Episode 10 Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode ten of the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I'm your host, Victoria "Sexy" Welsby. And in today's episode we are talking about why I use the word fat and not the O words and the O words being overweight in quotation marks and obese in quotation marks. Let's do it.

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 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 negative beliefs about your fat body controlling your life? It's the Fierce Fatty Podcast. Let's begin.


Y'all, it's so cold today. I'm recording this the beginning of December. It's going to be going out in the next week or so. And I'm freezing. I'm actually in a loft at the moment. And so if you hear wind noises, it's really noisy in here. The wind is hitting the roof and it sounds really cozy, but if you hear some kind of sounds like, I don't know, wind I guess. Well that's what wind sounds like. It sounds like wind then it's the weather. And I've tried to wait to see if the wind will die down before recording the episode, but I don't think it will. So yeah.


Hey, Apple podcasts is really fucking annoying. You lot are leaving me some gorgeous reviews and you're telling me about it. Because if you tell me about it, you get a copy of my book, you get a digital copy and you get an audio copy and people emailing me, giving me that gorgeous reviews and they're not showing up on iTunes. There's only three reviews on iTunes and I've had a lot more than three, so it's getting on my big fat tits. But that's Apple podcasts, I keep saying iTunes but it's Apple podcast saved difference. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah. So I wanted to read one out today, one of the three that have appeared on Apple podcasts. Maybe some time in 2025 the new ones will. That's why I say take a screenshot before you submit your review because if you press submit and then try and take a screenshot when it appears you'll be waiting until you're dead. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, the digital and audio version, then screenshot it and then send it to me victoria@fiercefatty.com.


Here is review from Miche 1971 and Miche says, "A must listen podcast five stars. Obviously, this is a podcast you need. If you want to say F you to anyone who makes you feel like bad for living in a bigger body. I've spent a little over a year with Victoria listening to her coaching and learning so much about diet culture and how it's a tool to make us feel so horrible about ourselves and keep us small. So we'll buy into the idea that our bodies are bad and we should try to be smaller no matter how exhausted it makes us, no matter how many times we fail a diet. I highly recommend listening to this podcast. Thank you, Miche 1971! Gorgeous, gorgeous review. I love it. Thank you. Thank you all for tuning in and listening and being here. And even if you haven't written a review yet, I appreciate you because you're here on this fierce fatty wave, journey, hot balloon, whatever you want to call it. And that's pretty amazing.


So bonus points, you also get my book if you, you get my book, if you write review and tell me about it. But if you share on social media, I'm going to enter you in a draw to win a Fierce Fatty mug, which is amazing. Make sure you tag me and make sure for the wall that you want to tag me, that your profile is public. If it's not public, I can't see it. Yeah, and you could win a mug. Oh my God. Amazing. And if you want them to show notes to today's episode, it's fiercefatty.com/010 for episode 10. So fiercefatty.com/010. There is a link there so if you want to ask me a question and I will answer the question on the show, there's a link there for you to do just that. And it's really simple. It just goes to a form that says, what's your question? And you want to share your name or not and you can, if you don't, if you want to, if you don't have to, you don't want to.


Yeah. So today we're talking about the word fat and why I use the word fat and not the any other words? I do use other words. We can talk about those but I like fats. Obviously, it's this, you know, my brand is Fierce Fatty Podcast, Fierce Fatty, my books, Fierce Fatty and I like being fat. But a lot of people when they hear that word, it can be really jarring and shocking and people are like, Oh, don't say you're fat, you're not fat. You're beautiful, pretty sure I am both motherfucker. They mean well, right, but so it can be jarring for most people actually because we have learned that the word fat is an insult, is one of the worst things that you can be as a human being.


And to call someone fat, you might as well be calling them the C word. You might as well be calling them, you know, a kitten killer or you know, something really bad. And so that word, it's kind of like, Oh no, don't say that about someone because we think fat is bad. And so people don't want to use the word fat because we know fat is bad as a society that's what we've been, we've been taught. And so someone who is kind and considerate, we'll be like, okay, well I don't want to use the word fat because that's such a horrible word to use. This is their opinion, not my opinion, but this is how I used to think. And so instead I'm going to use the quote unquote correct words to you and what are the correct was to use. Well, the words to use our words that we use in medicine, right?


