The Life Of Bryony - Food Noise is a Horrendous Thing to Live With: Ruth Corden on Fatphobia and Weight Loss Jabs

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Regular listeners will know this is not a podcast where we glamorise weight loss stories or before-and-after pictures. As someone with a long history of eating disorders, I’ve spent years rejecting the idea that our worth lives and dies on the bathroom scales. But in this episode, I sit down with Ruth Corden to talk about what it means when healing your relationship with your body does involve losing weight – and how to do that without feeding fatphobic bullsh*t. Ruth talks honestly about living in a fat body, food addiction, “food noise”, and starting semaglutide – not as a vanity project, but as a lifeline for her health and sanity. We get into thin privilege, weaponised body positivity, fertility grief, shame in the GP’s office, and how lifting heavy weights helped her finally feel at home in her skin. It’s not a weight loss story. It’s a story about finally inhabiting the body you live in.WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOUGot something to share? Message us on @lifeofbryonypod on Instagram.If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it – it really helps! Bryony xxCREDITS:Host: Bryony GordonGuest: Ruth CordenProducer: Laura Elwood-CraigAssistant Producer: Sam RhodesStudio Manager: Sam ChisholmEditor: Luke ShelleyExec Producer: Jamie East  A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Regular listeners of this show know that it's not the kind of place where you come to hear weight loss stories. In fact, here at the life, Briney, I like to think that I'm pretty focused on showing you that you're more than some numbers on the bathroom scales. As someone who has a history of eating disorders, I've kind of made it my life's work to help women heal their relationship with their bodies. But for some people, healing that relationship might look like dropping weight. And if that's you, how do you go about doing it in a way that is truly loving and doesn't feed straight into the destructive narratives about thinness and fatness that so many of us have grown up with? Today's guest, Ruth Corden, is here to talk about the journey she's gone on to truly inhabit and live in our body instead of letting society define her by it.

It's a journey that has involved losing 12 stone, but one that is really about so much more than weight loss. There's absolutely no doubt my health markers have changed. My health markers before I went on summer glutide were quite frankly awful. I honestly think I was a stone's throw away from getting really poorly and I don't know whether subconsciously my body was saying to me there's something going on here. What's been the most freeing thing for me, I suppose, is this is just the body I live in. My chat with Ruth Corden coming up right after this. Gordon, welcome to the life of Brienne. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited. The thing that kind of sparked my desire to have you here was seeing a post you made in December. And it's, I guess it was

a transformation post. It was a before and after picture. And I don't see many before and after pictures in my feed because obviously I don't, that's not like weight loss stuff isn't my kind of of thing, as lots of people listening will know. But this was, it was like a before and after picture with a twist. It had the caption that accompanied it was so profound and moving. And I wondered if you would read it now for us. Yeah. The girl on the left learned to walk into every room like she had to be dazzling,

loud, magnetic, unforgettable. because being fat taught her that if she didn't take control of the space, the space would take control of her. She believed that if all eyes were on her for anything other than her body, the judgment wouldn't land so hard. She believed being larger than life could quieten the voices in her head. So she smiled, she entertained, she insisted she was fine, all the while she was exhausted for performing just to feel safe.

The girl on the right walks in as she is, softer, quieter, more herself. And this kind of truth is the bravest thing I've ever worn, terrifying in its exposure, freeing in its weightlessness. Wow. Did you realise how profound that was when you wrote that caption? Not really. I think when you live in a really fat body for your whole life

and, you know, I was, God, a dress size 28, X stone, wouldn't be able to tell you never stood on the scales, don't stand on the scales now either. But I suppose you get so terrified that the first thing that people are going to see is your size and that you are desperate for anybody to see anything other than that. So if I am the funny one or the loud one, and you know, the whole world says the fat funny girl, right, or Gary Barlow was the fat one in Take That, that wrote the songs. Like you've got to have an extra tagline if you're fat, right?

Yeah. And so I just learned to just walk into rooms and be like, I can't have anyone judge me for my size. I'd rather they judged me for being too loud than anything else. And now I just am like still fat, still in a bigger body. Absolutely like, as somebody said to me over Christmas, well, you're still fat. But there's just a sense now that I can be more myself than I've ever been. And I can live in a way that says, yeah, I, I, I, would still take up more space than most people but i don't have to take up space in the way that i did before so to anyone who's listening obviously podcasts now we watch we listen the photo on the left which you spoke about where you were so fearful of people noticing your fatness yeah so that's that was you in 2024 i guess before you started on this kind of journey of exercise and semi-glush-hide, but it's, this isn't really a tale of weight loss, is it? It's about healing your relationship with your body, which you decided you needed to start doing.

