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#FreeFromDiets campaign

How to create your own DIY …

March 29, 2018 by Molly 9 Comments

Hello and welcome! I'm Molly Forbes - podcaster, presenter and blogger with a passion for positivity, confidence and body image chat. Regularly writing and vlogging about empowering female issues from a motherhood angle, I also cover lifestyle and fashion topics for like-minded mums who want to rediscover themselves after having children. Thanks for stopping by! Read More…

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Let’s talk joyful movement and.... PRIVILEGE! A

Let’s talk joyful movement and.... PRIVILEGE! A nice juicy subject for a Thursday evening 😅
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I absolutely love to see the narrative shift (albeit ever so slightly) to the intrinsic benefits of movement. The focus on intuitive movement and moving our bodies for how it makes us FEEL over how it makes us LOOK brings me huge happiness.
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BUT... even when we take movement away from a diet culture context, I still think there’s often a lack of acknowledgment of the many barriers preventing people engaging in movement in the first place (hot tip: it’s not “just cos they’re lazy” 🙄).
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When it comes to my own family - here are some of the privileges we live with which make movement easier for us:
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✨ We live in an area with access to lots of safe green spaces to play and walk.
✨ We can afford to pay for a gym membership, and extra curricular activities for the kids like gymnastics, Street Dance and swimming.
✨ We have access to the technology needed to take part in online classes over lockdown.
✨ We are non-disabled so experience no physical access issues preventing us from joining in with these activities.
✨ Our work schedule allows us to get out together during daylight hours.
✨ None of us lives with a mental health condition which might make getting outside / engaging in movement really hard or even impossible.
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Kids access to movement is not equal so if we really care about encouraging more children to move then, as a nation, we need to level the playing field (pun intended).
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Some accounts which often discuss movement and privilege: @thephitcoach @amysnellingpt @theaishanash ❤️
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[Image description: Molly and her two daughters standing on top of a hill smiling, with their arms in the air.]

It’s pretty well accepted that certain “fad di

It’s pretty well accepted that certain “fad diets” are not the one. But if our definition of diet culture stops there, and we fail to see how diet culture IS fatphobic in its very nature - and that it absolutely depends on a collective cultural fear and vilification of fatness then we’ll never get anywhere with tearing it down.
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Dressing up fatphobia as “health concern”, or “tough love” or “helping people” is just a fluffy way of saying you don’t acknowledge the huge complexity around health, or the many factors that impact weight, or the research showing the harmful (and unhealthy) impact of weight stigma, or the evidence into the long term effectiveness of diets and intentional weight loss.
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And essentially, those who assert that health only looks one way, and that people have a moral responsibility to prove their health via the shape of their body and not be a “drain on society”, are saying that only people with their version of a “healthy body” are worthy of respect, equality, dignity.
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Children pick up on these messages and learn from an early age that “fat = bad”, and to see some bodies as better, and more deserving of love and respect than others. This could be why we’re seeing a rising number of pre-teens with eating disorders and mental health issues associated with poor body image.
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Yes we need to lose the fad diets. But we also need to lose the deeper prejudices and anti-fat biases that make them profitable in the first place, otherwise they’ll just continue to show up in different ways, coming in ever more aggressive and insidious ways for our kids.
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(Image description: A yellow slide with multicolour shapes and a screenshot of a tweet overlaid which reads “FYI you can’t be simultaneously anti-diet culture and pro fatphobia. (And yes, fatphobia includes continuously asking “But what about health?” and not listening to the answer...)

You might have missed this in the news over Christ

You might have missed this in the news over Christmas. It didn’t get nearly the same amount of coverage as all the diet-related features that are everywhere right now. It was hidden away behind the before and after “amazing weight loss” stories, celeb diet plans and “o*esity causes covid” headlines. But that doesn’t make it any less shocking or heartbreaking.
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I believe there’s a link between the rise in children being diagnosed with eating disorders and the rise in children suffering poor body image. These issues are fallout from a culture that idolises thinness, vilifies fatness and continually promotes one, narrow, over-simplified version of health.
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Diet culture is coming increasingly aggressively for children, and the pandemic with the huge mental health toll it’s taken has not helped one bit. We already knew the number of pre-teens diagnosed with anorexia in the last decade had doubled, and it seems the figures are rising even higher. We need change. Fast.
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Check out the Body Happy Kids resources, workshops and Masterclass and the #FreeFromDiets campaign in my bio, if you want to help change the culture our kids are growing up in. They deserve better.
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[Image description: a section from a news article about rising numbers of children suffering with eating disorders. Full text can be found in Alt Text.]

I’ve been looking a lot at old photos lately. Th

I’ve been looking a lot at old photos lately. This pic is from summer 2018, when I could hug my mum and travel abroad on holiday. If I close my eyes I can almost feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, smell the salty sea air and hear the laughter of other families playing on the beach. Holding on to these memories and the hope that the hugs, sunshine and bikinis will come again one day. In the meantime it’s video calls, trackie bottoms and WhatsApp. ❄️☀️
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[Image description: Molly and her mum standing on a beach in France, in 2018. They are both wearing brightly coloured bikinis, hugging and smiling. It’s a hot sunny day and the sky is blue.]

❤️❤️❤️ #BodyHappyKids The Masterclass

❤️❤️❤️ #BodyHappyKids The Masterclass is on 30th Jan. Find out more and sign up via the link in my bio. Happy Friday everyone ✨
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[Image description: A tweet saying “Cannot recommend Body Happy Kids enough, especially in January with its incessant ramming of diet culture in everyone’s eyes and ears. They also do teacher sessions and the one I (virtually) attended was brilliant. If you’re a parent, sign up if you can!]

Throwback to when I was last in a gym, back in Dec

Throwback to when I was last in a gym, back in December. Seems like a good time to talk about resolutions and goals and how diet culture has muddied the waters with this stuff...
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Having a fitness or movement goal is not the same as having a weight loss goal. Diet culture always conflates fitness with weight loss, particularly at this time of year, encouraging us to move in order to “burn the fat” or “earn the food”. But it’s entirely possible (and, as research shows, more conducive to long term exercise) to move for reasons that have nothing to do with aesthetics. There’s also evidence to show it’s the fitness, not the weight, which is more important when it comes to health.
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This doesn’t mean that if you move for the love of it rather than the look of it that you can’t have goals though. I’ve got goals - but I’m in it for the gains, not the losses.
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Swimming and the gym are off the cards at the moment, so I’ve set myself the goal of as many walks as I can fit in this month - ideally daily, but that’s a loose plan as it might not always be possible. I’m seeing it as self-care, a chance to be outside and get some vitamin D and fresh air, and enjoy the hit of endorphins as I move my body up and down hills.
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Have you got any (non diet culture tinted) fitness goals you’re working towards at the moment?
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[Image description: Molly stands in front of a mirror at the gym. She’s wearing workout clothes, looking sweaty, holding a weight in one hand.]

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