Episode 46 Transcript

You're listening to The Fierce Fatty Podcast. In this episode, we're talking about myths about body confidence and food freedom debunked. I'm your host Victoria Welsby. By the way, let's do it. Okay.

I'm Victoria Welsby TEDx speaker, Best Selling Author, and fat activist. I have transformed my life from hating my body with desperately low self esteem to being a courageous and confident Fierce Fatty who loves every inch of this jelly. Society teaches us living in a fat body is bad. But what if we spent less time, money, and energy on the pursuit of thinness and instead focused on the things that actually matter? Like if pineapple on pizza should be outlawed? Or if the mullet was the greatest haircut of the 20th century? So how do you stop negative beliefs about your fat body controlling your life? It's the Fierce Fatty podcast Let's begin.

Unknown Speaker 1:29

Welcome, welcome. Hello, fatti Have you been keeping fierce I do hope so. We are having a storm today here in Ireland. And so if you hear banging and crashing it's not me. It's not me. The wind and the rain and I am my office is in the I don't want to say roof but it's in the upper part of the house, which is half the roof is half a roof system and having some roof in the roof. Okay. I always in the roof. And yeah, so it's even it's even noisier. As is why I'm telling you that. Yeah. So, hey, have you got your hands on the fifth party vote yet, which is remember, that incredible resource, which is all of the things that I have created in the last couple of years to help you get to a place where you can love your fat body, all in one place. People are loving it. And it's free. So we're gonna check out the link in the show notes in wherever you're listening to it. To get to the show notes, if you are, if you want to remember if you're listening, it's face value.com, forward slash 046. And whatever episode it is, it's the show notes will will be zero, whatever. Until we get to 100, then it'll just be like 100. Anyway, you don't need to know that. Or face id.com.com forward slash podcast and that will take you to all episodes. Yeah. So today, what we're talking about some debunking some myths, like those two science guys, the one with a ponytail that do those videos, Ben and Taylor, Penn and Teller. Maybe, maybe that's then I don't know. Like when they show people, you know, they'll see that there'll be, there'll be like a magic trick where someone will be run over with a lorry or a truck. And then they're like, Oh, how do you do it, and then it'll turn out like that one of the wheels is made from foam. I remember seeing that when I'm asked. It's still kind of dangerous, though. But it's made from foam. That's how they do it. So that's what I'm doing today with some myths that people hold that will be helpful. So the most common misconceptions that that folks have, why believing these minutes isn't helpful, how you can begin to feel better sooner rather than later, and why your expectations of yourself can be holding you back. So let's talk about it. The first one we are going to be talking about is a myth and a lot of people believe is it'll take years to see any results from working on this stuff. As I've hated myself for a long time. And I definitely won't end up being like you Victoria, I'll never be as confident as you. Or people believe that working on this stuff. Within two minutes. They'll feel like lizard or something. So people believing that it's going to take for the rest of their life to have any change in their confidence. Or people believing that they're going to see a change within two minutes being like when I read that one blog post I don't I feel like amazing

