Episode 3 Transcript

You're listening to the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I'm Victoria Welsby TEDx Speaker, best selling author and fat activist. I have transformed my life from hating my body with desperately low self esteem to being a courageous and confident Fierce Fatty who loves every inch of this jelly. 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.

Hello and welcome to episode three of the Fierce Fatty Podcast. And in today's episode, I am sharing with you the five reasons why diets are 100% fucked. Let's get into it.

Chances are you've been on more than one diet in your life. I know I have. And uh, at one point lost a quite a lot of weight on, um, I won't tell you the diet, but guess what? Diets are fucked and uh, they don't work. So I want to talk about that today. Um, so just in case, make sure we're on the same page about what a diet is. A diet is any type of restrictive eating, so whether it be a juice cleanse, um, and cleanses are bullshit by the way, or a detox detox her shit, by the way, you have liver and kidneys to detox yourself or telling yourself you won't eat carbs until you get a date with Channing Tatum. Hands off his mind. Or it could be full-on restriction of calories in order to starve yourself and reduce your body so that you can look like a supermodel.

And along the times, we're not actually officially on a diet, but we are from where the untrained eye, you're just going about your life. But when you go deep into understanding diet, culture and all the different ways that it gets his claws into you, you're actually behaving in, um, really restrictive ways that a lot of the times around food and you don't realize it. So you might not have officially been on a diet for years or maybe you've never been on a diet, but there may be behaviors and ways of thinking, which are so 100% of diets. So, um, so let's not go on a tie anymore because they don't work. So that is my first point is diets don't work. So imagine this, imagine this, you go to your doctor with some serious medical problem and your doctor tells you to take this pill that could work in the short term, but there's a 95% chance that in the long term will make you even more sick than you are today. Would you take it?

No, no. You tell that doctor, just stop smoking the wacky baccy. Right. So in medicine, if a prescription doesn't work, 95% of the time, doctors would work to create something better, not tell the patient to try harder at taking the prescription. Right? And that is what diets are. So best chance, best chance they have a 5% efficacy rates. So that's the, that's us being generous with, with the Diet Industry. Um, depending on your size is, you know, can go to a north 0.8% chance or basically it's a 0% chance, right? So best chances is that a diet or work 5% of the time, and so not only do they not work, they make you fatter. And of course there's nothing wrong with being fatter, but if you're going on a diet to be less fat than it's literally doing the opposite. Um, and the best thing about this, I say best being sarcastic, is that once you fail your diet, die companies and our society, diet, culture has you believing the, you are the failure and not the Diet.

So you try again and again and again and again and again, and you're like, oh my God, why is this not working? I'm so bad at this, but it's not you, right? It's not. You think about any other product that you ever buy, okay. Because diets are a product and only 5% of the time it worked. So he bought a car in the morning. You go out and you put the key in, you're going to drive to work and 95% of the time it doesn't start. In fact, that's a good statistic. And then you go back to the, uh, the, the car dealership and you're like, this thing doesn't fucking work. And they're like, well, have you tried hard enough? But where you really turning the key, did you wake up earlier enough and turn the key or before 6:00 AM? Because that's when you have to do it.

I don't think that you're, uh, you, you, you're already trying, you know that hard with this. So you cheating with other cars. No, you, but like, this is fucking bullshit. Give me my money back. Right? But the die entry has been so fucking clever and blaming us for it's failure. So my next point, number two, number two reason why diets are fucked. So let's, let's say diets did work. Let's say they did, they don't make you healthier. And now a lot of people say, I'm not losing weight because I want to look a certain way. I want to be healthy. I call bullshit on that because really if someone could wave a magic wand over your head and say, you can be fat and healthy or thin, quote unquote, stereotypically attractive and unhealthy, how many people would hesitate a lot, right? So it's not about health, it's about assets.

But even if deep down people are like, okay, it's about health. So as we know, there's about a 5% chance that going on a diet will succeed. So why not try, right? When a try see what happens. Yes. Great idea. And that's something that I thought plenty, right? I presumed that the 95% of people who failed at dieting were just, they weren't trying hard enough, not like me. They were lazy. They cheated and girls or down gallons of liquid lard and had like 50 deep fried Mars bars for breakfast every day. Right? That's what I presumed. I presume the people who didn't do well at diets, it was their fault and it's not that weren't doing well, it dies. It's diets weren't doing well with them. But you know, I had that fit. The sort of, I'm not like them, I'm disciplined and dedicated. But here's the thing, there's negative consequences of putting yourself on a diet even if you do lose weight.

So these negative consequences get this. Okay, listen here. These negative consequences of going on a diet, just go on a diet include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, depression and cardiovascular disease worse. So self, kind of similar to the things that they tell us that we're going to get if we stay fat. And we've talked about success, you know, like a 5% success rate and that's the generous number. What does success actually mean? So for a diet to be quote unquote successful, you need to lose 10% of your body weight and keep it off for two years. Okay. So what does that mean number wise? Okay, so as an example, someone who is 350 pounds, if they lose 17.5 pounds and kept it off for two years, they would be in that top 5% the absolute most successful success story from the Diet Industry. Here's another version, a 200 pound person, they would lose 10 pounds and keep it off over two years to be seen as the most successful version because most people don't ever get that.

That is the best case scenario, right? That doesn't seem like that much to lose in return for all that mental anguish and all that money spent on stupid subscriptions and you know, crappy food. My is like no fat, no, no fat, no sugar, no air, no carbohydrates, no anything inside this food. It's just oxygen finishes the, you know, all that stuff. Hey, for losing 10 20 pounds, is that going to have any type of benefit to you? So, but what if, okay, what if you do lose weight, won't less fat on your body mean that you're healthier, won't losing that 10 or 20 or 30 or whatever. If you're going to be in like the miraculous percentage of losing, um, any type of way from a diet. Won't that make you healthier though? Surely weighing less means you're healthier. Sorry to break it to you, but no, no.

