Episode 4 Transcript

You're listening to the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I'm Victoria Welsby, TEDx speaker, best selling author, and fat activist. I have transformed my life from hating my body with desperately low self-esteem to being a courageous and confident Fierce Fatty who loves every inch of this jelly. Society teaches us living in a fat body is bad, but what if we spent less time, money, and energy on the pursuit of thinness and instead focused on the things that 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.

Hello and welcome to episode four of the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I'm your host, Victoria Welsby. And, in this episode, we are talking about the fears that we have about stopping dieting and loving our fat body. So there are three main fears, we're going to go over those today and I'm going to help you reframe them so that you can let them go. Because guess what? These three fears are going to be talking about is total bullshit. They are bullshit. So, this is the fourth episode of the Fierce Fatty Podcast and I released the first three on one day of the day that we launched and the feedback has been incredible. Thank you all so much for tuning in, for leaving a review for your support. I know this podcast is a long time in the coming. I have been talking about doing it for probably a year now and it's not like me to procrastinate, but I was very I got in my head about it and I was saying, you've got nothing to say, Victoria, even though for the last 18 months I've been doing a weekly video.

So clearly I have got something to say and I was saying it's not going to be interesting enough or unique enough. And I was just listening to my inner critic and I didn't even realize that's what I was doing. And then one day I was like, Oh, for God's sake, come on Victoria. You don't do this. You don't listen to your inner critic. And yeah, so the response has been incredible. I really, really appreciate it. And I really want to reward the people who take the time to write a review. And so if you write a review on iTunes or rather Apple podcasts or Stitcher and you write the review, you screenshot it before you submit it because once you submit it, it goes off into some black hole and then it will reappear, you know, a few days, weeks, months, years down the line. So take a screenshot and email me at victoria@fiercefatty.com and I am going to send you a copy of my best selling book and you're going to get an ebook version and also an audio version.

So if you'd like listening to it, I've got you covered. If you're a reader, got you covered there. So the book is called Fierce Fatty. Love your body and live like the queen you already. So that is a best seller. It was a bestseller in. Also on Amazon, you have different categories. It was a bestseller in like diet. Diet and weight loss, I'll say yes. The edge, Oh, getting all those people who were thinking about dieting and taking them across to the evil side of body positivity and fat positivity. So that's pretty cool. So, do that and also if you share on if you're listening and you share on social media that you're listening and that you're loving what you're hearing or whatever you want to say about it and tag me. Make sure you have a public profile so I can see the tag. I will end to you to win one of five Fierce Fatty mugs. They're pretty badass. I have one myself. So you can't buy them anywhere. So I have five to give away. Tag me on social media saying that you're listening to the Fierce Fatty podcast and I will enter you to win one of those mugs. But every single person who leaves a review, you will get a copy of my book. You just need to email me with the screenshot of your review and I'll just send it to you. No strings attached. Right? Magical. Okay.

So in this episode, we are going to be talking about the three biggest fears we have about stopping dieting and loving our fat bodies and how to get over them. So if you have these fears, you are 100% normal. It's so normal to have these fears. So if you have these fears, I'm going to be talking about, and there are lots of fears, but these are the three main ones that I see time and time again, and it stops people from taking action and from really embracing their fat bodies. Then you know, it's normal. Don't stress about it. Just recognize that you have them and let's go through them today and I'll break them down and show you how these ideas might be problematic, understand where they're coming from, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Also, I have made a resource to go along this, with this episode. So go to the episode webpage which is fiercefatty.com/004 because it's episode four. Again, fiercefatty.com/004 and there's going to be a link there for you to download the fuck fear action guide. And this will help you go through everything that we're going through in the episode today. Follow along and I have some exercises in there for you too, so you can have maximum impact from our time together today.

So the biggest fear that I hear is if I stopped dieting and if I start to intuitive eating, I am going to put on weight. I'm going to put on loads of weight, I'm going to become even fatter and it's going to be terrible. So a lot of people say, what if I stopped dieting and controlling what I eat? I'm just going to eat forever. I'm going to just eat only things that are quote-unquote unhealthy or quote-unquote bad. I am going to be this uncontrollable monster. A lot of people say, well, intuitive eating has a refeeding stage which is a part of intuitive eating is you have to build trust back with your body. And what we do with our bodies while we die or restrict, if you're not on an active diet, you're probably still restricting in ways you've not realized. Because we live in diet culture and there's so much bullshit that we believe about food. You have to build that trust back and that is giving yourself the food that you've denied yourself all these years and think about it. It has to be done, right? You have to rebuild that trust and you're going to have to be, you know, eating those things that you've denied yourself all of these years. And so that refeeding stage really scares people because they know how they feel about certain foods, about how they love them so much and is so obsessed with them and I just can't eat enough. And the reason why you're feeling like that about certain foods is that you've denied yourself. Like you don't feel like that about the foods that you think are quote-unquote healthy for you, right?

