Adulting - #60 Food & Body Image In The Time Of Corona with Becky Amoi Young

Episode Date: April 19, 2020

Hey podulters, I hope you're well! In this episode I speak to the wonderful Becky from @antidietriotclub, about we can protect ourselves from diet culture, body image issues and other things that may come up during quarantine. I absolutely loved speaking to Becky and I hope you do too! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hello poddlters. In this second episode of my special quarantine season, I speak to the wonderful Becky from the Anti-Diet Riot Club, who you might have heard of and you might follow them on Instagram. I've actually been meaning to get Becky on for ages, but I suddenly realised that she was the perfect candidate to talk to in this time about how to be wary of diet culture and any kind of conversations that might make us feel negative about ourselves or our bodies or what we're eating in a time when we're already under stress and there's kind of that low-level hum of anxiety constantly anyway so the wonderful becky and i just discuss ways

that you can perhaps talk to family about how you feel around food and change who you're following on instagram to protect yourself from unhelpful rhetoric and lots of just general lovely chat about why food and loving your body and trying to look after yourself in all ways is so important especially in this time. I really hope you enjoy it and please do rate, review and subscribe. It'll mean the world to me. Thank you. Bye. Hi everyone and welcome to Adulting. Today I am joined by Becky from the Anti-Diet Riot Club. Thank you so much for joining me Becky. We are doing this online which feels very new to me. For people who don't know who you are and what you do, please could you introduce yourself? Well thanks for having me. I'm Becky, I'm the founder of Anti-Diet Riot Club

which is a rebel community and platform dedicated to fighting back against diet culture, fat phobia and all the ways that we experience shame around our bodies and sexuality. We usually host, do this through hosting events, meetups, workshops and giving talks and trying to sort of spread the theory and movement of body acceptance and anti-diet and we also have sort of built a big online community around this movement um and now we're obviously trying to do all of these events online so we did a life drawing workshop last night over Zoom and we're doing a free webinar on surviving diet culture during the corona crisis next week.

So we just try and bring people together and give people a safe space to explore rejecting diet culture and hopefully improve everyone's body image. I love that you call yourself like a rebel cause. That's so cool. I've found you guys for Instagram I absolutely love your page and I think it's a complete tonic for what Instagram used to be and it's certainly such a great place to get to but how where did you how did this all start for you like what was your history and what drove you to want to start doing this so like a lot of people and maybe like especially a lot of women I have been

dieting since I was a teenager so I mean I think I went on my first planned diet when I was 14 and since then it's just been this career of yo-yo dieting trying out all the different plans from fad diets to like the more extreme ways of eating that you know many people try and do for decades um and then I got to and this whole time I was pretty much basing my self-worth on you know whether I was eating well quotation marks or um had lost weight or was being good um and even though I was quite confident outgoing person underneath I had this preoccupation obsession with the way I was eating and moving and it was extremely disordered even though I was never diagnosed with having eating disorder um and

then I got to like 20 26 27 it was about in 2016 and I actually was traveling and I'd seen a picture of myself the year before where I was a lot skinnier and I just completely had this breakdown and was so upset and so um so ashamed of myself I felt so like I'd failed once again at like keeping off the weight and um I was embarking on my next big diet plan and in that process I was looking for hashtag fitspiration or thinspiration on social media on Instagram because Instagram at that time was as you say quite a toxic place it was a place where I went to get inspiration for eating clean and eating less and you know over working out sort of obsessively and instead I found the opposite of what I was looking for but it was a complete life-changing moment I found this amazing thriving body positive community

of fat women living unapologetically putting the middle finger up at diets and saying that they weren't gonna um live like that anymore and for me that just spoke to me massively and I thought I want to be that kind of woman and I am that kind of person just underneath all of the agonizing over menus and you know obsessing over bikini body workouts I was actually you know someone who didn't give a fuck what people thought and I was um more I wanted to live more authentically and intuitively than what how I had been sort of forcing myself to live. And yeah, and then that was the sort of start of my journey into learning about body justice and anti-diet theory. And I researched and read as much as I could. And then

in 2018, or the end of 2017, I just thought I wanted to give back to this community. And I have a long background in events organizing. And I thought this would be the way that I could give back. Let me create a in real life community around me. I didn't know many people in real life that was kind of exploring, you know, rejecting diet culture. And I decided to launch this like sort of support group called Antidote Riot Club um yeah in March 2018 we threw our first event and it sold out with 100 people coming to watch um Megan Crabb aka Body Poison Panda speak she just sort of

released her first book and I realized that so many people needed this you know we needed like real life spaces um to connect with other people who've struggled for years with their bodies and diet cycling and we could kind of be like the Weight Watchers groups or the Slimming World groups that people pay money for decades to go to but we'd be the opposite of that we'd you know help people find freedom and liberation around food and their bodies rather than tie them to all these rules and weigh-ins and shame so yeah it's kind of it's kind of grown from there you can't see me but I was smiling so much when you were telling that story because it's just so nice to hear the arc of how that all happened and I completely agree with you like when you were saying you know I was never diagnosed with an eating disorder now with the

