Episode 16 Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 16 of the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I'm your host, Victoria Welsby. In this episode, I'm answering the question, if I start intuitive eating when I put on a ton of weight, 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.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome to episode 16 I'm feeling really good. You know, today it's been really windy and haley. I'm living close to the beach and in Ireland and we get a loads of wind. It sounds real. It sounds so good at night here on the the roof. But, but just like 10 minutes ago, the sun just came out and is shining across the fields, across the sea, across the mountains and its beautiful and yeah. So I'm feeling good and I just got back from a business trip to LA. Oh my God. I'm so fancy. If I had hair, I'd be flicking it around right now is not really fancy. But I go to LA, the last time I went was in May and now it's well I'd went in January, now it's just the 3rd of March. February. Oh my God at time. But I go because I have on my business, if you didn't know I have an online business, I teach a fat people how to love their body and stop dieting, start intuitively eating. He didn't know. You probably didn't know. And anyway, having a business is can be difficult because not a lot of other people around have online businesses. It feels like everyone I know has an online business because I've slowly made friends in the online business world. But anyway, I am a part of a coaching program and we meet up and have events in, tends to always be in LA, kind of a central location and hang out with other business folks for a few days. And it's just so rejuvenating, so invigorating, so inspiring. And I love it, you know, to hang out with all these different people who are doing not the same as me because everyone has a different business and it's amazing to see all the different types of businesses that have successful on my business is doing three things from like calligraphy, like people making a wonderful business from teaching others how to do calligraphy online.


Another guy who's teaching people not to be scared to fly online. Isn't the future amazing that we can do this now and any education that you want around any specific topic, you can find it online. So yay for being born when we're born. It'd probably be better if we were born like a hundred years later if the world is still around. But yeah, even not being born in like 1900. So something that I'm doing right now is for the month of February, I am feeling fattylicious and excited to share the fatty love and I am putting on a ton of free training, free webinars. And so if you are not a place where you love your fat body, you where you don't let what others think of you, stop you from doing whatever the hell you want. If you're scared to wear a crop top or bikini your bay, your fat arms in public, or if you're struggling with feeling confident and not out of control with food and getting that intuitive eating, the journey nailed down, then please come along. The training is called the Four Simple Steps to Feel Confident in your Body and around Food, Even if you believe it's not possible. And I'm putting on training, I'm dedicating February to it basically. And so, that's the thing is I normally will do a training a couple of different times, but I'm spreading it out. So there's lots of different times because people who follow me and people who who consume my content are from around the world, literally all around the world. So lots of different time zones. And so go to the show notes, the show notes fiercefatty.com/016, because it's episode 16, and get that link for that training and it's free. Just sign on up. Just put your name in the your email. You can put your telephone number in there as well if you want. You don't have to, but it's a cool thing where I can text you to say, Hey, the training's just about to start. How cool is that technology? Yeah, so make this February the fatty love month and finally begin to feel like how you should feel, should feel relaxed about your body. It just shouldn't be a thing. It shouldn't be a thing and food shouldn't really be a thing either, right? so I barely think about my body and I barely think about food. Like, you know, as in stressing over it, I'll be like, Oh, why do I want to eat and all this is delicious, or Oh why, whatever you like this or whatever. But thinking, Oh my God, can I eat? What can I eat? How many calories is that? Oh, am I going to get fat and roll? So come over to that training and let's have some fun and hopefully there'll be a time there that fits your schedule. I hope so. Because yeah, I'm putting it on a lot of different times. Okay.


And so today's episode, I am going to answer a question, a listener question. If you want to ask a question that could be answered on the show, again, go to the show notes and there'll be a button there for you to submit your question. And it's, you just tell, just tell me your question and just you doesn't have to, you know, write anything long or you can if you want or short. And if I think it's, it's going to be beneficial for other people to hear the answer, then I will answer it on the show. So two, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read out this question to you and then I'm going to answer it, but we have a download for you that goes along with this episode because of the stuff that we're talking about in this episode.


