It’s Friday, you’ve guests arriving in a couple of hours and you get a text saying one of your number is a vegetarian. With the rose/cider/lager sorted and chilling in the fridge and the dips, chips and nibbles all ready to go, a small niggle of doubt rises from somewhere deep. What on earth can you make at this short notice?
Vegetarian summer food at it’s best – we love eating out at this time of year and it’s so easy to go meat free
Puff pastry is your friend even if it’s not exactly the most classy of ingredients. It’s not sophisticated and if, like me, you attended one Tupperware party too many growing up in the 70s and 80s, you’ll shudder at the idea of chicken vol au vents. Let’s call it an ingredient reborn shall we?
Firstly, some make their own puff pastry. Life is too short and wine is too plentiful – so I buy mine, very often frozen because it’s cheaper that way. You can also buy it fresh in blocks or ready rolled. Do make sure that it’s vegetarian – check the ingredients (most are but a few more deli-style pastries might have animal fat in them, just for fun).
If you’ve bought frozen, defrost in a fridge for at least 12 hours. If you choose to take it out of the fridge, to help it along, please remember to put it back in again and chill thoroughly before use (trying to roll out warm pastry is like trying to roll out mud).
Get it to about 3mm thick for a good, crispy texture when cooked. You’ll get four decent 4-slice tarts out of a block and two 4-slices from a ready rolled sheet (and two slices is ample per person).
Then score the pastry 5mm from the edge all the way around – that way, the pastry will rise around the filling.
One I made earlier – you can trim the edges if you like but a bit of wonkiness won’t affect the finished article.
This is the fun bit – getting creative with a few nourishing, flavoursome ingredients. These are my ideas for toppings to make a tart with a little wow factor (and very little effort):
Tomato, feta and basil – this one is dead simple. Place thinly sliced tomato over the base (leaving the edges so that they can rise) and then scatter feta over the top. When the tart has finished cooking, rip a handful of basil leaves over the top and leave for a few minutes for them to wilt gently over the hot topping. Delicious.
Gently caramelised tomatoes meet creamy, salty feta – finished with a little fragrant basil. A vegetarian classic.
This one is a leek (softened in a pan with a little butter first), goats cheese and walnut version – really earthy and satisfying. Great with a few grinds of black pepper and a lovely fresh white wine.
Goats cheese, leek and walnut tart. I love goats cheese and walnuts
And this one is a simple favourite – tomato puree spread sparingly but evenly on the base with mixed chopped vegetables (in this case, courgette and red onion) and then lashings of cheddar. Add a few Italian herbs too if you like, it makes it more like a pizza – my kids can’t get enough of it.
Pizza tart, always a winner and so simple to make (add pepperoni or chorizo for the meat eaters)
To cook: place on baking parchment on an oven tray and bake for around 20 minutes at 200c, gas mark 6. Check after about 15 minutes to make sure nothing is burning.
To serve: green salad is great. I also love this fragrant potato salad – boiled and cooled new potatoes (about 200g per person) tossed with a handful of finely sliced radishes, a finely chopped red onion, a handful of chopped fresh coriander, a glug of olive oil and the juice of a lime. Season with a little salt and black pepper and let everyone dig in!
So simple to make but always a crowd pleaser (and fantastic from the fridge at night Nigella-style – if there’s any left!)
So many toppings, so little time. What’s your favourite? I’d like to add more ideas to my recipe book, so drop me a line and let me know.
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All from Tu at Sainsbury’s. There is less wobble in my go-faster stripe trousers since I bought them back in January but that’s not as important as the muscle I’ve put into them.
I love running. Now, I’m not a born runner and I’m a big girl so when I made the decision to start running back in January this year, I knew that I’d be up against a very special set of circumstances in order to succeed. Six months on, I regularly run 4k and I’m well on my way to being ready for the 5k race I’m training for in October.
How have I got this far? Well, before I started running, I did some rummaging around on the internet for information about what I would encounter as a plus size runner and I found some excellent sources of information (check out The Fat Girl’s Guide to Running and The Running Bug). But there’s nothing like personal experience to help climb the steep learning curve, so if you’re thinking about taking up the sport or you’ve just started, these are my top ten tips for the fat bird running:
DownloadCouch to 5K from the NHS website. Realistically, it should be called ‘Couch to running for 30 minutes’ because I don’t know anyone who has gone from zero to 5K in nine weeks (but plenty who have gone from zero to hero). Listen to a few of the podcasts, familiarise yourself with how it works and know that it’s all about starting out your way, at your own pace, in your own time. I’m a big girl and I did it from beginning to end without missing a week and it’s started a running habit for life. It’s a flexible programme that gets you walking and running in intervals, slowly building your stamina until you can run for thirty minutes. It is doable and if you struggle at any stage, the option is always there to re-try a week until you feel comfortable enough to move on.
