1: "I feel fat". What next?

0:00:00
 Hey guys, and welcome to the No Wellness Wankery podcast. It's so good to have you here. My name is Lyndi Cohen. You might know me as the nude nutritionist. I'm a dietitian. I'm a nutritionist. And well, I think there's just way too much wankery in the wellness world, don't you? Too much dodgy health advice masquerading as something that's good for us when really it's compromising our health. So this podcast is all about helping you be healthy without the bullshit, thank goodness. And I'm joined by my wonderful co-host, Jenna. Thank God, yes.

0:01:07
 Hello, my name is Jenna D’Apice and I'm a radio presenter and content creator, but I've also been on a diet most of my life, probably a lot longer than maybe other people have. But hey, we've learned some things along the way. And I am working with Lindy and showing, like, yes, the new intuitive eating, it all sounds amazing, I love the goals, but I'm kind of like on the path of how do you get there? Are these things achievable? It's like I always had the thought of like, I can intuitively eat once I lose weight, and it's like, that's not really the point. So it's like, how do we get there? Maybe I'll ask the questions that you're thinking about, but how do I actually do this? How do I stop dieting? So that's what I'll be helping with.

0:01:49
 It's so good to have you here. One of the things that you and I often chat about is some of the things that you're working through at the moment that you might need a little bit of help with. So what's kind of been on your mind recently when it comes to all of this dieting stuff and intuitive eating?

0:02:03
 Well, recently, I feel like I wasn't buying new clothes in terms of, maybe that was stopping me from feeling good, like I needed a new outfit, something like that. I know that's a massive first world problem. But you can feel good in what you're wearing. And I feel like at the moment, I'll get something new and I'm like, oh, this is really great. I feel good in myself when I'm at home. I'll go and then I'll see photos of the event afterwards and I'm like, oh, I look horrible, I look so fat, and then I instantly like, oh, I can never wear that again, even though at the time I felt good and before I felt good, but looking at a photo from the event afterwards, I'm like, horrible, need to lose weight.

0:02:41
 Well, this is just one of those huge triggers that we have that can make us feel like going through the spiral of, you know, as I say, feeling fat, feeling really uncomfortable in your body, feeling like you're not good enough. And I think it's really important to realize that literally everything around us is telling us that we are only going to be good enough, thin enough, and pretty enough when we weigh less and we look perfect. But the key thing is to know it's not your purpose in life to look perfect from every angle. You're going to take shit photos where you look awful, and you're going to take photos of you look amazing. I saw this quote the other day, it's like, you know when you take a photo of a sunset and then you look back at it and you're like, ah, that looks really a lot better in person. I think that's how you must be turning up in life and you're seeing these photos of yourself and you're going, that's not the full version of you.

0:03:29
 Do you then, when you're with yourself and feel like if I take a thousand photos, then I'll find one that I look really good in and it's like, is that a good way of going about it as well?

0:03:39
 Yeah, it's such a good question. I don't know. I feel like there's got to be a limit. How much of your life are you sacrificing if you're spending your time taking a thousand photos of yourself? But this is what happens in Instagram is we have these influencers who are genuinely taking a thousand photos of themselves, picking the very best one, editing it, and then sharing that as though like, oh, it's just a, what a happy coincidence that this is how I look. And I think it's total nonsense. Maybe it's what makes us think that you're not allowed to take a bad photo of yourself.

0:04:10
 That's actually a very true point. Maybe because back in the day, back before social media, you had a camera, you took a snap and you moved on. Whereas now the photos that we put up are like the most highly curated best photo, but now we see a photo that's not the best, especially if someone else takes a group photo and you're not fully in control of the photo taking moment, then you're like, now I look horrible.

0:04:33
 Or there's always that conundrum when someone takes a photo where they look really good, they share it on social media and you feel like, oh, I really don't love how I look there.

0:04:40
 This is exactly it. But this whole concept of feeling fat, like how people think I would say, oh, I feel fat, is a very common phrase. What do you think about, what does it actually mean, I feel fat?

