The Netmums Podcast - S15 Ep1: Body confidence campaigners Laura Adlington and Lottie Drynan on the impact of diet culture and self-esteem

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Welcome to a new series of The Netmums Podcast with Wendy Golledge and Alison Perry! To kick off Series 15, we're diving headfirst into the world of body confidence, diet culture, and New Year's resolutions with the inspiring Laura Adlington and Lottie Drynan. Known for their advocacy in self-esteem and body positivity through their social platforms, podcast and live shows, these ladies are here to challenge the norms and celebrate every body type. Laura and Lottie share their personal journeys towards body acceptance, highlighting the impact of diet culture and the importance of being kind to oneself. Laura opens up about her life-changing decision to cancel bariatric surgery and embrace her body, while Lottie talks about overcoming disordered eating and IBS. The conversation delves into the societal pressures women face, the billion-dollar diet industry, and the importance of questioning why we feel the need to change our bodies. Our guests share their insights on how to navigate the balance between health and self-acceptance, and the role social media plays in shaping our perceptions. Laura and Lottie also discuss their upcoming show, Same Teresa, Different Bodies at the London Palladium, promising an empowering and uplifting experience that celebrates fashion and body confidence. Stay connected with Netmums for more parenting tips, community support, engaging content: Website: netmums.com / Netmums socials: @netmums / Facebook / TikTok / X Series 15 of the Netmums Podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative / @decibelle_creative

You're listening to the Netmums podcast with me, Wendy Gollich. And me, Alison Perry. Coming up on this week's show... It's when we're losing weight because we feel that we have to, to look a certain way, because of the media and all this toxicity that we've been fed from pretty much the day we were born. That's when it's a problem. But before all of that... It's a new series. It's a new year year do you feel like a brand new year ellison this feels like an advert for like um i don't know like vitamins or something

something um but you know what i don't and i feel like um there's so much pressure at this time of year to reinvent ourselves and it really bugs me because it just makes me a bit panicky and a bit like, I need to be, you know, having like a brand new exercise regime and be eating healthily and be organised and buy notebooks and be do bullet journaling. And it just switches me off entirely. How about you, Wendy? Do you feel like you should be improving your life

in some way I'm I'm really torn on the one hand I think January is the worst possible time in the world ever to do anything because it's miserable and crap and all you want to do is be cozy and I try every year not to make any resolutions and then I get swept up in it and then I fail like everyone else so this year I'm just going to make a long list of things that I would like to have achieved by the 1st of January 2026 and if I get to the end of the year and I've achieved a couple I reckon that okay I think you should do what I do so when I'm making a to-do list on a daily basis I always put things on that I've already done so that I can tick them off. So you should put things on your list

that you've already achieved and have that feeling of satisfaction. Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that our guests today will have had a thing or two to say about this. What do you reckon? Tell our lovely listeners who we're chatting to today. They will definitely have an opinion on this. Well, I'm so excited to have these ladies on

today i have followed them both on instagram for ages we are joined by lottie drynan and laura adlington now laura you might remember from great british bake-off back in 2020 and since then she has become a body confidence advocate and plus size content creator creator. Her book, Diet Starts Monday and podcast, Go Love Yourself, has brought her thousands of fans. Lottie, meanwhile, is a self-esteem, body image and mental health advocate, talking about her own struggles with disordered eating and IBS on a journey to self-acceptance. Together, Laura and Lottie are hitting the stage with same dress different bodies live at the London Palladium in March. Ladies welcome to the Netmums podcast. Hi thanks for having us. Thank you. You are very welcome. So tell us then let's start where we started. What do you think

of New Year's resolutions? Helpful and a nice way to make adjustments or just something to beat yourself up about in the urge to be perfect i mean i've got adhd so i'm very easily overwhelmed so i would say no like i do agree with you allison writing a list i always do that i'm obsessed with like the tick lists on apple and I always put at least four things I go yeah already done that this morning like power done get dressed have breakfast yeah breathe like but apart from that let me know to resolutions yeah I'm kind of a bit like you Wendy I think a bit of mix of both I like the idea of like a new fresh start and I think it's nice to kind of set out things of what I'd like to achieve in the year but I definitely think like hard and fast kind of resolutions they don't work do they I think also like I'm sure we'll get into it more but I hate January

for the reason of like we are just bombarded with that like new year new you diet mess diet culture messaging and so for that reason I'm not a fan because i think like you said like they just set people up to fail don't they um and they're not great so yeah i need to like still bask in my like pigs in blankets coma until at least the end of jan and i can like the best thing about news resolutions i think you can get a new notebook like that's what i was hanging from it i'm so with you it's all about the stationery I'm in for the new stationery I'm not in for the eating dust and not drinking wine I feel like things like advent calendars and pigs in blankets we need to kind of bring that you know carry that through into January because there's so much joy

like why are we having all the fun stuff in December it's just it's not fair is it we need to get on the advent calendar January sales let's do it let's do it um but some people like picking a word for the new year um what would yours be if you were to pick um a word for 2025 I've actually got mine oh it's been my word of the year for two since I had my daughter actually surrender and it's like my favorite word ever so I'm gonna say like stop trying to fight everything. Fight the chaos. Just surrender.

