Saturn Returns with Caggie - 8.10 Cultivating Compassion: Reclaiming Self Love with Alex Light

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

This week I’m delighted to be joined by Alex Light, a body confidence advocate, journalist, chart-topping podcast host and founder of Light LDN. Alex started her career in magazine journalism where she wrote about celebrities, fashion and beauty. Her Instagram was a space for her to share her love for these topics but whilst it appeared she was #livingherbestlife, Alex was actually battling an eating disorder. Now, she has successfully created a platform that encourages body positivity and champions women’s unfiltered bodies. At 26, Alex began using her social platform to document her recovery and was astounded at the amount of people who resonated with her story. We discuss the relationship Alex has with her body and the steps she took to mend and cultivate what was one of the biggest tormentors in her life. Alex is on a mission to expose unrealistic beauty standards and diet culture to help others combat their own feelings of shame and self-loathing.  Alex deconstructs some of the messaging that has permeated into our collective psyche from being a young woman and how diet culture is a tool of the patriarchy. She shares the importance of recognising and detangling those beliefs whilst also encouraging us to commit to refraining from commenting on people's looks, regardless of the intention.  Saturn can bring change and awakening in mind, body and soul. Alex discusses how this contentment came with age, coinciding with her Saturn Return. Alex also shares how she transformed her internal critic into self-compassion in order to reach that space of contentment within herself. She takes us on her own path of healing whilst delving deep into the emotions that have come up for her during this time of self-reflection.  --- Subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. This week I wanted to hear from another member of the Saturn Returns community and so here is a little note from Hannah. I'm Hannah from London and I came across the Saturn Return podcast at the start of 2020 just as we were going into lockdown. I used to listen to it on my walks and I had actually just gone through my Saturn Return. I was 29 at the time so it all made a lot of sense to me. I had quit a really stressful job in a really stressful time that I wasn't aligned to and

once I listened to the podcast, I realized what was happening, which was really comforting. And this year, I actually had the chance to go on the Saturn Return Retreat in Zakynthos in Greece, which was so amazing. It was the most beautiful setting. There was six of us and then Kagi's team. And it was just beautiful. We did journaling, we had lots of rituals some workshops with kagi and i got to know some really great women and got to know more of kagi and it's just a beautiful community that i am feel really lucky to be a part of and i will continue to be we've been taught for so long to not love our bodies to actively hate our bodies and do what we can to fix them and you're

just setting another standard for yourself that ultimately you're going to feel like you're failing again so I think that's a big part of the reason that people often struggle with body positivity because it just feels so far-fetched and so far removed from where they're at. Today I'm joined by Alex Light, a body positivity advocate, journalist, chart-topping podcast host and founder of Light London. After battling with eating disorders in her earlier life, Alex has successfully crafted and created a platform that encourages body positivity and champions women's unfiltered bodies. I wanted to have her on the show because it was a big part of my own Saturn Returns journey, sort of making peace with my relationship

with my body. And I know that it's something that a lot of people struggle with navigating, I'd say particularly women. And we're constantly told and given all this messaging that we aren't enough, that we need to be thinner. And then when we get to that place, then we're constantly told and given all this messaging that we aren't enough that we need to be thinner and then when we get to that place then we're told we're too thin and it feels like we're sort of chasing this goal that doesn't really exist when it comes to our bodies and you only have to look back and see how you know the way me and Alex were brought up there was this obsession with size zero an obsession with asking women about their weight online and when I watched the Beckham documentary recently I was reminded of how much pressure Victoria Beckham was under and how you know

the commentary around her weight and whilst it's improved quite a lot there is still this fascination with women's bodies in a way that's quite disproportionate to men and so I really enjoyed having this conversation and kind of unpacking a lot of that and hearing about Alex's journey of overcoming some of those obstacles and getting to a place of self-compassion and self-love with her own relationship with her body. So I hope you enjoy this conversation between myself and Alex. Welcome to the Saturn Returns podcast. Thank you so much for having me. And welcome to my apartment. It's so nice. It's such a nice, comfy, cozy setup here. I love it. It's very, I'm a Taurus and I feel like it's very very much represents my does it yeah is it tourist vibes tourist like homely cozy okay comfort it's very

cozy I love it thank you it's really nice I'm really excited to have you on because we've never met before no but we were saying just before we started recording that I think we've known of each other for a while yeah because we're about the same age we are you probably hate people saying this but I remember watching you made in Chelsea all those years ago so you had that experience from yeah me a decade ago so this is this is to be interesting. But I wanted to have you on because we recently connected online when you put up something about how the sort of media talk about women and how they talk about men. But before we get into that for the audience that doesn't know, would you be able to explain a little bit about who you are and what you do yes so I'm a journalist originally I was

