Episode 22 Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Fierce Fatty podcast. I am your host, Victoria Welsby and this is episode 22 and we're going to be talking about how you've been brainwashed into hating your body and how to deprogram yourself. Let's do it.

You're listening to the Fierce Fatty podcast. I'm Victoria Welsby TEDx speaker, bestselling author and fat activist. I have transformed my life from hating my body with desperately low self esteem to being a courageous and confident first fatty who loves every inch of this jellied society teaches us living in a fat body is bad. But what if we spent less time, money, and energy on the pursuit of thinness and instead focused on the things that actually matter. Like if pineapple on pizza should be outlawed or if the mullet was the greatest haircut of the 20th century. So how do you stop a negative beliefs about your fat body controlling your life? It's the Fierce Fatty podcast. Let's begin.

Okay, so welcome. OMG. How are you feeling? Oh Lord, sweet, baby Jesus. Yeah. Corona virus, COVID19. It's all going down, isn't it? It's March the 18th today when I'm recording this podcast and this morning I reached out to a few of my Vancouver right fatties because what we're going to do to support everyone with the intuitive eating, their fat positivity, their body loving and reduce anxiety is next week. So the week beginning, I think the 22nd is it? Yeah, 23rd Monday, the 23rd, sometime in that week. I haven't let you haven't picked the time yet. I am going to do a Facebook live where we are going to be talking about all of this stuff. The fact that people are feeling really food insecure, the fact that people are being triggered into feeling like they need to be exercising and feeling shit about their bodies and feeling just super anxiety, which is 1000000000% normal. I am going to do a free training for that. I haven't decided when yet, so I can't tell you. But anyway, by the time you listen to this podcast, it's probably would have happened. But I'm gonna put a link below for you to either sign up for it or to watch the replay. I'm going to have some special guests with me, so it's not just going to be me. And then if you don't catch it, I'm probably going to turn it into a podcast episode. So you can just check out maybe episode 23 or 24. It will probably be a podcast episode. So if you want to learn more about how to cope with the sky falling down, which is what it feels like right now then look out for that.

So I personally, I'm in rural Ireland and I work from home, so there's not really that much of a change to my daily routine because I work from home and I'll be going around the local areas in regards to like walking, Dougal, my dog, go into the local beaches. There's lots of beaches around here and there's hardly any people. So I'm lucky in that respect. It's pretty much a business as usual but I, myself personally, last, last week, last Monday or Tuesday when it was all kicking off, I was just like, I can't cope with this. Just turn off everything. Don't mention anything to me about the corona virus don't. I don't want to read anything or I want to see anything. I am just not interested. I am definitely not going to be talking about it, but now a week later I've kind of, my brain has changed a bit and I feel a bit more relaxed about it which is good. But if you're not, then that's fine. It's understandable. But just FYI, you can rely upon me, your fierce fatty to continue with a weekly podcast and maybe the Corona special Facebook live one is going to be quicker than a week. Who knows?

Reminder, go and leave a review for the podcast. Would you please, would you please thank y'all. If you're listening, you can just leave five star review. Really simply just click the star thing and if you want to write something, even if it's just she is sexy or whatever, obviously that's all you use it, right. Then just write a little review if you could that would make my day and as a thank you, send me a screenshot of your review before you submit it because it goes into a black hole of the internet and never to be seen again for any way for awhile. And send me a screenshot and I will send you an audio and digital copy of my best selling book, Fierce Fatty and something I didn't know which is someone knowing, and it's the same for Amazon because people leave reviews for my book on Amazon is that every iTunes account, and I'm not sure for Spotify or Stitcher, but every iTunes account is regional specific. Did you know this? And so I was like, I'm getting all these reviews. Like people emailing me their reviews, like loads of them and, but then it wasn't showing up on actual iTunes and I was like, what the heck? Like where are these going? Why is it taking months for these things to appear? And it's because I was looking on the Canadian iTunes, which is the country that my iTunes is on. And these reviews are from all over the world. So the US and the UK and all over. So now I've got this technology, I can't remember. It's called podcast review, I think it's called podcast review, pay like five bucks for it. And once a week it just sends me the reviews that I've got through. And so I can see them anyway. So yeah. Hey for technology, but Oh, I wish the iTunes would just lump all reviews together, right? Wouldn't that be helpful? Wouldn't it? And with Amazon too, like every market is different, have different reviews that you get.

