Oh heart, I’m doing this for you

I went for my second run in ages this morning. Early sun lifting mist off the nature reserve, leaving naked branches in silhouette against the whitewashed vegetation. The first shoots of daffodils poking up from the brown of last year’s fallen leaves.

Birds singing obscenities to each other.

And I thought to myself – I like this, why haven’t I run for so long?

For a while it was anaemia (I couldn’t understand why I was getting so out of breath). But, I guess it was mostly despondency. I didn’t feel like I was fast enough. Didn’t think I was losing any weight.

I’d lost my mojo.

And with most high-street retailers not selling fitness gear for plus size women and some running apps not acknowledging someone seriously runs at my speed, it’s no wonder.

Am I just too fat and slow to be a serious runner? Does running do my overweight body any good, or am I just slogging my lumbering guts out for nothing?

Sound familiar? From talking to people on Facebook, my friends and from what I’ve read, I’m relieved to know it’s a common thing.

So, consider this.

A US study into women’s heart health found that lack of strenuous exercise was more likely to lead to heart disease and heart attack than being overweight alone (read my ramblings about it here).

Think about it.

If the numbers on the scale or the stopwatch are an impediment to my body getting more efficient at pumping life-giving blood around itself, are they helpful?

I think not.

So, scales and running app back in the cupboard of sadness where they belong, I put my running shoes on this morning and enjoyed  a bit of spring sunshine.

And I got thinking about the mate of mine who I met in the supermarket the other day. She’s a plus-size honey and she’s been working with a personal trainer. Oh my, she looks sweet.

“But I’ve fallen off the wagon” she said.

“Doesn’t matter, just as long as you get back on it” I replied. I think I was talking to myself.

Weight, speed, whatever – all to one side for now. They’re not helping.

I’m doing this for my heart.

Fancy taking up running but don’t know where to start? Check out my top ten tips for plus size running. Good luck.

Misty walk

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Why I never give up on new beginnings

Autumn. A time when nature starts to shut up shop for the winter and the humans turn their attention to retreating indoors for cooler, darker days. Odd that it’s also a time of new beginnings, but it is.

And it’s not just the new term that I’m talking about: although whether you’re a four-year-old starting school or a forty-eight-year-old beginning the final year of your Masters, there’s the potential for new books, new people and new ideas.

It’s the concept of the summer providing a fire gap. On one side, the wind up of the old term, work schedules geared towards taking time off for a holiday and a season of barbecue weekends and cold beer in the garden. Then the disruption to the normal routine – whether there’s kids at home or not – and eventually a return to what went before.

Or is it? Do we really go back to what went before?

I spent some time working as a childminder a few years ago and during August the phone would ring off the hook with new enquiries: usually women who, with the upcoming new term, were re-evaluating their employment status or taking on new studies.

Likewise, it would seem that some women re-evaluate every aspect of their lives as they edge towards autumn, including their bodies. Social media has been wall-to-wall this morning with introspective comments, some positive, most negative, about how lazy and unfit people feel. Is this really the case? Could it be that with children back at school and/or the distractions of summer out of the way, there’s some time and space for these women to think about who they are and where they are heading?

The new term brings new beginnings for everyone, I guess.

So, I started running again this morning. I walked around the supermarket afterwards, remembering the buzz and how strong my legs feel. And despite missing the lazy, warm days of summer with my children, how exhilarating it is to be out alone under the trees, with this new beginning stretching out in front of me.

I love the chance to start again, no matter how many times I’ve done it before.

Thinking of new beginnings yourself? If you’re looking for inspiration, check out my Top Ten Tips for Plus Size Running and for a little motivation, why we should ignore the doubters and just get out there for the sake of our heart health. If you want a giggle, there’s my retort to Nicole Arbour’s fattist outburst and if you’re looking for a re-stabilising moment of calm, what the body obsessed modern world can learn from an ancient Tibetan proverb.

 

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Eat Half, Walk Double, Laugh Triple and Love Without Measure – the Tibetan proverb and what I’ve been doing wrong all this time

Not a day goes by when I don’t see something that makes me think. Articles in the papers, snippets on newsfeeds, posts on Facebook. Some things get my goat, make me angry but at the weekend, I saw something that really made me sit up and think.

A Tibetan proverb that someone posted on line:

For a long, healthy life you must –

Eat half
Walk double
Laugh triple
Love without measure

Now, I know it doesn’t sound like much but I know this works, I’ve seen it. I live in a town that is home to a large Nepalese community. Not Tibetan, I know, but by the way they live I can see there is a similarity in philosophy. The elderly walk, laugh and browse the market with a real joy and interest on a Thursday morning – you could almost believe they hadn’t seen carrots and onions before. And I was saying goodbye to my Mum as she left in the car with her boyfriend yesterday morning, when two ladies wandered past – brightly coloured, well-shod. Both easily north of 70, they jumped and laughed when we offered a Namaste. I later saw them perusing the root veg in Morrison’s – their need to walk, explore, laugh, interact is strong, inbuilt, vital.