at a magazine for a really long time like 10 years and I was writing about celebrities and fashion and beauty I also had like an Instagram account as well where I share my fashion and beauty pictures and a lot of these super curated, super edited pictures of myself. And in the background of all of this, what was going on was I was suffering from an eating disorder, one that I'd had for a really long time, but that was coming to a head. And when I eventually sought recovery from it, I kind of started to realize that what I was doing online started to feel really at odds with what was going on in my in my private life as in you were doing the therapy and you were

working through it but then the stuff you were putting out online was almost like exactly the opposite of that exactly it felt very counter intuitive I was starting to learn through therapy that you know my body size and my appearance wasn't the most interesting thing about me and that my worth wasn't tied up in my appearance and at the same time I was editing my photos you know to within an inch of of my life and I downloaded photoshop so I could use the Liquify tool to like slim my body before even the apps existed. And it just started to really jar with me and what I was learning. And so I had this, I don't want to say crisis, but I was just like one night, I'm done with this.

I'm not doing it anymore. And I'm going to talk about what's actually going on in my life. You know, talk about having an eating disorder, talk about having problems with my body image and my struggles with my weight. And that was it really. That was the turning point. At what point was that?

What age were you? I think I was like 20, I want to say 26, 27. And it was kind of, it was gradual from there. Like now I'm at the point where I talk about anti-diet culture a lot I talk about um beauty standards and body confidence like it's a huge like makes up a great deal of what I talk about and so it was a slow it was a gradual process to kind of get there but I became just more and more passionate about it the more I learned about it and I felt more like galvanized into action the more I learned and the I guess I became a bit angry learning about

why we feel this way why women feel so bad in their own skin and feel so much shame around their bodies and themselves I guess that's in a nutshell how I am like why I do what I do now which is I struggle to like sum up what I do but I guess like body confidence activist and it's obviously resonating with so many people because you've developed this huge community online which I kind of want to get into the more collective narratives of the conversation that we're going to have but also from a personal experience you said that your eating disorder and that kind of journey had been happening for a long time but then you got to the point where it kind of came to a head when do you feel like it sort of originated for you I grew up in a really diet culture heavy environment which I think a lot of us did especially I grew up in a really diet culture heavy environment which I

think a lot of us did especially I was born in the 80s oh my god it was like there was no nutrition health it was sort of eat a piece of cheese if you're if you feel like you're gonna pass out and have diet coke and smoke cigarettes like that was kind of what we were told to do at school were you at a girls only school I was yeah yeah it perpetuates it sometimes totally and disordered eating was really glamorized as well it was like cigarettes were a glamorous substitute for food you know and it was the era of nothing tastes as good as skinny feels and we had all the we had Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie and I guess that era of of role models for lack of a better yeah the size zero and this was all really when we were kind of teenagers yeah going through puberty our bodies were changing but as it changes

you kind of then feel this need to try and control it or you don't like the changes that are happening exactly those formative years you're so vulnerable and I was always I still haven't got to grips with how really to describe it but I was I was always chubby like I was never fat but I certainly wasn't thin and I was acutely aware of it and acutely aware that it was not a good thing and that my peers who were smaller than me like that was very much coveted and that was praised and that was admired and did you ever receive criticism for that or people being mean to you or anything like that I mean yeah I comments you know the comments that were just passing off the cuff comments for the people that said them but for me who was on the receiving end

you know things that still stick with me they're so damaging today yeah I actually recently did a talk that my dad came along to and we were talking about you know the older generation and how they grew up around around body image and believing that everything thin was good and everything fat was bad and we had this really cathartic but emotional moment where he apologized to me in this room full of people because he would call me pretty but plump and he apologized to me you know in front of all these people and it was an emotional I was really trying so hard not to cry he must have felt terrible because you probably didn't realize how that was going to impact you he just didn't know no and I think also our parents like we want to please them and get

their validation so the comments that they make about our weight or anything I mean obviously as a society nobody should but our parents especially when we're young and in those formative years can be it can be really impactful so impactful and so long lasting and you're right it's like there are everything when we're growing up we seek validation from them more than anyone so yeah there were there were things like that that will just I think that always sort of stuck with me I mean the jury's out on eating disorders and whether they're nature or nurture but I think that always sort of stuck with me I mean the jury's out on eating disorders and whether they're nature or nurture but I think for me it was a mix of I was very sensitive really still am extremely sensitive and very much susceptible to black and white thinking and

perfectionist tendencies and that coupled with all the diet culture that I was absorbing day after day all these messages that thinness was going to be what made me better and made me more worthy and more lovable and desirable I think all of that together was just yeah compounded before the eating disorder like I started dieting super young like 11 I think started dieting and from then on tried every single diet under the sun like you name it I tried it and it wasn't until my 20s that that tipped over into real like diagnosable eating disorder territory and what did that look like I mean it was just hell have so much empathy for people who are stuck in a diet cycle because it's just hell and it's so trapping I would do diet after diet after diet and I would each one would I don't I don't like to say I failed each one failed me because they're always

