Just As Well, The Women's Health Podcast - How To Rebuild Your Body Confidence with Danae Mercer

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

When it comes to things like self-esteem and body confidence, good influences don’t come much better than today’s guest. Danae Mercer is a journalist-turned-Instagram sensation who demonstrates self-love and body-acceptance to her 2.2 million followers. She exposes the fakery that brands use while flogging diet products online and has made it her mission to help women the world over love themselves a little more and judge themselves a little less - cellulite and stretch marks included. In today’s episode she opens up about her teenage struggles with anorexia, the problem with always looking at your face with a filter and her tips on how women can cultivate a stronger, more resilient relationship with their bodies - for themselves, the women around them, and the next generation. Join Danae on Instagram: @danaemercer Join Roisín on Instagram: @roisin.dervishokane Join Women’s Health on Instagram: @womenshealthuk Topics Danae’s eating disorder recovery story Why it's important to understand the artifice of social media perfection Why there’s no 'right' way to celebrate your body on social media The problem with using beauty filters all the time Why teens’ body image battle is every woman’s fight Like what you’re hearing? We'd love if you could rate and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, as it really helps other people find the show. Also, remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, so you’ll never miss an episode. Got a goal in mind? Shoot us a message on Instagram putting ‘Going for Goal’ at the start of your message and our experts could be helping you get where you want to be in an upcoming episode. Alternatively, you can email us: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Halloween is on Disney Plus. Hello. So you can feel a little fear. What's this? Well. Or a little more fear. I see dead people. A lot of fear.

Mom. Completely terrified. Who's that? Choose wisely. With Halloween on Disney Plus. How can we use social media? in a way that supports rather than chips away at positive body image. It's a monster question,

the answer to which evolves constantly with new technology, new trends, and can look different for everyone. But one thing we do know can really help, from research and anecdotal evidence, is being choosy about what faces, bodies and voices you let into your personal sphere of influence. And when it comes to things like self-esteem and body confidence, good influences don't come much better than today's guest. Dene Mercer is a journalist turned Instagram sensation

who demonstrates self-love and body acceptance to her 2.2 million followers. She exposes the fakery that brands use while flogging diet products online and has made it her mission to help women the world over love themselves a little bit more and judge themselves a little bit less. Cellulite, stretch marks and the rest, included.

Hello, I'm Roshin-Devichokein and this is Going for Goal, the weekly Women's Health podcast. On this show, we call on top experts to share the tools you need to make good on the health goals that really matter to you. And we also chat some of our favourite celebrities and wellness heavyweights about what they do to feel and function at their best. Dene was an absolute delight to speak to you. She is body confidence personified. But as is so often the case, it hasn't always been that way. In the next half an hour, she opens up about her teenage struggles with anorexia

and how being at such a low and difficult place with her body really informed. her drive to inspire confidence, self-worth and joy in the next generation. She's a font of knowledge when it comes to navigating the online world in a way that's kind to yourself and others, and she offers up advice from a place of no judgment. Well, unless you're one of the people using her fake before and after pictures to flog, detox teas and other diet fads on the ground, I mean, she's judging you pretty hard. If your confidence needs a little pep up in a gentle, supportive, and truly, we're all in this together fashion, then Deney is your woman.

Get comfy, pour yourself a cup of something warming and enjoy. So, Denae, Marcia, hello. Welcome to the pod. Hi, thanks so much for having me. You're so welcome. So you're a fellow journalist, content creator, and probably one of the most prolific revealers of Instagram trickery that there is on the app when it comes to those flawless body shots.

Time again, you put out this message that what's online doesn't equal real. Why do you do what you do? Yeah, it's a great question. I think there are a lot of reasons. The big kind of overarching one is that I really, really, really just want to help women and girls, teenagers feel a little bit more comfortable in their skin. I think for so many of us, we struggle with things that feel, they still feel taboo, whether it's cellulite and stretch marks straight on through to disordered eating or when should I have children or should I be married already, you know, all these topics. And things. that I myself have felt shame over or struggled with or embarrassed about. And then also, you know, when I was 19, I had an eating disorder and a lot of that journey now informs a lot of what I talk about today. Would you, are you able to talk a little bit about that, like how it presented and how you, how you were able to get yourself out of that place? Yeah, of course. So my, my eating disorder, I mean, I would say I was always aware of my body and I was, I started dieting from the time I was 13.