Defeat any niggles about your heart or joints by having a chat with your doctor if you’re really concerned. I don’t know a GP in the country who would consider this kind of discussion a waste of time, especially with current concerns with obesity and the NHS. A personal fitness trainer friend of mine suggested running on grass or mud in order to reduce stress on my joints – which is what I often do (and it means I get to run in the countryside, always a happy thing).
I have a pair of Karrimor d30 trainers. They’re lightweight and durable enough for me but do shop around
Buy a really good pair of running shoes – shop around on the net, try a few on and if you can stretch to it, go to a local running shop and get fitted. Supporting your feet, ankles and other joints is imperative if you’re carrying a few extra pounds with you along the track.
Get some comfortable running gear. Sainsbury’s Tu do a range of great running clothes off the peg up to a size 22. If you’re over a size 18 don’t even bother with Sports Direct – it’s just disheartening. J.D. Williams also do running gear up to a size 32 if you’re happy to order off the internet.
Worry about the jiggly bits. Get a really good running bra and be prepared to spend a little on this because it is really worth it. Mine came from Marks and Spencer and I really feel as though I’m well strapped in when I’m running. It does give a bit of an uni-boob effect but believe me, when you’re half way through a 30 minute run, it really doesn’t matter.
Don’t worry about the jiggly bits. If I wobble here or there, or if I feel I’m showing a bit more bum or belly than I would normally be happy with I think of how hard my healthy heart is pumping to keep me moving. Besides, I’m lapping everyone sitting on a sofa or in a car seat.
Be prepared for it to be more than a little bit addictive. I twitch if I haven’t run for a while, I’ve heard my trainers singing to me from the hallway on more than one occasion and sometimes, I choose to swap my Saturday lie in for a blast in the early morning sun. It has to be said that while the slog is sometimes hard work, the buzz afterwards is more than worth it.
Be prepared to be hungry – and respectfully answer the need. I’m carb sensitive, so I find that loading up with bread, pasta or sugar after a run quickly sweeps away the happy feeling but those kinds of foods work for some people – we’re all different. What’s important is that you feed your body good things because it is a good, healthy, strong body. Reward it, don’t deny it and whilst honouring your body with good quality nourishment is the kind thing to do, remember that the occasional doughnut won’t do any damage (but hating yourself afterwards will).
Zingy and bright, oranges are one of my favourite post run snacks – and not because I’m virtuous, I just find them fun to eat
Be prepared to be slow and steady. I can’t run fast, I’m carrying too much weight – I often see lean runners bounding past and I’m not bothered, I just wonder how much bounding they’d do if they had several stone in weight strapped to their body. I eat healthy and build strength in order to run – losing weight is not my focus, it’s just a happy by-product.
Running really is an inclusive sport. Slogging along the riverpath where I usually run, I often meet fellow runners – often girls with ponytails in pairs lithely bouncing along in pretty sports gear or solo, muscly chaps complete with water bottle and strong legs. Far from feeling intimidated, I always get an acknowledging smile for my effort and very often a fist pump too. Watching the runners finishing the recent Polesden 10k race in Surrey was an eye opener – coming over the line were the faces of exalted pensioners, ladies with more than ample bosoms and in fact every kind of person you could imagine – old, young, slim, heavy, tall, short – they’d all taken on the challenge of the Surrey hills and won. All individuals with the same goal – putting one foot in front of the other until the finishing line.
And so, when I went for a medical appointment yesterday and the nurse had recorded my weight, she was genuinely pleased to hear about my running habit. This makes a happy change from being hassled about my weight which I have never enjoyed or found very helpful.
There is so much negativity around weight when in reality, heavy bodies can be strong bodies. They can be beautiful, healthy and worthy bodies. In a culture obsessed with the fat someone is carrying, it is easy to forget the possibility that a healthy heart and lungs can lie within. So while the debate about whether or not it is possible to be fat but fit rattles on, I know I’d rather be breathing in and out in the sunshine rather than crying into a pot of processed, low-fat goo.
In my mind, the movement of the needle on the scales is not as important as the movement of my feet along gravel paths; over hot, summer grass at the park or to some cheesy tunes alongside the river.
But that’s just my opinion.
Finishing the Polesden run with my husband. Pretty chuffed with my 2K achievement, I was bowled over by him completing his arduous 10K trek – we started running at the same time
Is there anything I haven’t thought of – what are your tips? And have you just started running or are about to? How do you feel? I’d love to know.
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I’ve got a bee in my bonnet again. The model Tess Holliday has come under fire again for daring to promote fashion. She’s a model. That’s what she does.
(Check out her instructions for getting a bikini body in one easy step for Simply Be here.)
Some responses on her Twitter account were unrepeatable.
Tess shows her followers how to wear a bikini in one easy step
In the light of this, consider that last week an Yves Saint Laurent advertisement in Elle magazine was banned by the UK’s advertising watchdog for featuring a very underweight model. The comments in response to this on social media ranged from motherly ‘all she needs is a good meal’ to positively inhumane rants about how the girl looked like a corpse.
