Episode 95 Transcript

Read transcript alongside audio.

Welcome to the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I'm your host, Victoria Welsby and this is episode 95. Today, we're talking about do this to feel more confident.

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 fifth party 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 first fatty podcast Let's begin.

Hello, welcome to the episode surplus. Y'all owe any of you interested in doing business? Shit? I'm curious. I'm curious. When you were interested in getting into the business of doing doing kind of like what I'm doing. Just some just some advice, just some advice, just some advice. When I was started my business, maybe 2016, Gosh, 2015 2016, whatever. Sometime sometime. A few years ago, I thought that starting a business meant that I just have to decide to do it up a website, send out a few posts, and I would probably be a millionaire within two to three minutes. That it wouldn't be that hard. And the entrepreneur lifestyle is just the best thing ever. You know, why would you? Why would you want a j ob when you could be your own boss and all that type of jazz and, and obviously, luckily, I found a calling and this is what I want to do.

But it's hard. I gotta tell you, it's hard. It's not impossible. Like I don't want to encourage discourage people. But sometimes to know how to. To have an online business, you have to kind of wear many hats, you have to be comfortable doing marketing, you have to be comfortable doing admin until you can get an admin assistant, you have to be comfortable doing customer service, all that type of stuff and a lot of people and and then coaching. Obviously, if you're if you're doing coaching stuff, and a lot of people are really good at you know, customer service or coaching or and a lot of people really don't like the marketing side of things and and it's hard and I get it like yeah, it's tough and I'm just the reason why I'm talking about this is because yesterday I got a message from someone who is a I don't know that they're teaching like anti diet stuff. And they got they sent me a message saying hey, can you share my program on your Instagram? They'd never messaged me before. I'm teaching people how to unlearn fatphobia and there were a straight size person. And so I just messaged back saying, Oh, hey, this is not the best way to market your program. If you'd like to learn how to successfully market your program.

Go and look at someone like Courtney Scholl from yay for 100k. Courtney is one of my friends and great program anyway. And this person responded back saying let me tell you what they said. I got I can't find it. I can't find it. Because I'm recording on my phone right now. But I was trying to look on my laptop for for the words they said exactly. But they were just like really snarky and they were like, well, Jameela Jamil shared it and so I approached a smaller account like yours. I see though you're not interested in helping people in in this industry. Oh, as I was showing that drink, Ella's. And then I said back to them. Listen, don't forget how like offensive it is to message a fat person who you've never interacted with before. Never, never had messaged me before. And he just started following me saying, Hey, can you get your fat followers? Can you share with your audience of fat people? and ask them to buy my program, even though I have a program where I have been present teaches your fat followers how to be out how to learn fatphobia. And so I said that and I said, Listen, why are you getting mad?

5:19

When I shared a resource on how you could better market stuff, and oh my god, then this person when Oh, they just was like, I share your content all the time lie. I didn't know that you had a program? Well, if you shared my content all the time, then you would know that I had a program. I they said, they were basically like, Oh, fine.

And they said, Maybe I should stick to other straight size people. And they just had me to load, like 20 messages. When I said, Hey, don't you know, this is not the best way to go about it. And and then I said, when people are not interested, then you shouldn't respond with. But I see you're not interested in helping out someone else in the movement. That is shady as fuck, please don't message me anymore. And ask a straight size person to help you untangle what went down here? And yeah, no, they didn't do that. They just they just kept sending me rude messages, saying, I'm rude. I'm immature. Are you serious? You have a problem. I came to you as a very nice person. And this is what you do. I find you I find that very immature. I don't see anything wrong with my messages. So what exactly are you trying to do? And then they say you've got a giant following. Even though in the previous messages, they said, you've got a huge pot, you've got a small pocket following Anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway, this got on my tits big time. Not just this, like this is like a small thing. But a couple of days ago. Two separate straight size people had taken my content on Instagram, and freakin cropped out my name on the, on the gunden. And then shared it uncredited, went to the effort of cropping up my name from two different pieces of content to separate people to share on them on their, on their platform, both the straight size people, I was just like, for fuck sake. And so I didn't you know, I didn't call them out. But. And this goes on all the time. This goes on all the time, people I know, trying to hustle. And in their hustling, they just, you know, shitting on other people.