This is what's happening. Just try and take... How old is she? She's nearly two and a half. Oh, Christ. Well, surrender really is the word then. Surrender to tantrums. Just surrender.

I'm a number one fan here. I love it. Honestly, like, I'm obsessed. Like, I feel like no one prepares you for how much you love your best friend's kids. Like, she's just so special, isn't she? She's literally like Lottie. She's sunshine in human form. I witnessed the first meltdown, like, toddler tantrum the other day.

Me or her? Her. No, I witnessed her first tantrum and I was just like, oh, no, Penny. You're ruining it. But no, she's just, just yeah she's a really special special little girl so Laura what would your word be uh mine would be hope yeah um I think uh it's cheesy isn't it oh god I just know myself a little bit but yeah just yeah I think just some things that I'm hoping that will like kind of come to fruition next year and just yeah I'm trying to I think I yeah like grew up with in like quite a negative household and we've got negative and I'm

really trying not to be like get myself out of negative uh mindset I think that's my go-to is to think the worst and to think negatively and so I'm trying to not do that as much not to be like you know toxic positivity or anything but just to be a bit more positive and and have hope. I love that. What shows that lesson? Oh I think mine's going to be confidence because I just in the last few weeks have started a bit of a mission to try and regain some of my lost confidence hence why I'm wearing red lipstick and leopard print today because I am just trying to kind of like force myself drag myself out of a pit of lack of confidence and what about you Wendy what

would your word be probably mindful I think a little bit more time spent in the moment rather than freaking out about what has been or might be which I'm very good at yeah so you touched ladies already on the big talking point for every January which is obviously weight loss and what I love about the content you both put online is that you challenge these standards and you celebrate bodies but that hasn't always been your attitude has it so can you tell us a little bit about the journey you've both been on to get here yeah so for me I've always been big like from the age of about eight really um and I've tried every single diet you can imagine if you name it I've done it I when we moved um from our flat about eight years ago uh I found I think like 10 slimming well books

in like the shit drawer that everyone has um so I was a serial dieter never happy with my body um and just kind of made to feel like a lot of us like I wasn't good enough and that I had to be on a diet and that I wasn't worthy as a size that I am and then my life completely changed um about four or five years ago I was about to have bariatric surgery and I was about to have it was a really huge operation life-changing where they basically like cut your stomach to like a much smaller size and then reroute around your intestines and all of this um for sort of very drastic weight loss um and it's's say it's major surgery you can die from it and I was three days away from having it and I just thought what am I doing and it was really at that point I

started to think do you know what is my life that bad that I would put my sort of myself and my health and my life at risk and what would life be like if I wasn't constantly on a diet and hating myself and does that world and life exist and and then bake off happened um and I was really lucky I got so much support from lots of women around the world who are also plus size maybe struggling with their confidence and I realized you know again it was a time of covid as well so I just realized like quite crudely I could be dead tomorrow and how do I want to spend my last kind of days on earth worried about not having a thigh gap or that I don't fit into size 12 jeans or whatever?

Or do I want to just live my life to the full? And I always say to people, like, don't live a small life just because you're bigger. And I think I now just really try and live by that motto. And the fact, you know, that the way we look is the least interesting thing about us. So I try, obviously not all the time, doesn't work all the least interesting thing about us so I try obviously not all the time doesn't work all the time but that's what I try and live by really um and I'm so much

happier for it Lottie what about you yeah we've got very different journeys but it's funny because there's like the turning point is quite similar in terms of I want to say that but like the community side of things like having our platforms is something that really has helped us both for me I had an eating disorder from around the age of 18 um it sort of coincided it was a bit of a chicken and egg situation of what came first the eating disorder or the IBS because I became so fearful of food because everything would make me poorly but obviously the eating disorder was making my IBS worse because I mean I was bulimic so it was just ruining my gut health so I was in this vicious

circle and I I remembered I was always conscious of my body like from you know school days being in the PE changing rooms looking at the girls that had boobs and a waist and I still had like what my family called like my puppy fat and I was always really conscious of that um and that sort of just became a really obsessive cycle and in my sort of yeah late teens early 20s I also tried every diet that I remember I worked at TGIs and you could give baby food out for free so I went on the baby food diet because Jennifer Aniston had done that like it was ridiculous like and I'd eat you know four pots of baby food and two tins of um Red Bull all day I went on slimming tablets and I'd used to put

