Episode 35 Transcript

You're listening to the fierce fatty podcast I am your host, Victoria Welsby. And in this episode number 35, we're talking about, do you want to be healthy? Or do you want to be thin? Let's do it.

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

Unknown Speaker 1:27

Okay, hello, hello, welcome to the face value podcast How you doing? You're doing all right. Hope you were feeling good. And thank you for hanging out with me today. I really appreciate it. And I've got a another special episode for you today. Now this is part two of a two parter. You don't have to have listened to Episode 34. So if you just happen to have landed on here, it's not in you know, consecutive chronological. It's not in order, it's not in order. So don't worry, you don't have to go back to 34. First, you can listen to this episode, and then go back and listen to the other one, no big deal. But what I have done is I have made a series of videos which bust through any limiting negative self beliefs that you might have about your body. And we talked about any mistakes that you might be making that is stopping you from fully loving your body and feeling confident and feeling peace around food. And I want to make sure that you are not falling into any kind of pitfalls or traps or holes or whatever places that you're calling Get out of crevices, crevices, whatever. And that you can continue on that that confidence journey. So last week, we spoke about the Devil Wears Prada the film. But here's an analogy about how we can is analogy of what not to do to get to a place of, of body love, and mistakes that Andy the character of the film made and how it mirrors what the journey that we go through from discovering the diet culture and fat phobia is fucked up and how we don't want to keep hating our bodies to getting to a place where we do love our bodies. And we also spoke about in that last episode, the Constant Learner effect and why you need to avoid it at all cost and why a lot of people, their strategy is actually lowering their confidence. And they don't realize it. And so when they're like I can't I don't know why I'm doing these things. And you know, I don't feel more confident. And then someone else can come and look at this situation and be like, Oh, okay, yeah, you're in the Constant Learner effect. And this is what's happening. So go back and listen to those. And in today's episode, Janssen will first section here we're going to be talking about answering this question, which is do you want to be healthy or do you want to be thin? And so in this coming section, I reveal a massive issue in the confidence coaching world that you need to be aware of, because following bad advice is going to make it harder for you to love your body. Next, we're gonna be talking about the biggest barrier that keeps people committed to hating their body. And why if you've been working on loving your body and you're not seeing results, why it's not your fault, and what is actually going on. Oh Just just when people are like, I'm, I'm trying, I don't know why it's not working, and they make it mean that there's something wrong with them. And I'm like, No, it's not you, you know, like with dieting, like the diets not working. It's not that the people were like the diets not working. They were like, I'm not good at dieting, I can't lose weight, I was bad. And he's like, No, diet is broken. And so there's some models and things that people do. That means that they fall into that trap again. And again, they blame themselves why I am, I'm just not a confident person. And it's just not meant for me, and I just can't do it. And it's not true when I want to know or so. Yeah. And finally, we bust through the two biggest limiting self beliefs that get in people's way. The first one is I'm scared to put on weight. And the second one is, I'm anxious if I put on weight, or if I'm fat, that I will be unhealthy and fears around health. And so that is the first section juicy shit. So let's not wait any longer.

Unknown Speaker 6:09

Let's get into it. Enjoy. Hi, it's Victoria here from fierce battling. I got a question for you. Do you want to be healthy? Or do you want to be thin? So in today's video, I'm going to be talking about the ideas of fatness and health and how the fear around those two things can stop us from loving our fat bodies. So answer this question if I could wave a magic wand over you right now. And you've got two choices. The first magic wand can make you healthy, and fat. The second magic wand will make you thin. Which magic wand Do you want me to wave over you? Now the answer to that question is going to help you understand if you are having trouble loving your body and stopping dieting. Because the biggest barrier that keeps people committed to hating their body. And worrying about about health is these fears and it's keeping you stuck. And people hesitate to work on accepting their fat bodies because they don't want to be unhealthy, natural, right, and they don't want to get fatter, which in our society, of course, because we live in a fat phobic society. Now, I see a lot of people offering intuitive eating as a way to lose weight and or body confidence coaching focused on getting healthy. And it really gets on my tests on these big fat tips of mine really gets on my tests. Because approaching body confidence and intuitive eating with with this method is really making the problem that they're trying to fix. Why hers, trying to do intuitive eating with weight loss is going to make you the opposite of an intuitive eater. And trying to work on body confidence. And health is going to make you struggle to get body confidence. And so when I see people offering these things, I just want to do like a facepalm you know that bass POM emoji like this is just it's just not helpful. And it's not going to work because this approach is reinforcing negative beliefs that are unhelpful and plain wrong. And so let me go into more about what I mean there. So biopro approaching loving your body with the lens of I mustn't get too fat. And I must constantly worry about my health or be concerned about my health. You were trying to build build confidence on a rotten foundation. Okay? When people lack body confidence, and everything that they seem to do, doesn't seem to be working. It's because essential beliefs negative beliefs haven't been addressed and corrected.