So anyway, let's talk about what we're here to talk about today, which is the idea that you, my glorious fierce fatty, have been brainwashed into hating your body and how to deprogram yourself. That's me making a noise of a robots. Did you like it? So the way that you feel about your body, about yourself, about food, about everything has not come from a vacuum. It's been informed by the world. So if you were to have been born on a desert Ireland, I always say if you're on a desert Ireland, but if you happened to have been born on a desert Ireland and you had no interaction with other people, you would not have the same thoughts and feelings about yourself or your perceived attractiveness or what you should be eating or all that type of stuff.

It's society, our society that has made you think that your body is good or bad or you know, what you eat is good and bad or any type of belief. And why this is important is because your perceived attractiveness is correlated with your perceived worthiness. And so that's something else that we have been taught by society, that the more attractive you are in the highest society, the more worthy you are, which is obviously we can all say hello, "ding ding ding". I hear some bullshit going off there. I smell some bullshit. So as a society we have decided what is generally considered attractive or not. But the thing is, it is not a fact that something is or isn't attractive. You know, the saying, " The beauty is in the eye of the beholder". But as a society we have these general rules of, you know, fat is bad, but there's gonna always be subsets of people who don't adhere to that message and can see attractiveness in all different types of people.

And, we all do, right? We're all not, we all have different types of people that we're attracted to, but genuinely on a whole society has this idea that fat is not attractive, that you should be in certain foods. And that your body should be a certain way. But individually we can blame bullshit, but it's still very hard to move away from what society is saying. So it's not a fact that you, your body who you are as a person is bad or an attractive. And what, or what a fact is, is something that is 100% true. 100% of the time. So if we were to survey the world population, I say, I don't know, 7.5 billion, I think it is 8 billion, something like that. And they looked at your body, would every single 7.5 billion people say, Oh yeah, Oh God, that body is disgusting. Or would there be some people who say, Oh hello, ding ding ding, my dream person right there. Can I get their number? Of course they would people be like, Oh my God, ding ding ding, that is my dream person. But none of that matters because it doesn't matter if other people find you attractive. It literally has nothing to do with your value as a human being. You are inherently valuable no matter what. So even if 7.5, 8 billion people, every single one of them was like, Oh no, that is what an ugly person looks like. Doesn't matter because I'm your human being, therefore you are worthy. When I went to university, I studied illustration and I loved, I was really a really, really arty person. And then when I went to university, my love of producing art was really crushed with my low self esteem and the critiques of one certain professor who would just be like, this is just an embarrassment. How can you produce art like this? She was a real bitch. Anyways, when I left university after centering illustration. I was like, Oh my God, I'm so bad at it and I wish I go back to Victoria. Then it'd be like, no, you're not. Anyway. The reason why I'm telling you that is something that I learned that while at university is what is art? And you know, some people will go to an art gallery and they'll look and it'll be like you know, one splash of paint on a white background or just a white circle on off white background and become, people can say like, how is that art? And then someone else will come along and see that same image and be like, Holy fucking shit. That is genius. That is gorgeous. I must have it. And what makes something art, it doesn't matter if you like it.

What makes something art is that it is remarkable in such a way. So when I say remarkable that you remark upon it. That it has provides some type of feeling, whether it be good, bad indifference but if you don't even notice it, then is it art? And so art can be anything. It doesn't have to be a painting or a sculpture or anything like that. Art can be anything. And even if you think that your shit are like, I used to think that I was shit or illustration, but actually I had many years of skills behind me and what I was producing was still odd. Even if that art teacher was like, this isn't bad, this is not very good. I don't like this. There's, you should be doing this. It is still art. Because opinion on the goodness of the art doesn't matter.