And for you, healing your relationship with your body involved losing weight. And for some people, that may be the case, you know. And what I really took from that caption was that there was real love and it was done with genuine care for you yourself. And that is so unusual, I think, when we read kind of weight loss stories. You know, they tend to be all about, you know, often they're actually people that to me, to my eyes, don't even look that big in the first place. And it's like, because we were so conditioned, weren't we, growing up,

that thinness was this kind of goal and to judge ourselves by a number on some scales, right? And but, you know, it's undeniable and it's very difficult to have conversations about weight loss in this current climate where, again, fitness is being centered. But for some people, healing their relationship with their body will look like losing weight. Yeah. And that is, it's for the right reasons and it is for their own kind of self-care. And for me, what came across in that caption that you wrote? was that. It was like it was just wellness, like proper wellness. You know, we see so much wellness crap. Oh, so much crap on social media. And for me, that was like, here is a woman who has

taken charge of her life and decided to really love herself fiercely. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting, isn't it? Because I think I probably would have said when I was at my biggest, which is the photo on the left, I probably would have said, oh yeah, I'm really happy and I don't have any problem with what I look like. And like I'm really confident in inverted commas. But it was all an act. It was all just an act to protect myself. It was like an armour that said, I've got to be this level of confident because underneath is like this tiny little, you know, glass figure that is going to crack under anything. And I think I've dealt with a fair amount of grief in my life.

I've struggled to have a baby, still live childless. That's not my choice. So, you know, there's been a lot of moments where my body has been shamed in lots and lots of different ways. And the anger that I felt towards my body that I couldn't do the thing that every woman should be able to do, have a baby and, look after it. That all became about weight. So I have polysistic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis. and it all became about my weight. Everything was centred around my way.

And so I did. When I was trying for a baby, I went away and lost five stone. Nothing changed. Nothing about my fertility changed. But when your body has been shamed so greatly and you feel so ashamed of what your body can't do, you just layer yourself up, right?

You just go, well, I've just got to be the person in the room that doesn't care about what she looks like. And I suppose, really, underneath it all, I probably did care. I probably did care about. Well, you can't not care living in a society that judges you so fiercely for the way you look at. Like that's normal.

Yeah, and I look back and I think, oh my God, like, I know this has been said loads, but Bridget Jones was classed as fat, right? Ronnie Zellwig had put on a load of weight. She was a size 12 in that film. Yeah. It's like, well, there's things that we, you can see it now,

watching back things like the America's next top model documentary, like things that we totally normalised. At the time we didn't see this as unusual. We were like, yes, that is what is considered fat per se. I think there's a really interesting conversation to be had here about this thing of the expectations that are put on people in larger bodies, fat people, to not care about the way they look or to be happy with the way they look. Or to be happy with the way they look. Yeah. It's like, well, but we live in a world that's deeply fatphobic.

Oh, yeah. And deeply judgmental. Like, do you think I'm, like, made of fucking teflon? Do you know what I mean? Like, of course I care. Of course I care, because every fucking day I get some dickhead on the internet, internet emailing me to tell me I'm fat. Or I don't know what you're, like, I'm interested in what your lifetime's experiences have been of this.

Oh, God. Like, you know, there is thin privilege, right? That is an absolute thing. And I know lots of people are like, no, absolutely. But until you've lived in an extremely fat body, you don't have a right to talk about whether there's them privilege or not. Because if you haven't gone to the theatre and felt sick because you're like, oh, I've got to get into that seat. If you haven't gone to a restaurant and they've said, do you want to sit in a booth and the first thing you think is, oh my God, does the table move? Because if the table doesn't move, don't put me in a booth, mate, because I'm not going to get in.

If you haven't had to ask for a seatbelt extender on a plane and feel the shame of that, it's like there's this whole narrative that is like, you've put. yourself there, haven't you? And, you know, six percent of people who have eating disorders are underweight. And I think the psychological, um, thinking about food doesn't extend to those of us that overeat and have constant food noise. And, you know, the bottom line is for me, I feel like fat people can't win, right? Like we're told, it's like, oh, you're really overweight, you're morbidly obese, you're fat, or you've lost weight. You know, there's like this, this narrative around people in bigger bodies that like, well, if you take weight loss drugs, you're cheating, you know, you're still lazy. But if you're too fat, oh, that's disgusting.

It's like, give us a break, you know? Like, just, however, I went on semi-glutide. It'll be two years this year. And in all honesty, it's revolutionized my life. I can't even explain. I can't even begin to put into words what it's done for me. And food noise is a, is a, is a, horrendous thing to live with and it's only when it's turned off that you go, God, this is what it feels like for people who don't live with this, who aren't just thinking about food 24-7, who aren't going, what am I going to eat next? I absolutely 100% was addicted to food. There's absolutely no doubt about it. It was a high-level addiction in my life and it's only since being on this drug that I've been able to go, right, while that food noise is off, Ruth,

you've got to sort this out because you have got to now learn to live in a society where you absolutely need to eat food, of course you do. But how do you make better choices and how do you live in a way that's sustainable? I was so ill, I think, before I started to lose weight. I was, I was, my resting heart rate was over 100. I had like a beating in my ears that was probably high blood pressure. And people ask me, what was it? And I don't really know. I don't really know what made me wake up one day in that February and go, I'm going to try and sort this out.

There wasn't like a light bulb moment. I was just like, I suppose subconsciously I was really worried about myself. And you can't talk about that when you're fat. You become frightened to say to people, you spend your life going, no, no, I'm fine, I'm really healthy. I eat really well. I mean, I would say that all the time and that was just bollocks. Like, you know, it was, it was complete rubbish.

