Ep #186: One Thing Missing from the Body Positivity Movement with Jen Lamplough

Hey Rebels. So before we dive into this week’s episode, I wanted to let you know that Jen and I are going to be talking about body weight and opinions about weight loss. It is definitely not an episode about weight loss success stories or how to lose weight or whether you should or shouldn’t be trying to lose weight. But I did want to give y’all fair warning in case discussions about body weight is something that you want to avoid.

Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who has never felt athletic, but you still dream about becoming a runner, you are in the right place. I’m Jill Angie, a certified running and life coach and I teach women how to start running, feel confident, and change their lives, and now I want to help you.

Jill: Hey Rebels. So this week I am back in the studio with my favorite human, Jennifer Lamplough. And we’re going to talk about some fun stuff tonight and we’re both a little tired and loopy and I may have had a glass of wine with dinner. I’m not sure if Jen has had any wine yet but it’s going to be a fun night.

Jen: I’m good. I have not had any wine yet. But I’m like – my mouth is watering thinking about having a glass of wine in a little while.

Jill: Okay. Excellent, excellent. So that’s our state of mind for this discussion. Jen and I talk every Monday. We have our own little self-love powwow where we meet for about a half an hour and we just kind of talk about what’s coming up in our brains for the week.

And this week for me, and I know Jen and I have talked about this, but one of the things that has been popping up for me is what happens when you’re fat and other people have a lot of opinions about what you should be feeling about your body. Whether you should be feeling good and accepting it, whether you should be hating it, and people are – what’s the word? Generous with the opinions as well.

Jen: Yes. Generous is a generous term for it.

Jill: So yeah, I mean, I guess I don’t want to share yet some of the epiphanies I’ve had this week but like, where are you on this spectrum, Jen? I’m going to use the F word to describe you because I think you are. You’re fat. I’m fat.

Jen: I’m sorry, I thought you were going to say fabulous.

Jill: I’m so sorry. Well, that goes without saying. But you’re fat and I’m fat and people have been telling me lately how I should feel about my body. And what I should be thinking about whether I want to change my size or whether – how I should love my body. So what about you? Do you have that experience that people have opinions of how you should feel?

Jen: I think yes, and I have my own opinions. And my opinions have been formed over the years by all of the outside opinions and influencers. And so on either side of the spectrum, either the diet industry spectrum or the body positivity spectrum, and I’ve been sort of like, yes, I want to lose weight, but I still want to love myself the way I am.

So I’ve been trying to do things to love myself the way I am, but then also still try to make strides to getting to a weight that makes me feel comfortable with myself. And whether that definition of comfort has been influenced for me over the years, I know when I feel best and I don’t feel that great right now.

And so I don’t know if that influences, I should be thinking that I should feel a certain way, but either way I don’t feel that great and I don’t like this feeling and I want to do what I can to make myself get to a place where I feel better. I’m not talking about being a teeny tiny skinny thing, but I know where I feel comfortable with my body and I’m not comfortable right now.

Jill: So when you say you’re not comfortable, do you mean physically or emotionally or your thoughts? What do you mean by not comfortable?

Jen: It’s a little from column A and a little from column B. It’s very much physically. I’m not comfortable physically. My breathing isn’t that great. It’s harder for me to do things like in the exercise realm that I was able to do easier before, even just sometimes getting dressed in the morning. I feel like it’s harder to get my boots on sometimes and that sort of thing, and I don’t like that feeling and I don’t like being out of breath.

And I have a very active five-year-old and I got to be able to keep up with his little ass. So I am not in the kind of shape that I can do that right now. And it’s due to this weight gain and becoming less active than I was before, and I don’t know if the less active has caused the weight gain or the weight gain has caused the lesser activity. But whatever it is, it’s there.

And so I’ve been trying to not hate myself over it because we know that that doesn’t work. So I’ve been trying to dress nice and do my hair and wear jewelry and see people when I can. I mean obviously we have COVID restrictions and stuff but not sort of hole myself up over it because that would have been my tendency before would be to hide when I would gain weight. So I’m not letting myself do that, but I also am still in the pursuit of trying to get to a place where I feel the most comfortable.