It's talking about beliefs that we have, which are not necessarily true. And so there's a workbook called the Fat Cutting Workbook. And so fat is not fat as in fat on your body. Fat stands for F- false, A- assumed T- truths, Fat Cutting Workbook. So False assume Truths workbook. And that's the only fat that you need to cut. okay. It's a False assume Truths and you can download that at fiercefatty.com/016, for episode 16. But if you scroll down on wherever you're listening to this, then you probably have a link to the show notes anyway.


Okay, so let me read this question and it's from Debbie. Hello Victoria. I love you and your podcast. Thanks Debbie. I'm 23 years old and I come from a family of bigger women. While I was in high school and college, I always worked hard to keep my weight down, but after years of struggling and learning about fat phobia, I don't want to worry about my weight anymore. I just want to eat the foods I enjoy and never step on the scale again. Since I've started intuitive eating a few months ago, I have put on weight. To my surprise, I've been okay with it so far, but I've started to feel some guilt creep in. What if I gain another 20 pounds or 30 or more? What if my ultimate goal isn't being healthy, but just being happy and eating what I want? What would my family or friends think of me when I'm no longer the smallest one? What if I ever become the biggest one? What if people judge me for getting fat and I show associate me with that. My question for you is, how can I embrace or even love my inevitable weight gain? Can you help put a positive spin on my bigger, bigger belly sticking out or people making comments. I don't want these events to make me question my intuitive eating decision. I want to be able to laugh it off, be proud of my progress and keep eating what I want and if I do get much bigger, bigger, it's because my body was meant to be much bigger, right? It would be so helpful to learn how to embrace and yes, even celebrate my weight gain to be proud of my new fat roll or softer cheeks and bigger pants and how much happier life is now, but then it was before. I think that with your enthusiasm and expertise, you can really drive the point home if you believe in it. Whenever I have doubts, I would love to hear someone say things like, your jeans can't button anymore. Look how far you've come in your recovery. You should go celebrate and get new clothes that fit your new happier body. Go donate those old jeans from the old you and don't forget to treat yourself to some tacos and donuts on the way home. You deserve it. Have a great day. Smiley face. And that is from Debbie.


So that is our listener question today. An amazing question and I know a lot of you will be nodding your head saying I feel the same. I have felt the same. I have the same fears. And I know I personally had those exact fears myself before I started all this before I discovered intuitive eating and fat positivity. So I can absolutely relate. And this whole question of I'm scared about getting fat is really one of the cornerstone fears. The one of the things, the barriers that stop people letting go of that dream of becoming thin and embracing the reality. I don't want to say reality as it as if it's this dark and horrible thing, but the reality that we can't manipulate the size of our bodies, genuinely speaking.


So it was hard. So I'm going to break down this question and then go through a few of the things, a few of the sentences and kind of pick them apart a little bit and just kind of raise some questions in case your feeling the same. If you're feeling the same as Debbie and Debbie, you're listening, hopefully this will benefit you as well. So one of the lines is to my surprise, I've been okay with it so far, the weight game, but I've started to feel some guilt creeping. What if I gain another 20 pounds or 30 or more? So the first part saying I've been okay with it so far, but guilt is creeping in and it's kind of like are you okay, because guilt is creeping in. So there's something going on there of, of maybe not panicking as much as you thought you would if you put on some weight, but you know, you're not zen about it.


You're not like, yeah, bring it on. And so there's something going on there. Now when we have any type of reaction, it really is a gift. It really is a gift. Any type of negative or positive reaction, it is telling us something. And so if you are having a fear of weight gain or fear of what that could mean, what does that tell us? It tells us that we need to do work on the fear of weight gain. And why do we fear weight gain? Well, because of society, because of fatphobia, because of the patriarchy and getting into that and getting into like the deep dark, like where does this come from? And getting yourself good and mad and really breaking that down. So let's continue with that. Breaking it down. So you say you feel guilty, you feel some guilt. Why? Why on earth would you feel guilty for doing something that is good for your mental health and for your physical health?


You demon. Oh my God, I can't believe she is doing something good for a mental and physical health. She should be ashamed of herself, right? Why would you feel guilt? So I'm guessing the reason that you feel guilt is other people's perception of what you are doing now. If you were living on a desert island, you might not be feeling guilt, right? If you didn't have the influences of fat phobic people around you, say if you're on a desert Island or on an Island filled with fat positive fatties, how amazing would that be? How it'd be so amazing. You probably wouldn't be filled feeling the guilt.