It was, you know, I did everything. I did Atkins and South Beach and slim fast and all the diets that came and went. And then at around 19, my mom passed away and my whole world became a big mess. Like everything just fell apart. My family fell apart. at school was very intense. And just managing all of that, I started to find control in food. And for me, that my eating disorder presented itself in the form of anorexia. So extreme restriction. I, you know, cut down calories to a drastically low level, incredibly low. And I lost a lot of weight very quickly. Straight to the point where my hair was falling out in clumps and my body hurt. And I was always cold. And the only way I could ever get warm was like being in a bathtub the rest of the time, even if I was wearing like, I remember at one point I was wearing three different sweaters and a jacket and I was still cold, you know, because your body is just falling apart essentially.

But I'm I'm incredibly lucky. My university, Creighton University, and basically I, when we came back from Christmas break, I was, I was very sick. I was like noticeably, I looked very, very very, very ill. And a couple of professors and staff at my university actually pulled me aside at one point and had a really honest conversation with me. And it was along the lines of like, you need help. You cannot fight this yourself. You cannot, whatever you're trying to battle, like, you can't do it alone. Let us help you. And I'm so grateful because the university got me, they took like the three-prong approach. So they got me a medical. professional, so a doctor slash nurse, a nutritionist, and the psychologist. And for about a year,

I was seeing each of those individuals at least once a week. Wow. And the university covered all of that. And it's, honestly, it's the reason I was able to recover and recover in the way I did. Wow. That's, yeah, that sounds like the gold standard in terms of pastoral care, doesn't it? It was, it was such a blessing, honestly. It's because, you know, disordered eating, eating disorders, they're so complex. It's not just your body. It's not just your mind. It's not just food. It's all these things together in a really dangerous combination. And it's, it's no wonder that eating disorders are the deadliest mental illness because it is so complex. Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing that. We really appreciate it. And then, so you recovered. So what age would you say that you were

recovered by? Well, I mean, I think, I think, like I said, eating disorders, they're so complex. There was no I wouldn't say there's a magical number. It's more of a constant journey. And I was really lucky that I got a scholarship to Cambridge. And that helped a lot with my recovery because it took a lot of these external things that were, I was trying to control, you know, because disordered eating is often about your external environment. And so it took those things and made them not a stress factor anymore. So being at Cambridge helped, being around, I joined the pentathlon team. So being around women and men who viewed their bodies as like powerful tools and incredibly strong, wonderful things that they needed to honor by fueling and feeding rather than shrink down and get smaller and starve.

That helped, doing sport helped. And, you know, it just, it was just this step by step by step by step journey where I could now say, you know, I'm incredibly comfortable in my skin and with with food. Like I feel no shame around eating that cake. I feel no shame around eating that candy bar. It's all just in balance. And yeah, that's such a powerful lesson, isn't it? Learning to appreciate your body for what it can do rather than, and what it is rather than what it looks like. I should also say as well that you are part of the sprawling global women's health family as former editor-in-chief of women's health and men's health Middle East. So you've got a background in health and fitness.

Obviously, we've talked about how you love to train. What would you say to someone who's curious about how you kind of reconcile those messages of self-love and acceptance while working for a brand that's kind of, all about kind of improving yourself and getting as like fit and healthy as you could be. Well, I personally, I mean, I love the women's health, men's health brand. I always have. Like if you were to, that was my dream job. That has always been my dream job is to work with women's health men's health. I just, like, it is a life goal and it will forever be one of the proudest moments of my life. And I would say it's not, it's not either or, right? It's not I love

myself, I accept myself, or I have fitness goals, I have health goals. It's not one extreme or another. It is both. And for me, loving myself and accepting myself means fueling my body in a way that makes me feel good. It means setting goals that are mentally challenging, that are physically rewarding, that make me feel strong and powerful. It means honoring this incredible vessel that I am, but also loving and trying to celebrate and respect the person I am in this moment while challenging myself for the future. It's these things that sit side by side and hand in hand. Yeah, it's not a binary. Yeah, exactly.

