A Conversation with Mary Pearson - Author of Weighed Down

Music.

And welcome to Change Your Relationship with Food, the podcast hosted by me, Kyla Holley. With many years' experience as an eating disorder and bariatric therapist, I know exactly what it takes to help you break free from your diet history and develop a more healthy relationship with food. Please follow this podcast to make sure you don't miss a thing.

Today we have a guest, which is really exciting because we've never actually had a guest before. You've had to listen to me waffle on on my own countless times. But today we've got another waffler with us, which is fantastic. Her name is Mary Pearson and she is a social worker and she lives up in Townsville in North Queensland.

And for those of you that don't live in Australia, Queensland is the bit that you see on all the posters with the sunshine and the palm trees and the kind of white sandy beaches. The beautiful kind of stereotypically Australian type look. And that's where she gets the pleasure of living. So I'm a little bit jealous about that to start off with, but she is also a published author. And she's written a book called Weighed Down, and there's a little subtitle

to it, which is Unlearning the Lies Sold to Us About Our Bodies. Wow. So I'm going to get Mary to tell us more about her book. So thank you, Mary, for joining us today. How are you? Hi, Carla. I'm good. Thank you for having me. That's no problem. You're my first. I feel it's a privilege. And I definitely have the air con blasting in the other room to make sure this room's nice and cold in hot, sunny Queensland.

Fantastic. Well, I mean, you say it's a pleasure. That's yet to be discovered. We'll see how we go. But I've wanted for a long while to get a guest on, and hopefully this is the first of many, but it's finding people that have got something interesting to say. And when I met Mary, which was last year on a training course, I thought she was one of those people. So that's why I invited her to be our first guinea pig on the show.

So Mary, Weighed Down, tell us about Weighed Down and how the idea came to you. Where was the motivation? Mary Daphne, It started a couple of years ago. I was working in a small town outside of Townsville and working as a counsellor. And I was feeling this pattern. More and more of the clients I was counselling had disordered eating or eating disorders that were diagnosed or just a really unhealthy negative relationship with food and their bodies.

And it started to inspire me to research it a bit more. And then I was reaching out to friends about how I felt about it and two of my friends, Nellie, who is a professional exotic dancer and pole dancer, competitive pole dancer. I didn't know there was competitive pole dancing. There is. It's a whole other world and she's incredible at it. She used to be a professional physical trainer. What's that called? Yes. Personal trainer. Personal trainer. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And she found a lot of toxicity, not so much in people exercising, but more about the tricks and tips sold to them about, you know, lose weight in 12 weeks and all these horrible things that in the long term wasn't helping her clients. And then the other author, Bridget, who was a friend of mine, she's an anti-diet intuitive eating nutritionist who, of course, had to go on a journey of her own to get to that point.

And we just kept talking and talking and I said I've got to write this down it's so interesting and then it made me reflect on myself and I realized I don't have the best relationship with food either and why do I keep these clothes that are two sizes too small and why am I joining gyms so much and not actually enjoying it yeah it made me question a lot so I started writing so that questioning that you mentioned only happened during the process of of actually writing the book.

Yeah, I wanted to write the book about other people's stories because I thought they were much more interesting than my own. Don't we all? So I thought it was more of a general sense about how we perceive beauty and our bodies and how it's shifted through generations and cultures. And it started as such a big, big book. I had so many ideas I was trying to cover. And then by the end of it, I'll put in my own story. I'll put in a a little bit of research.

I've put in a few other people's stories and somehow, because I made it so specific, now it's down to 61 pages. But I like that a lot because it's direct, but it's still funny and light, but hopefully helpful. And it's personal about me as well. Well, something you said about the book is that it's a short book with a big message, which I thought was a really cool little tagline. What is the big message then? If you had to kind kind of summarise what that

big message is. What do you think came out of it for you? For me, it's realizing what is actually being sold to us by not only media, but the weight loss industries and fitness industries as well.

And do these industries actually care about us as individuals? After you ask enough questions, you realize they don't. And the big message is figuring out what works for you to make sure you enjoy your life as best as possible, the best way possible. I think I've wasted so much time in my life focusing on how I looked, but in a negative way. I wasn't celebrating how I looked. It was picking at everything. And I feel like it's a monumental waste of my energy.