Unknown Speaker 4:58

yet Okay, so what happens with when you start working on your body, first off, you will probably see the message that it's okay to be fat. And you'll probably be like, what? I didn't know that, like, this is news to me, and you will consume a lot of information about it. And you'll feel really good. And you'll continue on your journey. And so you'll have a leap forward. And then things will kind of simmer down a bit. And then there might be another leap forward, and things will kind of feel more relaxed. And, and this whole time that you're having these leaps forward, where you have like a big, you know, exciting development in your confidence journey. You're having all these small, incremental changes, and wins. And you might not even realize it until maybe six months, a year later, you look back and you're like, Wow, holy shit. A year ago, I wouldn't have done that, or even consider doing that. And it's really, I hate this word, but it's a journey. It's a journey. But it is not going to, if you're say 40 years old, and you start working on this on this stuff, and you've been alive for 40 years, it doesn't mean that it's going to take another 40 years to deprogram yourself. No, the process can be a lot quicker than that, obviously, obviously, because you're learning this new thing. And depending on how committed you are, and how much you challenge yourself will depend on how long this takes, but it's not going to be two minutes. And it's probably not going to be 200 years, either. Or, or 20 years, you know, it's probably going to be somewhere, you know, within six months, a year, couple of months, two years, whatever, right? It's all individual. I can't tell you. But yeah. And when people say I want to increase my competence, but I just know that I'll never be like you, Victoria. I always think What do you know that you can't be like me? Or do you know that you can't wear a bikini? Or do you know that you can't do X, Y or Z? Like, how do you know that that's just not a possibility for you? Is it because you have lower self esteem currently, and that's what you're seeing is a possibility for you? Oh, no, no, something to think about. Okay, so next myth is being confident means that you're full of yourself, and you never get shy. And your turn into like a rude person. So you'll be like, Bitch arrived. Listen, up, fives are tennis speaking. And if someone says something to you that you don't like, you'll just be like, Fuck you, and then kick him in the face. Because you're so confident you just don't have any time for anyone's bullshit. I mean, you know, that could happen. If that's what you were like, before you had high confidence. Increasing your confidence doesn't make a change to who you are as a person. You're just changing your perspective about who your worthiness in society, your place in society. You're not changing who you are inherently as a person. So if you're a dickhead before, you know, if you had low self esteem, and you're a dickhead, maybe when you get higher self esteem, you'll continue to be a dickhead, I don't know. But just getting higher self esteem doesn't make you a dickhead. It also doesn't make make you immune from feeling human emotions. I know, it's so strange that human beings will have human emotions. But there are plenty of times where I will feel shy or anxious or nervous. But the difference between now and before is that before I would be shy, and then I would hide away, I'd be anxious and I would ruminate on it. I'd be nervous, and I wouldn't do the thing that I was nervous about or make excuses. Whereas now, as a more confident person, if I'm feeling any of those things, I'm like, Hmm,

Unknown Speaker 9:31

this is a clue as to something else that might be going on. Or this is an invitation to help me grow. Or perhaps I need to give myself some extra love and support right now. It's just an invitation to be more curious, and it's not good or bad that I feel shy or anxious or nervous or whatever it is. It's just that I'm a human being and having coffee It doesn't mean that you don't have human emotions anymore. It just means that the way that you are able to deal with it may be different. So you would probably have more of a more self compassion. And so, you know, if you're feeling anxious and shy or whatever, instead of being like, Well, it's because I'm, I can't do that thing. Or maybe I shouldn't do that thing. You'll be more caring towards yourself, which really is what increase competence is, is having deep self compassion. And knowing and number two here is knowing that fear can be helpful in guiding us towards increasing your self esteem anymore. Think about the things that you haven't done in your life. And imagine going to try and do something you've never done before. It is a normal human emotion to feel anxious about it, no matter what your confidence level is, like, if someone was Victoria, let's go skydiving. I would be. I'd be scared. How are you anxious? I'd be like, well, actually, I can't go skydiving because I exceed the weight limit. But I'm sorry. But if I didn't, then I would be having feelings about it. Because yeah, I'm a human being. So next one is, myth. next myth is you'll never have disordered thoughts about food, or engage in binging type behavior. Now, you, this is not true. Because it's a myth. So this is not true. Again, because you're a human with a human brain, it means you are always going to be influenced by other people, there are always going to be circumstances in your life where you will be triggered by something, you'll hear something, you'll move to a different place and things change, or you get a boyfriend, and they move in with you. And, and the way that you eat is you've, you've become more focused on it, because of whatever reason. And so generally, you're gonna feel pretty relaxed around food and pretty joyful around food. And also times where you're just like, I can't be bothered to me, it just seems like such a chore. And times where you think, like, I wish I could just, you know, have, you know, someone just cook me all my meals, because I can't be bothered with it. Oh, that'd be amazing. That's me, just want someone to get me on my wheels. And, you know, just a general range of emotions around food, but isn't isn't is none of it is really a big deal. Not like it was before if you had a disordered relationship with food. And also, this includes sometimes engaging in things like eating more food than what your body may want at that time. So the reasons why you could be doing that is because you're eating something that's particularly delicious, a tasty meal. Or perhaps this is something that I do. I mean, twice a month is I'll be so so in the zone with working, then I'll be like, Oh, just like 10 minutes, 10 minutes, I'll go get something to eat, like, I'll just, you know, I'll just finish this thing, and I'll get some to eat, and then I'll get to a point where I'm like, ravenous, and then I'll have lunch, and then I'll eat more than I normally would, because I've lived it too long to eat. And that's normal, that's fine, right? You're not meant to be, quote, unquote, perfect with this stuff. Or maybe you eat more food than you would normally because you're happy or you're sad, or you're bored, and all of it is absolutely normal to be expected. And eating more food than what you're used to, or more than what your body wants, is not something that is disordered. You know, if you're in the diet, you know, diet land swing roller coaster, right. And so a lot of times that type of stuff isn't disordered. But of course, there are some times where it could be.