That makes sense, right. You know, we're going to use the correct words and be politically correct about it. And so people then will use the words normal, overweight, obese, morbidly obese, et cetera, et cetera. And even me just saying those words, I'm like, ughhh shut up and this is really problematic and I'm going to explain why. And so if you've not heard about the BMI scale and what a load of fucking bullshit it is, get ready to be like, what the fuck? And, to never potentially want to use the O words ever again. So the BMI scale is a measurement that we use to determine someone's health status, right? So in case you don't know, it's basically, it's a simple formula. So it's a number that is generated by dividing someone's weight by their height squared and multiply in that result by 703.


Guess, when this thing was invented 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30, 40, 50, try. Almost 200 years ago. What do we use in medicine that hasn't been improved upon in 200 years? Probably not a lot of things, right? So the BMI was created, body mass index was created in the 1830s by a mathematician, statistician, astronomer, sociologist. This person had a lot of feathers in that hat. Is that the right way to say it? They were smart, but they weren't a doctor. The name is Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet? Quetelet! Sure, Quetelet. Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, Belgian person. So Lambert, let's call him Lambert. Lambert, got old Lambert. Lambert wanted to study populations to see how to categorize populations. And so he took white European men and looked at their sizes on average. Remember this is 200 years ago and it's just what European men that he studied and he put categories on these people.


And now he said, this should never be used to measure the individual or to be used to measure health. This is not what the BMI scale is. So fast forward, hundreds of years, not hundreds, 200 years, roughly 150 years. You can tell I'm great at Math. Who knows how many years, I can't do her Math. But in more recent times, the scale has been adopted as a way to determine someone's health status and the categories of what makes someone quote unquote overweight or normal weight or any of the other weight labels that are out there. Arbitrary numbers. At one point, it was lowered because it was 27 for someone to be classes overweight and it was lower to 25 for the reason of, it's just easier to remember. It's like, it's so messed up. In 1998, the World Health Organization lowered these categories of what is considered fat and what not.


And the committee who changed it consisted of people who would directly linked to diet companies, weight watchers or diet pill pharmaceutical companies. Now, if that is not a conflict of interest, I don't know what is, and so overnight, 29 million people went from being a normal weight to being overweight just because, huh? Do we fancy 29 million new customers? Huh? Well, we can get 29 million new customers if we just lower the thresholds. Pretty smart, right? What it is small for them who wants to make money, but he's not actually helpful for human beings. Now the BMI is used in the States, in North America, in places that have, you know, rely heavily on insurance or medical insurance now in the UK. So he really kind of rich people that will have insurance because we have the NHS, Natural Health Service. And so now insurance companies will want to know your BMI because guess what they can do, charge you more money if you're fat. Even when I remember completing a mortgage application and they want you to know my height and weight, and I was like, well, why does a mortgage company need to know my height and weight what it was for insurance, right? And I don't even know, like I got my house, I got a mortgage when I was in my early twenties, and what if I was like, class does very, very fat that wouldn't have been denied a mortgage. I don't know the answer to that, but it's just made me think, I just realized that. So many experts agree that the BMI is pretty unscientific and doesn't really tell us much of anything. It definitely doesn't tell us someone's health status. There's loads of things that you might see like, Oh, Brad Pitt is actually classed as obese and Jason Mamoa is morbidly obese.


So I don't know I'm making that one up. But you know, he probably is because it doesn't tell us how much fat is on someone's body and even if you know versus muscle. But even if you know that the amount of fat on someone's body doesn't indicate health either it's just, it's not showing us much of anything. They are some instances where the BMI is useful. An example of that is medicine dosage or say if you're going to have an anesthesia, they need to know your BMI so they're not like giving you too much and you die or whatever. You're not getting enough and Oh my God, what a horror film. Imagine waking up in surgery. No, that's always been my fear. I'm actually, you know, when I had surgery when I was a kid on my teeth, one of my tooth was growing. My canine was, I think my canine was growing up instead of down or something like that. Anyway, and so I had surgery when I was a kid. You know what my biggest fear was? I was about, let's say I was about 10 or 11. Then my biggest fear before I went into surgery, it was that I obviously didn't understand. I didn't understand what I was going to go on, that I was going to start humping the the table. While having surgery that I was going to somehow go from being on my back, so on the stomach or my stomach and start humping the surgery table and the surgeons were going to have to like strap me down because I was some out of control sex child that I seriously thought that that's what was going to happen. I remember waking up from surgery and being like, Oh my God, they probably all saw me humping the table even though I was totally unconscious.


