Episode 34 Transcript

You're listening to the fierce Fatty podcast. I am your host, Victoria Welsby. And in this episode number 34, we're talking about the Constant Learner effect and how to avoid it. 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 0:34

Hello, hello, fatty and welcome to this episode, I've got a special episode for you today, actually, I have made a series of videos that aim to bust through any limiting beliefs that you have any mistakes that you could be making that will stop you from feeling confident in your fat body. And I'm going to be sharing them over the podcast because I think that they're so important for you to hear. And today I'm going to be sharing two of them. And then next week's episode, I'm going to be sharing the final two of them. So you'll have all four of them. And they will help you understand if you're not at a place of body confidence. Why? And what you can do to fix it. Yay. Right? And at the end of each segments, I I mentioned my Facebook group, which is called first party friends. Why the fuck? I've not already told you about it. I think I've told you once, maybe. But I don't know why I do have been keeping telling you about it. Because you know, you might not have listened to that one episode. I'm silly. And it's important, right? Because those, this world is a fat phobic world. And on the internet, there's lots of diet, culture and bullshit and stuff. And my Facebook group is not bad. It's a safe space for fat people for people who are aligned with dismantling fat phobia and diet culture. And everyone's welcome. As long as you're not a knob head. So thinking your mind or your knob? Nope. Come on. Come on in. We've got rules, obviously not to be like, Hey, I'm so fat. And you're like a size zero, whatever, you know, different things like don't don't trigger other people. But yeah, come on in first party friends, you can just search it on Facebook, or Google, you probably find it on Google as well. But I'll also link to it into it in the show notes of the zoo. So kind of when do that. All right. So in the first section here, we are going to talk about now this is going to be weird. What The Devil Wears pride at Prada, the film can teach us about loving our fat body. So spoiler alert, I'm going to be to going over the synopsis of the film. And not saying it's a great film or anything, but it's just a great analogy example. One of those things of what we shouldn't do in certain circumstances. So if you haven't seen the film, and you're like, oh my god, it's on my list of things to see then skip forward to midway through and you'll get into the next section. But you know, it was made in 2006. So if you're planning on on watching it, then you've had 14 years and so I reveal the synopses you know, if you want to go watch it, watch it, but it's not a big deal if you've not seen it anyway. So I'm going to be in this section talking about the number one mistake that everyone makes when trying to love their body. And how this film can give us an incredible lesson on not on what not to do to get to a place of body love. And it's not what you think and why you need to plan your escape from diet culture with careful consideration. And finally, this three step essential steps to take to love your fat body. Okay, so