And then this morning, someone posted something on one of the pages I follow on Facebook to remind me about a fabulous plus-size yoga teacher by the name of Dana Falsetti. I’ve known about her for years but her approach to whole body and mind connectedness served to crystalize in my mind the key reason why diets and exercise programmes don’t work for some of us. We’ve concentrated on the first two principles of the proverb for so long, we’ve forgotten the second two. And in terms of quantity, it would seem they hold more weight, as it were.

I can offer some suggestions why this might have happened. Food intake and activity are easily measured, not to mention even easier to make a charge for. But how can you eat half and walk double if you don’t laugh triple and love without measure? It’s so clear to me now, I have no idea how I’ve not seen this before.

So what does it mean? Well, what if it was more than just OK to kick back and have a giggle with your friends and family, what if this was essential to living a healthy, happy life? What if laughing and loving were treated not merely as additional elements but critical components of a health regime? What if we dumped self-hatred and body-loathing in favour of acceptance, confidence and joy?

What if we took the brave step of connecting and thinking?

Eat half, walk double are key to the commonly held notion of calories in vs. calories out, granted (and there’s enough research out there to support the health benefits of fasting). But this principle is meaningless without the second half – the balance is way too out of kilter, too many grand efforts are bound to fail, too many people lost to empty diets and self depreciation.

So, today I ate a modest breakfast and climbed a hill in the North Downs to catch some early sun. I laughed with my Mum on the phone this morning and now I’m sharing this with you.

Have a great day x

 

Time to breathe and think

Time to breathe and think

Walk double – I suppose climbing the 115 steps and running down the sloped route would count?

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You Are Already Amazing

It’s the New Year and although we chinked glasses and wished everyone the best over a week ago, it’s taken for the normal routine to kick back in for me to get back to my computer and write about the subject that’s been burning away for days. In fact, it’s been burning away for years and no more so than at this time of year.

To kick this off, these are a few of the comments I have read on social media over the past few days:

“I’m overweight, I have no confidence.”

“I feel so fat, I don’t want to go out on a date with my boyfriend.”

“I lost 5 stone last year and put half of it back on, I’m such a slob. How could I let this happen?”

The diet industry has this brand of self-loathing well stitched up. Join our club, pay the fee and we’ll turn this all around for you.

Now, I’m not knocking diets. They work for some – I know plenty of people who have lost weight and kept it off. But they don’t work for everyone and I think in this case, it has less to do with the body and more to do with the mind: in particular, self-worth.

So, for everyone who’s ever felt like a big, fat, lazy failure, let me tell you something:

               You are already amazing.

Do you know why?

Your liver performs over 500 vital functions, scientists don’t know about everything it does – you’d not live a day without it. Supplying glucose, fighting infections, storing nutrients, recycling waste and detoxifying your body it is a chemical powerhouse that gets on with its job without your knowledge.

Your skin spans 21 square feet, weighs nine pounds and contains more than eleven miles of blood vessels and 45 miles of nerves. Home to 1,000 bacteria (most of which are vital to its health) it rejuvenates itself every 28 days.

Your stomach produces hydrochloric acid (up to 3 litres a day) to digest your food – an acid so powerful that the stomach also produces its own neutralising agent in the stomach wall to protect itself.

Your strongest muscle? Your tongue. The smallest? Only 1mm in length in your ear, holding in place the smallest bone in your body. The hardest working? Your heart – 115,200 beats a day, 42 million beats a year, over 3 billion in a lifetime.  It’s mind boggling.

And your brain? The only organ in your body to feel no pain, it contains 100 billion neurons (and there are 10,000 types of brain cell), weighs 3 pounds and contains 400 miles of blood vessels. Laughing at something uses at least five areas of the brain and it’s estimated that we have 50,000 thoughts a day, 70% of which are negative. The organ is 60% fat and it houses 25% of the body’s cholesterol: and without this, it would not be able to perform the estimated 100,000 chemical reactions a second. Information can travel at 260 mph.

Sit for a moment and think about all this.

Really think.

You are already amazing

Granted, sometimes bodies fail but there is still so much to marvel about.

So:

  • How can a body be devalued because of a number on a scale or a measuring tape?
  • How does the size of someone’s clothing demean the complexity of the valuable gift they’ve been given?
  • How can something so vital, so unfathomable so irreplicable end up ready for the rubbish heap when really it’s nothing of the sort?

It’s nonsense.

However you feel today about your body and what it can do, know this: the fact that you are sat reading my blog post means that you are already amazing.  The work of heart, the eyes, the brain, the liver, the lungs, the skin, the hormones and the millions of other processes going on have brought my ideas to you.