You're not like, Oh my God, I could never stop eating carrots. Oh, if I ever got my fatty hands-on carrots, Oh my God, I'll be day eating them day in, day out. All I'd ever do is eat carrots and I'll, you know, probably turn orange more of carrots that I ate. No, because you know, theoretically that you can have as many carrots as much as you want and it might be a neutral food for you. You might have actually diet things attached to it. And so you might not even want to eat any carrots and that's all to do with the way that you perceive that food. And so by allowing yourself that food, then you're taking that power out of it. Anyway, tied tangent about what refeeding is in the intuitive eating model in case you didn't know what that was. A lot of people think that if you are not monitoring what you eat then you're going to just explode into a really, really, really big person.

These are the fears and you're going to be out of control. And so that control and that monitoring, you people can be really worried about letting that go. And a lot of people think, well I've already put on weight and I haven't truly already you know, let go of dieting and I'm still monitoring. I'm still, you know, not really going for it and I've already put on weight. So if I really do properly go for it, then I'm just going to get really, really big. People are worried that they can't deal with being bigger. Like their life is hard now and they hate their body now. So what happens if they get bigger then life is going to be, you know, exponentially worse and they're going to hate themselves more for every pound heavier than they are.

And another big thing is that people, we all are so concerned about what others think of us. And you know, what if I have gone from straight size to being a fat person, or what if I'm fat, I've gone to even, you know, I've got turned from a medium factor, super fat. What are people are gonna think of me? What if I see an old colleague on the street? What if Aunt Pam posts a picture of me on Facebook where I'm not looking my best? And people are like, Oh my God, did you see them? Did you see how fat they got? Oh, Oh God, Oh, she's been eating that chocolate bars, isn't she? So these are all the fears associated around being putting on weight. Totally legitimate fear. Okay? So if you have that fear, it's normal. Don't feel bad, but we don't want to have that fear because it's based in fatphobia. So fatphobia. The fear of fat, being fat, fat people, the dislike of fatness, fat people. And so your buying into a system that discriminates against you, it discriminates marginalizes fat body. So if you believe it's okay for other people to be fat, but for you not so much. I don't, you know, I'm just not beautiful if I'm fat, other people can be beautiful but not me. It's still fatphobia is internalized fatphobia if you're living in a bigger body. And so this fear is also based on the idea that your body is this monster that without your control is just going to turn into something horrifying. Right? And that's not based in reality. The reality is we have very little control over our bodies and what they do and how much we weight.

And you perceived control over your body is perceived. Yes. If you change the way that you eat going from eating you know, hardly any food and being really restrictive and you allow yourself more food. Things might change in your body, but they might not, we just don't know. You might be and you might weight more, you might weight the same, you might weightless. We can't predict that. But that fear of I don't want to try because what if I get fat? Is really holding you back and it's keeping you buying into diet culture, into fatphobia, buying into that we should keep fat people marginalized because it's such a terrible thing for you to be fat, right? If you really truly believe that fat bodies deserve love and respect, you would include yourself in that.

So another big thing is the idea of certain levels of fat being more acceptable. And that's the reality of life is that someone who is a smaller fat person is much more palatable to society than someone who is a super fat or an infinifat. These are terms coined by Ash from the Fat Lip podcast and it identifies that there's a spectrum of fat bodies and those who are on the smaller end of the spectrum or those who are straight size experience tons more privilege than those who live on the other end of the spectrum those who are infinifat or death fats. And that's just a fact. Having privileged doesn't mean that you're a good person or a bad person. It just means that life is just that little bit more easy for you because your body is smaller and it doesn't mean that your life's easy in general. Like it doesn't, you know, having privileges just not mean fairy tales and rainbows and unicorns and glitter and all that type of stuff. It just means because you have some type of privilege, it's a little bit easier for you. I'm going to do a whole episode on privilege to explain it better for you, but that's kind of a snapshot.