Unknown Speaker 5:31

I'm going to pass it over to past Victoria from a couple of days ago, here we go. What we're going to talk about is what the Devil Wears Prada. At the film, The Devil Wears Prada, what that film can teach us about loving our fat body. Interesting. So I want you to think about that movie. Now, if you haven't seen the movie is based on a book. Let me give you a little bit of a synopsis. So the main character is this woman called Andy. And she is a recent graduate who wants to be a serious journalist. And she scoffs at the fashion industry and thinks it's, you know, just a bit vapid and silly. So for whatever reason, she gets an interview at a fashion magazine called runway, which is basically Vogue, for an assistant job to the editor. The editor is called Miranda Priestly, basically, Anna Wintour. And so she gets a job that many people are vying for. I don't know why I can't remember, because she was like, not a good candidate, theoretically. But I think that's why Miranda Priestly picked her anyway, that doesn't matter. So she, she starts a job, and it's awful. They say that she's really unfashionable. And what she's wearing isn't appropriate. The editor, Miranda Priestly is awful to her. And she doesn't fit in to the culture at all. But eventually, she starts changing. And she because she asked for help. And she becomes more fashionable. And she because she fits more into the runway, the runway model of what to be, and the runway culture. And how she does this as she, she steps over a colleague, to take an opportunity from that colleague. So basically, she's turned into the thing, the very thing that she laughter and she scuffed up before and what she hated from the beginning. And the thing that is made her life miserable. And she knew that this wasn't good for her before, but now she's in it, she doesn't really realize, and she's being abused by her boss, and her co worker, the one that she stepped over for this opportunity. Her name is Emily. And she is so dedicated. And she's so fashionable, and she does everything above and beyond. And she's just tossed away when she gets sick. And she can never measure up like poor Emily. So, in the end, Andy, she's in Paris at this moment, this fancy thing, fancy runway thing with Miranda Priestly, the editor, and he realizes what she's turned into. And she gets out of the limousine that she's in with Miranda Priestly. And she basically quits her job. And she throws her phone into a fountain and Paris and never looks back. And eventually, sometime in the future, it cuts to whenever in the future. She is she's got a new job at some place that she actually likes. So I shouldn't have said spoiler alert to begin with. But this movie is like 14 years old, I think. Anyway, so that's a synopsis of the Devil Wears Prada. And you might be thinking, Well, what's this got to do with loving your body? Well, let me tell you. The reason why I'm talking about the Devil Wears Prada is that it's a great analogy for the way that we go through our adventure of loving our fat body. And the each character kind of represents something in that adventure. So Miranda Priestly, the editor, the evil, you know, Anna winter character. She represents diet, culture and fat phobia. She seems glamorous and fabulous and what we should aspire to. But really, she's our oppressor, right? She's the villain and underneath it all, she's a bully. Someone who is cruel and unkind, and not actually someone we would want to associate with, or be friends with, or spend time with, right? Because there might be some fringe benefits of knowing her. But really, she's gonna make you feel like a big bag of shit. So Andy, the main character, the one that you know, has this transformation moment and then realizes what she's become and leaves. So Matt, Andy, the main character, Andy is us, when we're still in the grips of diet, culture and fat phobia,

Unknown Speaker 10:38

we are trying to conform, right, we're trying to make Miranda Priestly, aka diet, culture and fat phobia happy by changing who we are. And we get abused by Miranda, and nothing we do is good enough. But we get a little bit of recognition. So in the film, Miranda will, you know, praise, eventually praised and, and, and, you know, that really fueled ally to give, keep going, because she's like, Oh, I'm gonna get the love and everything that I really want from this relationship. And she was never going to get that anyway, the same way, with diet culture, we're never actually going to get the things that we want, we might think that we want to have a smaller body and to be healthy, but really, we want acceptance and love and to, you know, feel good and all that type of stuff. And we're never gonna get that from diet culture and fat phobia, we're never gonna get that from Miranda Priestly. And so at the end of the so and Emily, Emily forgot about Emily. So Emily, the co worker, played like Emily Blunt, she is the devoted Dieter. So she's been doing it for years, she's been working for Miranda Priestly, you know, for more longer than anyone can tolerate because of the abuse that she experiences. And she's gained privilege because of her blind devotion, but it is causing her to break down and be sick. And then in the end, she is tossed aside for this, you know, new young shiny thing, which is Andy. And so all of those things that she was trying to get, she didn't get. And she's just tossed aside the moment that she showed any type of vulnerability, or any kind of real side of her personality. So at the end of the film, and the Lee was Miranda in Paris, and she's compelled to, because she's seen what she's become. And she throws away her phone and she walks off. And this is like what we do when we wake up to diet culture and fat phobia. We say fuck the hat. We're like, Oh, my God, what is going on? And we instead of throwing our phones into the fountain and powers, we like, throw our scales into the bin, and we unfollowed diet people. And we're like, oh, no, like, I can't do this anymore. And so we just have this feeling of this is not working, I can't do this. But same as Andy in the film, and he leaves. And she doesn't know what the next step is. She just knows she's passionate, and she needs to get out of there. This is wrong. This is doesn't align with her values. And so in the film, we see later that she has a job, we don't know how long it took for her to get a job. We don't know what happened that night in Paris, if you have to go to the hotel room and see Miranda Priestly. And it was awkward. And did she have to pay for a flight home? Because she left early? And did she go to the office to collect her stuff? And how did she explain to people when she was interviewing that she didn't have a job and so it's you know, we didn't get to see all of this, this difficult stuff that Andy had to face because she was passionate and, you know, followed her heart. So she didn't leave with a plan. And it would made it harder for harder for her. And that's just the way it goes sometimes, right? But it would have been a lot easier if she had planned and she knew what steps to take next. And if she had another job, what job lined up and you know, sometimes that's not always possible, but if she knew exactly what to do and where to go, and the same way it is for us, when we say fuck you to dieting, there's not a plan to follow, right? It's not like we're gonna say fuck you to dieting and then be like, Okay, now I need to do this, this, this, this, this and then I will love my body, you know, get another job basically, which is what happened to the film