My relationship with food was all over the place. Had it always been that way? Yeah, food is, I'm the youngest of three, so I've got an older sister and then my... And James? And then you've got James Corden, if your older brother. Yes, and then there's me. And I think third children are often placated with food. Because if you've got, you know, my sister's seven years older than me,

So my mum had a seven-year-old and a four-year-old and then me. And it's like, you're just trying to get everyone out. And I want a biscuit. Yeah, have a biscuit. Just put your shoes on, have a biscuit. I want, yeah, just have that because, and that's no judgment to my mum. But, you know, my dad's out at work all hours. My dad was in the RAF, so he would often be travelling.

Went to the Gulf War for nine months when we were kids. You know, my mum was essentially a single parent during that time. And I think for third children, it's so easy to just be like, you want it? Yeah, okay. God, have a custard cream at half eight in the morning because I just want. want to get everyone's shoes on. So I think there was a thing for me that I just sort of went, oh, food. Never really been a big drinker, never tried drugs, never even had a drag of a cigarette.

What? Yeah. Never even had a drag of a cigarette. Strange creature. But food, I was like, and it's the same, right? It's the same concept as alcohol or drugs, always the same, never changes, always there, always consistent, gives you this dopamine hit. But the difference with food is, is I suppose like alcohol in a way, is it's socially

acceptable. And I think we have a problem in this country with alcohol being really socially acceptable. And I don't think if alcohol was found now, it would be legal because it's the most dangerous drug there is, I think. But the other thing about speaking as someone who has had an addiction to alcohol is that I don't need to drink alcohol to live. We do need to eat food to live. And so that complicates that further.

I'm not saying like one is easier than the other or whatever, but as someone who has experienced binge eating disorder as well, like I definitely found having, changing my relationship with alcohol is easy. It's not easy, but I just stop. I can stop it. You know, like I just cut it out. You can't do that with food. So it's a constant thing that you have to be thinking about.

And you talk about food noise. And, you know, if you have experienced binge eating disorder, because I think we hear a lot now about food noise. And I think that in some cases, not all. I have heard very thin people say to me that they have started taking semi-glutide because, well, I get food noise. And I think what the food noise often, because we have such a mess. up attitude towards bodies and towards food and towards dieting.

That is nobody's fault, like, I mean, other than the kind of patriarchal systems that create it. You know, but sometimes that food noise, what they're talking about is actually just hunger. Yeah. But what you're talking about is something that is like all encompassing, you know, it kind of, it really is, it's the sort of, it's like, it's like thinking about alcohol the whole time. Yeah. Because it's the drug of choice. It's your drug that you used to soothe, to comfort, as you say, when you were a child, have a custard cream.

Yeah. But I also think growing up in the 90s, I look back at pictures of myself now as a, like, preteen or a teenager. And yes, I was bigger than my peers. But I wasn't actually that fat. Like, I look back now and I think, God, I wasn't like, but I was the easy target in school. I just, I feel like, you know, fat people have just always been the easy target. it, right? It's just always been this, eat less, move more, this, this, it's, it's that simple.

If you just stop eating and you move your body more, you'll lose weight. Well, if it's that simple, why do people find it so hard? And when you, when you walk into a doctor's, I've been to, I've been to the doctors about tonsillitis and they've told me that they've got away me and figure out what my BMI is. And I just, can I just stop you there? Yeah. And ask you, how does that, feel to go to the doctors and you're sick, you're just, you're sick, you've got tonsillitis and they turn around you and say, well, I'm going to weigh you as if your weight will have anything to do with tonsillitis or the kind of, how does that feel?

It's absolutely horrible. It's like, it's so, there's so much shame that is put on you. and I can count on one hand the kind doctors that I've met that have really wanted to look after me and I remember going for a fertility appointment in the throes of trying for a baby which went on for 12 years and I was I was kind of shunned away because of my weight to start off with and then I found one GP said I think we need to investigate this further and they did And this consultant was just like, I don't know. I'm bawling my eyes out saying, I just, you know, I said to him, when do we start talking about IVF at what point?

And he just put a big cross through it. And he said, no, you're too old and too fat. I was 35 at the time. And he said, you're too old and too fat for IVF treatment. And I started crying and he said, look, the only way you're going to be a mum is if you get a gastric band. But if you get a gastric band, you've got away 18 months before you can try for a baby. And then if you come back and you have a only success, we might look at IVF. but you're over the age bracket now in this NHS trust,

so you'd have to go private. And he was absolutely adamant that he needed to weigh me in that consultation. And I'm crying and saying, why? You've told me, based on what I look like, that I'm too fat. Well, I need to write it down for your BMI. Why? Why do you need to do that? The nurse came into the room and she took me out,

and she refused to weigh me because of my emotional presentation and went back into the room and said, I'm not putting her on the scales. It's like, you've just told me that this, this appointment that I've been literally hanging on for because there is something wrong with my body that isn't just weight related. Polysistic ovarian syndrome can be for people who are overweight,

but there's also a lot of research for people who aren't overweight. Endometriosis has absolutely nothing to do with weight. It's about your womb lining. It's absolutely nothing to do with weight. And yet everything, well, if you lost weight, you'll be able to have a baby. It's... And until you've walked into a room with a doctor in a really big body,

you just have no idea how frightening it is. I would go in, you know, now and back then, and just say, I don't want to talk about my weight. I'm here for this reason and I don't want to talk about my weight and I want to advocate for myself and I don't want you to weigh me and I'm not going to allow you to do that. But actually, we know that fat people don't go to the doctors because they're terrified.