And in order to try and grow their business. I'm just like, Oh, you do it it rah, rah burn. And so I know if you've got a business and you're listening, and you know, there's there's like, I don't know, I don't I feel like you know how you know how to make friends with people, right? And so if you want to make friends within a certain community, just say, Oh, hey, how you doing? I like your shit. And, and then someone's like, oh, cool things, you know, and then just, you know, build a relationship with that person versus this person coming into my inbox being like, share my shit, give me give me your clients. And I'll teach them as a thin person, how to not be fat phobic. Oh, beverages. Anyway, so this, this has helped me with my decision to no longer be in my DMs on Instagram, I'm actually going to ask my assistant to read my DMs and so and read and respond to my DMs.

And so unless people are actually real life, friends, or friends in person, or I've known, you know, we already have a connection or whatever, then it won't be me in my inbox. I say I say that I'd probably from time to time I'll be like, Oh, what's going on? I want to know, and go in and like interact with people. Because a lot of times I'm just like, I'll share like some funny thing and people send me funny responses. So I really enjoy that. But then there's always a one I probably get one message a day from someone saying something that makes my brain go. I don't like that. Yeah, and it's funny because yesterday as well, I shared a clip of an interview I did saying about how to deal with trolls and saying how most of the time like sometimes I'm like want to educate them and then sometimes I'm I'm I'm like, you know, fuck them and then the highest version of myself will just

9:49

not interact with them. And it's so hard, so hard when you're like, I saw that message from this this girl like first thing yesterday and then I had therapy in therapy I spoke about because my first reaction was like, Okay, I'm gonna send them a really nice message about, like, you know, one, you know, like breaking down why the tactic wasn't effective, and how they could go about. And I was like, you know, what, why am I going to spend 1020 minutes writing a really cool message, I could just send them something, which is simple and to the point, and, you know, and I said to them, like, you know, join this program, good luck sort of thing. You know, I wasn't like, fuck, you go away. Yeah. And then I had therapy, and in therapy, this is what we're talking about, like, how do we deal with? How do I know that we, there's no one else in my DMs. And I deal with people who expect a lot from me.

And that kind of guilt that I have. I do have guilt because I want to. I want to help people. And I do want to help people. And I genuinely wish that I could, because a lot of people send me like really traumatic stories without giving me a trigger warning. And just to like, kind of, like, fix my life. But then if I say, oh, yeah, okay, would you like to do one on one coaching? They're like, No, go away, I hate you. And so, it's tough. And because I'm only one person, and so trying to figure out, how can I strike a balance, and I realized that, you know, my VA does my email. So, you know, and so that means I have more energy to do things like this, where I can reach more people, and unfortunately, can't be, you know, more of that one on one stuff. And, and in the last, you know, five years, five years, how many years 556 years of me doing that I have in my business, I would be able to spend more one on one time for free with people. And now I just don't have the capacity. I don't have the capacity don't have the capacity, and don't have the the the the physical capacity and the mental capacity. Yeah. So anyway, that's updates from my, my life, the Instagram drama, drama. And I And by the way, most of my interactions, or interactions on Instagram are really nice and really lovely. And most of, of Luckily, most of what I hear from people is really wonderful kind things. So, but it's kind of like the balance, where do you want the balance be? Can I can I only see the good things? Good things, please. Why my dears? Yeah, so today, I wanted to share some practical steps with you to help you if you're looking to feel more confident in your body or just confident in general. And really kind of dig, dig down on, on, on how to do these things. In how many steps you've got five steps, five steps, five stops. So what we're talking about is, if you don't feel confident in your body, there are consequences in your life to that, right. If you don't feel confident in your body, you might avoid doing things, or do things to try and make you feel more confident that aren't really helping you. Or the comfort you but or a distraction, you know, like maybe doing something like adjusting your clothes or, or wearing certain things to hide your body or, or you know, maybe doing things like not going to events or all sorts of different things like that.