Unknown Speaker 14:47

The equivalent of loving our body. And so the thing that Andy had on her side is that she knew the goal. The next step was to get a job. up. But we, when we say fuck you to diet culture, we don't know what the next step is like, what? What do we do? We're kind of floundering. And it's very hard to do things if we don't know what the steps are to get there, right? So Andy knew, Okay, well, I need to write a resume again or CV, I need to go looking on the job boards, I need to maybe call some people I need to do you know, by an interview outfit, but we don't have those steps. When we say fuck you to dieting, and that's what I see a lot is people in this limbo of saying hello to diet culture, and fat phobia, but not at a place where they love the fat body and have healed their relationship with food. And that's not because they don't want to. And it's not because they're not trying the absolute opposite. And people try and do things on their own to try and get there. But you kind of like going blind, you know, walking without a map. And it's, it's a lot harder than it should be really. There's nothing for people to follow. And you know, when we're in that stage, we just don't know what to do. So I have created a framework to help you transition from that, throwing your phone in the fountain, aka saying fuck you to die culture and knowing that it doesn't work for you. And knowing that there is a different way to finding the new job, aka getting to a place of body love and food freedom. And this framework, it's it's called, it's nice and simple. And I'm going to share it with you right now. It's called the three step framework to love your fat body. Okay? So, because I've been through this, obviously, and I've seen, and I've helped loads of people get through this, I wanted to make it nice and simple. So that you can just follow this framework is laid out for you like, okay, right, your resume, by your interview outfit, whatever. And it's three steps to this. And it's even simpler is just three words. Okay, so the first word, the first step, step number one is explore. And so what explore is, is looking at why do you believe that your fat body is not okay? Why is it maybe that you can look at other fat bodies and say, well, they're beautiful, but then you look at your fat body, which is pretty much the same, and you say what mine isn't? Why is that? Why do you believe that? What are you not doing in your life? Because you believe that? And how are your current beliefs being supported. And so why this is important to do this is to what we're doing is we are looking at the house of our, our self esteem, our confidence. And we're looking at the foundations of our house. And so our houses have been built on unstable and rotten foundation foundations, right, because our core of our confidence and our self esteem and the belief around who we are. We believe that our bodies aren't good enough. We've been taught from a young age, and from media and all of the different things that we consume, that fat bodies are not okay, and that you need to dye it and you need to eat these things. And these things are good, and these things are bad. And we cannot build on top of shit foundations, because we know we've tried it in the past, we've tried these gimmicks to try and make ourselves feel better like dieting, like you know different things that you might have tried. And it just crumbles again because the foundations are not good. And once you've rebuilt those foundations and understood what was happening, you become like an expert in foundation making, and you can just go build loads of self esteem houses, but we can then build this new house of confidence, and it will last. So doing this is super important because it stops, stops you making the same mistakes over and over that derails your confidence. Or houses is going to be rock solid instead of you know, a little bit of wind blowing over like, you know, someone saying, You look bad on the internet or someone saying, do you really need to eat that and that big like core shaking versus up just being like,