Unknown Speaker 14:23

But, you know, sometimes things will trigger you. Like, for example, being in a global pandemic go into the store, and seeing that all the food has been bought. Do you think that anyone can be triggered by that? Yes, even I was when I went to the store. I'm seeing like, at the beginning of the of the pandemic scene, everyone had bought everything and I was just like, oh my god, I got I need to buy everything too. Right. And so, yeah, you're gonna have times where you might have a disordered thought or engage in something and a disordered behavior, but genuinely speaking, you're feeling pretty good and relaxed and joyful. Little and all that type of stuff around food. Okay, next one is next myth, you'll eat, quote unquote bad food all the time and won't care about your health. Now, this is what a lot of people really believe that if they allow themselves to eat food, or if they accept and love their fat body, they're just gonna be like, Do you know what? Fuck it? No, we're going to adopt us again. In fact, I'm going to engage in some really dangerous activities and, and probably die, and I will just eat this food forever and things like that. And that's just not how it's not how it goes, you know, is just, yeah. So what happens is, you have if you've lived in diet culture, if you've dieted, if you've restricted in any way physically or mentally, it is a natural human reaction to need to overcompensate for that. So it's like, imagine if you had been holding your breath. So you can probably hold your breath a lot, and I couldn't hold my breath for 30 seconds. And then when he got to that 30 seconds point, someone was like, Don't you dare breathe in. And, and then you felt pressure to not to not take a breath. And by the time you got to 45 seconds, you'd be, you'd be like, Oh, my God, oh, my God. And then if you've got to a minute, you just want to breathe any debris. And then by the time you breathe, you will like, and your heart will be racing. And you'd have to take some more deep breaths to get some more oxygen in you. And that is what is happening when you are restricting in any way shape or form is you're forcing yourself to not breathe. Not literally, but you know, metaphor, not breathe. And then you have to take a gasp because your body's like fucking food. And so it's a natural reaction, as well. Imagine if you had been like hardcore into health and you are really healthiest person. And you're like, Okay, well, I need to like when I say health, it's in quotation marks. And, you know, I need to be working out this margin, I need to be doing all of these strict things, and which are not necessarily helpful for your health. And that too, is like holding your breath. And so when you get the permission to say, you don't have to do that, then obviously, there'll be a point where you might be like, fuck it, I'm never gonna go to the gym again. In fact, I'm never going to move my body ever again, or whatever it is. You need to it's just a natural response, it will be kind of weird. If that wasn't a human beings response, if they were just like, No, I'm just gonna continue, we'd be like you, they, you know, they weren't truly restricted, or were actually felt good around food or whatever. And the way that I see it is, it's like, you're a teenager again. So to begin with, as a teenager, you know, you go out with, you know, if you're like me, you probably probably go out, behave like a bit of a dick. If you're like me, drink so much alcohol, throw upon yourself, maybe shit yourself or whatever, usual things, but I think over shit, myself will probably be some as well. Anyway, and but you don't do that forever. You do that for a little while, and then it kind of gets a bit boring, right? And then you may be wild from time to time, but then you start to learn what feels good, and what you actually enjoy. And, and so you'll start to think, okay, when I eat this food, this makes my body feel good. And when I eat this food, it's really delicious. And when I move my body in this way, it feels good. But in that way, I really don't like it, it feels oppressive.

