every single year. I would jump on every diet, the promise to keep me full and lose weight, because guess what? I really fucking like food. So for me, that was always the like selling point. And guess what? It was a bunch of shit. It always was like, always was a lie. But

I always saw my body size as temporary and so because of that I wouldn't shop in plus-sized clothing stores because I was so ashamed of myself. I would not buy clothing that fit me.

I find it so sad when I look back because I just think to myself if I had like just for a moment accepted my body at the size it was, if I had just stopped, I do wonder what my life would, you know, my body would be like now. All of those things. I wonder what my life would have been like in between because

I just feel so sad for that version of me who didn't like what she saw. Right? She didn't like what she saw. She always wanted to be something else and someone else.

And so fast forward a little bit, my husband proposed to me on 31st of December 2009. We were on holiday in New York. It was all very romantic. And what I remember is, I remember the proposal. Like I do remember all of that, but I remember the very next day we were still there. We went for dinner and I ordered a salad. Because of course the first thing I thought

was I need to lose weight for my wedding.

And 18 months later when we got married I was still plus size. I was still plus size. But I had been focused on dieting of some kind for over a year.

And I'd also been very obsessively working out. And when we returned from home from our wedding, so we got married in New York as well, and when we returned home from our wedding, I remember heading back to the gym and just having this very overwhelming feeling of like, well, what now? Like, I'd had this, this thing that I'd been working towards this date, this goal. And I was like, well, now what? Like it lost its...

It lost its excitement, it lost its illusion. And then the next six months felt like a constant battle. They really did. I remember I was really struggling with trying to control my body. We also bought our forever home and we were starting our married life, but I was very unhappy in those six months. And once we moved to this house,

I decided to hire a personal trainer because I seen their advert, they lived down the road from us. I actually think it was like that first weekend we moved here, I saw the banner when I was walking our dogs and I was like, that's what I'm going to do. That's what I'm going to do. And this decision, this decision to hire that personal trainer that year, it really started a very, very unhealthy obsession with exercise and food.

And it also led me to becoming a personal trainer. I hated my corporate career. I didn't see it as a career. It was a job that I didn't enjoy. I had always kind of felt like I wanted to work for myself, but didn't really know what I would have done because I didn't really have any hobbies. And so when my personal trainer suggested that I could blog and do this for a living, I jumped on that straight away because

For me, I think at the time, someone who had always been big and always, you know, quote, struggled with my body, to be seen by someone who is a personal trainer, who fits into this like space, telling me that I could do this for a living, I was like, okay. And that's kind of what started me down this route of getting certified and becoming a personal trainer. Now I do want to say,

that although this experience ended up being incredibly unhealthy, for many reasons, I did learn about nutrition. However, it was all moralized. It was all very much good and bad, and it was all focused on weight loss. So yes, I did learn about nutrition, but I learned about it through this very, very distorted lens. And in the long run, it took me, it took a lot of unlearning because I wasn't just...

I knew certain things, but I had to unlearn all this other baggage that came with that knowledge, because I'd only ever known it in one particular way. And so I pursued my personal trainer qualifications. started, I started studying. I, me and that personal trainer parted ways. That's an interesting story, but probably for another time. We parted ways. I carried on. I went to the gym.

got gym membership, I started working out, ⁓ obsessively. Obsessively. And I had body privilege for about six months. And it was a super interesting experience when I look back because no one cared about anything else other than my body. Right? We hear about this all the time. Some of you may have also experienced it, that

Everyone just wanted to talk about my body. Everyone wanted to talk about what I was doing. Everyone wanted to talk about weight loss. And I get why, I do, I understand. I recognize where that comes from. And I can't say that I didn't enjoy, at the time, the interest and the validation, because of course that's what I was chasing, right? I was chasing external factors. I wasn't really doing this for me. I was doing it to fit in. A lot of people acted like I was the keeper of some kind of secret.

And I also remember being very confused because after a period of time, what I realized is that I could see my size. I could see that I was smaller than I had been. I knew what I had been doing in order to get to that point. But in my head, I was still the same person. That was something I had never expected and...

I realized it quite quickly that being in a smaller body hadn't changed my insecurities or how I actually felt about myself. There were so many other things that felt like they were missing and they had nothing to do with my body size. And I was pissed off. I was so annoyed because here I am terrified of gaining weight, terrified of skipping a workout. I was so afraid of like being found out because

A stranger could meet me and would pass no judgement on my body, would never know that I wasn't just naturally this size, but I wasn't the person that people could see. And that was a really difficult piece of that experience, was how insecure I really was, but I had this body that I had been told I should want, this body that I'd been told would bring me all this happiness.