0:04:52
 Well, there's a lot of commentary around this, that they say that feeling fat isn't an emotion, it's not actually a feeling, fat is a state. And so, it can kind of lead to a little bit more weight stigma when we're referring to ourselves as fat. And I buy into that, but then also, I think I know what that feeling is. So when you wake up and you put on clothes and you feel really uncomfortable in your body or you don't like how you feel in your body, that's fundamentally it. So maybe we need to change our phrasing around how we say it, but I think everyone listening

0:05:26
 to this is going to go, I know what that feeling is. Absolutely. And I feel like right now in terms of maybe the world has changed in the last few years and we haven't been going out as much, and especially not that we're in lockdown now, but when that time was. And I feel like now we're coming into winter in Australia and I'm starting to put on jeans again and maybe they're a little bit tighter than that. And these little things, why am I being triggered by a pair of pants that maybe don't fit as well as they used to fit? All of these things can then make you feel fat even though you didn't feel fat before.

0:05:58
 Yeah. And you know, it's that beautiful saying is your clothes are meant to fit you, your body's not meant to have to change to fit into your clothes. That's a key thing but also hard and expensive when you feel like you have to have all these different clothes. Full disclaimer, I have about four different size clothes that I keep in my wardrobe at any given time. I actually do just like put them into boxes above my wardrobe because I think it's a really important thing that when you get dressed in the morning, you do have clothes that fit you. We have this idea that our bodies are meant to stay the same throughout our entire lives but you're going to go through seasons where you gain a bit of weight, seasons where you weigh a little bit less, more active seasons, also like just depending on what time of the month it is and how bloated you're feeling and how you're feeling in your body, it all matters. So I think one of the key things when you're feeling fat is to clear out your wardrobe. This is a biggie. Don't let clothes dictate how you feel about yourself when you wake up in the morning. I feel like a big diet culture rule that's stuck in my head is about, like, don't keep clothes that are too big for you because then that is like a motivation that you might fit into them one day. Like, don't keep fat clothes. Like, that is a thing that people have drilled into me throughout my life. Totally. And one of my mum's friends, she swore that she would never buy pants with a drawstring or stretchy pants, that she only wore form-fitting pants. And honestly, that's a very disordered eating kind of principle that she had ruling her brain. I say, that's bullshit. I mean, let's ditch that. Sometimes you really need those stretchy pants. Sometimes you need those big balloony pants. I still wear my maternity sweatpants because they're so comfortable. And like when it's been a big day of eating and I just wanna like, my tummy's bloated and I can just chill and feel good and relaxed. I actually think having too tight clothes is gonna make you feel so much worse about your body. It's gonna trigger you into more of a diet mindset, which is gonna make you more likely to restrict, which makes you more likely to binge eat and fall off the bandwagon. So it might not seem like a big deal what we're talking about, okay, just like have clothes that fit you. But actually, the on-flow effect can be so huge because we know when we have these bad body image days, it can make such a big difference to our eating, our sense of self, and it can make us lose control around food.

0:08:13
 A hundred percent. And sometimes I even feel it stops me. Like if I'm having a bad body image day, I kind of don't even want to exercise because that means I've got to put on maybe gym pants that are a bit tight and show your body and you've got to like go outside. They're things that make me feel good and they're things you don't want to do. Going into a gym, sometimes I have the mindset of I'll go to the gym or to a personal trainer or to that new like scary gym once I lose weight and get fit and then I can participate in all those things and it just stops you from living life.

0:08:42
 It doesn't adjust and I'm kind of curious about this. Where does this idea come from that we'd be walking on the street or at the gym and someone will see us in our clothes and think, oh my goodness, look at that person. Can you believe they're exercising? The audacity of them to do that. I mean, where did we get that idea from? If you were a kid and maybe you got bullied about your weight, I think that's something that you could definitely still hold on to. If you had parents or family or friends who made slight comments about your body or even about what you're eating, I really think that that can also be one of those things that you hold on to. You have this understanding that people are judging bodies. For me, I grew up in a household where I guess my family were pretty judgmental of other people's bodies and we might get into a car after an event and they're like, oh my goodness, can you tell that person's put on weight or looking different or whatever it is and I think I really absorbed that. Or we'd be watching the news anchor on TV and there's criticism about how much makeup she's wearing, not enough, her hair, like things just like things were never quite good enough. And I think when you're growing up with that kind of judgmental energy around you, you come to believe that everyone around you is going to be judging things like your appearance all the time.

0:09:58
 Yeah, I feel like I have memories. I remember probably like kids in primary school and those type of things, like making comments about like my legs, because like my legs are probably a bigger part of my body than maybe like other kids in the school's legs. And then that kind of sticks with you. I even remember, I remember the first time I remember things, like my kindergarten school photo, because I could clearly… And I think my mum even remember I said like, why am I bigger than like the two girls on either side of me? Like why are my calves bigger than theirs? And I was five saying, like, why am I bigger? And then if other people later on have mentioned my legs, then it's like, well, no wonder I have this big thing that walks around with me in my head basically 29 hours a day.