Interesting. And yeah, I've been seeing more and more about that, kind of the more conversations that there are about tackling obesity and stuff and people saying exactly what you said, like learning to love yourself. It isn't, that doesn't mean that people then are like, oh, I'm fine. Sometimes that step to love yourself and accept yourself is actually the thing that's going to make someone feel able to then, like, they're worthy of making themselves nice, or they're worthy of beginning an exercise journey or something like that.

It's actually it's so fundamental. Absolutely. Like I spoke to a woman the other day who struggled with binge eating disorder and she was saying for her, like she used food as a punishment. You know, it was this weird situation where she was eating and eating and eating, but she was doing it to hurt herself, to make it painful. You know, and I would say I was in a place where I used food as a punishment too. I was starving myself, not because I loved my body, not because I loved myself, but because so much in so many ways was really bad.

So I think for me, help is this beautiful, like it is one of the most beautiful expressions of self-love we can give ourselves. And that's a huge thing that you're about and your Instagram bio, it's angles and self-love, which I think pretty much sums it up. And if you, I mean, I'm pretty sure that our listeners will be familiar, but if, with, with, with, donate to Instagram. if not do go check it out. It's brilliant. That's your message on Instagram and you're in contact with millions of women across the world. From what you see and from what they're telling you,

how do you think the pandemic has changed people's relationships with their body? Wow. Well, gosh. I think the pandemic's made our relationships with our bodies so much more delicate and in many cases, far more challenging. Whether it's women, I had a woman message the other day saying she's gained 40 pounds during

lockdown. And that's something we see with a lot of women is they are gaining weight or their routines of change. They can't go to the gym. They can't maybe go eat at the healthy restaurants they like to eat at. They can't go for long walks. They can't do a lot of the things that they are used to doing. So it's all these things. It's the disruption of routine.

It's being stuck in our houses, dealing with the mental difficulty, dealing with the stressors of an external environment. And so on one hand, we're looking for new coping mechanisms or going back to old dangerous coping mechanisms. And for many women, that's dealing with our bodies, that's changing the way we handle our food and not in a healthy way. Or we're dealing with our bodies changing or our routines changing. So all of this chaos has made COVID very, very, very difficult on body image and mental health.

I spoke to a therapist the other day for something I'm working on. And she was saying, like, without a doubt, they have seen a rise in the number of mental health issues during COVID because of all these reasons. So, and it's something I'm getting messaged a lot about at the moment. The current environment has made it very difficult on women. Yeah. And I guess it makes sense almost, it almost speaks to that thing in your personal journey as well when you experienced that firsthand when your world felt like it was falling apart

after the death of your mother, you turned inward to exercise control over yourself and your body. And I guess it makes total sense that in the climate where people feel so disempowered and scared and like they can't choose their next move and they're not in control of what happens next, then you are going to hone in on what you can control, which is food and your body. So what would you advise as someone who's been there and as someone who, as a journalist, you're in touch with tons, of super clever people who kind of you speak to about this stuff all the time. What are some habits that you do within your day that kind of reaffirms, as you say, you haven't got it completely licked to someone that's recovering or has recovered from eating disorder. It's a constant journey. But what are some habits that you do in your day that kind of reaffirm this positive, loving relationships that you have with yourself and your body? There are a couple of things I do,

especially throughout the week, you know, varying on different days. One is I try to meditate and it isn't, I used to think meditation was like an hour long where you sit with your fingers on your knees and your back is straight and everything starts to hurt and it's really boring. I'm sorry, I know that's not the cool thing to say, but I was just like, this is just not for me. But there are so many great free apps or like a nominal fee apps that have guided meditation. So they're like five or ten minutes. It's long, and they're usually really powerful and about something cool that, you know, you can, like, imagine. And I like to do those laying in bed with my eyes closed, and about half the time I fall asleep, which is just beautiful.