Unknown Speaker 19:46

Oh, well, you're a fat phobe. And we become really wise in this process. And we're able to build resilience for continuing through our lives. And when shit hits the fan, we are able to deal with it once we've looked at our foundations and rebuilt it, and you're able to build lasting confidence, but most people don't do this, right? Because so if you've not done this, and it makes sense, right? Most people don't do it because they don't know they need to. They don't have instructions or a roadmap or something. It's like if you went out to a house and someone said, Hey, dig up the foundations, then you're like, What the fuck? I don't know what to do. I don't know how to do that. Probably, I don't know, maybe you do. But, you know, most people be like, I don't know how to do that. And that seems hard. And it? Do we really need to do that. It seems unnecessary. Can't we just, you know, use up things. And you know, can we just paint the house or, you know, put some flowers out making it pretty, but that's not going to work. And so it can be really difficult to know where to start. And people just want to rush ahead, right? They want to get to the really, you know, juicy, you know, feel good stuff, and then be like, Oh my God, I feel like Lizzo I feel amazing. But you need to start with step number one, explore. Okay, so step number two is just one word, again, is unleash. Okay, so what unleash looks like is letting go of all of the diet bullshit, and feeling free around food and around your body, and wrangling those limiting negative self beliefs. So you're always going to have limiting negative self beliefs, if you are someone who likes to grow and become a better person. And there's a reason for that. So with unleash, you're able to step into the version of you, that you maybe in the past, have been too afraid to show the world. So you'll, you'll start being like, well, do I like this? Who am I really? What am I? How am I showing up in the world if I'm not trying to minimize myself, or please others, etc, etc. And also what unleashed looks like it's saying fuck you to beauty ideals, and really believing it versus just intellectually, knowing that beauty ideals and fat phobia and diet culture is fucked up, knowing it's fucked up and believing it for yourself. And with this, it's important to do this because what you're doing is you are able to learn how to connect you with yourself, like you had never been fucked up by diet, culture, and fat phobia. And you're able to do things like eat in a way that serves your workload that you want to do and play with your kids with on the beach, in your swimsuit, without thinking what other people are thinking and explore and achieve and do all of the things that you want to do. And stop trying to please everyone else, and to please yourself. And so what this really is all about is cultivating deep self compassion. And really what this whole thing is, is self compassion. And confidence is a side effect of self compassion. And that self compassion is knowing that no matter what, no matter what you look like, and what you do in the world, as long as you're not a massive bellend which most people aren't, that you're worthy. And even if you are a massive Belen, you're still a worthy human being. Right? So it's accepting yourself good, bad, all of it, right? Because we're never perfect people. And sometimes with confidence, it can be like, Well, I'm amazing. I'm just amazing. There's nothing wrong with me. And that's what some people get confused about that confidence is being a narcissist. And it's not it's just being self compassionate. So it's really important to do this because it lets go. It helps you let go of the fox that you've been giving about unimportant shit, right about whether should I be wearing a sleeveless top or not? Should

Unknown Speaker 24:06

I let my fat arms be out in the world because people are going to be horrified and, and debating it and feeling hurt, but I'm hard to know what to do. But I don't want to. That's not important. Just, you know, share your fucking arms with the world. It doesn't matter, right? You're going to be able to express yourself and find self fulfillment, and no longer have negative or a disordered relationship with your body and with food. And what impact does that have on the world and the people around you not that we're doing this work for others, but it does if you have negative, low self esteem and if you think that you are disgusting, if you are relating to food in a way that is disordered, you are passing on that message and that legacy to those around you. And if you change that, and you have a positive relationship with your body and with food, and you wholeheartedly believe it for yourself that your body is okay, then to you pass it on to those around you. But most people don't do this, because their negative beliefs are so deeply ingrained that they think it's not possible to change. And they just don't know how right. So the third step is at devote, activate. And so what activate is, step number three activate is doing the scary shit is doing it. And this is where a lot of people fall down is that they will learn about this stuff, but they never actually do this stuff. And where confident confidence really comes from is from doing the stuff not just learning about it. So inactivate, you will become an expert at living your life authentically and with joy and achieving things and doing things that you previously never thought was possible. And have the ability to weather any, any storm at home. So I want you to think about my like a mountain self love mountain, okay. And you want to climb this mountain of self love. So the ultimate test for your newfound confidence is to be able to climb this self love mountain, but you can't do that. So if someone just said go climb a mountain. Unless you're already a mountaineer, you'd be like, what, how quiet. But once you've done it a few times when someone's has, has guided you and showed you the equipment and said, Don't watch out for that, that hole over there, you might fall into a crevasse or whatever, you were then able to do it yourself, right. And so it's important to do this so that you can build confidence and you can climb that mountain. And the first, who knows how many times you're going to need a guide, and you're going to need help, and you're going to need support and people cheering you on. But eventually, you can do it yourself. And eventually you'll be the one that's cheering other people on. And so you can't learn how to climb a mountain by reading a book, you have to do it. And so that's why this stage is so important. And you're not always gonna need help and reassurance from other people. This is making you self sufficient in the process of feeling like you're a worthy person and you have you know that your body is okay. And confidence will just become a part of who you are. You just won't have to think about it that much. You'll just be like, Yeah, you know, I'm fine. It's just no big deal. Right? And you're never going to be like, Oh, should I lose weight? I think I might try another die. You never know. Like, you just won't be a part of what your brain is saying to you. Right? But most people don't do this. Because how? How do you do confident things? If you don't feel confident, right? It's a catch 22? How are you meant to do confidence things if you're not confident? Well, when I get people say when I feel more confident, I'll do that thing.