You love, you live.

Dammit, you rock!

Just breathing makes you amazing.

Consider:

  • Walking uses over 200 muscles. It is thought that it helps expand the hippocampus area in the brain: concerned with learning about new places, its shrinkage in women over 60 has been linked with dementia.  Far from being a passive, ineffective form of exercise, there’s nothing like walking.
  • A recent American study found that female heart disease is more likely to be caused by inactivity than excess weight.
  • Swimming requires the rhythmical stretch and relaxation of the skeletal muscles, naturally inducing a restorative, meditative state. It releases endorphins, uses free floating to relieve stress and fight or flight hormones and regulates and strengthens the cardio vascular system without putting undue pressure on joints.
  • Regular movement like running or sport strengthens the digestive tract, making it more efficient.

So:

  • What if you didn’t need beast yourself at the gym or nigh-on starve yourself to be a valid human being?
  • What if you were to rethink the things you’ve been told about size, weight and dieting?
  • What would happen if you chose to nourish your body because it’s an unbelievably complex, unique, living organism?
  • And what harm would come from moving your body your way: making it stronger, more able to carry out your dreams, more capable of interacting with the people you love?
  • What if we found new and helpful ways of linking health and self worth?

Because there are those who will tell you that you need to be a certain shape or size, deny yourself life-giving food or beat yourself up on a daily basis in order to be an acceptable human being.

Ignore this: their thinking is self-defeating and counterproductive.

Because you are already amazing.

Use this as a starting point and allow everything else to follow.

 

I’m passionate about this subject so check out my other body confidence and plus size fitness blog posts using the tag cloud to the right.  And if I’ve motivated you to re-engage with your most marvellous body, then drop me a line and tell me what new reasons you’ve found to love yourself.

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Women And Heart Health – Why We Need To Ignore The Doubters And Just Get Out There

I’m a plus size woman with a really bad running habit.  I can’t stop.  My shoes call to me from the hallway and I’m worried that I’ll get arrested for indecent exposure if I go out running in the rain one more time (an ample bust, combined with a lack of decent plus size breathable wear have too many times made for an impromptu wet t-shirt contest).

So, when the Daily Mail published an article last week about two running magazines which have chosen plus size women for their covers, I was delighted.  US magazine, Running, featured Erica Schenk, a size 18 model, who is well known for her fitness habit and the UK title, Womens’s Running, pictured Lindsey Swift on their November issue.  After being heckled by a van driver, Linsday’s open letter detailing why running is more important to her than what people think about the size of her body went viral, being shared over 26,000 times.  To say I find her inspiring would be an understatement.

The Mail article was positive and inclusive, everything I like reading about but as usual, I was more interested in the comments section below.  This is where it all started to get a bit muddy and a little less positive.

There are many obesity experts out there.  Unfortunately, instead of spending their time doing research, pounding the streets or making themselves a salad, they litter perfectly healthy discussion forums with anecdotal, ill-informed soundbites about pie-hole stuffing and sofa surfing.

But what kind of message is this sending out?  Should we really be discouraging women from exercising because it’s pointless if it’s not accompanied by a punishing diet and an unhealthy obsession with the tape measure or scales?

Thankfully, the real experts are out there reading books, crunching numbers and writing papers.  I find their words far more helpful.

The Mail article lead to me doing a little digging around on the matter of fit but fat and I came across cardiologist C. Noel Bairey-Merz, well known in her field for investigating the differences between the ways that men and women develop and present heart disease.  She wanted to explore why after years of research, mortality rates from cardio disease were decreasing in men but increasing in women.  For her, this has been a matter of sexual politics as well as medicine.

From what I’ve read of her research, trends of where and how blockages and other operational problems arise in the heart are different between male and female subjects.  That in mind, she published a study, examining the BMI, measurements and fitness levels of a sample of women with surprising results: “fitness may be more important than overweight or obesity for CV risk in women”.

Of course, she is only one voice amongst many and cardiovascular disease is only one area of risk reported to be higher for tubby people but it got me thinking.  What if we took her research at face value?  What if we just acknowledged that getting out and getting going is just good for you, whatever your weight?

The Heart Sisters blog by Carolyn Thomas, journalist and heart attack survivor, is a most excellent place to find out more about prevention, diagnosis and care of female heart disease and has a page dedicated to ‘Improving Your Odds’.  I read it and realised that my running habit may be helping me to dodge the family heart disease bullet despite my weight.

