Success at ANY Size Ft. @kathleencameron

Thank you so happy to be here. If you missed it, I had Kathleen on my podcast The Truthius Life, and we talked all about how this woman made fifteen million dollars in two years. You heard that right, fifteen million in two years. And best of all, she did it by helping other women up level and live their best lives. So she is a woman that is is helping all of us, and her story of how she did that is really incredible. So I'll link that in the show

notes below. And Kathleen, does that feel like an okay intro for you? Yes, that's a beautiful intro. You know the thing that really makes it so special is that there's nothing special about me. And so as you hear that, you're going to think, oh, there, there's something she's got this like crazy education that taught her how to run a business. No, I'm a registered nurse by background who decided I wanted to live an extraordinary life. And here I am creating a right before my eyes. So anybody

can do anything. And hopefully that's the message you'll get today. And you know, that's that's kind of our audience. You know, we do have people that are nurses and every day, you know, people that are going to work every day and working really hard and feeling just stuck in so many ways. And the reason I wanted to bring Kathleen on Out Way. We talked a little bit of my podcast about it, but I wanted to save it for Outweigh is because Kathleen mentioned that she's been dieting and

struggling with her weight her entire life. And it was the same time that she healed that that she also leaped forward in her business. So what is your relationship to your body and food and how long did that go on for? Oh my gosh, I have a book that I actually wrote a little bit about the transformation process in my perspective or perception of my body, you know, and the path that I took to retrain myself to

see myself differently. But in that book I talked about, you know, the first time that I started to starve myself was when I was in grade seven, so like,

what's that twelve years old. I remember somebody told me if you drink a lot of water, it will flush the fat out, and that you know, you eat an apple a day and you'll lose right, And so every single day would throw my lunch out and I drink water all day every day, and out of the bathroom all day, and then I would eat one apple during the day, and you know, I started to lose weight, and then I started to feel a little bit better

about myself. But then I stopped doing that, and it just kind of reinforced this thing my whole life of just not having an ideal body. And I remember the first time, actually somebody told me that I shouldn't want to diet. I didn't know. My body wasn't good good air quotes. You can't see me if you're doing audio. But you know, I didn't know my body wasn't good

until people started to tell me that. And so for years and years of my life right now and thirty nine, I'm almost forty years old, and up until thirty seven years, every single year on my birthday and I blew up that candle. The thing that I wished for was to be skinny every year. I think that started probably about eleven twelve years old, and my thirty seventh birthday was the first year that I didn't ask for that, and that was after I started to work on me. I've

lost large sums of weight in my life. I've lost eighty pounds, sixty five pounds, I lost a hundred and two pounds. And after I lost that a hundred two pounds, I felt the best that I had felt because people were telling me they were proud of me. They were telling me that I looked good, that I was in inspiration, and it just reinforced a belief in me that I'm better thinner, I'm more successful thinner, I'm more liked thinner when I look this way, I'm more approved or enjoyed.

I'm better on people's palates. And then I got sick. So this is the thing that many of you listeners probably have experienced where you do things to look a certain way that caused you to experience health issues. And so I lost so much weight so fast, and I was starving myself, I was over exercising. I started to faint. I started to faint three to five days a week, and I had to go off work and I couldn't be a with my kids, and I had my driver's

license taken away for nine months. And I started eating more food and I was told I couldn't exercise. So guess what happened. The weight that I lost came back, But what also came back was all of the weight of other people's opinions and the judgments. And so I actually ended up feeling like a failure. And I started feeling worse and worse and worse. And so when I started studying manifestation the power of the mind, I started examining some of these beliefs, and I thought, where did

this belief come from? That thinner is better? And I noticed that the conversation wasn't about my health, but about how I looked. And I realized that all those times that I had done things like eating healthier foods or moving my body or drinking lots of water. Even drinking something like green tea was always to make me thinner, to look different, and it wasn't actually about my health. So I spent a solid four weeks um really examining that one belief of why did I think that life

would be better if I was thinner? Where did that come from? And what if I believe that I could be successful now? And so successful means money, yeah, it means success in my business, yeah, but it also means successful relationships. It also means expressing myself fully in my life and not hiding anymore. What would that be like to not hide anymore and hide on social media per se, but also to hide my body. You know, I had worn big, baggy clothes for years to hide something that

