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Episode 5: It's My Body, I Can Cry If I Want To
72 Plays2 years ago
Alright Rule Breakers, saddle up because this one is a doozy. You might want to grab some tissues before you hit play. On this week's episode Sarah and Jaimie dive into their history of body image, how they relate to their bodies and where their journeys have led them to today.
Candid and raw, these real life experiences are what all women can relate to and it's time to shed some light on how we can move forward.
Be sure to subscribe and give a 5 star review wherever you get your podcasts.
xoxo
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Transcript
Introduction and Personal Wellness
00:00:00
Speaker
hello Jamie and welcome we're on the air you're live on the air tonight for the sexy midnight show so pull up a seat lovers we're gonna get real
00:00:15
Speaker
That was a little, I liked it. I mean, okay. Um, what are you drinking tonight? Uh, tonight we have a Trader Joe's organic Moroccan mint green tea. Love that for you. Are you still no alcohol? Still no alcohol. Three weeks, no alcohol. How do you feel? It honestly, I feel really great. My sleep has been really good and I don't wake up with that like guilty feeling of like,
00:00:40
Speaker
I shouldn't have done that. I don't feel good. The alcohol brain fog. And that I've just been reading a lot about how even if you drink like one to two times a week, it raises your cortisol levels for the entire week. Yeah. So really, you're just fucked for the full week. I mean, what happens when we're kind of fucked either way, like we're stressed, regardless? Well, at that point, just choose to live your best life as you are drinking white wine.
00:01:09
Speaker
I have a confession to make actually. Oh, yeah. This isn't just white wine. What did you put in it? Ginger ale. No. Hi. It's like a cocktail. This is like your, your coke in red wine. I know. I mean, I don't do that, but I do root beer in red wine. No, ma'am.
00:01:32
Speaker
I know, I'm not a good person is basically what we're finding out. Like if we were on the show with a good place, you would definitely be in the bad place. Yeah, just for that fact. Violating the sanctity of wine. Yeah. Seventh Circle of Hell, Jamie Ridgewood, sentenced.
00:01:54
Speaker
I am starting at a new gym tomorrow, which I guess this kind of pertains to what we're talking about today. So yeah, I'm very pumped about it. Is it just like a Planet Fitness, LA Fitness, or is it more of like a CrossFit vibe? It's a CrossFit vibe. Oh shit. It's not, they used to be CrossFit and now they consider themselves sort of an amalgam of many things, but it's definitely, like you walk in, it feels like a CrossFit gym. I've never done CrossFit. It's fun.
00:02:22
Speaker
I think it'd be really fun, but I did Orange Theory the other day and it fucked me up for a few days. Also, I have a really bad Achilles tendon and that was very angry for a full week. Just one?
00:02:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's just my left side, which I think is all connected to like the fact that I tore that hamstring. Oh my God. Um, had surgery on it. Like my legs have always been tight even as a dancer when I was stretching, obviously like every day of the week. So I am now having to incorporate yoga and daily stretching because I really don't need that thing snapping in the middle of wedding season. So basically you're doing great is what you're saying.
00:03:01
Speaker
I'm doing so good. So good. All right, should we dive in? I suppose so. I feel like today's gonna be a hefty, hefty boy. It is. And this is like the day where I regret not drinking wine because I feel like it'll be emotional a little. Yeah, I feel like it's just like I was thinking about it's like, Oh, yeah, I have such great things to contribute. And then I was like,
00:03:26
Speaker
Oh, and then I think about my dark history with eating habits and tea is going to be spilled tonight. Hello, friends. Welcome to the Rule Followers podcast. My name is Jamie and I'm Sarah. This is a podcast where we examine commonly held beliefs, life rules, self-imposed and society imposed and deconstruct them, re-examine them and hopefully live a little bit more in the gray.
Exploring Body Image
00:03:50
Speaker
Today's rule is about
00:03:52
Speaker
body image. It's a big topic, so really we're just brushing the surface, I'm sure, but we felt like we've been having enough key-on-versations about it off mic that we should have one on the mic. On the mic, on the ones and twos. I just thought we could dive in, unless you're not ready to dive in, in which case I can talk a little bit history stuff.
00:04:17
Speaker
I full on have my, my spandex latex speedo ready to go off the high board into the pool. That is this topic. So however you want to start it, I'm in. Great. Let's just dive in then. Tell me about your body journey, my friend.