kind of knowledge and the tools that I have to understand the way that we kind of look at food I've realized that me and most of my friends had eating disorders but just because it wasn't diagnosed and because it was so normalized we never really realized and the way you talk about how you've kind of found who you were the minute you could let go of the diets I completely felt that the minute I realized that I was so much like there's so much of me as a woman that is completely like nothing to do with what I look like and until I was able to get rid of that fixation on being a smaller version of myself I was never able to tap into my full ability of being you know this complete whole human outside of trying to be skinny yeah oh my god I feel that so much yeah

and it's amazing because you obviously found the body positivity movement a lot earlier on than I did like my Instagram page was one of those pages that was like fitspiration and I was doing these ab workouts and I'm not on a diet it's just um macro counting and oh god I was a huge part of the problem as well as you know being a victim to it but I completely agree that seeing I mean there's something really amazing that's happened that I've realized now because what we're going to talk about I guess at the minute is how quarantine might impact people in terms of diet culture and how it might bring us back on to having those same old thoughts about controlling what we're eating, controlling how we're exercising. But I haven't had that at all. And I think that's down

to the fact that my Instagram feed is so diverse. And whilst I do have women that look like models, I have so many different body shapes available. I also follow artists and it's such an abundance of creativity on my feed. That really really really impacts how I think about my body to such an extent that I don't always think about it but when I was thinking about recording this episode I realized that actually I wasn't having those feelings purely because I had curated an environment around me that didn't support that which I guess is kind of the foundation of what your work is trying to do as well yeah I mean I feel quite similar in that I've created a online community around me or a kind of bubble if anything that is really

positive and not like in a kind of sickly way like people talk about real um real life stuff that isn't always positive and covered in rainbows and hearts but it is generally not a toxic place I don't feel um like a huge pressure to use this time as the time that I'm going to like shrink and tone up or whatever because of the people that I follow who are more focused on you know preserving their mental health in a time of extreme global crisis um and for me it's like a daily reminder of you know my looking at my feed is a daily reminder of all the time all the ways in which I should give myself a break and not you know not have these huge expectations of myself but when I go searching elsewhere um and I look at look at hashtags and I go further into the social media world outside of my bubble, there's still a lot of extremely toxic diet culture messaging that's happening.

And when I post about it in the past two weeks, we have a lot of people in this era, in this context, messaging me, DMing me or commenting, saying that they're really struggling with their feeds or what their family and friends are posting um and that can be really difficult when it's people that you love who are sort of making jokes about getting fat or sort of quite clearly obsessing about you know exercising twice daily and what they're eating and posting loads of photos of their like sort of pristine bowls of food etc so that can be really difficult if it's people that you know and love and not just influencers yeah it's a weird time because it's almost like we're kind of in that Christmas period this is when I used to kind of get triggered around food when I was younger because I would go home and I would be reminded of the attitude that I had towards food

when I was at school and like often it'll be people's family members as you say that might make a little comment like oh you've had a lot of bread or whatever it might be. And that can be really tricky to escape because, as you say, it's in your immediate family. It often is actually easier to curate your Instagram feed, but it's much more difficult to kind of educate your family or peers or people that you live with about what you think. I wonder actually if you have any tools on that, because it's something that I've definitely tried to learn to do over time speak to my parents whether that's about you know understanding what being trans is or understanding about queerness or sexuality but again with food and diet culture because it's so um it's it's so cultural especially I think for our parents generations it was just so normalized for them teaching them about it can be quite hard do you have tools and tips and tricks that people can use

if they are in that scenario to try and help their parents better understand why it's so important to be more neutral around foods yeah I mean there's it is a lot like Christmas it mirrors that scenario definitely and what we normally say is that there are different routes depending on the energy that you have because not always do we feel like getting into these sort of discussions with people that we love it can be really draining and um I'm not a very confrontational person and if I really believe something strongly and I have to kind of confront someone about it I get like shaky like my heart starts bumping and then I can't string sentences together and it kind of all goes wrong and I get all hot and flush so um for me sometimes using resources that are online for instance um our website's down but we normally do have them but a health

every size h-a-e-s um there's a big community resource website that has loads of information that you can give to your parents and you could maybe ask them or your family members you know would you mind if I gave you some uh articles or information that I've been reading about diets and food because maybe it would help us um have a conversation about it and then you have something to base it off rather than my kind of for me my kind of roller coaster of emotions um and also I would suggest uh having quite clear boundaries so if for you you think that there are lots of these sort of diet chat diet conversations happening and it really triggers you and makes over your long-term

relationship with food in your body a lot worse be quite clear either with yourself or with the people that you live with when you when you feel like you need to take yourself out of that situation you can say you know I really don't want to talk about diets because of my history with obsessive diets or my history with an eating disorder or my history with food I'm really trying to live and um or explore a different way of living now so I'm going to remove myself from this conversation um you can say can we please stop talking about this around me or leave the room you have every right we're not I like to say we're not in the Victorian era you don't have