Jill: Yeah. So I think that what you said is similar to what I’ve been experiencing because I’ve also gained weight over COVID. And I’ve done a lot of work on myself over the years to not beat myself up over the size of my body and to just live in my body and love on my body and treat it well.

And I kind of revealed a few podcast episodes ago that that’s sort of the past couple years, I’ve stopped thinking the thoughts that I was thinking before and I’ve started thinking a lot more critical thoughts about my body and I’ve been blaming those thoughts on the weight gain, but in retrospect, I’m like, maybe I’m putting the cart before the horse a little bit.

But I completely agree with the physical thing. Physically, especially when you gain weight somewhat rapidly, like when you gain 30, 40, 50 pounds in the course of a year or a year and a half, to me, I was at a comfortable weight before, which was not thin by any stretch of the imagination, but it felt good on my body.

I was carrying extra weight according to what my doctor said, but my body felt light, my body felt really good. And I’m over that weight right now by probably about 60 pounds. And it doesn’t – it physically feels harder to just…

Jen: To do anything.

Jill: To do a lot of things. Doing a forward fold where I used to be able to fold over and put both my hands flat on the ground, now I can’t quite do that. But at the same time, I’ve also got these thoughts in my brain like, hey, you need to stop beating yourself up over the size of your body and just learn to love it.

And I’m like, okay, but if I learn to love my body the way it is, does that mean I’m not allowed to change it? I think that there’s a lot of messaging out there, especially from the body positive community. And this is not a slam on the body positive community by the way because I think that that community, which I consider myself to be at least a fringe part of, that community has done so much to raise our awareness about diet mentality.

And I think that’s really powerful, but I also think it can go a step too far in making you think – in giving you the message that it’s not okay to want to lose weight. It’s not okay to not want to be fat. It’s a weird way to say that but…

Jen: It’s almost the same thing that the diet industry is saying that it’s not okay to be fat, or it’s not okay to not want to be fat. And I know that’s not their intention. I know that in the deepest part of my heart. But it can certainly feel that way and that does the same thing that those other messages do and that invokes shame. And anything that invokes shame is something that you’re going to have to deal with mentally because you only feel shame if you let yourself.

Jill: Because what you hear from the diet industry is there’s something wrong with my body and then you feel shame when you think that thought. And then what you’re hearing from the body positivity community sometimes is there’s something wrong with the way I look at my body. And then you’re feeling shame.

So we feel shame when our brain thinks there’s something wrong with me and in the diet industry it’s like, oh, my body is wrong, I’m a terrible person because I’m fat. And then a lot of messaging from the body positivity side is there’s something not right with you if you can’t love your body as it is. And if you want to change your body, that that’s not okay.

And I’m like, listen, how about it’s just okay to want to change your body, full stop. I think it’s more helpful to want to change your body for reasons of like, hey, I love and accept my body the way it is, and I want to change it, versus I need to be smaller so I can feel better about myself. I don’t think that that thought is super helpful.

But I think you and I are both in this place of I want my body to be smaller for convenience reasons, for logistical reasons. And then we kind of also struggle with this whole – I find myself sometimes very unwilling to talk about either weight loss on this podcast or to say to people, “Hey, I would like to lose weight,” because there’s this blowback of like, how dare you, you’re triggering me, you’re not loving yourself. And I’m like, no, actually I feel like I’m pretty worthy, thank you very much. Stop bossing me.

Jen: Yeah. Well, and I think what you said earlier, you said it’s okay for me to want to change myself full stop. The only qualifier I would put on that is as long as it comes from a place of self-love, right?

Jill: It’s okay to want to change yourself out of a place of self-hate. I don’t think it’s super helpful, but if that’s your choice – but I do think loving yourself doesn’t mean that you don’t make changes. It just means that you don’t – I think changes that you make from a place of hate tend to not stick. We’ve all been there, right?

Jen: For sure, for sure. And it’s not a healthy mindset. It’s not good for your brain either and it can lead to disordered eating and that sort of thing and so we don’t want that either. But if you can look deep inside and make sure that that change and whatever it is is coming from that place of self-love and self-worth, that’s when that change is going to be long lasting and it’s going to be for the right reason.

