Welcome to a new season of The Culture Of It All, and our first episode of 2025!

You may have guessed, I’m still fat, and I’m choosing to stay fat 🥰

No need to sugar coat it, this first month of 2025 has felt like a metric fuck ton of hot garbage. Like so many of you, most days I’ve struggled to find the fuzzy line between staying well informed and falling into a spiral of sadness, empathy and anger at the state of the world.

Yes, I do talk about it in this episode, and if you’d like to skip some of it then skip 06:35 - 09:35… however, I’d also like to be transparent and everything I talk about in this episode and all episodes is of course political and a reflection on the state of the world we live in.

Diet culture IS political.

If we don’t like the state of the world right now, we have to ask ourselves how diet culture plays a part in keeping us quiet? How is diet culture distracting us from the important social issues? How do our Governments use fat folks as a scapegoat in their political policies, and cause more harm to marginalised communities whilst taking away basic human rights and access to care?

We don’t have the time to be distracted, and we need to be well fed and rested in order to fight. So, yes you can skip part of this episode but my political opinions, and where I stand is woven throughout it. Please take care of your mental health, pause, come back to it, do what you need to do in order to take care of yourself.

The Culture Of It All! Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Chapters for Ep. 019

00:00 Navigating Parenting Challenges and Personal Growth

06:35 Reflections on Political Climate and Social Responsibility

10:35 The Intersection of Diet Culture and Social Media

23:24 Creative Outlaw: Embracing Authenticity and Self-Expression

31:10 Nurturing Relationships and Personal Development

Topics discussed in Ep. 019

* The rigidity and failure connected to goal setting

* The wave of ‘New Year New Me’ marketing and GLP-1 advertising

* The shifts in social media, and how this connects to diet culture

* My words of the year, and how they reflect my intentions for 2025

* How we can embrace being a creative outlaw

🎙️ Coming this month:

Feb 11th - Confessions Of A Fat Girl: that time I found myself (almost naked) on a Welsh beach…

Feb 18th - The Art of Slow Living, In A Fat Body

Feb 25th - Confessions of a fat girl: the one when I was fat shamed on a treadmill

Thanks for reading The Culture Of It All! Podcast! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Welcome pals, to our final episode of 2024!! In this reflective episode, I’m sharing my journey over the past eight months of podcasting, discussing 8 lessons learned, personal growth, positive shifts in my body image, and the importance of having my own back.

Takeaways

The journey of podcasting has been transformative and fulfilling.

Reflection is essential before setting intentions or goals.

Contentment is a valuable state of being, not mediocrity.

We have the right to occupy spaces that resonate with us.

Choosing who stays in our online communities is empowering.

Health anxiety can be exacerbated by diet culture and weight stigma.

It's okay to let go of past versions of ourselves and our work.

Sharing personal stories can foster connection and understanding.

The future holds exciting opportunities for growth and creativity.

Chapters

00:00 Reflections on the Journey

10:22 Setting The Scene: The end of 2023

19:51 Embracing Visibility and Community

26:53 Navigating Personal Feelings on Weight Loss Drugs

31:53 Challenging Fat Stereotypes

35:11 Retiring Previous Versions of My Business

46:31 Looking Ahead to 2025

Last week I was chatting with the hosts of ‘Fat & Fucked’ and they asked me about how I’d got ‘here’, and what led me to starting a fat liberation podcast.

The truth is that a lot of moments that led here…

* Being fat my whole life

* Losing a parent as a teen

* Losing myself amongst the waves of grief

* Feeling even less like myself when I spent pockets of time existing in a smaller body

* Working in the fitness industry, and starting my online business

* Leaving the toxic and cult like business coaching bubble

* The book Playing Big by Tara Mohr, and her guided visualisation

* Ditching dieting, and finding intuitive eating

Many of these moments indirectly led me to this chapter of my life, and it’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that less than a decade ago I had such different beliefs about my body.

There were times when I was in extreme diet phases, I’d tangle myself up in maths, meticulously detailing what I’d eaten, and I’d think “Is this actually even worth it??!!”

*Spoiler Alert* — No, it was absolutely not worth it!

(But that’s an episode for another time…)

This bonus episode is a reflection on the experience of starting a business whilst in the depths of diet culture, exiting a space that intersects with diet culture, and how I started to unravel, unlearn and find myself again.

They say if you want to learn who you are, start a business… and what a wild fucking ride it has been to discover who I truly am.

Enjoy!

P.s don’t forget that I’ll be taking a break from publishing regular episodes between Dec 17th and January 13th, but you will continue to receive additional content in December here on Substack!