0:10:42
 Yeah. I mean, this is very relatable for me. I had a similar experience when I was five in ballet class and my leotard staring in the mirror, noticing the other girl's legs because I've never been the smallest built girl and I never will be. I'm really strong and I'm just, you know, my mom would always say I'm bigger boned, which I don't know if I believe, big bones or whatever that is. I'm just never going to be like a slight frame. But it's amazing how very early on you have these moments in your life that start to impact your body image and you have these situations that you can probably remember that really stick in your brain. I think it's really just important for us to acknowledge the triggers when it comes to feeling fat. So things like not fitting into your clothes, getting comments about how you look. I think, especially if a friend loses weight, this can be another trigger. You have colleagues who are talking about dieting. All these things can compile and actually make you more obsessed with trying to lose weight, which can make being healthy a whole lot harder.

0:11:43
 A whole lot harder. So I feel like I definitely have days feeling fat. I'm sure you have days feeling fat as well. What can we do when we have a day and we're like, I feel fat?

0:11:53
 Yeah. Okay. So I think a really important one is to stop trying to lose weight. I think that's our gut reaction, isn't it? When we feel fat, we're like, all right, I got to go on a diet. Tomorrow, I'm going to be good. And all that ends up happening when we do this is we're going to drive ourselves into restricting, to under-eating, to over-exercising. And this often results in increased cravings for the very foods we're telling us we're not allowed to eat. And if you've ever done a diet, which I'm sure you have done several, way too many to be honest, you know that this just ends up with you overeating, you're feeling out of control, binge eating, and then having to start again from scratch. So instead of trying to lose weight, which is the knee jerk reaction, what if you're like, okay, I feel uncomfortable in my body, acknowledge that, and then what we want to start doing is just building in those healthy habits, and you might be doing a whole bunch of healthy habits already. I think what many people do is they try to swim across the river instead of building a bridge. They try and just fight the current as opposed to taking the time to build in a healthier body image, the time to build in those foundations of eating healthily so you don't feel like you're falling off track all the time. What most people do though is when they feel they're unhealthy, they're like, okay, I have to go into a diet. They jump into this extreme mode and the pendulum swings all the way back into this deeply unhealthy state So what if we just made like tiny little micro Changes little habits that actually stuck around and then I feel like we're gonna get somewhere. It's not gonna happen quickly That's the hard part. That is the hard part right the patients of going I feel really icky in my body right now, and it's not gonna happen overnight

0:13:33
 I feel like a lot of natural like human instinct is that instant gratification in like, I do this and I get this. If you go on a diet and you lose a few kilos within a few weeks, then you're like, oh,

0:13:46
 this is good.

0:13:47
 Whereas if you lose, you're not even tracking what you're losing and you're just waiting to see what your body does over a long period of time, that's a lot harder to stick to.

0:13:55
 Yeah, it is. I really don't talk about this that often because I feel like I don't want to be seen through promoting weight loss. I'm not anti-weight loss. I'm just not telling you you should lose weight because that's not helpful. But when I stopped dieting, over the course of four years, I lost 20 kilograms. I'd spent my entire life trying to lose weight unsuccessfully, and all that happened is I gained weight, I gained weight until I was clinically morbidly obese, according to the BMI, which is bullshit. We don't like the BMI, but anyway. And when I stopped trying to lose weight, I just focused on doing things that made my body feel good. I didn't weigh myself. That was a really key thing. And funnily enough, over the course of four years, I lost 20 kilograms, which equates to 100 grams of weight loss each week. Now had I been measuring my weight, I would have hopped on the scale and thought, I'm not getting anywhere. I'm not getting anywhere fast enough. This isn't working. Some weeks I would have gained weight. Some weeks I would have stayed exactly the same. So when you go on a diet and you're trying to lose weight, you're putting so much energy into trying to lose weight so that when you don't get the outcome you're looking for on the scale, you are completely disheartened, you throw in the towel and you completely give up. But because I wasn't measuring my success based on my weight loss, I naturally just got to a point where I was 20 kilograms lighter and it just turned out to be a happy coincidence?

0:15:14
 That is a tricky one, especially I know like being to like WW and all these things where you literally have to go and get weighed every week and they write it on a card. It's like if you lost 100 grams, you'd be like, I did all that effort for nothing.