00:04:37
Speaker
A lot of this is very similar to what I feel like a lot of women have gone through. And I feel like we're gonna have a lot of the same themes. But growing up, I remember always watching what I was eating. And I would say I didn't have the best family support when it came to body image and how I felt about it. And obviously, my parents didn't know a ton about nutrition, like we were eating things that were highly processed.
00:05:02
Speaker
My mom thought feeding us Yoplait yogurt was really good for us but that thing is literally just like a soda in a yogurt form. So I think having grown up as a dancer I was hyper aware of my body from a very early age because you were constantly obviously in tights and a leotard so that leaves very little to the imagination and I was a chubbier kid and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
00:05:24
Speaker
But when you are put next to other little girls who are super tiny, and I mean, I went through a very awkward phase, I was just very self conscious about everything. And one thing I really didn't appreciate about my dance studio when I was going there was that they would measure you for
00:05:45
Speaker
end of recital costumes in front of everyone. And they would call out your numbers. And I don't remember it happening in every class, but I remember one very specifically, she measured my waist. And it was just really embarrassing because I was I went through puberty a lot earlier than my peers. And so I had already started gaining, you know, chubby baby weight that happens. And so I was in fifth or sixth grade. And I just remember being like so ashamed of my body.
00:06:12
Speaker
and always wanting to be on a diet or something to that magnitude. And it didn't get any better as I got into high school, into high school dance team, because then it's like, not only are we talking about hormones, but then we're talking about boys and we're talking about boyfriends. And, you know, we were in the era of MySpace where you're posting photos. And so it was just a lot about body image. Honestly, I would say nothing compared to what is going on now for kids who have Snapchat.
00:06:37
Speaker
and Instagram in their faces all day. But it was still bad enough to where there was never a moment during the day at school that I was not thinking about my body. People are fucking cruel. Like I remember in middle school, I had dated this boy and we had broken up and someone who I very much trusted and had a crush on at the time and claimed he claimed to be my best guy friend, literally paired up with this guy to bully me about my weight. So I was
00:07:04
Speaker
We were in PE class and I go up to back. Cause we're doing like softball or baseball segment in the spring. And from the pitcher's mound, this boy, I dated chance, the song, holy cow. It's a cow move it over. Oh my God. In front of the entire class. And then walking down the hallway, they would, we had cause like got milk had a lot of like campaigns during that time.
00:07:28
Speaker
So we had those posters in school and any poster that had a cow on it, they would try to take it off of the wall and pin it to my backpack. Holy shit. Yeah. So it was really hard. And then I had a bully in elementary school who would literally come up and just punch me in the stomach to show me that he that my stomach was flabby and that he could. He's like, I literally my hand like disappears in there. It's so chubby.
00:07:55
Speaker
Oh my god. Yeah. Sarah, this is traumatic. Yeah, I don't think I've ever told you these things. No, you haven't. So that was extremely difficult, just because again, like so not only am I being bullied in school,
00:08:12
Speaker
but then I'm also still a dancer. And like being a dancer, I was extremely athletic and I look back at photos and I was nowhere near chubby or overweight at all, but I was made to feel as if I was morbidly obese. So then moving on to my college years, I was a professional dancer for a sports team and it was kind of even worse than it wasn't like what you think of when you think of like reality TV and like doing weigh-ins and things like that.
00:08:38
Speaker
But I was amongst a team of women who were all incredible, like absolutely wonderful people, but they were all naturally very thin and very lean. And that was not my natural body type. So when I was on that sports team for two years, we were sponsored by Gold's Gym and I lived right next to the Gold's Gym on Capitol Hill. So I would literally work out every single day.
00:09:01
Speaker
And then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we had practice for two hours, so cardio for two hours, but I would show up to the gym two hours prior to do an hour of lifting and an hour of running. And I still could not get my body to be as small as I wanted. I was definitely dabbling in anorexia and bulimia and I would binge eat and then I wouldn't eat. And for auditions, when I first joined that team, I lost 28 pounds in six weeks.
00:09:27
Speaker
for auditions. Oh my God. I did this by eating a thousand calories and running six miles every other day around Greenlink. And then it all kind of culminated in a really tragic way where I was auditioning for my third season. And at that point I was kind of wanting to maybe leave the team just because management had gotten really different. They didn't treat the dancers as well as they used to. And I was just kind of over it. I was kind of ready to move on with things. But my best friend Emily was
00:09:57
Speaker
moving into college, like we were moving in together for college, and she wanted to join the team. So I was like, Okay, I'll try it one more year. That'll be it. So we go to the auditions
Sarah's Dance Journey and Body Image
00:10:04
Speaker
together. I am newly dating my now husband, and she's been dating Austin forever. And so we plan the night of the auditions, we're all going to go out to dinner and celebrate.