So let me reframe this in a way which is like, Oh my God, duh. I don't know your past behavior in regards to whether you are a chronic dieter, whether you had a full blown eating disorder whether you just dabbled. You mentioned that you worked hard to keep your weight down and so chances are you had at least disordered eating behaviors. And so you had something going on there where you were unwell in some way. And also dieting. However, whatever way you try to manipulate your weight is not good for your physical health even. Okay. And so imagine if you had some of the ailments that isn't associated with being good or bad. Say you broke your leg, say you broke your leg and you went into hospital and the people around you were like, did you see what she is doing? She went to hospital and she got a cast on her leg and now I can't believe it. She's walking around with crutches and when she gets home, she puts her leg up to rest it. And she's not even doing any physical activity for the next six weeks.


She is an embarrassment. That wouldn't happen, right? That's ridiculous. You were like you doing the things you need to do to make yourself healthy, to make yourself heal, to make yourself happy and be able to not react. Don't react like that because we don't have any stigma around people breaking their leg. But we have stigma around people's body sizes. And this is the exactly same thing as you're doing these things to help heal yourself. And you are worried about people's reactions, which brightly so because people do have reactions. But to reframe it in your mind, you're getting better. You're healing yourself. You need to do this. At the moment, food is your medicine. You need to heal your relationship with food and you need to know that you have an abundance of food and these are the things that you need to do to get better or healthier, whatever, happier, whatever it is that you're trying to achieve, right? And so, you know, feeling guilty. Why, why, why?


Okay. now the next sentence I want to talk about. What if my ultimate goal isn't being healthy but just being happy and eating what I want? Eating what I want. That's the end of the sentence. Do you know this how I noticed how, I dunno if you know how I don't know if this true, I've just, this is probably not true. And all over North Americans end sentences on a high like, and so it sounds like they're asking a question and so it's, it's kind of really difficult to know. What if it was a question or if it's the end of the sentence. I don't know. Debbie what is that? Am I talking, talking shit?


I noticed that when I moved to Canada and it was like, you ask him a question, I don't know. Anyway, different people to people talk differently all over the world, right? okay. So what if my ultimate goal isn't being healthy but being happy in eating what I want? Okay. So what if you don't want to be healthy? Absolutely. One goodillion percent. Okay. So we live in a society that really values health and it assumes that health is something that isn't something that individual controls when health is a very complex issue and a lot of what makes up someone's health status is not in their control. A lot of it is a socioeconomic stuff where you were born, the color of your skin, how much money you have your, your ability to access different types of healthcare, the amount of stigma and marginalization you receive, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.


How much is in personal control is, is actually not that much. So you can't necessarily control your health anyway, but if you were trying to do things that were healthful, fine, if you were not interested in doing things that are helpful, fine. Both are morally equivalent. Okay? You are not a better person. If you, you know, run marathons 50 times a day or if you only smoke kale believes and put them up your bum and all that type of stuff versus if you're not interested in that and you know, you eat food, which you know, we have been told is unhealthy and do things that society have told us are unhealthy. It's fine. You can do that. You don't need my permission or anyone else's permission to do what feels good for you. Right? So if you're like not interested in pursuing health at the moment or, or being obsessed with health because maybe you have been a lot in the past that maybe that's exactly what you need, right?


Maybe that is perfect for you. That's absolutely fine. But something that I want to say is, are you presuming that by eating certain foods and, or having a bigger body that you're not healthy or that your health is damaged? As I said in the point before, by stopping dieting, by listening to your body and honoring what it wants and needs, that is a healthful behavior. So maybe are you accidentally embracing health and you didn't even realize it, right? So do you believe, do you believe that health and weight are correlated? Right? So there's a fat person, okay. Can tell. Absolutely. They have type two diabetes. Their eyeballs are about to fall out because they have so much fat on their body that it's squeezing them out and about 17 seconds until they die. Obviously you don't think that because you know, that's the internet troll that thinks that, but all the other deep down beliefs where you think, yeah, faculty.