Apparently both campaigns were promoting the wrong kind of lifestyle.
But stop and think. What do we mean by promotion? Why does this matter? What exactly is being promoted?
I have a friend who is a professional copywriter and she often says that the objective behind an effective campaign is to sell not the sausage but the sizzle.
In other words, it’s the emotional response to the sausage’s sensory output that is likely to bring the consumer to the table rather than the sausage itself. After all, an intestine rammed with chopped offal doesn’t sound as appealing as the smell of a Cumberland ring fresh off the grill (unless, of course you’re a veggie like me but I’m comfortable running with the sausage metaphor for now).
So, back to Tess in her bikini and the YSL girl laying on the carpet. What’s the sausage being sold here? On a simple level, it’s the fashion but we all know that the printed picture is the end product of a long creative decision making process to create sizzle, so it’s clear that there is some kind of lifestyle being promoted too. Without this spark to fire up the consumer’s emotional response, there’s less likely to be a sale.
In the case of the YSL advertisement, it’s attempting to offer a kind of sophistication but the fact that the girl is lying on the floor in an empty room with seriously wasted thighs and an emaciated chest plays right into the hands of the critics waving the anti ‘heroin chic’ banner. Body dysmorphia is a well-known problem and it’s estimated that eating disorders affect 6.4% of UK adults, so I can understand why there is uneasiness to feature this kind of image in a sphere as public as a popular magazine. At least it got people talking about YSL – and the only thing worse than that, according to Oscar Wilde, is people not talking about it.
Should the advert have been banned? Probably but not necessarily just for the model, I think the shot was poorly styled in terms of the message it was sending. This leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth if this kind of negative publicity was intentional.
Is Tess doing more of the same? What’s her sizzle?
Is Tess really promoting cake abuse as a lifestyle choice?
According to critics avidly waving the anti-cake banners, images of her should also be banned because she too is promoting an unhealthy lifestyle. I suppose if she’d been pictured laying on a kitchen floor surrounded by semi-eaten cream-filled chocolate sponge this would be a fair point.
But that’s not her sizzle. Not once has she encouraged anyone to overeat. She has referred to comfort eating as her only vice but not once has she actively promoted being overweight as a lifestyle choice, like thin people should go out tomorrow and eat the cake store. We’re talking sizzle here, not sausage. She’s not promoting cake, chips, cheese or burgers. She’s promoting fashion, looking good and feeling fabulous in the body you have.
Rather than being a target for do-gooders she should be acknowledged as a champion for the thousands of obese women in this country seeking to improve their self-esteem and lose weight for their health.
And feeling good should be the sizzle that leads to weight loss. Doctors aren’t saying that if people would just try to become a bit more beautiful it will save the NHS, so health should be the focus, not man made aesthetic standards – we’ll leave those to the shallow end of the advertising industry.
Rocking a frock Tess Holliday style – one that fits your curves the size you are now – makes a girl feel good. Who cares if it’ll be baggy in a few months’ time – cinch the waist in with a belt until it’s frock buying time again. Wear red shoes to the supermarket, pout lipstick chops at the mirror in the office and feel sexy in your own behind because it’s this kind of attitude that will get you healthy.
Why settle for the sausage when you can have the sizzle?
A treat for the senses or a plate full of dead animal?
Going home has always been a restorative thing for me. Driving over the Tamar, I take a huge breath of good Cornish air and then another as I circle above my home town of Penryn, where the new Combined Universities in Cornwall has sprung up on the grounds of what was Tremough Convent. Glimpses of the river going out to Falmouth Bay never fail to catch my breath and bring back memories of walking the fields high on the hill with my mother as a child; ripping grass from the verges to feed the horses, fingers stained from blackberry picking. There was less traffic then.
But my story is about Falmouth, where my parents now live. The car park on Fish Strand Quay is one of the best places to see the historic waterfront and it’s one of the first places I head to when I’m home. Half way along is the building that was the Royal British Legion – a building that my Dad has strong links to as did his father before him. It’s now home to the Arwenack Club where my Step Mother is a key player behind the bar. Yes I did spend much time in there with my family over the weekend. Yes, I did drink much beer. Yes I did sing karaoke on Sunday evening. And the quality of music of the Rockabilly band Chrome Deville was matched only by the jivers on the dancefloor. There’s something very special about watching the sunlight fade over the water as the lights of the docks come up – over a pint and some lively banter of course.
This is where WordPress could do with a Smellovision plugin. The lane heading down from where my Dad lives towards Swanpool beach is always vibrant with bluebells at this time of year but it’s the scent of the wild garlic that is overpowering. An evening walk down to the beach with the kids and Buster often involves signet spotting on the pool and a hedgehog ice cream on the Swanpool café decking overlooking the sea. (A hedgehog ice cream involves Cornish ice cream, clotted cream and toasted chopped hazelnuts by the way – it’s heaven’s heart attack in a cone!)
