This week, I’m getting personal and finally sharing my story.
I’ve been hesitant, telling myself that my story isn’t interesting, helpful or relevant. That was until recently, when I noticed that I’d been talking around my own experiences with diet culture, and what I believe led me to spending two decades diet cycling. The negative impact of dieting started in childhood, lasting well into my 30s and left me repeatedly burned out.
This might not be a new or original story, but that’s kind of the point.
Many folks have shared their experiences with me, from the girl on the playground who called them “fat” and their parents said “Well, yeah you could lose weight.” to watching the adults around them talk negatively about their own bodies, and taking them to a weight loss club as a pre teen.
As I’ve shared in previous episodes, there are 30+ factors that lead to weight gain and there is still no long term solution to fatness. None of this is new. None of this is original.
You’ll hear me reflect on my childhood, including the first times I hid food and started binging – there are content warnings at 7:35 and 17:56 – navigating high school, pregnancy and starting my business as a personal trainer.
I spent years dieting, and when I reached my 20s I didn’t have any hobbies or career aspirations because in every dream I ever had about my life I was thin. So I made weight loss my career - except I called it fat loss, because I thought that was different, it’s not - and still never felt like I was enough physically, mentally or emotionally.
Nowadays I often feel neutral about my body, which I’ve realised is hard to conceptualise when we live in a world of “Love your body!” whilst simultaneously being told we’re never doing enough. Just know that the body appreciation spectrum is vast, how we feel about our bodies can be complicated for a myriad of reasons, and it’s okay if you never reach body love. That’s not the only feeling or goal available to us.
I hope you enjoy this episode, and as always please consider sharing with your friends, pals, family or colleagues who you think could benefit from the show!
Chapters
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
Links from the episode:
If you’re interested in listening to the episode of Entrepreneurial Outlaws that I reference in this episode, you can listen below. Please bear in mind this is from 2020, before I fully divested from diet culture and I’ve yet to listen back, so some of the content may not reflect my current opinions or feelings.
The book I mention is called Playing Big by Tara Mohr, again I’ve not re read this book in a few years.
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