Should I Delete That? - You Are Not a Before Picture with Alex Light!

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

For this week’s Thursday episode, Em interviews our very own best-selling author, Alex Light! Alex talks about her new book, You Are Not A Before Picture, and why YOU deserve a better life than what diet culture gives you...Please take care with this episode as the girls do discuss eating disorders and Alex’s experience, so if this episode isn’t for you, we’ll catch you on Monday!If you’re struggling with an eating disorder and are in the UK, the Beat Eating Disorders charity has a hotline. The number is 0808 801 0677 or you can visit the website at beateatingdisorders.org.uk. You can now buy Alex's book here or from all good book shops!Follow us on Instagram @shouldideletethatEmail us at [e-mail] & edited by Daisy GrantMusic by Alex Andrew Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

so weird hello hello hello welcome to the show it feels like it feels like role reversal but not for you but for me but then also for you know yeah you're in the hot seat how does it yeah really weird um hello everyone welcome back to the should i delete that podcast we have a special episode today because what day is it please drum roll that'll be a terrible sound I was like ah but today your book comes out it's ours it's launch day finally Thursday

I fucking love a Thursday I can't believe it you're published author by the time you want to be listening to this you'll be minus one in the charts you'll be so high you'll be setting netball minus one wow she's amazing

and we're doing a special episode normally the Thursday episode is it just me episode but today we're going to we've just got a book, we've got a day celebrating you and I get to interview you. I know, I know, but I promise it will be interesting. It's not just like all but you can't promise them that. I can't promise that actually. That is, be honest, it might be interesting. You might find this. It's been trying my best to be interesting. But I'm really excited about this because we talked about it last week about how this book, obviously it's everything you live and

breathe, right? Like it's about diet culture. It's about recovery from diet culture from disordered eating from eating disorders from like all of the shit that so many women have carried for so long and it's about like freeing yourself from the like shackles of diet culture which is something that maybe we take for granted because we're in this space totally yeah it's so powerful and so exciting and it's here yeah I wanted to ask you some questions today to people who maybe don't understand like why in what even again I'm going to start with this in your language In your head, what do you think diet culture means?

Because it feels like a bit of like a buzzword that the booners don't understand. It is. It's a buzzword. So basically, diet culture, I guess, the best way I can think to sum it up is like a set of beliefs that thinness is the best thing that a human can achieve. And that thinness equates to happiness and success and desirability and lovability. and that we all need to be thin, essentially. And we all live in a diet culture, particularly in the West. It's very strong, and we're very entrenched in diet culture here.

And it's been around for actually, like, a really, really long time. And the only, really the only reason it's around, or the reason it thrives today is because it makes so many people so much money. Yeah. It's a, I think, a bunch of the statistic, I believe it's a $192 billion industry worldwide, which is an insane amount of money. Like, I can't really grasp how much money that is, but it's a lot. So, like, there's a good reason that diet culture exists and it thrives and it's so prevalent

because it's, it's a moneymaking. It's a huge moneymaker. So in terms of how people are making money from diet culture, like the brands and the products, like, can you give us an example of, like, the things that exist that are marketed or sold as being product that we're told that we need, right? The diet culture creates. Yeah, I mean, it's a vast array of different products. You have everything from like anti-cellulite creams.

Do they work? No, sorry. I was actually writing this morning a feature about cellulite. And, you know, 90%, I think it's 80 to 90% of women have it. But only less than 10% of men, which is convenient. So, of course, it's a woman problem. And it was, it was, cellulite, it was a word that didn't even exist to define it until the late 60s. And it was just, it was basically coined cellulite and then became something like another way for women to hate themselves and another way for brands to make money.