So they get more poorly and then people can pin it down to the fact that it's because they're fat. It's like we know the research that says people who are fat and overweight feel terrified, genuinely terrified about the bollicking they're going to get by a GP because they're overweight. And I don't think I've ever felt more shamed by anyone than the NHS. And that's not a slight on the NHS. You know, look, we are incredibly lucky to have the healthcare system that we have in this country. But actually, there is an overarching institutional narrative that is fatphobic within the NHS. And I went to see a consultant about gallstones and she told me I couldn't have the gallstone operation because I was too fat. And then she said

if you thought about having a gastric band. So they won't give an operation for the gallstones, but they will give you an operation. To make me thin. Right. Yeah. Okay. And I said to her, do you understand how crazy that is? And she said, what do you mean? I said, well, you won't do the surgery because my BMI is too big and it's too risky, but you've given me a leaflet about a gastric band. this isn't about health. This isn't about my health. This is about you marking down that my BMI has gone from 50 to 35 or whatever it is, you decide that that stupid calculation

that was made decades ago that marks somebody's health, somebody went, oh, divide this number by that number. Oh, yeah, you're really unhealthy. It's like, how did you get there? So the feeling, I just remember the whole time being, and I'm pretty thick, sit. skinned and I've always been pretty confident. I've always been able to speak my mind. But even for me, I remember thinking, I don't want to go to this. I don't, I don't want to have this conversation.

I don't, I would rather feel ill than go and sit opposite somebody who's going to make me feel worse. Do you, I was talking to you before about time I'd, um, I saw you in, uh, viewed. And I remember, I saw your brother. I don't remember thinking, what is James Corden doing swimming in Bued Seapult? It's not a glamorous place, guys. Do you know what I mean?

It's lovely. But it's not, you know, it was like, you know, it's not where I expect, you know, like famous people to go on their summer holidays. But you then told me about how you, you remember quite clearly how you felt that day. And I wondered if you might share that with us.

Yeah, I went through a time. This is when James was filming a Amazon program called Mammals, and he had like a few hours off. He had like three days off, and he said to my sister and I, do you want to come down and spend some time with me? And it was great. We had a brilliant time, just the three of us.

It was amazing. And I was going through a really weird time at that time where I didn't want to have any pictures taken of me. I remember vividly I'd gone out for a meal with some friends a couple of nights before, and they were like, let's have a picture. I was like, no, no, I don't want to be in it. And everyone was like, what really?

You don't want to be in it? Normally I'm like, what is that camera? I'd sort of started this weird feeling about my body and what it represented and that I actually really didn't like it. And I don't know whether some of that was the overspill of fertility grief. Like I was coming out the other side. I was realizing that a baby probably was going to be unlikely for me. And we didn't want to explore adoption for lots of reasons. And I never wanted to do treatment.

We could have gone into Europe and we could have had treatment. But I was sort of coming to the end of that. And I don't know whether it was a bit of an overspill of like, I really really. do hate my body and what it's been unable to do. And we went to Bude and James said, why don't we go to the seapall? And I was like, I don't want to go in. And both, Anj and James were like, what? I said, I don't want to go in.

I don't want to put a swimming caution you on. And they were both genuinely really worried about me. Because I've never been that person. I've always sort of gone, this is my body and this is, you know, this is what it is. But I remember vividly that day, they got in the pool, in the seapool, and they were swimming and having a great time. And I just sat and dangled my legs in. And I just, I remember feeling really sad that I wasn't in the water with them. I remember feeling like, God, this feels really heavy for me.

But I just couldn't do it. I just had got to the stage that I was like, and maybe that was the start of, you know, it would have been a year or so later that I would have woken up that day in February and, thought I'm going to start exercising five minutes every day, which is how they started, and I'm going to think about what I eat. And maybe that was the start of me going, oh, I don't know that I like the body that I live in anymore. And maybe it's time to, I mean, look, if I look back now, I was completely out of control with food.

So can you give us an idea of what I would eat? Or I don't, I hesitate to do like what I hate, you know, what do you eat in a day, I hate those. The moment I see someone do, what I eat in a day, I'm like, instant unfollow. See you later. I could not give a shit to what you eat in a day. Exactly. But I do think just to give, because it might also give some sort of comfort to someone else listening who perhaps thinks that they're the only person who is out of control when it comes to food. Well, I'll tell you this.

I couldn't go to McDonald's and get one meal. Yeah, well, that feels relatable. Well, I could, I could not. I definitely did not know the feeling of being full before I went on summer glutide. I could have just continued eating like a bucket. Like there are times now where I think, oh, I'm hungry. And I suppose what's happened for me,

is that the emotional connection to food has gone. So I now go, I'm hungry, I need to eat something. I'm full. I need to stop. Yeah.

And before it would be like, right, I'm hungry. And if I don't eat now, this is going to go down. And if it's not exactly what I want to eat, then it's going to be a nightmare.

And then if I don't have a family size bar of chocolate to finish that off, I'm not going to be happy. And I could sit And I never like ate a whole packet of biscuits or anything like that, but I could easily sit and just eat chocolate after chocolate after chocolate and there'd just be no off button.