And so if you are a fat person, say you're a small, medium fat and you're scared of going into being a larger fat or a super fat or an Infinifat or death fat, then that is more bias and prejudice that you are holding, right? So, yes, if you are bigger, life is more difficult, right? There are accessibility issues. You don't get believed by your doctor as much as you get paid less, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I want to do a whole episode on privilege, so we'll talk about that more.

But you're buying into the idea that a bigger body is less valuable and that's not true. Super fats and infinifats and death fats. Infinifat and death fat are interchangeable by the way. Aren't they just as valuable as a human, as someone who is straight-sized or a small fat or a medium fat? Yeah. Yeah, they are. So it's kind of unearthing more bias that you might have. And by the way, we all have bias. We are all are fat-phobic even I am fat phobic. It's just that I haven't yet discovered the layers of my fatphobia that are so deep, right? We kind of take off layers and layers and you're like, wow, I am a biggie. Oh shit. Also the idea about the fear of getting fat, it kind of buys into the false idea that we can control our bodies. I kind of mentioned that before, but the reality is that we really have very little control over what our bodies do.

Another point about this is this belief you know, the fear about getting fat, it puts other people's fat-phobic opinions above your own mental and physical health, right? If you're worried about what other people are gonna think, you're putting their opinions above your wellbeing. If you're worried that weird Uncle Keith is going to see a picture of you on Facebook and be like, Ow, the layer of golf fat, then you're saying, weird Uncle Keith's perception of you is more important than how you actually feel inside. That mental wellbeing of letting go of diets, our physical wellbeing because as we discovered in the last episode, dieting is fucked up. It makes us sick. It makes us unhealthy in so many ways. Of course, you don't have to be healthy if you don't want to, but your wellbeing and your happiness are more important than what any motherfucker out there thinks of you and the size of your body. If those people who are judging you, you don't want them in there in your life anyway, right? So fuck what they think and do what is best for you.

Okay. So the next fear is that fear that stopping dieting and starting intuitive eating or loving your body means that you are going to become unhealthy. So you might be thinking things like, if I allow myself to eat all the food that I want, I am just gonna eat lard by the pound and fistfuls of sugar and then become so unhealthy that I spontaneously combust from fat cancer. Right? Have you thought of that? It's made up of disease or fat cancer. You might be also thinking if I don't stay on top of myself, I will never want to exercise because the reason why I exercise currently is just to try and control the size of my body. I don't do it for fun. I do it to punish myself because this is what a fatty does and if I stopped doing that, then I'm never going to want to engage in any type of body movement ever again.

You might be thinking it's really important to be healthy. My health is really important to me. You might be thinking, my health condition is worsened by being fat. You might be thinking, my health condition is managed with weight loss. Your doctor might have said to you, you need to lose weight to be healthy. And you might believe that it's really hard, if not impossible to be fat and healthy. So any of those ringing true for you? Any of those you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I believe that. That's true, isn't it? Like isn't it? What is it not true? Is it true? Well, let's find out. Okay. So a lot of this stuff is based on healthism. So healthism is the belief that the individual is responsible for maintaining the quote-unquote machine that is their body and healthism values healthy bodies over unhealthy bodies. So wellness is the new diet and healthism is the new wellness. Okay? So it's stuff that is ways to cloak our biases and healthism is one of them. You might be thinking, well, what's wrong with wanting to be healthy? Well, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be healthy, but it's the way that we speak about those who are healthy and those who are not healthy in the way that we think and feel about them. The reason why this is something that we want to look at and be aware of is that if we say someone is more valuable, if they are healthy, then it increases the marginalization of those who cannot be healthy for whatever reason and who are not healthy and who choose that health is not one of the big things that they want to focus on in life.

You are not morally superior if you decide that you really want to focus on your health. You're not morally inferior if you're just like, wow, I'm just going to live my life and see, you know, see what happens. Neither of those has any moral label attached to them in reality, but society doesn't tell us that. And so this is why we really worry about our health in ways that is not helpful for us. Again, so this belief presumes that you have control over your health. It presumes that food and exercise make up what someone, what makes someone healthy or not healthy. And the reality is health is a very complex issue and the food you eat and the exercise that you do makes up only a small portion of what makes up a whole person's health status. And I'm like, I'm so geeking out on healthism at the moment and how health is a social construct and health is not binary. You can't be healthy or 100% or unhealthy 100%. It's not an on-off switch where it's all shades of gray. Anyway, and so there are so many different factors that lead to your mental and physical well being. And it's to do with your socioeconomic status where you live. If you have access to health care it's to do with your family of origin is to do with your access to mental health services. It's really, really complex. And to say that it's an individual's fault or responsibility. What the health status is it's misleading and really we don't have that much control over health outcomes.