And like, why would that happen? What is wrong with, what is going on with my brain as a kid? Anyway, so okay. So that's BMI and so that's where we get those words from normal weight, underweight, overweight. And so let me go into more about the words, those words. So, I call them the O words because I don't even like saying overweight and obese in the body positive community, in the fat positive community those weight, those words are seen as slurs now. And people don't actually write them out. They put them in quotation marks or they put asterisks or stars in the word. And so that it's not written out because it can be really difficult for people to read and see or even to hear. And if you think, Oh my God, a slur, that seems extreme and let me tell you what a slur is. And slur according to Merriam Webster dictionary is an insulting or disparaging remark or innuendo, a shaming or degrading effect.


Let me explain how these words are shaming and degrading, disparaging and insulting. So that you can be like, Oh shit. Yes they are slurs. Oh my God, I didn't realize. So what does the word overweight,sound like? Like what does that mean? Well, it means the past and is over the weight that a human being should be. Now what weight should a human being be? All sorts of weights, right? You know, there's no one weight that, okay, the perfect human being weighs this much, is this tall, has this color hair, has this color eyes, has this kind of skin, that fee is this size. The nails look like this, their belly button is an innie or an outie that air logs are attached or not there can curl their tongue. Who knows? Because we're all so different. You know, it's just in the animal kingdom. There's no one way or size a dog is or you know, any other animals. You know, cat is not like, okay, this is the weight. You know, all donkeys weigh this much. The tails are this long. And if there, if the tail is longer or if they have shorter legs or whatever, then they are not a good donkey, right? It just, it, you know, human beings come in all sorts of sizes and shapes and heights and abilities and that's a good thing, right? It's a good thing. We don't all want to be the same human because it's boring and eugenics, right? So that word says that human beings should be a certain way. Your body is not at that weight. Therefore you are wrong. Your body is wrong and faulty and needs to be changed.


That's bad, right? The word obese, this one is even more fucked up. So not only is it presuming that you're overweight because it's the next category up. The word obese means, literally means the meaning of the word obese means having eaten until fat. The word obese means having eaten until fat. Now everyone who falls into that category of obese, is that accurate? Have they eaten until fat? Are all fat people at home just polishing off a thousand donuts for, you know, casual snack in the afternoon and guzzling them lard milkshakes and all that type of stuff. No, we know now modern science tells us that there are literally hundreds of reasons that someone has a different body size and to presume that fat people have become fat because of something that they have done, which is wrong. And even if you have eaten until fat, who has decided that is wrong, because what is behind that?

What is going on there is that a reaction to years of dieting. Is that a reaction? Because of some sort of emotional thing that's going on where you need to protect yourself. And the alternative is something, you know, more difficult and difficult to deal with, et cetera, et cetera. Is eating too much food? Does that mean that you're a bad person? All this is all judgments on the individual, right? It's saying that the individual's body is the individual's quote unquote fault. And it is not looking at the whole issue of why people are fat and the fact that being fat is not even in the issue because we all come in all different shapes and sizes and now there's a beautiful thing. So the O words really pathologize fat bodies, they presume that fat bodies are diseased and wrong and need to be fixed. And that is not true.


If you want to be healthy, you can be healthy and be fat. I know it's absolutely fucking healthy. Holy shit. Cold the presses. But it's true. If you don't want to be healthy, that's fine too. It's up to you, right? It's your body. You do what you want with it. So as soon as I hear someone use the O words, I'm like, Oh my God, this person is not safe. I think, Oh, this person is not really into social justice, or this person is not that far along in their body acceptance, their body love journey, or this person hasn't got a lot of education around this issue. And so it makes me hesitate towards that bold person. Now if people are using those words and they're like, Oh, Hey Victoria, I'm struggling because I'm overweight and blah, blah, blah. I understand that where they're coming from, right?