Unknown Speaker 9:51

Okay, so I want you to, to visualization a, something here to help you imagine what I'm talking about here. So imagine There's a bucket, not a big bucket here, right here, there's a bucket. And in the bucket, there are holes. And each hole represents a negative core belief, or fear. And the biggest holes that I see time and time again, is the fear around health and the fear around gaining weight. So every time you try and pour water into that bucket, it's just going to drain out. And no matter how many times you keep pouring water in, is never gonna get full, because this is big gaping holes in there. And the water represents things that are help, you are going to help you grow your confidence, right. And so you can never get those things are going to grow your confidence to work because you have these big holes. And you might not be able to see it because maybe you're you know, you haven't got a view of the bucket, right. So you must plug those holes before you can move forward. And one of the biggest holes I mentioned that comes up time and time again, is I'm scared about my health, and I don't want to put on weight, I don't want to get fatter or become fat. So today, let's try and see if we can plug those holes, because constantly trying to fill your buckets up and not seeing results. And not knowing why is exhausting, right? And it can lead to even more negative beliefs about who you are as a person. I can't become confident there's something wrong with me. I'm particularly ugly. Other people are beautiful, but I'm not an all of these other beliefs that are not helpful to you. Okay, so let me ask you a question. In the past when you have dieted, or if you're dieting currently, or if you've ever dreamed about being smaller, what was the motivation behind that? Did you really do it to be healthy? Did you? Or did you do it? Because you want it to be thin? And have everyone see you and see that you were sexy and hardworking and worthy and in control of your life and lovable and all of the positive things? And healthy them? Have people believe that you're healthy. Really be honest here. What were you really looking for? And some people Yeah, they could be saying, oh, yeah, I was actually doing it to get healthy. I didn't actually care about being thin. That's fine. But but you what, what is it for you? Now has dieting or Hating Your Body? Worked for you long term? But of course you can temporarily become smaller. But was that sustainable? Was what you did to get there? Was that sustainable? Is it sustainable for pretty much every single human on Earth unsustainable for pretty much every human on the earth? Yes. Because studies have shown that dieting simply doesn't make a smaller and doesn't make us healthier. In fact, the opposite. So as we know, there's no reliable way to get fit in. But there are ways for you to get those feelings that you were searching for. When you were dieting, is there ways? Are there ways that you can think of to get those feelings that you were searching for when you were trying to make yourself smaller or wishing yourself smaller? Yes, increasing your self esteem will get you a lot of the feelings that you were searching for. And that is something that we can control. So why hold on to the unhelpful idea that being smaller is the best route for you to get those feelings that you were you know that those good feelings? Why is that why hold on to the idea that that is the best route for you. Why hold on to the fear that getting bigger means that the world is going to stop turning that there's going to be an announcement on a national newspaper to say that you've put on six pounds and call the police that there's this fat person roaming the streets. That's not gonna happen. And think about who benefits when you commit to holding on to this belief. Who benefits from fat people's continued oppression is people who sell a shit to make us not fat. And the people who sell a shirt are the people who are in power. Who is in power. rich, rich white. men in power, rich, white white people who is the epitome of a rich white man that I don't want to give my money to. I don't want to give any flux to