And the kind of emotional validation that that gave me that like, oh, I feel better now, I can only describe it to how people must feel when they drink alcohol because alcohol is never really, I enjoy it and I can drink it and I don't mind it, but I can really take it or leave it. Like, if I didn't drink now for six months, I really wouldn't care. But food, the thought of somebody, you know, saying, oh, no, you shouldn't eat that or you can't eat that, or there's no chocolate in the house. What? Oh, my God.

You know, I, so I think what semi-glutide has done for me is made me just go, food is something I do. You hear that a lot, because when you remove all the conversations about people, abuse. essentially abusing semaglutite, which is a situation that is now very common. There was some statistics that came out recently about the majority of people taking semi-glu-tide and not the people for whom it is intended. So that's exactly people such as yourself, Ruth, who, you know, who have a high BMI. I know BMI is a very questionable metric. But, you know, it's the majority of people taking these drugs are not the people it's intended for.

They are much thinner people who are, you know, essentially using it to fuel an eating disorder. I mean, that's the truth, right? Whereas actually how you're using it is to stop an eating disorder. Absolutely, yeah. Right? And so that's, that is absolutely, you know, I think that's quite a clear line. So when we remove that element of the GLP1 conversation, which is, which dominates it, frankly, at the moment,

is that people abusing it, people who are not abusing it. What you hear very often is not that they go days without eating and it takes away all appetite. It's that it just enables them to eat like a normal human being. Exactly that. And I think I have got really frustrated with GL1 being abused because it's just another thing that has been hijacked. And, you know, we had a conversation about this earlier

about, you know, body positivity for me was just hijacked by thin people. Like, I, newsflash, I'm not a huge fan of the body positivity movement. Not when it's done in a way that it's some thin girl contouring her roles of fat to make herself look fat, right? How does that, let's talk about how that makes you feel when you see a someone who's a, and again, it's like, I understand. understand that there are people who can be thin who are who have been taught to hate their bodies, because that's how we do it? But as a fat person, how does it make you feel? Do not. I mean,

if you want to come on and say, look, guys, whether you're a size 12 or a size 22, you can still dislike the body you're living, great, let's have a conversation about that. That's healthy. If you want to contour your body into a picture of Instagram of you sitting in the middle, in the mirror, just like making fake rolls of fat going, see where you all have fat, I'm like, oh my God. You know, the thing that I just get so sad about is that there'll be some 13-year-old girl, because it was me, I didn't have social media at 13, thank God, but there'll be some 13-year-old girl, so in her bedroom going, God, if you don't like your body and it looks like that, I should really hate my body. And people who upload that stuff don't understand that for fat people,

that's like a slap in the face because you're not fat. And if you don't like your body at your size, that's fine. That's a conversation we can have, but you're not fat. So stop taking these pictures that make you, in inverted commas, look fat, still don't look fat. And stop kind of plastering this stuff everywhere because those people that really are in fat bodies, God, it's a horrible thing to see. And, you know, I feel like I want to rant now. Oh, God. Go for it.

We want to run. Come on, Rose. I feel like, you know, there's loads of thin white women now. really worried about the fact that diabetics can't get their medication, which is fine, right? I just feel like, no, what you're worried about is that fat women are coming for you because we haven't rested on pretty and we've got a personality and we've had to find other things in our lives that we're good at. So I think what you're worried about is all of a sudden, these very fat women who you could poke fun at or you could dismiss.

Feel better about yourself by looking at. Absolutely. are now showing up with a personality and are also living in smaller bodies. And I think there's this whole narrative. Back to, you know, Reni Zellweger put on loads of weight, there's this whole narrative around what constitutes an okay dress size. And actually that's not the conversation, is it?

The conversation is at what do you feel your best and your healthiest? And if that is a dress size 26 and you feel your best and your healthiest, then live your life. If that is a dress size 6, then live your life. You can hate your body whatever size you're in, but please don't make out your fat if you're not.

Yeah. Because it's awful. Yeah. The other thing about body positivity is how it's now been sort of weaponised and turned back on fat people. Yeah. So if you look at someone like Lizzo, who has lost a bit of weight, but is still in a larger body.

And it's like, oh, well, you weren't happy then when you were fat. And it's like, it really misunderstands to me what body positivity was about, which wasn't like going, it's great to be in a fat body. Exactly that. It's healthy and we love it. And everyone should be fat too. It was saying, I deserve to exist. Exactly.

And be seen. Like, don't stop looking. at me and don't, you know, don't assume that I'm not a human being. Yeah. Like that, to me, was what the body positivity thing was about. I mean, obviously, we know that actually it was for black, disabled, you know, women, who founded it, you know. And I also am really aware as I'm a plus size, midsize or whatever, that I'm in a

larger body, but I still have a privilege. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Because I'm like, you know, a size 18 to 20. You know, again, it's like there's all these conversations. But for me, it's about saying all bodies deserve to exist. Absolutely.

Whatever their size, you know. And can you please look at people and treat them like fucking humans? Yeah. I did a post on Instagram not long ago now. And it was a like carousel post with lots of different things that I've learned by losing weight. And the last phrase was just like, I've just realized this is the body that I live in. And that's been probably one of the most freeing things. Yes, there's absolutely no doubt my health markers have changed.