It still makes it art. So, one genre of art that I love is the pre-raphaelites. They were around in the Victorian times and the pre-Raphaelite is formed because they were opposed to the British Royal Academy. And the British Royal Academy had a really narrow view on what they considered was art. And it had to be you know, a certain type of beauty that would be depicted and certain types of scenes. And then if not, they were very snobby and they would be like, no, you can't display that painting here. And the pre-Raphaelites are like, fuck this noise. We're going to paint some pretty cool shit. And now if you look at the paintings, you're like, well, they kind of look old fashioned and they don't really like edgy or anything, but they're so fucking cool. I love pre-raphaelites art work. My favorite is The Awakening Conscience. I'll put a link to it below so you can see it, but it's so full of symbolism and it's not necessarily the actual look of the painting, but what it represents. Look into what it means and it's all the symbolism in it. It's gorgeous. Anyway, so you might know pre-Raphaelite works like affilia. Like, have you ever seen that image where there's a woman floating in water or Jesus coming to this door, there'll be Jesus coming to a door. You might have seen it in memes and they'd be like, Jesus is knocking and it'd be using memes. But anyway, so you might be familiar with pre-Raphaelite.

Anyway so the British Royal Academy, we're like, pre-Raphaelite, pre-Raphaelite. We don't like them that are a shit. But it wasn't, they had decided that they didn't like it for whatever reason and they didn't class it as art. And that was an opinion. Now that was like the mainstream opinion about what art should be like in those times. And the pre-Raphaelites went against it and said, Hey, no, we have a different opinion. And so it wasn't actually a fact that that is what art was meant to be. And so deciding that fat is an attractive or you or an attractive or your body is not okay. It's like saying one type or style of art is better than the other. And promoting that one single type of art or image as the only image that is good or worthy, which is bananas, like think of the thousands of years of art and creation that we have and all of the different styles. And imagine if you were just like, no, pop art is the only art that is good art, that is what art should be. Pop art. That's the way to go. Why? No? Right? It's going to be like pop art. But you know, it's not the only type that is good or bad or whatever. Right? And so it's ridiculous to say that fat bodies are the only type of bodies that should be thin bodies. Are there any type of bodies that should be seen as attractive? Because it's just an opinion and we as a society have got confused. We are like the British Royal Academy when we said uhhmm sticking our noses up different types of art saying, no, that's not what's classed as real art. And so when we see bodies that looked different, marginalized bodies, and if we say, mm, no, that body is not right, you need to lose weight, you need to do this. We just be in snobby assholes. How it was that we don't want to be snobby assholes.

But obviously that's a very simplified version of what I'm talking about now. It's an opinion is what I'm getting at is it is opinion and we've decided as a society that thinness is better for whatever reason. And the thing is around so using art as an example to where you could say, well, pre-Raphaelite art is the best art ever because it's so realistic. It is so rich in color and rich in metaphor and it educates the viewer. Whereas modern art, let's say for example, Tracy Emin, British artist. Tracy Emin had a bed in a gallery with notches on the bedpost for how many lovers that she'd had. And all the newspapers went while being like, how dare she call this art? This is just nothing. And so some people were like, well, on the pre raphaelites took hundreds of hours to make this one painting and Tracy Emin just carved some notches into a bedpost.

And so there is a reason why people won't say, okay, pre-Raphaelite is better than Tracy Emin or modern art because there's reasons, but are those reasons valid? Not necessarily. And so there'd be reasons. For example, people say, well, fat people are unhealthy. Well, I'm fat. People genetically would be less likely to be picked as a mate for whatever reason. But also fat people genetically are the ones who survive famines, right? So you know, the reasons behind it, it doesn't really matter because it's all bullshit. Anyway. So another factor with this is consumerism and companies trying to sell us shit to fix our flawed bodies. So imagine, I've seen this quite a lot. Imagine how many multi billion dollar industries and multimillion dollar industries would be destroyed if one day we all woke up and said, you know what? I think my body's pretty fucking good.

I don't need to get that anti-aging cream or that, whatever it is, wrap that goes around my belly to make it smaller or diet plan or whatever it is. Multi-million and billion dollar industries would overnight just be like, Oh shit. And so it benefits companies to keep perpetuating the idea of what is beautiful and what you should look like. Because if you are in fear, then you will buy more shit. And it's okay. If you want to buy shit, that's fine. I'm not against you. You buying stuff like for example, even though I love myself, I still do things like wear lipstick just cause I love it or get my nails done. I love it. But underneath that like, but do I, what am I doing that if I lived on a desert island now. Now, I'm questioning myself. Right. but you know, I don't feel there's any negative behaviors, you know, or things happening in my brain around that I don't think. But I could I could be wrong.