Unknown Speaker 19:04

And you'll be curious and you'll become wiser. Be your, you know, have that wisdom, to be able to make the best choices for yourself free from being in a disordered place. Being in a place that is not helpful. Free from you know, I need to work out because if I don't, then I might get fat and then I'll you know, people will hate me. It'd be more like, Oh, I like moving my body because it gives me endorphins. And I like being outside, or I don't and that's fine, too. And you'll be able to do things like look after your health, like go to the doctor, because you know that your body is worthy of those things versus you know shying away from it because you think that you should lose weight. And if you go to the doctor, you know, they'll just tell you to lose weight and you're like, Yeah, I know I need to lose weight but you know, but if you are coming at it from a place where you're more loving and caring towards yourself, you understand that that person scription is not evidence based. Okay? So next myth is you need to be a scholar in fat studies, and have read all the books, consume all the information, to be able to do this to be able to get to a place of body confidence of food freedom. Well, that is a myth, you just need to know that feeling like your body is bad, doesn't make you feel good. You need to know that constantly dieting doesn't make you feel good. So do you have that knowledge? Like, does it make you feel good? Does it something that you want to stop doing? Okay, that's good. You may want to know the science behind it. So you may want to do some reading about like, why diets don't work or how you can be healthy at Every Size. If you're interested in that. You might want to know why, how this stuff is rooted in different oppressive systems. And we know You're fine, you're good to go. You're good to go. And, you know, as in good to go as in got to start working on feeling confident in yourself. You don't need to read 1000 books to then be qualified to love your body. You don't need to know every single thing and every single piece of scientific evidence to show that actually dieting doesn't work for you, you know, right, you know, and, you know, you might want to like I say, you know, get a bit of the scientific information about it just to confirm what you already know, and how it feels to be in your body. And, and something to consider is that working on becoming this super knowledgeable person before? Taking action, also known as something that I call the Constant Learner effect can be deeply unhelpful. Because when will you know enough to be able to take action? Like what is that line? When will you have arrived? Not enough knowledge versus action taking is probably never right. There's so much knowledge in the world. But of course, this is not to say you shouldn't educate yourself like, yeah, knowledge is great, you know, but but don't. Don't think that you need to know everything before taking imperfect action. Done is better than perfect. Okay. Yeah, so having knowledge doesn't always translate to changing the way that you view fat bodies or your family. Okay, last one, is my family slash friends will have a massive problem with me not hating my body and not dieting. So this is the last myth that we're talking about. My family slash friends will have a massive problem with me not hating my body or like working to love my body and not dieting. Not to be what I like. I know my family. I know what they like and absolutely you do. Totally 100% But have you previously got to a place where you love your body and you feel good? And you're no longer dieting? Have you got there before? And have you seen how they have behaved when you got there? Probably you haven't? Because if you're not at a place where you feel good right now, you might not have we might have I don't know it's just my question to you. So chances are you might not know how they might react you would have seen evidence in the past about you know if they are weighed bigots you probably know that already.

Unknown Speaker 24:02

But how many times have you had serious conversations with them about this? How many times have you set firm boundaries and kept to them? Are you judging their ability to become a better person? You know, aka not bigoted not pushing diets on you not telling you that fat is bad. How are you judging their ability to become a better person the same way that they may be judging your ability to love your body for whatever it is that you're trying to achieve? So are you judging who they are? What they can possibly do? The same way that you you might be thinking that they're judging you. I don't know I don't know the answers to this right. This could be you could be like, You know what, my massive my family are just a massive bunch of knobs. And I know that if I say I love my fat body, they're just gonna be like, you're disowned from the family or whatever or my friend And it'll be like that. And that's fine too. That's, you know, people want to react like that, and that's fine. But a lot of the times, not always, a lot of times what happens is your say, people will say, you know, what I'm, I've decided I'm going to start working on loving my body, I'm not going to die again. And what a family member will hear, or a friend will hear is, you know, I'm trying this new thing, the way that I've always tried diets. And to begin with, it'll be really good. But then I'll quote unquote, fall off the wagon and things will be shared, and I'll be back to square one. And so they might hear that, and they'll be like, okay, and they'll might temporarily support you. Or they might just be like, Well, why bother, or they might be like, You know what, but the fat is bad, or whatever it is, you know, you're gonna get really unhealthy, you are really unhealthy. But then, this time, it will be different, though, because it's not a diet, which is set up for you to fail. It is a journey into getting to a place where you realize that you're not just a big bag of shit. And so they will start challenging you potentially. And they might start learning from you, you know, through osmosis, you might have conversations with them, about how how this stuff works, you might you might not, they might join you, they might see how you're doing and be like, You know what, I can see a massive change. And oftentimes what happens is, it takes a little bit of time. But you know, six months, a year later, the family lot friends are like, really on board really supportive, changing the way that they're viewing things. And sometimes they're not. And so you have to make decisions around that as well. But we can't like judging people about how they are definitely going to react and what type of stuff was maybe not necessarily always helpful. And I think I've used this example before about my mum, my mum now is, is really keyed in and understands about fat oppression. And when they talk about fat shit on the telly. She'll be like, you know, that's not okay. And not in a million years would I have thought that that would have happened, but it did. So who knows. So they are the myths, let me go over them again, my family friends will have a massive problem with me not hating my body and not dieting. You need to be a scholar in fat studies. To do this to become confident you will eat quote unquote, bad food all the time and won't care about your health. You'll never have another disorder food for thought about food again. Being confident means that you're full of yourself, you'll never get shy, or you're turning into a rude person. And finally, it'll take years to see any results. Or it'll take two minutes to see your results from working on myself. So they are the myths, any of those you resonate with any of those that you are currently holding, or previously held. Or maybe me talking about them as made you think, Oh, maybe I should start believing that myth. Oh, I don't believe it is not true. Yeah. So we're Hey, thanks for hanging out with me today. I still appreciate it. And hey, if you want me to answer a question, on the show, any question you got about this stuff about this stuff? Don't