My health markers before I went on semi-glutide were quite frankly awful, like bad cholesterol, bad high cholesterol, low good cholesterol. Like, you know, blood sugar was frightening, you know, by blood pressure. I honestly think I was a stone's throw away from getting really poorly. and I don't know whether subconsciously in my body, my body was saying to me, well, Ruth, you've got to stop. Like, there's something going on here. But what's been the most freeing thing for me, I suppose,

is this is just the body I live in. But it's far easier to think that at a dress size 18, 20, than it is at a dress size 28. Because the capacity to just buy clothes, right? I was in Sainsbury's on Sunday and I picked up a pair of jeans off the rack and I had a pair of leggings on and I put them on over the top and I was like, these are never going to fit me. And I was like, oh my God, they fit me. I've never experienced thinking, I'll just pop into H&M and see if they've got any tops. I've never experienced that in my life until now.

I've always had to trawl the internet to find fat clothes that are embellished with butterflies because, you know, all fat people want to wear stupid clothes, right? But all fat people want to dress like hyacinth bucket. Oh, it's just an absolute. It's like, oh, we'll put this massive embellished Diamante butterfly in it because, you know, fat people are jolly and they like wearing jolly clothes. And it's like, no, I'd just like to wear a black top. Oh, yeah, we'll give you a black top, but it's got this massive gold thing on it. It's like, oh, my God.

Like, why can't we just wear clothes, right? And so you live your life, trawling the internet, going, I just want a black dress to wear. I don't need it to have a million and one diamond. on it, right? I'm fat, but I'm not jolly all the time. And that's the thing, isn't it? You get into this space of like, she's the fat, funny one. And, you know, it's really interesting because Lisa Riley, years ago when she was in fat friends with my brother, I remember going to a press conference about fat friends, and I was privileged enough to be sat there. And the media asked Lisa,

have you ever been bullied because of your weight? And she said, the first journalist, I said, no, I was really lucky at school. I always was popular. I had boyfriends. And I know that's not everybody's story. And then another journalist said, well, you must, Lisa, I'm really interested by your comment. No, no, honestly, I've never got to like the fourth journalist. He said, I'm really interested by your comment. Have you ever been bullied? And she turned around and said, the only people have bullied about my way is you lot. Yeah. Because it's the only people that have ever poked fun at her, she would say, is the press. So also, can we talk a bit about, because your brother actually has been quite a trailblazer in representing large, like that,

people on screen, fat friends. Then of course there's also Gavin and Stacey. And if you listen to Ruth and James talk about Smith, Smith, Smith, and Nessa and Gavin and Stacey, what they'll say is you never see two fat people on screen who have a very rampant sexual relationship, who are just like, you know, Smithy and Nessa until right towards the end, don't really like each other to start off with, right? But yet they've got this desire to have sex with each other. They've got this desire to fuck. Yeah, exactly that, exactly that. And I'll really remember hearing an interview that Ruth and James did and said, we've never seen that. We've never just seen, it's always the thin characters that get this rampant, hungry for sex

kind of storyline. Yeah. And two people that look like us would never get cast in those roles. They don't get to be horny. No. And so they wanted to say, these two people are just hugely sexually attracted to each other, actually don't really like each other outside of the bedroom, but there's something about their chemistry that they can't deny. And you sort of look back on Gavin and Stacey and you think, oh yeah, God, all the kind of jokes about sex, all of the sex stuff, all of the, you know, Smithy comes in with mud all over his knees and he says he fell over

and then Nessa comes in and she's got mud on her back and she says she fell over. You know, all of those like funny bits are around two people who are fat, and you don't see that on TV. You don't. You don't see those. I remember actually in Fat Friends, there was a character in that.

And she was, you know, having lots and lots of sex. And I think Gayna Faye was very wanted to portray some people who were fat as really, really wanting to desire and have sex. And for a woman to want to desire and have sex, I mean, that's like, that's a no-go area. Women cannot desire sex, especially not fat women, right? God, how dare you? It's so interesting, isn't it? And I always wonder if a bit of like your brother, because your brother's spoken about fat phobia and he's, I think he's spoken publicly about taking semi-gluticide and not working.

Not working, yeah. But I also wonder, whereas, because there can be some sort of like snippiness, can't there in the press about your brother. And I wonder, and I'm like, this is just a hugely successful guy who's like gone to America and conquered it essentially and do it does really cool stuff. And yet there's still this snippiness. And I think is that because he's not. you know, thin. Yeah, I don't, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because Ruth Jones doesn't get the same vibe, does she?

It's a, I think it's a really interesting, you know, Ruth would be classed as a bit of a national treasure. And James, in some contexts, gets talked like that. But I suppose in other contexts, maybe doesn't. And I think what's that, what is that about? I don't know. I don't know, I don't know whether it's a level of success. I don't know whether it's that age all thing of like, get successful,

but don't get too successful. Tear them down. Yeah. I think there's probably that. Yeah. But heaven forbid you shouldn't get too successful. Exactly the same as lose weight but don't get too thin. Like, oh God, she's gone too far.

Like people who say, oh, have you seen so and so recently? She's lost too much weight. Oh my God. She can't win, can she? No. But that's the thing, isn't it? Like, in a way it's subverts expected narratives. Exactly.