You're not a bad person if you've used those words, because we've all used those words. I didn't learn about this stuff until the last kind of five years of my life and I would be like, Oh, that's so nice of me to use that word, overweight, you know, obese. That's kind of me because I'm doing the right thing. But now we're becoming smarter and more savvy about the effects of the words have on people. And we've not even spoken about the category of normal. I mean, Holy shit, normal. Oh Lord, right? Just the whole, yeah, just, Ugh. I'm literally just shaking my head. They're being like, you have a normal body or you have an abnormal body. There is literally something wrong with you. You big freak. Look at you. You're two pounds over normal or 200 pounds over normal. You'll mega abnormal. It's just very judgy, right?


It's very judgy. And not only is it judgy, it's dangerous. This is not just about, you know, let's make people happy by using the right language. This is literally life or death because what we know about saying that fat bodies are not normal, saying that fat people have eaten until they're fat, that they are over the correct way. Their bodies are bad is violence against fat people is death. It is literally death. It's stigma. It's not being able to go to the doctor because you know that you're going to be prescribed a diet because you stubbed your toe or way more serious things like I hit all the time whenever I share on social media about anything to do with weight stigma and doctors, the amount of messages and comments I get people being like, Oh, I didn't go to the doctor because of this.


Or I went to the doctor because I had this issue. And they said, Oh, it's because you're fat. Turns out I had cancer. It turns out I had MS, turns out and then we hear stories in the media of turns out that fat person died. And this is all intertwined with the oppression of fat people. This language is devastating to the care and love and acceptance of fat people. So it might seem like a little thing and it might be like, eh, whatever. Just call them overweight, who cares? But it's really, really, really harmful towards everyone. Really? How many straight sized people go into a doctor and they're presumed to be 100% healthy because they're straight size, right? It's not just fat people who were affected by this. It's everyone who presumptions are being made about their health status because of the size of their body.


We don't want to do that, right? It's almost 2020, right. We want to be forward thinking. So the O words are slurs. If you want to use the O words, like sometimes no medical publications, we'll use the O words cause they don't know any better and you know, they think they're being you know, based in science and whatnot. And so say if I want to share a publication, which is good in regards to like, Oh, overweight people does that to other people I will say, Hey, trigger warning the use of O words or I will put in quotation marks. The words overweight, obese or I will also, well I actually do is I put in quotation marks and I also star out the ease in overweight and obese to say, Hey, this is really fucked up. We don't use this word. So we don't use the O word, but why do I use the word fat and not something else like thick or fluffy or curvy or whatever.


Well, the fat positive community have reclaimed that word and use it as a neutral descriptor. And by using it as a neutral descriptor, we're saying there's nothing wrong with being fat and why fats? Why fat? Well, fat is that, that word that we have all been so terrified of. I used to be so scared that someone would ever call me fat. That would just be my deep dark thing. Like, please don't even know if I ever got into an argument. Please don't with them. Say that. Call them, call me fat or if a bully called me fat. Ugh, like I remember this boy at school and we were in French class and he said, Victoria treyground or gross or something, I can't remember what the word was, but it was a French word for fats. And him and his mate was laughing, turn out both of them fancied me fucked up. Obviously, I'm mean gorgeous, even as a kid. But they were saying that and I just, it was just sickening. Like how I can remember that years and years and years later, I remember where we were. I remember my friend Irene turning to me and saying, can you hear that they're calling you fat and French? Like it was traumatizing. And now obviously that's not the only instance, but it would literally be a knife to my heart. It would be the most hurtful thing. Like, and they could call me anything but fats. Now, if someone calls me fats, I'm just initially like, well done. You have eyes like, yep, yep. I'm fat. Well, she point, it literally has taken the power out of it because I have reclaimed it and I've said, you cannot hurt me with this word anymore because it's mine.