stones in my pockets to make myself heavier so I'd go to these like dodgy slimming um clinics to get these tablets sort of basically speed um to try and lose weight and I just put myself in so many dangerous positions with my body with my weight and made my health my gut health even worse and I think living with IBS and the constant bloating made it really difficult and I know a lot of women that suffer with that find the same because you can't it's really hard to get a place to a place of body acceptance when your body is always changing so I could think okay this is how my body looks I'm at peace with that and two hours later I can sniff a bit of pasta and I look totally different so it's so hard I think that it just makes the relationship with

your body a little bit more complex um and I started actually in my Instagram I did that without my name without my face on there. It was, my husband always laughs because it was an awful name. And I basically took photos of my food and it looked like cat sick. It looked disgusting. But I started this platform sort of almost by accident as a diary for myself. And then accidentally fell upon this community of women that also struggled with their body image, also struggled with bloating, like both the physical side and the visual side like appearance side

um and I realized I wasn't alone and I kind of always say like I kind of did fake it till I make it in terms of confidence I realized that these women needed help and I I wanted to help them because even in a selfish way, it helped me too. So it was a really lovely thing to be able to have these conversations. And I really tried to make myself confident to help other people. And in the end, it actually got through to me and sort of rewired my neuro pathways to not hate myself. And it's become something that's grown from there. That's amazing um why do you think then that diet culture has got such a strong grip on so many people but especially women

i don't want to be like one of those people that like the patriarchy um because but it is it's it's a multi multi-billion dollar industry designed to make women feel bad about themselves and actually it's one of the only industries really when you look at it that is actually designed to for you to fail they want you to fail because diets don't work the scientific proof is that you will you will lose weight um when you begin a diet because you know for whatever reasons it's the maintaining that that is pretty much impossible unless you're five percent of the population and i think what the the whole the chokehold that diet culture has on women is because it's we have been fed this lie that we are not

good enough unless we are a certain size and our worth is directly and inherently linked to our appearance and i think that we feel that so so much um i think it's really important a thing i always say when i talk to schools and when i've done coaching clients in the past is it's really important to get angry at diet culture like get angry at it use that as fuel and ask yourself why. So every time when you're thinking, I hate my body and I need to be smaller, why? Oh, because small equals pretty. Why do you think that? Because that's what the media has told us. Why?

Because diet companies and diet culture want to profit off our insecurities. If we all said we like how we look, these businesses would lose, like you say, multi, multi millions of pounds. It is such a high generating um industry and if we can get angry at that and question it's like actually like i don't want to sound it as well like but you know it was used to make women shut up and keep us interested when we were housewives and to keep us small and not to talk about our opinions or anything that we felt passionate and was important it was to keep us in keep the women at home keep them just obsessing about their bodies and serving men pretty much that's what it was for but at risk of getting kicked off of our own podcast by you two we're so angry I want to talk about the other side of that because there is a balance to be created and I feel like sometimes there are some health benefits and I for example was pre-diabetic and had to lose someamed now because you're supposed to be positive about your body, however you look.

So how do we navigate that flip side where there are people who are losing weight? And I understand the diet culture and how we do that can be really challenging. But there are sorts of guilt and shame being raised by weight loss now. And I wonder what you have to say on that side of it. I think there's a big difference. Diet culture, diet industries don't care about you. And they don't care about health. They care about profiting off your insecurities.

And I think that if someone is losing weight for themselves for whatever reason that's okay it's when we're losing weight because we feel that we have to to look a certain way because of the media and all this toxicity that we've been fed from pretty much the day we were born um that's when it's a problem so it's i think it's a really hard line that both of us struggle with yeah it is hard and i get accused of promoting obesity on a like pretty much a daily basis I can well imagine yeah and and I think that you know it's something that I do really I feel really passionate about talking about because I am just existing and actually I think I'm not standing around with a billboard saying eat McDonald's every day eat 40 donuts a day I think you're right I think there is a balance to be had um and i think i think it's completely an individualist choice if you want to lose weight for whatever reason i have no judgment there what i personally just don't want to see is it plastered

all over the internet like it's i think i think we sort of feel like sometimes like losing weight is the best thing you can ever do and it's really celebrated and and I think I'm just not really about that like I think for me the goal is health so if you have lost weight and you feel healthier I'm really happy for you I think that's brilliant I think we should all be trying to be the healthiest version of ourselves but it's like we always say like sometimes like you know some food is good for you like your heart your brain your lungs and some food is good for the soul and it's so it's just it's not about having just not maybe like beating yourself up for how you look and what your body is like and just know as well that we're all different like we're all like you have to lose weight really like you said before like medical reasons some people are

