158. Still carrying your past? It's time to put it down

Somewhere along the line, you might have been told who to be.

Maybe you were raised to stay small, keep quiet, not take up space. Maybe you’ve always believed you’re “just someone with no willpower” or that confidence simply isn’t for you. Maybe you've dieted your whole life, or you were praised for shrinking and learned that smaller meant better.

Just because that was your story, doesn’t mean it has to be your future.

In this episode, I’m talking about how your past – no matter how loud it’s been – doesn’t get to decide who you are now. Ingrained beliefs around food, body image, and confidence can keep you stuck, and it's time to loosen their grip so you can finally start showing up the way you want to.

Yes, there’s value in acknowledging and working through the past. But you don’t have to carry it forever.

You are not defined by the old labels, the dieting history, or the way others taught you to play small.

You get to choose what comes next.

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, how are you? Are you okay? Have you had a good week? It's not a awful lot. It's gone on here. Actually, there's not a lot to tell you about my week. Um, Luna is still home. She hasn't managed to escape again, which is a good thing. She's actually, she did go out. She did go out once, but it was quite nice because she sauntered around the garden a little bit. She went and lay up on the top bit. I know you dunno where up on the top bin is, but she went to the top of the garden and she laid there for a bit and she's had a much around and then she came trotting back in for her tea. So we didn't intentionally let her out, but it all ended up okay because she didn't really go far. She did pop up through the fence at the end of the garden, so she did disappear outta sight for a short while and we thought, oh, right here we go. She's either gonna. Never come home again or she's just gone up for a look again and she'll be back and yeah, sure enough, she went and she had a look and then she came back not too long later. Really, she wasn't gone hours and hours. She certainly wasn't gone weeks this time. But it was really nice because she went out, she had a much around. She came home, she knew where her food was, she knew where she needed to be, and she literally came trotting back in'cause we left the door open. She came trotting back in. We were sat in the front room watching tv and she comes into the front room, looks at us as if to say, hi, hi, I am home now. And then hopped back up onto the winter sill where she likes to spend the day in the sun and just went and laid back up there again. So she was quite happy, obviously, to go out, have a look around and come home. Oh God, I can't tell you how much of a relief that is, but she's still not vaccinated and stuff, so we are not actually intentionally letting her out. We've gotta start that process all over again now. But it's nice to know that if she does make her way out the door, she will come back. But she's doing really well. Thank you very much. So many people have asked how she is. I've had messages and comments on posts and on the episodes on YouTube and all sorts. I've had loads of little messages like, how's Luna, how's she doing? Is she settled? And it's really nice. I thank you. Thank you for your care and your concern. And she is, she's doing well. She's putting weight back on. She's not as nervous as she was. She's not jumpy again. So, yeah. All good. Thank you. Thank you very much. And that is about the extent of my news for the week. Um, there is not an awful lot else going on really to tell you about, I don't think. No news updates? No. Nothing. Um, no. I could do that really annoying thing where I go, oh, I've got a new project in the planning. It's so exciting and I'm not gonna tell you anything about it right now. But I wouldn't do that, would I? Because that would be mean. So we'll move on. You will love it though when I release it. Just saying. Now then, do you have stories that you have held onto? Do you have things from your past that you've held onto? I'm gonna explain this in more detail, but for example, myself, I used to think of myself as the person who would eat the biscuits. If you left them out on the side. If you left to have a packet of biscuits out, I would be the person that would eat them. I knew it. Everybody else knew it. If they're open, just leave them there. Terri will have them. But there's also more subtle things. So bold prints or No, not for me. Stand on stage and speak in front of people. No, that would be drawing attention to myself. You know, there's all these weird little things that I used to believe about myself. Habits, beliefs, identities, and they've shifted, right? These things are no longer things that I identify with because identities can shift stories that we tell ourselves, stories that we've been told by others, they can change, and that's what I wanna talk about this week. So when we think about food, for example, there are loads and loads of ways that this can show up. I've used the biscuits example already. Don't leave food out'cause she'll eat it. Or you tell yourself, well, I've never had any willpower. I've never had willpower, never will have it. That is just me. That's the way it is. That's the way I am with food. I just don't have any self-control or restraint around food. That is me. I've always been the quiet one. Oh, no, I, I'm, I'm the quiet one of the group or I couldn't possibly stand up on stage. No, I don't do that. No, I'm not good at public speaking. No, I couldn't lead a group. No, no, no. I'm not a very good leader. That's not me. No skirts, dresses. No, they don't suit me. No, no, no. I don't wear things like that. I don't wear things like that. I've never worn things like that. Or what about this one? Oh, no. I've never been good