128. Body confidence in the workplace, why it matters and how we can all help

Welcome to Episode 128 of our podcast, "Body confidence in the workplace, why it matters and how we can all help". Today, I'm  going to delve into a sensitive yet crucial topic that affects many professionals: body confidence and its impact on workplace dynamics and personal performance. 

Let me take you through various aspects of body shaming and bias in professional environments, from subtle comments about food choices to explicit biases in job selections and office interactions.

I'll share some personal anecdotes and broader insights on how negative body image manifests in the workplace. We're talking ineffective diet competitions, poor relationships with food, and diminished self-esteem, all of which can profoundly affect one's career and mental health. 

Furthermore, I'll discuss the importance of fostering a supportive work culture that embraces diversity in body types and provides a safe space for mental health discussions.

Join me as I explore strategies to combat body shaming, promote body positivity, and create inclusive workplace policies.

Whether you're an employee, manager, or HR professional, there's much to learn about the significant role body confidence plays in shaping our professional lives.

I talk about my chat with Jenna Dale on her podcast, Because She Can.
You can find that here.

Get 'Eat From Within - The 3 Steps To Food Freedom' course totally free!

Transcript

0:09

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 off weight stigma, diet culture and food rules so that we can all have a better relationship with food and our bodies. Hello, hello. Terri here. I don't know if you remember me. It's been a little while. Um, it's, it's been a moment, but it's also been a time around here. It really has. Let me explain. Let me explain where I've been. There's been some stuff going on. Um, So let's start with the sad stuff. I don't want to dampen your whole podcast episode. So let's just start with the sad news, then move on to the other stuff. Remember the tales of the cat diaries? Probably two years ago now it was, wasn't it? Remember Tilly, who was a little bit crazy, broke her foot, had it pinned. broke her foot again, had it repinned, did a Houdini escaping act with the cast, got the cast off her leg, if you remember rightly, and uh, then disappeared out the house, gone, with a broken leg and no cast on. Do you remember all that? If you were not around when that was going on and you haven't listened back to those episodes yet, then go and listen because, my goodness, was that ever a tale. That's why I called it The Cat Diaries because this went on for Months. Absolutely months. And I won't spoil the story for you now, but, you know, if you haven't listened to that, if you don't know the story, go and listen to it, because, goodness me, is it ever a story. But, lovely Tilly, sadly, has left us. I know, it's really sad, right? Um, Yeah, it was very, very, very quick and very sad. But long story short is she had this growth in her abdomen and it grew very, very rapidly and she wasn't well. And the kindest, kindest thing for her was to say goodbye. So that was last week. No, it wasn't. It was. Yeah, was it? Goodness me. No, it was two weeks ago. So that was two weeks ago. I wasn't really in the right frame of mind for recording a podcast episode, if I'm going to be completely honest with you, because it was a bit sad. It was a lot sad. And, um, you know, our pets are our family, right? So that took some, that took some getting through. And then, um, one of my One of my kids left home? Mm hmm. Yep. So my eldest has moved out. It's amazing. She's got her own place with her boyfriend. They're really happy. The house is lovely. It's great. It's really, really, really good. But that was an emotional rollercoaster. That's a mix of feelings, isn't it? I don't know. Have you been through that? Had one of your kids move out of Oh, it's It's a, it's a time of excitement and sadness all at the same time. And, uh, yeah, it was very, very emotionally draining. So again, all that going on and we were very busy and missed, just missed the week, just didn't record. And then what happened is after she moved out, we had some moving around in the house. And I now have an office. So some time has been taken to move everything into the office and set the office up but now the office is very bare because there's no actual real furnishings. There's no furnishings or anything really at the moment because my desk has always lived in different spaces of my house. So in the front room, in the bedroom, that sort of thing. So now I've got this dedicated office space and It's a big echoey box. So it's not really been suitable yet for recording podcast episodes. So that was another week where I had to wait and I've kind of patched it today to make it work because I can't go any longer without speaking to you. That's ridiculous. So I've done a bit of a botch job to try and get the sound right. So if this sounds all echoey today, I do apologize. I am going to try and fix it before it goes live. So who knows, who knows what that's going to end up sounding like, but you know, sure enough. Life lifed and, um, yeah, time passed and that's why I wasn't here. That's the thing, isn't it? Life does life and as much as we want to do the things that we want to do and we want to keep our routines in place and in order, sometimes we just can't do it. Sometimes things have to go by the wayside, sometimes we have to take a step back and look after our own mental health and well being, that