just naturally you know in bigger bodies some people are smaller and I think what we're just kind of saying is that's okay your your appearance and your weight are not equal to your worth and actually you know we're as anti skinny shaman as we are like fat shaman yeah there's one thing that's always stuck with me I think it was Vic Spence a friend who's also a confidence coach said um shared before and she said if somebody says to you oh I've lost you know I've lost two stone where I'm saying oh that's amazing saying okay and are you happy and if they say yes then amazing like brilliant but actually do you feel better do you feel healthier do you feel well and you realize actually I was chasing this dream that

wasn't or you could lose it and like yourself and then feel happier and healthier. So it's about how you feel and what that sort of motivation for yourself was. And if that brings you like true happiness and health, then brilliant. But if you're chasing after this, when I'm smaller, when I'm smaller, I know I've been the smallest I ever was. I was the least healthy i've ever been i could barely walk a mile never mind run the marathons that i've now done since gaining weight um so it's just about it's a really hard balance i think it's something that we find really hard and probably most women do because there isn't anything wrong with losing weight it's just

there's wrong something wrong with people making you feel like you should for your appearance yeah and i think i i'm i always say to people like again you were saying about going back to the why like why do you want to lose weight oh because i want to you know because whatever reason but actually like how many times have we we've all you know we've all done it where we've gone on a diet and then you weigh yourself and you like you've only lost a pound but you feel better you've got more energy maybe your skin's clear clear or whatever and you go oh fuck it because you've only lost a pound but you feel better you've got more energy maybe your skin's clear clear or whatever and you go oh fuck it because you've only lost a pound so actually when we focus on weight it's really detrimental so I think you just all need to focus on it it's just

it's a bad way to feel yeah yeah I mean personally I am firmly anti-diet but I feel like weight loss and dieting is one of those things that it's like one of the biggest blind spots that so many intelligent critical thinking women have I've got friends who will discuss the ins and outs of politics but they still weigh themselves every day um do you think that if someone listening has a friend like that is it good to challenge those people when they start talking about their diet or weighing themselves and if so how should we do it without upsetting them or shaming them I think it comes down to whether you've got the mental energy and the strength to do that if you're in a place to then you know go for it and if you're you've got that relationship with them where you think something positive can come out of it

but if it's just going to cause you sort of more mental load and put you back into a triggered place then you've got to sort of weigh it up as you go you can stick you know there's so many different ways you can challenge it and sort of do that you know sort of why i was saying like but why but why um and you can sort of get angry at the reason why together or you can try and just set a boundary and say do you know what i don't feel comfortable talking about weight or body image um right now and i'd like us to change the subject please like you know we've we've posted stuff before i think on our um joint channels of like christmas when your nan starts talking about calories going should you really

be having your third portion and whether you actually tell her where to go or whether you say do you know what now i'm not interested in that so i think it sort of depends on your situation your relationship where you are at the time yeah definitely no i agree i think and the health i think health setting healthy boundaries and with family i think is really important as well i would say like my family know now do not come on my weight and actually the research all the research i did for my book showed that weight stigma actually has more of an impact on somebody's health than excess weight and and it's it's clear it's the mental load and that's why we shouldn't be talking to kids about weight and and and issues and stuff like that because it just I'm I'm an actual like living walking breathing example of you know

growing up in a household where it was you need to lose weight you need to lose weight and the it just made me go the other way. So yeah. Yeah, I always remember my grandma called me buxom once and it stuck with me for years and it just triggered my eating disorder. I think we all have that. We all have a thing. I had an uncle who was like, oh, you've packed it on.

And it's like, it was just a comment that he will certainly not remember. And, but you, they stay with you, don't they? They absolutely. Yeah. At the dinner table last night, I've got six-year-old twins and a 14-year-old. And one of my six-year-old twins made a comment about her twin, about how she was fat. And my 14-year-old was like, oh, you, like it was the worst thing in the world.