Having more fat on your body does not automatically mean you're not healthy. Having less fat on your body does not mean that you're a walking health guru, right? Indicators of health, just FYI. Things like good blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, triglycerides, that type of stuff. Your mental health. So can you get good health, quote unquote good health? I'll do an episode about health and why that is a fucked up binary. Just all sorts of stuff I have to say on that in a different episode. But let's say, you know, can you get good health if you weigh the same? Yeah. Yeah, you can. You can affect those, those types of things by weighing exactly what you weigh right now. So you could even look at how much time you spend moving your body or making healthy quote unquote healthy eating choices or working on your strength or stamina.

For example, if you want to be healthy, um, and a fat person can display all of these qualities of health despite having more fat on their body. Fat doesn't equal sickness. Okay. And by the way, you don't owe being healthy to anyone ever. You're not a better person if you're healthy or you know, a worse person if you're not healthy. So next, my next point is diets actually make you less healthy. You might be thinking, oh for fuck sake. Really, really? Yeah. So Yo yo dieting. So Yo, Yo dieting is also known as weight cycling. It's going on a diet, losing weight, putting it back on. Remember, it's not your fault that you put it back on and repeat, which is what most humans do, uh, during their lives. So Yo, Yo dieting damages your long term health and many studies show Yoyo dieting is less healthy than being, I'm gonna use an o word here, by the way, I'm gonna do another episode about why the o words obese and overweight are totally fucked up, should be taken from our language and basically need to be burned in a fire somewhere.

So, but this is quoting research. Oh, I just hate it. Anyway. Um, so many studies show that, um, Yo, yo dieting is less healthy than being obese and leads to numerous health problems and a potentially shorter life. Um, and you might be thinking about Victoria Fair people are going to have a shorter life anyway from all the fatness. Aren't they going to die when they're like [inaudible] like, you know, 30 years old or whatever? Uh, no, no. Statistically another word is coming up. Obese people live longer than quote unquote normal weight people. [inaudible] Yep. Shut the fuck up. Right. Uh, now you might be thinking, what the fuck? It's science. It's science. Honestly. Um, no one really knows why, but the suggestion is that um, quote unquote overweight and quote quote, obese people are less prone to disease, the normal quote unquote normal and quote unquote underweight people.

Um, so yeah, if you have fat in your older, then you've got a better chance of, of, uh, overcoming and not getting certain types of diseases. Okay. My next point is the diet industry is proper profiting from fat shaming you with scam products. So if dieting doesn't work, then why are so many people on diets and anyway, we all know, my aunts, friends, brothers, dog's friend knew someone who lost like our, found some pounds on this keen wall, die and won the lottery and fell in love and grew wings. So dieting must work. Hmm. Think about this. If dieting worked, there would be no dieting industry. Everyone would be [inaudible] then every on, right? We just would go on that diet. You'd be like, okay, time for me to get. Then go on that diet. You'd be like, oh, then dumb. That's it for me the rest of my life.

I'm thin. Right, but this is going to blow your mind because when I found this out, this, I was just like, what? This cannot be true, but it's true. There is not one single study that exists in the world, a legitimate study peer reviewed that shows weight loss products or diets work in the longterm. Not One. Let me repeat that. TIF to you, just in case you missed it. There is not one single study that exists that shows weight loss products or diets work in the long term. Isn't that wild? Instead the Diet industry is worth in 2017, $64 billion a year every year and it's growing, right? So the Diet, the Diet industry is like, Hey, do this time, you'll become thin and super sexy. You're disgusting right now. You should really change that your slob and then that like that diet didn't work because it didn't include things like seaweed detox and parents toenails and also you're a fat lose a try this one instead maybe you work harder this time and stop being so hideous.

So I think we should tell the Diet industry to get fucked to go and do one. Um, I'd rather give my money to a company who isn't praying on my low self esteem with Hocus pocus queues. The biggest thing, like the biggest, you know, look diets don't work is you know, Oprah bought into weight watchers like eww and no Oprah, y, um, and she's been on diets all of her life. Okay. Oprah is really fucking rich. She has unlimited resources. She has definitely has like a private chef. She, um, can have someone come out and do workouts with her. All of the things, okay. She has the most access of human could need to become thin yet Oprah is not thin. If that is not an indicator that diets don't work and Holy Shit, I don't know what is right. It's just Oprah. It just happens to be a bigger person.

I wish. Oh my God. I want Oprah to listen to this episode. And so I listen, come on now listen, you're great. The way you are. Look, how much more evidence do you need? The eye ties don't work. I mean you fabulous jeans. Oh my God, I'm so, you know, it was Oprah with endless money. Can't force her body to be smaller. Do you think that the average person can? No. No they can't. I have. My next point is that losing weight won't make you happy. It's not going to give you better self esteem. So I had this fantasy in my mind that once I become thin that I would shit glitter rainbows would appear from my bum hole. I wouldn't be able to get George Clooney to stop calling me and obviously money is going to be a pairing on my doorstep, you know? Oh God, it's just going, life is gonna be amazing once I'm thin. And at one point I got thin, I became straight sized. Was I shooting glitter? Did rainbows come out of my bum hole?

No. No they didn't. No, it didn't happen. What didn't happen? Because what I was seeking was self love and acceptance and no matter how, no matter how thin I was, there was always someone who was sinner and therefore more beautiful and therefore I still wasn't worthy. Right. Ah. And it took, it took me going, oh, deep in with dieting to get to the point where I realized, yeah, okay. You know, being thin, being thinner affords many benefits. Things like not experiencing fat phobia, being able to go and buy clothes, um, not have people be judging me in certain ways. But the thing I really wanted was too, not be thinking about how awful I was all of the time and not comparing my body to others and thinking, well, I'm thinner than her. I'm fat than her and [inaudible] what does my boyfriend think? And you know, all that type of shit.