sort of thing. And that's what I did. So, um, yeah, that's what I did. So that's where I've been. Loads going on, right? Does that make up for all the weeks that I've come to you and gone, nothing going on this week, guys? Hmm. Anyway, back, back in the room, back in the echoey room, but back in the room and, uh, ready to talk to you, which is brilliant. Right. Let's talk about the workplace, right? We haven't really talked about this on the podcast yet, have we? Let's talk about the workplace and body positivity, body shaming, weight stigma, all of this sort of thing and how it shows up in a work context or a professional environment. There are. A lot of ways in which this stuff shows up in a work environment. You might recognize some of it, you might not. You might recognize some of it when I talk about it. But there are lots of different ways that when we go to work, we're affected by how we feel about our body. So for example, let's just go with the out and out body shaming, the banter, the jokes. There are always jokes about what people look like, what people eat, what people drink, the exercise people do, whether they need to move more or not. There's always banter and jokes in the office about that sort of thing, isn't there? Some of it is very unintentionally hurtful. It is just observations that people make about themselves a lot of the time. So it'll be comments that Oh, I really must eat less. I must do this. I must do that. I must do the other. I must exercise more. I should not eat that cake. That sort of thing. That conversation happens all the time. The self deprecating stuff. Justifying why you're eating or not eating something, you know? Justifying the exercise that you do. Just yesterday, actually, in the office, we had a Domino's delivered for lunch, right? Shh, don't tell my family. They don't know. But we had Domino's. Domino's, for those who don't know, is a pizza place. And it is really good. But they do a lunch deal, which is a pizza wrap, so not a full on big pizza, but it's a wrap with your favourite pizza toppings, the sauce, the cheese, the lot, so And, and it's this toasted wrap. So good. And it comes with a side and a drink and it was very reasonably priced. So I think this might be a new thing for Domino's because I didn't know they did it. Not that I have Domino's very often, but still didn't know they did it. And this lunch turned up and it was amazing. I had this wrap. I had a Texas barbecue wrap. And I had garlic bread, you know, an individual garlic bread and a bottle of, what did I have? Dr Pepper. It was the most satisfying lunch. We'd all spent the morning craving after different foods. It was one of those days where everybody in the office wanted to eat, and we wanted cake, and we wanted chocolate, and we wanted stodgy foods, and we, we just wanted everything and anything that we didn't have, basically. So, somebody, some bright spark, says, let's order in. Let's get Domino's. Brilliant. It hit the spot. It was just, just what we wanted. Me, the intuitive eater that I am, I sat there afterwards going, that was brilliant. I was comfortably full, not overly full. It was the right amount of food for me. It was so tasty. It was really satisfying. I could have done with something sweet after it, but anyway, that's by the by. And I was like, that was good. That was good. Didn't really eat anything for the rest of the afternoon because I was full enough. And then, as we were leaving, one of the girls says, Right, I'm gonna go home and have my salad now. And she was joking, but what she wasn't joking about was the fact that she felt like she'd had such an indulgent lunch that she didn't really want to eat something too much in the evening. And it wasn't in a diet y type way, you know, this isn't somebody who is constantly on a diet or anything like that, but it was very much a, I've had an indulgent lunch, I'm gonna have something good for good, you know, in inverted commas, for tea tonight. And that is obviously her prerogative, you know, if that's how she likes to balance out her foods, if that's what makes her feel good about her, her eating habits, brilliant. There was no dieting, um, undertones in it. It was very much, I feel like I need to eat something. lighter, some salad, you know, something a little healthier than the lunch that I've had. And that's fine. Other people though might have taken that in a diety fashion, you know, lots of other people might have said, well, that's it. Now we've had pizza for lunch. Now we have to cut back. Now we have to not eat tonight or now we have to only have salad. That's a good example, isn't it? So some of these words, some of the things that we say show up and they show up as, um, genuinely harmless stuff, but sometimes they show up as body shaming and food shaming. They show up as banter. They show up as jokes. And in the worst of cases, they show up as conversation behind somebody's back. And by that I mean, maybe if that lady had walked out of the room and we'd gone, well she needs to eat a light, a light lunch. By that I mean, if we take for example the lady at If she'd walked out the room and we'd said something like, well, she clearly needs to have a healthy tea tonight. Doesn't she? After that, that sort of conversation. I mean, we never, we didn't. That's the kind of conversation I'm talking about. The stuff behind people's back that is not okay. You know, it's not, it's not nice. It's not pleasant. And it's none of our business. What other people are eating or doing, um, at any time. So that's the really obvious way that it shows up. Um, another. way that