Some of the major contributing factors to a higher risk of CV disease in women are:

  • Stress – running not only helps to readjust hormone levels, it also gets you out of the house from the kids/pets/spouse and allows thinking time or even not thinking time.
  • Type E-personality or being Everthing to Everyone – a study showed that women often put themselves last after house/kids/pet/spouse. This means that the more subtle symptoms of female heart disease can be easily missed or misdiagnosed. Running puts you first, even if it’s only for thirty minutes or so.
  • Sleep disorders – whether it’s through beneficial core body temperature changes, improvement in brain function or strengthening of the cardiovascular system (amongst a whole host of associated benefits) moderate exercise has been shown to promote better sleep habits.
  • Depression – you need only do a cursory search to find out how exercise can help with depression.
  • Smoking – a big no-no for women who want to keep their hearts healthy and it’s a bit hard to run with a fag in your mouth. I do know a few girls who’ll have a cup of tea and a ciggy after a run but they’re in the minority. At this point, I’ll add that I’ve never smoked – not because I inhabit some kind of moral high ground but because I cough, making me look like a spotty 13 year old behind the bikesheds.
  • Blood pressure and cholesterol – again, affected by activity levels as well as diet.
  • High fibre, heart-healthy diet – I have a strong body that responds well to how hard I push it – I just don’t feel like filling it full of rubbish after a run, it would just seem ungrateful. It’s all change when the fridge starts singing to me late in the evening, however, but that’s another blog post in itself.

So, what is my message to the fat but fit naysayers?

Your rhetoric is just too simple.  Just as Bairey-Merz has done so much for female heart disease mortality rates just by pushing past what other physicians thought was obvious, I’m also keen to ask questions about whether exercise can inform healthier lifestyle choices, rather than just being something someone gets morally blackmailed into doing to lose weight for losing weight’s sake.

I’m calling for a change in thinking.  I’m calling for an uprising of plus size people like me on the streets with their trainers on.  I’m calling for a war cry of heart healthy people who are fed up with being labelled as pie-eating sofa surfers.

Let’s wobble away and damn those who’d have us believe we’re not healthy just because we’re heavy.

And now that the rain has stopped, I might just chance a run.

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Dear Nicole Arbour – why I’d love to shake your hand

Nicole Arbour on a fatshaming spree

The internet is awash with your Dear Fat People.

(If anyone else reading this hasn’t already seen Nicole’s six minutes of insightful commentary on obesity, then don’t bother.  Make yourself a cracking cup of tea and watch the clouds passing the window instead, you’ll get more from it.  If you’ve already fallen over it on social media, like a fluorescent safety cone in a shopping centre, you’ll either feel cross about someone else’s lack of concern for health and safety or the amusement that us bipeds at the upper end of the evolutionary ladder use to cover embarrassing situations.)

I want to thank you, pretty lady because although your message seems young, funky and ‘out there’ (thanks for showing us your Kesha hair, so we know just how hip you are), it is a latecomer to the fatshaming bandwagon: a bandwagon that having already shakily rambled along a long, bumpy lane with three wheels and a broken axel, now sits rotting gently in the corner of a forgotten barn with only pigpoop and a lonely donkey for company.  And the fact that your ranting about something this old, tired and unfit for purpose reminds me of how far we’ve come in our conversation about obesity.

I won’t pretend that this conversation started in my lifetime.  But I did used to eat my Weetabix to the Green Goddess shaking her thing on breakfast telly in the eighties.  I engaged in the low-fat insanity going around at the time, believed wholeheartedly in pasta as my saviour and like millions of fellow tubbies likely picked up an insulin intolerance along the way.  Protein came under fire with the food-combining frenzy of the nineties and now the new century is waging war on carbs.

You’ll be happy to know that the myth of the weight control one-size-fits-all silver bullet now seems to be on the wane.  Even a shallow search of the internet throws up issues such as:

  • Is it a matter of calories in vs. calories out any more?
  • Is the adage ‘just stop eating’ helpful for long term weight loss and health gain?
  • What role does exercise play and does the hunger it creates outweigh the benefits?
  • Is it possible to be fat and fit?
  • Are obese people more prone to getting diabetes or are people already prone to getting diabetes more likely to develop an obesity problem as well?
  • What role does mental health play in eating and exercising habits?
  • What of the multi-million dollar, multinational diet industry?  Are they doing a Tyler Durden and selling rich women their own fat arses back to them or providing a valuable service?

I can’t say that I have answers to any of the above questions but you don’t seem to either: you present no credible evidence to support your ‘facts’.

D’oh!  Of course you don’t.  And this isn’t because you’re a blonde explaining simple stuff to people who should know better, it’s because your video is part of your act.

Of course it is, I hear you say, you’re a writer and comedian.  But there are moments when the woman behind the mask apologises for the tripe she’s ranting about – a smile, an apology, an awkward caveat: then the one-woman Punch and Judy show starts again.

And so, for the woman operating the puppet, I’d like to propose a vote of thanks. 