at standing up for myself. No, no. I'm not good at dealing with confrontation. I'm not good if you put me in that position. No, I'm not very good at standing up for myself. These statements, they have often been reinforced by other people, but the difference is they're not fixed truths. They're just old stories. They're old stories that can be rewritten. So what of those things have you got for yourself? What do you identify with as your identity, as your personality? When you think about your relationship with food, your behaviors, your personality around other people, your clothes choices? Um. How you interact with people, with your colleagues, with your partner, how you are as a parent, all these things. When you look at these things, do you have things like that, that you believe about yourself, and then, oh, if you dig a little bit deeper, you know whose story is that? Whose story are you believing? Is that something that you've told yourself? Is it something that somebody else has given to you? What is it that you are believing and who, who is it from? You know, the important message that is about today's episode is not necessarily where this stuff has come from, right? It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. It, it ultimately doesn't matter where these messages have come from. It's about the fact that they don't have to stick, it doesn't have to own you. It might've shaped you. It might've been something you believed. It might've been something that you have formed identity around. It might have created who you are now, but it doesn't own you and it can be changed. That's not to say that, um, that we need to completely ignore it, right? We do need to acknowledge the impact of our upbringing trauma. Repeated messaging. You know, we see this in food all the time, don't we? Repeated messaging. Don't eat that. You'll get fat. Do eat this. If you want to get thin, don't eat that. It's bad for you. Do eat that. It's good for you. You know, all this messaging chips away all the time. It is repeated and you'll hear that in lots of different parts of your life. Um. Girls don't eat much or girls don't eat as much as boys. Don't wear that. It's too loud. If you lose weight, X, y and Z will happen. Go and lose some weight and then come back and we'll talk. Um, you need to lose weight to be liked. All that sort of thing. All of this messaging has fed into you for such a long time. This is why you are who you are. You know, it's the whole nature nurture thing, right? There's a part of you that that is who you are because of your very makeup, and then there is the person that all this messaging has essentially nurtured you to be. Although it's not very nurturing, is it? Nurturing feels nice and safe and warm, but this messaging is not nice and safe and warm, but you know what I mean. It's, it's who you have become because of this relentless messaging and the messages shape your beliefs. They shape everything you think of. What you don't realize, or probably what it doesn't feel like right now, is that you can change that. You can, you know, respect your past while letting go of it. You don't have to hold on to all these things. I do think. That an awful lot of people that have been through traumatic times, have had tough upbringings, have had tough family lives, have had really hard things to deal with, you know, have been dealt a tough hand in life. I think these people go one of two ways. You either play the victim. Or you rise out from it. You either spend your time, your life being the victim of circumstance and saying, well, I'm like this because, or you go, I am like this in spite of, I'm like this. This is what I had to deal with, and now I'm doing something different. Do you know what I mean? But wherever you are in life and your past is always gonna shape that. It's always gonna make you do one thing or another. But the real key point is knowing that wherever you are now, whatever's happened before this minute, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You can change. You can change everything. Your entire life could be flipped on its head. If you chose to, you could make small little changes that just have these natural little ripples through your life. Or you could throw one whopping great rock into the water and cause a tsunami. Oh, that was a clever little analogy, wasn't it? Did you like that? Um, but you know what I mean, it's, it's entirely up to you. You can completely upheave everything you know, or you can do it gently bit by bit. I've actually got some great examples of this from clients that I've worked with recently. So there is a lady that I've worked with who said. Oh no, I'm, I'm just a quiet person. I, I will never be able to be that confident person. I will never be able to, to stand up in front of people at work and, and lead them confidently. And, you know, it was all about project management. She's like, I dunno how I'm gonna do it 'cause I've got no confidence and I. And I am not that person. She thought that she was this very quiet, very meek person who didn't really have it about her to be forceful and controlling and demand what she wanted from people in an appropriate, in an appropriate way. I mean, we can be all those things, can't we? Quite aggressively. But what she wanted to be able to do was to lead her team of people around her in this project in an appropriate way and in one that didn't feel like she was stamping all over everything they were doing. She just wanted to, to show the confidence to be able to get the job done. But she thought she was not that person. She thought she'd always. Being the quiet one, the meek one, the one without the confidence, and she thought that's how people saw her. She thinks that that is what her team around her see her to be and would they have faith in her and all of this sort of stuff. But when we were talking about