And I love that. I love to see people subvert the expected narratives. So can we? Go a bit to like this journey that you have been on to kind of heal your relationship with your body. And again, like there's not one moment where you go, you wake up and you have an epiphany and go, today I'm going to. It was like the same people say that what was the moment you decided to get sober? I'm like every morning I woke up, I had a hangover.

I decided I needed to get sober. And then I didn't. You know? And that happened a million times before finally I was like, shit. Better do this because I think I might die for don't. But you know, so like it's a cumulative, isn't it? These big changes happen over many, many, many, many years. But you've spoken about exercise and how starting that,

that was your kind of introduction into, and I do love hearing about people who use movement to kind of like just get into their bodies for the first time in their life. lives. I went to the gym last night at 8 o'clock. And I had it. You were so strange. You haven't smoked. And you went to the gym at 8 o'clock on Sunday night. I, because I couldn't really, I was away with work last week and I couldn't, I couldn't exercise. And then I had a relatively busy down. And it got to Sunday night and I was like, I have got to move my body. Now, never, if you'd have said to me three years ago, you'll have a week where you haven't moved. I'd have

been like, mate, whatever, I got to the point where I was like, I have got to move my body. And I went and I did a, I just did my own weight session. And I think, so we started February two years ago, I downloaded an app, which was just called Get Fit. And it was loads of different workouts, 10 minutes right the way three to 30 minutes. And I filled in the questionnaire and I said that I didn't move my body ever. and it kind of gave me a bit of a plan. And I just thought, right, okay, well, look, 10 minutes every day.

I'm just going to do 10 minutes a day. Anyone can do 10 minutes a day. And I was like, I would get to the stage where I'd be thinking, I'm really looking forward to doing that 10 minutes or I've got to do that 10 minutes. And then slowly I was like, oh, I want to go to 20 minutes. So I started doing 20 minutes. And the feeling, and at that point, I don't even really think it was about changing anything in my body. I think I just started to go, I really like this feeling.

I really like this feeling when I've worked out. I really like how it feels for me. And then in the April of that year, I joined a gym. What was it like going to a gym? Yeah. So I searched for a gym for a long time and I picked a really small gym in a hotel. And it's tiny. It's got a pool.

It's got a weight section, but it's not like obnoxious. You know, like a lot of the weight sections are in gyms. Yeah. Obnoxious is exactly the right. Exactly the right word. And I just was like, I'm going to go in my baggy t-shirt and I'm going to go on the treadmill. And that's all I'm going to do. And I get lots of people message me on Instagram.

How did you walk into a gym for the first time? I just didn't really think about it. Just walking. Yeah. I just probably didn't overthink it. I just was like, I'm just going to walk in. And if people look at me, they look at me. What I would say is that nobody in the gym is really judging you.

That's just not a place where people do that. so focused, if you actually go into a gym, people are so focused on their own program and what they're doing that they just don't really acknowledge you. It's just like, and actually I've spoken to people since who have said, oh my God, when I see people, fat people or people in bigger bodies in gyms, I'm like, yeah, go on, because you're here, you're showing up. Like people in the fitness industry, you know, personal trainers are probably some of the least judgmental people I've met because they're actually going, go on, like you're doing it. You're here. Who am I to see, who am I to look at you and judge you? You're here.

You're doing it. And so I started using the chevron and then I got really bored of that and I was like, oh, what I'm going to do? And then I found classes. And now all I do is classes. And I remember the very first kettle wells class I went to now I was terrified of walking into that. Because it's a, in my gym, the studio is really small. You can only have 18 people and people do, like, turn their head as you walk in the door. You know, it's just naturally. And I went. And I went to this kettlebells class and I could probably do 30% of it at that point. And it was a lot of like swinging kettlebells and there was stuff on the floor and up and down. But the instructor was a woman called Joe. And she came up to me at the beginning and she said, I haven't seen

you before. And we had a lovely conversation and I said, look, I've never done kettlebells before. She said, you can moderate everything. You can do it. Just do what you can do and just get to the end of the class. And then I went back. And now I go to five to six classes a week. Some of my greatest friends are at the gym and I have a sense of I really feel like I belong there and I never, ever, ever would have said that that's where I would find a place of belonging. I'm about to sell my house and move. My number one criteria is I can't live too far from my gym. That is like, you know, my number one thing. And I go to classes and I just, when I come out, I say, you know, I have days where I'm like, oh my God, I don't want to go. I want to just stay on

the sofa. And I just say to myself, just think about how you'll feel afterwards. Just think about how you'll feel afterwards. Just get in the car and just think about how you feel afterwards. And I come out and I've never come out of a session going, oh, God, I wish I hadn't done that. Yeah. I always think with exercise, it's like nobody wakes up and wants to do exercise, but no one ever regrets it. No.

You never regret a workout. You never leave going, oh, I wish I hadn't done that. Yeah. You always come out going, oh my God. I feel. And actually, I would say, no. Now, movement for me is way more about my mental health. I don't really do any cardio.

Kettlebells, I suppose, is slightly higher cardio. I really do weights because I want to shift a bit more weight. And the best thing that you can do if you want to shift weight is weights. It's way better than cardio. And so I do pump classes. I do kettlebells. I might do one hit class a week. But really, I've dropped cardio.