Also, this fear rejects the idea that mental health is as important or maybe more than physical health. Okay. So at that moment that you're saying, I can't stop dieting and controlling my way and trying to do all that stuff, you know, that dieting damages your mental health, right? As we found it in the last episode, it really does damage your mental health as well as physical health. But you're saying, okay, I don't want the risk of damaging my physical health, not that is necessarily going to happen. And so because of the risk in my mind that there's going to be some sort of damage to my physical health. I am going to continue damaging my mental health because we already know that diets cause disordered eating causes full-blown eating disorders. So you're trading off an almost definite of damaging your mental health for maybe who knows, right? And is your mental well being not as important as your physical well being? Is it? It is up to you, right? You might say no, actually I don't want to risk any type of change to my health status and what might be the best decision for you. Whatever you choose to do with your body is your business.

Also, this buys into the idea that by being fatter, you will be more unhealthy which is total bullshit, right? A smaller body doesn't equal health status. A larger body doesn't mean you're automatically unhealthy. We have no idea about her person's health status nor is there any of our business by looking at the size of their body at all, right? We have no idea at all. So if you believe that having a bigger body is going to make you unhealthy, you're buying into that lie, into that bullshit that we can presume someone's health status by how much adipose tissue they have on their body and we simply can't do that. Finally, it helps you continue judging your body and others by how healthy they are, which is fucked up and it's not gonna work because you can't judge your body on how healthy you are. Because sorry to break it to you, one day you're going to die and you're going to have no health. So we're all hurtling towards the inevitability of death. Sorry, gloomy. I know. And some of you are getting self esteem from being like, well, I'm really healthy, I'm fat but I'm healthy. That's problematic in itself but you are going to lose that health. Hopefully, you're going to get older, your mobility is going to be reduced. Hopefully you'll be very old when you die and when you're very, very old when you die, you're not going to be doing cartwheels. And maybe you will, I don't know, you might be 110 and doing back flips or whatever. But the reality is your health is going to change and by judging and putting a value on bodies when they are healthy means that your self esteem and you’re worth are tied up with that and therefore it's just going to go downhill and you know you're going to feel sad. So sorry to be so cherry talking about death but that is the reality.

Okay. So the third fear that I hear a lot and it's kind of like people's deep, dark secret because they don't want to admit this, but a lot of people fear that they are going to be unattractive or continue to be unattractive or grow more unattractive. If they put on weight or they stay the same weight or then, you know, that they are who they are. So types of things that I hear around this is, it's okay to be curvy but not fat, fat, fat, fat. You know, it's okay to have curves in the right places, you know, and a flat stomach, big tits, fat bum. But, that's not what my body is doing. I have tiny tits, big belly, flat bum. I'm round, you know it's not sexy. People say my spouse is probably going gonna confess to me that they fancied me more when I was thinner and really deep down when they look at me, they're just like, Oh, you're disgusting. I'm really making them unhappy by getting fatter or being fat or, you know, cause my body has changed. If you don't have a spouse, a lot of people say, no one wants to date me looking like this. It's just not attractive. And nevermind if I'm fat, then you know, if I'm fat, then I'm just going to be scraping the barrel of some loser that wants to date me.

A lot of people are worried that they're never going to be seen as hot or sexy by their spouse or by others just from pea or momsie You might be thinking, people may want to have sex with me secretly on the down-low, but they don't want to date me or marry me or hold my hand in public or any of that stuff. Like they'll fuck me, but you know, don't tell anyone about it. You might be thinking, I really can see the beauty in other fat people. I look at other fat people and I'm just like, wow, they're so stylish and they are cool and they're amazing. Oh, great. But for me, no, no. I don't look the same as what they look you know. I just, mm, my body is gross. You might be thinking, I just look better when I'm smaller. It's just fat. I look better. I'm more beautiful when I'm smaller. And a lot of people say I wish that I didn't care about this stuff or value it or think about it. But I do, I do. I worry about how romantic partners are or do perceive my body. And that's a problem for me.