set up to fail but every single diet and I actually as is really common with dieting I dieted myself up in weight I ended up in you know much heavier weight than than when I began because I was just then stuck in a cycle of restriction and binging restriction and binging and just sort of devour depth like depriving yourself and yeah I mean I resonate with so much of what you're saying especially at that time in my life and and you know like you grew up in a culture that was very much size zero there was no such thing as too skinny girls sort of sense of self-worth and beauty that was then sort of entangled in that and then yeah like you say it's that that awful cycle when the same voice that tells you when you're thin enough, you'll be worthy also tells you to go

and eat like the entire cake. And so it's this really toxic relationship that you end up having with yourself where you're like, you can't get out. The goal that you're trying to achieve doesn't actually exist because even when you achieve it, the goalpost gets further away. And I think that's one of the most difficult things about eating disorders is that once that kind of permeates the mind it's really hard to unravel and to get back to a place of feeling like you don't need to reach anything in order to feel worthy and enough so I also empathize with anyone that's listening to this and struggling with some of these themes oh it's so it's so hard because it's true you end up pinning your

happiness on this number which is you know this number that you're going to hit on the scale which is totally arbitrary and for me anecdotally the proof is in the pudding like I got down to my I'm saying this in air quotes goal weight and much further beyond that and I never never ever reached any level of happiness I was just getting more and more unhappy yeah and also what you're saying that that dichotomy that we have in this society that is so weird it's like on one hand food is this huge source of comfort for us and this huge source of joy and tradition and and it's like a social currency as well and then on the other hand we're supposed to be as thin as we possibly can and it's so confusing it's just such a minefield because yeah the messaging is

conflicting and also I remember I remember when I was younger someone saying in terms of addictions and often you know an eating disorder is very much wrapped up in a kind of addictive behavior but the reason that an eating disorder can be the most challenging of all those sort of things to overcome is because it's the one thing that you have to address and have three times a day every day for the rest of your life or however many meals you know you need to survive and to actually thrive whereas with alcohol or drugs or gambling whatever you can just cut it out yeah and it's far easier when you cut that thing out to just get on with life and it sort of normalizes and you forget about that thing hopefully yeah whereas this is so confronting when you get to that point because you are being confronted with that internal critic and that

challenge so many times that's why it's such a a difficult thing to truly overcome right I remember so and so clearly and this is my mind in being in a really unhealthy bad place but I remember feeling vividly that I was I was jealous of people who had like a gambling addiction or an alcohol addiction thinking I wish I had that instead because then I wouldn't have to be faced with food three times a day. Well, you know, the eating disorder recovery protocol was three meals a day, two snacks. That's an awful lot of food that you're having to face. And I remember thinking, this is so complicated and confusing and painful. You know, and I obviously don't, I do not envy anyone with any kind of addiction. And I know that the jury's out on that as well as to whether eating disorders are a

physiological addiction but it certainly it felt that way and it is it is hard because you have to you can't just throw out that relationship you have to mend it and you have to cultivate this relationship with something that has just been the most toxic relationship of your life and like a tormentor in your life yeah and it's one of the hardest things I've ever done and it continues to be one of the hardest things that I have to do. It's so, so hard. In terms of the recovery process,

what is your perspective on how it was dealt with from a professional standpoint? I just think this is so, so difficult and eating disorder recovery is notoriously difficult which is why anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder it's it's so difficult to treat for me the the three meals a day two snacks a day ultimately provided a sense of comfort and gave me a little bit of control and I thrive on that and letting go of my eating disorder which was like this simultaneously my best closest friend

and biggest source of comfort and also my worst enemy the most toxic thing in my life but it had complete control over my life and part of me really enjoyed that control. So letting that go was so difficult and so painful that I welcomed order and control in other ways into my life. And that for me was part of it. But my recovery, and I like to stress this a lot because my recovery was really slow. Really, really slow. And it took me a really long time and I think I was harmed by having consumed narratives that a girl is sick and she gets help and then she recovers and it's just like that you know everything clicks into place with this help

she has some therapy and then she gets better and it wasn't like that for me at all. It was so messy. It was so hard and so long. All the time I just kept thinking of, but I read about that girl who went in as an inpatient and did three weeks and then she was fine. And then she got better. And I was constantly beating myself, I guess just holding myself to another standard. So that's something that I really like to talk about now as well.