So that's the message I want to get across is how do people realize or figure out their relationship with food, their relationship with their body, and how important it is to them and what really they want to change about it. And it's a hard conversation to have with yourself, but hopefully this book is like a friend that can help you have that conversation without you being judged.

Right. And it is really common. And a lot of the people that I see, like yourself, and you, I mean, a lot of the people I see have got years on you. So sometimes people come to me with decades and decades of that real kind of hatred of the skin that they're in and the body that they're in.

And your book brings up a lot of interesting concepts around that one big one that that sort of stuck out to me though was this idea or this sort of dichotomy between the body positivity movement and something like fat phobia and this is something which even though I'm in the job I do and you know I know a lot about the subject on a personal level this is something that I still struggle with, and I think we all do, the idea that on one day you can be saying, well, hey,

this is my body and I'm accepting it how it is. And it's bloody fantastic, regardless of the wrinkles and the hodgy bits and things like that. And then on the next day, I'm sort of looking in the mirror thinking, should I actually lose a few pounds? Could I actually lose a few pounds? And then I kind of beat myself up for thinking that. And it's confusing out there. It is, and it's hard to cut ourselves some slack on those days that aren't as...

Body positive. My journey with body positivity, I think, was confusing for a lot of the time, because I loved the movement, body positivity. It's a radical idea. It reminded me of, you know, the feminist movement against patriarchy is, I think, body positivity against fat phobia. You know, you have to be radical, you have to be loud and colorful to make a difference. And there's a lot of people doing that. And I love watching them.

But then for me, I feel like some Some days I don't feel like that. So I read more on the term being body neutral. So there are some parts of me that I love. I love, I think I've got a great smile. I think I've got great hips and I love those parts. And then there's other parts like, you know, stretch marks on my belly and got a chin I don't like, but instead of hating them, those are the parts I'm trying to accept. So I can be neutral.

Yeah. I talk about body acceptance rather than body love because for some people loving their body is is just too big a goal and there's this kind of idea that there's people out there loving their body and if you can't do that if you don't feel you're capable of that there's already that feeling of failure you know this person loves their body why can't I love my body so much better to say you know just accept your body or feel neutral about your body rather than go this whole big

body love thing yeah but the the whole fat acceptance movement though has a bit like feminism there's always that extreme part of it which gets criticized within the body acceptance movement for actually promoting obesity or that's what it's seen as do you know what i mean in that they sort of say we shouldn't be glorifying this there are health risks we have to be realistic about it yes i've seen a lot of arguments on that in social media saying you know you're glorifying or obesity.

But I think there needs to be a radical side of it because if it's just being body neutral and body accepting, which I think is my comfort zone, that's what's going to make a difference for me, maybe that's not powerful enough for everybody to hear it. So also we don't know everybody's journey with their bodies or what conditions they live with genetically or anything. So when they say, oh, you know, you're promoting obesity, it's like, well, you don't know that person at all.

You don't know their health level at all. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we don't really have a right to comment on that, I feel. Yeah.

And also there has been this very big connection with health, this responsibility to be healthy. And you're right, you can't see health. You don't know, you know, what's going on behind the scenes. And a small body, a thin body, isn't necessarily a healthy body, just like a bigger body isn't necessarily an unhealthy body. And I think we have to disconnect the two.

I agree. I even finished the book with a story of myself where I went to the doctor and one doctor made a mistake about my cholesterol level. So I started taking these cholesterol tablets. And then I go back to the doctor for a different doctor for a refill and they have a look at the numbers and said, no, you're fine. That was a mistake. And they said to me, you're healthy. I'm like, oh, great. But it was so easy for me to believe, oh, well, I'm quotation marks overweight.

So So there must be something wrong with my cholesterol, but actually I live quite a healthy lifestyle. Thank you very much. Yeah. And people make the same assumption when they jump on the scale as well. So if I jump on the scale and I see a certain number, I make a whole host of assumptions about what that means. And a lot of people, we see a very weight obsession. It has to be a particular number, not two kilos over that number.

It has has to be a particular number, as if that makes a profound difference, you know, that kilo or two, which of course it doesn't. And also, I do say to a lot of the people that I see, nobody actually knows what you weigh. When you see people walking down the street, and I'm pretty good because in my job, I do know the weights of a lot of people, so I could make a fairly educated guess, but I wouldn't get it exactly right. Of course I wouldn't.

And nobody knows whether you're 77 kilos or 75 kilos. Nobody knows. So it's a crazy business.

