13. I miss skinny me

Just because I'm an intuitive eater and an Intuitive Eating counsellor, it doesn't mean I can't miss the old me. I do miss skinny me, but somehow I'm so much happier now. Here I talk about how it feels, what I miss about being smaller, but what I have and haven't got in my life now that I have made peace with food and my body.

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Related Topics:

Intuitive Eating, HAES, Health At Every Size, Body Positivity, Body Confidence, Body Positive, Anti Diet, Non Diet, Diet Culture, Food Freedom, Fat Acceptance, Fat Liberation, Self Care, Weight Loss, Eating Disorder, Eating Disorder Recovery, Disordered Eating, Nutritional Therapy, Slimming World, Weight Watchers, Cambridge Diet, Cambridge Plan, 121 Diet, Lighter Life, Noom, Coaching, Healing, Health, Wellness

Transcript

Welcome to the Intuitive Eating And Body Positivity Podcast, I'm Terri, and I'll be talking about all things Intuitive Eating, body positivity and Health At Every Size, and shaking of weight stigma, diet culture and food rules so that we can all have a better relationship with food and our bodies.

This week's podcast comes to you with the mother of all hangovers. Why do we do it? Well, why do I do it rather? Oh, it's been a long week. It's been a really long week. So last night I had a little drink and then I had another little drink and then I had another little drink and, uh, several little drinks later here I am not feeling great. Oh, that's okay, though. It's been a long week workwise.

But actually, let me tell you what was awesome this week. The very first Intuitively You group coaching session. That was this week. Oh, it was so good. It was so good. I really enjoyed it. I think that the girls on the call really enjoyed it also. I hope they did. It was so good. We talked about diet culture and where it is all around us, how it sneaks in to your day to day life. And we talked about social media and the impact that that has on how you feel about your body and about eating and things like that.

And funnily enough, we also said how different two people's experience of social media can be. There were two ladies who were talking about the same industry that they follow on social media. One has a very positive experience. One has a not so positive experience just because of the things that they follow, the things that they're seeing on a daily basis. So it's interesting, isn't it?

We talked about that. We talked about Intuitive Eating and principles of Intuitive Eating and, yeah, we're we're getting stuck in. We talked about a lot of stuff, but it was good. It was so, so good, and I'm really looking forward to this one this week. Just before I get onto the actual subject that I want to mention that it is hotter than hell in my room at the moment so I have got the window open. So if you hear traffic noise and things, I do apologise.

It's, uh, it's just the way it is. I live on a busy road. I think I said that before. So there's quite a lot of traffic, but I cannot shut the window. And the alternative is I shut the window and I put the fan on, which is going to be even more annoying for you to hear. So, yeah, if you hear traffic noise, just ignore it.

Right. This week I want to talk about how you feel when your body changes.

So I for example, I'm going to use myself as the example in this because I can only talk about myself and my feelings towards my own body. You may have the same feelings. You may have different feelings. So I can only talk about it from my own perspective. But I have through my Intuitive Eating journey put on some weight. I am bigger than I used to be. I am quite a different shape and size now to what I was when I was deep in diets, and even at my thinnest thought that I still wasn't thin enough.

Through my Intuitive Eating journey I've kind of got rid of this desire to diet and to be skinny. I have got rid of that, but that doesn't stop me missing skinny me. It doesn't stop me wanting to be that size, because life in a bigger body is more difficult than life in a smaller body.

Let's think, things like when you're smaller you can sit comfortably on an aeroplane, for example. In a bigger body it's a bit of a tighter space. You might need a belt extender, that sort of thing. Clothes shopping. I've mentioned clothes shopping before. Clothes shopping in a bigger body is very, very different. In a smaller body you can pretty much walk into any shop you like and there will be something to fit you. In a bigger body, not the case. And so it's natural to want to be smaller, given the choice, but we don't have that choice, not without dieting, so I am learning to accept myself and love my body the way that it is now.

When I started Intuitive Eating I didn't understand this. I think I was not ready to start Intuitive Eating because I just didn't get it. I'd read the book, I had joined some Facebook groups, and I tried really hard to get into it and to understand what everybody was talking about when they were saying about ignoring the weight gain and making peace with that, because I couldn't. I tried to talk to people online about this and I said it affects me in lots of different ways.

The clothes that I wear. I don't like the way they look. How my body feels in the heat. Oh, this time of year, being hot and sweaty in a bigger body, very different to being hot and sweaty in a smaller body. Sleeping. That's different. The way you sleep. I'm a pool player. The way that I play pool has to change according to my body size, the way I stand, the way I line up for a shot.

All that has changed since I've gained this weight. So there are lots of practicalities that I just couldn't get my head around and I was trying to ask people how how do I come to terms with this? How do I figure this out? And the responses I was getting were just put trust in your body, just accept it, not just accept it. They weren't saying that, they were giving me the right words, they were giving me the right approaches, I just was not ready to let it go.

I wasn't in the right space to start Intuitive Eating properly and so I went back to dieting, as you do. You get drawn back into it because I thought that was the only way that I could approach this. That was the only thing I could do. I didn't like my body bigger. I didn't like gaining weight, and so I was going to diet and I was going to get rid of it.

Intuitive Eating was not for me, but I just hadn't done the work, and after these diets went on for a bit longer, I came to Intuitive Eating again. I was like, now I really resonate with this. I do want to be an intuitive eater. I don't want to diet anymore. And as I reread the book, I started following these groups again. I started following posts on social media accounts on social media that were promoting it.