And so how do we overcome that? Like how do we go from having a lack of confidence to feeling a lot better and doing things. So a huge, rigid mistake that I see people making time and time and time again, is they do a lot of learning, they do a lot of learning, they get into something that I've a phrase that I've coined the thing that I've coined Constant Learner mode, they're in constant learner mode, which is

14:32

Learning about the subject, you know, learn about, about fat positivity, about anti diet, about confidence about all of that juicy shit, listening to podcasts, or reading books or following accounts. And all of that is super important. Like, listen to my podcast, okay? Do not listen to my bad girls because I'll miss you. But all of those things are important, but it's you're missing and really big part of the ingredient, the next ingredient is taking action. And so we have to take action in a really in a way that's going to help us and support us and not in a way that is going to traumatize us. A lot of people say to me, Oh, well, I tried to take action. Once I one time I went out and I did this thing. And it just totally fucked me up, because it was really awful. And, and people staring at me, or you know, someone said something, and it was really bad. And we, we don't want to do that, right? We don't want to take that type of action, where we're putting ourselves in a vulnerable position that could actually derail us. And so I want to talk about that as well. Now, with taking action, you have to actually do the work to see the changes.

And you can't expect to see dramatic changes in your life just by you know, following some fatties on Instagram. Especially if you're a quote unquote, baby fat, so somewhat someone who's new to the fat positive community, because then you're unable to spot when some influences are not actually in line with fat positivity and body positivity. And they say loads of, like, problematic things. So when I was new in this thing, I was like, oh, yeah, man. Yeah, you know, diets suck and Anila. But it's really important to be healthy. And so I would follow accounts. I was like, I don't know if it's still around. But there was an account called Healthy as a new skinny. And I was like, Yeah, this is it this is it healthy is the new skinny. And I was like, is like, no. Oh, you were close, Victoria, but not quite. And so following that account, it was a step forward. But still, it was still kind of health ism, ableism diet culture, but just with a different label. Right. And, and as well, like, if you're following some, some people online, some of them are doing a ton of photoshopping and airbrushing and wearing shape underwear, and only showing like really super glamorous shops, shots and, and, or maybe on diets themselves. And so we're kind of showing off, you know, our glass fatties or, or fatties that are more palatable. Like when I was in New or in the journey, I, there's no way that I'd follow like super fat people, I'd be like, Oh, that's just too far. Oh, my God, you know what I follow very attractive, fat people, and it would make me feel better. But it was just reinforcing things that I needed to unlearn. And another thing to consider is, you know, about this kind of learning and, and all that type of stuff. Again, learning is good. Like, I'm not saying don't try and learn.

17:52

Sometimes people can feel like, I need to become like, a fat scholar, to be able to, to feel to be able to, I need to know that much about fat shit to be, you know, the most knowledgeable person, and then I'm going to feel better. And knowledge doesn't always translate into changing the way that you view fat bodies, right? There's a lot there's a lot of, of people who know about certain stuff and hate their own fat body, right? They're like, Oh, fat, people should have rights and fat people should not be sticking, stigmatized and oppressed. And hey, you're being fat themselves. And it's really complicated. And there's lots of different reasons.

But it doesn't always translate. Like having more knowledge about a subject doesn't always translate to you deeply believing that that about you. You could probably deeply believe it about other fat people, but maybe not your self. So now let's first The first step is to get out of constant learning mode and just make the decision that you're going to take action. So that's the first step just making the decision. Okay. And so the next step, that step number two, is to work out what you're not doing, or what you are doing because you don't like your body. So think about what you're doing or what you're not doing because you don't like your body. So here's some examples of things that people could be doing. They could be thinking negatively about themselves all day. They could be avoiding social situations. They could be wearing certain types of clothes that maybe don't feel like them or or hide their body. They could be single, even though they don't want a spouse. They could be in a relationship even though they don't like less vows. They could not want to speak up at work. They could be scared to leave their job and find a new one. And as well, like some things to point out here, there are some things that you know, as fat people, we, you know, legitimately legitimately can't do some people who are bigger fat people can always find clothes that express express who they are authentically. So I'm not talking about things where, you know, you can't leave your job because it's, it's impossible to find a new job or, or, you know, you have to support your family or whatever, I'm not talking about those types of situations, because that's, you know, absolutely 100,000% legitimate, I'm thinking I'm talking about the things where it's a belief, and it's not, you know, a fact. And it's, it's a, it's a kind of, it reduces your life satisfaction and your happiness. And you know, that if you didn't think negatively about your body all day long, your brain could be occupied with doing like, more interesting stuff. Like, I don't know, watching Netflix and scratching your bumhole, or whatever, you know, things that are really important. So okay, so we, we want to work out what we're not doing, or what we are doing. And you could have a good idea where you might need to like write down a list, and it doesn't have to be dramatic things. Maybe it is dramatic things, but it doesn't have to be. So that is step two.