Now, what about the other side of it? Fat phobia. What do you you think drives fat phobia i find the term fat phobia so interesting because it makes me think i'm not scared of fat people but um that's not what it is about at all of course but is it being scared of fat though it's being scared of fat and i think it's more internal but we portray it as external we judge other people but i think it's it's our fear of being fat oh god i don't want want to be fat, I'll be loved less,

I'll get less attention, I'll be excluded more, I'll feel ugly, I'll feel unhealthy. So we're fearing fat itself, but then externally it turns into practically bullying, excluding people, just devaluing them as a person just because of their body and it's very toxic. And I think as well that it wouldn't exist unless there there was a financial aspect to it.

Because whenever there's this creation of a sort of fat phobic message, there's always this underlying, and we can sell you something to fix it message that comes a few seconds later, either, you know, join a gym or buy this book or, you know, do something or go to the doctor and get a certain drug prescribed, you know.

And it's this This idea that if we create the fear and get people worried and fearful, then ka-ching, it turns into money because they're going to then seek out the solution to a fear which we created in the first place to sell our product. Exactly. Isn't it clever? And I don't know who said it, but there's this phrase, we're only motivated by either fear or love.

Mm-hmm and and both are very powerful so if it's fear that's so easy to fall for i've fallen for it all i fell for every gym scheme weight loss diet scheme i googled pills didn't buy them but i was i was in there with everything because i just i just wasn't good enough and this was going to fix me yeah and absolutely yeah absolutely but i didn't and all the time there was nothing wrong wrong with you no and that's the thing too I and that took a lot of work it took therapy it took

nurturing my friendships it took realizing that I'm I am loved and I have a great life I threw out my scales because all it caused was a bad day if it wasn't the number I wanted like you said but that took time and I'm lucky that I'm 31 and have figured it out because you are it took me a a lot longer yeah but just wait because just around the corner they make you feel bad about your age as well oh yeah i'm looking forward to that oh that's what i'm finding and it's it's that thing

about you're not allowed to be fat but you're also not allowed to be old. Because again you know we're meant to feel is that a wrinkle oh my god i need a solution to that so there's this whole level of fear which which again there's something that they can sell you to solve those problems. I never understood that even as a child, seeing these ads on TV for, you know, anti-wrinkle creams. And I've always been confused by that. Why would you want anti-wrinkle cream?

You're getting old. That's part of it. And I was never scared of getting old. But then all this messaging was, well, you should be. Yeah, absolutely. Well, if you're not scared, absolutely, you should be because we want to sell you something. And often the funniest thing is the amount of, well, firstly, airbrushing that happens in those anti-wrinkle ads, or the fact that there's someone who's sort of 25 trying to sell you an anti-wrinkle cream. Yeah.

On the premise that wow it really worked on her i'll i'll have some of that and that's another thing with with aging as well that our bodies change again so my hormones have changed now so my body looks of course different than it did 10 years ago and i know emotionally i'm going to have to ride the roller coaster of it changing again in 10 years and then 10 years after that and it's just the reality of it but yeah we're told to fear it and and there's beautiful women in my office

saying, you know, how much they've got to lose weight. They've got a daughter's wedding coming up. I have to lose this five kilos. I haven't been skinny since I was 30, they would say. And I said, but you're beautiful and you're healthy, but they can't hear what I'm saying. Yeah, exactly.

It brings me actually to another concept that came up in the book, which I really loved, which was, what if, I'm going to look up what the actual quote was, What if the way your body is now is the best it will ever be? And I kind of read that a few times when it came up in the book because I just thought, yeah, it's just a way of thinking that we don't ever really go to. What if this is it? What if today my body is the best it will ever be?

How would things be different for me? yeah but you know why i love that sentence is because you said that to me the day we met did i you did you did it was that's why it stuck with me oh i'm so old and wise oh you are i'm gonna write that down that's a good line i always say to to people actually you're you know right here right now that you're the youngest you'll ever be.

Which is also true but you you get a lot of people who you know it's always deferring a lot of things in life to you know when i lose 10 pounds i'll do such and such or when i can fit into that beautiful dress i'll wear it not i'll just buy it in my size and wear it now or i'll just get on and do that thing it's that idea that one day things will be better and that belief that i have to to believe that otherwise it feels like I'm giving up.

And I've had a few people say that I'm not fighting the good fight with this. I'm just giving up. I'm just lying back and resigning myself to the fact that this is my body and it's never going to be any better.