this might show up is things like office diet competitions. Ever worked in one of those offices? For example, there might be a let's see who can lose the most weight by x point in time, or let's see who can drop a dress size the quickest, that sort of thing. And those are seen as good competition, a good bit of fun, we'll bring scales to the office and once a week we'll all weigh and we'll log our weights and then at the end of it, whoever's won will win something and whoever's done the worst will not. I've worked places where, what did they do, um, and they do things like bring the scales into the office and have a competition, so. I've worked in offices where they've brought scales into the office, had this competition to see who could lose the most weight by a certain date. There was a spreadsheet kept, weighing scales were brought in, and they lived in the office, and there was a weekly weigh in. And you paid. You paid money. So, every week, if you gained weight or you didn't lose weight, you had to put money in the pot. That sort of thing. And it was supposed to be fun. It was not fun. Things like that are no fun for me. Absolutely not. And I don't want to take part in them. For me, they just encourage a really poor relationship with food. They encourage me to eat in a very poor manner. I have a very bad relationship with food and with exercise and things when these sort of things are going on. I become super restrictive. It is not good for me. I know that these things are not good and this is what they do. People would never have known that when I was doing things like that, there was all this negative behavior going on behind the scenes. You just do not know what you're encouraging when you're encouraging a, uh, a group diet competition like that. And also it, um, It's exclusive for staff, so you never know what kind of health issues somebody's got going on, what kind of lifestyle issues they've got at home, what money troubles they're facing. And to put this pressure on, or for somebody to not be able to join in because they can't medically, physically, whatever their reasons are, well all of a sudden you're creating, um, you're creating a barrier for people. And you're creating a space where not everybody can join in. And that's not what I want in the workplace. It really isn't. Uh, there are other things that go on in offices that show up body shaming, fat shaming, um, unfair bias towards certain people. Things like dress codes. If you've got a policy in your place. that leans towards dressing a certain way. That can be really difficult for somebody with body confidence issues. Or if you've got, um, what else? It also shows up as people being selected for certain jobs, certain roles, certain customer facing things, being part of advertising campaigns. Um, if staff are going to be on leaflets or things like that, then you best believe they're going to pick the people who look the best, aren't they? And there's lots of different ways like this that these things show up. in the workplace. It has such a negative impact on some people. You might understand some of this, I certainly do. There's lots of different ways that this negativity, this body shaming, will affect people. In the workplace. I talked about this on a podcast with a lady called Jenna Dale, and she's got the Because You Can podcast. And I talked to her on one of her episodes, all about body confidence and how it affects how you show up in business or the office, you know, in a professional environment. And I won't go into all the stuff. That was said there because we covered an awful lot. So if you want to, if you want to go listen to that, I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But me and Jenna had such a good conversation about how being a bigger person in the workplace or in business, actually, we talked a lot about being in business. It can, it can be testing. It can be really testing. Your confidence can really be, Put Under The Microscope, if you're in a bigger body, in a professional environment, there's loads of ways that it impacts on things. It impacts on your performance. Without a doubt it does. If you are feeling like you're not good enough, if you are feeling stressed, if you are upset, if you're worried about what other people are thinking about you, all that stuff is going to have an impact on how you perform in your role, without a doubt. It affects your relationships with other people. It creates, it creates this barrier and quite often, I talk to Jenna about this, but we create this self projecting. barrier. We are putting thoughts into people's minds. We don't know necessarily what people are thinking and it's almost like we put up this barrier, this shield that protects us from what other people might be thinking or saying before it's even happened. And when you do that, you put up a barrier, um, in a relationship between you and somebody else. And in a work relationship, that can look like you're a little bit cold, you're a little bit standoffish, you're a little bit unapproachable, maybe. You know, it's lots of ways that that barrier shows up, but it definitely. impacts on the relationship that you have with other people when you put this barrier up. And quite often it also means that you don't get to be social with other members of the team or you don't link in with other members of your team like you should. You don't liaise with other departments maybe in the workplace because Quite often when we've got body confidence issues, we want to sit tight, stay put, not move, shrink into our seats. And when you do that, it means that you don't