Oh, you can't say that. And I kind of thought quickly and I said, you know, fat's not a bad thing. That's just like saying that she's tall or that she's small. You know, it's just a descriptive word. So that's not a bad thing. But she's not fat. And my 14 year old was kind of like thinking about it. And I was like, phew, I feel like I navigated that one quite well. Well done you. It can be so hard though anyone who's sort of struggling with that I would really recommend a book by um an author called Molly Forbes called Body Happy Kids and it sort of talks all about how to talk to your kids in a sort of

body neutral way to raise kids so that they know that exercise is for play and for fun not just burning calories like we were sort of talking to um it's an amazing bit but yeah it sounds like you did a really good job I always try and say like fat is not a dirty word like it's a descriptive word just like brunette words absolutely Molly is one of my closest friends so I have learned a lot but we hear phrases like body positivity used a lot but some people kind of find it really hard to love their body do you think that body neutrality is a more helpful goal or do you think that you know we could all love our bodies should I take this one you I know that you sorry I'm like oh no I can feel you itching

you go so I think we get sold this lie that we have to love our bodies it's rubbish I promise you you don't have to love your body every day. It's not realistic. It's not attainable. So please, I would say, don't focus on that goal. If you get there, amazing, but please don't set that as a goal. It's also going to be very difficult to go from, I hate my body. I don't like how I look in the mirror to, I love myself. I love my roles. I love my stretch marks, my cellulite. It's a big order, right? The body positivity movement was actually a bit of history for you here. Sorry, I love my roles I love my stretch marks my cellulite it's it's a big order right and the body positivity movement was actually a bit of history for you here sorry I'll just I'm this is this is boring let me know but it was actually a political movement in the 60s and it was about

equal rights for black queer disabled women it wasn't about loving your skin or like loving who you are it got commercialized in the 90s and hijacked by companies that a little bit like diet culture perhaps you could say kind of then thought right there's money to be made here on like getting women to like love themselves but it kind of got whitewashed um and then what we were seeing is women in more privileged bodies in smaller bodies with their roles and in inverted commas showing off their sort of flabby stomachs or whatever and saying like i love it i love it it's not really about that and i think for me i say i don't really identify anymore with the body positivity movement and i think a lot of people don't

for me i think body and both of us actually body neutrality which is in essence what we're saying earlier is the way you look is the least interesting thing about you and focusing on function over form is the way forward it's basically saying I have a body and so does everybody else but the shape of our bodies and fashion are also really closely linked and you guys always look amazing in your outfits online what what would you say to someone who's kind of covering up in leggings and baggy clothes and doesn't have the confidence to dress how they want to or to kind of experiment with clothes because of their shape I think women's for the first I'll just say women's bodies are not trends like we we've all you know we've seen the trends like from like the the 1920s

or up until now you know and unfortunately this whole heroin chic thing is back in but I think just we just need to ignore those completely and just to just say since when did eyebrows get their own trends I look back at like freckles I used to try and like scrub my freckles off and now we're paying 15 pound for a freckle pen like we look at all these things of insecurities and how our bodies are like you know how we look our appearance is just treated as a trend like there's alex light she's a brilliant follow she's done a piece where she's put she's great isn't she and she's put her body and like edited it as if it was in line with the trend so you know like laura said the heroine that's it and then suddenly the kardashians with the big book bum and i talked to the kids and i

say if we were to try and get ourselves in that shape one it would be impossible without a shit load of surgery which is dangerous expensive and all the other things but two it gets the end of that decade and it's like oh actually no that's not big bums not in fashion oh right okay what do i do with my bbl like what do i do i've just spent you know every hour at the gym it's like yeah it's really hard and then when clothes you know we look back to the sort of we always talk back about the noughties the you know those shows that we grew up with how the 10 years younger and stuff like that not to wear not to wear like well you're not allowed to wear vertical stripes how you can only wear black and the wavy look the kind of kate moss where you had to like an ironing board that's it and we look back and think god actually why don't we just wear what makes us feel good like physically and mentally like if it's comfortable and it gives

us confidence then surely that's the best trend like without being cheesy no i agree i think you're really great at and like you're such an advocate for dressing for joy it's like you love to wear like color like pennies you're a style inspiration and i think that's really great and i would say to anyone that is struggling thinking that their shape is wrong like your body isn't wrong I think it's just about finding trying different things and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone even if it's just a little bit to try things that maybe you wouldn't maybe also just I think exploring color as well I'm someone that also this is what Alison has been doing of late yeah have you not yeah well I yeah I've been trying to wear more less black. I've been shopping my own wardrobe to try and, you know,

delve into it and find things that I've forgotten about. But my main thing is I would rather, this is like a mantra that I'm telling myself on a daily basis. I would rather look fat and fabulous than slimmer and boring. And that's, I'm just trying to, like today I'm wearing dungarees that they're really slim fitting. And you can see, I'm going to stand up so you can see it ladies.