Swanpool beach – St Anthony lighthouse on the other side of the harbour is a pin prick in the distance
Swanpool Beach. This place means much to me. The small specks on the rocks are my son leading his little sister over the rocks – much like my brother used to do with me – and the path leading up on the cliffs towards Gyllingvase was where I used to walk with my Granddad when I was a child and where I sometimes run now. This is also where I used to bring my son after school, many years ago – we’d have tea on the beach and he’d play in the shallows when the heat of the summer day had passed.
Clean, cool air came off the water as I sat and watched the guys fishing off the rocks and the smell of the barbeque their friends had just lit for them just up the beach from me wafted out to sea.
Swanpool beach looking out towards Stack Point
So I did what any girl would do when left alone on a beach in the evening sun – I slipped off my flip flops and buried my toes in the sand.
The next day we drove back. ‘Til August it is then.
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.
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 Mythby 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.
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.
I live on the outskirts of an old military town and since Joanna Lumley’s campaign to improve the lives of ex-Ghurkhas and their families, the area has seen a considerable influx of Nepalese people.
And unlike so many residents who live round here, I have to say I really like these people: they’ve brought a different dimension to the town and I think we have so much to learn from them.
It makes me sad to hear of yet another earthquake in their homeland and I cannot begin to imagine the sadness they must feel, thinking of the communities they’ve left behind. With all the devastating news reports in the media at the moment, I just wanted to say something positive about the people I’ve encountered here, in what must seem like a very foreign land.
Early in the morning, when I’m cycling my daughter to school, I meet small groups of elderly, well wrapped, brightly coloured Nepalese walking in groups along the river path and through the park. “Good morning” they say and in return I offer a “Namaste”. It’s always at this point that they light up and putting their hands together offer many back.
It took me no time at all to notice that this expression conveyed so much more than one of our own English greetings and having never been to Nepal, I thought I’d do a little research.
Just five minutes looking around on the web turned up so much. The phrase literally means “I bow to you”. The small head nod, the hands gently pressing together, the smile that accompanies it, acknowledges the divine spark that resides within us all. It’s more of a prayer than a greeting, so much richer than “good morning”. It’s more involved and wider than just one person acknowledging another. It’s about souls, much older than bodies, passing the time of day.
This made me think about so much I’ve observed recently.
One spring morning about a year ago, I was sat in the car outside my friend’s flat, waiting for him. Next door, a couple of elderly Nepalese ladies stepped out into the sunshine and it was as though the new green leaves and the bright light filled the second woman with something so enlightening, she simply had to place her hands together and say good morning to the sun. My friend is really ill, which I’m finding most distressing at the moment but that one gesture made me smile.
Then there was the time a friend sent me a picture of a small group of elderly Nepalese sat outside his flat in the car park on deckchairs. They were tightly wrapped as it was a cold November day but because the sun was out, so were they. I’ve never been good at hibernating either.
I’ll also mention the elderly Ghurka who I regularly see making his way into town. His slow shuffle speaks of determination despite infirmity or injury. His broad shoulders, muscular physique and strong hand on his walking stick speak of a dignified life at arms for a country far away from the land of his birth.
There seems to be something open and accepting that’s hardwired into the Nepalese people I’ve met. They go outside, explore, find new places – and the library is usually busy with them. On market day, the town is alive with circles of men talking, the women picking over the vegetables on the stalls and in the parks and gardens, they sit and talk in the sunshine.
I don’t pretend to know very much about their land and their diverse culture. I know there are divisions in the country and that it is recovering from a brutal civil war. The town in which I live is groaning under the weight of this sudden population increase (which I believe has more to do with policy than people) and even the local MP has voiced concern over the locals’ inability to find a park bench to use at peak times. I’ve also read about their caste system, their gender roles and their religious and ideological divisions but I can only go on the elderly Nepalese people I’ve seen (I believe the young have their own basket of problems) – and what I’ve seen is a quiet, respectful, considerate people with a great sense of humour and a thirst for human experience.
I’m not a religious person but I think the concept that we all carry a spark of the divine within us is a sensible one. If, just if, the idea that we all harbour the same life force is true, wouldn’t it clear up so many modern-day woes? Wouldn’t so many of our negative emotions like jealousy and fear which cause so much hurt become not just futile but useless?
There are so many souls hurting in Nepal today because the earth shook – again.
What is it about overweight people that reduces some people to hideous hate speak? Is it our chubby cheeks? Our wobbly bottoms? Or our obvious love of lard, burgers and pie?
‘Obese pigs’, ‘people keep putting a fist full of food into their mouths’, ‘stuffing faces’,’ lardies’, ‘being fat is a choice’ and constant referral to laziness, greed and lack of self-control littered a comment section below an article published by the Mail Online this week, written by physician and journalist Dr Max Pemberton.
No stranger to speaking out, this driven psychiatrist and nutritionist wrote a well-reasoned opinion piece about the stress be believes is being put on the NHS by the obese. In terms of style, the article’s awkward use of punning detracted somewhat from its serious content but it’s not that I have a problem with.