  • Thanks for highlighting all the reasons why the futility of fat-shaming is still a relevant issue.
  • Thanks for making strong, agile but fat arsed people like me run faster, write harder and shout louder.
  • Thanks for motivating people to search out body positive sites like Callie Thorpe’s From the Corners of the Curve, organisations who can help with real life obesity issues like the charity Hoop and Facebook pages like blogger Debz Aiken’s plus size life/no weight loss chat page which offers an alternative place to talk about feeling good and living life without the constant hum of yet another diet in the background.
  • Thanks for encouraging all those women who will be sat in a PCOS clinic this morning to turn their backs on the destructive narrative of fat as a defining verb.
  • Thanks for creating an environment where the fabulousness that is Tess Holliday can blossom, pushing out the senseless, archaic and quite frankly spent ideas we used to have about size and aesthetics.

Fat shaming is just not on trend anymore – and your video is all about fat shaming, whatever label you choose to use.

I mean, putting a pair of boots into an oven won’t make them biscuits.

(Just imagine the last sentence was cut in black and white and said without the backing track – I’m stood looking into a pretend oven, wide eyed in surprise.  It helps people to laugh at poorly thought out jokes, apparently.)

And just indulge me for a moment Did Frankenstein ever walk like a zombie?  Perhaps he did on his more morose days but there are also breath taking moments of Shelley’s book when we follow him at  break neck speed across the ice in pursuit of his creation.

Oh, hang on, you’re talking about the creation put together by the doctor Frankenstein.

Perhaps you need this simple, fat, brunette to explain that Mary Shelly’s ground breaking text is a dark and wretched exploration of body and acceptance.  Ironic to think you had mistakenly referenced it in a video loaded with empty rhetoric and prejudice about what you see as disfigured, broken bodies.

And yes, for the record, I could catch up with you.  I enjoy running as much as I enjoy eating cake and surprisingly, I do the former more often than I do the latter.

Seriously though, I’ve read responses to your video that have ranged from the outraged to the tickled pink.  There have been those who’ve passed it off as ill-judged humour and those who have seen it as senseless nonsense dripping from the mouth of an attention seeking idiot.  For others, it’s been harmful, very harmful and this has once more raised issues of responsibility and censorship on the internet.

But I still think we need to be grateful to you for highlighting just how tired and one-dimensional #fatshaming is these days.

And I could finish up by saying that I hope you enjoy your five minutes of shame because you’re the kind of bottle blonde that’ll be forgotten about in five minutes – but that would be senselessly rude and I’d have to wander across the screen in black and white.

And I can’t.  Because you (and everyone else reading this) are exercising your ability to read, not passively soaking up YouTube content.

And Smarties.  Thank you for reminding me of how delightful these little capsules of sugary chocolate joy are.  I’m going to squish a few in my mouth this afternoon.

xxx

If this has made you think, please share (the buttons are up on the right hand side). 

Has fat shaming ever worked for you or someone you know? 

Has Nicole Arbour got a point or am I just taking this all too seriously?

Comment away!

And check out more of my views on taking back ownership of your body:

Feeling Uncomfortable About Obesity?

Plus Size Runner and Proud – My Top Ten Tips

And so many other positive blogs about the small things that keep us healthy and enjoying life – check out the archives to the right

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A Quick Response on the Matter of Obesity

I’ve got a twenty minute training run to do before lunch today, so I’ll be brief.

This morning Sunday Morning Live on BBC 1 with Sian Williams featured the item Is Obesity a Disability?

Inflammatory titles draw both commentators and viewers, so we’ll chalk that one up to necessity.

Issues raised: exercise doesn’t result in weight loss?  Lots of conflicting evidence out there but the one thing that pulling on your trainers and getting out there will do is make you feel a whole lot better about being yourself.  If we’re talking about metabolic benefit then Michael Mosely is right in that it doesn’t physically melt weight but if we’re going to get to the bottom of the mental health issues that so often cause obesity in the first place, then exercise is the very best place to start.  As I’ve said before:

I know I’d rather be breathing in and out in the sunshine rather than crying into a pot of processed low-fat goo

The programme opened with a great VT of fat runner Julie Creffield (check out The Fat Girl’s Guide to Running) but was not mentioned again.  Why?  She’s a force for good.  The panel member patched in from another studio mentioned that when you get to a certain size, you feel helpless.  Instead of promoting what Julie does, as a woman who gets big people feeling strong and vital, the panel continued with the same shit about food in and calories out.

Yawn.  Change the record.

Those who know nothing keep spouting the same prejudiced, ignorant garbage and they aren’t helping.  The likes of Julie and Lilz (and the HOOP organisation promoted on her t-shirt) are talking from an informed position.  Taking away blame-talk leaves space and energy for us fatties to solve our own issues with the help of real science and research.