So if you're worried about this stuff, again, it's 100% normal because we as humans, you know, we want intimacy, we want love, and we want acceptance and society have told us that fat body isn’t acceptable. So, of course, you're going to be worried about this. Of course, you fear this and it runs through your mind and no matter how much intellectually you know this is fucking bullshit. It's still in the back of your mind because it's human nature to want to feel those things that our partner might be able to provide you.

So let's change our thinking about this, about, you know, fat is unattractive, my spouse is going to tell me I'm unattractive. By the way, I'll make an episode on this, but my boyfriend of I was with him for six years, told me, confess to me, I find you less attractive because you've put on weight. I'll make an episode about lads and what happened about that. But I survived, he's no longer my boyfriend, not for that. But anyway you can survive if that happens. But anyway, this belief, guess what is based on fatphobia again and twist, also sexism. Yes. Hello? Patriarchy. First, it puts a massive value on appearance as an indicator of worth. And you know, we don't want to be buying into that bullshit. That appearance makes means that you are a more valuable human being. Society drills into our brains every single day or a certain way that someone can look, you know, there is beauty in every type of body. And sometimes it's okay to just be like, you know what. You know, some people want to embrace being ugly, right? Some people just like, I'm fucking ugly and it's great. Who cares? Right? All this value, placing all this value on appearance, it's just distracting us from the real issues, right?

This belief says fat is unquestionably, undeniably, unattractive which is not true. There are so many fat people that we've all been like, Ooh, damn. Oh man, I would like to spend 10 minutes with that person who didn't see them and they're fat. Maybe they're fat as hell, you know? So fat is attractive, okay? It's not empirical. Fat is never attractive to anyone. That's not true. In fact, sorry, this is hetero data, but 25% of men say that they will date a fat woman. Okay? So straight men say they'll date a straight woman. Sorry, hetero data. Female focus, women-focused. And so if you think about it, we've got almost 8 billion people in the world. Let's say this is really dumping it down, but 50% are men, 50% are women. We're not even calculating how many people who don't identify with those labels anyway and say of 25% of men would date a fatty that's around 1 billion people who would date a fatty.

Now, if you think no one's going to date you because you're fat. You have literally if you're a straight woman looking for a dick, you've got 8 billion dicks waving around being like, Oh hello baby, come over here. Give me some of that, give me some of that fatty goodness, right? In theory. And so, okay, not all 8 billion live in your local area. But still, that's still hundreds of thousands of people who are properly close to you within an hour, you know, who are an hour plane ride or whatever. And, but the reality is, you know, you'd like, no one wants to date me cause I'm fat. No bitch, it's not true. Society tells us that, right? We see that played out over and over and over again. And you know, the movies that you're watching, the TV shows, you know, that the fat loser you can be funny, but you never, you know, the romantic, the apple of someone's eye and all that type of stuff, it's not true.

Fact people are getting laid. Fat people are having the most romantic, wonderful love lives. Fat people are desired. There are fat sex workers whose phones are ringing off the hook from men who society says are stereotypically attractive, who just want a slice of that fatty ass. That fear is not based in reality that no one wants to date you. Yes, fewer people want to date you because we live in a fatphobic society. But, the way that I see it is cool. You're automatically screening out all the knob heads out there. If you don't want to have sex with me or be with me because I'm fat, then poof, you’re missing out baby because I'm fucking amazing. Right? So it's, I just see it as a perfect screening tool, right? You don't like me because I'm fat. Great. See you later loser.

Imagine, if you ended up with a fatphobic by accident, like if you were thin and then you started dating someone and you'd realize that they're a massive bigger but fat people, we don't need to worry about that because when you know the fatphobic don't date us. So yay for us, we're lucky and think about it this way. Should you do what you know, should you not do what you want to do in life because Brad or Chad from school, you know, from all those years back is like, Oh, a fat gal that gross, Oh, fat boys that gross or whatever. Are you going to let that knob head who is, you know, probably a massive loser and be like, hmmm that gross. Are you going to let their fatphobic beliefs infiltrate your brain and let that kind of run around your mind and play havoc with your life?