Yeah. If I this one thing, I am one step closer towards type two diabetes or whatever. And what if you, what if you have different health outcomes? What if you do get sick? What if you die? Oh my God, you might die one day. Oh my God, we're all gonna die one day. We can't control that, right? We are going to die and hopefully we'll live a long life, but maybe we don't. Who knows? Right. We are. Hopefully if we get old, our body is going to break down. We are going to get sick, something's going to happen that causes our death. So it's inevitable, not the, you know, we want to race towards death necessarily but that is going to happen. Sorry to break it to you, but you will get sick at some point. Now all of the illnesses and conditions that people traditionally associate with people having bigger bodies, are they actually. Are the bigger bodies causing those those issues?


We don't know the answers. We don't know. We don't know. Correlation is not causation, right? Is it the amount of stigma and marginalization and oppression that people experience also very deeply tied to negative health outcomes? Yes. We know that. We know that. And so are you further marginalizing yourself by believing that fat bodies are unhealthy and that your body is unhealthy because that is causing stress and that will be detrimental towards your, your happiness and your, your, your health outcomes, let's say will can be, you know, but you know, if you're stressed out and you're like, Oh my God, you know, isn't it? It doesn't feel good, right? So can you embrace the idea that every body size can be healthy and unhealthy? You can't tell someone's health status from looking at their body. And also if you're not interested in health and you're like, how can give a fucking shit if I have all the health conditions that there are, and that's fine too. You can do you right. Don't buy into healthism I'm going to do a whole new episode on, on healthism. We can get into the nitty gritty details, all that fat beauty. So yeah.


Next sentence, I want to talk about what will my family or friends think of me when I'm no longer the smallest one? What have I ever became the biggest one? What if people judge me for getting fat and associate me with that? Okay. So does being smallest one mean that you're good? Cause I presume that you're the smallest one now, right? So does, what does that mean to you? To me it means that you happen to be the smallest one. It means nothing else. It's like if you said I have brown hair. It is, you know, it's just a descriptor. It's a meaningless but Oh, of course it's not meaningless. It's lots of meaning behind it. But in regards to who you are as a person, it doesn't, you know, you couldn't say to me, okay, that person is the smallest person and then you know, Oh, they're the smallest person must mean they've got a great sense of humor. Must mean that they're a real bitch. Must mean that they love working out or whatever. You know, you don't know. You don't know anything about that. So, you're placing a meaning on it. What does it mean to be the smallest one? Is that something that you're proud of? Is that something that throughout your life you're like, okay, my family is bigger, but I'm the small one. I have got this under control. I'm not like them. I'm better than them or I am flying under the radar because I have a smaller one. It like, what does it mean?


I don't, I don't know the answer to that. I was always the biggest one. And so in my family, so what if you are the biggest one? Well, what that mean for me, I always meant for me I was like, I'm the biggest, so I'm the tallest. I have the biggest shoe size and I'm the fattest. No one else in my family is actually fat. Although growing up I was, I were all fat, but that's because I had my views on what was fat was totally fucked up. Actually my family are all a lot smaller than the quote unquote average sized woman. So I know what I put on being the fattest was that I was an embarrassment, that I was an outsider. The I was the one that was damaged. The, I clearly had issues that were visible on my body, whereas the rest of my family were good and normal.


And the, my larger family, larger resident, the more, more aunts and uncles, not larger as and bigger my, my, my wider, larger family. What were they thinking about me? They were like, Oh, what are the daughters, look how fat she is when everyone else is straight sized. What happened to her? That's what I was thinking. And I just was desperately to just try and to get, if I could be thinner than, than one of my sisters. Oh my God. Whoa. And that was probably some jealousy going on there, right? Like why can't I be thin and small and little like them? Like I just want you to have a little feet and little hands and, and be a child basically. Because then I would be desirable to more desirable to men. How fucked up is that? Seemingly I want it to be a child. And so what does that mean to you to be the biggest one?


Is that based in reality? Well, you know, was my mum looking at me and saying, Oh my God, I've got a failure for a daughter because she's bigger. I don't know the answer to that. I'm guessing probably, probably no. Sometimes she probably thought, I, I hope that she could be thinner because my mom, you know, was fat phobic and in that probably wanted the best for me and probably presumed that being smaller I would have a better life. Turns out my life is better because I'm fat. Who do so, but even if it is true, say if your whole family say if you did become the fattest one, save your whole family was like, Oh my God, look at her. She's out of control, she's disgusting, she's a peg, blah blah, blah. Say like, that's the worst. That's the worst case. Right?