Ewww. Apparently, this is what us fatties stuff our faces with all the time. Personally I’d rather go lick the pavement.
The fat shamers of this country are really not helping the overweight to get healthier and unfortunately Dr Pemberton just fed them as much fuel as they wanted. And what pictures accompanied the article? Someone eating a massive burger and two fat ladies sat on a bench overlooking the sea, their rolls apparent but their faces hidden.
Like so many other features about the obese in the media, his words were accompanied by these negative images of fat people as if this is going to shame the overweight, many of whom already suffer from self-confidence problems, into shedding the pounds. It’s simply not going to work.
He’s a psychiatrist. Doesn’t he already know this?
“Most obese people simply do not care about being overweight…we should make such an attitude socially acceptable” he says “that’s not to say you have to be cruel”. I’m not sure I agree with his first statement one hundred per cent but he is entitled to his opinion.
“We also need to address the issue of what is making everyone fat” I agree with him here and his assertion that a fat tax could “fund psychological help to support those who struggle to lose weight”.
Nice one but there are still two conflicting stories running alongside each other here. On one hand, you have the journalist out to sell an emotive article to a readership and on the other, a doctor who wants to do something about the problem all rolled into one. It creates a mixed message.
So, what now? Personally, I’m going to keep on campaigning for more positive images of fat people in the media.
I want to see sexy, vibrant people who pull on their running shoes, go the gym, walk their kids to school, cycle to the shops – because in reality, that’s what a lot of us do.
Yes, exercise alone won’t tackle a weight problem but a healthier feeling body is a body that feels more worth caring for, worth feeding right. Inactivity isn’t a choice for some people but for those that can increase their exercise, what can we do as a nation to get them out, get them moving, get them feeling a part of something? In my mind it’s giving them self-worth.
It’s getting the message out there that you don’t need to be beach body ready, you don’t have to be running ready, you don’t have to be fitness ready. You just need the confidence to get out, do what you can and see where it leads you.
The This Girl Can Campaign. Let’s make a change through more body positive and less fat hating
So, let’s see Dr Pemberton’s article accompanied by a link to the ‘This Girl Can’ campaign. Why not show a plump woman ordering a salad and falafel at a health food van rather than a chap in a chip shop? Let’s show the faces of the overweight so that they become human beings – they don’t want to be bullied or shamed, they want some answers about why dieting for thirty years has got them nowhere.
They want to know why their perceived lack of self-control is somehow worse and more damaging then that of some Neanderthals commenting anonymously on a website.
For the record, I haven’t eaten meat for nearly twenty years – and I’d rather eat the box than the vegetarian crap they serve up at fast food restaurants. I run or cycle at least five times a week, walk at the weekends and eat more fruit and veg than anyone else I know. I was taught how to cook by my mother and at school but I’m also able to learn. I have never smoked and I drink no more than a few glasses of wine a month.
I am not a faceless human lump, I am a vibrant, valid and beautiful human being who is struggling to lose weight so that I can feel healthy. I don’t see that promoting positive images of plus size women and seeing them as fashionable, attractive, valuable human beings makes me part of the “ludicrous cult of the obese” – (to quote Dr Pemberton).
I’m not interested in being the object of hate for some small minded idiots who’ll stub out their fag and open another can of beer, smug in the fact that their vices are more easily hidden.
Hair slapped back, no make up but wearing a massive grin, this is what a size 22 girl looks like after she’s been out for a run. Put that in your fat-shaming pipe and smoke it!
And as a finishing note, compare the attitude of the fat-haters to the fellow runners I met out by the river early this morning. Slogging my final km, two young women bounced past me, light on their feet and chatting happily. They both smiled huge grins in acknowledgement of my effort and I even got a fist pump. This is what will help us, the fatties, the obese, the slobs, the lumps, the burden on the NHS to lose weight.
Not idiots with empty heads, stupid words and unhelpful images.
I posted my dismay at some bizarre comments made by the Loose Women team last month about whether high street fashion should be available in sizes above 14-16. Here it is in it’s glory but be prepared to shout at the screen.
So many people were as shocked and appalled as I was that one member of the panel, Jamelia, made an apology the following day. This carried more of the features of a backtrack than a sorry but being an ambassador for ITV’s Good Morning Britain #selfieesteem campaign I guess she had little choice. (But do check out Natasha Devon’s part in the campaign and her bid to banish ‘fat talk’.)
“I do not think it is right to facilitate people living an unhealthy lifestyle” she smiled “I think you should be uncomfortable if you are unhealthy.”
Janet Street-Porter (no stranger to controversy) chipped in with “I don’t want to demonise these girls but at the same time I don’t want to normalise being morbidly obese.” Rolling these two words around in her mouth, her concerns seemed to centre around mobility issues in the short term and health issues in later life. I can only suppose she thought these were valid anchor points for her argument but she soon slipped her mooring when she implied that denying teenagers fashionable clothes would motivate them to lose weight.