get up and go and talk to people. You don't walk around. You don't go and see other departments. When you walk into a room, you do it shyly. You don't walk in full of confidence. Like I am here. I need to speak to you and I'm meaning business. You don't do that. You're more likely to sit. In one place or minimally walk around, you know, just go to the bathroom and talk to somebody in passing as you go by that sort of thing. It affects the confidence that you have in speaking up for yourself or speaking in general. Actually, if you are conscious of the way you look and what people think about you, do you think you're likely to stand up in a meeting, present to a room of people, not even stand up? Are you going to voice your opinions? Transcribed Your thoughts, your contributions. You might have some brilliant ideas to contribute, but if you're not confident in speaking up because you're worried about what people will think of you solely based on what you look like, may I add, But this is what it does to us, right? Then you're not going to be making those contributions. You're not going to be presenting. You're not going to be speaking in front of a group. You don't put yourself forward for things. You don't put yourself forward for opportunities, for promotions, um, for, for anything really. You just shrink back and you, you want a quiet life. So you hide away a little bit. And even if you put on that confidence, you know, this, this air of confidence rather than a real confidence, even if you do that, the energy, the mental capacity, the guts that it takes to put that front on, to be able to go and talk to somebody or to present something to somebody is massive and it's draining. Do not underestimate how much. Or how long, rather, someone will sit and drum up the ability to go and speak to somebody if they are suffering with self confidence or lack of self confidence rather, for a lot of people, it takes a lot of, of, of, of, well, I can only say it, just say it again, summoning the energy, summoning the drive to do it, the will to do it, the, the The, the oomph to go and get out of their seat and go and talk to somebody. It's a really difficult thing for somebody to do. And then if they've got body confidence issues on top of that, then wow, they don't want to draw attention to themselves, right? Clothes choices can often be difficult in the workplace because if there is a dress code in place, it can mean that dressing appropriately can be tricky, but also it can change the type of clothes that you wear. Okay. And the colors, for example. Maybe it means that you won't wear brighter colors because you, you know, you don't want to be larger than life, right? You don't want to be drawing attention to yourself in the workplace. There are some professionals who will walk around in cerise pink dresses with bright yellow shoes. Maybe not those together, but you know what I mean. And they will own it because they've got the confidence to do it. If you have body confidence issues. You are less likely to dress in that kind of way. You're more likely to go for the dark tones, the neutral colors, that sort of thing. The clothes that are less figure hugging, maybe. It really does impact on what you choose to wear to the office. And what you end up with is mental health issues, and stress, and all that contributes to poor health, days off work, um, You know, being signed off working in extreme cases, well, not even extreme cases, but where there's stress and anxiety around being in the workplace, people are now more comfortable with going to their doctor and saying that they need to take time off work. And what all this contributes to is poor mental health at the end of the day. If you are stressed or anxious, self conscious, all of that going to work, it creates A really poor work experience for you. No one wants to go to work and spend their day hiding away. Just head down doing their job, not really talking to anybody, not having the confidence to have a laugh and a joke with people, that sort of thing. It really does create mental health issues. Confidence is a mental health thing. And this rears its head more and more often now. We're more often seeing people going off work with stress, anxiety, that sort of thing. And if that is caused by people, In the office, treating you unfairly because of your body confidence. Well, that's a real issue, isn't it? It's a real, it's a real problem. So, what can you do to help yourself? What can you do? I'm going to give you a list of things. Now, I appreciate that if you're already struggling, I'm With a low self confidence, then some of this stuff is going to sound like it's unachievable, but you can pick and choose off this list. You can start with the small stuff for you, whatever that small stuff looks like for you. You can work up to the big stuff as you go, or maybe, maybe you're like, I have had enough of this. I am taking control of this situation. I'm going to do all of these things. Entirely up to you. This is, you know, this is your call. So here's what you can do. Speak up for yourself. Right? Advocate for yourself. Challenge people on what they're saying. If there is talk in the office about body types, body weight, um, shapes and sizes, if there's criticisms of other people, if there's commentary on what people are eating or what people are wearing or whether they've exercised or not, you know, all these things that we just take as everyday acceptable conversation. If this is happening, it's time to say. It's time to speak up. It's time to advocate for what you believe in. Challenge people. Just sometimes