And I remember wearing a bikini for the first time as an adult and I was so insecure about my body. Every little piece of, every insecurity, every little piece of my body that I not liked when I was big, I almost didn't like it even more. It was like almost exasperated and magnified because I still couldn't see what other people see. I couldn't enjoy celebrations or holidays. I felt so guilty for being unhappy because this is what I'd wanted.

I had chosen to go down this path.

And as I said, I had body privilege for about six months or so, ⁓ maybe a little bit longer, but I really felt like I had, really kind of experienced that body privilege and remember it vividly for about six months or so. And we decided to start a family and I got pregnant in a smaller body. That?

That was really an interesting experience. I've been sitting thinking about this for a while in readiness for this episode because I hadn't unlearned anything, right? I was in a smaller body, but I hadn't unlearned any of the stuff that had been holding me back all these years, all these things that I'd struggled with and battled against and these insecurities. My relationship to my body and pregnancy was very overwhelming. I all of a sudden had people asking me if there was more than one in there.

people touching and commenting on the size of my belly at that point, an area of my body that I was not comfortable with. I wasn't comfortable with it when it was small. I wasn't comfortable as it was growing. Even though there was a baby in there, yes, I understood all of those things. I understood that I was growing a human being. But people are so willing to talk about your body. I worked

in a customer-facing role at that time, so people would ask me how far along I am, and then when I would tell them they would gasp because I still had a few months to go. And people were really fucking rude. It was such a mindfuck. It so, difficult. I did not enjoy being pregnant whatsoever. It was really difficult. And towards the end of my pregnancy I remember being told that like

I was too big and I was growing too big and like my baby was gonna be big. And I just remember feeling so overwhelmed by this kind of language and this it felt like it felt like so much guilt and shame was being thrown at me like just the language that was being used. It was really really difficult to kind of process. And the thing is as soon as I had my kid I was trying to get back on my bullshit right as soon as I could.

I was getting back straight back to my bullshit. I also needed to finish my certification for my personal training program because I really wanted to leave my nine till five. And I found myself very much deep in some disordered eating and over exercising during that time. I was a new parent and I was exhausted all of the time, not just from being a new parent, but all of the other things I was doing.

to my body and trying to do to my body

And so I returned to work in my ninth or five when my kid was about a year old. And later that year, I actually applied for a business coaching mentorship program. This person's also a fitness professional. And I had found her, you know, during the course of my dieting and ⁓

getting qualified as a personal trainer in that kind of three years that I'd been doing that. I had found her through, you know, other, other online business professionals or fitness professionals. And yeah, I applied to, be a part of her program. The next three years were some of the hardest I've ever experienced. I had started this coaching program. I was trying to start a business. I was a new mother.

My husband was having a lot of health issues and was later actually diagnosed with ME or chronic fatigue syndrome.

I was constantly anxious for a number of reasons. I was trying to control my body through any method I could and I was trying to build this business. I was working nine till five. I was exhausted all the time and I felt like a complete failure One of the things that constantly plagued me during this time was how hard it all felt.

I was working as hard as I possibly could to start my business. This was something that I so desperately wanted. I did all the things. I participated in every call. I followed all of the rules. I did everything. Because at that time I believed that I could just work harder than everybody else and I would get there.

The imposter syndrome was intense. My inner critic and my self-doubt, it felt debilitating and I couldn't understand what was going on. I was constantly questioning myself. What was wrong with me? Why did my peers all seem to experience this but kind of move through it with some ease and some clarity? Why could they push past this and still find success? And I just constantly felt like I was spinning my wheels and stuck.

Now there were a number of reasons why I think I struggled. One is because I don't really play games. I'm not really into bullshit and being unethical. That's not me. I hope that anybody who listens to the show kind of sense that from me. I don't play games. I don't want to manipulate people. I have no interest in unethical marketing. But you see, I didn't know what I know now back then.

What I learned just last year as I was starting this podcast is that words like or phrases like imposter syndrome affect all of us in some way. However, for folks in marginalised bodies, this is very much reinforced by the way people have treated us in society. So self-development terms like limiting beliefs and mindset blocks, imposter syndrome, those things very much go hand in hand.

with online business. And they say if you want to learn about yourself, start a business. I think that's true. I've learned more about myself in the last decade than I ever have. But I'm also very aware of how much I struggled with some of these things. And I know that being in a larger body, even in as a personal trainer,

in an online business space, people didn't hire me because of how I looked. Especially in health and fitness, because people didn't want to hire someone that they considered to be their "before." Right? I had the body, from first glance, that they didn't want. On the flip side of that is I had people who intentionally hired me because I was the safe choice. That was fine.