it, we worked through it. We figured out that it was all because of previous messaging. She had heard from people in her life that being quiet and small was the way to behave, and that she didn't need a voice. Other people would be a voice for her. And so she never learned how to do that because she just, she just kept herself small and just kept herself quiet. And so after, after we talked about this and we put some action points in place. She, she's really come on leaps and bounds. It's quite honestly amazing the difference that it has made. She's come out of this far, far faster than I even anticipated that she would. I thought it was gonna be good for her 'cause I could see the little aha moments as we were having the session, but I just couldn't believe it when we met again. The, the things that she was telling me, the progress that she'd made, the, the way that she had got things sorted at work. I was like, wow. It's amazing. Through letting go of the old stories, through letting go of what she was led to believe about herself. She was then able to create this person that she knew that she wanted to be. It was almost like there was the permission to do it, you know? And then there is another lady who was constantly given the messaging that being big is not okay, and you have to shrink yourself. You have to be smaller, you have to lose weight, you have to be petite for anybody to take you seriously, and for anybody to appreciate what you have to offer or to think that you are valuable or worthy of anything. And now she's speaking on stages. She hasn't lost any weight. She hasn't reduced herself. Instead, she's gone and she's got clothes that she loves and in colors and prints that she loves, and she's standing on stages and she's going to events and she's talking with panels of people and it's amazing. Because that was through letting go of the old messaging that was letting go of the her that she'd been told that she had to be, and then stepping into the her that she wants to be. Um, I've also got another client, well actually she's not with me now, but um, I was working with a lady not so long back who said, oh, I'm just not a gym person. I'm just not a gym person. I just don't like it. That is that right? Fine. I'm all good with that. I will never force anybody to do anything that they don't want to do. But we were talking about movement and we were talking about the things that she likes and the way that she wants to feel in her body after she's had some movement, that sort of thing. And it turned out what she wanted was she wanted to feel strong and she wanted to feel powerful, and she wanted to feel more than she was feeling when she was just, um, doing the other things, you know, the, the cardio bits that she was doing. So we talked about how that was possible for her and how she was gonna achieve that feeling, you know, what could she do to feel it? And she said, I think I'm only gonna get this from the gym, but I'm really not a gym person. So we talked about options and we talked about other things that weren't going to the gym. But then she came back to me one session and she was like, I went to the gym. I was like, I thought you didn't wanna go to the gym. I thought you didn't like the idea. I thought you weren't a gym person. And she said, no. I thought I wasn't too. And what it boiled down to was a teacher at school had said to her that she would never make a gymnast, she would never be good in the gym. And she took that to be, I am not a gym person. And she carried that with her, bless her all up until adulthood. And then she went to the gym and she threw a few weights around and she had a go at the re the, you know, the machines with all the weights loaded onto them and stuff. She's like, I love it. I love it so much. She's found this joy in this thing that she'd always believed was not for her because a teacher a long time ago had told her that she was not for the gym. Doesn't that make you really bloody mad for her? I've got things that I remember from teachers when I was little. I dunno if I've told you about this before or not, but I had a teacher when I was Mm. Midway through primary school, possibly, and yeah, yeah. About midway, mid to mid. Yeah. Let's just go with Midway. It's irrelevant, but I remember having. Just changed body-wise. I wasn't dieting at that point, but I had changed body-wise. And my teacher said to me, oh, you're becoming a real skinny gym now, aren't you? And it was a, hmm. It was intended to be a nice remark. It was intended to be a confidence builder for me. It was in the changing rooms. So we'd either just had or just about to have a PE session. I remember it vividly being in there, and she said that, and I was so pleased. I was so pleased with it. I hadn't actively done anything to achieve that, but I was pleased with the comment anyway, and that has stuck with me. I mean, I'm in my mid forties now, so look how long that stuck with me. I can still, to this day really vividly remember it. It's etched in my brain. And from that early age that messaging said, thin equals good weight loss equals good. Be thin, lose weight, people will praise you. And that's what I heard from a very young age. And so into adulthood, I go into my teens, into adulthood. I go with this messaging that I will be appreciated and praised. If my body is smaller, but I do the work, I figure it out and you know what? Guess what? People don't love me any less because I'm now in a bigger body. I was able to shake off that. I don't mean I could still remember it obviously, but I've shook off the messaging and I don't believe it anymore. But doesn't it just go to show that the messaging we hear just sticks with us just, it just sticks there in our brains. Confidence and your approach to food and all that sort of stuff. It's not, it's not innate, you know? It's built over the time. Over the time