Because, oh gosh, you shouldn't have cellulite, like here's something that you can fix, use to fix it. So like cellulite creams, weight loss products, weight loss tablets, waste trainers, anything that's going to change your appearance. or fix your appearance and even stuff that doesn't isn't it doesn't explicitly say this is for weight loss like diet culture is very clever and sneaky and they you know have a huge like incredible marketing power behind it who keeps up with the current climate and you know realizes oh you know we can't we can't be as avert with our messaging nowadays so we're like package it up as balance or wellness or well-being and lifestyle change yeah Yeah, right, exactly, and then like, yeah, a lifestyle change or like a gym, you know, get in shape.

Mm-hmm. You know, what shape? What triangle? No, a pair. No, actually good. But there's also, within that there's other products as well, right, that, like, already exist that are them being used, and then, be products, when I say, like, an apple, or, like, there's ridiculous things about existing things, like, oh, drinking more water so that you can not be hungry. so there's stuff like how who is doing the marketing for apples that like it's like oh you have to eat an apple every day and that's and it's like I mean that must come from dietitians I suppose like or PTs I guess the amount of PTs that particularly on Instagram offer like unsolicited or not unsolicited that are nutritional stuff that they don't necessarily have the training for right and that's because everybody wants an answer right that's the thing of diet culture exactly and with anything like that if you drill down you'll find that people are making money from it somehow

so like the PTs they're doing it they're offering this you know this advice like nutritional advice but at the end of the day they want to sell their plan or they want to get more clients and often in magazines we'd get the like it's you that you used to eat an apple every morning right yes I did not every morning before every meal

before every meal okay and I did half a grapefruit fucking love a grapefruit they are spice not spicy sour that's a lot to do every time it's like oh god it was like you were going my eyes all the time I was like constantly bloodshot but yeah and unsurprisingly didn't lose weight not thin so can I ask like from a again right

I'm going to ask this as it I hate people that say I'm going to be a devil's advocate because the devil doesn't need an advocate because he's the devil but I'm going to ask this like a boomer I'm going to be a boomer advocate right because there are people there are like the peers Morgan's of the world with the school of thought that's like okay well there's an obesity crisis in the UK for example and potentially maybe that is more dangerous than diet culture. Now, that's something for people to debate and whatever.

Sorry, I'm not asking you to answer that because it's an impossible question. But I think people need to understand the dangers that come with diet culture because people think that it's a celebration of obesity. Right, that's what people, that's what the boomers basically say sometimes, you know, whenever we see like plus-lise women on a magazine cover or whatever, they're like, oh, well, you're just promoting obesity and blah, blah, blah. But I think, like, in order to understand why that's not the case, people need to understand why diet culture is so dangerous.

So could you please explain, like, the life-threatening dangers of diet culture? So, yeah, we have that Pierce Morgan narrative, like, obesity is bad, obesity is dangerous. Obesity, like obesity, and I'm saying this in air quotes, because the science behind obesity being unhealthy is not what we think it is, right? We think, according to our medical knowledge and our medical system, which adopts a very weight normative approach, we think that anyone that is in the overweight category, which is over 30, on the BMI scale, is then unhealthy, right? And then if you go obviously higher and higher and higher, the more unhealthy it gets. And actually, like, yes, I'm not a scientist and I'm not a doctor.

and yes some fat is linked to bad things like that you know to health problems like we can't get away from that but you can't just look at a person who's fat and say that they're unhealthy because you just don't know that you have no idea and only their only their doctor knows that like and them you have absolutely no idea so we can't just go around deeming people unhealthy when there are when we don't give that same energy to thin people like if we just see thin people why do we assume that they're healthy we haven't absolutely no idea and health encompasses so much more than what you weigh. So there's that. And then this whole, you know, promoting obesity thing. Like, what is the alternative for those people? Do they want fat women to be shut away and kept in them on the margins of society

and not be represented and not be shown and not be seen? Is that what they want? Yes, I'm guessing so because if they're complaining about them being like celebrated and shown and I'm guessing that's what they want and what does that cultivate shame and shame is you know and I'm using this and applying this to their logic I'm not saying that fat women need to lose weight but by their logic they want this obesity crisis gone and people to be thin but shame is science has proven again and again is not an effective motivator it doesn't help in any way fat women being ashamed and feeling like they have to lose weight to fit in and feeling shamed into losing weight