And then there’s the matter of Mail columnist Peter Hitchens.  Well known for getting controversial speech and being a twit confused, his ignorance on the matter of addiction raised a quiet informed smile from experienced and well read broadcaster Michael Mosely sat on the couch opposite.  It was a beautiful moment.

So, all in all, more sound bites, more over simplified truths, more ignorance about how people become overweight and how we manage/talk about the problem.

The only constructive voice on the coach was Michael Mosely, a well known advocate of fasting for health but notice how he didn’t feel the need to mention this once.  He spoke science, compassion and strategies rather than anecdotes, moral judgement and blame.

That’s the way forward – not just because it’s kinder but also because it’s more likely to work.

See also:

Plus Size Runner and Proud – My Top Ten Tips

Feeling Uncomfortable about Obesity?

The Damaging Lack of Self Control That Could Sink The NHS

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Feeling Uncomfortable About Obesity?

Let’s have a conversation about Obesity.

No, I mean a real conversation. Not a let’s poke a judgemental finger at the fat people conversation.

Let’s look at the problem, first. This week alone the news reports:

Big cost to tax payers, massive cost to individuals, not to mention embarrassment for politicians.  Clearly, some tough talking is going to have to take place in order to bring the problem under control.

We all know the adage about how much a picture can say, so this is the kind of image the media choose to accompany articles about the obesity crisis.  This gem came from the Guardian:

No head, no voice, no humanity.  What do pictures like this really say?
A pie eater? A 24-hour a day carer? Someone who has already lost 4 stone? On his way back from the gym? How could we know?

Now the NHS burden can be placed quite firmly on this chap’s shoulders and there’s nothing he can do about it. He can’t turn around and talk to you about why he’s overweight and even if he could move, his head has been chopped off so he physically has no mouth and therefore no voice.

Well, not on this platform anyway.

Being a morbidly obese vegetarian runner, I’m a regular visitor to on-line forums for the overly podgy and let me tell you about the conversations they’re having:

      • I’ve run out of points this week and I’m panicking about what to have for dinner because I’ve come off a twelve hour shift and I’m hungry – any suggestions?
      • It’s weigh in tonight, I’m having pizza afterwards and there’s a whole week to make up for it
      • My diet isn’t working any more. I’m fat/stupid/lazy/a slob/confused (cue reams of suggestions in reply, some genuinely helpful, some shamefully judgemental)
      • I haven’t lost enough weight for my wedding/my daughter’s wedding/my holiday
      • My eating has gone so off track since my mother died. It’s been six months and you would have thought I could have pulled it together by now
      • Some stranger told me today that fat people shouldn’t travel on trains/have tattoos/wear leggings

All paraphrased but all genuinely posted.

And then I came across a group for plus sized ladies with a complete ban on weight loss chat. What do they talk about?

  •  How does this top look with these leggings? Should I wear heels?
  • Which chaffing shorts work the best?
  • Which bikinis fit best?
  • What I’m wearing to work today
  • My new hair colour
  • I’m going swimming today! Something I wouldn’t have done without the support of this group!

That’s not to say the other groups don’t have positive posts – they do. And that’s not to say that the weight loss free group doesn’t have posts about keeping healthy – I regularly seek feedback about running as a plus-sizer.

But the environment is so different, so energising, so self-affirming when the focus on how much weight you’re losing and how you’re doing it is taken away. My size is not the most important thing about me – I can write, sing, cook, draw. I make people laugh, I love my charity work and I’d challenge any overweight 40 year old woman to offroad on a bike like I do.

And this is the nub of the matter for me – everything is just so over-simplified and no wonder: do some digging and the advice is all so confusing.  Back in the day, fat was to blame and now it’s sugar. We need to move fast food joints away from schools and teach kids how to cook. Even the school holidays are fattening.  Measure these ideas against the material I was reading this morning about how the rise in obesity coincided with the rise in the anti-fat movement and a new study suggesting that a high fat diet can impair the function of a hormone that helps you to feel full.  The NHS Eatwell plate still promotes ‘plenty of starchy foods’ in the face of the anti-carb movement.

But from what I’ve read recently, the cure to all our obesity problems apparently lies in:

  • Taxing sugary drinks and snacks
  • Closing/moving takeaways
  • Teaching people to cook
  • Making fat people go to the gym

Think about this for a moment.  I’m overweight, so therefore I’m:

  • Gluttonous and weak minded
  • Ignorant about food and cooking
  • Lazy

Weak minded? Ignorant? Lazy?

Really?

Perhaps I’m a one off? I’ve read enough on-line to know that I’m not but let me tell you one thing I do know: I tend not to see fat people any more – I see survivors: survivors of bereavement, illness, depression, domestic violence and post-traumatic stress disorder. Not always but more often than not.  I’m training for a 5k charity run in October, I haven’t eaten meat in nearly twenty years and I knock out a home-made from scratch dinner for four on a budget every night. Oh and I’ve survived years of depression.