0:15:26
 I totally would have given up. So this is why it's really important that you stop focusing on weight loss. And how about this? If you think about it, if you've been focusing on your weight your entire life and it's gotten you to a place where you wake up and you're feeling gross in your body and you're feeling fat, how about we try to do the opposite? How about we let go of trying to lose weight and just become curious about what happens? Another really important thing is you don't have to love your body. In fact, when you live in this society that's constantly telling you that you're not thin enough, loving your body would be a very remarkable act. So it's actually not essential. In fact, there are days where I don't love my body. Simply aiming for accepting your body or even not hating on your body is a really good goal. So one of the things we can do is we can be mindful of when you're going, oh, you're so fat and you're so ugly and just stop being so pathetic or can you just get some better willpower or you know that little mean girl in your head saying all these nasty things to you about your body. It's almost like we've got our brain as a computer and the words that we say to ourselves are like a computer program. So we need to change the program so that that computer can run a little bit better. So first step, just get clued in about what your inner voice is telling yourself.

0:16:41
 And then when you hear what it's saying, do you kind of like say new things and just say them in your head like a mantra?

0:16:48
 You can. I've tried that before. One thing I found really useful is simply imagining that your brain's like a radio, and when you hear that channel come on, you go, hmm, no, we're not gonna play that channel. And so you just change your thinking to something else. So you just almost like you shut it off. You're like, no, not today, not thinking about that, and then think of something else to think about. And when that thought comes back in, you go, no, we're changing the channel. You decide to change the channel like your brain is a radio station. And I suppose the more you do it, the easier it gets. Absolutely. You can try mantras like, it's not my job to look perfect from every angle. That is very helpful. In fact, you're probably going to need a whole bunch of these strategies to help you boycott the pressure to feel like you need to lose weight all the time.

0:17:30
 Yes, okay. Mantras. I find since knowing you and saying to myself, you don't need to look good from every angle, is actually helpful.

0:17:39
 It sounds a bit wanky when you first hear it though, I'm going to admit. I hate the word mantra. I think it sounds like a woo-woo.

0:17:44
 But it works because it's just something that it's like you just, you see something you don't like and then you can instantly default to that. Then over time and time and time, maybe you just connect that with that. Oh, you don't like the look in that photo, but you actually don't need to look good in every photo, so.

0:17:59
 Yeah. And that's the key thing. You're going to take photos that you look awesome in and look at those photos.

0:18:05
 Put them on your desktop.

0:18:06
 I don't know. One of the strategies I do really like is a compliments diary. You know, it's like when we hear bad things being said about ourselves, they stick in our brain, they replay in our brain. So a compliments diary is just helping you remember all those awesome things that people think about you because sometimes we forget the awesome things that we do. You can just record them down, keep them in the notes section of your phone. So on those days when you're quite doubtful, you can kind of always come back to your compliments diary.

0:18:36
 But I feel like on that, a lot of the time compliments people have given me over my life are, oh, you look like you've lost weight. And then when I don't hear that compliment for a while, I either think I've put on weight, so that's why no one's saying that I've lost weight, because I've

0:18:52
 clearly put on, because everyone comments when I am losing weight. I've been watching too much TikTok, let's be honest, and I've somehow ended up in this vortex where you have these fitness professionals who are like fitness models, and they're revealing the truth about what it actually takes to look like them. And they talk about how diminished their health is, how they can't walk up the stairs without feeling out of breath, how they feel faint, how someone passed out in the shower because they had under eaten, how dehydrated they make themselves. And then they simultaneously talk about how the less healthy they became, the more compliments flowed in and the more people just praised them and told them how like admirable and impressive they were. And we have this very warped idea that the more compliments we receive about our body the more impressive our body is and that's just not the case We have this idea that you're meant to look like a completely unattainable Photoshopped human who doesn't even exist the women on front covers of magazines They need to starve themselves often and over exercise to look that way and then there's still Photoshop and makeup and lighting and all that Jazz, yeah