Um, and it didn't happen. So I have come and pissed all over your, your dieting parade, maybe taken your hope away that you will one day be Beyonce. Um, you can be Beyonce with our losing way, by the way. Well, that's not true. Beyonce's the only Beyonce. But you can be your own version of Beyonce. All right? Without losing weight. Um, but how about you think of it like this? Okay. So diets don't work. You might have to let go of dieting and that's kind of sad, right? Because really what you're letting go of is the hope that one day you're going to feel all right, but you're not letting go with the hope really, because you can still one day feel all right, you can still one day feel better, feel healthy, whatever, whatever it is you're trying to achieve through dieting, you can get there without dieting, okay?

You can do things like you can start to forgive yourself and not ever sticking to a diet. And I say that with a big quotes around sticking to a diet because the reason why you can't stick to a diet is because your body is like, what the fuck is going on? We are literally starving. We're going to do a ton of things to make sure that you stop this behavior because this is bad. I'm going to do an episode on what is actually happening, happening within your body when you're on a diet. But basically your body is being your best friend and making sure that you're not gonna lose weight and dime basically, right? And you can come to terms with where you're at right now. So, by the way, if you don't know that we all have a natural weight set points that our body likes to be out, have you noticed that most people are generally around the same way their whole lives? And we have a 10 to 20 pound range that our body's like, yeah, this is pretty good. This is where I like to be. This is what I weigh. And when you move out of that, then your body's like, hmm, let's make some changes. And so when you're losing weight and you lose, you know, 10 plus pounds, then your body's like, what the fuck is going on? Right? Um, so you can come to terms. It was like, okay, this is maybe where my body wants to be.

Okay?

You can also begin to embrace the awesome body you have today. And your body does say, oh my lord this, think about this. The amount of Shit your body does to you does for you. And you've, you've done too, where you're like, you need to get thin. You're worse F's worthless sack of Shit. And you're what? He's like, hi, I'm just trying to get us wrong when the world and no, I'm sorry. And you know your body does some pretty amazing things for you, like sleeping and blinking and high kicking and go foraging and all the stuff that your brain does for you and your ears are listening to this. Or maybe you're reading a transcript or you know, Holy Shit, think of all the great things that your body does for you versus focusing on its outside appearance.

You can spend less money on diet bullshit. I know so much of those like detoxes, you know where they send you, they send you packets of like, they're like, oh hey, I put some cinnamon and some water and you're going to drink this and then you're going to, you know, detox and then you know, you're going to grow some like horns and then you're going to be gray and all that type of bullshit is really expensive. And I remember ships for, you know, going to get weighed and stuff. It's expensive. What can you use that money on doing something fabulous, buying yourself some cool shit. Like, um, you know, t shirts that say riots, not diets or I don't give a fuck about your diet, Susan. I really want one of those ones. I've got the first one rise on days. Uh, you can get a, you can get the second one.

I don't give a fuck about your diet, Susan from fat mermaids. Um, amazing one set. Um, so you can spend your money, um, on coal shit, shit that makes you feel good versus stuff that makes you uh, mentally and physically unwell. You'll also going to have way more brain space to think about core things instead of instead of spending about 29 hours a day dreaming of when you can eat next and have to sex up that salary stag. Ah, right. When you're on a diet, you literally, your brain has to focus on, make you focus on getting food because you will, you are actually starving. That is what's happening. Your brain like, bitch, stop doing that thing you're doing right now and go and eat something. We are dying. Hello, get on the page. We're dying here. And when your body and your brain is relaxed and it knows, oh, she's going to feed me, it's going to be fine.

Then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I don't actually need to think about, um, salary. I can think about, oh, I'm going to go on a date with this guy, or, oh, well maybe I want to ask for a promotion at work, or Oh, there's a new series on Netflix, et Cetera, et Cetera, et cetera. And another positive thing about this is you can buy clothes that fit you instead of a size down, hoping that you'll slim into them. You can clear your overstuffed wardrobe of all of these clothes that would only fit a toddler version of yourself and fill it with new, awesome, Super Sassy outfits, right? Just you can just get rid of all of that, that stuff, you know, hanging onto this quote unquote dream of when you're, you know, when you're going to get thin and all of the things that are going to happen. All right, so I know this might have made you a bit sad. Maybe you were like, Oh yeah, yeah, I know.

Maybe you were like, Oh yeah, yeah, I know about this stuff already and this has been like a call refresher of this information. Maybe you had really fucking angry. Now maybe you're like, what the hell? This whole time I've believed that if only I tried harder than I would finally be thin. Maybe you feel relieved that you realize that it's not. Your fault is not your fault. Honestly, you have worked so hard at losing weight. Oh my God, we all have worked so hard at this stuff. I mean, if it was just about willpower, fuck, we'd all be thin, but that would be really boring, right? I'm glad that we're not all thin. I think it's beautiful that we have a different, a variety of bodies and your body is perfect just the way it is. All right, so let's tell diets to get fucked.

We're done with them. This is a relationship that is ovie are for good. And if this is a new concept to you, then you will still get lured into thinking, oh, but this new time where you just rub banana peels on your bum hole, I've heard it makes you lose like 75 pounds in 12 seconds. Maybe I'll look into that one. You'll see things like that and you'll be like, mm, okay. And you'll see people be like, oh, well this one's not a diet though, right? This banana peeling on your bum whole thing. This not diet. This is about wellness. This is about health. If it's about losing weight, it's a diet. It's a diet, okay? Every is about you stringing the size of your body, then it is a diet, okay? But you just, you know, FYI, you're going to get good. And you might even go on some more diets being like, well, I just one last try.