And it's not to discourage people and say, your recovery is to be so impossible don't do it because it's the best thing in the world basically don't compare your recovery yeah because only you are going through this with everything on your back of what you've experienced you're looking through the lens of what you've experienced everything that you've gone through and it's just completely different for everyone and we've just got to be so kind to ourselves in this process even though it's really hard and especially as women it's so hard to be kind to ourselves and so hard to to lead with compassion and self-compassion but that I think is ultimately what was really the key for me is when I firstly when I put my trust in the hands of the professionals

and also I started to be compassionate with myself that was that was then the game changer when you move from a place of really I mean I don't want to put words in your mouth but from what I've experienced myself as an internal critic that's really quite self-loathing yeah and then trying to shift that to a place of self-compassion and there's a lot of stuff on social media that's about that sort of positivity and everything but I think for someone that's in the sort of trenches of it it can feel so far removed to have that self-compassion what were the kind of steps for you to get to that place you know I think the number one thing for me that I go back to them with judgment or shame or a sense of embarrassment?

And the answer's always no. I would have compassion for them. I'd have empathy for them. Their story makes sense. It makes sense that they feel like this. And I find that simple shift of taking myself out of the equation immediately allows me to tap into that compassion

for myself and also there must be a huge amount of grief when you finally make that shift because you're having to acknowledge the way that you've spoken to yourself or the unkind words all of these things and really kind of face them head on there's a lot of cognitive dissonance I think and in some ways it's probably easier to just continue as you are doing because then you don't have to face that but yeah I shout about compassion so much because I just think it's keep shouting I think it's just so important yeah and then in terms of putting yourself online that was a hugely courageous thing to do with something that's so vulnerable that it was it didn't sound like you were by any means like completely healed or

completely recovered when you started speaking about it how what was the kind of whole it was experience like so I remember and I'd like to say that I did it it came from like a careful and considered place and there was something I thought about and I wanted to help other people but that's not the truth it was it was actually came from a place of like desperation of like I can't really carry on like this I am desperate and I'm looking for any outlet and I'm just I'm just desperately asking reaching for any kind of help and that's when I first shared it. And I instantly had this like outpouring of like positive reinforcement. And this was, I don't know what year this was. I'm so bad with dates and ages.

But it was a long time ago now, like eight years, I want to say. And it was at a time when people didn't speak about eating disorders or body image or any weight struggles it was very much kept under wraps there's a lot of shame and stigma around it and embarrassment so I felt like I was the only one who was experiencing what I was experiencing I thought I was defective there was just something wrong with me I was just too sensitive I thought into things too much I was too vain which is another common you know eating disorder trope and so when I spoke about it and I received literally I couldn't believe how many people were responding to me telling me all privately because people was you know still a lot of stigma around at that point

so many people telling me that they were in similar positions a lot of those people were friends and people that I'd known for such a long time no idea and we had no idea and they had no idea about me and we just never broached this because it was so shrouded in in this in this shame and that's one of the really amazing things about social media is that you can actually share that vulnerability find a community and in turn it does give you the sort of sense of anchoring and paradoxically confidence in an area where you felt perhaps very under confident because you realize that there are a lot more people that feel and think the way you do right totally yeah that's the brilliant thing about social media for all its pitfalls like

the community the sense of community and it was it was really really powerful for me and just not feeling alone not feeling like there was something wrong with me and then I just kind of realized like why do why do we feel so much shame about this is so many of us going through stuff like this like surely we just need to open up this conversation yeah which is kind of brings us perfectly into you know what I messaged you about because you put up this post and that was more to do with but it's all kind of one of the same thing it was two daily mail articles one was I can't remember the woman that it was but she had a big gray streak in her hair and the title was you've let yourself go don't you know that like gray hair it's a sign that you know you're no

longer desirable whatever it might be and then you put next to it a daily mail article with colin farrell saying he was completely gray saying look at the silver fox around town shopping and i mean she actually looked not that it matters but beautifully preserved was so like immaculately put together and he was like disheveled and all over the place i know and it just sums up like what we have to experience as women right you know all of these things from such a young age just permeated into our psyche of to age is a bad thing to be overweight is a bad thing yeah but then equally it's like to be too skinny is a bad thing right no so there's this weird thing where it's like okay i'm not sure what i'm supposed to be because it doesn't seem to

exist i know that is what so i feel like every woman in one way or another feels like they're not good enough because they're striving for something that's unachievable right it's a very fine line to tread but also the goalposts are forever shifting because we have all these beauty and body trends that you know come and go and what are your thoughts on some of them because obviously yeah i'd be curious to know i mean i just i always think of the one in the you know the 90s and it was like not good to have a big bum like that was really not a good thing it was not coveted at all there was even that book does my bum look big in this you know that was like the

