The Shameful Shamers…

25th July 2021

Days to go: 49

Funds Raised: £505 (101% of £500 target!)

Miles Run this Week: 16.13 miles (2hrs 57mins)

Total Miles: 193.93 miles (1 day 14hrs 8mins)

I ran 9 miles today! The furthest I’ve ever run and I’m totally fine! Who knew? LOL. The fundraising efforts have somewhat tailed off, so if you have a few quid to chuck at it, I’d be eternally grateful as my training efforts increase, I’ll need a little pick me up!

I’ve wanted to cover a very touchy subject for sometime now. I’d say it’s touchy because lots of people are affected by it daily. This is the issue of weight and body shaming.

I’m a great advocate for people not discussing something they don’t know about, I admit I have been lucky never to have gone over that magical, mystical, basically bullshit body mass index scale. I can never profess to have had ongoing battles or wars with my weight, but I have never known a female to be able to say they have never suffered a single issue in their lives. To me, that’s the problem, this is not an epidemic, this is a pandemic, one which is likely never ever going to go away. There is likely no cure, there can only be education.

Size 12

This was the size I remained out for a very long time. It seems as though I can barely remember anything before being this size after puberty hit. I was raised in a sound socio-economic area and went to a good school. There was lots of stick thin girls and many larger girls, but there was never any judgements, name-calling, or derogatory comments about weight as far as I can remember. I mean, there probably was but they were never directed at me and I never heard anything which made me think someones weight should direct me to cast aspersions about a person. I never did. It never occurred to me that I should.

As a child I had a very healthy appetite to the point my grandparents would complain that every time my elbow bent my mouth opened. LOL! And also that I would eat them out of house and home. This was all said with a sense of pride rather than ridicule. In short this meant I never suffered body image problems as a child and certainly never restricted my diet.

I continued to be happy with my body and how I looked, in fact it never crossed my mind not to. I joined the Royal Air Force aged 17 and again there was lots of different shapes and sizes around me. The first time it occurred to me that people had any sort of body image issues I must’ve been around 18 or 19 and living in the block at RAF Benson. A group of my friends had joined a slimming club, I can’t remember which one it was, but I remember ridiculing them and telling them how ridiculous they were. Practically all of them were skinnier than I was and I just did not get it.

RAF passing out parade age 17

Moving on, I recall with clarity sitting on the edge of my bed aged around 23 and crying because absolutely nothing fit me. I think at that time I was around size 14, but refused to accept this and tried hopelessly to cram myself into size 12 clothes that were in my wardrobe. Inevitably, I joined the gym, got back to size 12 and promptly jacked the fitness in. Still no restrictive eating patterns though.

Then, I decided I was sick of dating men in the military and I joined a dating site. I met someone for a date, he was okay though somewhat as dull as dishwater. He told me afterwards that I was larger than most girls he would be attracted to. I was absolutely mortified and cried my eyes out, I promptly left the dating and vowed never to return. I never did.

Just before settling down

Shortly after this I met my ex-husband. We got married and I quickly fell pregnant with my son. During pregnancy I ate and ate and, you guessed it…I ate some more. I’d catch people talking about me and how I’d never lose that baby weight. In all honesty my insatiable hunger left me unable to care about what would happen after. What did happen came as much as a shock to me as everyone else.

Very pregnant

Size 6

Yes, you read it right…size 6. I gave birth to Charlie in October 2008, 8 days before turning 27. I soon discovered exactly why I’d been so hungry, that child was an absolute feeding machine, he was so hungry I had to wean him onto solid food over a month earlier then was recommended.

I on the other hand completely lost my appetite and weight fell off me quickly. When I got back down to size 12 it continued to fall off. I was accused by family members of starving myself to lose a baby weight, but even when my appetite did return the weight continued to drop off. At Charlie‘s first birthday party pictures were taken of me that made me cringe, I was so skinny I looked like a skeleton.

Shortly after Charlie’s first birthday, I discovered I was pregnant again. When I found out I was pregnant, it was likely a size 6 because size 8 was incredibly loose though I refused to believe this and continued to wear the size 8. I gave birth to Lily in summer 2010 and was in size 10 within days after giving birth. I think it’s really important at this point to tell you, all of this was without trying and it’s clear to me that pregnancy completely changed my metabolism. I quickly dropped back to the size 6.

Did being skinny make me happy? Abundantly and absolutely a hard no. Childbirth ravished my body much like anyone else. For the first time in my entire life I became extremely paranoid. What once were pert little boobs where saggy folds of empty skin. Every time I looked in the mirror I would cry. I’ve always been a believer that if you can’t live with something, quit your whining and do something about it. I did. I had a breast augmentation in January 2011. It was the best thing I ever did for myself, though it came with many hardships.