is not going to make them lose weight because we know shame is not an effective motivator. So they're just left on the margins of society feeling ashamed alone and it's not productive for anything or anyone. It's just, it's cruel. And those women finally that have never been able to see themselves represented

or seen anywhere in the media, anywhere like they finally can see themselves and like I'm actually referring that I'm thinking in my head about the test holiday cover which is what was so controversial and that cover meant so much to so so so many women because yeah they just they've never seen themselves be celebrated and it doesn't mean that everyone out everyone in the world is looking at covers like that and thinking oh this means I have to be fat like her I'm going to get fat like her like don't be stupid like our society is so incredibly fatphobic we're not going to see a few fat women be celebrated and the whole society then wants to be fat that's not how it works because it's so

ingrained in the fabric of our society that fat is bad and that fat is the worst thing that you can be in that you have to be thin so it is just like plain ridiculous to me that people say that it's promoting obesity like no it's just allowing people who have to be thin. have been previously marginalized to be seen and celebrated and they're just allowed to exist, right? And I think like a really big part, this is like not an interviewer thing, what I'm gonna say.

On the men that make these comments, I think it's so often, like first of all, because similar women have been considered to be more attractive, right? By society, that's why these men are like, well just be this, be this, but I think a massive part of the men that say this and it's making women smaller

because it's convenient than women smaller and I think that's a really big part of the diet culture stuff and it's like just seeing women like celebrate themselves everyone's like fuck I'm losing what this money like these women aren't going to need my approval they're just going to go out and exist and be happy on their own and like oh god like and it sends these people into a real spin totally like diet culture is underpinned by the patriarchy because it keeps women busy and obedient and so busy like think about when you're on a diet and thinking about when I was on a diet I had absolutely no capacity, mental or physical capacity for anything but focusing on like not eating.

Yeah. Or like eating a certain way. So it's a good, it's a good trick for the patriarchy. It works for the patriarchy. And like on your dieting and like your experience with it, like I think we said this in an episode a couple of weeks ago that the women that put themselves at the forefront of the fight against diet culture are often the ones that have been hurt by it the most. Yeah.

and your experience is like certainly the case like and you've documented your recovery from anorexia and your like freedom from diet culture so spectacularly on Instagram and it's been so valuable but I think like you know anybody who's new to your page now might not know where you've come from so if you could like what's the biggest driver for this book in terms of your own personal experience of diet culture yeah and do you know what and it's and it's nice that this is more informal because like whenever i'm asked this i find it so hard to condense it into like a little answer because it just feels like something that's been going on in my life since i can ever remember well i was i say i was a chubby kid just for lack of a better word i don't know how how else to

say like i was i wasn't fat but i definitely wasn't thin and i was chubby and i developed before everyone else like I had boobs and everyone was fascinated about it and I just wanted to like I wanted the ground to like swallow me up I hated it and I was aware that my body felt bigger and I became increasingly aware that bigger was bad and so from I think from the moment that I realized that food manipulates how your body looks like you can use food to manipulate how your body looks and you can make it thinner via food from the moment I realized that I was just on a diet then for like years and years and years and years and I tried that every single diet under the sun like you name it I have tried it like some some worse than others Atkins is

one that was horrendous I was like gray my face was actually gray um my mom said I look like my face looked like off bread and it really did it was just like gray and hot. It was really, really awful. And then when, and then in my early 20s, and I started a job at a magazine, and I guess it was, I was thrown into a more, like, glamorous world in fashion. I was doing fashion, and obviously, like, fashion is so...