famous phrase wasn't it oh does my bum look big in this fast forward 20 years and a big bum is the most coveted beauty trend to the point that like bbls are yeah yeah, it's like, I don't know, I can't remember the statistics, but I mean, it's enormous now that market. So it's like we can never actually win unless we devote our entire capacity to it, all of our energy and our time and crucially our money as well. You know, we pour everything we have into keeping up with these trends. And then maybe we can, you know, maybe some of us can get there into keeping up with these trends and then maybe we can you know maybe some of us can get there and keep up with them but for what like that's the thing that I always come back to like for what but if we kind of unpacked it on a deeper level what do you think the intention behind the narrative is because it's obviously created for a reason it doesn't it doesn't just happen

i think it's a tool of the patriarchy to keep women occupied to keep them busy to keep them quiet and to keep them small both literally and metaphorically exactly yeah and it does it really does for anyone listening who's been on a diet you'll know that it occupies when you're on a diet and you're having to restrict yourself restriction is a really difficult thing for our bodies we don't like it we have a visceral biological response to it and we can't function you've got no energy for anything else you've got no capacity for anything else it keeps us busy and it keeps us occupied and it keeps us small which is a pretty dark thing to sort of recognize but at the same time a lot of liberation in that and you know part of the

work that I feel very passionately about right now is to kind of decondition all of these things and question whether it's actually how you feel or what you think or what you value versus what you've been taught or told so what has that kind of journey been like to really decondition some of these things for yourself and what because there's obviously everywhere you'll face whether it's a news agent and you see a magazine or just a conversation you have with someone it's constantly being reinforced so it's an active thing and an active choice every day to push against that and to continue to decondition and unpick it I'm like naturally not very good at that I don't think I'm naturally a good critical thinker I think I'm good at going along with the status quo and not

questioning things and not challenging things so that for me is something that I continue to challenging things so that for me is something that I continue to work on and continue to try and do I mean I guess this is true for a lot of us as well like the you know I look back at the television shows that we consumed even just like 10 years ago or like the magazine articles and it never it once occurred to me that the stuff that I was reading wasn't right like that article about Princess Letitia with the the grey streak 10 years ago I would have been like oh god yeah she has let herself go. I actually know what made me think about when I saw it was um I've never forgotten this but when I was at school I had a very funny eccentric history teacher and he was very amusing and like I really liked him but I remember him telling us that Anne Boleyn got beheaded because she let herself go.

No. And it was like one of those things that he was sort of joking. But he was essentially, again, it was just that thing I remember thinking, oh, God, I better not let myself go. Do you know what I mean? So again, it was like, and i don't think that that was um would necessarily be accepted today but he sort of meant it with a lot of humor and it was a fun silly thing to say but at the same time it was again perpetuating this thing that yeah if you don't stay on track with all these unachievable things that do consume every waking thought or moment right that you might be

off with your head goodbye how do you feel at this age and stage where i mean i don't know are you in a relationship yes yes married a lot of it is around what I notice people feeling this fear for women around being single these expectations that they have to have ticked all these boxes and if they don't they're going to be sort of discarded by society and that again it's like but why because men get a very different thing. They get called, you know, bachelor and... I know. ...eternally single and sexy, and women are like spinsters and Bridget Jones.

Right, right. Tragic. Yeah, tragic. And even if you look at the film Bridget Jones, it's like she was a very normal size, very still young, very pretty. Beautiful London flat. Like, great job. And that was depicted as tragic do you know I my boyfriend and I of 10 years split up when I was 30 and I remember someone

saying to me at the time it wasn't mean they didn't mean it in a mean way but they kind of said like do you kind of like worry that you've missed the boat really what someone online said no it was a it was a colleague actually um but at that time I was like oh shit yeah maybe I have missed the boat but which is mad which is just mad because also I feel like it makes people make bad decisions exactly they scramble for something yeah just to kind of tick that box and do what everyone else is doing but this idea that everything narrows or opportunities just disintegrate by the time you reach 30 and then you get there and you're like actually everything's quite good and I actually feel quite good about myself but society is simultaneously telling me not to and I don't know about you but

I the older I get the better I feel in myself 100% everything feels better and more comfortable and I feel like my morals and my values feel more in place and solid and yeah I just I feel much better now than I ever have done which again feels intentional you know it's like a woman really when she begins to know herself which i believe happens post 30 and after you're sat in return and everything and you kind of step into your own authority and your power but then you're being told to lie about your age or that if you haven't ticked these things or become a mother that yeah you're not really a woman and all of these roles that

you're supposed to fulfill and play out that might not really even feel right for you that's I mean that's been a big thing for me with the pressure and the expectation of becoming a mother has been I found that really difficult in what way I just feel the pressure and to be honest with you some of it might be internal as well I know it definitely is some of it internal as well but it just it feels like women are are on this trajectory and it's something you have to do it's like this box you have to take and if you go into the sort of farming industry yeah kids yeah oh okay I guess it's that time and if you don't it's like well what's your purpose I know and it's really hard I found that really difficult and trying to field questions from people about it it's just