And everyone staged an intervention being like, you're so fat and horrible. You don't have to take on those beliefs, right? Just because other people believe certain things about you. Why do you have to believe them too? There were a different stage in their adventure to, you know, and place of non diet. Maybe they never get to a place where they don't diet. Maybe they're there, we're ready. You know, we just, we don't know. And you're just at a different place in your life and that's fine, right? and I'm sorry to break it to you. You wrote in here, what if people judge me for getting a fat? Listen up here. Listen up here. Hey, you, me, every one on the planet is constantly being judged and is judging others. It happens all the time now. Me possibly I try to limit my judgment as much as possible because the more I judge others, the more I judge myself.


And when I find myself getting caught up in judgment because you know, I'm a human being, then I just try and take a step back and be like, mm, this is coming from now. I don't tend to judge people on their bodies but on other things like, like someone was in the store ahead of me and the shopkeeper was talking to a customer and I was stood there for like, I don't know, 17 seconds while they would not ring away and like being like, Oh yeah, blah blah blah, blah. And I was just like, accommodate this calm. They see me, both of them see me stand here with stuff ready to buy and that talking and they're having a good time. Don't they know that I am very serious and I'm here to buy my whatever it was. I was there to buy and I was like judging them.


Negativity. Like, Oh, this person's so bad at her job and who is this person? She's so rude and stuff. And then, then I caught myself and I was like, Victoria really? Is it really that big of a deal that, that, that, you know, catching up or whatever's happening, you know, maybe that shopkeeper she hadn't talked to anyone that day in a, in a, you know, a friend or whatever and it was like a real joy of a day. And then she has some madly customer like crossed arms, like looking annoyed over like, and she wants to talk to her friend just for a couple of seconds. And then you have me being like, Oh, you know, doing whatever, you know, with my face. And then, you know, I just reminded her how much she hated a job and whatever was going on. It doesn't matter because in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter, right. So that's just a little example of how, how I judge. But we were all judging, you're going to get judged if you're fat, if you're thin, if you have the way that you talk. Like I just judge people at the beginning of the episode, the way they talk, say North Americans do the end of the sentence. The way that you wear your hair, your shoes, the choices that you make in life, the partner that you have, every one is judging you constantly. You have to deal with it. And the way to go over other people's judgments is to feel secure in what you are about right? And know that no matter what you do, if you stayed small for the rest of your life, you're going to get judged. If you became the biggest person in your family, you're going to get judged.


If you go date this person or you don't date this person now, whatever it is, no matter what you do, if you hide in your house because you're fair, if you're scared of people judging you, you will be judged for hiding in your house because you're scared of other people judging you. You cannot avoid being judged. Now, something that I had a quote that I heard before, I did my TEDx talk and this changed everything in regards to fear of what people would think. Because when I was doing my TEDx talk, it was only a few days before that I decided to take my clothes off. I was stuck between taking my clothes off or just doing a dance and I had two speaking coaches. And one coach said, if you take your clothes off is going to be amazing, people are going to go nuts. It's going to go over so well.


Your talk will go viral. And where the coach was like, I don't know. I think you might be about to be making a fool of yourself. This could go really badly. It could be bad taste. This is the TEDx stage after all. And I, I, I trusted both of them. They both had good points and both of them were absolutely right. And the quote that really changed my mind and made me decide to take my clothes off is 10% of the audience watching my TedTalk will love me. 10% of the people watching my TEDx talk will hate me. And 80% are going to be somewhere in between, in between that love and hate. Now I can be my true self and have 10% love the true me. Or I can be muted for fear of offending people and keep my clothes on and have 10% of people who are not actually my people love me. And so why would rather the people who love me, the people who are my people, the people who are like, yes, fuck yeah, let me see that. Let me see those fucking little tits. Let me see a long tits out, flop them out. I want to see them jiggling. Let me say all that shit and not give a shit that it's a TEDx stage. And just be like, fuck yeah, this is amazing, right. They're my people. Not the people being like, Oh my God, this is so inappropriate. They're not my people.