And it’s going to be – but that’s a hard mental place to get to, especially if you’re a woman, I think especially our age because we never had a body positivity movement until recently. I mean, we spent our whole adult lives and lives as teenagers and children living in this diet mentality world. I mean, my mom had me drinking SlimFast shakes in the ninth grade and I maybe was 10 pounds overweight.

Jill: I know, right? Nutrisystem. 10th grade, Nutrisystem was like, oh, you need to lose 15 pounds or you’re never going to have a boyfriend. I’m like, uhh…

Jen: And I’m not blaming my mom because it’s all she knew too. My mom was always trying to lose weight. My mom is 82 years old and she’s still trying to lose five pounds. I’m like, “Mom, who cares? You’re 82. Get elastic pants and live it up. Who gives a shit?”

Jill: Right. So that’s just how deeply engrained that it is in our society. And it’s – I mean, it’s a very patriarchal thing. Men tell us that we are here to serve as adornments, to serve as accessories to them, and therefore we are taught oh, we need to make our bodies – our bodies are the resource that we have. This is not how I think. This is just a more patriarchal way of thinking.

But like, your body is a commodity. And the better your body looks, the more marketable you are to find a man. And I think like, we don’t realize how deeply embedded that is in everything because women are constantly thinking like, I got to look good so I can get a partner. And it’s like, hey, maybe you can get a partner just because you’re an awesome fucking person. It doesn’t matter if you’re a beauty queen.

And I’m not saying like, hey, if you want to make yourself feel more attractive or look a certain way, fucking go for it. But don’t do it because you think it’s a requirement to please somebody else. And to get approval. You are worth as is. And you’re worthy whether you’re fat, whether you’re thin, it’s all good, and you also get to decide which of those bodies you want to inhabit and work towards that as well if that’s something that you’re interested in.

Jen: And you also get to decide how you want to feel about it. It’s all up to you.

Jill: Yeah. So I’ve been struggling a lot lately with this whole concept of sort of riding the edge between people saying like, oh, you really shouldn’t be trying to lose weight to make yourself feel better, and I’m like – so actually, let me back up.

I am wanting to lose weight to make myself feel better. And that’s putting the cart before the horse because the way I feel, the emotions that I have come from my thinking. And my brain is like, yes, well if you have a smaller body, then you can think nicer thoughts about it. So for sure, there’s still some of that diet mentality thinking in my brain. I’m very, very aware of it.

But also, I have a deep belief that I’m 100% worthy exactly as I am right now and I get kind of pissed off when people are like, if you want to lose weight it must be because you don’t love yourself enough. And I’m like, that’s where you’re wrong. It’s such a murky place to be in.

I think as women, we need to do that work on ourselves like, over and over and over again to figure out what do I really want, what do I really think and feel about my body and separate out other people’s opinions. Because that’s the thing; everybody’s going to have an opinion. There’s going to be a lot of people who think your body is perfect as is. There are a lot of people who are going to think you should feel shame about your body, and there are going to be a lot of people who don’t care. And none of that matters.

Jen: None of it. And the stories you create in your head about their opinions of you are at the top of the list of things that don’t matter.

Jill: On a list of things that don’t matter, that is number one.

Jen: That is number one. Other people’s opinions and your own stories that you tell about those opinions, those things don’t have worth. The things that do have worth are yourself and loving yourself to do whatever the hell you want. It doesn’t matter what it is. We’re talking about being fat, but it could be – just insert whatever it is. It could be whatever has told you you’re too whatever of, you’re too loud, you’re too bossy, you’re too thin, you’re too stubborn.

Jill: I’ve heard all of those except too thin.

Jen: Same. It’s like, that’s when you put both middle fingers up and you’re like, and your point is?

Jill: I mean, I’ve played around with soft ways and more aggressive ways of responding to those things and sometimes it’s thanks for your opinion and I got this. And other times it’s hey, I get that you want me to be different but I’m not and I’m really not interested in hearing – and then of course sometimes it is just a simple middle finger. It’s elegant, it’s classic.

Jen: If you have a well-painted nail it’s even better.

Jill: And I do right now. I do, that’s so funny. Actually, mine are starting to chip a little bit.