I mean, fashion is almost, like, synonymous with Finn. And so those, that beliefs, like, it just, those beliefs became even more ingrained. And eventually, I just, it was a juice diet, I think that really tipped me over from disordered eating into eating disorder and then I just basically stopped eating from then. But like, and you know, and then, but like recovery was really long and I want to stress that because I feel like people think, oh then you get, you know, like young, thin, you know, very thin, white woman like gets eating disorder, gets held, like

recovers. But my story wasn't like that and I really want to stress that because I'm I don't think there's enough of those, like, quasi-recovery stories. We don't hear enough about those. I'd only ever heard of, like, success stories, like instant success stories. And mine wasn't like that at all. My anorexia then morphed into bulimia for years and then into binge-eating disorder. And it was really only a few years ago that I actually managed to, you know, recover. I suppose people think that it's like, with most things, like you get a diagnosis,

is you get the treatment like an antibiotic and then you're better. Yeah. But I guess the big part of the fact that it's a mental health condition is that you also need to want to get better. And there's so much to it that people, I think maybe because we're so shiated talking about mental health in the UK that we just won't even entertain the conversation. But can I ask like how your diagnosis came to be, how it was approached by you or by your family or by your healthcare professionals, because so many people exist with disorder eating,

with eating disorders, and they just, like, you know, everybody's journey is so different. So different. I mean, do you know what? It feels like a blur now about there when I first got the diagnosis, and it was my mum. She was like, something is really not right with you. I remember her saying, like, the lights are off with you completely. Like, there's just no one home. And there wasn't.

I was just, I was in, like, people call it a prison. and a eating disorder and that is exactly what it feels like it's like a mental prison and you're just so trapped and consumed by food and weight and body and I was on and off the scales like five times a day and I just I existed on like boiled sweets like sucking boiled sweets like that would help alleviate my hunger pains and then yeah my mom was like we need to take you to the doctors the and I was really lucky because I had private medical through my work and this is also why I like telling the story because it's so hard for anyone listening

who does need to access help and they don't have private medical they can't afford private medical because it's, you know, the NHS like it's just, it's dire the situation and your BMI has to be life-threateningly low for you to access help and then even if you do it's only like 12 sessions of CBT

and in my experience at least like that is not sufficient so I was very lucky I was really lucky to access therapy and sustained therapy which is what I needed because it was just really I mean it is with everybody

though it's deep-seated with anybody but it took me a really long time to come out of it I wonder for you was it like a shameful thing within your friendship groups or within your family or something that you were able to talk about

because obviously you speak about it so publicly now but was it always easy for you to do that? and you know what when I actually and I don't really know what possessed me to do this but when I spoke about it on Instagram I'd still never spoken to my friends about it or my sisters about it like my mum and a little bit my dad and that was literally it was it was so it was such it was such a secret but I didn't just keep that secret because I felt ashamed that was part of it I felt very ashamed but also a eating disorder is weird but it feels like it almost

feels like your private best friend that is only you know about and it's personal and intimate and it's a false sense of security and comfort totally false sense and telling that secret is it feels so scary because you're like I'm going to lose this best friend that's been with me for so long and who's there in my darkest days even though they are your darkest days yeah so I would was just, yeah, I just didn't want to tell, and I, and I don't even know how it happened or why I decided to do it, but it's true like that, and I can't remember who, I think is it, Brené Brown talks about, like, how telling a secret releases, like, just releases, releases so much power and takes away the power of the secret, and it's like so, so, so true.

because the thing with anorexia that is terrifying is it has the highest mortality rate of any mental health condition and is there anything that you would say to somebody who doesn't understand the real danger of anorexia I mean like you said it's the psychiatric disorder with the highest mortality rate and yet it's still commonly seen as a vanity illness people think oh you just want to be thin because you're vain and you want to look good and I think that is a reason that there's so much stigma and shame around it as well and that's definitely what I felt I thought like God I am so vain like I am so vain that I want to be thin and I'm spending I am I am dedicating my entire life to trying to be thin like how vain am I and it's actually a really really serious illness but I think people