That's fine, that's fine. Right? We all spent so many years in living in this diet culture, a culture that is obsessed with, um, quote unquote health and smaller body sizes as being held up as the most desirable. So that's absolutely normal. And even years and years after you stopped dieting, you still might be like, oh, maybe, maybe diets, I've got better. I saw this one where it's, you know, you just take this one pill and right, there's always something because diet companies, they are expert marketers. They have to be, they have to be very, very intelligent marketers because, um, diets are not a new product. And so this is like marketing theory. When a new product comes onto the market, the, the marketing doesn't have to be that sophisticated. So think about like, when the iPhone came out, the marketing, they didn't have to be like, this is, um, here are all the features and benefits and this is why our phone is the best.

And, um, here's some data and stuff. They, they did, they had that stuff, but really it was just like, this is the iPhone. This is the only one you want it. Right? And we all knew, whereas now, like years later, now we have lots of different options that are really, really cool and stuff. And so the marketing us are getting more sophisticated. And so when it comes to dieting, dieting has been around for years and years and there is like literally a good Giulia bajillion diets. And so they have to become very, very smart. And so what they do is they will attach to your identity and they will align their identity with your identity. And so you've really feel like it's a part of you. Um, they have to become sophisticated. And so don't feel like you're weak because you're falling for the bullshit. Because you know, people have degrees and masters and PhDs in learning how to market diets to you.

Um, and you're just like, I'm just, you know, I'm just trying to be no, go around, be fabulous. And you know, and then you'll have people trying to mess with your brain. So yeah, so that is why diets are fucked. The five reasons. So let me just, let me just round it up for you. Number one reason why diets are fucked, they don't work. Number two, even if they did, they won't make you healthier. Number three, in fact, they make you less healthy. Number, the Diet industry is profiting from fat shaming you with scam products. And number five, losing weight won't make you happy or improve your self esteem. Weren't, weren't, weren't, weren't. Okay. So, um, I wanted to end our episodes with a little fact about me so you can get to know me and I want to get to know you all as well.

So you tell me, you tell me, I'm going to share something with you and you can tell me your version. All right? So a little fact about me is that I can play the trumpet. Oh my God, no problem. That's not really what it sounds like, but you get the picture. Um, I learned for about six years when I was a kid, so I learned in primary school and Secondary School for those, those Brits out there. Uh, I can also not as well play the piano. So I studied the piano as an adult for a couple of years and I like singing. And so I like going to um, acquire and I just love singing in my house a little bit of, you know, show tunes, love a bit of that, you know. Um, do you play an instrument? Can you sing? What's your favorite song to sing? Share with me, tell me.

And um, if you would like to show notes to this episode so you can follow along, then go to fierce fatty.com forward slash zero zero three because it's episode three again, that is fierce fatty.com forward slash zero zero three because it's episode three and I know that you're the type of person who is digging this stuff because you are right at the end of our episode here. And so I know it's important for you to support fat positivity and um, confidence. And so why not share this podcast? Um, why not leave a review that is really, really, really helpful. The reason why it's so helpful is because on iTunes, if you leave reviews, it tells the iTunes algorithm that this podcast is something that's worth sharing on their side of things. And so they will then make sure that it is a new and noteworthy podcast.

The more reviews the better. So even if you just leave like a five star and you're just like, "Yo, good, great." "Victoria's sexy" obviously you're gonna write that. Um, anything you want, just leave a five star review and subscribe so that you know when the next episode is out and you don't miss a single second of this juicy, juicy stuff that, uh, I'm sharing on the first Friday podcast. So thank you so much for being here. I so appreciate you really, you don't know how much I appreciate you, um, for being here and for tuning in, listening to me. Um, it's a real privilege privilege that I can talk about this stuff. Um, and people listen. So thank you for being you for being here. I'm so excited to continue to share all of this stuff, and I know what I'm talking about this episode, like, Oh, I'm going to share this on another episode because there's so many things. Right. Uh, so I'm so excited, excited to share even more with you. Um, so yeah, I shall see you on the next episode. All right. See you then.

Episode 2 Transcript

You're listening to the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I'm Victoria Welsby Tedx Speaker, best selling author and fat activist. I have transformed my life from hating my body with desperately low self esteem to being a courageous and confident Fierce Fatty who loves every inch of this jelly. 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.

Welcome to episode two of the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I am your host Victoria Welsby. And in this episode we are talking about my story. So let's get into it. Before we start, I want to give you a big content warning trigger warning. In this episode I'm going to be talking about sexual assault abuse on a minor homelessness, self esteem issues, alcoholism and eating disorders. It's a pretty deep one today. So this is my story of how I went from meek and mild hating my fat body being a total doormat with shitty jobs, loser boyfriends, and an all around sad existence into a confident and courageous Fierce Fatty who hello loves her body. Unapologetically, I'm relaxed around food, best selling author, TEDx speaker. I have my dream job teaching this stuff. So I went from one extreme to the other.

So if you want change and you want to get from A to B, maybe hearing my story might show you how. So yeah, you might have wondered where this weird accent is coming from. I am a Brit. I was born in a place called Peterborough, which was voted so proud, but worst city in the UK to live. Oh my god dreams do come true. So I lived there, I was brought up there and I lived in a council estate, which is for those who are not British, it's, it's not a nice place to necessarily be, well, my version of the council estate wasn't a nice place to be. So the council being the government, so it's kind of government housing grouped together. And I lived in a really dangerous area where there was a lot of crime and we lived in poverty.