Unknown Speaker 15:13

Donald Trump. So by holding on to this belief, you're supporting Donald Trump. Do you want to be doing? Oh, fuck. So, you know, it doesn't benefit you to hold on to this belief. So give it back to the people who, who've tried to convince you of this. So now let's talk about health. Okay. And the truth about health is that we as individuals really have, you know, a limited scope on you know, how much control we actually have over our health. And yes, of course, there are health promoting behaviors. But by focusing on obtaining this magical, unknown, free from disease or healthy status, that that's impossible to get to, we're causing ourselves stress, and stress and shame are known to affect our health negatively. And studies show this time and time again, a lot of health issues linked to people, people in bigger bodies, are actually caused by systematic systemic marginalization and oppression, and not from having more fat on your body. So if you really did care about your physical and mental health, then you'd stop conflating health and weight. And you'd work to dismantle that seriously unhelpful lie that you've been fed, that fat bodies are unhealthy. And you'd work to dismantle the systems that uphold those beliefs, which cause harm to fat people that cause harm to you. And we know that they cause harm. And so if you're holding on to that belief, you're supporting a system that harms you. So, so so so if you plug those holes of fear around health and fatness, you can then actually work on improving your body confidence and how you relate to food, right. So if you plug those holes, you can pull that water in. And you can begin to if health is important for you, you can work on your health in a non disordered way. And when you're working on your health in a non disordered way, and when I say working on your health may be engaging in healthful behaviors. And of course, you don't ever have to if you don't want to, it doesn't make your morally superior or inferior person if you are interested in health or not interested in health, both morally equivalent. So you can, you can approach health in a non disordered way because it a lot of times the way that we approach health is, you know, I have to go to the gym to work off that half a piece of dust I had yesterday and, and gym, the gym doesn't make you feel good, and what and, you know, berating ourselves and all that type of shit. And it's not sustainable. When we approach health from a weight neutral perspective, we're able to maintain behaviors that could support our health. So and that includes like being able to move your body in a way that is joyful versus something that is filled with anxiety. And of course, again, you don't have to move your body ever moving your body or not moving your body does not make you morally inferior, or superior, or not. Okay, so by letting go of these beliefs, you can be free and we want that right? That bucket can be filled to the brim with that sexy water. And you can carry on your life actually deep down feeling confident, instead of this, like surface level confidence that's built on, you know, but what if I put on weight? What if I get sick? But what if this what if they're, you know, this deep knowing that you are an okay person, and that your body is fine and not having to think about it all the time. So imagine in a year from now, a year from now, if today, you let go of those unhelpful beliefs. Where would you be and how far can you go once you plug those holes?

Unknown Speaker 19:51

So I would love to continue this conversation in my free Facebook group. It's called fierce fatty friends and and I will link to it so you can head on over there. Continue to the discussion. And tell me in the comments, what fears of or negative self beliefs have you recognized that maybe have come up today that you've recognized that you need to work on and you need to be plugging up. So that your efforts of pouring that water in and not fruitless? Alright, I hope you enjoyed that and got some light bulb moments, then let's get into section two here. Which is talking about if you've not got to a place where you can love or even accept your body, what could be happening in your life? If you don't like your fat body, and why what you're doing is not working. The impact that higher body love can have on your life. Oh, I'm so pleased that I now have body love self esteem and and a feeling of just that I'm an okay person, no matter what it just makes like, everything is just a little bit better. And in some ways, like life is a lot better. And I don't constantly have to worry about like, oh my body my you know, what do people think of me? What do I look like all I look frumpy and blah, blah, blah. Anyway. And also, we talked about how to cut through the bullshit to successfully love your body. So that is our next section, reminder karma and over karma Nova fatty to face fatty friends, the Facebook group, where we have on a family party, we're all just waiting here for you. We're saying what's going on? Where is where are you waiting? The party is getting started with that. Yeah. So come join us. And let's get into this next section. Enjoy. Today, I want to talk about loving your fat body. And the reason why I want to talk about this is because I've been seeing a lot of discussion about this topic. And there are a lot of untruths, and myths about how to love your fat body. And there's a lot of simply just straight up bad information. And I want to cut through that bullshit for you today. And when I say cut through that bullshit, I don't want to put a bandaid on the issue, which is not helpful, right? If you're British, a plaster. Right, we want to take a step back and look at the root of what is going on and why we don't love our bodies. So first, I want to discuss where we're at, when we're talking about this, I don't love my body. Where are we at? And how does this lower confidence or lower self esteem manifest in people's lives? And so in the comments, give me a yes, if you resonate with any of these things, I'm going to say if you feel like this yourself, okay, so how low confidence confidence manifest is believing that your body isn't right to wear certain things. So saying like someone with my body can't wear a swimsuit, or a bikini or a mankini or a speedo, or a crop top. And that if you do then other people are going to be laughing or judging or thinking it's so inappropriate that someone who looks like you is wearing these clothes and it could be even just clothes that are just more colorful or or a shirt that has short sleeves versus long sleeves or a tarp that doesn't cover your bum or a tarp that is tighter on your belly and things like that.