That was a role I was happy to fulfill, People wanted to hire me because of how I looked, because I was a safer option. When I worked in a gym and I worked there for a year and I taught spin class and other classes, there were plenty of, especially men, who wouldn't come to my class because they didn't think that I could teach them. So, because I'm petty, when they showed up I made the class extra hard. ⁓ But...

Yeah, people wouldn't come to my class because they didn't think that I was capable. Didn't matter how many qualifications I had, didn't matter the fact that had the same qualifications or even better qualifications and more skills and that I was probably even a more empathetic trainer than other people that worked there. It was all about how I looked and how I appeared.

So in 2018 I actually quit working at the gym. I realized that it was not my passion, it was not my calling, and I was very much burned out from working there. And I gained a lot of weight very, quickly because upon reflection I didn't know that I was controlling my body weight with exercise because I never felt like I was doing enough.

never felt like it was enough. Everything, I constantly felt like I should have been doing more, but I was tired all the time. And at the end of that year, after being body shamed by my business coach,

accused of stealing her ideas and discovering that she's transphobic, we parted ways. That was her three final nails in the coffin. She finally closed her business and actually ended up being a Trump supporter, no surprise there. ⁓ So that was a decision that I'm glad I made very quickly. But after all these experiences, this awful coaching that was very manipulative, very unethical, I was burned.

I was burned. I was so scared to go it alone. I stripped everything back in my business because I was in a lot of debt, right? These coaching experiences were expensive and very overpriced. And I decided at that point that I just needed to focus on myself.

and

I've talked about this book a lot over the years because it was kind of first, I think, starting point for me, really interestingly. I left that bubble, I left this business coaching, this fitness space, a very toxic environment. I left all of that behind me and I was terrified because I didn't know if I could do this by myself. And that year, I read the book

Playing Big by Tara Mohr And it just felt like when I look back, this was the starting point for me. It had me questioning so many areas of my life, like out of curiosity. I started looking at things like my home and my clothes and my lifestyle and questioning whether this was what I saw for myself. I dyed my hair red.

I started wearing lipstick for the first time in my life and I slowly made our house a home.

It just opened up a lot of new thoughts and ideas. I started to see things for what they really were. Now, if you had asked me in 2020 if I was dieting, I would have said absolutely no. But I still moralized foods. I still elevated certain foods. I was very aware of my body size. I know that year I did start to talk about my body.

In my first podcast that I started that year, very early on I did an episode about being a plus size entrepreneur. I perhaps should go back and listen to that episode and see how I feel about the language that I used and things like that now. That might be an interesting conversation for us. But I did start to open up about how it felt because I had gained weight as a business owner and so much of what I had experienced.

because I've come from this particular industry, was very thin focused.

In 2021, I lost my biggest marketing client and I was so burned out because I had been working all the hours imaginable during COVID. I stepped back from my business. I started supporting some of my content creator friends with graphics and working with them. And like later that year, I started freelance marketing as well. In 2022, I intentionally decided to quit dieting.

I also started drawing plus-sized bodies as stickers and started an intuitive eating group program that autumn. And as I worked on the intuitive eating principles and framework and I practiced, I put everything into practice, I discovered other areas of my life where I wasn't listening to my body or myself. As I sought out satisfaction in food, I noticed that I wanted all of my areas of my life to be more satisfying.

I wanted my relationships to be satisfying, my clothing, my home, my career. I also noticed that I was much more confident in asking for what I needed rather than assuming that I deserved less. That was a really big part of that journey. And it was a part of the journey that I had never expected. When I started intuitive eating, I honestly thought it was going to be some kind of diet. It is not.

I had heard about intuitive eating, now granted there are a lot of people out there talking about intuitive eating and you literally cannot put intuitive eating and weight loss in the same kind of bracket. You cannot have intuitive eating for weight loss. That doesn't work because part of the framework is ditching diet culture. Doesn't mean people can't lose weight, but it just means you can't have intentional weight loss.

with intuitive eating.

So

Yeah, the mindset piece, all of that, like the unlearning, seeing, I guess, my entire life and how diet culture affected all of it, how I was indoctrinated into this system of beliefs and into this way of being, it was really, really overwhelming. And also incredibly wonderful. With all of those new experiences and all of these new

this new kind of newfound confidence or this understanding of what I actually deserved, rather than settling for less, I ended a friendship, which turned out to be the best decision I could have ever made. I prepared to finish up my freelancing work and pursue this work right here. I wanted to finally take the step and start talking about

fat issues and talk about my experiences as a person in a larger body.

What's really funny is that somewhere around 2019, I actually thought a lot about the kinds of business owners I wanted to support with their social media content and marketing.