And so who, who do you want your people to be? The people who love you, the 10%. Are they going to be people who are like, Oh, she put on some way or are they going to pick the people being like, yes, she has really flourished since you said fuck you to dieting. Wow, look how amazing she looks and feels and I'm so pleased for you. Would you rather have that 10% love you or a different type of scent? Would you have people love you for the real you? And the real you right now is fatter than you know you a few months ago. So are you going to be living for the to please people who don't actually like the real you? I mean you can, but you probably won't be as happy, right? And that's what most people do most of the life is that they try and please everyone. And no one is actually pleased, you know, because you're trying to be one person, one for one people and another person for other evil and it's just not going to work out, right.


Next sentence. I want to talk about on the end of this one. You say, what if people judge me for getting fat and associate me with that? So what if people do associate you with fat? What does that mean? Is that bad? I fucking love that people associate me with fat. I felt if someone was like, Oh, I associate you with I don't know chickens, Victoria. I'll be like, well what do you mean chickens? Why do you not associate with me being fat? I'm fist fight. Hello? It's like a power of my identity.

Why would you be afraid that people will associate you with being fat? Is it because you have internalized fatphobic beliefs? Yep. And we all have, we're all fat phobic, right? And it's to what degree are you fat phobic? And so if you don't want to be associated with fatness, then who had low siren is whaling. That is fat phobia because you a believing that there is something wrong to be associated with fatness if I'm understanding your sentence correctly. So yeah, you need to work on that, on that in 10 less fat phobia because fuck, listen, there's literally nothing wrong with being associated with fatness. In fact, if I would be so sad if people would like, Oh, if I was straight size, it's cause it's part of my identity. Not that being straight size is bad, but I'm so aligned with this identity of fatness.


It makes me so happy. I just love it. It feels like we're a part of this really cool gang. You know, the fat is taken over the world. I love it. And if I happen to become smaller day, just, you know, obviously I'm never going to go on a die, but anyway, dies. Don't make you smaller. But I'd know. Let's just for a man generic reason, I was, I was thin it would, it would be either, it would be difficult for me, honestly. It wouldn't be difficult for me. But of course we can't, we can't ever predict what our bodies are going to do. Okay. So the next part of what you said is, my question for you is how can I embrace or even love my inevitable weight gain? Okay. So first part of this, why is weight gain inevitable? Now you, you said you've already experienced weight gain, but why is it inevitable that you will continue to gain weight?

Why is it, why is it inevitable? Is it inevitable? Do we know what's going to happen to our bodies when we start intuitive eating? Nope. No, we don't. And are you looking at this as a lot of people do? I know I certainly did the short term, right? Like intuitive eating, you know, we can get fixated in like how long is this going to take? And they know by maybe by a year and maybe a little, but this is a, this is a life lifelong thing, right? We're going to be hopefully intuitive eaters for the rest of our lives as long as we don't go back into dieting or whatever. So he's a lifelong thing. Now you at, you know those clocks that you, that you see scientists, they show like how long humans have been around and like from like 12 to like what, 1159.

So all the way around the clock is, has been without humans in the last 10 seconds is like with humans anyway. So you are at like second, you know, minute one of the 12 hours of intuitive eating life, right? And so it could fill out that minute one is, is everything because it has been everything so far. That's your experience in intuitive eating. But the longer you become an intuitive eating you realize that that stage exactly where you're at was so tiny. Like you said, it's only been a few months. In a year's time, in two years, three years, what you'd probably 10 years is going to look different for you. And so you might put on weight in the first bit, you might lose weight, you might stay the same way. We just don't know how your body is going to react and how things might be different in a year's time because you might be at that stage where you only want to eat the foods that have been denied to you all of your life and you need to be, you need to be doing that to heal your relationship.

And so this stage you could just be eating those foods in a year's time. You might be like, I'm bored of those foods or not. You still love those foods and you could in the stages of intuitive eating one of the final stages is gentle nutrition and wanting to add in more variety, wanting to see how different things make your body feel and all that type of stuff. And we don't know what that does to your body either. Like in regards to weight gain or weight loss or whatever, we just don't know. What we do know is when we are eating in a way where we're listening to what our body wants and needs, our weight will stabilize and it could take months, weeks use. We just don't know. And so it could be that you're at the stage where your weight is increasing at the moment and it could increase until infinity.