Unknown Speaker 28:15

It's not gonna happen, or you have to do the thing to get the confidence. And people don't do this because they don't have a system in place.

Unknown Speaker 28:24

So that they know if I do this, and this and this, then I'm going to be able to feel like I can do that. And then I'm going to do it and it's going to be great. And even if I think I don't, I can't do it, then I'm going to do it anyway. Because I know that if I follow these steps, and I will get there, and they believe that they can get there. And a reason why people don't do this as well is is it's scary. It's scary, especially doing it alone, especially doing this work. When you're surrounded by people in your life who were like, should you eat that? You should really lose weight and really make fucks with you like should I fish? Should I be loving my body? Or should I listen to the people around me who are telling me that? You know, it's disgusting to be fat or whatever. So these are the three steps. Number one, explore. Number two, unleash. And number three, activate. So follow those three steps that three step framework. And you won't have to be like Andy, in The Devil Wears Prada, floundering and not knowing what to do and how to get there, you will have a plan, you will have a step by step process. And you won't have to be like so many other people who are stuck in this limbo land of not knowing how to get there to get to a place where they don't feel disordered around food and get to a place where they don't feel shit about their body, or even get to a place where you just don't have to think about your body right, because that's boring. And let's continue this call conversation in my free Facebook group. And it's called first fatty friends, obviously, we have a community of fatty friends in there. So I'll put the link below for you to join. And let's continue this conversation. Okay, so I hope you enjoyed that. Now we have got the second section, which is about the Constant Learner effect, what the heck is a Constant Learner effect? What don't you worry, I'm going to explain it in this next section. So what it is and why you need to avoid it at all costs, and why your potential current strategy is actually actually lowering your body confidence. And we're also going to be talking about the counterintuitive thing that you should be doing instead. And finally, three questions to ask yourself to determine if you've fallen into the Constant Learner effect. And again, a reminder to go on over to my free group, Facebook group, first party friends, and have a family party on my amazing. Okay, so let's get into this next section about the Constant Learner effect enjoy. So in today's video, I wanted to talk about something, some things something that people who were struggling with their confidence do that they might not realize, actually lowers their confidence in AD vertically. And so I made this mistake for years. And I want to tell you about it so that others don't make the same mistake that I did, that actually helped lower my confidence. And so what we're talking about is the Constant Learner effect. Now, if you Google that nothing's gonna come up. Well, I don't think so. Because it's something that I just made up. And what it is, is constantly learning. Now, constantly learning about a topic could look like reading loads of books, following those people on Instagram, listening to multiple hours of podcasts, but not taking action. Now those things on their own, they're great, right, and, of course, educate yourself. But when you don't take action, then it can be very damaging to your self esteem. Now, this is why you don't feel confident or whoever doesn't feel confident. And there's a thing that they want to do. Now, they learn about it, and they read about it, and they listen to people talking about it. And but they never do it. And because they don't do it, they're reinforcing the idea that they can't do it. And the longer time passes where they don't do it, the more that belief that they can't do it, is reinforced. And so it's like this constant feedback loop of, I don't think I can do it, I'm not doing it too, therefore I can't do it, I don't think I can do it, I'm not doing it, therefore I can't do it.