And just to add to that step, 2.1, or whatever is, is thinking about the opposite of of what it is that you are doing or not doing. So for example, I'll give you these three examples of one is the opposite of thinking negatively about yourself all day. And the opposite of that is not thinking negatively about yourself all day, or thinking less thinking less negatively. So in other words, avoiding social situations, the opposite of that is doing social things. And finally, example being single, even though I want a spouse, so the opposite of that is having a partner. And so we're getting closer there. So this is not it. This is not, we're getting closer, but we're getting closer to an idea of where we want to go. Now,

22:23

when I say oh, think of the opposite, the opposite is not what we're necessarily aiming for. Because not thinking about yourself negatively all day long. Is that, like, is that achievable? Is that realistic? Do even people who think that they're great not do that? I think I've talked shit about myself, you know, many times a day, often it's not about my body, because you know, I just don't just I'm not that bothered, you know, it's not doesn't doesn't correlate, of course, my mind, but still, from time to time, it'll pop up. And still, I'll be talking shit about, you know, the things that I've done on my personality. And so is that, you know, I could reduce that is it to a point where I need to who know things like that. So even though we're thinking about the opposite, we're just putting out the opposite out there. And now we're going to kind of refine it. And so, so step three is making a goal, making a goal from that opposite statement.

And so this might be difficult for some people, a lot of people struggle with that. They're like, I just don't know what to do. Some people, they're like, Okay, well, I'm going to wear this or do that, because it's really clear, whereas others where it's just like, I just don't feel good. How do I make that into a goal? Well, that's something we can do you. So you need to think about what goal you could make from that statement. And to break it down. So let's go back to our examples are examples. Now, thinking negatively about myself all day long? And so the opposite of that is not thinking negatively about myself. Now, is that something that is possible, doable, achievable, realistic, you know, not? Not really, maybe if you're at the state stage right now, where you're thinking, you know, 1000 bad thoughts a day.

Let's try and break this down. Okay, so we're going to get really specific so for example, a goal that you could have from there is, for one day, I'm going to try I am going to catch three negative thoughts and dissect them. Okay, so a goal from that could be let me repeat for one day, catch three negative thoughts and dissect them. So see how you know we've got this this this thing that we want to change thinking thinking negatively all day long. And now we're putting it into something tangible into something. Do you think so if you have 1000 active thoughts a day, do you think it's possible in a 24 hour period period that you could catch them, not change them, just catch them and dissect them? If that feels like no impossible, how about just one in a week, you know. So, examples for the other ones, you're not you're not doing social things, is the is the example. The opposite is doing social things. And the goal from there could be ask my friend to go for a coffee. not dating. Even though you want a partner, the opposite is having a partner and a goal could be so the goal wouldn't be go and find a partner, the goal would be take photos for my dating profile. So with these goals, we really want to break it down to the smallest possible step, so that we can achieve it. So when we think about if I like the analogy of climbing a mountain like self love mountain, I love that analogy of climbing a mountain. If we look at the mountain at the top of the mountain, and we see all the all the different routes and how tall and scary and windy and cold it is. You might just say, Fuck this, I ain't climbing that mountain. But if we said, oh, hey, can you just walk 10 meters to that camp right there and sign in? Then you can think I could do that. And doing that is like, Okay, well, we did the first step. How did it feel?

26:48

Did I did I achieve that? Yes, I did. Have I achieved lots of things in my life. Yes, I have. It's confidence building, right? And people might say poopoo it and be like, Oh, well, it's just walking towards a, you know, desk and signing in. No, that's a big thing. It's a big thing, you've moved a step forward. And so, a lot of times people really struggle with this, we struggle with this stuff. Because they look at the whole picture they look at, oh my god, what you know, like, say they're, you know, a goal is to find a partner. They look at the whole all of it, like, oh my god, what about the first day? What would I wear on the first day? And oh, what if the when, when? When do we care? And, oh, I want to get married, maybe they don't want to get married. And you know, it's like, Listen, this will get ahead of ourselves here, let's just think about logging into OkCupid. You know, that's all you'd have to worry about right now. Because if you are thinking about the whole thing, and it's getting stressful, then it's not helpful, right? And remembering, you know, when you're starting something new, and you're doing something different, if you've if you've hated yourself, or your body for a long time, doing things in the realm of loving yourself, and asking for your what what you want, and expressing yourself is scary as fuck, Ray, Isn't it scary as fuck, because it's brand new. Anything that you're doing that's brand new, is really difficult, really, really difficult. And that's to be expected. But the more that you do it, the more that you get out of constant learning mode and take action, the more that it's going to just be second nature and easy peasy, lemon on mine. And so let's break down the this even further.