So it benefits consumerism if we hate ourselves. And so to make sure that we keep buying stuff and to keep these companies afloat. Because it's very lucrative, they will make up things that you need to start worrying about. So here's a couple of examples. So cellulites. Cellulite is made up. Yes, like cellulite, it exists like as in, it's like on our bodies, but it didn't always used to be a thing. So I'm going to link this article by Kelsey Mille, and the title is cellulite isn't real. This is how it was invented. So here's an excerpt from that, so cellulite is not real. The end. Oh, was that not clear? And allow me to elludicate, there is such a thing as sub cutaneous fat and fibrous tissue beneath your skin that's real. And indeed on the majority of human bodies, there are areas on which skin appears deeply or bumpy that exists too and always has. But until relatively recently, there was no word to define it because it was not a thing. Half a century go. No, no one in this country had even heard of cellulite, let alone identified it as a problem to be gotten rid of today. We spent untold millions if not billions on anti-cellulite treatment despite the glaring lack of evidence that any of them work. Which makes perfect sense of course, because you cannot treat a condition that doesn't actually exist. But that's the end of the quote. I'll link to the full article cause it's very interesting and Kelsey Miller is a fat positive rockstar, the author of that. It makes sense like, okay, women are rising up, women are becoming more strong and standing up for themselves. And you know, if you read the article, this is what it's saying. And so what can we do to make those motherfuckers insecure to make them spend their money on shit that doesn't matter. Ah, okay. I want to make up a cellulite, Oh, you need to get rid of that. Oh dear. Oh no, no, no. And it's fucking bullshit. Like most people have cellulite. I remember after I'd lost loads of weight, like a dangerous amount of weight and saying to my friend, I don't have cellulite anymore. And you know, I was probably dying or something. And just being like so excited about that. It just so fucking didn't matter. Oh, my old Victoria was getting on current Victoria's tits.

So another one, another one is Listerine. Did you know, Listerine made up the idea of halitosis. They even, I think it was the son of the owner or the son-in-law of the owner was like, okay, let's medicalize people having bad breath. And they literally created this word halitosis, which I think like Greek for halitosis is like Greek for bad and then the breath. And so I'm gonna link to this article as well, but in this article from Smithsonian, it shows an ad from 1928 for Listerine and the ad reads, halitosis makes you unpopular. And then the image of the ad is a woman sitting on her own looking, kind of dejected and then a man dancing with this other woman. So the presumption is that he went up to her and said, would you like to dance or something? And then he was like, Oh bitch, your breath is nasty. Anyway. So the ad reads halitosis makes you unpopular no matter how charming you may be or how fond of you your friends are. You can not expect them to put up with halitosis forever. They may be nice to you, but it is an effort. Oh, Listerine. You had shade day. Oh my God, there's so many seeing those old ads are so funny. How like, they're just like, bitch, you nasty bitch. You're fucking ugly. You ain't gonna get no friends if you don't buy my product. You know? Have you seen those ads as well where they say, Oh, you're too skinny. And it's all about like, you need to plump up because the boys don't like skinny girls. And it wasn't plumping up to make them fat, but it was pumping up to give them like a bit of a hip and some curves or whatever. So, you know, now we can look back and be like, Oh my God, that's so funny that they would do that. And it's so blatant that Listerine would just straight up come after people and be like, your breath stinks.