Jen: One of the things for me too is I get told I’m too emotional. I have really high empathy, it’s one of my top five strengths if you’ve ever done Clifton’s Strengths Finder. It’s an excellent self-assessment tool. But I have really high empathy and what that means is that I strongly feel my own emotions, but I also feel other people’s emotions. And I can feel somebody’s emotions walking into a room and they don’t have to say a thing and I can feel it. I used to think it was…

Jill: You can read their body language.

Jen: Yeah. I can read the air, I can – literally, I had a boss who was so unpredictable and so high strung and was so hard to please a long, long time ago. And I could walk into the building and we worked on the 17th floor and I could feel his emotion before I got to work, before I got to the 17th floor. I knew what kind of day it was going to be. I have really high empathy.

And what that does is it causes me to either laugh a lot or cry a lot, whatever way you emote. I do it a lot. I can cry so easily because I overly feel all emotions. Happy, sad, mad, whatever, it all brings up emotion in me. And I have apologized for it almost my entire life. I have not looked at it as a strength. I have always looked at it as a weakness.

Jill: Right, and it’s so not.

Jen: No. Once I figured out that empathy was actually a strength and how to harness it, I don’t apologize for it anymore. I’m like, I am – Glennon Doyle, this is a quote from her about – I don’t know if you’ve read the book Untamed by Glennon Doyle but I’m a huge fan of her book.

And she talks about this very thing, about feeling overly emotional and I’m trying to find the quote because I have it in my phone. But it’s basically it’s like, I feel so strongly because I’m paying attention. I laugh, the reason I cry – oh, here it is. “I understand now that I’m not a mess.” People are like, “Oh, she’s a mess because she’s always so emotional.”

So she says, “I understand now that I’m not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. I explain that now when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say for the same reason I laugh so often. Because I’m paying attention.” This is my new – I just show this to people and they’re like, you’re so emotional, you’re crying, and so now it’s like, I wear it as a badge.

And so whatever your thing is that you’re telling yourself or other people have told you you’re too whatever of, this is all the same thing. It’s all the same. It’s about your self-worth, your self-love, and your feelings and thoughts that you create for yourself and not letting other people’s opinions guide that.

Jill: Because really what we’re talking about is when somebody says that you’re too emotional or when somebody says, “Hey, you shouldn’t want to lose weight,” what they’re really saying is your thoughts, your actions are making me uncomfortable. When you’re crying in front of somebody, it’s not the fact that you’re crying. It’s the fact that they’re uncomfortable. That’s what they have a problem with.

And when I tell somebody that I want to lose weight and they’re like, “No, you shouldn’t want to lose weight,” the reason that they’re bothered by it is because of their opinions of their beliefs. Has nothing to do with me whatsoever. And when you can divorce your opinion of yourself from somebody else’s opinion of you and recognize the difference, that’s a very powerful place to be I think.

Jen: It is. It’s a gift.

Jill: It is.

Jen: But it takes practice. It really does. You’re not all of a sudden enlightened and then it’s like, oh, this is super easy. You have to practice that every day because the opinions come from everywhere and we see it – whether it’s an opinion that’s geared directly toward us, but we also see it in social media and advertising and shows and whatever it is. It’s everywhere, right? And so it’s a constant, constant practice.

Jill: Yeah, I completely agree. And I think a constant reminder that – for example, say you’ve gone to a place with your body or your thoughts about your body, you’re like, I’m feeling really good about my body. And then suddenly you’re exposed to a whole bunch of that same old shitty messaging, and then a couple days later you start to notice yourself feeling a little bit critical.

And instead of thinking oh my god, what’s happened, what’s wrong with me? You’re just like, oh, that’s right, I was exposed to a bunch of messaging. No wonder, right? I think a lot of times people say, “Oh, that triggered me. Those people need to stop saying that because it triggers me.”

And it’s like, actually, I think it’s a way – people are always going to say shit and you can curate your social media feed and you cannot hang out with those people, but those messages are always going to find you one way or another. And so the onus is not on other people to change their behavior. The onus is on you to practice the skills of recognizing when something is an opinion that doesn’t apply to you versus information that you actually want to absorb.