to sort of politely sit around conversation that you find incredibly uncomfortable um or triggering um you're allowed to leave the room and hopefully you have a space in your home wherever you're living to separate yourself with um I do think if because we're living on top of each other a little bit now, it is important to be, sort of practice being honest about your needs in close quarters. I'm going through this experience with my housemates, as are probably loads of other people, we're not used to being around each other all the time and you do have to sort of catch yourself in the way you feel and hopefully be truthful about that because rather than letting it bottle up so I would encourage to have a conversation um you can show them the amazing Instagram accounts that you follow you can um direct them towards our page and to diet riot club um and you can just ask them why why do they feel like fat is bad why do they feel that

this foods are good or bad like where did they find this information? Often I find just keep asking why and why, and it gets down to the root of it. Like, why do you feel like you've eaten, you've been naughty today, mum? Oh, because I ate this thing. Like, why do you think that's bad? And then you come down to the root of it,

and it's often because of their insecurities, or they're just, they often don't know the answer. And that kind of explains to them that it's a bit of a false notion a false yeah I think all of what you said that's so important I guess the first thing you pointed out is that you know it can be really stressful and sometimes we don't have the emotional withdrawal to to do that emotional labor right then and there especially if for you it's such a deep-rooted thing it can be really tricky to talk about it it's interesting that you just said about you know trying though despite that to be able to talk about it. It's interesting that you just said about, you know, trying though, despite that, to be able to talk about how feeling. I've just filmed a video about living with a partner. I've just asked to live with my boyfriend in quarantine. We've never

lived together before. And actually it's been fine. And I realized it's because we very much know each other's moods. Like he knows if I'm hormonal, I'll know if he's hungry. And all of those kind of signifiers mean that it's it's that vulnerability of allowing yourself to say how you feel that kind of gets rid of the tension but that can feel like a really really scary thing to do because often I think especially as women we really want to project this idea that oh my god no we're fine no don't worry I don't mind if you don't clean up or oh it's fine I'll do that and and that actually in the long run tends to be where you might then feel like oh my god no I can't do anymore. And not having that pretense of feeling like everything's fine, especially in

the middle of a pandemic, is so important. And learning that vulnerability can be one of the hardest things to do. But I do think that it offers you so much in return. And the other thing you pointed out about giving resources, I certainly found this with my friends and family. Sometimes they might not want to listen to you, but if you give them someone who's got a bit of credibility around it, they tend to find it a lot easier. And I mean, I've had this with my parents before as well. You might not listen to your parents and then your friend's mum says it and all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, did you hear what someone's mum said?

And my mum will be like, I've been telling you this for 10 years. And I'm like, no. So I do think that's a really good a really good point yeah I was just thinking um so kind of two opposite things but obviously people love do recognize and respect science or you know that kind of authority so that's why the directing people towards resources does help but then also we shouldn't be scared especially as women or femmes to to be emotional we you know in these kind of conversations I get really caught up in trying to be rational um and non-emotional not seen as the kind of hysterical emotional feminist which I

was often portrayed as in my teens because it is an emotional thing food and bodies it's you know it is emotional for a lot of us um and that's okay to um to portray that and to to sit in that you don't have to sort of be like so um I don't know rational and cerebral about it um often sometimes that's really tiresome to be emotional but actually we shouldn't be scared of that no I agree that's really important I am the same as you I find it really hard to go into any form of debate about anything um without probably crying at some point because I get so frustrated and find it so emotional but I think another important thing to talk about when we're talking about bodies is because I'm seeing a lot of we see this push and pull especially on social media people saying like,

oh, well, you can't complain because, you know, you're living in a nice house or whatever. And someone else is suffering or someone's working the front lines. And whilst this is all true, and we have varying degrees of how this pandemic is impacting us, I think we can't belittle this thing around our bodies. It is, as you say, it's so emotional, it's so personal. And it's something that we all live with all the time. I think every single person on the planet will have had some kind of issue with their body along the way. So when we're in this really weird environment, obviously, any kind of insecurity you have, or any kind of negative emotion, which normally maybe you can push away by going to the gym or using, you know, seeing your friends as kind of a buffer for those emotions has been stripped away. So I think we need to not feel guilty if this pandemic is throwing up

emotions completely not related to coronavirus, or you might be, you know, on the outside, have got a really good situation. But really, you know, it doesn't mean that your feelings aren't valuable or important, just because they're not necessarily the same as someone else yeah and I think it's also firstly it's really important to recognize that there are still health issues going on despite the fact that there's these um this huge world challenge like we still have our own personal battles that matter still um and also that when the world feels out of control or when our life feels out of control, that's actually the perfect time when we start to obsess about our bodies and food. Not perfect and good, but that just happens very naturally.