Unknown Speaker 34:00

And so a lot of people get into this, this cycle. And it the longer that you're in it, the harder it is to break free. So it's normal to do this to be in this if you are in this, this is not a failure on your part. Because in taking action is really fucking scary, especially if the thing that you're trying to do is something that you are nervous about, and you're something that your brain is telling you that you can't do, then of course you're not going to and of course learning about a topic is going to feel a lot more accessible versus doing the scary shit. So it's totally normal if you're doing this and it's totally understandable. So this this, this action, this constant learning, the Constant Learner for act. It's like, say if you wanted to learn how to swim, and you read a book, and that's how you were learning how to swim, were you reading books, you were watching videos, you're listening to podcast, you were following swimmers on Instagram, and you weren't getting into the water. This is what it's like, right, because of what was scary and what was deep and dark. And, you know, you could drown. And there might be animals that might touch your fee and all that type of stuff. I'm a little bit scared of the deep sea. And so you're you'll never build confidence to be a good swimmer. Unless you get into the water even if the first time you're really scared. So I actually this swimming analogy I was in when I was a kid, the we had swimming school swimming lessons at school, we didn't have a swimming pool at our school, but we would get a bus and we'd go to the city's pool, and we'd go and swim. And I was in the lowest group. My, my family was poor, and we didn't have the money to go swimming. And I had never learned how to swim. And I was like, maybe eight years old by this time. So I was in the lowest group like the kids that can't swim. And I would always look at the kids in the other groups and the kids who were the most skilled would jumping off the diving board. And I would be like, No fucking way. Not only did it mean that I'd have to get into the big people pool where it didn't work. It wasn't warm, you know how like the kids pool is really warm. One time I went into the adult pool, and I was like, oh, fuck this shit. No, no, no, it would mean jumping into the deep end. And that looked terrifying. And so I was like, No, I can't do that. No way. And sidenote, this is not related. But I never really progressed that much with swimming, because we were poor. And so I had a swimming costume that came from a secondhand store, a charity shop, a thrift store. And it had lost all of its elastic, and it had a zip down the front. And the zip was totally loose. So much so that as soon as I started to begin swimming, the thing would unzip come off my shoulders. And I'd be basically topless in this pool as an eight year old. And so I would never want to swim properly or swim at any type of speed. Not that I was going at any speed. Because the moment I did start moving my arms, I would lose my swimsuit. And I was too shy to say to anyone like oh yeah, I've got a faulty swimsuit. I wouldn't say to my mom, I you know, I was just like, this is just the way it is. So I didn't progress for a long time because of that. But then eventually I did get another swimming suit, another secondhand thing, but it was just, you know, no zipping it. And it had elastic, but unfortunately, it had the spots on in the same colors of this famous in the UK at the time, there was this thing called Mr blobby, which was like this, this person dressed in a suit and it was like blood by Robert Bobby. And so the kids would call me Mrs. Bobby. So yeah, lots of trauma, around swimming. But anyway,