Everyone has a back story which no one will get to hear if all they ever see is your headless back.

So I propose we start a real conversation – one that will work. Let’s get to the bottom of why people get fat and what they can actually do to reverse this. I’m not speaking about a silver bullet here – do this diet/take this pill/do this exercise. I’m talking about a proper strategy that uses the ingenuity and strength of the human spirit to overcome adversity and acknowledges that we are all individuals with our own metabolisms, hang-ups and personal circumstances.

The aerobics classes I took in my early twenties to lose weight couldn’t finish soon enough but feeling my strong but fat-suit hidden legs doing Zumba at the weekend made me feel completely different

– because what I was doing was utterly relevant. I’m getting fit for my health, not because being fat makes me somehow unworthy of being part of society or having a voice.

I don’t have diabetes, I don’t have any weight related illnesses but because I’m overweight there is this idea going round that I’m going to be expensive later in life, so the UK taxpayer already owns me along with the right to say what they please about me.

But I refuse to be one of The Obese.

I am not a blob with no head, with my back to the camera.

I am full frontal, full throttle and full volume.

I’m not celebrating or promoting obesity, I’m saying we have to completely re-think the way we talk about it because the conversations that are happening on a public and policy making level are not working.

So, yeah, let’s talk about obesity, it’s clear that it needs to happen – but for it to work, it’s got to be two-way. Because that’s what the word conversation means.

An obese person in trainers - a more helpful image?
An obese person in trainers – a more helpful image?

Do you agree?  Have I got it all wrong?  How can we make things better?  Drop me a line below, let me know.  Perhaps I’ve missed something.  And drop me a line if you’d like more information about the Facebook groups I visit.

For further rants on fat politics:

The damaging lack of self-control that could sink the NHS

It’s not that there’s a skinny person trying to get out

Plus size runner and proud – my top ten tips

Sausage or sizzle – which is better for weight loss?

How to get the body you want this summer

 

 

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How to get the body you want this summer

Start loving the one you already have…

I’m feeling excited.  Not just because summer is coming but because change is afoot and I like it.

After having seen the fun pictures of fashion blogger Callie Thorpe and friends at Evans’ #stylehasnosize launch last night, I felt something stir from within.  It was a feeling of excitement: that a culture of not just body acceptance but body celebration is growing from within the fashion industry and it’s been a long time coming.

People Magazine have endorsed plus-sized Tess Holliday's status as the world's first supermodel to be a size 22 by putting her on their cover this week. Tess, 29, - who became the first size 22 model to sign with a major modelling agency in January this year - recently shot a campaign with Benefit Cosmetic and has appeared in Vogue Italy.
Tess causing a storm on the cover of People magazine this week

Add to this, plus size model Tess Holliday’s feature on the cover of People magazine published today.  According to her Instagram post this morning, her remit to the magazine was “I wanted show my body off & they listened”.  The result?  A beautiful woman creatively captured by photographer James White at home in her own body.  She was not an unwanted guest there – she was there by choice and it shows.

Like just about every woman I’ve spoken to, my body has never really felt like my own.  Granted, I had some special circumstances to deal with – I grew up as part of a controlling religious organisation that dictated just about every aspect of our lives right down to what we thought and how we acted when we were alone.  As young women, our bodies were already owned by our future husbands and children and by the congregation for acquiring new recruits and serving the elders.  Man-made rules were handed down as the pronouncements of their god.  It never quite rang true with me.

So, when I left at 24 and finally got the education I deserved, naturally I had a teensy bit of a leaning towards feminism.

There, I’ve said it.  The dirty word that’s been spat out too many times with regard to body issues and obesity.  It’s as though the title of Susie Orbach’s totem of a book ‘Fat is a Feminist Issue’ has become an ignorantly misused sound bite for the fat shamers.  The loving and taking control of our bodies has become a feminist issue and therefore all about man-hating – like we’re spiders seeking to eat the men that come anywhere near us.

Balls.

They’re our bodies and we want them back because we like them.  Incidentally we like men too.  The two are not mutually exclusive.

Now, I realise that not every woman has had the same prescribed and damaging upbringing as I had.  But I do talk to a lot of women and the same issues keep coming up.

  • The need to prescribe to a diet – low fat, low carb, no biscuits/cake/chocolate for a month diet.  Are you in the Weight Watchers or Slimming World camp?
  • I’m dieting for my holiday.  I’m dieting for my wedding.  I’m dieting for my sister’s wedding.  It doesn’t matter what the reason is, there is always some external force at work to change the way we look.  Somehow this body won’t be acceptable for whatever we are working towards.
  • I have to lose my baby weight.  As if pregnancy, childbirth and the endless sleep deprivation coupled with unbelievable pressure to breast feed isn’t enough (don’t get me started on breasts by the way), then the media is obsessed with dropping the fat ten minutes after you’ve left the labour ward.
  • A suspended disbelief that one size fits all.  If it did, we’d all be wearing the same shoes.
  • The need to buy and consume what the dieting industry and media are offering, unaware of the irony that our bodies are bought and consumed by the dieting and media industries.  Like Tyler Durden in Fight Club says – we are having our own fat sold back to us.