You better lose Listerine. What is happening all the time now. Right? It's like you know, all of the new things and new products that are coming out. And it's making it seem abnormal for you to be in your human body in the way that you are naturally. And of course, if you want to engage in these things and get beauty procedures done and get buy into diets and all that, that's up to you. Right. but is it distracting you from rising up and is it hurting you by making you think that your body is not okay? Something that I've been toying with is the idea of eyelash extensions. And like, I'm like, Oh, I like the idea of it. Like, cause I can't, or I've never really done like false eyelashes. And I'm like, Oh, I like the idea of it. But like, I think I like the look of it. But why do I want to do that? Is it because I'm trying to increase my worth as a human? Is it because it will be fun for me to play around with it? Why do we expect women's eyelashes to be longer? Like what is going on there anyway? And so like anything like that and I'm like, what is going on? Is it me to be just playing around and having fun with my body? Or is it something else? And I haven't decided. Yeah. So maybe I'll get eyelash extensions and just see if I like it. But I've noticed like me considering eyelash extensions maybe I've looked at my eyelashes a few times and been like, well, those eyelashes are long enough. And how hurtful is that? I don't have an answer for that. Because you know, still something that's continuing and exploring. But it's distracting me in some way from stuff that might be more important and it might be important, like I might have fun doing it so I'm not ruling it out, but I'm just, you know, saying question these things.

So these messages of who we should be as human beings are presented to us in many different ways. A massive way is through the media, through TV, films, magazines, books, comics, Reddit threads, like they are everywhere and they are taught and then they are repeated by family and friends. And you've probably repeated these norms that they know the way that human body should look like. I know I have plenty of times in my life and they become seen as a fact. A fact that fat bodies are not good bodies are not as attractive as smaller bodies. We just take it as a fact. It's a given. It's everywhere. Obviously it's a fact, as much as it's a fact that the sun is going to rise tomorrow as a fact, as much as the sky is blue, right? But it's not a fact. It is a belief.

So let me read you a little excerpt from this, New York times article, which is talking about a study which was also cited in the beauty myth, which is a book by Naomi Wolf. And the beauty myth is there's loads of good stuff in here. It's quite dense. I dunno how I managed to read it. Maybe I'm ready on audio book or something. I don't know. Anyway, I read it. And I just remember this study now, their study is not perfect. It's this lots of floors around it, but it's just I want to illustrate something. So this is an excerpt from the York times article. I will link to it below as well. So here we go. The title of the article is Study Finds TV Alters Fiji Girls' View of Body. You've gained weight is a traditional compliment in Fiji, anthropologists say. This article was written 20 years ago by the way so there might be some things in there which have changed or you know, culturally have changed. Just FYI. Okay. So you've gained weight is a traditional compliment in Fiji, anthropologists say. In accordance with traditional culture in the South Pacific nation, dinner guests are expected to eat as much as possible. A robust, nicely rounded body is the norm for men and women. ''Skinny legs'' is a major insult. And ''going thin,'' the Fijian term for losing a noticeable amount of weight, is considered a worrisome condition. But all that may be changing, now that Heather Locklear has arrived. That gives away the day or the, luckily I'm like, who is she?

Just a few years after the introduction of television to a province of Fiji's main island, Viti Levu, eating disorders -- once virtually unheard of there -- are on the rise among girls, according to a study presented yesterday at the American Psychiatric Association meetings in Washington. Young girls dream of looking not like their mothers and aunts, but like the slender stars of ''Melrose Place'' and ''Beverly Hills 90210. I'm very heavy,'' one Fijian adolescent lamented during an interview with researchers led by Dr. Anne E. Becker, director of research at the Harvard Eating Disorders Center of Harvard Medical School, who investigated shifts in body image and eating practices in Fiji over a three-year period. The Fijian girl said her friends also tell her that she is too fat, ''and sometimes I'm depressed because I always want to lose weight.

Epidemiological studies have shown that eating disorders are more prevalent in industrialized countries, suggesting that cultural factors play a role. But few studies have examined the effects of long-term cultural shifts on disordered eating in traditional societies. Dr. Becker and her colleagues surveyed 63 Fijian secondary school girls, whose average age was 17. The work began in 1995, one month after satellites began beaming television signals to the region. In 1998, the researchers surveyed another group of 65 girls from the same schools, who were matched in age, weight and other characteristics with the subjects in the earlier group. Fifteen percent in the 1998 survey reported that they had induced vomiting to control their weight, the researchers said, compared with 3 percent in the 1995 survey. And 29 percent scored highly on a test of eating-disorder risk, compared with 13 percent three years before. Girls who said they watched television three or more nights a week in the 1998 survey were 50 percent more likely to describe themselves as ''too big or fat'' and 30 percent more likely to diet than girls who watched television less frequently. Before 1995, Dr. Becker said, there was little talk of dieting in Fiji. ''The idea of calories was very foreign to them.'' But in the 1998 survey, 69 percent said that at some time they had been on a diet. In fact, preliminary data suggest more teen-age girls in Fiji diet than their American counterparts. So, I'll linked the whole article below, the New York times article.