Unknown Speaker 24:32

So the belief that someone with your body shouldn't wear clothes that draw attention to themselves or a clothes that you want to wear and feel authentically you and you say don't because someone like me can't wear someone with my body can't wear those clothes. Another way that lower confidence manifest is not good. Being in pictures and so not being in pictures with your loved ones, or not being a part of memories, like, if you look back a lot of times, when when I had lower confidence, I just wouldn't want to be in the picture, or I'll be like, I'll take the picture. And if I wasn't that picture, I'd be like, let me look at the picture. And then as soon as I've been looking at only myself in the picture, and I'm like, No, we need another one knew that another one, because I hadn't, you know, done all the things to make me look as thin as humanly possible. And alongside that, not participating in the way that I wanted to participate. And so going to the beach, and not, you know, ripping off my T shirt and going splashing into the waves or playing and having fun, because I was worried about what other people thought of my body. And when we're not in pictures, we're being raised from memories, and years and years and years from now being like, looking back, and like, where was I, and that sucks, right? So it, it also could manifest. As you know, we all love lives. If you're on a dating app, worried that if you finally meet someone from a dating app, they're gonna be like, Oh, my God, they're so fat. We're so fatter than their pictures, and then not liking you because of that. Or if you have a partner, believing that your partner doesn't really find you attractive, and really would be happier with someone who was smaller. And on that note to thinking that when people do say, Oh, you look cute, or you're beautiful, I love you, or you're so handsome or wet or whatever. But they are saying that to be nice, not because you are actually cute, or whatever. They're just, they're just nice and nice people or they have to say it because you've dressed up or whatever. And you know, just thinking, you know, it's nice to hear that, but I don't believe it. And a lot of times I see people believing and I used to believe this, that certain things in life were just not meant for me. And things like going for a hike, or riding a bike or ziplining or riding a horse or whitewater rafting or jumping on a trampoline, the list goes on and on. And on. Of course, there are some things that people can't do for various reasons. But if you have told yourself that you can't do them, because if I go for a hike, I'm going to slow people down, and they're just going to get really annoyed. And it's going to be really embarrassing, because I'm going to be out of breath. And I'm going to have to take breaks and you know, my friends are just not going to understand they're going to leave me behind. You know, if you're saying that types of things to yourself. That is a manifestation of lower confidence. And finally, a big one is just feeling like you can't get there, you can't get to a place of higher confidence. Someone like you, it's not your mission or your destiny or it's not, you know, a part of your life that you can change around how you're feeling about yourself and interacting with people and interacting with the world makes a lie, you can. Okay, so now I'm going to talk about the three ways to experience the world as a confident fat person. And so most people know about, you know, following diverse bodies on Instagram and reading books and listening to podcasts. But there is a big issue with this.

Unknown Speaker 28:58

It can be that you are not doing the work to up root, the problem and up root what really is going on. And so if we think about it, if we look at a garden, and the garden is full of weeds in the weeds represents our negative thoughts we have about ourselves by not getting to the root of the problem, what you're doing is you're just cut cutting off the tops of the of the weeds, and you're not pulling them out at the root. And what happens when you cut the tops off is temporarily it feels good, it looks good, you feel proud of yourself and accomplished. But in a few days or weeks or months, they're gonna grow back. And you have to do the same thing over and over and over and over again. And really you never get to that place where deep down, you know that you're good and you feel confident right? So we have to get rid of those weeds from the root. So those nasty weeds can Get out of here and never come back again. And having to constantly chop the heads off the weeds is exhausting, right? really exhausting. It's not mean, you can't maintain that, you know, no human has that, you know, endless capacity to fight negative thoughts. And at a certain point, you just think, oh, fuck it and just be like, the whole field can be weeds. You know, because it's too tiring, it's too tight, It's too tiring is not sustainable. So when you do dig out the root of your negative self beliefs, you can experience the world in these three ways. And these three ways. The first one is your mind. Okay, so confident people don't have these negative thoughts constantly popping up, that your body isn't okay, that their body isn't okay, that they don't look great, that they don't look good, they don't look acceptable, that they are undesirable, you know, these, these pervasive thoughts that they just keep coming up and up and up, and you're just like, God, go away, you know, like a, you know, a wasp is around your head, and you're just like, Oh, it's just so annoying, right? So confident people are not bombarded with these thoughts. And even if you don't have them, you know, 100 negative thoughts a day, even if even if you're only having one that has really still really impactful, negatively impactful for your mental health. And so, as a confident person, when you are no look in a mirror, walk past a mirror, instead of a thought being. Or, I should really be smaller or something negative. There's just, you know, neutrality, you just like, oh, there's my body. And sometimes you're like, oh, there's my body, oh, my God, I cubed and I look gorgeous, today, you're just not constantly reminded that you're not good, because these swords are coming into your head. And also, you're able to understand where these negative thoughts are coming from, you're able to understand what is potentially triggering for you. And you know, how to protect your mental health and our resilience, right? Because she's always gonna hit the fan things is that things are always going to happen that really shake you to your core. We're unconfident people, people with higher self esteem, are able to be like, I'm still worthy as a person no matter what. So the first one is, is your mind. The next one is the world. And so how you participate in the world. So as a confident person, you do things that you had previously told yourself that you shouldn't, or you had felt anxious about. So for example, proudly getting into pictures and just be like, take a picture of me, oh, my God, I mean, I'm gorgeous. And, you know, when when someone says, Do you want to look at it? Now? I'm just like, Yeah, cool. You know, we look good. Even if, you know, it was an unflattering, quote, unquote, unflattering image of me, I don't care, right? Because people in the world know what I look like. And that that means they know what I look like, when I'm looking the most, quote unquote, flattering, and they know what I look like, you know, when, you know, I'm just being a normal human being in the world. And a picture is not going to change their opinion of me.