But like, I've got a tummy in them. And I'm like, I don't care that everyone can see my big size 18, 20 tummy. I'm just going to wear them because they make me feel happy. So I'm with you on that front. Yeah, there's a really great exercise that Laura Thomas,

she has got an excellent book called just eat it she's um i think it's food psychologist but she developed something called the zero crap stay which i love doing it's like if you woke up one morning and didn't give a crap about what other people thought of you if you had no judgment on yourself what would you do and you go through what you'd eat but i love the what would you wear and just imagine that and like Alison like you say like you said earlier I've put red lipstick on I'm wearing leopard print and dungarees like try and imagine that zero craps Alison and just bring in something even if that's a pair of jeans if you're living in leggings and a hoodie and just like push yourself to do that like once a week wear something from your zero craps persona and you'll see the joy

and you'll realize actually people aren't looking at me and staring at me. If anything, they're maybe thinking, oh, she looks fab. And that it's like training yourself and you will eventually find that style that just makes you feel good. Definitely. I think I was going to ask you a question about shapewear, which is, let's face it, the devil. But I think, actually, I know what you're going to say already. You're going to say we should chuck it all in the bin, aren't you?

Yeah. It makes me shit myself. Yeah. Well, it actually makes you shit yourself. I don't know if I should share this or not. Yeah, you can. You chat yourself a lot of times, Laura, so what one are you planning on sharing? This is the same i was at my friend's wedding and i had like kind of like

a tighter fitting dress on you remember when i was like is it peplum dresses like anyway i was wearing one of those and i had some like really awful dodgy shapewear from primark on that was like four sizes too small because Primark don't do plus sizes and let's just say it was not a great evening yeah it was so tight yeah I just think I'm too short to be comfortable I've always ended up throwing mine in the tampon yeah I remember going clubbing we've all done it yeah come in and then you just have your funny out and you may as well have just worn your nice bit Bridget Jones. Annie, who used to be on this podcast with me, on her wedding day came up to me and said,

come to the toilet. I was like, what? She was like, get me out of these pants. It took me months to get her out of her pants and put them in the bin on her wedding day. So sorry, Annie, for mentioning that. Chub Rob shorts, though, though amazing because they stop chafing and they have a slight smoothing effect but they're not restrictive. Yeah I think it's different to feel some support isn't it it's nice especially if you've got a bit of a tummy feeling like you've

got a bit of a hug it's very different to like you know like you know when you're moving and you don't want it like wobbling anywhere just because it doesn't feel nice or like it's you know I'm sitting down now and my tummy's like quite literally touching my fanny and it feels nice to have that bit of support but that's very different to crushing my internal intestine so true that's so true I'm gonna I'm gonna try and raise the tone again ladies when we say that something is flattering we often means that it makes part of your body look smaller you know people will say oh that dress looks amazing on you and I'm thinking I know why you're saying that do you think we almost need to redefine what flattering means yeah I do a series on this um on Instagram and it's called f flattering basically because

we do like flattering I guess isn't a bad word but it's being used in a way where it does basically mean that it's smaller whereas we can yeah you look thinner like you say oh that's so flattering on you basically means you look slimmer and slimmer is the body ideal yeah like so challenging that or redefining i love that some people in comments say do you know what i don't think of flattering as that i think of it as the color really you know brings out my personality it suits who i am and I think that's amazing so if we can give it a new definition then great but I think it's the whole sort of Trini and Susanna days of it's not flattering to wear vertical stripes if you're above a size six or something like that

that's where it's sort of got a bad reputation hasn't it yeah completely agree you said recently laura you posted a video that you were having a bad body image day so you obviously still get those little voices giving you a thump in the back of the head how do you tackle it what do you do on a bad body image day i think sometimes i sort of lean into it a little bit and i kind of just have to say i'm just having a bad day that's just we all do we all get them i think it's important sort of lean into it a little bit and I kind of just have to say I'm just having a bad day that's just we all do we all get them I think it's important sort of to say that the road to body acceptance isn't linear like we're all going to have good and bad days but I just try and tell myself that I'm like more than my bad days and that this too shall pass it's a bit like when you're having a mental health wobble really hard when you're in it isn't it to kind of get out of

it or think that you're not always going to feel like that um but i for me i a bit of self-care like sounds really really simple and it sounds a bit superficial but literally just shower hair wash shaving legs fanny face whatever i need to do a bit of fake tan and not kind of like i think sometimes the temptation is to kind of put on your old clothes with holes in or stains on them and sit on the sofa with your greasy hair and feel sorry for yourself and that's fine to do that maybe sometimes but also I think sometimes I just try and get myself out of it and make myself feel a little bit better um and then I just find that over time maybe if it's not that day maybe it's the day after or the day after that I then start to be a bit kinder to myself and not beat myself up so much yeah realize that your thoughts aren't fact yeah yeah yeah um now obviously you're both big on social media and

