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
Walk double – I suppose climbing the 115 steps and running down the sloped route would count?
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.
(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:
There’s a lot of talk about the UK’s weight issues being bandied about at the moment. What caused the problem? Who’s to blame? What can be done?
I’m an avid reader on the subject – everything from cutting edge scientific papers to tabloid headlines but there were two things that caught my eye this morning – both from one of the social media groups I follow.
One was a story of a woman openly stared and talked about in a gym because of her weight.
And another ridiculous meme about how fat people should just get out there and get thin.
Firstly, who criticises someone for working out at a gym? You’ve got to have a serious self-image problem yourself or a tiny intellect if you think that crushing words or cat-like staring is helping anyone.
Secondly, exercise is all about raising your heart rate and your self esteem – if you’re looking for radical weight loss on exercise alone, you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’s all about the shits n giggles, building mental and physical strength and changing your body shape. It isn’t about pleasing the small minded who’d rather you have a tiny, toned physique because somehow they have a right to dictate what you look like.
So I got thinking. It’s often the absences that say more than what’s actually there – all it takes is a little creativity*:
What lies beneath? Bother to think and you’ll be enlightened
stare too much at my fatsuit and you’ll miss the powerful legs beneath
whisper about the rolls the big girl at the gym is carrying and you might miss the ones she’s managed to lose in the last six months
laugh about the guy with a round belly and you’ll not know that the meds he’s been taking for the past year have kept him out of the psychiatric ward but gained him six stone – he’s now on a low GI diet to shift the weight but it’s tough
ridicule the curvy red head in her crop top and shorts but miss the fact that she’s conquered a childhood of domestic abuse and now supports her young son from the proceeds of an international modelling career
chide the cake eating sofa queen for her laziness and sloth and be completely ignorant of the fact that because of idiots like you she struggled to leave the house to take her toddler to the park yesterday
rant about the availability of the fatkini and how it’s promoting obesity as a lifestyle choice and miss the more intellectually challenging concept that self worth can be a lifestyle choice regardless of your clothes size
look down your nose at me and see me as a disgrace and you’ll be ignorant of how far I’ve come and how many people I’ve helped along the way
Yep, I’ve got a big arse
but there seems to be an epidemic of small-mindedness out there and for the future health of the nation it needs to be dealt with
Do you agree? Take a moment to share using the buttons on the top right and drop me a line.
Not agree? Do the same.
Have you been shamed (for whatever reason) and how helpful was it?
I feel like we can make a positive change one person at a time.
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.
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:
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