So often eating disorders are bred in a time of real uncertainty because we want to control one part of us. And that feels like something we can control our bodies and what we eat and how we exercise and so it's totally um understandable if a lot of people feel like they are starting to preoccupy themselves with that kind of stuff when the sort of crisis feels kind of out of control um also our world has shrunk so you know whereas we were going about our day leaving the house going traveling around our cities whatever now we're more confined um to our people that we live with to the world in our four walls and that means that we do focus inwards uh or at least on our externality on our bodies um and so it's understandable but it's still important so um often like disordered eating eating disorders they you know your brain within

that your brain tells yourself that your worries um don't matter that you know everyone else is struggling more and what you're struggling is much is minimized um your experiences aren't as serious as other people's but we have to recognize that we are all having our own struggles within this and um it's not like a sort of uh uh oppression battle or who's you know who's less privileged it it's all relative yeah i completely agree with you and i know what you mean about perfect it's the perfect storm for us to fixate on food and not least because we have all of these restrictions around food externally as well you know we're only allowed to go shopping once a week um there might be certain foods that you rely on eating normally which now aren't available I definitely have thought that if I had been where I had been maybe like five six years ago

I know I would have really struggled because I was so controlling over my food and you know sometimes I go to shop and I can't buy eggs and now I just think okay well I'll have yogurt or whatever you know I don't have that same fixation. Whereas if you're someone that's very used to being able to control your food, the fact that, you know, you can't go and buy. When I had, I definitely had sort of like problems with binging. So I would have to buy the food on the day because I was so worried that if I had too much food in the house that I would, you know, eat it all. Which is not something I struggle with anymore thankfully so I can do a big food shop but I don't know what the coping mechanisms or

if you have any suggestions of ways that we can you know try to maybe use this time as difficult as it might be to then try and let go of some of that control over food when we don't have the options to have control and it's kind of like a weird paradox you know because you've got all the time in the world to fixate on it but you also don't have as much agency to control your food in the same way that we did before yeah I think that one thing I always remind myself is that my tendency to binge which I also experienced my my binging behavior was a direct result of my restricting behavior and so that's really hard in this current climate because obviously we there's a kind of scarcity mindset in that you know people have

been stockpiling and so you can't get certain things although I think that is at least where I am starting to level out a bit now a couple of weeks after um you know this kind of first blew up um things are a bit more level in the shells but without without restriction you don't really get the binging um and so for me that's trying to dismantle how I see food generally so trying to not add this like moral value to food which is so difficult because we from a young age our parents instill you know good foods and bad foods um sometimes with the best of intentions but you you start to very quickly assign you know things like sweets and chocolates and crisp and this stuff as being so bad and if you eat them then you're a bad person but food has no moral value in that sense you know we we really need to stop labeling them as such and that

will be a massive starter to stopping restricting certain foods I often I often think that our brains are like toddler brains and when we start taking things away from it take labeling certain foods and um as bad or naughty and our brains want that food and that's where that kind of binge cycle comes in because we obsess about those foods and we think we don't have control over them when you realize that you um have freedom around that food and you can eat as much as you want you probably won't eat the whole entire packet or you know um you're never going to eat cake for breakfast lunch and dinner every single day you you won't survive and your body won't want that but if you feel that you

have freedom around it you won't feel so out of control um and i would just direct anyone who feels like they're out of control around certain foods or feel like they have no control and that they can't have foods in the house because otherwise they'll eat it all to look into intuitive eating which is a way of a 10-step process of eating that can really help you and it's about unlearning all of that and relearning good behavior around food um and it's hard to go into right now but it's an amazing process and there are several books and resources that you can look to yeah there's so many the thing with food as well as I think we almost want to resolve our issues with it in a day so we want to go from

you know having disordered eating to being fine with it when if you think about it if you recognize your disordered eating in your 20s you've had 20 years sort of a building up this attitude towards food so you cannot be hard on yourself if it takes a long time hopefully not 20 years but maybe like a year or a few years to really try to undo some of that or unlearn some of the things you've learned and I completely agree about that elastic band theory which is you know you restrict restrict restrict you pull the elastic band and eventually it's going to have to ping back and I did that same binge restriction cycle myself and I do agree that learning to allow yourself to have things which might mean that you go through a period of you know you do have you do eat a full packet of biscuits and then go and have some cake whatever but once you get used to the idea that you can have you do eat a full packet of biscuits and then go and have some cake whatever

but once you get used to the idea that you can then you stop to have stop having that kind of fear of the food and you think oh okay so if I want to have it I can have it tomorrow I think it's that idea of you feel like if I'm gonna have a bit I've got to have it all whereas actually if you just have a bit you can have some more later um and as you say this is a really long process and sometimes it might take professional help or speaking to a therapist or or someone that can really aid you um but it's there's definitely a way out and I think I think it's so important is we all I generally think everyone has had has this we've all learned this so we all have to unlearn it I don't think anyone is born

with a perfect relationship with food unless you're really lucky. Hopefully our children and the generations coming after us will have much better relationships with food, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Daily Jackpots, a chance to win with every spin and a guaranteed winner by 11 p.m. every day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600

or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded or 11 p.m. Eastern. Restrictions apply. See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com. Please play responsibly. Well, I think that we are born with a good relationship with food, but we are taught a terrible relationship with food.