So, at what weight does a girl give up the right to feel good about herself? At what BMI does she have to hand over her red lipstick and stockings? At what size does she no longer have the right to wear high heels and up to the minute fashion?
Size 16? Possibly an 18 according to the Loose Women crew (the following day this was increased to 20). Certainly not if you are a size 24 or, incidentally a size 0.
The word ‘kaftan’ was mentioned once.
Tess, the face of Yours clothing, rocking a dress from their latest collection
Tell all of this to successful model, fashion blogger and celebrity Tess Holliday. Sporting stunning looks, big lashy eyes and tumbling locks, her portfolio includes swimwear and lingerie shoots. She has no shortage of va-va-voom but her gorgeous curves fall outside of what our ladies above would call ‘normal’. Seriously though, putting her in a shapeless kaftan would be nothing short of a crime.
(Check out Tess’ blog and see also fashion bloggers Callie Thorpe, Dannielle Varnier, Bethany Rutter, Georgina Horne – find their blogs on my Links page).
L.A. based Tess along with this small group of influential and rather fabulous British plus size fashion bloggers were featured in Channel 4’s Plus Sized Wars – the subject of the Loose Women’s lunchtime chat. (Available to view until 20/04/15 – see Channel 4’s website.)
Aired on the 21st of April this year, the programme explored the fashion industry’s awakening to a previously undertapped corner of the market. Three companies: 80 year established high street staple Evans, Australian Taking Shape and market trader brainchild Yours are after the plus sized fashion conscious girl with an eye for style and money in her pocket.
But, it’s clear from their clumsy comments, that the intelligent media-savvy individuals sat around the Loose Women panel that day had understood little and misunderstood much from the Channel 4 programme.
This in mind, these are the things I have a problem with:
The assumption that every girl who is a size 20 cannot run after her children or enjoy life to the full. I regularly run 4k and cycle 10k and yes, I chase my six year old around the park and regularly run up the stairs (I mean, who really has the time to walk?).
The assumption that feeling uncomfortable will make you lose weight. It won’t, it will make you go eat more cake.
The assumption that everyone who is big is greedy and lazy and therefore deserves to be. This kind of Dickensian reasoning is just ignorant of the kind of mental and physical health problems that can be behind weight issues (and a quick bit of research will reveal the damage done by the bullshit dietary advice about fat we were spoonfed in the 1980s/1990s).
The misleading assumption that teenage girls can be shamed into losing weight. This is a time when a girl’s self-esteem can be at its lowest and is so easily scuppered. If we send out the wrong messages about their self-worth then they are lost. Punishing a girl for being overweight at this age is utterly counterproductive (regardless of what Janet Street Porter says).
What’s next? Punish everyone with an unhealthy lifestyle? Shall we start saying that smokers can’t have coordinating accessories or that drinkers can’t wear makeup?
What do you think of when you see this picture? Someone who has never smoked? Drinks a few glasses of wine a month? Hasn’t eaten meat for nearly twenty years? Or a girl running in size twenty trousers? Yep, I’m guilty of all of the above.
Let’s separate morals and self-esteem because even bad people can have a good haircut (something to think about in the run up to the General Election).
I think a more intelligent approach is in order:
The ‘This Girl Can’ campaign. A friend of mine teaches teenagers with mental health issues. Her classroom walls feature positive images of women of all sizes sweating, getting strong and feeling vital and she’s had a great response from the girls in her care.
And how about the ‘Too fat to run’ club interviewed running the London Marathon this year? Plus size women can’t run after a toddler? These women run over 26 miles for fun.
What better way to get people feeling good and feeling fit than by telling them that they have a good body, a strong body, a valid and beautiful body that’s worth training?
Promote the message that it’s more important to be healthy than to be slim. For some of us ‘slim’ is a dream in some far off tomorrow. Fit is putting your trainers on or getting in the saddle right now and doing what it takes to get your heart pumping.
Let’s remove the stigma that comes along with being overweight, from health. The focus should be on moving and eating healthily, not on what bad, lazy people fatties are.
Let’s think about the underlying causes of obesity, instead of reducing people to wearing shapeless, unflattering and soul-destroying clothes.
It’s a matter of shifting perspective and opening your mind to the fact that good people sometimes make unwise choices and unwise people sometimes make good choices. There may be an unseen story behind what is immediately apparent.
One of the biggest concerns the NHS has at the moment is the rise in diabetes. Will someone, somewhere please point me to the clinical research that concludes that weight shaming is the best way of tackling this. I’d be genuinely interested in reading it.
Hats off to the likes of Sainsbury’s TU and Mountain Warehouse for their fine ranges of sports/outdoor clothing up to a size 22 – they are the only mainstream places I’ve found stylish running gear off the peg in my size. Shame on everyone else. You’re not helping (but do drop me a line if you’ve found another great source).