0:19:59
 Okay, so

0:20:00
 We don't need to love our body. We just got to accept it or move on from it. Something else that I think is quite a useful thing is health is meant to be enjoyable and somehow we got this idea that it's meant to be feel like punishment. One of my favorite tips is, one of the things I'm loving doing right now that's pretty essential for my mental health is going for a mental health morning walk. It's kind of like a non-negotiable. It's really, really essential for me. And because it's just a walk, it's something I previously in my dieting brain would have been like, well, that's not going to make a difference. Why bother doing it? But I don't walk to lose weight. I don't walk even for my physical health. I'm purely walking for my mental health because it feels good, because it's enjoyable, because I like who I am when I go for a walk. So maybe it's walking for you, or maybe it's something else, but we need to find a way to move your body that is really good for your mental health and makes you feel good, that has got nothing to do with losing weight. So question, think about all the ways that you exercise right now. If you didn't lose weight from doing those things, would you still be doing them? Because we really want to be able to say, yeah, I would absolutely still be doing that exercise. Maybe you're killing yourself by doing these high-intensity interval exercises that you absolutely hate, but you're really desperate to lose weight. I'd say stop doing those. There's so many ways that we can move our body that feel enjoyable that have got nothing to do with weight loss.

0:21:29
 Yeah. I feel like, it's not only I'm kind of doing that in a little way and I kind of didn't notice that I was doing it. Sometimes, me and my best friend who live in the same apartment block, if it's like kind of raining or not really feeling like doing much, we'll still drive down to the beach and walk, like, park, and walk like 400 meters to get a coffee, sit, drink it, and then walk back. Whereas previously, I'd be like, well, we didn't go for a walk. But it's still something, getting out there, fresh air, moving our body, getting dressed, doing all those things that I generally wouldn't have normally considered that exercise but it's still like movement and mental stimulation to start the day.

0:22:08
 Yeah, I love what you're talking about. It sounds like, okay, there's this idea that you have to be perfect in order to be healthy and perfectionism is so evil because it makes us feel like if we don't do it perfectly then it's not worth doing at all and as a result is we ignore all these tiny little things that we do do that are really good for our health, for our mental health, and we think that it's just not worth doing. It can lead us to think things like, well, I may as well just finish eating the whole packet because I've started eating a few. It can push us to go to extremes where we're like, okay, well, I exercise five days a week this week, and then a few weeks later, you're not exercising at all. But finding those small imperfect actions where you realize that little things really do make you healthy enough, I think that's kind of a really big goal to have. It sounds like you're getting there.

0:22:59
 Yeah. I feel like that's actually a win that I didn't realize was a win until right now. Not wankery, can stay.

0:23:07
 Thank goodness. So instead of just calling out all the wellness wankery that we see, I think one of the things we want to do with this podcast is also like call out the legends who are doing really good work, whether it's a company or an individual who are doing awesome things.

0:23:23
 So to finish off today's episode, I want to praise Flexmummy. Now I love her. Follow her on Instagram. I'm pretty sure you would follow her too. She's amazing. She's a Ghanian Australian. Her name is Lil. Flexmummy. She's a DJ, author, presenter, and just someone, if you're not already following her on Instagram, you need to follow her on Instagram. And basically, I love her because she literally says her aim is to ensure that everybody has the necessary tools and agency required to glow up and be their best self, whatever that looks for them, whatever things they need to do to feel their best, look their best, be their best, live their best life. I love her so much. She's created a card game for everyone who is kind of sick of the little small talk conversations that maybe are happening right now. It's called Reflex. It's curated convo starters, which I really love, and it's something we probably all really need in the world right now. She has this whole online shop with all these cool things. It's like Smummy again, if you've forgotten what I was saying. And she did this another thing which I love. She did a collaboration with Nasty Gal, and they actually saw an uplift in the curve category of Australian clothing after her collaboration from like 5% to 18%.

0:24:34
 Insane. How cool. How cool. What's her handle again?

0:24:38
 At Sleksmummy. We love her and she's not a wellness wanker.

0:24:42
 Thank goodness. Well done.

0:24:44
 Thank you.

0:24:45
 Guys, thank you so much for tuning in to today's podcast episode. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot me a DM on Instagram, write a comment, tell us what you think, what you'd like to hear more of, and of course you can always ask us a question. So send me a DM with a voice note, ask me a question, something you're struggling with at the moment, and we'll see if we can jump in and help you out. Thanks so much guys. Bye! Do you feel like you know what you should be eating but like you feel completely out of control with food? You're either eating perfectly or you're face planting into the fridge. Well, if you've got binge eating or you're struggling with emotional eating, I can help. Check out my program, Keep It Real. I've got lots I can teach you and hey, you don't have to be a binge eater for the rest of your life. You can get 20% off Keep It Real when you use the code podcast when you check out via the website. And because I don't want this to be just another failed attempt for you, I'm offering a 30-day money-back guarantee because you know what? because you know what? You've just got to give these things a go, no risk, give it a try, check out KeeperReal.