really distance like disordered eating and dieting from eating disorders and I I don't think that's a good thing to do because I think the line is thinner than we realise. Yeah, so the line is thinner than people think and actually at NEDA, which is the National Eating Disorder Association, they did some research which showed that people who engage in moderate dieting five times more likely to develop an eating disorder and people who engage in extreme dieting or 18 times more likely to develop an eating disorder. So the path is very clear and, you know, eating disorders are, very complex. I'm not saying like, oh, if you diet, you're going to get an eating disorder. You know, people have to be, I think, I'm not scientists, but I think people have to be

susceptible as well. And there are certain like personality traits that make people more susceptible to developing an eating disorder, like perfectionism. There's like all or nothing tendencies. But the path from disordered eating and dieting to, and that's what dieting is, disordered eating of course that path from disorder eating to eating disorders is very clear and I don't think that enough is acknowledged I don't think that's acknowledged I think in the same way that Britain's binge drinking culture enables alcoholics to exist quite easily within society it's it kind of feels like the same with dieting the fact that everybody's on a diet everybody's going to be good on Monday everybody's avoiding the

bad slacks. It does mean that people with a functioning eating disorder can exist kind of normally. Totally. And like you mentioned before that you were working in fashion. Like I don't think we could underestimate how normalized size zero is. Like haught couture. Close your eyes and think of culture because it's size zero. Right. Like that's it. And like, do you, this is it like I think, you know, like you say, a lot of people with eating disorders are susceptible to them for so many things and often it could be other things that you're craving control of and it's like so many complexities and it's not all about food but this is a culture that is creating such an extraordinary focus on thinness

but it's surely inevitable and I wonder like the fashion and beauty like do you think that was a big I mean was it was it common like that because the food talk must have just been crazy working for a magazine like that crazy and dieting isn't just like dieting is glamour eyes that really is and thinness is as well I mean nothing tastes as good as skinny feels like that was my mantra Emily Blunt's line in Devil Wears Prada and it's just like

I'm one cube of cheese away from my gold weight I'm like what that? I know and I was like I god I know it was really really glamorised and like that you know it was and still is unfortunately like maybe less to a lesser extent now

but and especially yeah I mean it was you had to be thin to be successful in fashion like you just have to be thin and I think a lot of that I really I think those those messages

and beliefs were already internalised but it was compounded by the fashion industry and how it was just like it felt like everything was screaming at me like thin thin you have to be thin you're not thin enough I would go to like parties like I was just out of uni

and like going to all these fancy parties and obviously loving it like I was like oh my god like living in london like this is so cool and realizing that like gosh these people are so thin i need to be thinner i'm obviously not thin enough there's something wrong with me and i was just getting thinner and thinner but the atmosphere in the environment in around me was such that people didn't know that i had a problem until it was really really bad but they didn't know i had a problem because it was just so normalized you know like um skipping lunch today trying to be good or just having like a bit of broth for my lunch or I'm just juicing you know we'd all juice in the office

like it was just it was just normal so people didn't realize until it got really bad because yeah and so we we kind of recognize the like the dangers at both end of the scale right we recognize the dangers with obesity like you say you know there are medical um sometimes there are there can be medical ramifications that come from somebody being overweight yeah in the same way that there can be those that come from people being underweight, right? So it's a huge spectrum, but I think something that that's fascinating is the middle bit. Because I want to understand, I would like you to help people to understand what it is. When you take away the mortality element and the severe, you know,

diagnosable mental health sides of this, and you just look at it as the elusive diet culture, can we understand the dangers of that? because when you take away, you know, people are very quick to use, like, well, people are dying, people are, you know, and hospitalisation rates, and if you take away all of that, and we just look at the normal people caught up in the middle of this, can we understand the dangers of that? Yes, yes. I did a section in the book, and this isn't just me plugging, but like, this is the point of the episode, so plug, this is the only time.

Okay, yeah, yeah. And it's, are you a chronic dieter? And it's like a week in the life of a diet. and it's like on Sunday night, diet starts Monday, diet starts tomorrow, we're going to throw everything away. I used to do that, I used to drive back to London after my mum's got, come and come back to my mum's house and I don't know why I went there every weekend, it was weird, but every second, and I'm just document in my head, I'm not going to eat them, I'm not going to know, I'm not quite, I mean, like a few years ago. And you eat loads on Sunday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I literally like dirty rose potatoes because I'm like, it'll see me through. Yeah, because you know, which obviously makes no sense.