I saw it all come together, and the principles of Intuitive Eating all started to make more sense and as I learnt how damaging Diet culture is and how I let it go, the principles all came together and started to make sense. I cleaned up my Socials, I saw through all that nonsense that I was seeing about why I should diet and why I should be in a bigger body now.

That doesn't mean I don't want to be smaller, because as I said, given the choice, I would be smaller, but actually, I am so much happier now. I am eating much better because I've let go of all of those rules and restrictions that diets put on you. I am not a binge eater anymore because I don't have those restrictions that are creating those binges. I have food freedom because Intuitive Eating teaches us that actually you can have whatever you want and you can have as much of it as you want. So now, because I know I can just have it. I don't feel the need to binge on it, and then I don't feel the need to restrict because I've eaten too much of it if that makes sense.

It's OK to still want to be skinny. This is my message today. It's OK to still want to be smaller, but you need compassion for the person you are trying to be in accepting the person you aren't anymore. It's about being kind to yourself while you are trying to let old you go and accept and maybe even love the person that you are going to be going forward as an Intuitive Eating.

It's a hell of a journey. That's the thing. You look at it all and you look at the principles of Intuitive Eating and you think, oh, how hard can it be? How difficult can it be to let go of dieting and start listening to your body and how hungry and how full you are, and enjoy a bit of exercise and maybe eat in a nutritious way? How difficult can that be?

But when you come to do the work, there's so much history in your life that affects all of the choices that you make around food, how you feel about your body, and it's hard work. So you need some kindness and some compassion towards yourself while you do that work, because it's not easy, but it's so worth it. So worth it.

I now have an appreciation for my body. I like my body way better now than I did when I was dieting. I was never satisfied when I was dieting. I was never happy with how my body was, because when you lose weight and you hit a target you have in mind, you get to that target and then "I'll just have a bit more. I'll just lose a bit more. I'll just take another X pounds off". You're always striving for more. At least now in my body as it is, I'm not striving for anything other than to be happy and have a healthy relationship with food.

That's what I've got now and it's so refreshing. It makes life so much more pleasurable because I'm not constantly trying to change my body. I'm not constantly trying to make it different, trying to make it smaller, trying to make it leaner, trying to make it more muscly, trying to make it anything other than what it is now. OK, I'm not over the moon about my size, but my God am I over the moon about the fact that I recovered from an eating disorder.

I'm happier overall. My life, my relationship with my husband, I would say, is better. My relationship with my family is better. My approach to life as a whole is better because I stopped giving a damn about what I look like, and about my weight. I am who I am.

What's quite interesting is that we've got a couple of new starters at work and we forget how much we know about the people that we spend all our time with, don't we?

We forget about how much we know about our colleagues and our family. These new people have come into our office and they're learning about us as individuals, about us as a group. All these things keep coming up in conversation about ourselves and what we do, and how we spend our time, and our skills and our experiences in life. Things are coming out bit by bit, and I was having a conversation with one of the girls just Friday, funnily enough, and she said to me, "wow, all this stuff that you do, this is amazing".

Over the last month and a half or however long it's been, she has (or they have) found out that I am a pole dancer. I am a pool player. I hold a personal licence and have run pubs. I am a qualified wedding planner, and that was what my business was for five years until I sold it and went back to doing the day job. There are so many more interesting things to know about me and my weight and my size have no bearing on any of those things.

Who cares? Who cares what your colleagues weigh or what they look like size wise? I don't ever look at my colleagues or my friends or my family and think about what their body is like. I think about them as people and their skills, their qualities, why they're in my life, because I believe that everybody that's in my life has something that they bring to my life. I hope I do the same back to my friends and my family. There are so many more important things to know and appreciate about a person that is not body related.

So if you are on this journey now, if this is something you are working towards, a really great exercise for you to do is to make this list of all the qualities that you have, and all the things that people would find interesting about you that's not body related. Go ahead. Make that list. It might be in your head. It might be on paper. On paper is good because then you can keep it and you can look at it.

You can pin it up on the mirror so that you look at it each day. And so when you're doing that difficult thing of looking in the mirror and trying to love yourself, you can look at that list and you can say, "I am more than my shape and size". You can appreciate all the good things about you, not just your body.

I am going to put a comments box up on my story on Instagram and Facebook, and I want you to tell me something awesome about yourself. Obviously, if you're listening to this in the future, you may have missed that comments box. So you just feel free to send me a little message and say, "hey, Terri, here's something interesting about me you might not know yet". Send it to me and tell me how awesome you are. I can't wait to see what you say.

That's it. That's all I can muster up today. I hope that helped. I hope that helps put some context to how you're feeling about when your body changes.

It's perfectly normal. It's a perfectly normal part of the process to go through. So you just kind of have to embrace it and work with it and be kind to yourself at the same time.

I will love you and leave you. I will speak to you next week. Oh, before I go, don't forget that you are very welcome to come and join the next group coaching session. I do them weekly and they are going to be amazing if this week's was anything to go by. You can find the details at terripugh.club.

Come and join. It's only £20 a month. That will give you the group coaching session once a week. It will give you downloadables and resources. A private online chat forum where you can get support and build up some friendships with people that are going through the same journey as you. It will get you discount on future products and courses that I launch. It will give you a referral scheme, so I'll give you cash back if you refer people in.

And what have I missed? What have I missed? I think that's it, but that's a hell of a lot of stuff for 20 quid a month. You pay more than that to go to a diet club, and you do not get the close support that these group coaching sessions are going to give you. So I really hope to see you there. I'd love to help you, and love to support you.

OK, I am going to love you and leave you now. I will speak to you again next week, minus a hangover, and probably with some better strings of English coming out of my mouth. Yeah, have a great week. Be kind to yourself because you are amazing.