all it takes is, do you know what? That's not very nice, is it? Something like that. Sometimes a small comment like that can be enough to make somebody go, you know, it might, it might end up with a sarcastic, Ooh, who rattled your cage? Kind of an approach from the person. But you bet your life that deep down they're going, Oh, that's embarrassing. Got called out. Shouldn't have said it. But start to call people out on these things. It is not okay for people to have these conversations. It's not okay for people to behave in this way. So be the person that you want to be, you know, be, what is it they say? Be the change you want to see in the world or something. Is that right? These things are not okay. And nobody wants to be a killjoy and stop any kind of laughing and joking in the office, but it's got to be appropriate, right? People have to be comfortable going to work and if these people having a laugh and a joke at your expense are making people like yourself or others feel uncomfortable, it has to stop. When it comes to things like competitions, you can encourage different things, different team competitions that don't involve Shrinking your body and restriction of food. It could be things like, have a baking convo, it can be things like, have a baking competition. How good that would be, how good that would be. People bringing things to the office that they have made at home. Brilliant. You could have challenges that support mental health. So you could have, um, here's a random thought. What could you do? A random acts of kindness month, for example. Let's see how many of these you can tick off. In the next 30 days, that sort of thing. Does that, does that make sense? You know, you could do something that's a challenge for people, bit of a competition and makes people feel good in the meantime. There's all sorts of things you can do in the office competition wise. For the competitive people like me that do want to get stuck in, that do want to take part in things but don't want to ruin their mental health and their physical health in, in the process. So come up with something else for the office to do. Start there. If somebody's saying let's have um, let's have a competition to see who can drop a dress size by the time they go on holiday, that sort of thing, then Maybe you could do something different. Maybe you could change it. I'm just trying to think of what you could do instead. Um, maybe you could do something like, instead of being kind of bikini body ready, that's the way they describe it, isn't it? Bikini body. Instead of that, maybe you could do something like, Who does the most preparation towards feeling good on holiday? So, who buys holiday dresses? Who has their spray tan done? Who goes, oh, I know, holiday tat, right? Holiday tat. Now, what this is, is things like pegs in the shape of sunglasses that clip your beach towel onto your sun lounger. Um, it is inflatables for the pool. It is a funny hat with straws on so that you can be drinking your cocktail at all times, that sort of thing. Holiday tat. The crap that you buy that costs a couple of quid that you take on holiday because you must have it, how will you ever get through your holiday without it? You could have a competition to see who gets the most holiday tat. There is so much you could do that isn't going on a diet, right? So that's some fun stuff you could do. What else? Um, you could talk to HR or your board of directors or board of managers, you know, whatever your setup is, you could actively go and speak to them about it as an issue, whether you do that from a professional or a personal standpoint is up to you, but you could go to them and say, I'd like to talk to you about how we approach body diversity in the workplace. I would like to help inform your policies. I would like to help shape your dress codes. I would like to help you have better facilities for people in bigger bodies. I would like to complain about some treatment I've received from some other members of staff. I would like to raise an issue about the way people behave and talk in the office. However you want to approach it, HR are there to look after you. They should be looking after your well being and they should be acting when you've got a concern about how you feel and how you're treated in the workplace and to do better for staff as a whole. So you can go in there with this, let me help you attitude. Maybe if you felt really confident, you could present to staff. Maybe you say, right, one lunchtime, I would like to give a Brief presentation, a brief workshop, whatever it is, on body diversity, on how we treat people in bigger bodies, that sort of thing. You know, you could do a presentation for staff. You can create the right vibe on a day to day basis. You can give compliments to people and give them where they're not body related. You can tell people how great they look that day, but by that I mean Oh, you look super happy today. I love this. You've got such a great energy today. That sort of thing. Or you could say, I love your shoes. Where did you get them? They look great. Where, um, where did you get them? You could say things like, I absolutely love your shoes. Where did you get them? They look incredible. Because you're complimenting somebody. You're complimenting somebody on their choices, but it's not body related. That necklace looks amazing with that blouse. Where did you get it from? All these little things make people feel naturally good about themselves. If somebody compliments a piece of jewelry that I've got on, I'm more likely to go, Oh, thank you. Oh, you like