My dad was an alcoholic and from the age of somewhere in his forties, he stopped working because of his alcoholism. He nearly died because of his alcoholism. But fortunately he got a liver transplant and then he died a couple of years ago, so unrelated to, to alcoholism. But we had, we had that to deal with. My mum worked in a corner store and so we survived on her part time wages, probably minimum wage from a corner store. So we're very poor and because we were poor, we didn't have the abundance of food that we necessarily needed. On top of that, my mum was very diet culture mindsets oriented, you know, like don't eat too much of that. We don't want to be fat. She would say things like she was a fat sisters of all of our sisters and she's, she's not fat. None of them are fat.

She's a very small and petite woman. And I would look at my mum and think, well, if she thinks that she's fat, then you know, what the hell am I, you know, I must be some, some, some sort of monster. My mom is five foot two and now as an adult, I'm five, seven. And so even from a younger age, I was close to her height and overtook her height and overtook her weight. So the beliefs that she had about her body really drilled down into my brain that my body, if she wasn't happy with her body, then my body was really wrong. I developed because of this, because of this, I'm not literally not having access to food. And when we did have access to food, it was kind of like, well, don't, don't eat that and you're greedy and you want all the food.

And I developed eating in secret and so I would sneak food because, you know, so shameful that I desired food, but Holy shit, how could I have not desired food? One, I was a human being and two, I was being physically denied the food because we didn't have all the food that we wanted and mentally because anytime I want it to eat all the food, then it would be shame. Around that. So I started binge eating never diagnosed binge eating disorder, but basically that's what it was. And that went on for years and that increased my feelings of low self esteem and thinking that I was out of control and greedy and just this, this horrible human being. The area we grew up in, like I mentioned, was very dangerous. So I was targeted by a local pedophile in that area.

And so we had we don't know who it was, but a local pedophile who would hang around, hang around in areas that were scary to walk, you know, like underpasses under, under highways into the motorway and you know in the bushes and fields and things like that. And he would indecently expose himself to children and two women. One day he did that to me out on the street and then he came to my back garden and would watch me playing and in decently expose himself to me there. So it made my house, it was already dangerous in that area, but it made my house a very, very dangerous and I was a terrified child. I really after that, that experience, and it wasn't just one experience, it happened a few times. I couldn't be alone in a room on my own. I couldn't go to the toilet on my own.

I had my mum had to be there with me everywhere because I was terrified. So this happened when I was maybe seven years old. I don't know how does happen, but we managed to get me into, well my mum managed to get me into therapy. How the hell that happened in the time, you know, in the 90s, early nineties to get me into into therapy is just a fricking miracle because you know, that's never heard of. And luckily through cognitive behavioral therapy, I learned how to overcome that fear. I grew braver and I was able to get back to my normal self. So that was a really useful tool that I learned about overcoming fear, which I have used throughout my life about, you know, this overwhelming fear, this overwhelming fear that I had like seriously to the point where I couldn't go to the toilet on my own.

Like imagine fear that, that big to break that down into the tiniest little steps and be able to move forward through that made me learn from a really young age that I could overcome anything. So that was a beautiful lesson I learned from that. So my mom's Irish, she wanted to go back to Ireland where she's from. She had a car accident and she managed to get some money because she got brain damaged from this car accident. She didn't have a car, she was on her bike, someone opened the passenger door and she went over, she wasn't wearing a helmet. And so she got some insurance money and with that money she wanted to get out of this scary, awful neighborhood and move back to Ireland where she's from. At this time I was 16 years old and I didn't want to go cause I had my, my friends and this is all I knew and I'd been to Ireland many times and it wasn't an enjoyable experience to be in Ireland because it was very religious.

With my family, very you know, shamed me in different ways, you know, if you weren't behaving in exactly, you know, a perfect Catholic girl sort of thing. And it was in the countryside in the middle of nowhere. And so I was like, no way. I want to hang out with my friends and you know, go to clubs and stuff like that. We went, yeah, we would go to clubs at age 16 age 15 even. And so I convinced my mom, I said, no, let me stay here. I to finish my, my my school and because my school didn't finish until I was 18. And she, she believed me. She said, yeah, okay, yeah, I'll let you stay here. So she left for Ireland and she sold our family home and after she sold her family home, it was like, okay, the family home, it's, you know, you have to be out in a couple of weeks or whatever.

And I was like, Oh, well what do I do now? I was at school full time. I had a job at school after school doing cleaning the school. That was my job. And that was part time. And in the UK, you can't rent somewhere legally until you're 18. And even if you could, I didn't have the money that you would need to rent a place right at the same time going to the club, I met this guy who I was like, Oh my God, he is so amazing. Now this guy, ah, excuse me, sick. Oh, he was 30 years old. So by this time I was 17, I just turned 17. He was 30 years old. I met him in this club where all these teenagers, teenagers go and instead of, you know, buying me a drink, which is maybe what a boy might normally do, he bought me a lollipop.

Now I'm like, Oh my fucking God, that is so creepy. The whole thing. Like why is he, why is a 30 year old hanging out in a club with teenagers and get, Oh, oops. Like now older Victoria's like bitch, get out of that. But 17 year old Victoria was so starved for love and attention and was lost. So I'd met this guy, I'd maybe been with him for a, you know, a month or something by this time that I was homeless. And so I ended up going to the council and saying, I've got nowhere to live. So they put me in a homeless hostel for children for under eighteens and I was there maybe a couple of months and it was fucking horrible. You, you've got a room and then, you know, everything else was kind of shared facilities, but the other people in there where of course it was unstable people.