Good grief, this is all starting to sound a little political.  Apologies if this isn’t your bag (but if it is, Fat is a Feminist Issue by Susan Orbach is not just a cracking good read, it’s also a practical approach to controlling your weight and The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf is also worth checking out).

We’ll return to the fashion bloggers and why what they are doing is so exciting.

I’ve read enough clinical papers, newspaper articles and media sound bites now to know that the medical community are worried about our health.  We have a rising obesity problem in the West and the strain this will put on services is causing great concern.

In some minds, frocks to fit a full bust, bigger belts to cinch a waist over rounded hips and a bikini that celebrates rather than hides a gloriously chunky body are going to normalise fatness and make the problem worse.

But don’t they see?  Rather than being part of the problem, beautiful, well cut and on-trend clothes are part of the solution.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and state that I believe we should normalise fatness and please don’t quote me out of context.  I believe we should normalise people being comfortable with the aesthetics of their own body – in that they should take ownership of whether or not it is beautiful.

So whether you are fat, thin, dark skinned, pale skinned, male, female, short, stocky, tall, lean or whatever innumerable permutations of the human body apply to you, they are yours and no one should be making money out of telling you that they are ugly and you need to change them.

What about health?  Improving health is part of this, it has to be.

So to this end, let’s do something radical and separate health from aesthetics and moral judgement.  Lumping these things together is not just insulting it’s profoundly unhelpful.

As I’ve said before, a body that feels strong and cherished is worth taking care of.  We can’t all be skinny but we can all tweak our lifestyles (or overhaul them if we chose) to make them happier and healthier.  And this doesn’t necessarily have to involve giving our money and self-esteem to a multi-billion pound industry bent on getting us to spend more by hating what we already have.

I digress again.

Back to my excitement.

I am old enough to have lived through the fledgling but influential low-fat movement of the 1980s.  Protein came under fire off the back of the food combining adherents of the 1990s and I’m now sitting back and watching the anti-sugar/anti-carb evangelists with some interest and maybe even a little cynical amusement now.  As a seasoned 40-year old I can’t say I’ve seen it all but I’ve seen enough to know that things move in cycles, absolute truth doesn’t exist and prescriptive diets are not an effective long term solution for everyone.

My interests have lead me to read so many inspiring, insightful and sometimes utterly radical and frankly confusing books about the body.  About how it is so much more than skin, bones and organs – about how society paints meaning onto it, how the image we see in the mirror is not always what’s there and how it is used as a tool to control our choices.

And I feel like we have reached a point where if we see enough images of fuller figured girls wearing bikinis, beautifully tailored clothes and red lipstick, proudly showing off shapely legs and glorious acres of creamy white bust, the aesthetics of this will no longer be wrong, evil and worthy of distaste.  In a utopian future, self-body-hatred, which so often leads to a negative relationship with food will be gone, leaving us big bottomed girls to get on with riding our bikes, safe in the knowledge that each heartbeat will be a little stronger than the one before, even if we’re wearing size 20 Lycra.  Perhaps next year we’ll be wearing size 18, maybe even a 16 but this will be a by-product rather than a focal point of a healthier lifestyle.

Perhaps this new aesthetic environment will bring a smile to the writers and theorists of my university days – who knows but I like to think that the girls in London this week are edging us closer to our utopia and having a massive amount of fun while they’re doing it.

 

How to get the body you want this summer - start by loving the one you already have

Notes:

In  the film The Full Monty, Gerald says “Fat, David is a feminist issue…I don’t bloody know (what it’s supposed to mean) do I?  But it is”.  Body dysmorphia and the male body is just as important and I’m sorry I haven’t had the space to include more about this in my blog post.

You’ll notice the bevy of beauties I’m referring to in my post are pretty young women with luscious, bouncing curls, milky skin and wickedly long eyelashes.  I realise that some critics, with some justification, will point out that in this they are as much buying into the beauty myth as the rest of the industry but  – one step at a time eh?

Weight Watchers, Slimming World and the dieting industry as a whole: prescriptive diets work wonders for some people – they take the weight off and keep it off.  For these people, I can only feel joy, it must feel wonderful to feel the benefits of their hard work.  It doesn’t work for me and it doesn’t work for others like me – we must find our own way of taking control of our weight.  Shaming and name calling isn’t likely to work either.

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