Often the intuitive eating theory or kind of body of work says that babies are the prime, perfect intuitive eaters they know what they want they stop eating when they want to they will you know put you put an array of food in front of them and they'll go for what they what their body needs and stop when they're full um you know cry out when they're hungry and they don't eat like these sort of morning noon um uh evening schedules like we kind of do, they eat whenever they feel like it throughout the day because that's what their body needs and what they tell them.

They have these internal hunger and fullness cues that they listen to. And over the years of us betraying our hunger and fullness cues, sticking to these external rules that mean we don't listen to our bodies or, you know, overeating because we feel like we have to eat the finish the plate because our parents tell us to or not being able to eat because we've been punished those kind of things basically mask and um might what's the word um muffle our internal hunger and fullness cues meaning that it does take a while to kind of like demuffle them so that we can actually hear them in in our bodies and and honor them um also just I was just

popped into my head when you think about earlier because obviously we're trying in this period everyone's trying to you know be healthy um and which seems like kind of an understandable response when there's a lot of health insecurity happening but we what we need to do is redefine what healthy means in terms of eating because I for me healthy eating also means you know um pleasure and community and satisfaction and being flexible and enjoying what I'm eating and not having anxiety over food. So if I feel a lot of guilt around what I'm eating, that for me is not a healthy way to live around food. So healthy eating for me, and I think should be for most people,

not exactly the macro and micronutrients of what you're putting in your body. It's much more complex. And then when you can start to see it like that, you well it's healthy for me to you know enjoy my um my pudding and to eat when I'm hungry in the morning rather than just when I think you know I should be fasting etc um and I think that's really helped me yeah I I completely agree my boyfriend and I actually had the same conversation because we were saying how you know food is one of the only pleasures we can get in this time like you can't really go out you can't see your friends like we want to drink but again we don't want to fall into bad habits with drinking so we drink try to drink on the weekends i definitely am drinking more wine than i normally

would but food is the one thing where we're like fuck it do you know what we're gonna have like i want to have a cream egg every day we're having like easter egg we keep eating easter eggs even though it's not easter yet so we get to buy more um not there's anything wrong with eating but we're definitely we're indulging in food more than we normally would because we're like it's fun we're having italian night every friday we make like loads of italian pasta and like we're like really enjoying it and i agree with you like macro nutrient wise i'm eating more calorie dense food or whatever but it's keeping me sane i'm enjoying it food is so much more than the eating it's the preparation it's the social it's the you know It's the social.

It's the, you know, like what you assimilate those foods with. It might remind you of going on holiday. It might remind you of being a child. Like food is so much more to it than what the components, the chemical components it's made up of. And actually in this time, I think it's more important than ever to really sink into the pleasure of food because there's fuck all else to do um I think it's so important yeah I've I've I'm absolutely finding all my joy from food like it's just it's actually been kind of a one thing because I have so much more time to cook which I'm I feel really lucky and privileged to do um and I'm we're doing we're doing this Easter Sunday we've got like a three I live with two housemates you know we've got I'm doing the starters my

housemates doing the main we've got dessert I feel like we're living in sort of master glorified master chef but at the same time there are going to be a lot of people who won't be able to have that experience and if if you know if it's not a problem to also be eating loads of like processed foods and canned foods and eating whatever is in your kitchen rather than cooking up some like glam meal because that's also fine and um what we shouldn't be doing is imposing loads of like more anxiety and worry about it it should be as you say like a pleasure a joy or at least not an extra burden because who the fuck needs extra burdens in this time when we're all like so you know already worried and anxious about what's going on in the world this is just momentous we don't need to be

putting that extra pressure on ourselves yeah and it's it's it's funny because I right at the beginning bought a few tins of beans and like some frozen jack potatoes and stuff that I wouldn't normally have um in the flat because I do I am really privileged in that I do tend to cook with lots of fresh foods which obviously lots of people maybe don't have access to or maybe have never been taught how to cook but weirdly I've regressed back to eating stuff that I would as a kid and I'm like loving it I'm having loads of beans on toast cheese and everyone needs to eat cheese and now I'm like suddenly I'm parmesan on everything and it's it's kind of it's nice to feel like as you say you've got the time to cook but you can also the rules have kind of gone out which is if you can sink into that idea rather than the idea that

everything's controlled and be like do you know what the rules have gone out the window as you can say you can have lunch it's at bloody 11 o'clock if you want which I want to every day because I get starving I like if I have breakfast when I wake up I want lunch by like 10 and I just sit there I'm like I'm so hungry um and and also there's like people like Jack Munro Bootstrap Cook who does like amazing um information on how to cook if you've only got like a few things in or I've had like no food waste because we're really being careful to make sure we use up all our shops we're only shopping once a week have you found that yeah I mean the things we're chucking in like um we did like baked rice and um the other day and it was just like literally the scraps of all of our veggies we had like even just