It was children who, you know, what, why would these children be be homeless? Basically? they're, they're troubled. And I was troubled too because I was in this situation and so, and so it was a very, again, a very dangerous place to live in. And my then boyfriend creepy 30 year old said, come and live with me and my mum and our seven cats. And I thought that was a great idea. So I moved in with him. I soon found out that he was a, an alcoholic, just like my dad. He was also abusive to begin with. Obviously he wasn't, he was incredibly charming and everything that 17 year old Victoria could have dreamed of, you know, AKA someone, anyone who would date someone who I thought was so disgusting.

So as abusive relationships go, it started out being, you know, great and wonderful. And then slowly things started to happen where any anyone with self esteem would have been like, get out of there. No. eventually he decided that I was too fat for him and so he put me on this diet, I'd say diet. Basically he staffed me. He decided what I could and couldn't eat and he would monitor me. And if I ever deviated from this plan of what I was allowed to eat, then there would be repercussions. So it really, really reinforced that idea that I was so out of control with food and I was so fat and greedy that I had to be controlled by my boyfriend. And I didn't think that it was a problem that he was controlling me in this way. I thought he was very charitable and kind to date someone who was clearly so disgusting.

Of course, being starved by your boyfriend increases the need, the actual need physically and emotionally to have to, to, to have food. Right. And so any moment he was out of the house, any moment that I was not with him, I would get food and I would just guilty, very guilty, eat it. And it would just, it would just be basic, you know, food like a normal dinner. Like I'd go around my sister's and she cooked dinner and I, and I'd say, don't tell him, but I had this food or I'd, you know, go around my friends and we'd order pizza and I'd order a pizza and I'd have like one slice and I'd be like, don't tell him, don't tell him I'm going to bring the rest of the pizza home and tell him that you ate this slice and I'll give him the rest of the pizza to show him.

I haven't eaten the pizza. And you know, really, really, yeah. Messed up. And really sad. So I really, really, really, really from this point knew that I was horrid, just a disgusting human being eventually. So I was with this guy for about three years, and eventually I got a job at a bar after I finished school and I started socializing with people and I started building a little bit of confidence, you know, talking to customers in the bar a little bit. I was still fucking terrified. Like when a customer would come in, I ducked behind the bar and be like, Oh God someone else would serve, we'll serve them because I'm scared. That's, you know, to talk to them. That's how shy I was, eh, who knows I ever managed to get any job at all because I was really really, really shy anyway.

And so because I, I'd made these new friends, I managed to start understanding that maybe the way that this guy was treating me was not okay and his behavior was escalating the way that it does in abusive relationships. And he started getting violent and he was already verbally abusive and manipulate me and controlled me and decided, you know, what things he wanted me to wear and all that type of stuff. So I managed to, to to leave him and it was very dangerous. He actually chased me with a knife. I had to hide in bushes to get away from him and he said, when we were in the relationship, if you ever dare leave me, then I will do this, this, this, this, this. And he laid out a list of consequences if I ever debt to leave him.

He followed through on almost every single one of the consequences. So the first thing that he did was throw a brick through my sister's window, which is where I was staying. He then went to my work and punched my boss, hoping to try and get me fired. He went to my sister's work and he followed, my sister's boyfriend harassed him. He, he said, I will make sure that you can never live in this city again because I'll harass you so badly. And I did leave. And that was because it wasn't safe for me and that in that city, but that was a few years coming. Anyway. He must have found a new girlfriend or whatever. But he, he eventually gave up a, I got a restraining order against him and even though I got a restraining order against him, he still broke. That restraining order would come to my place of work would contact me.

But the police wouldn't do anything. They'd say, well, we can't prove that he went to your place of work to see you. It's like, Hmm. Yeah, yeah, he was. But like I say, he must've got a new girlfriend because he eventually gave up. So that was poor, pretty much my lowest point. I really, really was really broken from that. And I met a new boyfriend very shortly after. Of course, I couldn't be alone at any point. Like I had to always have a boyfriend because I needed that self esteem boost. I met another guy who was a nice guy, you know, just an average guy. And the way that I would behave around him was he was like, what is wrong with you? You know, I would be so terrified of him. For example, I remember one evening making bolognese and bringing it to the table and putting his down and then mind falling out of my hand and hitting the floor and that moment of absolute terror of how's he gonna react?

And I was quickly sweeping it up and being like, Oh, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry and I won't have any dinner and you know, I'll just, I'll get out of your way. And so, you know, you know, waiting for this big reaction. And he was like just have half of my dinner. You know, it's not a big deal. It's just a play like relaxed sort of thing. And that was the moment that I realized that maybe there was a different way to, you know, experience a relationship and not saying that this guy was perfect at all. Like I wouldn't date him now, but he was exactly who I needed because he was very patient with me when I was, you know, clearly very damaged from this relationship. So I was with him for a few years. In this time I was working in recruitment, which was really, really soul destroying working in this agency in my home city.

It was all very sales based, talking to people on the phone, which helped me with my competence again because I'd have to talk to people who had, you know, authority, you know, put people in positions of power and convince them to buy from me and spend, you know, thousands of dollars with me. So that was actually helpful for me and my self esteem before that, to get to that point, I'd worked in a call centre, which a call centre I had to talk to people in the call centre as I was working in was people complaining and complaints. And so talking to lots of angry people. So I had learned how to talk to people are not, you know, run away and cry because I was so terrified. Which was, which was good for me. So a few years after their side meet some guy out clubbing when I was I was, I went to my sister in Sheffield, which is a couple of hours from, I'm from Peterborough and I was like, Oh my God.

So maybe I was 25 by this point. And I fell deeply in love with this guy. He was so cool and quirky and he was so in love with me and I was like, I know I'm going to marry him. We talk about getting married and I was just like, Holy shit, I've never experienced love like this. It was so intense and amazing and, but there were little red flags or red flags that Victoria now would be like bitch get out of there, but I ignored them because I was, you know, still recovering from this, this terrible abuse that I'd experienced and low self esteem in general, I would put them to the wayside. You know, like sometimes he texts me and he be like, remember that time that you did that thing and there was no time that I did that thing.