An unbelievably good find at TK Maxx this week, I’ll not be running after my six year old in these but it won’t be because of my weight. I wore them to the supermarket, just because I could.
I’m the first one to acknowledge that the young, curvy body of the beautiful women in Channel 4’s documentary will change when they get older. Popping out a couple of kids and blowing out forty candles on a cake changes a girl and the potential sagging of the later years affects those of us of a more voluptuous nature to a greater extent than our trimmer counterparts. This is one point on which I can agree with JSP but from what I’ve read, self loathing is rarely the first step to making life-changing decisions. I’d say that self-belief and self-worth are probably a better starting point.
So I believe we have a responsibility towards overweight young women but we can’t assume that they’re lazy, greedy and lacking in commitment. They want to feel good about themselves. They want to feel powerful, sexy, valid and we have to help them to do this.
Feel utterly fabulous in this pretty polka dot number from Simply Be
Let’s see more of the well designed fashion Tess, Callie, Danielle, Bethany and Georgina are peddling. Let’s have a bit more body acceptance – no, body joy. Let’s celebrate the feeling of looking good. Us big girls are not all burger eating, couch surfing slobs who don’t give a shit about our cholesterol or heart disease. Some of us regularly run, cycle, dance and swim despite our wobbly bits. And for those who really need to lose weight for medical reasons, let’s make it about medical reasons. Let’s make the journey more positive every step of the way – after all, JSP’s hypothetical size twenty 18-year old might have been a size twenty-four last year and doing up the zip on her new, crisp polka dot frock has made all the blood, sweat and tears worth while.
We just want to wear some delicious clothes and feel fantastic while we do it.
And it’s going to take a bit more than a bit of lunch time chit-chat to stop us.
Everyone has their own signature dish they make for guests. Whipping out a roasting tray or a griddle pan and grabbing some garlic from the fridge or Rosemary from the garden, it seems we all have go-to dishes that never fail to delight.
But what do you do if you are normally a meat eater and now have a vegetarian in your midst? You’ve been Master at Arms in your kitchen for years and suddenly your teenager comes home one afternoon to announce that they are now veggie. Perhaps you’ve found out your son’s new girlfriend doesn’t eat meat just after you’ve planned a huge Sunday feast or maybe a colleague is coming round for the first time for a Friday night barbeque and they need a vegetarian option.
You can even make vegetarian scotch eggs – perfect for a picnic, a summer barbeque or a Christmas buffet.
I’ve known competent cooks to go to pieces and raid the freezer at Waitrose rather than come up with something homemade (and by the way, I’d eat anything veggie from the freezer at Waitrose any day) but if you’re looking to stir up something fabulous of your own creation, it’s not that arduous to remove meat from a meal without removing the flavour. I’ve not eaten meat for nearly twenty years now and if there’s anything that sets off an attack of guilty ungratefulness at someone else’s dinner table, it’s the sight of a Quorn sausage next to my dauphinoise potatoes and butter sautéed baby veg, no matter how pretty they look.
But you don’t really want to be cooking two meals when you’re already under pressure, so welcome to my new blog series: Vegetarian Kitchen Heroes.
I thought I would start with some basics
If you’re cooking for a vegetarian there are a few really important things to remember:
Sounds obvious but please keep meaty utensils, plates and all other equipment separate. Finding out that someone has put the chicken gravy spoon in with the mashed carrot and swede just causes sadness.
Not all veggies are cheese freaks. Have a chat with your herbivore friend beforehand to find out what they like to eat and then head off to have a look at anything by Rose Elliot (she’s published about a million different cookery books and her website is really informative too) or the Vegetarian Society website. I use the BBC GoodFood site a lot as well.
Easy on the carbs, even easier on the eye. A simple feta and walnut salad with shredded beetroot and lambs lettuce is great dressed with just a splash of olive oil and a little freshly ground pepper. Light, nutritious, perfect.
Vegan and vegetarian are two very different cuisines. Cooking without any animal products at all can be a scary proposition but the vegan society have a vibrant and really rather helpful website. Or rustle up a chickpea and coconut curry – rich, sumptuous and utterly comforting – I’ve made this BBC GoodFood version before and it’s delightful.
Check sauces, bottled ingredients and accompaniments. Did you know that Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce contains fish, Muller Light yogurt contains gelatine (derived from animal collagen) and most authentic pestos contain cheese made from rennet (from animal stomachs)? Five gold stars if you already knew all of this but it just goes to show that you need to check what you’re cooking with before you serve it up to a non-meat eater.
Easy on the carbs. It’s very easy to cut the goodness, protein and beneficial fats from a meal when you cut the meat. The last thing you want to be left with is a dull, stodgy mess so using nuts, wholegrains, cheeses, eggs and so many other great foodstuffs can round out a meal, making it wholesome and balanced. Do your research and have some fun.
Go on, try a bit. In fact, have a go at trying it once a week, or even for a whole week. You’ll bump into new flavour combinations, textures you may not have come across before and who knows, maybe even a few extra vitamins and minerals. My brother is a chef and he was impressed by just how much you can enjoy cooking and eating when meat is no longer the main attraction.