probably irresponsibly but like licking it smell it like oh we can't throw that away it's corona like you know probably being a bit um more blasé with it than we would be although I tend to live my life you know eating vegetables that have gone off ages ago because I just I just mainly eat vegetarians so for me that's not an issue but um yeah I think we're definitely being more conscious of what we're wasting I'm actually going to start a compost heap as well I've got like you know big plans for my garden so um compost heap is on its way oh my god that's amazing that's so funny you said that we made what we called special fried rice last night which is where we did the exact same thing and every single vegetable we had we just fried it in sesame seed oil and then just it was the biggest pile and we've got lettuce

home for lunch I'm actually buzzing but we just put everything in there and then some eggs and we were like special fried rice it was so good and I always eat everything that's off as well I'm the worst for it I don't care it's really bad no especially if you're cooking it I feel like it just always you could never tell I don't care like people are funny about it but I just don't care what will I get by and as far as touch wood so far I've never had an upset tummy and I swear I've eaten like chicken that's off so I know I was gonna say that like literally the other day we ate chicken my friend was like I don't think you should eat the chicken I was like I'm eating the chicken I'm totally fine so that's what I do that is just what I do as well it's it's so funny sitting here

having this conversation with you now because I really wonder what my when you come out of it I'm sure you'll feel like this and I'm sure there'll be times there are times when I feel a bit triggered and I suddenly think do you know what the trigger will be though it'll be me thinking oh my god I should be dieting it's not that I want to be thinner it's the fact that I'm not making the effort to be thinner that somehow correlates to me not being as worthy a woman I don't know if you ever do you get that feeling ever I think that's the feeling that I had my entire life up until a few years ago you know my basically it wasn't like um sometimes you know I might have been a bit happier with my body but I just felt like

my worth as a person and especially as a woman was like tied to controlling my intake of food and like everyone else is doing it you get that kind of diet FOMO you know everyone else is you know being picky in the menus and um you know not eating cutting out carbs or you know eating raw and it kind of feels like I I just I compare dieting and the kind of diet culture that we live in to a religion and we feel like we need to sort of every Monday you know kneel at the altar of the diet gods and you know beg forgiveness for all the sins literally sins in Slimming World they call them sins that we had we did we committed at the weekend and say you know I will be good oh my god there's a bee in my room sorry maybe it's trying to quarantine with you no you're not allowed in my lockdown go away okay uh so um

lockdown podcasting um what was i saying so yeah and then that kind of cult that's almost like you know all of the other women in your life are in this religion and you kind of want to be included in this community and talk about it and compare notes and and you feel so good when you're doing it you know when you first start you know your first week of a diet and you're like I'm in such good control look at me I'm being so good it's like it's like a it's like an endorphin rush or dopamine rush whatever it is because you feel like you are smashing it and killing it like you're so powerful um and and then obviously undoubtedly you you falter you fall off the wagon you sin and then you feel like an awful person and that's the kind

of cycle that you know your friends go you'll be able to pick it up we'll do it together and it's this whole cycle and pattern that means that it almost becomes addictive that being on diets try new diets you know a lot of times with my friends we tried them together um and so even if you you personally or me you know we know that maybe our deep-rooted body issues come from like internalized fat phobia and that the diet industry is evil and you know requires us to fail so that we keep coming back and we know all these things rationally sometimes it can still feel like um it's going to be a struggle to unlearn that like pressure internalized pressure to be like but we should be because everyone else is or we should be because this means that I'm

I'm actually in control yeah I I did so many diets and I can't even remember them all and we would all do them as friends as well and you're just you've made me remember that I posted not that long ago a meme that I saw on Twitter of someone pressing diet coke and coke on a on a vending machine and one of them says wanting to destroy unrealistic beauty standards and the other one says wanting to look like an unrealistic beauty standard and then the hand pushing the both drinks says me and I was like that's me because I so intrinsically know I feel like I know with all of my everything that diet culture's fucked up but then every now and then I'll be like oh but I want to look like that and sometimes it can be the cognitive dissonance in that scenario can be so strong that you can like be fighting for the cause and not realizing that you're still you know victim to it and that's I think that's where a lot of us right now end up

sitting sometimes you know like you you know it's wrong but it's so hard to escape it and it took me so long to realize that it was all about the control as you say I thought it was about the body and it wasn't until I got really really tiny I took those all the time but did a bikini competition and was literally like so lean like was not good for me at all that I was like oh right nothing's changed I'm not happier I look like the smallest I could physically get to and if anything everything's worse and it took me so into it was all about that control and I see it sometimes when I have friends who really monitor what they eat and it wasn't them what they look like it was totally about the fact that I thought that their capital came from this um what's it called you know when you don't abstinence it's like a weird it is religious it's that it's like it's like

anything to do with pleasure you can abstain from sex and food and anything enjoyable but then you still look coquettish and like this damsel in distress then you're like the perfect woman which is a complete paradox because no woman that's deprived of food and sex is going to be like sensual and beautiful and do you know what I mean it's it's it is very biblical yeah I think it has like it's like a big colonial hangover from our like I don't know 18 19th century Christian morality stuff you know we we see this like untamed body as like totally goes against our morals um and if you can tame it and make it less wild and control it and not give it any pleasure then that's like the better better body and the better person attached to it um also I am in the same boat as

you always like no one is perfect my journey to like being accepting my body is definitely not linear and I have so many days or moments where I look at my body and I think you know oh I wish it would be thinner or I wish I look at bodies I see in media and mainstream or even on social media and think uh you know that that's what I want to look like and of course because I've been um I've been socialized to think that this is the hierarchy of bodies exists and there's well it does exist but the thin white able bodied are at the top and that's what I should be aspiring to and in terms of like how that plays out practically you know I'm like loving this um lockdown in certain aspects because