Or he would just go missing for a few days on an end, you know, not text me or not respond. And I'll be like, Oh my God, he's gone off me. And then he just resurface and be like, Oh, I missed you or sorry, my phone was broken and we had a long distance relationship. And so we would go and see each other maybe at the weekends. And so there were some things that were a little bit fishy. So one day I caught him, I caught him with three of the girlfriends and these were proper girlfriends. He weren't, these weren't like flings or something. So, so I was girlfriend three in a four girlfriend situation as having this long distance relationship. He was able to spend time with these other girls. First girlfriend, girlfriend, number one, he actually bought a house with her girlfriend to he was in a longterm relationship with her.

I had been with him for nine months at this point, and then he had just started with girlfriend number four, also a long distance relationship, go from one and two. We're in his city. So obviously he'd worked out, he couldn't have people in the city. Girlfriend one and two and me go from three. We got got together and became friends. We reached out to girlfriend four and and said, Hey, this guy's cheating. And she said, no, I don't believe you. He's a great guy and dah, dah, dah. Even though we said, Oh, here's all the evidence. She was like, no. So hopefully she worked it out, but she wasn't interested. It was so interesting to, to, to meet, you know, spend time with these, these other women because they were so smart and funny and gorgeous and accomplished and cool and quirky. And then I looked at myself and I was like, Oh, what is he doing with me?

We took a picture together. Actually. I'll put it on, I'll put it on show notes. I'll, I'll put a picture of us three go from one, two and three together. And I'm so thankful that this happens because, because he was such a scallywag and he was, you know, cheating. He wasn't doing it out of the kindness of his heart. He wasn't dating me because he was a good guy. You know, he wasn't dating me to be charitable, which is what I thought of the guys were doing. They were dating me as a favor. They were doing charity work and you know, dating this poor fat girl, you know, he was dating me because I too was smart, funny, quirky, beautiful, gorgeous, sexy, desirable. And looking at the other girlfriends, I was like, wow, I can see that they are those things. And clearly, theoretically I too ambo things. It's not like he did, you know what? Go from one, two and they were great. And then he was like, Oh fuck, I'm just going to date some complete loser who I find physically disgusting. No, you know, he was being selfish and he wanted someone, he also found attractive. So

That's when I realized, okay man, something's going on with my brain update. Its, you know, had terrible day in experiences. I hate my job, I hate where I live. I, I cannot believe that I am acceptable being this weight. Something needs to change and I need to work on my brain because this ain't working for me and head's not fun. So

So this was kind of my turn round point. This is my appear funny. I, from there moved to Canada. My sister was in Canada. She said, Oh fuck, you've got nothing to lose. Why not come and stay in Canada for a bed and see how it goes. So moved to Canada and my planned, six months turned into 10 plus years and Vancouver in Canada is my home. And I started therapy.

I knew that I had to fix what was going on in my mind. So I started therapy. Still, I'm in therapy to this day because therapy is amazing. And I'm very privileged to be able to, to do it. When I first started out, I didn't have any money. And so I managed to find free resources in regards to therapy, different places that would give free therapy

And I was able to, to work on my mental health that way. But still after years of therapy I still wanted to be thin. I just couldn't shake this feeling of wanting to be thin. I was just, I was just like, Oh man, I'm, you know, I've turned my life around. I, I got, you know, better jobs and better relationships and I'm just feeling great all around. But why can't I just be thin? I'm so accomplished in all the different areas there are. I had done different types of therapy to really work through my PTSD, which is what I suffered from after that relationship. And I was, you know, my life was great but I just couldn't fix this one thing. And the one thing is being thin. I didn't know that it was the F the wanting to be thin. It was the being thing.

Like why couldn't I be thin? I, I'm intelligent, I'm, I'm hard working. I'm dedicated. I would crush any diet, but you know, I went on, but of course I couldn't crush a diet because diets don't work. I was, you know, it was a faulty system. So only after years and years and years of therapy and the realization of what if it's okay to be fat. I started following body positive blogs and reading things and looking at the science and reading the, the big breakthrough was coming from reading Regan Chastain's blog, dances with fat and being like, what the fuck? What do you mean it's okay to be fat? What do you mean diets don't work? What do you mean all of this stuff? You know, why hasn't no one told me this? Why w what if only I had known so many years ago that this, you know, this was the truth.

You know, that it's okay to be fat. In fact, it's beautiful. All different body types of beautiful, it's interesting. It's visually interesting. Fat bodies are, they're so sumptuous and gorgeous and, and many people have a preference for fat bodies. The guys who were dating me all through this time, one dating me to be charitable, they were dating me cause I was fucking gorgeous and also had an amazing personality and was resilient and kind and funny and intelligent and all of those things. I didn't realize it because of this and this really, really long journey of working out all of the different things I needed to do to help my mental health, to overcome my rampant internalized fat phobia. I have now made it my life's mission to tell everyone, Hey, it's okay to be fat and because you're fat, you do not have to accept less than if I knew from a young age that it was okay to be fat and that I wasn't greedy and I didn't learn all of that stuff around, you know, food moralizing and all that, all sort of stuff.

And you know, over-exercising and I would never have you know, when I met some 17 year old, you know, 30 year old when I was 17 in the club, I be like, Oh, go away. Creepy old dude. You know, I'm busy being, you know, 17 and having fun. You know, maybe I would have gone to Ireland with my mom who knows, you know, maybe if my mom was in, you know, who knows, who knows. But I wouldn't have ended up in a lot of the situations that I was in that simple, deep knowledge that you are worthy as a human being. No matter what you look like, no matter what you do, no matter what mistakes that you make. And we all make mistakes because we're human beings. If I had that, then things would have been a lot different. Now that's not my reality.