So I know we're not talking about eating disorders here but the power of the media. So I wanted to share that as an illustration to show the power of the media and the power of these messages that you need to be thin, white, young, able-bodied and all of these other things that we've decided we need to be as humans. So media informs us and those messages are then ingrained in our brains as fact, they are shared through conversations through our own heads. You know, our own minds telling us that this is fact and it just becomes cemented in our brains. So according to e-marketer in 2019, we spend on average 12 hours and nine minutes a day consuming media. And so the average adult is awake for 15 hours and 39 minutes meaning I did the math, look at me, I'm so smart. 60% of our days consumed with our day is used by consuming media. I love consuming media. So this is no knock on how much media we consume. Like fucking, I'm like, if I need to do wee, I bring my phone and bring it to do a poo or definitely bring my phone brushing my teeth. I'm watching some and getting ready in the morning or let's do a podcast like falling asleep. I'll listening to a podcast. So no shit on the amount of media that we consume. But what is the media that you are consuming? Is the media you're consuming supporting fat positivity or is it supporting that fat bodies are bad and it doesn't have to be aggressively fat phobic? It can just be a show with lots of straight sized people that is informing you what a body should be like even if the straight sized people are like, Oh, we love fat people. You're still being conditioned to know what a body should look like. So again, media is telling us what we should look like and you know, it's not as simple as it's just the media. Lots of different things are going on at play here. But the media and what we're consuming and what's going into our brains is such a massive part of it. And it's presenting the idea that fat is bad. And I'm presenting it as a fact. And remember a fact is something that's 100% true 100% of the time when in fact the idea that fat is bad is a belief.

So let's look at beliefs. What makes up a belief? Your belief, any belief that you have is different for everyone. And so I like to think up. Think of beliefs in our brain as each belief is like a suitcase. And inside each belief suitcase we have different things that make up that belief. So if you believe that being fat is bad and you open, that suitcase is probably going to be chock-a-block filled with that time that your mom said that you would look better and of you were thin, that show you watch with a kid where they'll make in front of the fat person. That news article that you read, that interaction with your partner when you were a teenager and they said you, your belly was too big. It's going to be filled with loads or different incidences and evidence to support that belief. Now, if you currently believe that your body is not good or fat is bad or fat isn't healthy, or whatever it is that you believe you have got this suitcase that's living in your brain filled with different things to support that belief, evidence, the evidence might be very faulty, but it's still filled. And your suitcase, which is the belief, you're lugging it around with you and it's not serving you and what is in what is exactly inside there. I don't know. I can't tell you what's in your suitcase because it's your personal experience, right? And everyone's suitcase is different for fat is bad if you even have that suitcase and everyone has all these different ideas and beliefs, which all have evidence, something in the suitcase to go behind him now. So you can have a belief, which is not really that deep. Like

So let's just make up a belief. If you eat grass, then it'll make your hair turn green. And so you just saw this on a scientific article written. If you eat grass, your hair will turn green. Now that belief, the suitcase of that belief is properly just filled with that one article, that one scientific thing. And so if someone else comes along and they offer you some counter evidence, it will be really easy to take that one article out and say, Oh, actually you're looking at this. I can see this is totally bogus. I no longer believe that eating grass is going to make my hair green. But when it comes to believing that fat bodies are okay, or your body is okay, you're open that suitcase and it's going to be like fucking Pandora's box in there. And so you do something like, listen to this podcast or look at some fat bodies on the internet and it's just making a tiny dent on that suitcase because it's just absolutely filled with shit. So you need to go into that suitcase and you need to know what is in there. You might not know exactly, but you can be a detective and go through each item in there. Some things are going to stand out and some things are going to be in there hidden for a long time. And then something is going to make them reveal them to you. After years of working on this stuff. So my suitcase of you know, the belief that fat is bad I think is pretty much empty. But something could happen. For example, a global pandemic something, trauma of ticket happen where it reveals another belief that I have a fat phobic belief that I have and I'm like, Oh shit, that suitcase wasn't actually empty after all.