Unknown Speaker 33:35

And doing things like ordering clothes online that are daring, or, or things that you've been meaning or wanting to try. And when they arrive, putting them on and just being like, yes, and going out and walking the dog in your shorts, shorts and your crop top and just being you know, it's not being a thing and just finding joy in that type of thing. Or when you're dating, or when your partner says, when you're dating, or you have a long term partner, thinking to yourself, wow, they are so lucky that they get to be with me. Not Oh, my God, when are they going to dump me? Or when are they going to cheat on me? Or how often are they thinking about how ugly I am, which is what I was constantly thinking when I was in relationships, and had lower self esteem. Or I would think that people were with me because of my great personality and they would overlook my disgusting body. Not true. Okay, and so that was the second one and that is world and the third one is body. And so when you have high confidence, the way that you relate to your body is different. You do things like feed yourself, honoring your hunger. So instead of being hungry, say Oh, I should do things to try and denying my hunger, you will eat food strangely. You don't look at food as good and bad or food as the enemy. You're not letting disordered food thoughts dominate your brain all day long. And you're able to eat food that is delicious and eat food that makes you feel good and makes you feel vibrant. And you're able to take care of your health, in ways that feel good to you. You know that physical mental health are equally as important. And when you have higher self esteem, you're able to approach your body minus the disordered beliefs that you may have had around food around health around movement. And so you don't do things like having to make up for eating food by doing some brutal, brutal exercise regime, and move your body instead if you want to, but you don't have to, in a way that it feels good to you. versus, you know, I used to always go to the gym, and I fucking hated the gym, and I would go to the gym to try and make my body look a certain way. And it was so boring, I hated it. And I realized when I loved my body, and it wasn't sustainable, you know, I go to the gym for a little bit, and then be like, Fuck this, because it was boring, right. But now I'm in a place where I love myself, I'm able to do things that are fun, and not to lose weight. But because riding my bike is fun, you know, or dancing is fun, not because I ate food the day before, and you need to punish myself. Okay, and so that is, the third one is body. Now, if you are not in a place where you feel confident, your current strategy isn't working. And you need to change something, right. Or perhaps you don't even have a strategy. So you need to get one. And what I see a lot is people becoming overwhelmed with all the information about confidence and fat positivity. It's not that you're lacking information about how to love your body, you might not have been able to cut through the noise and through the bullshit and get laser focused on one thing, right? When you have, you know how to love your body, and then you've got a list of read these 1000 books, watch these million videos, or do you know, watch 70 hours or listen to 70 hours of a podcast or whatever? That's really overwhelming, right? And so, you know, humans are just like, I'm gonna have an app, right? And so it's not that it's there's a lack of information, it's that there's no strategy there. And picking one strategy, instead of doing like a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and not really going all in, and then not seeing results. And you know, you've tried this thing, and it's not worked. And then you blame yourself and you're like, Oh, well, I'm just not the type of person who is confident because I tried this thing once, and it didn't work. And did you, you know, go all in with it? Or was the strategy good, you know, it's not your fault. If you tried something and it didn't work, you have to get laser focused on one strategy and go all in. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 38:34

So, I want to continue this discussion in my Facebook group, which is called first party friends. Everyone's welcome. I'll link below to the group. So you can go ahead and join it. And in the group, I want to start a discussion. And I want you to ask me any questions that you have in the comments. And I want you to tell me as well, where you are at with your confidence, and where you want to go. And what lightbulb moment did you have with me today? What thing really stood out for you? So it's kind of like a book club, you know, listen to this video. And then we're going to have a discussion about where your confidence is, where you want to go. And what light bulb moments did you get? And if you have any questions as well put it in there too. So first family friends, you can just search it on on Facebook or you can just click the link. So today we went over what could be happening in your life if you don't like your fat body. Why what you're doing is not working. The impact that higher body love can have on your life and how to cut through the bullshit to successfully love Your body. So make sure that you join my free Facebook group first party friends in the duration, so we can continue the conversation there. And thanks for hanging out for me today. Okay bye for our team.