And actually today I feel very thankful that I got to experience those things because now I'm so deeply passionate about sharing this message with the well. So other people who are maybe somewhere along the story that I, you know, the same story of me, maybe not the same extremes of homelessness and abuse and all that type of stuff, but somewhere, you know, not accepting you know, the best relationships and having crappy jobs and just being, you know, walked over and feeling like a doormat and not wearing clothes that they want and scared to wear a bikini and all that type of stuff. They can hear this message and be like, what? And have that same epiphany moment that I had years ago where it's like, what's up? What do you mean it's okay to be fat? No one's told me this. I want to be telling everyone and I want you as a listener to be also sharing this message with people in your life if you're able to and saying, yo, did you know the, it's okay to be fat and Hey, we don't always have to be on a diet.

And in fact diets don't work! And what an incredible world that would be if we could live in a place where little girls, little boys, children of any gender, know that their body is okay, what beautiful things could their lives turn into because of that? So that's why I do what I do. And now because I have this deep sense of worthiness, I have confidence. Now when I say confidence, a lot of people think arrogance. Some people might think I'm arrogant, but I know that I'm an incredible person. I also know that I am a deeply flawed person because I'm a human being. I'm not 100% good and I'm not 100% bad. I'm just a human being. But I'm also worthy of love and respect from everyone around me. And if I don't get it, then I put boundaries in place and I look after myself because I am precious.

And not only am I precious, everyone is, and it doesn't matter if you are fat or thin, you're still precious and worthy. So because of my new found confidence, I would do things like change up who I was dating. I'd start spotting red flags and be like, Mmm, no see ya later and I would ask for pay rises. I remember one time in my job I asked for a pay rise and my boss was this very conservative American guy. I was like can I have a two K pay rise? I was thinking, you know, I'd worked there for a couple of years and, and got a pay rise. And I remember very clearly him saying, Victoria, you're not worth two K more you're lucky you even have a job. And kind of went on a, on a rant of, you know, in this economy, blah, blah, blah.

And I listened to him and I, this is when I really knew my confidence or the work I'd been doing. All my confidence was paying off because I was listening to him, watching his mouth move, watching him being so certain that he was right in his opinion. And you know, he was right and his, his mind, he was right. That saying I wasn't worth 12 two K more and I wasn't internalizing what he was saying. I was just like, that's your opinion. That's not a fact. And so I went out and I got someone else's opinion. I got other company's opinions and he was right. I wasn't worth two K more, I's worth 12 K more, which is what I did is I got another job within a couple of weeks paying me 12 K more so old Victoria would have heard him say, you're not worth two K more.

And I would've just been like, I wouldn't have even asked for two. Came or did just settled in this job that I really hated, but knew Victoria was able to understand that what one person thinks of me is not the truth. I can decide. I have control about the narrative that's going on in my mind. And I continued with this like all these little steps of bravery, like at the time that were just so overwhelming. Now I wouldn't think twice of being like, give me some fucking money, bitch. You know what I mean? But at the time there were massive and all these little steps and big steps turned into even bigger things. So wearing a bikini and filming myself and putting it online and I was like, Oh my God, this is so scary. And then doing a TEDx talk where I take my clothes off at the end, if you haven't seen it, seen it, go find it.

Look at a TEDx and Victoria Welsby. And yes, I take my clothes off at the end. It's amazing shape. My fat titties all over the place. And wrote a best selling book and really I don't give a fuck what other people think of me. In regards to the negative opinions and really positive opinions about me is lovely, but it doesn't mean anything about me. It means something about you. What you're thinking about me is a reflection of you. Right. You know, someone who has high self esteem, who feels great is not gonna be you know, saying mean shit on the internet, right? Or the troll comments I get, I'm not like, that's a well balanced person, that person who's telling me that I'm a disgusting human being and I should die, they're not happy. So, but if someone is, you know, thinking good thoughts about me, it's probably because they have good thoughts in their brain about themselves.

So I wanted to tell you my story because I wanted to show a kind of dramatic version of going from someone who was terrified to talk to other people who, you know, experienced these things because I thought that I wasn't good enough into the extreme version of, you know, flopping my tits out on a TEDx stage and not giving one single flying fuck if people thought that I was unattractive. And so wherever you are, you can do it too. You can that there's a process that I have developed through all these years of therapy and all of this, you know, body positivity and fat positivity that I've been exposed to, but helps you get from, from a to B. It's called the fierce framework. And we'd be talking more about that in upcoming episodes. About the different things that you can be doing. But I just want you to know that it is possible.

It is possible. It doesn't matter how many years you have been hating your body. It doesn't matter if you are 90, a hundred years old. It can change. It doesn't matter if you really, you know, have a deep, deep hate for yourself. Of course it matters. But what I'm saying is that it can change, right? No matter what dark hole you're in right now, or maybe you're coming out of that dark hole it just takes one step in front of the other doing things that sometimes are scary and pushing yourself and surrounding yourself with messages like this message that I'm sharing today. So just by listening to this podcast today, you're taking another step forward to submerging yourself and fat positivity and knowing that, that it's possible and you know, anything is possible for you. Really, really anything is possible. So that's my story. I hope you got something from sharing this.

If you did, please let me know. Reach out to me if my story resonated with you in any way. And because I know you're the type of person who wants to share this message with the world, then please share this with with your friends. Please leave a review and subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss out on the future episodes which are going to be so juicy and filled with such amazing content. I can't wait to share that with you and I so appreciate you being here with me till the very end and being part of this first fatty revolution. Youre incredible thanks for being here. And I will see you on the next episode of the Fierce Fatty Podcast.