Okay, so what now we want to do is make it into a SMART goal. So if you've not heard of this, this acronym before, SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound, let me repeat that make it a SMART goal, which stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound. And so when I see a lot of times, people will have goals, and their goal will be I just want to feel better. I'm like, great. What does that mean? How will you know that you've achieved that? How can you take action on such a giant thing? You know, it's just, it's not going to happen. And so if you have a goal of I just want to feel better. You know, it's not gonna happen, right? Because how the hell are you going to do that? How are you going to do that? You know, is a kind of break it down further. What does that mean? How can you quantify it? So we use the example of I have negative thoughts all day long.

And then we've got the opposite statement. Positive thoughts or no negative thoughts? And then a goal, a kind of rough goal of for one day catch three negative thoughts. and dissect them. And so let's make it take it even further and make it a SMART goal. And so this is what a SMART goal could look like. On September 5, between 10am and 1pm, I will catch three negative thoughts and dissect them by writing in my notebook. One, why might I be thinking this thought to where this thought came from? Three, what things in my life support this thought for? What is an alternative belief. So that is a small goal. Let me repeat it. On September 5, between 10am and 1pm, I will catch three negative thoughts and dissect them by writing down in my notebook one, why I might be thinking this to where it came from three, what supports this belief? And four, what is an alternative belief? Now, is that achievable? Now we want? Yeah, I think so. You know, it might be a bit, you know, you might be saying that sounds like, you know, three sounds like a lot, that's fine. between 10am to 1pm. That sounds like a lot, that's fine. You can collect, you know, the sometime on September the fifth, and we're going to catch one negative thought, you know, and so you want this goal to be attainable. But we want it to be stretching you enough so that you feel a little bit like, oh, a little bit uncomfortable, right?

31:35

It's like, you know, doing a stretch in yoga. And what do they call it, they call it the like the biting point or something? No, not the biting point something. It's not the pain point, the edge, that's what they call it, the edge, get to your edge, where it where it's not painful, but it's like slightly uncomfortable. So you're pushing yourself, but you're not pushing yourself so much that you're going to have a negative and terrible experience. Like, we don't want you to have a terrible experience. Because if you were like, Okay, well. I have negative thoughts about myself all day. And so for all of for all of November, whenever I have a negative thought, I'm going to break myself and spit at the mirror of my reflection. Is that good? Is that helpful? Is that reasonable? You know, or, you know, I hate my body, and it's awful. .

And I've never stepped outside without at least one baggy piece of clothing. And instead, what my goal is, is I'm going to step outside in the street, wearing just two Dorito chips. sellotape to my nipples, and one on my genital area with some tooth floss, and see how it goes. Because the reality you know, if you did that, people talk about what and you're gonna feel any of you don't hate yourself, and you hate your body is going to be a negative experience. Like, yeah, sure someone might come up to me, we're like, yeah, you go, or whatever. But it's just too far. And it's traumatizing. And you know, it doesn't even mean that's hyperbole, but some people do do things like that. And I'm like, Oh, you're so close. You're so close. So close to you know, it's so cool that you're taking that step, but let's do it in a way that supports us and doesn't terrify the shit out of us. And that will also then not help your confidence do the opposite is gonna make you be like well I tried this thing once and I felt awful therefore that's the evidence that I need to say that

33:50

I'm not cut out to do this and I'm actually thinking about you know, like it's like if you were doing

33:59

I don't know if you if you I think learning to drive a manual is probably more terrifying I don't know though probably driving any car is terrifying right? If you remember the first time you were sat in the driver's seat and the instructor or your whoever is there was teaching was like, Okay, you can turn the engine on and you're like, turn the engine on. What you're going to I'm going to be sat in a car with the engine running in the driver's seat. Do you know that how close we are to dying and and the instructor would be like Okay, now let's just play around with put it into gear and let's find that biting point with the clutch and, and the accelerator and let's just take off the handbrake ever so gently so that you roll forward at like naught point naught, one mile an hour, and the whole time you doing it's terrible. And you're rolling forward at this, you know, you might as well be crawling on the floor on your belly. Like, that's how slow you're going. But in your brain, you're like, oh my god, this is warp speed. Can we slow down? The whole time? Not everyone is probably this experience. Some people are probably really confident.