you put out really helpful content and but we also know that social media is a big part of the problem with promoting this idealized perfect lifestyle and we've got teenagers soaking this stuff up too what advice do you have for parents listening about what conversations to have with our kids and obviously you've mentioned molly forbes book body happy kids already um but in terms of having that conversation about body image and trying to ensure that the next generations are growing up having a better relationship with their bodies yeah i think for me one thing I mean my daughter's only two but I also work in the schools as well and trying to be aware of your own language like I think most women our

generation grew up with mums that are permanently on diets who you know we can't blame them because unfortunately they are just a victim of the diet culture too but always on slimming world always on the next you know five two diet so not talking about that talking about food for pleasure for health for all the other benefits that it's got same with exercise just being really aware of our language from the very beginning you know not so they're not seeing us prod at our tummies and the bits that we don't like i think is will actually have a really really positive effect um because we do you know we can't like, I think will actually have a really, really positive effect. Because we do, you know, we can't protect them forever.

And unfortunately, with social media, as much as there's so many positives to it, we know that it's a really scary place. We know, especially even things of AI coming in, the AI models and filters. Well, Alison and I have both got teenage daughters and you know my daughter's just starting the changes in her body that come with puberty and currently she's utterly non-plus by all of it which is marvelous but it's it's really hard with grandparents i find because they are the the generation our parents you talking about, who were constantly on a diet. And they still are, to an extent.

And they're still talking about, oh, well, I'm going to do 800 calories for the next couple of weeks before Christmas so that I can then eat everything I want at Christmas. And it's like, don't say that in front of my 13-year-old. Please. don't say that in front of my 13 year old please and we as parents now are trying to have conversations like you say about health and about movement for your mental health and movement for other things but do you think the next generation will have a different attitude to self-esteem are you positive that all this work you're doing in schools lottie is gonna pay off and that they will have more self-love than we have yeah it's such a hard one because I when I go into schools I see that the young people now influence a much younger age you know I was still wearing no makeup except blue eyeshadow and not caring what I looked like until a bit older

because we didn't have social media we we had all the horrible magazines they get me wrong but now it is really scary so I do I see that and I see how many students need me to be there which breaks my heart because I wish I could go in and they go oh do you know what we don't need this but they really need it and they stop and they come over and talk about it but I also see the conversations when I do go in that's not the first chat they've had about it teachers now are talking more openly they're doing so many positive things for young people's mental health including body image and self-esteem generally I do I have this like high hope that you know

especially by the age even just selfishly by the age that Penny, my little girl, is in her teens, that we almost do a bit of a go back backwards with social media. And we're seeing the damage now that it's done. Like we've now we were like sort of the first generation to properly use it. We didn't grow up with it, thank God. But we've used it in our sort of 20s and now we've learned about it and realized how powerful it is i feel like we're now starting to see how it can be used wrongly and kids are hopefully getting a little bit more aware of that we're getting more information i really hope that there's some more laws like we've seen it in i think it's sweden that has just made it illegal australia australia has just made it illegal Australia Australia has just made it illegal for under 16s and I know there's loads of different schools of thought on that but I do hope that

sort of you know institutions are taking more um ownership of things like metal or taking more ownership I hope that that'll become something that you know we can take positives from but it is it's scary like I don't know the answers I do this you know we do talk about this day in day out I go to schools all the time and I don't know the answer but I so hope that we're going to be in a better place. I feel like I'm taking you from a potentially positive place to a negative place again so I apologize for that but it feels like um with the rise in popularity of ozempic and similar weight loss drugs it feels like um we are being offered a quick fix um that is potentially you know and again it's you know arguably a massive

industry making money off the back of our insecurities is that something that you find worrying and do you think that how much impact do you think that's going to have on us and our ability to accept our bodies the way they are rather than try to fight to change change our bodies I think it's a tough one i think it goes back to what we were saying earlier about it being an individual choice i have absolutely no um you know kind of opinions really on people pursuing the the weight loss injections for their own use i think what we need to be a little bit careful is when we talk about them as a miracle cure because in essence so what they do is the the glp1 hormone suppresses your appetite

and it also slows the release of food so you feel fuller for longer so in theory you you eat less and you lose weight but just like a fad diet when you stop taking them you put the weight back on and more and at the moment they're only licensed for use up to two years that may change but I just think it's a little bit careless to describe them as a miracle cure however sorry post box however um I will say that I know that friends that have been on them and say that for the first time the food noise as in constantly wanting that's how I've heard them described as well that they turn down the noise on the kind of obsession with food yeah and I think that unless you are somebody who like myself included who has struggled with having like an insatiable appetite

and really struggled with kind of you know not eating to excess or whatever and disordered eating added into that, I can see how they're really appealing. And I don't think they should be demonised. So I think they can be a lifeline for some people. Again, I think it's an individual basis. And it's kind of early days. I just think we need to be a bit careful how we report on them