I'm like, oh, I can do walking, whatever. but for me, a weights class, I don't know, I just feel like a badass bitch. You are a badass bitch, Ruth. I'm married up now. Now, like, I'm doing squats with like, you know, 10KG on either end. I'm, you know, I'm sort of, and I suppose what it's done for my relationship with my body is to sort of go a bit full circle, having been so ashamed of it and so angry with it for so many years, I'm now going, my God, look at what my boy is.

can do. Like I can put a barbell on my back with, you know, 10 KG on each end and the bar and I can do a squat track and I can do it. And so there's a part of me now that's like, whoa, that's to be like nearly 44. That's so cool that my body can do that. And yeah, you know, I don't, I'm not the thinnest person in the gym and I'm not by any means, you know, the fittest person in the gym. But there is something in terms of that relationship with my body, which for so many years has been so damaged, so damaged. You know, I remember just bawling my eyes out at a negative pregnancy test and throwing it across our bathroom and saying,

I don't know why my body just can't do what every other woman's body can do. And so when you live with that level of hatred and anger for your body, when you do a weights class and you think, my God, look at what my body can do. It's like this sort of dramatic change. And so now I just, I love going to the gym. I'd never thought I'd say that. And I've got brilliant friends. And Sarah, who's the girl that I go to most of her classes,

she's just, she's absolutely brilliant. She's just lovely and welcoming and, you know, it always says, I can modify anything, you know, we'll say at the start of the class, if anybody hasn't done this before, you know, just that very welcoming, like, don't be afraid to do it lighter or different, just do what's right for you. Well, that adaptations, I think, like, it didn't occur to me until when I, before I started exercise, that you can just do variations. Yeah.

Yeah. Can I sort of finish by asking you about your relationship with the word fat? Because I think that's quite an important. Yeah. thing because you you use it very happily and that makes me happy because I always kind of find it a bit weird when someone's like you can't say that they're fat. Yeah. You know, and it's like, well, it's just a descriptive word. Like it's not an insult. Talk to me a bit about that. Yeah, I've always used the word fat and I suppose it's a little bit like reclaiming it, right?

and not allowing people to use it as a derogatory term when it's just something that describes something. And so for me, there's a sense, I remember saying years ago to a friend, well, I'm fat, and she was like, you shouldn't say that about your body? And I was like, why? That's what it is.

Now, I wouldn't describe somebody else's body as fat because I understand the connotations behind that and how that can make somebody feel. But I don't know. We've sort of gone, oh, she's a bit chubby, or she's larger, or she's a bit rounded, or she needs to lose a few pounds. like that's a nicer term.

Yeah. And I don't know whether it's because fat is so, it's like short and blunt and to the point and larger feels a bit more like cuddly, you know, like let's talk about somebody being, well, she's a bit cuddly, isn't she? I don't know whether people have just in their head gone, well, that seems nicer.

But I've always used the word fat. And like I said, somebody at Christmas said to me, well, you're still fat. And it wasn't the use of the word fat that upset me. It was the kind of diminishing of all the work I'd put in to reclaim my body, I suppose, and have a better relationship with it. That one word diminished all of that stuff. But I've never, I've never, ever not wanted to use the term fat

because I don't understand why it's offensive. I still don't know what's offensive about it other than people have gone, oh, that's the worst thing you can be. You know, it's like we've kind of in society said, anything but fat. Yeah, but actually there are far worse things to be than fat. It's not a crime. But I think there's become this this like conversation around, well, I wouldn't want to be fat. Like, it must be awful to be fat. And I suppose in some of this conversation we've identified that actually being fat is really hard. And it is a really hard place to sit. And there is thin

privilege. And that is something that, you know, people are starting to talk about more and more. but actually the word fat isn't offensive. We've made it offensive. And I'm kind of of the belief that I don't want it to be offensive. So if I talk about myself in that language and I'm not offended by it, then you can't offend me with it, you know, because I've reclaimed it and I'm going to call myself fat, and that's what I'm going to do.

So, yeah, I've always wanted to talk about fatness as something that shouldn't be kind of grossed out. people shouldn't be grossed out by it, but also it's not the worst thing you can be. No. Do you know what I love about this conversation is that we've had this whole conversation and not once have we discussed like how much weight you've lost? No, because it doesn't fucking matter. It doesn't matter.

And I just love this conversation about inhabiting our bodies and living in our bodies. Totally. And being allowed to do that, whatever their size happens to be. Absolutely. I've had such a wonderful time chatting to you, Ruth. And there is so much for people to go away and think about, I think, in this conversation. So I just want to say, I just want to end by saying thank you. You're fucking amazing.

Thank you for having me. I've had a great time. A massive thank you to Ruth for such an eye-opening and honest conversation. about what it's like to live in a body that everyone has an opinion on. I'd love to know what you think about our chat today. Come and tell me over on Instagram at At Life of Briney Pod. And Ruth will be back on Friday for our special bonus episode, The Life of You, where she shares all the things that keep her grounded and happy.

In the meantime, don't forget to subscribe, follow, rate and rave about us to your friends. It really does help us get a scene by more people. But most of all, keep being you. I'll see you next time.