Not that that's gonna happen, but you know, we just don't know is what I'm saying. You don't know what your, what is going to do, you have to trust in the process. So weight gain is not inevitable. That's the first thing I want to say. And so how can I embrace or even love my weight gain? I think you said it perfectly in the end of your question when you said this is me healing your weight gain is a, is a physical manifestation and representation of your healing, your maybe your body image issues, your, your feelings around food and dieting and all that type of stuff. It literally is you becoming better and more. Well and so working on that internalized fatphobia of, of seeing fatness or weight gain as a negative is a big one. Working on that. And so what positive things does having a big body mean to you that you no longer have an eating disorder?

I don't know if you had an eating disorder that you're recovering, that you're saying fuck you to diet culture. A big thing for me is that embracing my fatness is stepping out of a system that hurts me. Let me read you this quote. This is my, one of my favorite quotes I'd say all the time because it's so powerful. This is by Naomi Wolf. She wrote the Beauty Myth but has a quote, A culture fixated on female fineness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history. A quietly mad population is attractable one. Let me read it again cause this is really important. Listen to what I'm saying. A culture fixated on female fineness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history.

A quietly mad population is attractable one. So the way that I see my fat body and I put on weight when I stopped dieting, I'm, I'm, I have a bigger body now and the way that I see it is that I was exactly what this quote was saying was I was keeping myself mad and distracted pursuing this useless thing which was having a, having weight loss, having a smaller body, pointless, you know, it didn't make me a better person. It didn't make me grow as an individual. It didn't leave me any, any energy to do the things that I deserve to do in my life because my, I was just fixated on becoming thin and this dream that what would happen when I became thin and so we're tired, right? As, as dieters, you're tired, you're exhausted, your brain is just done because all your brain power, most of it is being spent on, I'm going to go on how many calories is in this slice of salary and how many calories in a pea and how many and what can I eat them. I bought him a lot his plan this meal, LA, I'm thinking about your body and how shit it is and all that type of stuff. And so you don't have the energy to do cool shit. There's no way that I could have done any of the stuff that I have done. Writing a book, having my own business, moving to a different country, being fucking on my [inaudible] if I was still dieting, no way, Jose. Not in a million years because I was distracted with bullshit. And so is the weights that you are gaining, is that a representation of the chains that you are taking off your mind and your body? Is it a rebellion? Is it radical? Is it political? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Total are those things right? It is radical and political. You are making a statement with your body that says, fuck you.

This culture that is fixated on thinness on white power, on male dominance, on all of the oppressive systems that are used to keep everyone down who is not in that position of power. And you don't want to bind to that, right? You don't want to buy into that, but you forget because you forget like what is behind dieting. You think it's about you. It's not about you. It's about keeping us, all of us controlled is keeping us sedated so we cannot rise up and I don't know about you, but it is about time that everyone who is dieting rises up and says, fuck this shirt. I don't know if you believe that, but I believe that because it's just a waste of time, energy, money, money and ah, dreams and goals and all that type of stuff. So yeah, what does that fatness, what is the positive aspect of that fatness to you? And you might be thinking scared of the negative aspects and the negative aspects. You can explore that, write that down and believe and think, is this true? And some of that's going to help is that free download the Fat Cutting Workbook, the False Assume Truths workbook. Because this question, it's fear, right? This question is fear and it's false assumed truths, right? A truth, a fact is something that is 100% true 100% of the time.

And so these, these beliefs, they're not truths, right? They're not, they're not fat. They're not fat. And it's not fact that you are going to be the fattest one. And therefore if you're the fattest one, then this will happen. And this is this, you know, X, Y, Z, and then you're gonna end up homely lonely and alone and everyone will hate you. And it's just a belief if it's a belief. And the good thing about beliefs is we can change them holding you. Sometimes you just need someone to give you a different viewpoint and it can be revolutionary, right? One of the, I made a new friend at LA and I was like, let's take a picture together. And she's like, okay, but let's put the camera up high I and I was like, why? And she said, cause it'll make me look thinner.