Unknown Speaker 38:22

years later, I got into swimming, and I loved swimming. But there was one thing that I always wanted to do, which I was like, I'm Tuesday I can't do it, I can't do it, which was diving, but I really was it was just like in the back of my mind. And so eventually what I did was my partner at the time, he was great at diving like we would go to the lakes and he would just dive in like some sort of a Olympic athlete. And I was like, I want to try it. But I was I was so scared. Oh my gosh, if you've never dove into a body of water then you will know this feeling and even if you're trying to do something in regards to your confidence, that kind of feeling of dread of standing on the edge of like there was a dock at the lake and looking into that deep dark water and knowing that I was going to have to dive in headfirst literally was terrifying and the amount of times I was like almost hooked no and then just like jumping in like without diving and being like oh next time it took you know ages but the first time I jumped in just you know not headfirst then I got a little bit of confidence and a little bit more and I had my then partner there with me to say oh, you're not you know, you need to put your head down more you need to straighten your arms more you need to your bum needs to be this way or that way and every time he was watching what I was doing and helping me now if I didn't have him to help me what I might have done which you know, accidentally I did was belly flop in there and I'm Imagine if I was like, I'm just gonna learn how to dive and I just went in. And then I just did a big belly flop. And I was like, Oh my God, that hurts so much. And I learned that diving is scary and it hurts and not to do it again. And it will just have reinforced my belief that I couldn't dive and diving was painful. And just someone like me couldn't dive. But because I had an expert there with me, to help me to encourage me to say, yeah, that you're so close, oh, my gosh, he almost did it. And then after, like, I remember leaving the lake, and him like drawing a picture of what my body was doing when I was trying to make it get into the pool. And so then I took his feedback. And then next time we went to the pool, I tried again. And eventually, I got to a place where I could kind of dive. It wasn't perfect. Like, I didn't look like Pamela Anderson diving in there, like with perfect, you know, I look more like, Oh, she's getting she's getting in there. But that's the thing is, is you need someone who is going to help you along. And so that you don't do things like a big belly flop. And so you don't do things like say, Okay, I'm gonna go to the very highest diving board and jump from there and traumatize yourself and take those smaller steps, and have people there encouraging you, and helping you and giving you feedback. There are three questions that I want you to ask yourself to see if you are falling into this Constant Learner effect trap. And so these three questions will help you think like, am I am I just kind of learning and not doing? Am I falling into that trap? Because remember, it's like learning how to swim by reading a book, you actually have to get in there. So the first question is, are there any activities you won't do? Because of a story you have told yourself about your body? So let me repeat that? No, are there any activities you won't do? Because of a story you have told yourself about your body? Now? If there is, if there are any things that you're not doing any activities that you're not doing, then you need to follow a framework and take action. Right? You need to have that person there who's like, yes, you're doing it helping you. And you need to jump in and not from a top board. Make it easy for yourself from the from the from the just from the side. Okay, next next question. Question number two, would you wear anything that you want, or express yourself in any way that you want? Without being like, oh my god, this is so awful, I hate it and it being a big deal. So would you wear anything you want or expect to express yourself in any way you want, without feeling really uncomfortable and stressed about it? If you wouldn't, then there's work that you need to do. And you need to follow a framework and take action.

Unknown Speaker 43:24

Because what action is going to do is going to help you get to a place where you're like, I don't fucking care. Well, how where am I split crotch panties and peep the whole bra and feel amazing. Right. Okay, third question. Would you set a boundary with a fat phobe? Would you set a boundary with a fat phobe? So like your mom or your sister or some some person at work is like, oh, that that that person is really unattractive? Or oh, I shouldn't be? Oh, my God, I had like the piece of dust yesterday, I must, you know, work out for 17 years to work off the calories. Or someone just saying shit that makes you feel bad or someone putting you down? Would you say, Hey, that's not okay. We don't talk about that stuff around me. Now, you don't have to be doing this with everyone. You know, it's not like would you do this with everyone? Because not every situation means that you're going to set a boundary. But would you in any situation, be able to set a boundary with someone who was a fat phobe? If you wouldn't, then there is work that you need to do. And you need to follow a framework and take action. Right. So there are some questions you can ask yourself to see if you're in that. That Constant Learner effect or if you have been taking action because you know what action does it Is dissolves fear. And it changes that feedback loop loop into something positive because you take action, you think, oh my god, I did it, I might have been shitting my pants with fear, but I think I can do it again. And then you do it again. And you might do it a little bit harder. And next thing you know, you're diving off the top board and you're like in the Olympics for diving or whatever. Not that you have to dive like you know, it's my analogy. Okay, so I want to continue this discussion in my Facebook group, I've got a free Facebook group. It's called affairs fatty friends, because I like a little bit of alliteration. I'm going to link to it below. And I want to have this discussion about this video and a chance for you to ask me any questions about what we're talking about today. So in the, in my Facebook group, answer these questions. So share how you answered those three questions. And so the three questions were Are there any activities you won't do because of a story you've told yourself about your body? Would you wear anything you want or express yourself in any way you want? And would you set a boundary with a fat phobe to answer those questions? And share your share your answers with with me and with the group? And there's no shame like if you like, No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't set a boundary with the fat fo but I just I don't know what to say that's fine. Like, that was me for years and years and years. Like I was probably probably the fat folk who was shaming people, right? So there's no shame of wherever you're at in your journey. It's all completely normal and nothing to to feel bad about. So and what light bulb moment did you have from this video? Okay, so Yeah, talk about that in the Facebook group.