But, you know, when I was learning to drive, I'd always be like, can I slow down? And my instructor would always be like, No, you have to get it to 30 We're in a 30 zone, you have to drive at 30. And I'm like, can we just drive at like 15? Because he miles an hour is bananas fast. So anyway, imagine if day one, the instructor was like, Alright, okay, buckle yourself in, turn on, gone, turn on the ignition, right? See that highway over there, we're just going to go onto that slip road. And then we need to get to seven e to meet up with the other traffic. So off you go. Good luck, you know, and was like, and then bullied you into doing that. You'd you you die, you would die. And then you'd probably have the story of, oh, I tried that driving thing one time. And turns out, it's you know, I'm just not built for it. I can't do it. It's too scary. Rightfully so Right. Like, that's a normal reaction. So we want to just be like that driving instructor for ourselves, and break it down. And when it becomes too much, because maybe it is too much. That Oh, K. That's okay, if it is too much. Do you know what that tells us? That it was too much. That's all it tells us is that maybe this was a little bit too much for me today. Let's see how it feels.

Let's take take it back a step. And let's try again, tomorrow, or next week, let's try again and see how scary it is then, maybe even just trying again, it's going to be less scary. And then eventually, you get to the point where you're jumping in your car, you're doing donuts, doing backflips in the car, you know, giving the finger to old ladies on the street being like say like a psychos. And it's not a big deal. And you cannot you can barely even remember the times when you were scared to drive a car. And so that is that is step three. So break down the goal goal into the smallest step and make a SMART goal. So step four, is to tell people so telling people it means that you're more likely to do it. So do you have like a someone else who understand your situation?

37:38

Do you have an accountability, buddy? Do you want to join first party Academy and have us all that all of us there cheering you

37:44

on? So tell people you're going to do it versus just like keeping it in me? Could you know, could we tell it telling anyone? And then do it. Do the thing? And celebrate? Celebrate yourself? And don't? What everyone does poopoo their sex their success? Success? Yeah, well, I get that. Yeah, I did that thing. But Well, excuse me. You just did an incredible, amazing thing. Like, hello, hello. So don't poopoo your success and celebrate yourself.

And step five is to continue and learning fatphobia and diet culture. Because remember, we've got those two different factors, you can't be taking action without unlearning. And you can't be learning without taking action. It's the two things that go hand in hand and an examining those thoughts and, and, and being able to spot when phobic thoughts are gonna come up because guess what they're gonna come up because you're a human being with a brain living in probably a fat phobic society, therefore, they're going to always be coming up and learning how to deal with that stuff. Is is really, really important. Because, you know, the world is changing, but not at the speed that that we'd like it to. Right. So hopefully by the time we're old, and we're in like nursing homes, we can like when I was young people used to tell fat people to lose weight. And then like our great grandchildren are all like, Wow, that's so can you imagine that? So people didn't realize that bodies came in all sizes? No, they didn't. And you'd be like the cool old person. They're just being like, yeah, I was like the early innovator. I was the earlier or do what do they call it early adopter of this concept and apply it on USA car. But it's me I probably won't have grandchildren because I'm not gonna have children properly so it'll be some other children. I enjoy talking to Children on the street we like Did you know that might go away? Oh, as a NATO ally, we don't care.

Okay, so let me recap for you do this to feel more confident. Step one, get out of constant learning mode and take action. So constant learning mode is the natural thing that we all do when we first discover fat positivity and long after it, which is learn and learn and learn and, and follow people and listen to podcasts, and read books, which is all incredible important things that we need to be doing. But we forget to do the other big thing. And the other big thing is take action, we cannot see changes in our life. Unless we do these two things, learn and take action. So step one, get out of Constant Learner mode and take action.