And I was like, why would you want that? And she was like, Oh damn. And I kept challenging her in like whenever she'd say things like, cause we were talking about fat stuff, not just randomly. I'm not just like stop being, you know, I'm not like a jerk or anything. But that's fine if you want to challenge people all the time, but it doesn't make you a jerk. But anyway we was talking about fatness and all these fucked up beliefs that we have and she was just like, what? Oh yeah. Oh my God. And you know, why, why do I want to look thinner and why do we believe that, you know, health and way so heavily correlated. And why do and so any of these things, these, these fears, these fears there's something going on behind them and its beliefs.

And so unpacking those beliefs and being like, is this true? Is it true? I dunno. Is it a fact? Remember a fact is 100% true 100% of the time? Or is it a belief? Is it a belief that we want to let go off? Cause we have lots of beliefs and they serve us right? Lots of beliefs, you know, we need them and somebody who's don't service. So let's get rid of those nasty ass beliefs that are keeping us stuck. They suck. Yes. So I have answered your question.

Fandom fact about me. Today's fact is my favorite food. I really like pizza. My favorite pizza is from Dominoes. I love it cause I put that meal stuff on the bottom, you know? Do you know what I mean? It makes it kind of gritty. I don't know if it's called mill or something I've known so , I know it tastes good, but my favorite topping is a green olives, mushrooms and light jalapenos, which I then peel off. Like I'm such a wimp when it comes to hotness, but I'd like a little spice. And so I do like jalapenos and when I get it, I peel it off. And so it's just got the essence of jalapeno and that's hot enough for me. People who see me doing this and like, what the fuck? Why do you even order the jalapenos and take them all off. Trust me, I can taste the essence. It's beautiful. And sushi and I'm really craving some sushi now because I'm in rural Ireland, they don't have sushi. And when I was in LA, sushi is like a $17,000 per roll. So I was like, nah, this is probably, and I had sushi before in LA and it wasn't that great. I'll wait to get back to Vancouver because she sushi is cheap and delicious. So I, I'm looking forward to having some sushi.

My favorite sushi is maybe like, Oh yeah, this is one cord is his car. I think it's called you and me being, and it's like edamame me beans and like cone flakes on top and then probably avocado, something like that. Yeah. So I'm a vegetarian by the way. If you hadn't noticed and like why you ain't just no bread, no meal, those and, but I don't care if other people are vegetarians or vegans or whatever you do. You, I'm just not that interested in me. And I can do an episode about if you can be a vegetarian and intuitive eating, if you want, let me know if you want that. The answer is maybe for me, yes, but it's a maybe it's a maybe it depends if you're using vegetarianism as a restriction thing or if you just have a preference for not eating me for whatever reason.

I'm also a big food thing that I love because I'm Irish. My mom's Irish is potatoes obviously there's something in Ireland. I've literally eaten a 200% increase in potatoes. So, and I did this thing, this genetic testing thing and it said you have a very high tolerance for potatoes. And I was like, yeah, no shit. Like my ancestors went through the potato famine. And so they love a better potatoes. Yeah. So I do like a potato. My favorite potato would be a roast potato hmmm. But a proper roast potato. None of this fucking bullshit where it's not crispy. I've seen so many roads, potatoes, like roast potatoes, they say roast potatoes. When you get your eggs Benedict and these like wet tiny cubes come out. And I'm like, these motherfuckers ain't roast potatoes. These are wet cubes or potatoes. I'm still eating that shit. But still it's not a roast potato. Roast potato is like a quarter of a potato baked for like an hour with you know, oil so that it's crunchy on the outside. That is a roast potato. Don't be coming up with those fucking nasty wet cubes and call numerous potatoes cause that ain't a roast potato. Anyway, I'm on my roast potato high horse.

So, reminder that February is the Fierce Fatty loving yourself month where I'm doing tons of training for ya. So check this show notes to sign up for the free training guaranteed to blow your mind, to entertain you, make you say hmmmm yup, yup, yup, yup, yup, yup. And feel good afterwards.

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Okay. Well thank you for tuning in. I appreciate it. Thank you. Really, I appreciate it to know that your listening and yeah, taking the time out of your day to tune in or, yeah, it's pretty cool. It's amazing. So I'll see you on the next episode Fierce Fatty. Good bye.