it's built, over the time It's built over years, years and years and years. And it's built because we have these messages reinforced. But if it's built that way, you know what that means? It means it can be changed that way. Neuroplasticity, that's what it is. Neuroplasticity. Do you like that word? Uh, it means that basically your brains can change. You can rewire them. You can forge these new paths in your brain. Literally, new pathways overwrite the old ones. There's a really nice analogy. I cannot take the credit for this. This has come from somebody else, but I can't remember who. And it says that forging your habits, your beliefs, all of this stuff in your brain is like, it's like walking through a field of overgrown grass, right? You start walking the path across the field and. The grass is long. It's very, very long. There's no defined pathway, so you just start treading the grass down, and then the first time you do that, it doesn't really make a difference. I mean, there's a bit of a mark in the grass. You can see where you've walked, but that's about it. And the next time you do it, if you walk that same path, you walk across that grass. Maybe it stays down a little bit longer, and if you keep walking that path over and over again, if you keep forging the habit over and over again, what happens is you tread such a path that the grass disappears, right? I mean, if you've got a garden where you've walked up and down the lawn in one specific path, maybe to hang your washing out or something, you've walked across the grass and you've done it so often that now the grass is a bit. It's a bit bare where you've been walking backwards and forwards. Same principle. This is what we're talking about. Just because the path isn't there at the moment, doesn't mean you can't put it there. Doesn't mean you can't create it. Your identity is flexible. You can forge that new path, and when you forge that new path, you stop walking the old path. And then what happens? Well, the grass grows back. Then over time, you can't even remember where that path was anymore.'cause the grass has grown back. You can't see it. You've got this brand new path. This is what neuroplasticity is. This is what forging new pathways in your brain is. This is what changing your thoughts and habits and beliefs looks like. But this is why it's not easy to do it in one go. Right. You can't just say it once and believe it and it's job done. You've gotta keep treading that path. You've gotta keep creating that path for yourself. We've been taught to play small, right? We've been taught to play small, be quiet, be small. Be um, just, yeah, just be small in everything you do and everything you say. But who does that serve? Who benefits from that? Not you because it means you don't have your autonomy around your body. It means you don't have autonomy around your food choices. It means you don't speak your peace. It means that people, you know, in the extremes, trample over people who are very, very small. That, you know, it's, it's just life is small for you, and that allows it to be bigger for other people. That's not right. We want everybody to have a nice, big, wide open world that they can experience. You can go from the quiet girl to a woman with a voice. You can go from the dieter or somebody who panics around food, someone who's anxious around food, someone who doesn't know what they like around food. To somebody who eats freely and happily and enjoys their food, you can go from the invisible woman that just kinda shrinks into the background to the woman who is unapologetically seen. This is what I want for you. So what would you do if you didn't believe that you had to stay where you are now? What would you do? How would your life change? What would it look like? What would you become? And I know that right now you are going, oh, well maybe I'd do this, but, hmm. And you put that, but in the sentence, you put the but in the middle, which means that something somewhere is stopping you thinking you can do it. So how about you start right now telling yourself what you can do? So let's try again. What would you do if you didn't believe you had to stay this way? What does that look like? Does it sound like I would be so relaxed around food? I would eat what I wanted to eat. I wouldn't really overeat. I wouldn't restrict myself either. I wouldn't die it all the time. There's no buts in that sentence. Or would you say something like, well, if I wasn't who I am now, if I wasn't nervous to stand in front of a room of people, if I wasn't nervous to put my point across in a meeting, then I would walk confidently into the room with my head held high. I would sit at the top of that table and when somebody says, have you got anything to add? I would say, yes. Here are my opinions. I would say it confidently because I know what I've got to say is worth being heard. There's a completely different vibe between the two things. Right. What about your clothes right now? Would it be that you just wear neutral clothes, things that just cover your body up with that sort of thing? And if, if I said to you, what would you do if you didn't believe that you had to stay this way? Where in your brain is the thoughts about your clothes? What would you think? Would you think? I would wear such bright colors. I would wear tailored suits, or I would show a bit of cleavage or you know, what is it? What does it look like for you? If there were no boundaries, if there were no limiting beliefs. What would it look like for your life? What would you say yes to if you weren't stuck in the identity that you are now, and what small actions can you take? What can you start doing? You know, can you, can you just say something in a meeting? Can you wear the red lipstick? Can you order what you really want off the menu? Reinvention is your right. You don't need anybody's approval to do this. Today