saying when are you going to and yeah yeah is it something that you want I don't know I still don't know I don't and I feel like I should know by now but I just don't know I know and then I guess because I've been having a lot of conversations with people about it you know both on the podcast and privately of this you know discussion around I look at it as like you know the female archetypes as we move from maiden to mother that doesn't necessarily mean literally becoming a mother it's kind of into a next stage of womanhood yeah but actually questioning whether motherhood in itself is right for you or not is a huge thing right it's the one thing you can't undo no you can't send that back you can't return to sender and so yours yeah and because again it's like we're told so much that

that's what our purpose is as women that's what we're supposed to do we're supposed to reproduce that if we don't it's like well am i in some way incomplete and then the other scary side of that is it's not like we have forever to make the decision exactly so i've got a lot of friends that are you know late 30s early 40s and maybe you know they've actually said i wish i did these various things perhaps it was egg just to give myself a bit more time so there's that other side of it that can be yeah and that has been i've done some embryo freezing i remember you saying when we were speaking yeah what was that process like do you know what my experience with it was was honestly fairly positive I know that everyone

has different experiences but I reacted fairly well to the hormones I mean as in emotionally and physically my but I have a low ovarian reserve so the results weren't fantastic but just to have something and something like you know literally in the freezer to like freeze time a little bit has been really like mentally taken taken off a load i can imagine yeah and there's something it feels this feels everything fertility and having this biological clock ticking it feels like there's a lot of like you don't have any power you know you're not in control of it and it's been a really great way to take back a bit of power and feel more empowered with it so I'm all for it I know it's a huge financial expense and I don't I know that not everyone has the means but um if you do I I do

I really do recommend it what was the process like making that decision with you and your partner well when I got so I did a test a blood test to determine a variant reserve so it was an AMH test it's called um and I did it really not thinking anything I was just like oh I was actually I was actually offered it through work and I was like oh cool I think I was 32 at the time and I thought yeah it'd be interesting to see but I mean my I've I've got four sisters two of them have had babies really easily my mum had five girls very easily it's just something that never ever occurred to me so when the results came back and they were really low I was like scared

but not quite scared enough to make me want to do something about it imminently as in try for a baby imminently so it felt like a good it felt middle really good middle ground yeah I mean I spent a while like not sure what to do and that was the worst part but then when I when I actually decided this is what I'm going to do i'm going to take control of it everything got got better from there because we've actually never had someone on talking about that experience so it's quite interesting to hear that you you know you went through it and that you'd recommend it and like you say to add yeah it is a huge expense but bringing it back to the kind of the body conversation, what are some of the things that you feel have shifted for the positive?

And what are some of the things that you feel are still quite damaging? I was thinking about this the other day, actually, because people ask me a lot, like, do you think things are getting better? Do you think things are changing for the better? And I feel really conflicted by this question, because seems to me I don't know if this is right or wrong but this is just my sentiment on this is that our generation like us millennials we've really lent into this conversation and really tried to educate ourselves and and we believe that you know all body sizes are worthy now and we've just got we've got a lot more body acceptance than we used to for sure and we've we've also looked at a lot of our toxic thinking

but then in contrast to that it feels like there's also and I think this I think it feels like a gen z thing to me where it feels kind of like that resurgence of 90s size zero like the return of the muumuu skirt the low-rise muumuu skirt with the super flat stomach like the hip bones sticking out right and the y2k fashion and tick tock seems to be full of what i eat in a day what i eat in a day videos with thin women like body checking and what body checking like showing how small their waist is really showing how small their thigh gap is subtle it's not like it's just kind of like turning to the side and like a lot of body checking on there so if it feels really weird and like these things are kind of like running parallel to each other so I know that's

a really messy answer no not at all I mean it makes sense though in this way that we lived through that when it was happening and obviously suffered some scars and some wounding from that whole experience and the damage that that narrative caused and kind of recovering from it and then there were you know years where there was a real push to do that but then that generation didn't experience it right so don't know the sort of impact that it can have yeah yeah that makes sense i haven't thought about it like that actually, but that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. That they're not quite understanding the severity of, yeah,

the consequences of it. Yeah. I'm also in a bubble as well. This is the thing like, of your community. Of my community. I am in such a positive bubble. I see me too.

It's like a cushioned bubble. I know. Sometimes when I go to other things, I'll have, you know, I went on someone else's podcast and I sort of was reading some of the comments and it was so bizarre because i suddenly was like my community and my audience isn't the world and i know that sounds really obvious yeah then you suddenly realize that they're everyone's kind of in their own echo

chambers even if they're positive ones right that don't really necessarily depict what the sort of social i don't know whatever is actually floating around for the masses or like everyone's just experiencing their own sort of unique yeah and every time it happens it still shocks me when my bubbles burst i'm like oh shit yeah like what this isn't how people think as a whole so I always get I always get surprised by that and you know in my space in my world it's I mean I'm not gonna say like body neutrality reigns because it doesn't and I think in reality we are really far from that but to an extent it's it's much more prevalent than in the real world. And then, yeah, I'll have a conversation with friends that I'm not, you know, more like acquaintances.