I'm at home and I've really fallen in love with my hula hoop again and skipping and I've like every morning got myself a little routine you know I said we couldn't start to live in because I'm like outside in my set my nice garden which I finally cleared because I had the time and I've got like a little bit of weights and some skipping and I literally do like 15-20 minutes it's not a big thing but for me I still have to pull apart that enjoyable process from wanting to be thinner and it's like something that I haven't done yet but I'm trying to separate them because the thoughts still come into my head when you're when I'm moving sometimes like oh yeah this is good for like my bingo wings and I'm like what am I doing like I this is not why I'm doing this

this movement I'm doing it because I'm finding it really enjoyable it's fun I get to listen to my music I'm outside you know I'm not moving a lot generally because I'm stuck in the house and this feels really great um and so yeah like divorcing my behavior from my that thought pattern it's still a process for me so just for anyone else struggling with it like I'm there with you I love that that's what your routine is I was gonna ask you that I completely forgot I love that it's your your hula hoop that is amazing um and I think it's really funny about exercise I agree with you because we're like not allowed to go outside now I think for so many people exercise will become what it should be which is about movement and mental clarity and space and you know getting outside and all of the things to

with exercise that took me literally 20 years to realize because I grew up thinking that exercise was only to make you lose weight and I thought that I couldn't do it because I didn't look in vertical as fit so I would just not try and I would just run off and smoke instead which was really fun to be there but I don't do that anymore um but yeah and now I'm like exercise even though it already felt like this it's just reinforced this idea that exercise is such a pleasure and if you're able bodied and you're able to get up and walk around and you know go for a walk that's a luxury it's it's really like reframed the way that we see things like your clothes kind of have no purpose even though I'm enjoying getting dressed up because it's like gives me a feeling like like being useful in some way you know like getting up for the day but the I really think that we're getting back to these simple pleasures of like talking and you know eating yummy food and going for a walk

and like all the things that life would be if we didn't have communism raining down on us so heavily the whole time and I think like if it can be if you can stop reading the news it can be a weirdly like sweet time it can feel a bit like utopian yeah I think like there are for some of us or maybe for a lot of us you know we are given this extra time and um moments of pause to really appreciate those small things and with movement like it's it's just it's like it's a medicine for the body and when it has that toxic thought process of the body needs to be shrunk I hate my body or my punishing my body or my body needs to change that's when it's so damaging you know that's when you can over exercise obsessively exercise or do exercise that doesn't suit your body I used to do this all the time I used to try I've got a bone disease in my

leg which means that you know I can't run jump do like high impact stuff um uh and I can't move my hip in certain ways so it's quite limited um just the one side and that means things like you know I can't do burpees because I can't um jump up my legs from from that distance um and but I used to try I used to push myself and do like that do kyla it scenes and all these types of body workouts that weren't suited for my body and end up injuring myself and not being able to walk without crutches and then in lots of pain and then never go to the gym or never move because I was you know you got out of the habit or you um almost scared and then it's like you get into this sport pattern that's well you know I haven't exercised in ages so there's

no point because I'm never going to get thin or um you know I can't do those exercises and there are no other types of movement that I can do it is only bikini body workouts or nothing else because everything else won't burn fat as much and it's just like such a weird thing that I somehow started thinking well I was starting to think and now I'm you know out of that but it still creeps up on you and you really have to catch yourself when you um are tying everything to shrinking your body rather than just moving it for pleasure oh I completely agree with that and it's only in the last year maybe that I've started to see walking as my so I try and move every day and I don't mind how that is but before it would be like

well I've got to go to the gym or do a workout or do something makes me sweat and now more often than not my movement even before lockdown was like I'm going to go for a walk today and that was just as good because it was about the moving but I completely agree with you that I didn't see value in exercise and I'm able-bodied and didn't have any issues doing that so it meant that I was able to keep doing it and not have any immediate repercussion apart from the long the more long-term psychological idea of getting more addicted to exercise and that kind of thing um and it's not half the time like it's not enjoyable sometimes I want to get really, but the majority of the time I just need to move. And I like doing that through yoga or walking or weights, but that's still not that really high intensity.