I was ashamed of. And so I just started examining all these things. And then I started to notice all the successful women in my life and around the world that you can see on social media that were plus size. Well,

how did they do it? If this belief was real, then how is it that all of these other women are experiencing so much happiness, enjoying their life and they're in a bigger sized body And so I changed that belief and I started telling myself, I am beautiful now in the body that I am in, I am successful now, and I just kept moving with that feeling. So so today I'm talking to you, and I am like, officially probably the biggest sized body that I have been in,

and I love myself more than I probably have. The last time I loved myself like this was probably when I was like three years old. To just live freely in your body without that constant energy being put forth to change and no shame, you know, this is the biggest thing that's gone now, Lisa is like, I have no shame about my body whatsoever. I'm actually really really proud of it, and I, um, I don't want want to look thinner, you know. I actually now ask myself, like,

what's it like to be healthy? Huh? Like wouldn't wouldn't that be nice? I'm playing around with, like what are my healthy habits? Not to get thin, but just to take care of my vessel, you know, And that's a completely different conversation. It is a completely different conversation. And you know, as a nurse by training, I know you're not practicing right now. I think that's a really blurry place because health and medicine, you know, so much as

rooted in weight. So as a health practitioner, what is it like to really take a look at that number and say I can be healthy now, because health is about my behaviors, not that number. Oh well, you know, I look back at my time in healthcare and I do notice some underlying biases that were in the health care system around people in bigger bodies, and you know, it's this feeling like, well, you're sick because of the choices that you made in your life. And that's you know,

that's a place of judgment. And I think when we remove all judgments of ourselves and of others, we truly come from a place where we just care. We just care about you. It doesn't matter how you ended up here, but we want to help you get to where you want to go. Um. I think that is holistic care is like helping the entire individual achieve whatever their goals are. But health for me has to do with the things that I do on a daily basis and not how

I look. You know, I read this beautiful article a few weeks ago, and it really talked about that people really think that you can see someone's health on the outside. You can see um what's going on inside just by seeing their outside. But we know and more and more evidence is just suggesting just how much of your daily habits are tied to the health of your body versus what you look like. And so there are people that you know to this day will continue to judge me.

And I think that I'm doing things is to make myself bigger on purpose, so that I'm really unhealthy. But it doesn't matter anymore because I'm over here instead of eating my emotions about the judgments that people make on me, I'm over here just walking every single day, drinking a lot of water, getting sunshine, and just existing in a beautiful way by my own choices. So it's clear that your your mental state has really become free and disentangled

from the realities of this world. But you are a modern woman living in a modern world, and I assume you are faced with reminders that the world wasn't created for you. On my podcast, you mentioned shopping at retailers and only being able to buy their accessories. That hit

me like a like a ton of bricks. Can you talk a little bit about that for a second, Yes, yes, you know, as I start to become more successful and as I start to love myself more, I want to express myself more, Like I am starting to fall in love with fashion. I love to wear like different types of outfits and look different and wear color and different patterns and stuff. And so the desire is there, but the actual attainment of it isn't as easy because of

the stores right now in their sizing. So not a lot of designer stores have bigger sizes, and if they do, you have to get it custom made, which is like two to three times more money. Uh. And and the average woman doesn't have to three times more money to custom design their entire wardrobe. Um. And then those stores that are having the bigger sizes come in the plus size. You know, you'll buy a two X or a three

X and it's literally an XL. You know, it's it's not actually true to size or true to form to all women bodies. And so you know, there are moments where it can be frustrating for me. But I don't want to stay in the muck of that. I don't want to be upset about that and allow frustration to become the dominant feeling. I want to say, Okay, what can I do to contribute to them shifting it. How can I actually like start to advocate a little bit more in that, and then how can I encourage the

industry to change a little bit more. So, you know, I'm really starting to play around with the idea of maybe designing my own clothes in inclusive sizing, and you know, inclusive sizing, but we don't want to just take a size zero and make it a size twenty two or twenty four because the body shape is very different. So we want to really make sure that the shapes can fit all different types of bodies and so not just a standard approach, but truly individual. And so I see

it like that, there's headway. You know, the industry is changing, and we have some people that are very vocal that are changing the industry in a beautiful way. I think Lizzo right off the hop, what she's doing is so beautiful to bring awareness to body positivity. But I think

we we still have a ways to go. Yeah, and what about in the medical setting when you're faced with your own doctor's appointments and just knowing the medical field, and a lot of our listeners have mentioned that when they go to the doctor, even though they're, you know, making peace with their own body, the doctor will tell them that they need to lose weight. Even if all their markers of health such as cholesterol and their blood work are totally fine. The doctors are telling them to