And I realized like, wow, we are still really focused on how thin we are. Because to sort of explain to the audience that might not know, because we did an episode on body neutrality with Jada and that's sort of about it. I mean, you're going to explain it much better than me so would you be able to yeah so I I feel like body neutrality is just it would be

living in a world where how we look didn't impact the way we live and didn't impact our lives and our self-esteem and our and our confidence I think body neutrality is a really solid and much more achievable thing to aspire to than being positive about our bodies and being happy with our bodies. I think I am all for people loving their bodies. Like that is the ultimate goal and that's so great. But considering where we all start,

considering our starting point, like that is so difficult to bridge that gap yeah to bridge that gap it's almost impossible and it's i think and it makes people feel worse about themselves as well because you're like like i said earlier if you have that criticism and that self-loathing to suddenly get to a place when people's telling you to love yourself like that doesn't feel right or like love your body yeah like you know it doesn't feel necessarily achievable at that moment in time yeah and I mean we've been taught for so long to not love our bodies to like to to actively hate our bodies and do what we can to fix them it's just very

difficult and you're just setting another standard for yourself that ultimately you're going to feel like you're failing again so and I think that's a big part of the reason that people often struggle with body positivity because it just feels so far fetched and so far removed from where they're at so I think body neutrality is just a is would be a super great middle ground where we just allow ourselves to live without constantly being preoccupied with how we look. Because it also puts another focus on the body. Because you speak a lot about this, but in terms of, you know, the press narrative and just generally people online or even friends or perhaps family like we discussed at the beginning commenting on someone's weight what are your kind of thoughts on that because it's obviously particularly focused around women because women have forever been objectified well not forever but under the sort of patriarchy have been very objectified right to detangle

that is such a mammoth task right where do we even begin do you know what i just and this is something whenever i talk about it online it becomes like it surprises me that it's so controversial to say let's just not comment yeah on other people's bodies we know that it does harm it does damage whether you're insulting someone or you think you're complimenting them by saying, you know, for example, oh, you've lost so much weight, you look amazing. Like, you don't know what's going on. You don't know what's behind it,

but also you don't know the impact that you're having to that person in the future because they're thinking, okay, so what happens if I put weight back on again which is could be could well be likely if they're on a diet you know a lot if they've been ill or something right it's not a sustainable thing exactly so what happens then so I'm not going to look so good anymore when I put on weight okay noted and also noted that you're assessing how I look you know you're you're making note of how I look and and when I'm thinner you suddenly see me you know I understand that this does this is divisive

because we are so used to thinking of it as a compliment and it's like we're just trying to be nice it's like I know that I know that that's not the it's not the intention behind it but it's the impact that it's having and if we can just avoid we can just avoid those conversations you know about body about body shape and size and like to me there is nothing wrong with being like I love your hair color or I love your t-shirt or whatever I think like that's fine that doesn't go deeper into someone's potential triggers yeah but to say oh you look really thin or you look yeah or whatever it might be right it's just like why it's just not it's complicated and it's really difficult for people because something that happened recently in the press was Ariana Grande put up a thing just

basically saying please don't comment on my weight because the weight that I was wasn't healthy what was that whole story and like why has that become such a huge press piece at the moment yeah so I think the um she had lost a lot of weight noticeably and there was this outpouring of concern and Ariana you're too skinny what's wrong you need some help and it sounds like she just got into a point where enough was enough and she very gently very gently and very kindly asked people to respect her boundaries and not comment on her body because and as she said you don't know what's going on behind it and also you don't know you know you're comparing two

different bodies without knowing what was going on behind the scenes like I always think right I always go back to when I was when I was in the thick of my eating disorder and I was really thick like way way thinner than I should be for me for my body build and my body type and I constantly had comments of you're my thin spur you're my fit spur like you look so good you look amazing like you're you you look so pretty like this like it was constant and you're like I'm dying like I'm feeling terrible so ill so ill mentally and physically so ill so you just don't know what what is behind it and I I liked that Arianna did that video I liked it in one way like in another way I was like it's crazy that she even has to ask like people to respect. But I mean, I think celebrities have it more than anyone.