The basics over and done with, I’ll share the ingredients I really love to cook with over the coming weeks.
Are you already a vegetarian and can add to my list, have you had any veggie cooking disasters or have you found the above helpful and fancy giving it a go? Please share, I’d love to hear your comments.
Inspired by a Hairy Bikers recipe, this butter pie is as good as a winter pick-me-up with some bright salad as it is a picnic delight on a hot summer’s day – and completely meat-free.
I saw you through the gates. You had short, spiky hair in mauve or it might have been black, I don’t remember now. Inked on one shoulder was a huge Pegasus, its wings wide and green and on the other, the motif of a woman embracing a man: the image dreamlike and fantastic in muted, earthy blues and greys. With a bar in one eyebrow and a stud through your tongue, I noticed that when you smiled, you had a ring in the flesh above your top teeth, although I guess you must keep most of these in a treasured box by the bed now.
You were tall, distinguished and cocksure amongst the jostling bodies.
You looked up to the sky and beyond the high fence at the clouds gathering with a look of rain on your face and with open arms ushered the children in your care through the school doors to the sound of the wet play bell.
That was eight, maybe nine years ago now. I’d just moved a million miles from where I grew up to live with a wonderful but distant man and having cried my way around the bored housewives tutting at the quality of slacks in department stores too many times, I decided what I needed was a friend. Always one to wear the wrong brand of flip flops, my skin was too natural a colour and my clothes too close to plus size for me to fit in well with the other mums at my son’s school at the time but something about you spoke of interest, life and excitement.
Lifting me out of my delirious melancholy, something about the fact that you were the most unconventional dinner lady ever woke me up.
And now up you go: in the belly of the helicopter, rising with your future.
Because living on the seesaw isn’t easy. It’s isolating. I know that.
Do you remember the time I picked you up and we went shopping? It took no longer than passing by the chicken wings to realise that it was a bad day for you. There were issues with the joints of pork and you thrust a jar of pasta sauce at me: shortly afterwards you shouted at some special offers on an aisle end and told off a mother with a howling child. My cupboards remained empty until later that night but I knew that I had to usher you out of the supermarket before something permanent happened.
Thinking back, we found out not long after I saw you in the playground, that although our children went to different schools, they were the same age: tendays difference, in fact. It was meeting you at Scouts that secured the notion that we were somehow meant to be a pair of caped crusaders: less Batman and Robin and more Morecombe and Wise or perhaps even Laurel and Hardy.
It took some time for your past to catch up with us. I remember as a child, letting go of my mother’s hand while walking to town and jumping a small wall to rescue a bear left out in the rain. She was horrified and came in to the stranger’s garden to catch hold of me once more but having seen the bear’s damp, limp ears her face softened and together we rang the doorbell and handed it over. I’d often seen toys left outside at night in my neighbours’ gardens and it unsettled something deep inside, like my heart and lungs had changed places or something. Things made to be treasured should be just that.
And since your childhood, you had been left out in the rain too many times.
So now, camera in hand, near-adult son at your side, you soar for the first time ever: up to the mighty fighter planes, the giant jumbos and the angular magic of your favourite fixed wing jet. I’ve been smiling at the thought for days.
Then there was the time you hid for months. Neck pain and a faulty MRI scanner meant you stayed the safe side of your coffee table, piled high with ignored bills, tv remotes and old teacups until you felt safe to come out again. It was the rain again. I could tell because your ears hung down.
I have a rich collection of snapshots. Your face around the back gate when I was heavily pregnant and deathly tired: you had lunch in one hand and a duster in the other. Then there was my wedding: you wore a trouser suit and a smile. With a glass of bubbly in one hand and my cake topper in the other, I could tell that something bright was laying quietly dormant, waiting for longer days and brighter skies.
Perhaps one of the things that I am most grateful for are the times you can engage with my husband on the nature of gaming, cricket and sixteenth century military maneuverers on my behalf. I am more than happy to move down the bench. Sunny days follow dark nights but always there are the totems of childhood joys stolen through the gaps of adult anguish.
And having delighted in sharing my family with you for so long, since I spied you through the gates, every time I go to lift your soggy fabric body off the lawn lately, I’m intrigued to find another pair of hands there first. This man makes your eyes bright. Your manic bounce quietens into a gentle undulation, like an ocean under swell and you fit into the cup of his hands as if you were always there.
Courtesy of those magnificent men (and woman) in their flying machines. Gotta love a bit of Red Arrows magic.
And this is where he has led you: the steps, the upward draught of the blades and a weightless lifting off. He’s the other side of the world but money flies and I almost hope that his Airshow gift soars you up into the clouds, into the skies above and then out beyond the atmosphere.
Then in eight, maybe nine years’ time I’ll think of the friend I haven’t seen in a long while and I’ll smile about the thought of her flying around the sun.