It's my word. It's like someone saying, Hey, you Victoria. Well yeah, that's my name. That's who I am like and what, what you play are you trying to make, you know? And so it can't hurt me. It really, it really cannot. I promise you. Like some people might be like, well, I just has so much power for me, but if you reclaim it, you can work on diminishing that power. So the you people can't hurt you with it anymore. People can't hurt me by calling me fat anymore. I've just, sometimes I just think, Oh, thanks for, you know, if someone's trying to say it in a mean way most people say in like a neutral way or even a positive way. If someone is trying to say it in a mean way, I'm just like, yeah, thanks. You know, thanks. I am, I know.


Isn't it good? So it's something that we've reclaimed, reclaimed, and it's a neutral descriptor. The same way as someone says, like right now I currently have yellow hair, so I have lemon, yellow hair. And so someone said Victoria, the, the the white girl over there with the yellow hair, green eyes, she's fat and she's wearing this like you don't think, Oh, you know, those other words, you know, brown head, whatever. You're not like, Oh, don't call her brown head. That's so rude. She's got chocolate hair or whatever, right? Yeah. Cause it's just not even a thing. It's just a descriptor about human body. And so we don't need to recoil when someone uses that words. And of course you call yourself anything you like, even if it is the O words, but just have an awareness that when you use those words, people around you are learning something, right?


Straight sized people are learning, Oh maybe it's okay to use those words. Maybe another fat person said to, you know, a straight sized person, Hey those words or slurs and, but then another fat person is using them. Then, you know what does that teaching? What is that teaching us? And so why I don't tend to use euphemisms because euphemisms being things like fluffy or ferric or curvy or zaftig or full, voluptuous. All are absolutely fine. But it's softening the idea of fats. It's saying, well, we don't want to use that nasty word, fat because there's something wrong with it. So we don't try to say, Oh, she, you're not fat. You're curvy. I've noticed a lot of guys I've dated if I ever asked them like, Oh, do you normally date fat girls? They'll be like, no, I don't take fat girls.


I don't curvy girls. And it's like, mate, you date fatties, there's not wrong to date fatties, you know, but then sometimes when they say curvy, they just mean quote unquote curves in the right places. You know, someone who's not actually fat, like someone who has maybe a big tits, you know? And so it's useful for actually saying no fat, like fat, fat, fat, not, you know, big tits, foul, big bum, foul, whatever. So should you call other fat people fat? Or if you're straight sized, should you call school fat people fat? Well, I always say respect what people call themselves. And so if someone wants to call themselves overweight I personally, if someone says I'm overweight, I wouldn't actually refer to them as overweight. I would use a word, a more, I'll use one of the words I'm going to share with you in a minute.


I'll use a different word for them. Just cause I don't, you know, it's like they're slurs. I just can't bring myself to say them, but I won't say I won't necessarily, unless our client of mine correct them and say, Hey, let's not use that word. So go yourself what you want, you know, really. If you can't get on board with fat, that's fine. I'm presuming you can because you're listening to Fierce Fatty podcast. And so I'm guessing that you're okay with the word fat, but let's say if you're a fat person, should you refer to other fat people as fat? Now, I will tend to mix up different uses of words. And so say if I'm with someone who you know, a friend and as a friend, they know who I am. And so I might be like, Oh my God, look at that fat person over there.


She's got a great outfit on or something. I would happily say that to a a friend talking about another fat person. Now say if that fat person with a cute outfit came on over, I wouldn't be like, Hey, fatty, how you doing? Because that thought person might be like, how rude, why are you calling me fat? I wouldn't reference that body, but say if I was, I don't know why I'd be referenced them, they're referencing their body to them because that's weird. You're not like, Oh, hello fat person. But I would use maybe different words until I, you know, I'd ask them, I'd probably ask them. But if you're not sure what to refer to someone as, here are some words that you can use, you can say, instead of overweight, obese or whatever. And if you're not sure if there are core with the word fat, you can say people of size or person of size, you can say larger body, bigger bodied, bigger bodied person.