41:00

Step two, work out what you're not doing or what you are doing. Because you have low confidence in whatever area in your body, low confidence about who you are feeling unworthy, unlovable, and vulnerable, whatever, decide, work out what you're not doing, or what you are doing, basically, how is it affecting your life, then we are going to work out how we can take that information and make it into a goal. Now, you don't have to have 50 billion goals, you know, don't overwhelm yourself, just start with one, let's make it easy.

So for example, if one of your so for example, if one of your things that you're doing because you don't like your body is thinking negatively about yourself all day long, we're going to work out what is the opposite statement. So the opposite, that we're not going to be doing the opposite statement, we're just going to work out what the opposite statement is. So the opposite statement of thinking negatively about yourself all day long is not thinking negatively about yourself all day long. So that's step two, working out how this lack of confidence is affecting you. And what is the opposite statement. Step number three is to make a goal from that statement. So picking. So picking a goal and breaking it down to the smallest step.

So for not liking your body and thinking negatively about it all day, the opposite being to not think negatively about it. That's not a realistic goal. But a goal from that could look like something like for one day, I'm going to catch three negative thoughts and dissect them. So let me repeat that for one day, I'm going to catch three negative thoughts and dissect them. Now we got to make it into a SMART goal. So if you're not familiar with that acronym, SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time bound. So let's make that into a SMART goal. thinking negatively about myself all day, a SMART goal around that could be on September 5, between 10am and 1pm, I will catch three negative thoughts and dissect them by writing down in my notebook one, why I might be thinking this thought to where this thought came from three, what supports this thought, and for what is an alternative belief. And step number four is to share your goal with other people and get support from people who understand what you're doing and what you're trying to achieve. If you share that you're you're working towards this goal, then you're more likely to do it and more likely to achieve it. And step five is to keep unlearning fatphobia and diet culture. Because we still need that, that that learning to go along with action. So we've got learning, we've got action, we need to do both. If we don't, if we miss out on one of them, we just do all the action and we do no learning. And if we do all the learning and no action, we're not going to see the results that we want. So in what ways is fatphobia and diet culture affecting your life? In what ways is lower confidence affecting your life? What are you doing? What are you not doing? And what would you like a different reality to look like for you? Break it down? Don't look at the whole picture because it's just too much. Let's break it down to the smallest step possible.

Take those steps, and then you can look at the next goal. And the next goal is another small step. Before you know it. You're at the top of the mountain and you're like oh my god motherfucker. Look at me just going around Badal confident and shit. And by the way by doing these things You're changing your neural pathways, right? So, so taking these actions, you're learning a new way to be in the world. And you're unlearning with the with the unlearning the fatphobia unlearning all of the old thoughts and beliefs and putting that into practice and people are not, you know, people are not one thing to remember is, you don't go into situations like this feeling confident,

45:27

you go in, probably shitting your pants, feeling nervous, and confidence comes from repetition. Confidence comes from it just being boring part of your life, right? You don't become a confident driver. By learning about driving. By thinking about driving, you probably would have my last good drive up, I think about it and being like, oh my god, what if I went, what would have happened drive it like 40 miles an hour, oh my god, I'm gonna die. The only way that you can get more covenant is to buy practice, practice, keep practicing, keep practicing. And, and if the practice is, is if it's too much, take a step back. That's okay. And And don't expect that, you know, you're going to do one thing and then all of a sudden, you're going to feel like Lizzo right? It's we're moving into the direction of feeling better about ourselves and feeling more confident. And that could take time, depending on how long we felt the opposite way. So I'm curious if you're going to set a goal let me know something. Bala. I want to know, tell me, email me. Let me let me in on your, on your journey on your adventures.

And a reminder to write a review about first podcast, if you like. If you want to write a nice review, that'd be cool. If you don't want to, that's fine. Whatever. So the thank you for hanging out with me today. I appreciate it and stay FERS fatty I'll see you in a while alligator thanks for listening to the episode and if you feel ready to get serious about this work and want to know when the doors open to fears fattier Academy which is my signature program, where I teach all about how to overcome your fat phobic beliefs and learn to love your fat body, then go to first fatty.com forward slash waitlist again that is phase fatty.com. Forward slash waitlist to get your name on the waitlist. For when first fatty Academy my signature program opens