00:10:14
Speaker
and then I didn't make the team. And this particular woman who I believe had it out for me because she didn't like me as a person on our team pulled me aside after everyone is shocked and odd that my number has not been called because I was a captain the previous year. So I didn't make it back. And then she pulls me aside and she goes,
00:10:36
Speaker
So yeah, the judges didn't even know you were an alumni. And I really just don't want you to go and get an eating disorder out of this, but your body has changed a lot. And it just kind of is what it is. And I was like, what? I'll try not to get emotional. That was the end of dance for me.
00:11:00
Speaker
And it had been a huge part of my life, my entire life. I danced for 18 years up until that point. And it just felt like something that got ripped away from me. And I've never had the same relationship with my body as I did when I was a dancer because I was free when I was dancing. And I've never felt that freedom since then. Sarah, that is heartbreaking. Yeah.
00:11:26
Speaker
my chest feels tight. Like I'm so sad. I'm so sorry that happened to you. It was, it is truly devastating. Like I know we talk about like in the middle of the night when your brain is like, let's go back to the worst moments over the last decade. That is definitely one of them. I don't know. I feel like I want to give it a moment because it's so like what happened to you is so horrible. It's something that I have
00:11:50
Speaker
I process in therapy. But truly in the last few years, I have come to a great place with my body. Like I might be a little bit heavier than I than I prefer to be. But I know that my body does incredible things for me. She goes through seasons just as I do. And I am not my body. If anything, I just want to treat her well because I want to be able to move when I'm older. But she does not define me. And I think that it took me going through all of that wreckage to then
00:12:19
Speaker
have that re that self discovery of that. Because yeah, it's, it's really hard, especially I think, beyond just the body stuff, I think it was the deep association of body image with being a dancer and like, having grown up being a captain of every team I've ever been on and being looked up to as a dancer and as a leader, it just felt so embarrassing. I was so embarrassed and mortified and then to have to live
00:12:47
Speaker
with Emily that first year when she was on the team, like I, that took a toll on our friendship and it wasn't her fault. Nothing was her fault. It was just really hard to watch. You know, it felt like my baby sister take my dream away and it's not that, but in my mind for a while it was that. And obviously I wouldn't trade Emily for the fricking world. I love her to bits and pieces, but it was a lot.
00:13:11
Speaker
to process while living with her and she would come home from practice and she would go to the games and she would have the uniform and I, you know, thankfully was very distracted with photography school at that point. So photography really took root in my heart when I no longer had dance. And so I feel like I've just really poured myself into photography the last 10 years because dances just felt kind of tarnished for me.
00:13:35
Speaker
Okay, so I'm going to talk about my story, but I wanted to ask as a follow up, recently you started getting back into dance, right? Like going to sort of extracurricular fun. Yeah. So how's that felt?
00:13:52
Speaker
Honestly, it has been so much fun. It's just been fun. So my one of my previous dance coaches, Ashley Nassett, teaches at a local studio here. And so every so often she'll do a couple of adult drop ins. And it's just so fun. It's like riding a bike. It all comes back to me. And I feel like because it's literally a room full of moms because we're all at this age now where most of us all have kids.
00:14:16
Speaker
I feel like there's no judgment about body types in there. Like we're all just wearing, you know, whatever clothes we got spit up on that day. And it's just been, um, it's been a really beautiful reintroduction. She recently moved it to a night that's hard for me to get to. Um, but when I can, I do. And it's such a gift. That's awesome. I'm glad you've been able to do that. And I hope it brings like that sense of freedom and joy that you got. Yeah.
00:14:44
Speaker
But enough about my sob story. Let's dive into yours. You made me cry, I honestly. I think you're right in saying that talking about this stuff can feel or it can bring up all of the embarrassment we felt in that moment. Not a lot of us like share a lot of these very specific things that led us to how we view our bodies today. So thank you for sharing that.
Jamie's Body Image Reflections
00:15:09
Speaker
Yeah, I've said I think in a previous podcast or group in a home where my mom was very weight conscious, she was very fit most of her life became disabled shortly after adopting me and couldn't work out the same anymore and gained a lot of weight became obese. And she and her sisters all my female cousins like everybody talks about weight in every conversation she was
00:15:33
Speaker
very much a diet like a yo-yo diet or always dieting but then would have like her bag of chocolate chips that she was eating out of all day you know that like hating her not hate it's so funny because when I bring up to her like I watched you hate yourself she'd be like I didn't ever hated myself and I was like
00:15:49
Speaker
Jeez, you talked about your body all the time like you didn't like it. Anyway, I have always been bigger than my peers and probably partly genetics, all the women in my birth family are obese. You know, my mom used while I was, while she was pregnant with me, so who knows what effects that has had. But yeah, anyway.