And when I say an opinion that doesn’t apply to you, I mean yeah, if somebody comes to me and says, “Hey, you need to learn to love your body and stop wanting to lose weight,” yes, it kind of applies to me because it’s their opinion about me, but that’s where it stops. That’s not an opinion that I want to share and so it’s like, it’s moo. It’s like a cow’s opinion.

All of our Friends watchers will get that one. It’s unimportant. It’s irrelevant. But yeah, you’re right, it’s a constant, constant practice. And I do think when we say, oh, that thing triggered me, they need to stop, that’s not right, they need to – this person needs to put a – I did have somebody say and it was a very thoughtfully worded email, but she said, “You should put a trigger warning on any podcast where you talk about weight.”

And I’m kind of like, well, actually, I think it’s helpful for people to develop the skill of not letting other people’s thoughts and words and discussions trigger them into an emotional reaction. Because the emotions are ours. We don’t feel shame because of what other people say. We feel shame because we hear what they say and we think, “Oh yeah, they’re probably right.”

Jen: And I’m going to say something that might be unpopular, controversial, but people use the word trigger too loosely. Somebody who’s triggered who has actual PTSD or has a condition that they actually can get triggered and cause them to have a PTSD reaction is one thing. And I think that that’s very applicable for people who have experienced disordered eating and have had to go through therapy for that and all that sort of thing.

That is real for sure. But I also think – and I’m one of them. I’m triggered, you know what I mean? But I use that in an inappropriate way and people are using it more readily now like it’s something that they say like, triggered. But it’s an actual psychological thing that happens for people who have certain disorders.

Jill: Right. If you’re in recovery from anorexia or another type of eating disorder, yeah, and I totally get it. But I also feel like if you are in recovery from those things, the skill of managing your mind when you hear discussions about weight and about eating is so valuable.

Because saying I was triggered puts the responsibility on somebody else and you don’t take any of the responsibility yourself. And I’m not saying it’s okay for people to just walk around saying shitty things. In no way am I saying that. But the fact is they’re going to do that. And even if – so say I put a trigger warning on my podcast, and I might actually.

I’ll probably put something in the title saying a discussion about weight so people are aware. But okay, so I put a trigger warning on my podcast but there’s so much out there that doesn’t have a trigger warning. So either you stay at home and just hide from other people’s opinions, or you put yourself out there and you develop the skill.

And I think that’s what I’m going through is developing the skill of looking at okay, when somebody says that I shouldn’t be wanting to lose weight, that it’s more that I’m wrong for not wanting to be fat, when somebody says that to me, I can be like, oh, I’m so triggered. How dare they? Or I can make it mean that wow, maybe I am really wrong, or I could say oh, that’s just their opinion, I don’t agree with it, I’m not going to take it, moving on.

Jen: Right, absolutely. It’s like when you do have high empathy and people’s anxiety becomes your anxiety, I have to say to myself all the time your anxiety is not my anxiety and I have to tell myself that and I do that in a lot of arenas. And so it’s like, it’s kind of the same thing. This is your opinion about that but it’s not my opinion and you can’t – we all do it. We’ve all done it over the years, letting other people’s opinions become our opinion of ourselves or our belief in our self-worth and all that. But there is a remedy for it. And it’s thought work.

Jill: CTFAR.

Jen: Exactly right. And there are some things that are so much more horrific that the work around this would be so much different. But it still is work that everybody needs to do to deal with whatever their thing is. And everybody’s too something in somebody’s opinion.

Jill: Right. You’re always going to be too much or not enough for other people. And I think that’s – if you just accept that, like I’m always going to be too much for some people, I’m always going to be not enough for other people, but I’m going to be enough for the people who matter and that first person on that list is myself.

But I love what you just said about – you said I know I’m not feeling other people’s anxiety. Their anxiety is not your anxiety. Your anxiety is caused by your thinking about you reading the signals. You’re reading their body language or whatever it is. Your brain is assessing, and your brain is very good at assessing and you pay attention and so forth, so you pick up on more signals.

But the emotion you’re feeling is created by your thoughts about somebody else’s signals. And I think that’s very powerful. And I don’t know as a very empathetic person if that’s something that you’ve ever worked on like, how do I turn off that at will in case I need to? Is that something you can do?