lose weight. Is that something that you've faced and how do you deal with kind of that incongruence of your life? Yeah, it is something that still comes up, for sure, and so the best way to approach that is by asking questions. You know, the more inquisitive that you are, and the more that you challenge some of these things. You don't have to argue with somebody, but ask a question, you know, just have them open their mind a little bit, loosen

the model, so to speak. So they've gone through schooling that has taught them to tell you that, you know, it is something that they have learned. And so the only way to unlearned something is for us to just loosen that model a little bit and kind of plant to see to something else. So I would ask the question, then, Okay, so my blood work was good, right? Yeah? I exercise regularly.

You know, I have good mobility and flexibility. You know, I drink water, every day, I'm eating a fairly nutritious diet, So why do I need to lose weight? You know, I would just go deeper um and ask the question, and then if they provide you with some sort of explanation about X y Z and x y Z, just ask for more and and then I always ask, but what if that's not the case? You know, what if

that's not true? So they may say to you. I remember this when I was working in long term care, they did this lesson for us about how people who carry extra weight on their body are more likely to end up in a wheelchair or a walker ten years earlier than someone that isn't carrying extra weight on their body. And so they were generalizing to teach you a lesson right of the importance of being in a thinner body. And at that time I was like, that's pretty convincing.

But now what I would actually say is, Okay, how many people have had extra weight on their body their entire lives and are in their nineties and they're not in a wheelchair or a walker. That's what I want to know. I want to see that possibility. I want

to see that explanation instead of the opposite generalization. So I'm always, uh, I look on the bright side of all things that I see all the possibilities, and I don't want to take on somebody else's assumption of how my life might look, So I want to build that for myself. So being inquisitive and asking questions is key. That is such a great tip and something I've become really passionate about in the last two years has been

really finding my voice in the health care space. Being married to a doctor and also just being a patient. I've really realized that as somebody who is confident and knows a lot about health and and is empowered when mean that that doctor's office chair, I oftentimes lose my voice. You know. I'm afraid to look stupid. I'm afraid to question their demeanor and offend them. But I think that like the tool, the specific tools that you just provided, is a great place to kind of have those words

ready to jump out of your mouth. Because I've personally shut down in a doctor's office and I've never experienced wait stigma, so I can only imagine what it feels like to know you're being judged, to almost know what they're going to say, and you know, just lose yourself in that moment. So thank you for those amazing tools to really show us that we can use our voice,

because we certainly should be advocating for ourselves. And that's the thing, Like doctors learn A plus B equal see right, But what if there's more to that equation that they don't see? And being inquisitive is the best way to disarm somebody and open up the conversation much more broadly. So I think that's great, ad Ice. I really really

appreciate that. I think our listeners are probably like breathing deeply for the first time, hearing you speak, hopefully going to your page already, Kathleen Cameron, feeling the energy that you're exuding, watching you take up space, hearing it through your voice. And as great as that is, I want to know, do you have bad body image days when you put on a pair of pants that don't fit, or you walk into a store to try something on, you know, do those thoughts creep back in for you?

Oh gosh, yes, it's something that is still more natural because it was where my thinking was set for so many years, you know, looking at myself in the mirror was where I observed the most self hate in myself. And so when I started this journey, you know, I like to use the term like, become an observer of your own thinking. It will tell you a lot about how you see you. And so I would get in front of the mirror and I would just listen to the things that I would be saying to myself in

my head, you know, about my body. And I realized I would never say those things to my worst enemy. Why am I saying them to myself? You know, if my best friend called me and said all these nasty things about herself like that, I would be like, what do you do and stop that? You know that's not nice? Like, but I would do it to myself. And so that's the kind of the natural thing that happens. But I've now made the decision to fight against it because those

are not my thoughts. Those are the thoughts of all of the people around me over the course of the thirty years that told me that I should look this way and that how I looked was bad. The magazines, social media, TV, doctors, family and friends that told me I needed to go on a diet. That's all their thoughts that I took on. And so now I'm a creator of my own thoughts. So I intentionally go in front of the mirror and I look at all the

beautiful things that I see when I look. And it might have just been my eyes the color of my eyes that first time. But now I can actually look at some of the roles and be like, well, this role is actually beautiful and this role might actually in fact look sexy, could it be? You know? So like playing around with that idea too is really key. But it does come back to me in moments. But I notice those moments where it comes back, it's not coming