00:16:11
Speaker
Point being, I've always been bigger. Similar to you, I have this very stark memory of being in fourth grade at a sleepover. All the girls decided it would be fun to jump on a scale. And even then, I knew, I was like, this is not going to be good.
00:16:29
Speaker
Even in fourth grade I can still remember to this day like everyone hopped on the scale and I maybe I get this wrong but I want to say like everyone was around like 60 pounds. I got on scale and was 91 pounds. I can still remember that to this day the exact number.
00:16:45
Speaker
and like I remember looking at everyone and they weren't laughing at me necessarily because I had kind of tried to over blow it like I'm gonna be so much heavier than you guys you already know that but I remember turning around and looking at them and being like see thankfully I think they moved on but it was just this horrible
00:17:02
Speaker
Horrible moment. And I remember in kindergarten going up to one of the teacher's aides and giving her my cookie and she said, why are you giving me your cookie? And I said, well, I need to go on a diet. And that was in kindergarten when I was like five or six.
00:17:17
Speaker
And she I remember her saying like you're too young to be on a diet, but obviously I had seen it at home My dad versus my mom. My dad was the same weight since he got married He has been the same weight since he got married Wow 160 pounds He was in the military right before he got married in Vietnam and literally I remember growing up every single morning I would wake up and my dad would get up at 6 a.m And he would do I would call it his like military routine in the morning. He would do like
00:17:47
Speaker
a hundred crunches, a hundred push-ups, jumping jacks. And then on top of that, he was a farrier. So he did a very physical job. But anyway, all that to say, my dad was a very fit guy and I think part of it was his mom was very much overweight. And then when she died,
00:18:06
Speaker
I don't know what it's called, The Corner, or whoever found her, whoever comes to the house to take care of a dead body. Okay. Put on her death certificate, obesity-related death. What? And I think that attached in his head, he so equated obesity with his mom dying that he was always, I would say, passive aggressively or lightly critical of my weight. He would say things like, well, maybe you should do running or swimming because you're more likely to be slim.
00:18:35
Speaker
And my dad is a very quiet guy and doesn't say a lot, so when he does say something, it's impactful. And it's so funny because when I brought this up to my mom recently, she was like, I don't remember him ever saying anything like that. And I was like, Oh, parents, they have such rose-colored glasses. So yeah, I was kind of always aware of weight, always conscious of it, spent a lot of time hating my body.
00:18:59
Speaker
There was a moment in college that I remember where I went home with my college boyfriend and he decided to tell me that his mom had asked him why he was dating the fat girl. Oh my God.
00:19:13
Speaker
I know, I know. Yeah, it's just, it's ridiculous. And looking back, I don't know if it's just like who I, it seems kind of like how you were too, like you're hurt by it, but we're also very resilient people.
00:19:32
Speaker
There have been times where I've done extreme things like not eat for a week or something like that, but at the end of the day, nothing was irreversible. Like I still feel pretty resilient despite having gone through hurtful body stuff. And this is, this will kind of help transition to a couple of things I wanted to talk about, but post, I don't know, sometime in my mid twenties, I got into the body positivity movement.
00:19:58
Speaker
I feel like this is around the time that I was meeting you for the first time, because I remember how body positive you were, and I fucking admired the shit out of that. I was going to say a little definition of it too, just in case this is something people are hearing for the first time.
00:20:15
Speaker
Body positivity is a social movement that promotes a positive view of all bodies regardless of size, shape, skin tone, gender, physical abilities. It's meant to help you appreciate functionality and health of the human body instead of its psychological, sociological appearance.
00:20:39
Speaker
In tandem with body positivity, I kind of naturally got into the fat acceptance social movement, which was sort of a subset started in like 1967 when there was actually this like 500
00:20:56
Speaker
people that did like a sort of sit-in situation. It was a social movement meant to seek to eliminate social stigma of obesity and of course it was mostly women in this movement because so often women or women present or female presenting bodies are more harshly judged than men, not to say men aren't judged for their body size.
00:21:18
Speaker
And so what they notice is that these positivity or fat acceptance movements will often coincide with feminist waves. So it's interesting. But went through that and what both of those movements sort of did for me and they do for a lot of people, I think, is they create this extremely black and white scenario.