You can say higher weight individual. You can say plus size. You can say big. So there's some non euphemism Medu is that a word you not euphemizing is other word. Just make it up words. Tell me if one of those words is right. If don't want to use a euphemism which is absolutely, you know, great and fine. You can just say people of size, person of size, bigger bodied higher weights. And sometimes it might be better to use those types of words versus fat for example. In in spaces where there might be some struggles with this. Like for example, in in the eating disorder clinic world, they might not necessarily use the fat, the word fat as much, but they might use the words higher weights, individual or bigger bodied individual. Now when I hear someone using those words, I'm just like, I'm in love with you.


I love you cause I know they get it right. They get it. And so if someone says people of size, I'm just like, Oh my God, be my best friend. I want to marry you. You get it, right. And so any of those words, I'm just really loving and, and you know, if you want to, you know, be playful and call yourself curvy or thick or fluffy or anything, I mean it's your potty, do what you want. But just be aware of the O words and how powerfully harmful they are for individuals and for society as a whole.


So that's why I use the word fat. And I started using the word fat maybe. Oh gosh, five years ago I remember I sent an email to my subscribers at the time and I was like, the email said I am fat and that's okay. And I remember when I sent it, I was just like, Oh man, this is big. It felt like I was coming out to the world as a bigger body person. Whereas before I was trying to hide the fact that I had a bigger body. I was just like, I hope doesn't, people don't notice. I hope that with my optical illusions, I'm tricking them into thinking that I'm thin and by saying, Hey, I'm fat and it's okay. It was really like stepping into my true self. And I don't know if I got people emailing me back saying, don't say that you're not fat.


I probably did, but I don't remember if I did. What I remember is it being a positive experience and really it being really cathartic for me to reclaim that. And it really was a turning point from being embarrassed and shameful about not being thin to being like, I'm fat and what, like and what or like, what have you got to say about it? Nothing. Okay, good. Something will fuck you. So do you want to come out as a family? Do you want to say, Hey, well I'm fat, I'm fat. I think I spoke about this. Yeah, I did speak about this on the last episode, but if you're like, I don't know, am I fat? Am I fat? Well to work out if you're fat, listen to the last episode. But the way I like to just decide whether someone is actually fat as if they have experienced systemized oppression, stigma lost opportunities, et cetera, because of the size of that body.


Is life harder because of the size of your body? And so for an example, have you ever not fit into a chair because of the size of your body? Have you not gotten a job because of the size of your body? Are you able to shop in stores and buy clothes? Are you able to shop in maybe just one store or are you able to shop in all the stores? You can also look at the fat spectrum again on the podcast before episode nine and work out like clothing size wise. Like, do you fall into, you know, being fat or not. And a lot of people call themselves fat, but they're not actually fat. Like, I remember being like, Oh my God, I'm so fat and I was like a size 14 and I'm just like, mm, no, you were actually smaller than the quote unquote average sized human woman.


So, you know, it's probably, it is a good thing to not call yourself fat when you're not actually fat. And all the times people call themselves fat when they're not actually fat is what they're trying to say is, I don't feel comfortable. I feel like my body is too big and fat is a negative thing in their eyes. And so they say, I am fat because what they're trying to say is I don't like myself. I don't like my body size or if you say I'm feeling fat, Hmm, are you, or are you feeling bloated? Are you feeling uncomfortable? Are you feeling that you've already should be smaller, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, maybe don't call yourself fat if you're not fat, but if you fat one. But yeah, so that is the why I call myself fat and maybe why I don't use the O words.


I want to tell you something about myself. So the thing that I want you to tell you about myself today is how I got to where I am today. Like, have I always been doing this? How can people love their fat bodies and feel comfortable and uncomfortable around food? No. Surprising enough. No, I haven't. I've been doing this for probably I think since 2013 I first started a blog and I've been full time in my business since 11 months now? But then I was, you know, doing stuff in my business part time previous to that. So originally, so I worked in a call center when I was just left university. It was fucking hell. It was horrible. It was character building. It's what it was cause I was so shy. You wouldn't believe it now, but I was so fucking shy. The guy that trained me I'm still friends with him today and he was just like, Oh my God. Like, yeah, he was like, you were just shitting your pants on, you know, the thought of talking to someone on the phone. Literally. I don't know how I even did it because I was so scared. And I would be working in the complaints department for a motor insurance or car insurance company. And so working in the complaints department, that was so much fun. Oh my God.