Let's look at this belief. Is it true? Do I want to keep it in the suitcase? Don't want to throw it out. Do I want to add something to my other suitcase, which is my body is okay and another suitcase, my fat bodies are okay. Do I want to add more evidence there? So that's what you need to do is you need to get another suitcase, which is my body is okay or fat bodies are okay, whatever it is. And you need to start filling that up. The more you fill that up with evidence, with information, with images, with good juicy fierce fatty stuff, the more you'll be taking out of that fat negative suitcase. And it might take years to go through their suitcase. It might be really hard, like there might be some things in there which will be light as a feather to remove. And there might be other things, which is like one of those, you know, in old cartoons, like the thousand pound weight thing. That's a ton. Is it? Is it 10,000 pounds? I don't know. Let's say it's a time. And it would take years to shift it and you might only be able to be pull it you know, one little inch and go. But that is what I like to see beliefs as like, you just don't believe something just because you know it, there's evidence supporting it, right. And if the evidence is flimsy, is easy to change your mind, but because you are constantly being told that it's not okay to be fat, it's a constant battle with keep trying to get that suitcase empty and it constantly being filled up again. So if you're spending 12 hours a day consuming media, I want you to be very, very, very critical about what you are viewing.

And the way to know if something is good or bad for you is to understand how you feel during and after and even before. So for example, there's this TV show in the UK called Love Island. What it is, is loads of conventionally attractive people go to an Island anyway. They're people, you know, mostly people and thin women walking around bikinis and they pair off together and it's on every single night for six weeks in the UK over the summer, I think. And the UK go bananas for it and you know, they love it. And so during the summer in, I was in the UK for a little bit. People were like, Oh God, Love Island's on, come and see it. And so I was like, well, theoretically I think this is going to be bad for me. So already I was like, this is going to be bad because I kind of knew the premise that well, there was lots of traditionally attractive people in the show. And so I sat down to watch it and for about, I sat for maybe 10 minutes and I was like, Nope, that's it done. And nothing had happened, but they weren't like, yo, fuck people suck. Nothing like that happened. Just the presence of all of those traditionally attractive bodies, which are not a true representation of the human body, the human population as a whole. So if it was, they'd be fat people on there, they'd be all sorts of different types of people on there. And that would be good to see because then you'd see fat people falling in love and fat people having fun and you know, fat people as people. And so I didn't watch it again and it kinda stuck in my mind for a couple of days after that. And I was a little bit critical because it was summer and I was in the bikini and a little bit critical of my body when I say a little bit, like a very slow cause I need to watch it for a few minutes.

But I had noticed that it had an effect and I knew I would love that show, you know, like as a guilty pleasure. I know I would love it and I would love being able to talk to other people and be like, Oh my God. Did you see what Beth did? Oh my gosh, she got drunk and then stepped off that guy. I would love that shit. I would love it. But I have to draw a line and sacrifice the entertainment of it because I know it all affect my mental health. So do you have guilty pleasures. Then, maybe cut them out? Do you have things like you'll start to notice things that are just they seem okay on the surface. Like someone's sharing nice recipes, but they might just be a little bit of judgment in there and you'll start to notice, okay, yeah, that's not good for me.

So how does what you're consuming make you feel? Does it make you feel good? Does it make you feel like, yes, fuck yeah, I want to go out and be my fucking fabulous self. Whatever that is. Or does it make you want to hide and not be yourself and you know, be sad, then you need to get rid of that show. So, so basically in a nutshell, you've been brainwashed with millions upon millions of messages that you've received through out your whole life from the moment that you had could have a conversation from the moment you could understand other humans, you have been told what you should look like and what is good and what is bad that will continue throughout your life. We cannot stop those messages accidentally seeping into our brains. But what you need to do is you need to go on the aggressive and reprogram your brain so that you are getting all of those positive messages in there. It is crucial. So if you have in the last year had a million messages saying that fat is bad, you need to get 1,000,001 messages in your brain that says it's okay to be fat for you to have an effect. And so you have to take action. You can't just hope that, you know, you'll just one day wake up and decide, Oh my body's okay without actually doing anything. You have to protect yourself. You have to put your mental health first to have an effect on how you're feeling about your fat body.