Jen: Yeah, I can now, but it took a long time. It used to be this like, I need to make everything okay and I think that’s why I went into hospitality because it’s like, hospitality is making everything okay and making people happy and giving customer service and the customer is always right.

It’s kind of that same feeling where it’s like, oh god, I can tell that they’re getting annoyed by this meeting so I’m going to interject and I’m going to make it better and tell them what they want to hear, thus pissing off the person who’s currently talking and probably wreaking havoc overall.

Now I have learned to recognize in myself when I’m doing that, and literally, that’s my mantra around it. Their anxiety is not my anxiety. And so I have to set myself back, take a deep breath, keep my mouth shut. There is a gift in silence.

And I don’t need to make somebody feel comfortable with – if there’s an uncomfortable silence, I don’t have to fill in the silence to make other people not uncomfortable. Just because it feels uncomfortable to me doesn’t mean I have to fix it. And just because I know that you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean I have to fix it for you either.

Jill: And it doesn’t mean you have to be uncomfortable. You can be totally comfortable in somebody else’s discomfort. And I think that’s a fun technique. So the next time somebody shares an opinion with you about how you should think and feel about your current body, you can be like, mhmm, and just use the silence and let them do with that what they may.

And probably what’s going to happen is they’re going to get uncomfortable because they’re going to be thinking, “Oh, she doesn’t agree with me. I wonder if she doesn’t agree with me. Should I have said that?” You’re going to watch their brain go crazy when you stop talking. So fun.

Jen: I’ll tell you what, there is such a gift – I call it the pregnant pause and there’s such a gift in that silence. I worked for somebody who was a master at it, and he was the type of person people just told him their whole life stories because they were afraid of that silence.

And it was just so – it was used in a more manipulative way in that way to get people to divulge their stories and he had a vault of a mind and he remembered every single thing you ever said. But when you can learn to master that and live in that – either let them live in their own discomfort or you learn how to lean into your own, it becomes that thing, and you translate it into that other people’s anxiety, other people’s opinions, other people’s problems that aren’t yours.

If you can help in a way that’s helpful, that’s one thing. But they always say not my circus, not my monkeys. It’s that adage. It’s sort of the same thing, but it takes tons of practice. Tons of practice.

Jill: And I think when you’re talking about coworkers and people that you don’t have a lot of contact with on a daily basis, it’s one thing, but what about if it’s your mom and you talk to her almost every day and she’s got opinions about your body, or what if it’s your mother-in-law, or your sister who’s like, “You know I love you and I just want the best for you,” and blah, word vomit, opinions.

Because I think a lot of people are like, okay, that’s all fine and good for the checkout dude at the grocery store who says something to me. I can just be like, your opinion is none of my business. But like, what about when it’s somebody that’s close to you? What do you do in that situation?

Jen: And our first instinct is to try to get them to change and stop doing it, right? It’s like I don’t know how many times I’ve said it hurts my feelings when you say that, or you telling me I need to lose weight makes me do the opposite, it makes me eat. I don’t know how many times I’ve had that conversation with people. And I’ve come to realize that other people aren’t going to change because they believe themselves. And your opinion in their mind is wrong.

Jill: Yeah. They’re like, I’m literally trying to help you so that I can feel good. Because I think that’s it. I know when my mom would tell me, hey, you need to lose weight so you can get a boyfriend or you need to lose weight for this, that, or the other, what she really meant was you need to lose weight so that I can feel better about your life.

Jen: Yeah, so I can stop worrying about you.

Jill: Right. And I was like, you can just stop worrying about me right now.

Jen: Or you can just stop worrying.

Jill: I know. She’s like, no, I can’t.

Jen: Yeah, I know. All that work falls on you because your mom is not going to stop giving you her opinion. It’s how you handle it. And you can handle it in lots of ways. And right now I just sort of listen and I either just sort of listen and change the subject or I’m just like, okay, I hear you, and then we move on. I don’t argue, I don’t try to get her to change her opinion.

I have tried to get her to change her opinion about herself because like I said, she’s 82 years old, still trying to lose that last five pounds. I’m like, mom, you know, like, who cares?