No, we've moved on from that. That was like, you know, whenever you went to school the 1990s or 80's or 90's or whatever the year after the 90's to 2000 so that people that have gone to school in the 2000s, yeah. Oh my God. Wow. Or the 70's or 60's or whenever, right. Those types of beliefs that we hear from the boys and girls and people at school, you know, a lot of them stay with us, but you know, we've grown on for that. We're adults now. When you just get rid of that, you know, it's fucking bullshit that they spouted and that we continue to believe. So say if you really buy into that belief of the fat is not attractive, it's really not attractive. It's ugly. Fat is ugly. You're like, no, it's ugly. Okay, so embrace that you're ugly. Do ugly people not also deserve respect? Do ugly people not also get dates? Do ugly people not also get fucked? Yeah man, Other people are getting fucked all left, right and center. They're having the best sex. They're having the best romantic lives. They're having all the things because I agree people are worthy and they're great and they're amazing. So if you really think that fat is unattractive, embrace that and be like, I'm fucking ugly, you know?

But the reality is we shouldn't be having to convince each other that something is attractive and it's not attractive and all that type of stuff because it's distracting us from the real thing, right? This focus on the outer appearance is to keep our minds busy so that we're not, they're out there taking over the world and being bad-ass power bitches, right? Or power bosses or whatever you want to describe yourself. Right? So it's just a distraction. Like Naomi Wolf said in the Beauty Myth, dieting is the most potent form of political sedative in history. A quietly mad population is an attractable one. And so that's when dieting, right? It makes you kind of mad. But this stuff does too. That fear of being rejected by someone you fancy because of your body. It really eats up your brain space and imagines if you could just let that go.

So I like to think about who is benefiting from us believing all of this, these bullshit lies. Someone benefits, right? It's not us. We ain't benefiting. In some ways, we do benefit because it keeps us quote-unquote safe and in our comfort zone and all that type of stuff. But someone benefits. And normally the people who benefit are old, rich white men. Who is an old rich white man that would enrage you to know that your negative beliefs about your fat body are benefiting? Who would it? It would just, you'd be like, fuck that noise. I'm not giving him any of my brain space, any of myself doubt any of my criticism because I am fucking amazing. For me, that is Donald Trump.

I ain't give him that motherfucker an ounce of myself doubt. No. And he's above it type of guy who'd be like, eww, I didn't wanna fuck a fatty. Great, thanks. Don't want to fuck you, right? So he's a perfect person and so if you can envision him. I'm sorry. I know, I don't want you to be thinking about Donald Trump, but that moment that you like, Oh no one wants to date me. Just think about Donald Trump's saying that in your head. Oh, no one wants to date you. Clearly I can't do a Donald Trump voice. Then you'd be like, fuck off. No one wants to date me. Watch this mother fucker. I'm getting me some do tonight, right? So, you know, just imagine him being like, mm, do you really want to get any fatter? Oh, you're already gonna get unhealthy. Then you're just gonna be like, Nah, go the fuck away, Donald Trump. So it can be a Donald Trump. It could be someone else. There's someone else that inspires you. But he's very inspirational for me because I don't want him to be getting any of that stuff. And not only that, your brain space. But what are you not doing because you were spending time thinking that you're not good enough? Okay. So if you're spending all this time thinking you're good enough, I'm not attractive, my fat body is bad, you're not going to be doing the things that you could be doing. You know, taking over the world, becoming the president doing, you know, getting a new job or asserting boundaries or spending time doing a really cool coloring picture or stroking your cat, you know? But if you're like up in your head, you're not really present with these things and you're not able to go out and crush things in the same way that you would if you were just like, mmmm, don't give a fuck if people think I'm unattractive or if my fat body is bad or if they think that I'm unhealthy. I'm doing me and I'm fucking amazing regardless of what they think. And I think it's okay to be fast and it's okay to be thin. It's okay to be whoever you are. I'm just going to carry on with my life.

So if these fears have struck a chord with you, then make sure that you go to the show notes for this. Again, it's fiercepatty.com/004 for episode four. Every show notes gonna follow the same thing, like 005 et cetera. So that you can get that free download which is the fuck fear action guide is really good. It's pretty as well. I've got a really nice picture of fatty on the front with really nice bingo wings. And we're going to go through those fears. So I'm worried about getting fat or fatter and or if I stop dieting, embrace intuitive eating I will become unhealthy or more unhealthy and I am scared that if I become fat or fatter I will become unattractive or more unattractive.