it? Oh, brilliant. Thanks. And then it makes you feel kind of good, doesn't it? So compliment people. It doesn't even have to be things like clothes. or their, their energy, you know, the, the way they are that day. It could be things like their skills. Maybe somebody really needs to hear that they're doing a good job. Maybe somebody needs to hear that their skills are valuable, that they are a valuable part of the team, you know. There's lots of ways that you can compliment somebody without commenting on bodies. Also, you know, Dress as you want to dress. Obviously within office policy, please don't break the rules, but you don't need to shrink. You don't need to hide. You can still be professional and wear a bright color. There are lots of ways that you can dress the way you want to dress and still present yourself professionally. You do not have to wear dark colors. You do not have to wear neutral tones. You can wear color. You're entitled to wear color. Bring some joy into the office. That's the way you have to think about it. You're bringing joy into the workspace. If everybody else was stressing black left them, but you know, you're there to bring a bit of light into people's lives and do the work on the confidence for yourself. Things like regular affirmations. If you're struggling with body confidence, if you are kind of doing the fake it till you make it approach and you're walking into the office and you have to take a deep breath first and just kind of go, Oh, go right. Okay, go. If you've got to psych yourself up a bit, Then doing things like regular affirmations to ingrain these new beliefs that you're trying to cultivate. That is a really good thing to do. The more you say it, the more you hear it, the more you believe it. So regular affirmations are, are brilliant. Believe in yourself. Nobody's going to believe in you until you do. Now I say nobody, I'm sure that you have a wonderful boss, a great team of people that see what your worth is in the workplace. But when you believe in yourself, people also have this new level of belief in you. Because you show it. You show that you're worth it. You show that you're worthy. And then other people get on board with that. Grow your strengths. Grow your own strength. Know where your strengths are. If you don't know where they are, ask for feedback, ask for an HR appraisal, ask for some feedback from your manager or from your team, or, you know, ask people, what do you think my strengths are? You might be surprised at what people say in response to that. And it's a real confidence boost to be able to get that feedback. Get coaching, right? Get some coaching. It is amazing what you can work through in a coaching session. I do a superpower session. It is 90 minutes. It's a one off 90 minute session. And this is what we do. We work through challenges. Confidence could be something you wanted to work through in that 90 minutes. Progression in your career might be something you wanted to figure out and work out and work through and get your thoughts straight around. It might be a case of you've got some issues that are impacting on your ability to function at work and you want to talk about those. There's lots of different ways you can use coaching and it doesn't have to just be to tackle intuitive eating or to tackle body positivity. In the way that I talk about it on this podcast, coaching's quite different. When you have coaching, you really work through these challenges and you really find some positive forward movement. So if you're in that space, if you're ready for it, get some coaching. I'll put the link in the show notes for the superpower session. Have a look because it is such a brilliant 90 minute session, honestly. Representation matters, right? Representation really matters. So, make a point of trying to include different people, different body shapes, different sizes. You know, people of all walks of life, when doing something professionally. If you're in a team management position, if you're in an HR position, if you're in a management role, You know, border directors level, whatever it is. Wherever you are, try and cultivate a real diverse range of, of people. And actually, Actually, let me speak directly to you if you are an employer or if you are a manager right now, because there are things that actually, from that perspective, we can do better, right? Employers can do better. Managers can do better with better facilities in the workplace. You know, things like chairs without arms in boardrooms. Right, if you're in a bigger body, you do not want to go into a meeting room and squash yourself into a chair that you've got to sit in for three hours because there's arms on it. So, get chairs that don't have arms. Get chairs that are sturdy. And by that, what I mean is it's all the rage to get chairs that look like they'd fall over at any given minute, right? Because you look at them and you think, how the hell does that stay standing? And if I sit in there, then surely it's just going to tip over. It's going to collapse. You know, there are some really crazy, amazing, but crazy designs for furniture. You don't need to do that. You just need to provide some furniture where people would look at it and not feel like they were going to break it when they sat down. Let's be reasonable about this and let's be realistic about this. The reality of somebody sitting in one of those chairs and breaking it, very, very, very slim, right? It really just doesn't happen. That doesn't mean that somebody's not going to feel like it's going to happen and you cannot invalidate people's feelings. So, you know, get