Like, what a beautiful way to have a little bit of a nap. But it also really makes me feel calm and calmer in myself. So that's something I do. I go for long walks. You know, being out in nature, like being in the fresh air is one of the greatest things we can do for our mental. health. And it's great for our physical health. Like so often we think, okay, exercise needs to be an hour-long session of grueling hit. And if I don't do that, I'm a bad. I'm a failure. I'm not working my body. No, if you talk to the experts, if you look at what the governments recommend,

like walking is one of the best things you can do for yourself. So it's that kind of double whammy. If it's good for my brain, it's good for my body, it makes me feel good. I also love journaling. So spending even again just 10 minutes a day like what's on my mind. What are my goals? What do I want to achieve that day? What am I proud of from yesterday? You know, these lovely little things that let us tune into that inner voice and kind of make the outside world feel a little bit less scary. Yeah. That's great in reminding yourself of who you are that you're not necessarily just your body. What you look like. There's this kind of inner thing that you can have this dialogue with. Exactly. With social media and kind of creating a more realistic and positive place on Instagram when it comes to body image, do you feel like everyone has their part to play? Or do you, I don't know, do you sympathise with people who use tons of filters or are still doing all the poses and haven't quite got to wear your app? Do you think it's on everyone to change? Oh, no, I think sometimes there can be confusion around my message that is tied to this idea of, well, posing is bad, filters are bad, this is wrong, this is shameful. And I'm like 100% no, that is not my belief. I don't advocate for that. I'm a big believer. Like women as women, as girls, teenagers, whatever, as anyone who identifies as female, we are shamed. We are constantly shamed for whatever decision we make, whether it's to wear makeup or to not, to have children or to, to have children or children. to work out too much, to not work out enough. Like, there is always something that we are ashamed for. And I, like, I cannot say this enough.

What matters to me is that you show up in whatever way makes you feel the most like you. And for some women, that 100%, like, say you're a mom and you're on the beach and you want to take a picture that feels sassy that you look at and you were like, I feel like a hot tamale, you know, and you pose and you angle and you squeeze and you pop. that can be incredibly empowering. But at the same time, if you're that same mom and you're on the beach and your bits are jiggling and your cellulite is out and you are like laughing in the sun with your kids and you catch those photos on camera and you look at that picture and you're like, yes, this feels like me.

This is who I am. That's equally as empowering. And I think the same is true on social media. Like social media is not this way is right. This way is wrong. It is empowerment looks and feels different on every woman. and I just ask that you show up in the way that actually feels like you. And you're just offering a little bit of behind the scenes

so that people can fact-check those gloriously smooth images that make people think. As you say, I mean, I can relate to him. I'm sure everyone can when you were 18. And you'd be looking at like, I remember becoming aware of like Victoria's Secret models. And it's when you're like, you had this like tiny, you had this like little like teenager's body and you're like, oh my God, it's hideous. I don't have a, because they have like Barbie bums basically, don't they? It's like not a dimple, not an inch, not an anything.

And your reality is never going to measure up to that. Well, I, exactly. I just want to help educate, like pull back the curtain a bit so that people do look at those images and realize, okay, well, yes, maybe that is exactly true for that person and that's how they exist, 1,000 percent. Or maybe they're supposed. posing and it's great lighting and it's a professional photographer and they know what to do with their bodies and, you know, all these other things. Or, I mean, this is so true is with like dodgy

brands that claim, okay, if you take this tea, you will lose 30 pounds in one week and then they use images to prove it. I get sent these all the time and I'm like, I can just, I can pose. I can pose and do that proof. It could be taken 30 seconds apart. and it's the exact same body, and I can look exactly like this ad that is coming out here trying to get your money by feeding on your insecurities. So my goal is just to help educate so that, I don't know, so that every woman, I guess, feels a little bit more comfortable in herself and realizes, like, how incredible she is. You know what's better than the one big thing?