from inside me, It's coming from outside me. So it's a post, it's a comment somebody makes on my post about how I should manifest a thinner body or something like that. You know, I should manifest some white loss. We manifest what we want, good sir. And at this moment in my life, I don't want to look any different than I look today because today looks good, you know. And so that's how I kind of address it. And

things like going shopping. I feel it when I go shopping. Uh, And so I tell myself that the fashion world and it's just not up to speed yet, and there will be a day soon where I can shop anywhere in any place, and maybe it's a in my own clothes, you know, my own clothing line that I can be sporting everywhere. But I just make sure that there's no judgment coming from myself. When we judge ourselves and when we shame ourselves for the way that we look, we

truly don't understand that we are not our bodies. We are in our bodies, and so the way our body looks does not define us, doesn't define our intelligence, it doesn't define our personality, and it doesn't define our worthiness. And so I know I'm a spiritual being in this body, and so I need to recognize and give myself grace and just know that I'm worthy to exist here and it doesn't matter if I take up a little bit more space than someone else, that I deserve it just

as much. Yeah, I think it's a great image for all of our listeners to take a moment, and you know, I think we all want to arrive at the place that Kathleen clearly is in. And if you're not there yet, you know that's okay. But imagine what it would be like to exist within your body rather than from outside of it, because that is a great description of although I've always occupied a thin body with my relationship to food and and disordered eating, That's exactly how I describe

how I was. I was outside of my body, and now I'm within it. And when you are living from within, you know exactly what you need when you need it. You want to take care of your vessel. Like you mentioned earlier, I love that word vessel, and the lens of life is just vastly different. And and to hear somebody like Kathleen really say that, I hope reminds us that it's really possible, and not just possible, it's possible

in a short amount of time. Kathleen, What is it like to really see that your most successful business, your your these last two years came with accepting your body. It's really beautiful, actually, and and it makes me feel really proud because I've done a lot of things in my life that I was proud of, but the pride came from outside. It was it was from making other people proud of me, which then made me have pride.

This time, I have pride that I took something that made me you know, I saw my body as a liability for much of my life, and it made me feel inferior. I allowed it to be inferior and made me less than, and I took it and I made it my superpower. And so I have a post actually coming up. I think it's tomorrow. You'll you'll see how I truly believe that being plus sized in this body is now my superpower because I have overcome something that

has made me so much stronger. And you know, it's not to say that this body might look different later in life. You know, I may come to a point where some weight is released, but it will be released because I choose for it to be released because of my own desires. And it's a desire to be healthy and nothing to do with looking a certain way about vanity or about beauty or about appearance, but truly coming

from a desire to take care of myself. And so if that day comes, amazing and if not, amazing too, and it's just it's just releasing all the expectations. And to have built an incredible business inspiring other women to love the bodies they're in now and create the life of their dreams is really really beautiful. And I'm just I'm honored to have been given this platform to be honest, and I've just stepped right into it. And you'll you'll see more of that from me for sure as we

go through. And by the time this episode comes out, that post, if it comes out tomorrow, will already be live, so you could head to Kathleen's page to read it and learn more about her. You know, Kathleen, I did tell you, um when you were a guest on my podcast, that I was going to read The Secret again, which I know is like the very basic intro to manifestation, but I was getting a lot of signs that I

should get to know manifestation a little bit more. And I remember reading this book when I was much younger, before my spiritual journey had begun, and just kind of thinking, Okay, this is, you know, complete bogus hoguage. I don't even understand it. So I did reread it and I have

a lot of thoughts about it. But the one takeaway that pertains to this conversation was having the realization that so many of our listeners, so many people in this space, are so focused on not wanting to diet, that they end up dieting. Does that make sense, And I realized in my own messaging that I'm contributing to this conversation and I don't want to anymore. So by calling myself an anti diet dietitian something that I've done for the last couple of years to kind of let people know