I mean, we all kind of have it now that we're online. But celebrities really are under this magnifying glass of scrutiny. It's awful. It's so shaming. And I think people think they're like fair game. They're up for grabs because they're in the public eye. Like, you know, that narrative of that. Well, well they asked for this they knew what they were getting themselves into with the fame and i think people associate like a certain level of like power or influence influence

with they don't get their feelings hurt anymore they're not real people anymore and they're not going to know what they're not going to care that what i'm saying about them it's so untrue it's untrue and it's also the problem is as well is that that that trickles down you know someone's saying that about not quite related but like bridget jones when that film came out and it was like oh she's so chubby and you know she's desperately trying to lose weight and i was like significantly heavier than her so i'm watching that now that people saying that about her and thinking well what then what does that say about me i know and this is the problem that's the trickle down effect as well of commenting on celebrities and openly just passing judgment on their on their bodies i think it's two part like one women gravitate

towards that kind of thing and the magazines because it makes them, it's that sort of schadenfreude. It makes you feel a bit better about yourself. You're like, oh, if Jennifer Lopez is like cellulite, then, you know, that makes me feel better. And if she's being sort of highlighted for it, but like you say, the other side of it is actually send it,

there's a more subliminal message is you look worse or you will feel worse because this is someone that's got all of these things and we're still tearing them down so like don't even you try and do anything just stay kind of small in your box and feel yeah you know this like you're not worthy totally and that feeling of seeing those celebrities being torn down and that making us feel better that only comes from the pressure that we feel if we didn't feel that pressure in ourselves we wouldn't be we wouldn't take pleasure in that we wouldn't be interested so it's all this horrible vicious cycle really which takes a lot of sort of personal sovereignty in to actually you know not participate

in right in commenting in buying those kind of magazines in talking about people's weight whether they're famous or whether they are friends and actually just being each other's cheerleaders a little bit more yeah but i also know that it's it's it is difficult and it is hard when we've grown up feeling this pressure feeling this intense all-consuming pressure to look a certain way and conform to a certain standard it's it's then hard to to not enjoy that in someone else I don't know that I think that's quite a difficult thing for us to do. And it takes a lot of it takes a lot of mental strength. But ultimately, it's the best thing that we can do. Not for not just for other people, but for ourselves as well. We're doing ourselves a huge disservice by continuing to laugh about how celebrities look and gossip about celebrities, how celebrities look and even about our friends, you know, oh, gosh, she's put on a lot of weight hasn't she through all that we're actually also doing ourselves a huge disservice because we're just reinforcing that messaging in ourselves as well so it would help that happens to us yeah yeah exactly what would your advice be not that you can condense this kind of topic down

in any way but for anyone that's listening that's really kind of going through this stuff and having that feeling like they're never going to be out of it what would your advice be and what were some of the things that really helped you and continue to I would say that I think it's really good to have hope with this and when you feel really lost and stuck and hopeless to know that there is a way out of this and you know I honestly always think like if I can get out of it then anyone can you know it really is possible but it's just slow gradual deconditioning and unpicking of all of these beliefs and everything that we've learned it doesn't happen overnight this stuff is really ingrained and we're entrenched in it and I think a lot of patience a lot of self-compassion and knowing that ultimately by doing this work you are really doing yourself a huge service and it will be so so worth it and make the most of resources as well like we you

know we have so many free resources available to us if you're interested in doing this work it's it's more accessible than than ever and I just promise it'll be worth it and also to talk to people about it because I think when we share these experiences that we get kind of locked in our minds and they fester. It's like actually when you can find whether it's community of people you find online or a best friend to actually just acknowledge what's going on can be tremendously powerful. And to kind of echo what you just said, I always love the saying that healing isn't linear so even if you make a lot of progress with it and then you're gonna have some bad days and that's okay like you said it in your experience it might be quite messy too but that's okay and it doesn't mean that you're not moving forward with it and something that I found really powerful that again does not come forward with it and something that I've found really powerful that

again does not come naturally to me at all is to realize that how I'm feeling now doesn't necessarily have to be how I'm feeling tomorrow like how we how we how we're feeling our recovery all of it is very fluid and it changes from day to day like when I'm in a bad place I think well this is me now forever I'm always going to feel like that and then it passes and then it passes yeah and I'm like oh I wasn't always going to feel like that and I think it's so powerful to try and and give myself that bit of hope and it's just quite freeing to be like just because today's like this doesn't mean tomorrow is going to be like this as well that is so powerful as well because it stops you from going down that cycle when you then start thinking oh well it's all futile there's no point in trying because i'm

never going to feel better so i might as well continuing doing making bad decisions basically and then you kind of get to yourself to a place when it's harder to kind of pick yourself back up but rather shifting to a thing of being like having the self-compassion you know yeah that wasn't perfect but tomorrow is another day exactly and it's all messy and that's okay like there's there's beauty in the mess 100 yeah well thank you so much for joining me what a nice conversation i love this conversation i think it's going to be really powerful for our listeners so thank you very much for being so vulnerable and so honest thank you for having me thanks thank you so much for listening to this episode of Saturn Returns if you found it useful I would love it if you could share it with a friend

or write us a review on Apple and as always remember you are not alone goodbye