Two big things. Exactly. The new iPhone 17 Pro on TELUS's five-year rate plan price lock. Yep, it's the most powerful iPhone ever. Plus, more peace of mind with your bill over five years. This is big. Get the new iPhone 17 Pro at tellus.com slash iPhone 17 Pro on select plans. Conditions and exclusions apply. Our brains are all just learning how to deal with this technology, aren't we? As well, I guess it's like if there's, it's so much and it's so overwhelming.

I guess we just need a little bit of, I think, so post like yours and those before and after is brilliant when you, as you say, you basically perform the book before and after on the same day. And haven't you had brands even then use some of your own pictures to promote, which is so meta. So you created a fake before and after to basically send up these type of adverts and show up these people kind of putting out these false advertising. And then they've used your piss take, basically.

So they've used your mock up to push more products. That's mad. Yeah. It blows my mind and it makes me so. angry in so many ways because it's it's like this is how how do you ever think as a human being because there is a human being on the other side of that brand how do you look at this image that I've created like maybe okay recent one was showing how light impacts how your cellulite shows up right because if you're in the if you're in the sun like just standing normally for me I've got cellulite on my

bum and hips and my cellulite shows if I'm in the shade and if I'm posing my cellulite doesn't or it doesn't as much. So I did like a side-by-side image talking about it, like same body, different lighting. And then a brand has taken that image to be like, here's before our cream and after our cream. And I'm like, how does that person on the other end of that process be like, this is what we're going to do today. This is what I want to do for my job. This is going to make me feel good.

Like, ah, it blows my mind. Yeah. It is mad. It is never. on the, if you spend too long on the explore page, I find sometimes some of the stuff you come across, it's just absolutely nuts. You just get yourself out of it occasionally.

Do you know, you can actually, because for a while, Instagram was showing me some stuff, and I was like, I don't want to see this. If you hold it down on Explore, you can click, like, see less images like this. And that's a, I think that's a really powerful tool to avoid, if you're like, nope, don't need that triggering nonsense on my feed. Like, that's what you do.

Interesting. Do you have any other tips? as being someone in the body confidence space and also being massively prolific on Instagram. Do you have any more tips for using it in a healthy way? In a healthy way? Okay. So one of the things, it's, I don't know if you've seen the documentary, I think it's called the Social Dilemma or the Social Network or something, but there's this beautiful quote in it that's talking about how, as humans,

like we were evolved to take in the feedback of our tribe, like of our community. It's how we function. It's how, like, you know, you keep the tribe going and everyone's happy. So we internalize feedback. But we weren't evolved to take in the feedback from thousands of strangers all around the world on the other end of their phone. And that for me has been a really powerful thing to hold in my heart where I'm like, if you are using the internet, and I think 99.9% of us are at the moment, like, try to

set those internal boundaries where you maybe don't take in the feedback or you're really careful with the feedback, make sure that you, like, do a spring cleaning every six months of the counts you're following and make sure that they're actually making you feel good or feel better or educating or, like, bringing joy to your day, not leaving you feeling a little bit worse or a little bit angrier, a little bit harsher, those sorts of things. What else? Set intentional timing. So if you pick up your phone, maybe say, like, I will look at it for 15 minutes and then I'm putting it down because otherwise we can like go down that little rabbit hole of wow it's four hours later and i'm feeling kind of bad you know because i've just compared myself to thousands of people i don't know

exactly just trying to create some of those boundaries because we're our brains aren't ready yet for all this technology so it's it's finding that balance yes making it work for you rather than just sliding sliding into it and then losing hours in a squirrel hole exactly scroll off. That's a great word. Yeah, I heard that and I was like, that's exactly it, isn't it? So we reported recently on rising levels of insecurity that people are experiencing about their own faces in this era of work from home when you've constantly got your own face in the corner of a Zoom screen. Cosmetic doctors in the UK reporting record requests for things like rhinoplasty, so nose jobs. And this is obviously coinciding with very subtle face filters that can

blur out every line, pour and narrow your nose, make your lips more plump, and they're becoming even more widespread and kind of even more subtle. I wondered what you think maybe needs to change there, because we've kind of, it's like we've had this conversation on body image, but it's almost like, I don't know, is the face now going to become the next frontier of that almost while we're staring at ourselves all the time and maybe we're not judging. maybe we're not judging other people's bodies as much because this is this is all that people are seeing. I'm interested to know what you think needs to change there. It's a great question. I think it's very complex. I think one of the things that I would encourage every person to do just for their own mental health and sanity.