I'm a safe space. I realized that so many people's headspace are circling. Their focus is more I don't want to diet. I don't want to diet that they die. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally, it totally makes sense. And you know how I I've gotten to plates where I'm from, moved the idea that something is bad. So if something is bad, it has a negative energy. It

holds a negative energy. So when I go out and get an order of French fries, let's say, and I say this is bad, I shouldn't do this right now, I'm in a negative energy and so as I eat that food in the negative energy, it is more likely to then make me feel sluggish and for me to feel really thirsty from the salt afterwards, and maybe to feel some indigestion or some heartburn after eating it, maybe not be able to sleep, and then have thoughts of guilt as I go. So for me, it's about eating

when I'm hungry. It's about eating what I want to eat, but being in an energy of this is fuel for my body right now, and I'm going to do it. So no more this is bad or this is good, or I should eat this and I should eat that. It's what would I love to eat? I actually have? This is so funny. I'm gonna tell you what my salad story. But I have hated salad my whole life. So when I was a kid, I had a babysitter who forced me to eat salt caesar salad. I sat at the table for hours. I couldn't do it. I

was like gagging on it. So I have not been able to eat salad my whole life. So this year I thought to myself, you know, people eat salads in front of me, and I think that looks good, but I can't eat it. I don't like it. And I thought, what would I love? I would love to like salad. I would not because I think salad is gonna help me lose weight, not because I think it's good for you, but because I just have a desire to eat a salad.

It just looks really fresh and good, and so I told myself that I like salad over and over again. And then I went to dinner and my sister ordered a caesar salad and I said, let me try and buy to that, and she was like what I said, Yeah, I think I might like it now, and I tried to buy it and I was like, that's good. I think I might like that. So then the next time I went out for dinner, I got a caesar salad. I only ate about a third of it because it took me a little while to adjust. But now I

love salad. It is like delicious, and so I actually feel like I go out and when I order a salad for lunch or for dinner, I feel so great. Not because I'm eating a salad to lose some weight, but because I love salad. I love this story so much. So many people in this space when they're like, Okay, I want to quit dieting. I want to be body positive. I've had people ask me I want to wear a one piece bathing suit, but is that not being body positive?

Like do I need to wear the bikini? Because you know, give an f you to to diet culture and reading the book, it occurred to me to your same point here is like there is no good or bad. There's no bikini is good, one piece is bad. There's only what will be good for you and what makes you feel good from the inside out. And I had changed my bio to say mind body dietitian awhile ago, but I couldn't put the reasoning and words to use. But

it was like, anti diet is negative. If we speak so much about what we're not, we are not what we are. And I think that that sorry to kind of go back there for a second, but I just want our listeners to know that when we focus so hard on on not doing something, we do it. So if you focus so hard on what you do want to do, that becomes it. And that was my huge takeaway from the book and from from your work and

all of that. And it's funny because my story regarding making peace with food also involves a salad and two similar vein. It was this idea that I needed to have a salad every you know, Monday after I had a weekend of you know, more gluttony and indulgent foods, and then one day I woke up on a Monday after like actually listening to my body all weekend and I was like, I want a salad. This is not and I have to I was like, my body is

craving a salad. And that's when I realized that our bodies can be trusted and that salad, you know, can be consumed for reasons other than punishments, right, Like we cant peace with food and flavor and enjoy it when we take away this idea that they need to be consumed for body manipulation as it was kind of initially

served to you in that negative way. Totally, And I think the key messages with anything in life when it comes to your diet or how you move your body, or the fluids that you drink, even the way that you interact in relationships or in your business. What if you took the judgment away out of it all. So nothing is good or bad until you give it meaning, and so take away the meaning and you free yourself completely.

The experience is only what it is based on your perception, and so change your perception and just change your whole entire life. So I wouldn't even be able to define how I am right now when it comes to body positivity or activist or advocate or whatever. I'm Kathleen Cameron and the body she's in right now. Just absolutely loving everything about my life, my body, my impact, and the things that I put into my body and the way I move my body. And it doesn't matter what anybody

else thinks but me beautiful. And I just want to quickly end with one of your Instagram posts that says, stop fighting it, stop debating its truth. Just stop and allow it all to come. Believe in your own conviction and it will come. If you want to be free, stop thinking restriction. If you want to be healed, thank wholeness. If you want more good in your life, embody the good all around you. If you want more joy, you must first experience all the joy that is available to you.

You cannot draw love into your consciousness through hate. You cannot see beauty through ugliness in or here harmony while your ears are filled with discord. And I think that kind of just sums up who you are and the work that you've done and the work that you are doing in the world. So thank you for your impact, Thank you for living your most honest life and really showing us that a life free of dieting outweighs at all.

It really does. Thanks for having me. Of course, we'll put all of Kathleen's information below so you can check out her work, her website, her amazing Instagram platform. Obviously, this is an energy that we all want to be around so we can continue to attract the life that we deserve. Yes, absolutely, thank you, Thank you,