It's like counterproductive to your actual goal. the morning and then you start a diet of one day and then and then it carries on a Tuesday and Wednesday and your enthusiasm naturally wanes because it's not willpower like our bodies are very clever which is a good thing and they want to they want to keep us going and so when they're being starved they're like ah what are you doing like I need food um so it's a perfectly normal biological response and then we end up eating then you know eating a lot on the the weekend and then the cipher continues all over again and it's so miserable like so miserable as I was writing the chapter I remembered like all the Sundays that were just so painful and I was

like I'm doing this again I can't believe I'm doing this again the little part of me was like if it hasn't worked before why is it going to work now but I couldn't I needed I needed hope because I was like I can't stay like this I need I need the hope so I shud that part away and just kept going but it's it's so detrimental to your life like not only mentally because it zaps you it drains you of of energy and it can impact your social life you know like I can't I love to go to that restaurant but I'm on this like low-carb diet whatever yeah it's it can zap your social and it can impact your career and your working life and your and your intellectual functioning and physically it's not good either like the shit that we do to our

bodies is really really it's just not good they're not supposed to live like that they're supposed to be consistently nourished and kept alive like not to be messed with every week trying this diet and then that diet and it's just it's really horrible to be fighting your reality which is what so many of us do when we're not liking how we look and we're dieting or we're being good or whatever we're fighting our reality and it's painful and it hurts and it's probably more painful that a lot of people listening probably actually realize until they were sort of thinking

about it and really honest with it and looked at like what will my life look like if I was if I had the body that I was super happy with like what would my life look like and actually like God it would be a huge relief for so so many people and people think that in order to in order for that to happen

they have to get their body of their dreams or their goal body and it's just not true as we know it is not true like it is a mind problem it's not a body problem like i thought there was no way on earth i could accept my body when i was i'm not going to say a specific weight but like however many stone thinner i was like no i still need to lose a stone or whatever and now i'm that many stone heavier and i'm happy with my body so that tells me that it's not it isn't to do with my body it was to do with my mind and i've changed my mindset but then i also realize that i'm sorry i'm going on tangent but like i also realize that it's easier said than done and it's easy for me to

sit here now and say like just be happy with your body as it is because that's really hard to do it's really hard to do especially when it's so ingrained in us that fat phobia and diet culture it's it's so yeah it's it was so conditioned that you just can't do that overnight and i think sorry i will shut up in a second but like i think for me that was part of the motivation for writing the book as well is that there is a lot of like self-love and body love and body confidence stuff out there on Instagram which is how I what I started doing which is like here's my body which is not marginalised by any means but it's not the the narrow you know standard of beauty that society dictates and here it is and I'm owning it and I'm owning my cellulite and my

stretch marks and that stuff I think is so important and so necessary for people who don't feel represented and haven't historically felt represented but I think what I realized is that that is treating a symptom rather than the actual problem which is diet culture and fat phobia and the patriarchy which is at the root of all this stuff so like we need to drill down to the you know it's it's okay to say like i love my body you love yours but like i think for me like when i really really started to recover or really started to heal my body image was like this is why i feel this way this is why i want to shrink my body this is why i don't like my body it's not innate in me I wasn't born thinking I'm too fat I want to get thinner because our moms have been on diets forever our teachers will have been telling us whatever and now even

you know with calories on menus and whatever like all over the world all over the world all over this country all over the Western world and people would be forgiven for thinking that it is innate totally but you can unlearn it right 100% and do you believe you have