Pre op

Post op

My confidence skyrocketed and I felt a million times more comfortable in my own skin, but other people failed to view me that way. I lived on an RAF base with my then husband after my discharge from the RAF in early 2010 and thus remained in contact with all the people I had worked with whilst serving.

The above picture was from a function I attended, where an ex colleague pulled me to one side outside the ladies toilets and told me she didn’t care for what people were saying about me and that she thought I looked fantastic. I had worked where the function took place and brushed aside the filthy looks and scowls from people I had once called my friends until the words of the drunken ex associate made the mist clear. They had all been slagging me off. “She’s so full of herself.” “Look at her, she thinks she looks so great, but she looks like a slag.” “She’s such an attention seeker.”

I was utterly destroyed.

It didn’t end there either, this brand new hatred of me, this distaste had not been caused by me…but by being thin and having big boobs. It spilled over into everything I did, when I published my first novel they all took me apart. I mean just who did I think I was?

I became extremely sensitive and when another author posted a ‘this or that’ picture online depicting a skinny supermodel next to a picture of the gorgeous Marilyn Monroe I completely snapped and told her she should take it down. I explained that every body is beautiful in its own right and bashing a skinny woman is no better than bashing a larger woman. She didn’t get it and deleted me as a friend.

Once I calmed down and explained to her via message what had happened to me, and asked her how it was any different to people bashing her and making assumptions based on her size she felt very silly and friend requested me again. This was after telling me I’d never suffered the comments she had because of my size and then having to apologise when the realisation hit her that body shaming and making assumptions about a person works both ways. If you’re skinny you’re branded as vain, superficial, conceited, full of yourself, over confident and even mean. If you’re considered over weight, you’re in danger of being accused of having an unhealthy diet, overeating, being lazy and undisciplined. You literally cannot win. I declined to accept the friend request and to this day if I see any body shaming posts in any direction, I delete that person. I’m not here to educate people who don’t want to be educated. Even within the last few months I saw an author post a picture of a very muscular woman with the sole intention of ridiculing her, I did comment on it and was pleased to see I wasn’t the only one horrified by this persons actions. She blocked me, even though I was rather tame in pointing out her failings. It’s great when the trash takes itself out.

Size 8 -12

Eventually I escaped the toxic environment of military camp life. Over the following years I gained weight and decided I wanted to lose a few pounds, so I decided to join Slimming World. What a mistaker to maker. I mean, what a load of horse shit. This was described beautifully in a friend of mines book, Dealing With Pricks which I highly recommend to anyone thinking about exposing themselves to the harmful dieting industry. I mean, as pointed out by Sarah Joan, the author, if you eat a banana it’s ‘free’ mash that exact same banana and it’s a ‘syn.’ Think about this folks…WTAF!?

After putting myself through a few weeks of indoctrination, I looked around at the tear stained faces because they’d devoured a Mars bar, quite by accident, and found I’d made a mistake too…my mistake was being there. This money grabbing, ludicrous concentration camp tells you exercise isn’t really worth your time and accounts for limited weight loss. It skips over the thousands of reasons people should ditch the diet and concentrate on moving instead. The main reason being the mental health benefits of ridding yourself from restrictions and generally feeling a billion times better, what’s more, when you introduce exercise to your life intuitive eating comes to the forefront of your mind and you automatically make better choices. I’m lucky, I left and didn’t become a victim of the bullshit peddling. I took up swimming and walking instead, again ditching it when I felt a bit better.

When I got type 1 diabetes and weight dropped off me at a rate of knots, I panicked that I’d have to go through all the hell I went through before. Proof to myself of how badly effected I was at the hands of those very cruel people.

Size 8-10

So, where am I today? How have I changed? What I promise you unequivocally is that I never look at someone and judge them by their weight. My best friend is tall and slender, she’s beautiful in every way. She will be the first to admit how unfit she is.

On the other hand, Sarah…undoubtedly someone I also class as a ‘best friend’ is carrying weight but is fit as a fiddle, healthy and happy. She is also beautiful in every way.

There’s a difference between them though…one will visit their GP for an ailment and have their weight brought up as a reason for them being there…the other will not. This is a sad fact.

You see, I have a deeply ingrained theory that we are all the way we are meant to be so long as we are striving to take care of ourselves the best way we know how. We are all different shapes and sizes. I do not run, walk, row, do a HIT session to shift weight…I do it because it makes me feel on top of the world, which is a good job because I haven’t lost any weight since I started exercising. My body has changed, it feels stronger and far more capable of taking whatever is thrown at it. My insulin absorption is amazing and my blood sugar is under much better control. I’m unrestricted. I’m free. You can be, too…