I remember having this very overwhelming feeling that I wanted to work with other plus-size creators and businesses, but I didn't really know anyone else. I was surrounded by fitness professionals, because that had been my world for so long, and thin creators. I think there was a couple of plus-size business owners I knew, but they were on intentional weight loss journeys.

And it was around that time that I started looking for other creators who were in plus size bodies, folks who had bodies like mine, folks who had different bodies to mine. I wanted to see other fat bodies doing the things I wanted to be doing, wearing the clothes I wanted to wear, living the life that, you know, we'd been told we couldn't have unless we were thin. Now my online world, specifically, is full of plus size

fat and larger bodies, creators, businesses, influencers. I am surrounded by other people in larger bodies and now I get to be a part of this community.

When I think about the last decade, it's really wild to think that I went from making diets and weight loss my career to ditching it all and learning to respect and honor my body. It wasn't easy, it wasn't just I didn't wake up one day, click my fingers and it happened. And there were definitely defining moments along the way, crossroads where I could have chosen to keep doing the same thing or try the unknown. I also know that I have a lot of privilege and

I have to understand and recognise that my privilege has helped me to make some of those decisions, has made it easier for me to make those decisions. I recognise that.

But it's been really interesting to see how in ten years, which feels like just yesterday, so much has changed. So much has changed. And I shared with you at the beginning of this episode that I'd been really hesitant to tell my story because I didn't know if it would actually be supportive or helpful. And I've been thinking back on my experience with diet culture and my body over my entire life. And I want to kind of leave you with this as we close out today's episode. For over two decades,

I pursued intentional weight loss because I believed it was the key to unlocking a lifestyle I was told I could only have if my body was thin enough. I was told it would be a life full of vibrancy and happiness and health and success and love, and I was told that I could only love my body when it looked a certain way and anything else was failure.

I burned myself out repeatedly for 15 years in order to try and chase a goalpost that I continually moved because nothing was ever good enough. My body was never good enough. I was never good enough. No number on the scale could give me what I was looking for. No clothing size could give me that life. I was never going to fit into these beauty standards, no matter how hard I worked, no matter how badly I wanted it.

These are the same insecurities and beliefs being passed down to young people today. It might look different, it might have a different name, but it's still there. We're told: "It doesn't matter what size you are as long as you're healthy!" but as long as your health checks certain boxes, including thin. We're told: "Who cares what people think, wear what you want!" but only if you're a certain size. We're told: "Diets don't work, it's just about a balanced diet and exercise."

but only if your balanced diet and exercise makes you thin. We're told: "You should love your body, it's the only one you've got." except you should only love it if it's the specific beauty standards and you shouldn't love it too much. It's fucking exhausting. Fucking exhausting.

Most of my life I've hated my body. I would wonder why I was given these genetics. Why did I have this body? What did I do to deserve this? Because it felt like some kind of punishment. It felt like a cruel joke. And the idea of loving my body felt completely unattainable. Because that was the goal, right? That was constantly the goal. Body love, self love. And a friend said to me a few years ago...

Are there actually people out there who love themselves, that love their bodies? That's a really wild concept to me. And I told her that there are, but it's not the only goal. It's not the only feeling you can have about your body. And actually it's much more complicated and also more realistic to recognise that how we feel about our body might change and differ on a regular basis.

Recently I saw a photo of myself in my camera roll and it kind of took me by surprise because firstly, I was wearing flesh coloured underwear and I thought I was naked. I was like, why is there a picture of me naked in my phone? And I didn't remember taking the photo, but it turned out to be a still from a Get Ready With Me video, a side profile close up of my belly and my boobs. And I felt absolutely nothing. I didn't even realise that I felt nothing until afterwards. I went back into my camera roll to look at the photo.

I looked at it again, nothing. I kind of liked the way my body looked, but mostly I was very indifferent.

Last week I recorded a video for TikTok wearing bicycle shorts and a crop t-shirt and it was a very cute outfit but that wasn't the point in the video. And as I was editing the video I thought about how there was a time when I wouldn't have even bought these clothes, let alone wear them. I wouldn't have allowed my body to be visibly in movement, skin showing, belly poking out as I stretch and move about. But again, there was nothing. And I think sometimes we're very resistant.

body neutrality. We feel resistant to body neutrality because it's an unknown. We're told we should love ourselves and look I'm all for that. That's a great goal to have.

Sometimes I love how I look. I'm feeling myself and I think I look really hot in a certain outfit I'm also not someone who regularly says that about themselves. And I don't think it's because I don't believe it. It's just not something I'm focusing on right now. And who knows? That could change. I didn't think I could stop dieting or wear a crop top. And here we are.

So pals, please, please know that these feelings can change just like our bodies. I love you, I see you, and I appreciate you so much for listening to my story.