And I make myself do this too because sometimes it's not easy. And that's to like do some kind of content, some kind of stuff without filters. And like sometimes your, you know, filters can be really fun. Like I love myself a good filter, especially ones that add sparkles or glitter, whatever. But they could also be really tricky mentally, right? Because if every single day all you see staring back at you is this like porous, super glossy, super shiny, change this, enhance that version of yourself that not even like a cosmetic doctor can create because there's no way you will end up with no pores at all on your skin.

you know, that can become a bit of a delicate and difficult thing. So I would say, allow yourself that balance. Like, yeah, filters can be great. They can be really fun. But try to like, okay, this is me. Like, this is me without a filter. And that's still worthy too. And she's still awesome too. I do worry about the teenagers. I would say adults are one thing. Like, we're increasingly smart and we're, you know, we're dealing with our own stuff and we'll get there. but teenagers who have access to things like TikTok, and you know, you're a 12-year-old girl, you're a 13, 12, 11-year-old girl,

and TikTok automatically, once you set up their beautify feature, it's always on. It's not like Instagram where you go in and you have to like click the filter. TikTok is just, it's just there. And that's just where it is, is making everything shiny and glossy and smooth and super poreless. And I think for adults, that's one thing,

but teenagers, that concerns me. I don't think it's very likely that TikTok's going to wake up tomorrow and be like, we're going to change this. But instead, we can educate, right? We can educate around, okay, here's why you need to do both. We can educate around how beauty trends come and go. Like, I don't know if you saw, but at the moment, there's this real trend for dark undereye circles. And that is like, yeah, it's this whole movement.

And there are even now filters on Instagram that blur your skin, shrink your job, but give you some nice little dark undereye circles. That's so funny. But it's wild. But I mean, look at the eyebrow trend, right? I was just about to say, and I'm looking at both of us on the Zoom call with like big brushed up brows. But if this was 10 years ago, plucks to obscurity. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And so, okay, it's fine. Like, it's great to embrace that, to play with makeup. to have fun, like to do whatever makes you feel like you. But at the same time, I think just educating ourselves around it, like being aware that these things come and go and they come and go and self-love is complex, beauty is complex, digital media has made it even more complex, but trying to find that balance within ourselves instead of being like constantly like, imperfect, imperfect, imperfect, imperfect, imperfect and wrong. Yeah. You know. When you, when you were talking there about teenagers, I think, I guess it really hits it home.

doesn't it? Because I think sometimes we can be, because we've kind of almost grown up with this inner critic, sometimes it can feel quite, sometimes I talk about self-love and being nice to yourself. It can kind of be a bit wasted when you think about yourself. But when you think of a younger girl or like a teenager in your life, maybe a niece or a sister or something, I think that's when it really, it hits home, doesn't it? Because you kind of put, you put yourself in their shoes and you realize how much pressure is on them. What advice would you have? have as someone that really kind of wants to educate teenagers on this? What advice would you have for people that are in contact? Maybe them, maybe their moms of teenagers or, as I say, aunt's friends. What advice would you give them on helping the teenager kind of encourage a relationship? What advice would you give for that kind of young girl on developing a relationship with herself? Because I feel like that's the key thing, isn't it? Trends will change. digital media will change, but that self-love and that dialogue and that understanding of who they are, that needs to be strong. Do you have any advice for people on how they can help those younger girls

nurture that? That is an incredible question. I actually, I got asked the other day from a kindergarten teacher who was saying that like some of the girls in our class have already expressed concern about their body shades. And she was like, what, how do I start that dialogue? What do I do? And if I'm honest, Like I am not the expert on this. I don't have children yet. Like I think to be a parent in today's age is so complicated and so nuanced. I guess just hearing, because I do get a lot of messages from younger girls and teens and stuff, and it would, from what they say, I would just recommend, like, first off, be really aware of how you speak about your body in front of them or their body, right?