You know, I'm going to go and absolutely smash it out there. And I think it's so drummed into us that exercise is only good if you walk out of it looking like you've just stood in a waterfall and actually I find that some of the most beneficial exercise is that really slow yoga flow that I do or the walk that I go on that I actually end up walking for ages because I start looking at flowers in a park or something like that it's it's the combination of the exercise and your mind body soul involved in it rather than like the really high elevated stress which puts stress on you emotionally mentally stress on your heart everything like that that just isn't always going to be the best form of movement yeah I remember learning that cardio was a stress cortisol raiser because when I was you know going through periods of real stress or I was ill and

my physio was like maybe that's not the time you know I wanted to move and she was like I don't think cardio might not be the best thing for you right now because it it does you know raise your cortisol levels to make you more stressed I was like what like I thought it was like you know framed as this amazing thing to do when you were anxious and stressed because it obviously does raise endorphins and it can make you feel great afterwards and then she's like yeah but it also you know puts stress on your body and maybe you want to do something calming and that just blew my mind I was like oh my god other forms of exercise can be good for me um I mean that was years ago but it did really did really astound me like why isn't that known yeah and you just made me think as you're saying that like kind of going back to that like binge cycling and a massive thing that changed my relationship with exercise and food

because they're often quite symbiotic was I would do those really heavy stress hard workouts after I'd binged so then the relationship became that the exercise was always punishment for what I'd eaten whereas now if I do have a day where I eat a lot or a day where I drink lots of alcohol the next day I tend to not do anything because I don't want to add extra stress to my body so I will do like yoga I'll go for a walk especially if I'm hung over you shouldn't really be putting your body under loads of stress if you've been drinking but so then that changes and it's like the exercises for when you feel good so I exercise when my body feels ready and rested and that flipped a really big thing in my mind where

suddenly exercise became like a thing for you when you feel good and when you're in a good place rather than as a means of punishing you for what you did the day before yeah I mean exercising out of guilt is just like a double whammy of stress and pressure on you oh sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you there but yeah no I completely completely agree um do you have any other top tips things that you would suggest people who maybe can relate to a lot of what we've spoken to in this conversation that they could take away as little tidbits um I would I mean there are so many so many things that I say and try and get people to believe um you know whether that's your worth it's not tied to your appearance and your body knows best so it will fluctuate during this time potentially but um there is a thing called set point weight which

means that your body is fighting to get back to the the weight and size that it feels most comfortable and functions it's best that and so trust your body in that there's a lot of talk about this covid 15 that people are going to put on um which I think is so incredibly damaging and uh what's the word um insensitive to the actual health issues that many people are experiencing um to make it all about you know weight gain um and also just to to use this time to if you are having a lot of anxiety around gaining weight to question you know that fear of weight and fear of fat and where that comes from and how you've been taught that and you know would you um would you want a child would you want your younger self to feel that because I think we

do really need to unpack the way that we see fatness and whether we see weight and the way that we value certain bodies over others all bodies are worthy and valuable um no matter your ability you know if you no matter your health status um no matter your weight uh race um or anything um and just to remember that you're not feeling that you're not alone a lot of us are going through this um and just to be kind to yourself be compassionate um try and think about the words that you're saying to yourself because they really matter um often we just speak terrible things about ourselves um that we would never say to our best friend um and try and think of yourself as your own best friend and double down on that self-kindness

um and also lastly just one thing for me because I am really missing hugs and touch and human connection um that there is there is some power in self-touch whether that's masturbation or whether that's baths and massaging yourself stroking your arms and um giving yourself a hug and it sounds cheesy but it does work if you kind of stimulate that hormone release by um stroking your arms um and yeah just try and experiment with different self-care routines in this time because it's going to look different now that we're stuck inside so um make time for that and don't put yourself give yourself a break basically that was a lot of things sorry no I think that's all amazing

I'm now stroking my arms it's very nice yeah so yeah they actually did it on this morning I think like um Philip Schofield was like they were both like all like hugging their arms but I then researched it and it does have scientific evidence oh I love that I have actually been massaging not massaging moisturizing legs more than normal because I just was like I've got time but I run out of moisture right there and I found this like body oil in my bathroom so I put it on today and I'm still soaked in oil like I don't think it's ever going to come off and my hair is now like drenched in oil so I'm just like a little slug sat in my room um which is really exciting okay so maybe not that much oil I'm hoping that I'm going to come out of this like really supple like a little reborn baby I'm actually

really dry right now so you've just reminded me to moisturize thank you oh yeah honestly I've been loving I don't normally do a full body moisturize but because we've got the time now after a shower I really get in there and moisturize everything um I've literally loved this conversation thank you so much for joining me um if we want to find you online your anti-diet riot club on everything yeah so instagram facebook anti-diet riot club on twitter we couldn't fit it all in so it's just anti-diet riot and and everyone can find everything that you're doing on those handles um there's links to everything there yeah exactly we're launching a new website in the next couple of weeks which will have way more resources and you know um signposting to other places that you can find information but for now just go to the instagram and we've got our link tree and join

in with our um online events because they're really fun. Amazing. Thank you so much. And thank you everyone for listening. I will see you next week. Bye. Thanks for having me. Bye. Bye. We'll be right back. Number one feeling winning in an exciting live dealer studio exclusively on FanDuel Casino where winning is undefeated 19 plus and physically located in Ontario gambling problem. Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connects Ontario.ca. Please play responsibly.