So, I'm talking about podcasts. My thing that I want to share with you today is the podcasts that I am really loving and honestly talking about podcasts, talking about media talking about media. I fall asleep every single night listening to a podcast. I wish that I had the desire to fall asleep listening to like, I don't know, positive affirmations or you know calm music or things like that. But what really calms me is like murder podcasts and what is it like crime, podcasts and things like that. So here are some of my favorite currently. So if you're that type of person, make sure you listen to these. So these are less crimes, these are more mystery things. So my first one is Swindled. And so it's all about different con artists. And the person who hosts it is left-leaning. So, yay. If you look at the reviews for Swindled obviously there's the person doing the podcast. It's an anonymous host didn't state their political views. And then maybe halfway through people listening to it, he started saying things that aligned him with being a liberal and the reviews, like from Trump supporters, they're like, Oh, this guy is so political and we'll, we'll, we'll, he's ruined it with his political bullshit. And I was like, Oh, what is this political bullshit? And I was like, Oh yeah, he's liberal. So yay. The next one I like, I've just started this one, but I'm really enjoying it from the BBC and it's called The Missing Crypto Queen. So there's this woman, this is the synopsis who started arrival to the bitcoin and it's called the one coin. And she basically, it was basically a pyramid scheme and she just took all the money and ran and millions and millions of dollars and people are still don't know what's going on. And so you learn about that. That's just the synopsis. And so this, this podcast series is looking into that next one. I like Con Artists, same kind of thing I'm willing to call is you know, different scam Swindlers throughout the time. The Score; Bank Robber Diaries So The Score; Bank Robber Diaries is this guy who went to prison for robbing loads of banks. He is now a reformed criminal. He goes through very detailed about how he would rob banks, what he would do with the money how he got caught, the experience. All of that experiences, how we then turned his life around. A really interesting one thing he says in it, he's a very charismatic guy. One thing he says is that money, so he would steal loads of money obviously, and he'd hide it under his bed and he says that money stinks of shit. Like big piles of money. Smells like shit. Cause he was sat in his bed and he was like, what the fuck is that smell? And he realized it was the money. How fucking gross is that cause money? Like, I don't know. People are fucking going around wiping their bum and then touching money or using money, money to what the bum or whatever. Oh man, people are disgusting. My people. So disgusting. And finally one of my all time favorites, I don't listen to this falling asleep because it's so good. I don't ever want to miss any of it. Not that I miss any of the others. Always just rewind where I fell asleep to, is All Killa No Filla. So it's talking about serial killers, but two British comedians. It's really funny. They're very British, but they have got a large North American audience and they always explain like the British things that they're saying. They're really funny and they've got a really good Facebook group too. Like lots of cool people like the fat positive and all that type of stuff. I'm not 100% fat positive cause one of the hosts lost weight, but she doesn't talk about losing weight as if it's a good or bad thing. So anyway, so I'm going to say it's fat positive.

Yeah. So reminder to leave me a review. Even if you don't want my book, why wouldn't you? Then leave me reviews good fatty karma points. I would so, so appreciate it. And the reason why it's important is because the more reviews, the more people will listen. The more the fat positive message will get out there. And this is fat positive media and fat positive media changes the lives of people who need to hear fat positive stuff. Would you ever want, everyone needs a fat positive stuff. And of course not everyone has to hear it from me because you know, I'm not the queen of fat positivity, the queen of the fat positive internet or anything. I'm just one voice, but it's important to get fat and voices out there. Okay. Well, thank you for hanging out with me today. Thank you for pressing play and look out for that special COVID Facebook live. I'm going to turn it into a podcast thingamajig now and I'll see ya on the next episode. Goodbye, my queen.