is a fresh vote for the woman you are becoming, right? So take the story that you've been given 'cause you have been given it by other people. Take that story that you've been given, throw it out the window. If you don't like it, acknowledge that. That past is a chapter, but you are holding the pen now and you get to write the next part of your life. Write the story that you wish you'd been given and then just go live it. Go live it. It'd be amazing, right? Share with me. Come and share with me on social media. Come and share with me on the YouTube video. Just I really wanna hear. I really wanna hear it and I wanna hear it if you do it, but I also wanna hear what you would change anyway, because then I can cheer you on, can't I? I can be your cheerleader. You know that about me. I'm here to cheer you all on. So why don't you share with me what you would like. I mean, you don't have to go and upheave everything to achieve it right now, but you know, baby steps and stuff, you can start moving towards it. Just let me help you with it. Just let me do it and talking about comments, let's, um, where I put them, right? Let's do listener comments. Uh, lovely. Tasha has. Been on the YouTube comments, uh, said, did Luna come back? Yes, yes, yes, yes. I told you about that at the beginning. So yeah, she did. But I love you that you're checking. Thank you. But Tasha also said, I have never had frozen jacket potatoes always made fresh ones. I agree That Skin crisp up makes it super. Oh, that was on the Weird Food Preferences episode, wasn't it? Um, yeah, well, I say lucky you for never having had frozen jack potatoes and only having fresh ones because fresh ones are far superior in my humble opinion. I mean, I, I, I don't need to go all over this again, but I am not show showing it any kind of shame towards anybody that does have frozen jack of potatoes. It's just for me. I don't like them. I just don't like them. Oh, when younger, I couldn't eat tomatoes without some bread. I still don't like the stalky bit in the middle. Oh yeah, I know what you mean. That is weird. That's stalky bit in the middle. I do know what you mean. Tomatoes without bread. I don't know why that would be. I mean, I love it. It definitely is a weird food preference to add to the list. I wonder why that is. Do you know? Do you even know yourself? That's amazing. That's amazing. I love that one. That might be my favorite one so far. Uh, I also heard, let's just say, plenty of mad comments in my dms on Instagram about the x-ray that I was talking about last week. It seems people are mad, mad, mad. They are as mad as I am. But what was really nice actually was, was to hear that people hadn't realized it was a fake x-ray. I had a comment from Carol Ry. Now, do you remember Carol? Carol came on the podcast and talked to me about alcohol? Do you remember that? Um, the episode is, hmm, episode 81. God, that was blooming ages ago. Was it that long ago? That's mad. Um, but Carol came on and talked about alcohol. She's an alcohol control coach. So Carol and I chat on social media quite, quite often, really, and I shared it. She had shared it on her, uh, on her profile. I'd seen that as well, but she commented on mine and said, thanks for putting your perspective on this post, Harry. I actually shared this on my profile because I was shocked at the visual and actually thought that it was a genuine image. If this image was generated to make people feel ashamed of their body and ridicule people in larger bodies, then I shouldn't have shared it. I'm taking it off my feed. I love that. See Carol? Carol is brilliant like that. Um, Carol is completely open to different viewpoints and learning about stuff and being educated around things, you know, as I am. And I think this highlights. Exactly what I was saying. People don't know the difference when these things are shared and it's false information. So she thought the image of the x-ray was real, and as I'd explained in the episode, it's not real. And so she's gone and taken the post down, which is really brilliant. I really, really applaud that because that shows responsible sharing of information. But yeah, isn't it mad how. It makes so many people believe that it's a real, a real image. So I really appreciated that comment from Carol. I mean, she's, she's really great like that. I love that she's taken action, you know, like, no better do better kind of an approach, isn't it? Um, Leslie on Facebook said, uh, the person in that picture has intestines and lungs that have the same tissue density as the bone. If that's true, they've got far more serious problems than the obesity. Yep. I, I know, right? Mm-hmm. Um, Rachel says what awful pictures vi to put it mildly. Thanks for your thoughts, Terri and Ashley said, I'm kind of ironic considering many doctors ignore medical reality to blame all issues on a person being overweight. I know. Ain't that the truth? It's just too quick a response from people. Those in the medical field, those outside of the field, and it's just pure ignorance. Most of the time it's a lack of compassion for what is actually happening to that person. But anyway, let's not get started on that again because I said quite a lot about it last week. So if you haven't listened to that yet, go back and listen to it.'cause then you'll understand what I'm ranting about. But yeah. Yeah, that got people fired up last week, that's for sure. Right. Um, hubby is busy cooking me some food. I dunno what we're having. He was concocting something. There was lots of chopping and ingredients going on. So who knows, who knows what I'm having for my tea tonight, but I'm gonna end it here so that I can go and find out. Ha ha. Right. Take care. My lovely. Keep in touch. Drop me some comments, drop me some messages. There's links in the show notes if you need them. And um, yeah, I will speak to you next week. Bye now.