We go through those and I break down like we did in the episode, all of those fears and we get you to reframe them for you. By the way, one of the fears that we mentioned about, you know, your doctor says that you need to lose weight to be healthy or my health condition is worsened by being fat. So something I want to say on that because we didn't really cover that but that's just an extra thing is that remember from the last episode if you've not listened to our last episode, go in order because I'm going through all of these things in order. And so you know, that we get a full understanding of everything that we talking about when we're talking about fatness. So go back and listen. But what we know about being fat and losing weight or losing weight for anyone is the best chance 5% of diets work.

If you're a bigger person, it's closer to a no point, no 8% chance. So basically a 0% chance. Not one single study has ever shown a diet that works. Not one ever, ever, ever, ever and holy shit. You know, that the diet industry is pouring so much money into finding evidence to prove that their shitty ass diet works, but it doesn't. Okay. And so what we do know is that dieting makes us unwell physically and mentally. I mentioned in the episode and so if your doctor says your condition needs to be managed by losing weight, they are prescribing you something that has at best. If we're being generous a 5% efficacy rate, right? Closer to you know, zero basically. And it doesn't necessarily manage your condition. Okay, so a big one. People like well, but what if I have sore knees? Okay. Do you think people ever get sore knees? Yeah. Are they told to lose weight? No. The root cause is identified. The truth is our knees can take humongous loads over years and years and years, really big, big loads more than a human can weight. So telling you to lose weight is going to damage your physical and mental health and it's not going to alleviate your knee pain. Maybe during your weight loss endeavors, maybe you're moving your body more, maybe you're strengthening your muscles and maybe that is helping. And a lot of people think, Oh, it's because I've lost weight but it's not necessarily that, right? And so ask your doctor, what would you prescribe to someone who is small? Who has this condition or does small people get this condition? Yes. Okay. Can you prescribe me that because I have a history of knowing diets are bullshit or you can say something else?

I say to my doctor, no, I don't diet. I'm fat-positive, blah and prescribed me that, please. Thank you very much. So you know, the whole idea that you need to lose weight to manage your health conditions is bogus, which is bogus. It could be that you just need to change the way that you eat or the way that you move your body or change something but weight loss is not sustainable and hurts us. So anyway, side note to that because we didn't really address it in the episode.

All right, so if you enjoyed this episode then please subscribe and remember, leave that review so that you can get a copy of my book. I'm going to send you the audio and digital copy of my best selling book. Make sure that you leave the review, take a screenshot before submitting it and email victoria@fiercefatty.com. That's victoria@fiercefatty.com. You can leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher, or if you find anywhere else that you can leave a review, go for it. Share on social media that you are listening to this episode and tag me. Make sure your account is public so I can see and I'm going to enter you into win a Fierce Fatty mug.

At the end of each episode, I want to share a random fact with you about me so you can get to know me a little bit better. In today's fact is that I am one of 45 cousins in my family. So I have 45 cousins and more actually counting and keep growing. So I have a massive family. My mom is Irish. They love a little bit of unprotected sex, a little bit, a lot. My dad was English. So on my dad's side, I have an aunt, an uncle, and like three cousins and no, four, four, sorry, four. I got lose track. And then on my mom's side, she's one of 13. I always get this wrong cause there's so many. I'll tell you what, cause I'm in Ireland at the minute, right? Whenever, it just feels like, Oh, someone's coming around the house. Oh, this is your cousin, this is your arm, this is your great, great-grandma. This is which is really cool. And you're like, oh, I don't know who these people are. It's really cool. It's really nice to have a big family and feel like you're a part of some kind of big clan or something. I guess that would be an Irish word or maybe it's a Scottish word. Yeah. And, my family has lived in this area in Ireland for many, many, many, many years.

Yesterday, I went to see my great, great granddad's grave. Yeah, great, great. Yeah, it was, you know, 1800 or whatever. So, and that's just down the street from where we are so in Donegal. So yeah, that is my fact. I am one of 50 billion. Oh, actually and as well I am one of, how many siblings do I have? Hang on, let me see, let me count. And that was four, two, three, one Oh seven, one of seven. And actually, of all of the siblings, there's not actually a lot of children yet. So someone come impregnate me, joking. I just want the D for now. Thank you very much.

Alright. Thanks for tuning in to episode four of the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I really enjoyed hanging out with you today and I'm going to see you on the flip side.

Have a wonderful day. My gorgeous fatty, and I'll see you soon.