Unknown Speaker 28:41

ask me like, what's your favorite sausage roll? You know? Because I don't know the answer. Yeah, so. And he asked me any question about this in the show notes on my website. So pHYs ed.com, forward slash podcast, or Ford slash 046. There'll be a button for you to ask a question. You can ask it anonymously. Or you can put your name or whatever. So as we were talking about this stuff, and I will potentially answer it in the show. And thank you so much for all of your reviews. I read absolutely everyone. Because not everyone if I if someone doesn't email me, then I won't see it. But if you email me with a review, then I'm going to send you a free copy of my book. So yeah, I really appreciate it. Let me see. I'm just opening my email to read some so someone has written five stars. This is from Sarah. Sarah says so healing I have binge listened to this podcast for the past three weeks. I recently moved to a new place and have been struggling with eating disorder recovery over quarantine, and victorious confidence and radiance is contagious. I found so much healing and reflective guidance in this podcast. Thank you so much and One from Claire PHAB content fivestars just discovered vs Mati podcast and have to say, after listening to like five episodes so far, I love her, she just gets to the source without any non sense. Okay, and we've got one from Katie who says, Five stars, life changing and affirming this podcast, and the human behind it are simply incredible. Even as someone who broke up with diet culture and chasing the thin ideal two years ago, and someone who thinks, who champions fat liberation, and thinks everybody has value, I still struggle with self esteem and self worth a lot. This sometimes means disliking my body or simply feeling not worthy due to other physical and mental health issues I have. But Victoria makes me laugh, cry, or both every episode and makes me truly feel seen in a way no other public person has. Oh, thank you. I read that before, but I was reading it again. It's really nice. It was like that, yeah. Especially made me realize like I too, had lost a job due to an obsession with my Fitbit. Recording every meal and eating so little. I made mistakes constantly. I feel like I could have been talking, which means I can achieve what she has to. It's an incredible feeling everyone should hear her message. But especially everyone in a larger body who wants to become a fellow first fatty 10 stars, not 510 out of five stars. Thank you so much. That's from Katie. That's really nice, man. He's getting emails people saying nice stuff about you. So I'm not that I'm like fishing for compliments. But it's nice to read that stuff. So if you want to leave a review, I'll send you a digital and audio version of my book. There's a link Yeah. Or you don't have to, you know, you can just leave a review and not email me. But you know, I like seeing and I like giving you I like giving a shit. That's my love language is gift giving. Do you know what your love languages you can just do like a survey online, it's probably a load of bullshit. But how I express and receive love is through gift giving. And it doesn't have to like, I'm not I'm not materialistic, materialistic. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. But you know, like, if someone gives me like a packet of chewing gum, because they know I love chewing gum I love during and by the way. So, you know, I'd be like, Oh my God, because they thought of me when they're in the shop. So it doesn't it's not about the money. It's about me doing something. So anyway, so that's how I show my love for you is by giving you shit. So yeah, let me give you shit. Okay, gone it. I'm just gonna give you presents all the time. Okay, so we're Yeah. Anyway, thanks for hanging out with me today. I will see you on the next episode. And remember to stay fierce, Fatty, and I will see you later crocodile.