Isn't it devastating, but so relatable. I think for me, the clothing situation is where it hits home is I'll keep this dress that's two sizes too small because I'm going to start this fitness regime and I'm going to wear it to this event and I'm going to look amazing and I keep all these clothes that don't fit me rather than going out and buying clothes that are comfortable and flattering that I can just love now and why can't I feel attractive.

And a close friend of mine even said to me recently, she didn't want to date because she didn't want to have sex because she feels she's too fat and therefore too ugly to feel not self-conscious enough to enjoy sex.

So she's restricting her enjoyment of a really important part of life because she's too self-conscious about her weight and i feel i felt heartbroken about that actually so did you get the chance to land this sentence on her and say what if today your body is actually the best it will ever be i did i texted it to her and she sent me those rolling eyes so i'm gonna send her my book and say, come on, you've got to read this. Absolutely.

Just go through it with loads of highlighter pen and tell her all about Shani's stutter. I think it's actually quite a liberating possibility, the idea that we are at our best today. I think it's quite freeing and quite motivating for you to kind of go. Well, all right then, let's get on and do something. Let's use today. Let's have fun today. rather than hoping that one day things will be better. I can see how some people might interpret it differently though.

Yes, I feel this is ironic because the thing that's held me back the most with writing books or speaking out is because I thought I was too young and no one would listen. Yeah. Well, I don't have enough life experience, so people won't take me seriously. So I'll just wait until I'm in my 30s and then I'll start doing it. But then, yeah, I started changing my mindset thinking, I've got a lot to say, actually.

And so in my late 20s, finally cottoned on to the fact that I could do that and started writing. But yeah, there's always something that we hide behind to hold us back. But you're right. We are our best today.

Just go for it. we are and also what you've said is really interesting because you know i was gonna sort of make a joke of it and say oh one day you'll wake up and you'll be old and irrelevant because you know there's that that fear of like being too old to be relevant right but but the fact is that we whatever age we are we have peers so you know you as a what did you say 31 year old 31 years you'll be very relevant to other women in their 30s,

but maybe not so relevant to someone who's 18 or someone who's 75. But do you know what I mean? We always have peers. We always have a group of people who are actually very similar to us, who we will be very relevant to. And that's regardless of our age. I love that. I think I'll keep that. We've always got years. I've got to write that down.

But actually, my co-authors helped me with that as well, because the book was taking me so long to finish, and it was so big. And they said, why are you struggling so much? And I said, I'm trying to appeal to everyone. I want everyone to feel included. And so I was bringing in all these different demographics and trying to relate to everybody. And they said, who are you writing I said, everybody, I want this to reach everybody. And they said, just write for you.

Write it to yourself as if you're the one who picks it up and buys it and reads it. And that helped me so much because if I'm writing for me, then I know it's from the heart. And then anyone who relates to it knows I'm being authentic. That's really good advice as well. It was. They're very smart women. They are. Stick with them. And also, you need to maybe write the next book about the aging process. Oh, yes. Yeah, why not?

You're never too young to do that. Well, look, where can people get the book? So I've got QR codes that I can share. Also, they can get it directly from my publisher's website, Bowerbird Publishing. But I've also got an Instagram page and a Facebook page out there. So happy to connect with people in any way. Fantastic. Well, what we'll do, we'll add all the links to Mary's book onto this podcast in the notes. So that you can get hold of the book and have a look at it.

You've been my first guinea pig and you've been a wonderful guinea pig. So thank you so much for joining me today and giving me this real baptism of fire of actually having someone to kind of chat to on the podcast. But I think it's really added another dimension to it. And for any of the listeners out there, if you have any suggestions of anybody else I might interview or any other subject you want me to cover, I'd be, as usual, more than interested to hear those.

But I think for now, I will end it there and say thank you, Mary, so much. And I can't wait to see a copy of the book. I'm sure it'll be fantastic. It'll be on its way to you soon. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thanks, Mary. Bye-bye. Bye.

Thank you so much for your company today. I would also love it if you could follow this podcast. It really does mean a lot to me. Also, we have a six-week online Change Your Relationship with Food course that you can take. Just visit www.acfeb.com and click on the ACFEB and Me courses link. There's also a journal and a workbook available on Amazon, and you'll find that link in our bio. I really hope you can join me again next week. Goodbye. Music.