And working at a call center, like you have to type a code into the phone to say, I'm going for a piss now. And if you're like, you've spent too long pissing today, what's wrong? You've spent seven minutes pissing, Oh my God, am I did poo or whatever. So that was awful. And then I saw an advert in the paper being like, do you also to make loads of money and drink martinis and be fine? I'll be like, And I was like, yes, I want to do that. And it was a job for, it was an ad for a recruitment agency. And I was perfect for it because I just spent, I don't know, a couple of years, 18 months taking abuse from people online on on the phone. And so in recruitment, my first job in recruitment was calling companies being like, do you want to have staff from us? And then being like, go away, leave me alone, you piece of shit or whatever. And so I was used to people being mean to me on the phone and doing those calls. And so anyway, and so then that started eight years in the recruitment industry in talent acquisition is what we call it nowadays, talent acquisition, acquiring talent, very sexy. And I was turned out to be very good at it. I was actually at one stage, the number one account executive for the largest agency.


I was a number one account executive in Canada for the largest agency in the world. And I think a lot of that was to do with like being a people pleaser and, you know, perfectionist because I wanted people to love me and all that sort of stuff, which is fine, whatever. I did that. Then I turned and moved into internal stuff and doing more like HR stuff. And then University of British Columbia, which is the number two university in Canada had hunted me to become an adjunct professor for them because I do like what's the word? Not charity staff. Volunteer, that's it. Volunteer what is the right word? Volunteer staffs. I do a lot of volunteer, like career advice and helping people and helping MBAs with salary negotiations and all that type of stuff. Show them the money.


And so they wanted me to teach their BAS there. This the undergrads to how to communicate and how to get jobs in the modern world. And so I did that for two and a half years. And while I was doing that, I was also doing my business. And I also am a certified coach, studied in personality tests and understanding humans. So yeah, so a long time, I was kind of a few years, part time with my business and then finished being an adjunct professor 11 months ago, being full time in my business ever since then. But it feels like I've been doing this for like two minutes, but also for two decades, right. Cause there's so many new new things happening and and yeah, just feels like I've also been doing it forever, which is cool. I like it. Obviously. I love it. I don't really like it. I love it. This is my life's calling. This is what I want to do. This is what I am doing is to tell people, Hey, you don't have to feel how I used to feel, which was a big bag of dog shit. You can feel okay if you want to or not. You do, you want to have you want I'm not your boss. You do what you want. Yeah. So that was my fact about me. Corporate recruitment, university adjunct professor. Now I teach women to get flopped. Let's hit South for everyone to see in the bikini. If you want bikini or not or whatever, more than I do what you want and I'm not the boss of you.


All right, so if you've not already subscribed to the podcast, make sure that you subscribed so you get a new episode. I'm trying to do one for every week. I say trying, I will do one every week. And by the way, Hey, did you know that I have about 18 months worth of videos on YouTube, so 18 months where I did a video every single week and then like short and sweet, so like between three minutes, you know, six minutes, that type of thing on topics that we're talking about on the podcast. And so if you want just like a five minute dose of fat positivity in your day, go and check out my YouTube channel. The link will be in the show notes to get some of that in your brain. So, yeah. So make sure you give me a review. Five stars, please, or whatever you wanted to.


I know the both of you. But if you would like a copy of my book the audio and ebook version, take a screenshot and email me victoria@fiercefatty.com and share on social media, tagging me fierce.fatty on Instagram and Fierce Fatty the other places you'll find me. You know where I am. And I'll put you in a draw to win a Fierce Fatty cup. And thank you for being amazing and hanging out with me today. Honestly, I love hanging out with you. I really do. Like, I was walking on the beach the other day and I was like, Oh, looking forward to recording the podcast episode so I can have a chat with them, with you. Listen to you. Yes, you right now.


So thanks for hanging out with me. It's been fun as always, and I'll see you on the next episode. Have an incredible day, Fatty. Good bye!