Like recently I had, because I was talking about it. about when my stretch marks emerged, like a 13-year-old message me to say, like, I'm getting stretch marks. Is this normal? And I was like, well, yeah, it happens at all different ages. That's okay. It's normal. And then I had all these young girls messaging me being like, oh, I'm 11, oh, I'm 13, oh, I'm 15, oh, I'm 16. And my mom spot me cream. And like, I'm covering it with duct tape. And my mom was horrified. My family was, and so it's this kind of like subtle, it's so deeply rooted, the things that we are ashamed of, that sometimes it can echo out into younger generations. And so it's like really trying to be conscious of that, like how we see ourselves impacts them.

And then also, also I would say just listen, right? Like these girls are coming to me, a complete stranger who, you know, I've never met them a day in their life. And they're telling me stories because they want to feel safe telling those stories to someone. so if you can create that like safe supportive environment where they can come to you and be like, hey, you know, I'm feeling insecure about this thing on my hip or this thing like on the side of my arm. Like, is this normal? Is this bad? I think this is bad. Is it bad? You know, that I think that could be really invaluable. Yeah. Hold that space for them. Yeah. But I don't know. I mean, I, heck, who knows, all those rules might go out the window when I have children. I think it's, I think it's incredibly

complex being a parent and I've just got such respect. Absolutely, especially here in the UK at the moment. They're homeschooling at the moment. So you've got all of loads of people at our work as well that you're doing full-time jobs and then teaching their children at the same time, you know. I don't know. I don't know. Just strength to that because I think being a parent is one of the most complicated full-time jobs you could ever have.

Like you can't one of my best friends is a mom of two. And you can't just be like, okay, I'm taking a lunch break. All right, mommy needs a holiday, like, chow. You know? Like, I'm going to put up this boundary. Can you not talk to me right now? Yeah, none of that, I know. Terrifying.

I need some self-love time, please. Just go over there, please, for two hours, thanks. That's safe when you can't even, like, go to the toilet or have a bath while being left alone. I watch them when she showers because she's like, I just, I can shower alone. This is amazing. And I'm like, it's okay. I got you. Cats are easier.

Yeah, they're so. They, like, try to get into the shower. They're very weird, my cats. So today has the most gorgeous, beautifully fluffy cats. So it's been so good to talk to you about this topic. And I should say as well that this is the third year of our Project Body Love campaign, which is kind of at the heart of everything that you speak to. So it's about loving your body and accepting your body,

but primarily at the core of that is loving yourself and accepting yourself and nurturing that relationship. And as you say, as you were saying just then, if you can't do that for yourself, do it for the people around you. Be there your friends, be there your colleagues, be there younger, younger generations, because we've kind of all, we've all got a part to play. And as you're right, we just learn by copying, don't we? Everyone is influencing everyone. So the more kind of caring and compassionate we can be with ourselves, hopefully that will, that will filter through.

Filter an ironic choice of word there. So, the name of this podcast is going for goal. So at the end, we'd like to ask people what is their goal for the next year. So what's yours? I would say I've got two. One of them is to be a bit more confident in myself, which is something I'm still learning every day. And the other is to, I guess, just help as many women and girls as possible. And I do think the two go hand in hand because the community around me really,

they help me more than I help them. So both things. That's great. And I think you're definitely helping people feel more confident about themselves. So it sounds like a very productive two-way street. So good luck with that. Thanks. Denei Mertha, thank you so much for coming on going for goal.

Thank you. Bye. Bye. I hope you enjoyed listening to that conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. And whatever stage you're at in your day, you're able to go about the rest of it, standing a little taller, and maybe being that extra bit more loving to yourself. As ever, if you want to comment on anything that we've raised in this episode,

get in touch, all the details of how to are in the show notes, as are some links to organisations that can help if you've been affected by any of the issues in this show. And remember, if you've got a goal in mind that you want to achieve, let us know, and we could be helping you get there in an upcoming episode. That's all from going for goal this week. We'll be back next Tuesday. Bye.