decent furniture in the office. Make sure you've got plenty of space around desks for people to move around, that sort of thing. Don't make people sit in really crowded, um, spaces next to each other. So don't cram 20 seats around a boardroom table when it's really capable of seating eight people. You know, don't make people sit on top of each other because if you're in a bigger body, it just emphasizes that. So yeah, be considerate about the facilities that you're providing for people. Be truly, truly nonjudgmental when you are employing people. When you are considering whether somebody is suitable for a team, there is never Never the need to comment on their body type. It's not a deciding factor. So when you are employing people, be truly nonjudgmental about decision making there. And when people are in, in the teams, give them really good employee support. Give them space to talk, give them a space that they feel is safe. Give them space to talk about, um, about mental health, you know, that sort of thing. It's really important. Recognize people's skills and talents too. Recognize that they are not body related. People are trained to do their jobs. They do them to the best of their ability. There is no link between body weight and talent, right? There's no link between, um, size and talent or knowledge. When you look at somebody and you judge them based on their size, you are doing that before considering whether they can actually mentally, Do the job. And it's, it's not fair. So recognize people's skills, recognize people's talents for what they are, and actually recognize them. Give them appraisals, give them feedback, give them, um, morale boosting comments, that sort of thing. Understand as well what sickness is. Understand that it's not related to weight. There are very, very few occurrences where somebody's body weight affects their health. Health is a result of behaviours. Health is not Caused by actual fat on the body, really. I mean, no, you have to take this as a nuanced, uh, conversation. So of course there are going to be instances where being very, very overweight or very, very underweight is going to cause health issues. But on the whole, it is somebody's behaviors that causes their health issues and whether they're able to manage their health or not, it is, it is not. No, it's not an automatic thing that fat equals unhealthy. So when people have sickness, when people have health issues, do not automatically think that that's because of their weight. Actually promote diversity and body inclusion. You know, promote that in your marketing materials, promote that in your team selections, promote that in the people that you are inviting in To consult on a topic, it's really, really important, you know, and get advice, right? Get somebody who can consult for you, get somebody in to talk to your teams, get somebody in to talk to your board of directors, to your management team, to your senior managers, you know, whoever you need to talk to about this stuff, get somebody in HR team, but get somebody in. So, Talk to me, talk to me because I do this for businesses. I can provide a bespoke package to come in and talk to your workplace. So if I'm in, if, if you are in the UK, then I can come in and talk to your workplace, just get somebody to drop me a message, link up with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a message on Instagram, wherever that needs to be. Send me an email, whatever it is. Start talking to me because I can come in and help your workplace understand these things better. And share, just share this knowledge with people, you know, share with your employees. encourage it through your whole workforce. It's really, it's really quite something when the place is accepting and welcoming and doesn't judge its staff. You know, you get such better output from people, more loyal staff, more people taking less days off work, that sort of thing. You know, there's lots and lots of reasons why you would want to promote this in your workplace as, as just the right way to, to treat people. Oh, I feel like I got a little bit soapboxy at the end of that. I didn't mean to, but you know, that's, that's the thing, isn't it? This stuff's important. And we quite often think that the body image and body confidence and eating behaviors and stuff that they're all personal life stuff, right? They all just mean something when we're outside of work, but people don't understand the impact that it has in the workplace and we spend too much of our life at work. To have it be a place where you're miserable and worried and upset and concerned about what the people are saying about you. You know, we spend too much time at work to allow that to happen. So hit me up, you know, if you want some coaching through it, let me know. If you would like me to come and talk to your workplace, just get in touch. Let's, let's spread the, Diversity joy, shall we? Right, I've rambled on for quite a while. This was, this was quite the, uh, return episode, was it not? I hope it was nice to talk about something other than food stuff. For an episode as well because we don't very often do stuff that is solely body chat, do we? So I hope that was good. I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think. Let me know what you thunk. Let me know what you think. As always, I'd love to hear from you. Take care. I will, all being well, be back next week. I've got some great episodes planned. So, uh, I just need to sit and record them for you. That's what needs to happen. Right, Terri, right, take care of yourself and I will speak to you really soon. Bye bye.