Jill: But isn’t that so interesting? You trying to get her to change her opinion about herself is exactly the same thing. The only difference is you’re like, oh no, but I’m right.

Jen: But mine is noble, right?

Jill: Mine is noble. Isn’t that funny? You’re literally doing the same thing to her. And I think not to get all political, but if you think about the last election, we had half the country who was dead set that Biden is the best choice and then the other half of the country dead set that Trump is the best choice.

And it’s not even that folks were I don’t know, I could go either way. People were either one way or the other. And they – no matter which side of the fence you’re on, and I mean, it’s no secret which side of the fence I was on, but no matter which side of the fence you’re on, your deepest held beliefs are this person is the best choice for this country.

I don’t think anybody was voting for a candidate thinking like, yeah, this guy’s going to fuck shit up, let’s do that. No, they had a deeply held belief that if this person doesn’t get elected, the country is going to fall apart. And that’s a strongly held belief.

I mean, it kind of was fascinating to me because each side of the election was coming from this place of no, I’m right, you don’t understand, I have to change your opinion. And I mean…

Jen: That’s why there’s no point in debating politics because…

Jill: I know, right?

Jen: Right? There’s no point because I know I’m not going to change my opinion and I know other people aren’t going to change their opinion and there’s no point because all it does is wreak havoc and it’s just your opinion.

Jill: I know, that’s the thing.

Jen: You’re entitled. And I stopped getting mad about other people’s political opinions too. That has also helped because I’ve come to that place where like okay, that’s what you believe.

Jill: And I know there’s a lot of people that have cut family members out because you believe differently than me, I can’t be around you. And I’m like, well, I don’t want to hear their political opinions but they’re still my family. And so anyway, we kind of got off on a tangent there but I mean, I think that that’s like a big powerful way of looking at the same thing. When somebody gives you their opinion, I always assume when somebody tells me their opinion, they’re not stating it to be a dick.

Jen: Most of the time.

Jill: They’re genuinely – that’s how I go through my life. I’m like, listen, if you’re telling my something, I’m assuming that you believe it’s in my best interest and if it’s an opinion I disagree with, I’m like, oh, you think this is in my best interest but you’re just confused, you’re just wrong. I know what’s best for me, I love myself, I know I’m worthy at 110 pounds and 510 pounds. No matter where I fall on the spectrum, I know I’m worthy. And I’m going to choose what to do with my body, thank you very much.

Jen: Exactly right. Exactly right.

Jill: So did we cover – I know we had a few different topics that we wanted to cover today. Did we cover everything?

Jen: I have no idea. I mean, we went off on a lot of tangents.

Jill: She’s like, I don’t know, you had the list. I think one of the themes for me this year and I know for you too has been like, making decisions from does this feel like love. And so for me, when I think about changing the size of my body – and I want to stop using the term losing weight because I feel like that’s a very loaded term.

I’m just going to say when I think about changing the size of my body, and I ask myself, does this feel like love? And it does because I really like the reasons that I have. And you know what, a lot of times people are like, my reasons for wanting to lose weight have to be these big powerful reasons and just so that my ass is in smaller jeans is not a good enough reason.

I think that’s a good enough reason. I’ve got a shit ton of reasons for wanting to change the size of my body and smaller jeans is one of them. It’s not the number one but it’s on the list.

Jen: Again, it’s your reason. Nobody else has any stake in that, in your reasons. And so it’s like, it doesn’t have to be some big noble reason. And I love saying change the size of my body because that’s super neutral. It’s like – I love that.

Jill: Because it could be maybe I want to gain weight. I want to change the size and the shape of my body and I’m doing a lot of strength training as part of that too. There are parts of my body that I actually want the size to increase and then the other parts that I want to decrease. Mostly so that I can go to a freaking regular store and just buy a pair of knee-high boots instead of having to special order them to fit my calves.

Jen: And pay a premium for such…

Jill: Right. Part of it is literally logistical and other parts are vanity and other parts are hey, I’ve lived in this size body for a really long time. I want to see what it feels like to be in a smaller body. And I think there is a genuine sense of curiosity behind this desire because it’s kind of like, I wonder what it would feel like to weigh this amount and move through the world in this amount.