and how the media has reported on them. Because I don't think they're a miracle cure do you think for some people they aren't so as bad maybe as they're being made because they're being demonized at the moment they're somewhere in the middle perhaps yeah i agree and i think that the only thing i think worries me is that i think a lot of people are seeing them and then people that don't need them it's it's a bit like you know what you were saying about putting stones in your pocket so that you weighed more it's how you're using them it is more high it's about being responsible with them as well so they're not for people that have got you know that 10 pounds to lose whatever they're not for people like that and this is a story coming from hollywood don't

we and you know there's i mean who knows because we don't know what celebrities are eating and how much exercise they're doing and what they're doing with their bodies but there are rumors that you know loads of celebrities are you know are taking these weight loss drugs yeah arguably they don't need to be doing that i was at a fitness conference like a wellness and fitness conference in the summer and there was an american presenter there she was discussing global wellness trends and she said can i just ask for a show of hands for anybody who's tried any of the weight loss drugs or is on them and kind of i think two or three people put up their hands and she said i asked this at a conference in california last week and there was about three people in the room who didn't put up their hands yeah so that's how much they're being taken in the us now and if you're so you're right

alice and we there seems to be they're coming here definitely in a big way i think so and i think that for some people they probably you know they might be it might be right for them they are extremely expensive as well i think that's another thing to consider and the nhs i think i believe has plans to roll them out to some people but it'll be a postcode lottery like everything over the next 10 years but um you're looking at kind of two three hundred pounds a month so they're not for everybody and i worry that people are putting themselves in like financial danger but it's similar to how you talked about bariatric surgery, that you've got the surgery, but if it's not addressing the... Obviously, the food noise is very different,

but if it's not addressing the emotional side, which so many of us have when it comes to food, when it comes to dieting, then it's how it's being used is worrying and the the accessibility of it i said it for years i think i really wish the government and the nhs would prioritize um focusing on the emotional reasons of like why we eat and having support for that rather than you know how many calories you should eat in a day or calories on menus bmi and all of that bollocks and yeah or sending sending um gp surgery sending their um patients to slimming world i get i think once a year i get a text from my gp surgery saying you can have some free slimming world world sessions and i always write back an angry text telling them about diet

culture that shouldn't happen they cause disordered eating i really truly believe that i truly in my heart believe that that weight loss companies like that um they cause disordered eating i really i feel really strongly about it they make me so angry sorry you're shaking lottie and laura the work that you are doing is so valuable and it's helping so many people out there so from the bottom of my heart thank you And thank you so much for joining us today. It has been wonderful to chat to you. Ladies, tell me about the show that you are coming to London Palladium.

It's same dress, different bodies, isn't it? Tell us about that. Yeah, so we are putting on an amazing show at London Palladium. We're so excited, aren't we? Yeah. And it's like the ultimate. And they do massive, ladies.

I know, right? Don't tell us that. We're trying to be quiet. show at london playdium we're so excited aren't we yeah and it's like the ultimate massive ladies it's gonna like the ultimate girls like that except it's in the afternoon so you'll be home in your pajamas in a takeaway by seven o'clock like happy days um but it's yeah it's all about like fashion and body confidence dressing for joy uh saying a big fu to happy days um but it's yeah it's all about like fashion and body confidence dressing for joy uh saying a big fu to flattering and but it's so much more than just like fashion isn't it so we've got like some really special guests and we'll be talking about like our both of our journeys in a bit more detail and it's just something really uplifting and empowering event yeah we bring our we do something on instagram called same dress different bodies which is where it's come from and we share show that you know the same dress can look amazing on us both or there's some things that you know just feel more me or feel more laura it's not to do with

our size it's all about like style has no size so we have we bring that to life we did a pilot show in june and we basically have women all shapes, different sizes, all different ages. And they're on the catwalk and they're just sharing how incredible they all feel in their outfits. And we just always, we really hoped that time, and I think we did it. And this time even more so that someone, everyone in that audience can look and think, oh, that's me on that stage or that part's me. And they can really relate and go, I would never have the confidence to wear that. But they look amazing. And you can tell they feel amazing so that's what we really want to we want everyone to walk out just feeling like happy to be a woman happy to be in their bodies and just

feel really empowered so oh it sounds amazing love it um yeah thank you so much ladies it has been fabulous to talk to you thank you so much thank you so much don't forget you can get in touch with us on all social channels instagram facebook tiktok just type in netmoms and you'll find us and if you liked what you've heard today we'd love for you to give us a five-star rating press the follow button and share the podcast on all your socials