unlearned everything or do you think it's a consistent game of hang on i'm catching this thought why do i think this thought oh this is the bullshit for this is because of the picture and whatever and yeah and that's easy for you to do that right it just yeah yeah i think it's i think it's about like how long it takes me now it's like we're used to those thoughts would like send me spiraling and crashing and i'd be you know at home in bed like i can't leave the house i feel disgusting and now i'm like oh i can catch that thought but at the end of the day I do think we have to be realistic as well

and acknowledge that we can you know we've talked about this before like we can do this stuff day in day out and we can practice self-love and self-acceptance until we're you know until the chaos from home but at the end of the day we live in a world where those values aren't necessarily

reflected back at us so we have to consistently rebel against that and fight against that so it's always going to be a struggle and I don't think it's realistic for anyone to be like oh I'm sick of my body. I'm going to love my body and that's that. It's just not realistic and but I think that's

okay. I also think it's a very exciting thing. I think like this is a I can't ever say things concisely but if I was saying to review your book I think like or to recommend your book and I think that the way that I would sell your book to a person which is useful because that's what we're doing in this episode would be to say that it

is such an exciting prospect for people because the way you're talking about Disordid Eating and the person that you described as the one that does a diet and whatever, that was me, like, 100%. It was, I was so immersed in this. And I used to lie in bed and, like, hurt myself, but having my tummy rolls, like, trying to be better.

And I think when I wake up tomorrow, I'm going to have a flat stomach and everything's going to be better. And actually, I realized that during this time, I got a very flat stomach, and I didn't even notice it because I was still put, and now I look back at the photos, I'm like, I was so dead, but I was still,

you know, like, I've basically, I've been exactly where somebody, who needs this book has been and I guess maybe like I've just seen it in real time by following you and being your friend and being part of this space online and seeing it but like when I think back to where I was now versus the freedom that I have

it's properly exciting like I just come back from that holiday where I sat in a bikini and I ate and I had my tummy rolls out and so and I didn't give a fuck because it wasn't worth it like on balance if you're fine it wasn't society perfect but on balance it wasn't worth

ruining my holiday for and that's a choice that I get to make now and I didn't get to make that choice before and like that's exciting and that's what I think this book is going to offer so many people is the chance to learn enough that they get to make these choices in their own lives yeah and I'm so proud of you and I think it's so exciting and I just I'm really like I don't know I'm I'm I'm so I'm so optimistic for the future of all the readers of this book because I just think that you're you're going to change their lives I hope so I really do hope so yeah I mean I have like keep saying I've thrown at it like I've thrown out it like everything that has ever helped me

and that I think could help someone else and you can tell but I'm extremely passionate about all this stuff and I just yeah I really hope it helps and like because I just I just think it's a it's about time that women all of us and I know I know there is men as well but there's just far greater pressure in this sense on women I think it's time that we like just break free of this stuff because whether it's just a you know whether you're dieting disorder eating disorder all of it is all a mental prison you know a lot of them are more secure and like tighter than others but at the end of the day it's all a mental prison it's like community service yeah exactly but it's at the end of the day it's it's not nice it's not pleasant for any of us and we just don't need it like really

there's there is no actual real reason behind it the reasons are all arbitrary and I just want people to like want to help people see that final thought please for a person that's picking up your book in their metaphorical bookstore online their hot very notebook can you give them sell it to the mouth yes so what i'll say is like don't pick it up and be like this is it i'm going to read it all and i'm going to put everything into practice and then like that's it i'm cured which is exactly what i would do because i have no chill and no control but it's going to take some time and like just just take your time with it all because there's a lot in there and there's a lot of different facets and it's a lot of it is like quite complex so give yourself

time and compassion and like go easy with it like even if you only read like a chapter a week and like have a real think about it and like let it sink in and maybe you know read it twice I don't know but but just be like very gentle with yourself this is this is this stuff is hard and this journey is hot. I said I was reclaiming the word journey, didn't I? And I keep, I keep air quoting it. Journey, this journey is really difficult. So yeah, give yourself like space and compassion

and go easy with it. And good luck. I just really hope that it helps because you deserve a better life than what diet culture gives us.