Because the last time I weighed that I’m pretty sure I was 17 or 18 years old and I was so disconnected from my body and myself at that point in time that I really legit can’t remember what the experience was like.

Jen: I love that.

Jill: Okay. Alright, so I think we can agree that if you want to lose weight, if you want to gain weight, if you want to change the size and shape of your body, whatever you want to call it, it’s all good. There’s no shame in making decisions for your body. Period. Nobody else can shame you. We shame ourselves because we have thoughts about what other people say.

So let’s own the shame and say I’m creating the shame for myself. And by the way, this is not victim blaming. I’m not saying it’s your fault you feel shame. I mean, you’re creating the shame for yourself based on your reaction to what somebody else says. But I think it’s an important skill to learn to like, hey, people are going to say shit.

People are always going to say shit so you can either decide every time they say it, I’m going to be triggered and I’m going to feel ashamed and it’s not fair, or I’m going to get mad and it’s not fair, or you can say people are going to say shit and I’m going to learn how to handle my own internal emotional environment.

Jen: And I think what’s interesting is when you come from that place, you kind of stop hearing it because you find what you seek. So if you just stop listening to it, you stop hearing it. And I always hear people talk about this person said this, and I’m like, they did? I just literally stopped hearing it and it is miraculous.

Jill: Oh my gosh, that actually happened to me when I was training for the marathon a couple years ago. My training partner and I were running. We were out running and a woman, kind of a tall slender woman was coming towards us. She was older, she was probably maybe in her 60s.

And she said something to us and what I heard was, “Oh, it’s a nice day to be out for a walk.” And what my running partner heard was, “Oh, you shouldn’t be running. That’s not good for you.” And I’m like, okay, we heard totally different things.

And it’s because my brain is always like, I just assume whatever, I’m not looking for people to make comments about my body. People have. I do remember when I was – and this was when I felt a lot more shame about my body size. I heard it a lot more.

I weigh so much more now than the last time I think I openly heard somebody make a negative comment about my body, I weigh so much more now, and I’m pretty sure people have said shit and I just literally – my ears don’t work that way.

Jen: Yeah, it really is a miracle how it happens.

Jill: It’s fascinating, yeah.

Jen: You’re like, I did not hear that.

Jill: And I heard something totally different. I’ll register people speaking and the words that my brain processes are just different. Because it just doesn’t occur to me. It is pretty awesome.

Jen: It really is.

Jill: Okay, so bottom line is it’s okay to want to stay the same size, it’s okay to want to change your body, to be smaller, to be bigger, whatever the fuck you want. It’s your decision, it is not anybody else’s. And if somebody says it’s wrong for you to not want to be fat anymore or it’s wrong for you to be okay with being fat, it’s actually just fine for you to choose either of those things. It’s your decision. Let self-love be your guide. What feels like love and go from there. And I think that’s all for my rant. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Jen: I think John Lennon would be really proud of us with that last line. Like let love live, let love be your guide.

Jill: Yes. I love that so much. So do you have anything else to add before we close out today?

Jen: I don’t think so. I think we covered it.

Jill: I think we did.

Jen: Yeah, I’m proud of us man. We had a lot to say, even with mushy brains.

Jill: I know. I think the wine was helpful for me. I’m a little more – I don’t know what the word is – animated than usual. A little more laugh-y than usual. Anyway, alright, thanks for joining me today for this. And I think we’re going to keep having these check-ins from time to time and share – because we’re sort of self-love accountability partners.

Jen: Yes, we are.

Jill: It’s a weird thing to say but I think we’re going to keep sharing our experiences and if you guys – anybody who has comments about the show, please feel free to write in. I know there’s probably some folks that may actually feel a little triggered by this or might completely disagree. We’re happy to hear your opinions and respectfully discuss. Discuss them. But yeah, thanks again Jen.

Jen: Thanks for having me. It’s always my favorite thing to do is talk to you.

Jill: Yay, same.

Oh, and one last thing. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you have to check out the Rebel Runner Roadmap. It’s a 30-day online program that will teach you exactly how to start running, stick with it, and become the runner you’ve always wanted to be. Head on over to rebelrunnerroadmap.com to join. I’d love to be a part of your journey.