00:21:43
Speaker
where you either throw caution to the wind and you're like, I accept my body, I can eat whatever I want and do whatever I want and I can, et cetera, et cetera, and I'm good to go. And that's sort of one spectrum. And it's like, if you don't go with that, then the other end of the spectrum is you hate yourself. And like, those are the only two options.
00:22:02
Speaker
I want to say that if you are on that end of the spectrum, you're fine. I am not somebody, people will disagree with me. I've talked to many people who disagree with me. I do not think health has to be a person's first priority for them to be worthy as a human being. Health does not have to be what you care about in life for you to be accepted, to accept yourself, to be a worthy human being.
00:22:31
Speaker
But I do think you can find a gray area if you want. And that's sort of where I've ended up where I think similar to you, I want functionality.
Body Positivity and Health
00:22:43
Speaker
I want longevity. I want to be able to do certain things in my marginal era, like pick up my grandchildren and lift a suitcase over my head into an overhead bin.
00:22:57
Speaker
I wanna be able to pick up my groceries. I wanna be able to walk up flights of stairs. Like there are just certain things I wanna be able to do. And that doesn't mean my body can't be fat and also do those things. But if working out changes my body, I have to be okay with that. And that doesn't mean I'm not fat accepting, you know? It's just, it feels like such a dichotomy to talk about. But anyway, after reading Out Live by Dr. Peter Atiyah,
00:23:24
Speaker
I definitely love how he approaches prevention medicine where he says he's trying to help people avoid the four horsemen, the top four physical things that will kill us. Four physical ailments? Is that a better way?
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah, let me look it up for us for cancer, heart disease, metabolic disorders like diabetes, and then degeneration, brain degeneration like dementia and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. So when I read the book and he talks about those things are the top killers of, again, ailments.
00:24:03
Speaker
Are those ailments are the top killers of people obviously like car accidents and etc, etc are huge contributors But after I read that I dug into my family history found out my birth grandma died of type 2 diabetes complications and So I went to the doctor and I said hey, I just want to get like blood tests done I want to see where I'm at I want to know like all the things did a bunch of blood tests. Everything came out normal range and
00:24:28
Speaker
which he does talk about how normal range is not optimal range. I wore a glucose monitor on my arm for two weeks and tested after every meal. My glucose was great. Ended up going to a diabetes doctor just to make sure everything was zoned in. It was so crazy because everything she had to offer me was basically a weight loss thing. And that was really frustrating.
00:24:55
Speaker
She basically, she put me on metformin even though I didn't have any glucose issues or insulin resistance. She tried to get me on Ozempic and a couple other similar shots, but of course my insurance wouldn't cover it because I don't have diabetes. I don't have any issues. I ended up, you know, kind of stepping away because I was like, this, this doctor clearly like, she's just here to help people lose weight. That's just, that's just her goal and that's not my goal.
00:25:21
Speaker
So yeah, ended up stepping away from that and working with a nutritionist. And I feel like I learned a lot in the four months that I was working with her. And in a lot of ways, I feel a lot more in control, which is nice. I think that is something that no matter where you are on the spectrum or what your goals are, like feeling in control of what you choose to eat, it just feels good. And we've talked about this like working for,
00:25:44
Speaker
Working out four days a week going to nutritionist like my body hasn't changed like it doesn't really change and so I Personally feel like I've gotten to a pretty good point in my life where I'm just okay with that if this is how I look This is how I look
00:25:59
Speaker
as long as I can meet my other goals, then I'm happy with that and I'm satisfied. But what's annoying is that it has to be an everyday practice because there's so much in society, so much on TikTok, if there's like a plus size woman that says anything, like there's somebody in the comments telling her to like stop existing.
00:26:17
Speaker
You know, today I started a new gym and like I love everything about this gym. Like I'm so pumped to start at this place. But one of their, even after I told them weight loss is not a goal of mine. Like I have so many other goals. Weight loss is boring. Like that's not a goal. You know, they still had to throw in that one of their things is like help people aesthetically look better. And he's like, I mean, everybody wants to look better naked, right? And I was like,
00:26:40
Speaker
I that can't be one of my goals because if that's one of my goals, I'm just going to be disappointed. I'm going to be disappointed by myself. Let me guess they are both they're probably people who are very pretty and probably look very good naked. So it's like 100%. So they have like a very like biased opinion, because they have a completely different relationship with their body. You know, actually, I'll let you finish your point and then I'll tell you this story. No, please tell me I'm
00:27:07
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going off the rails. So it was really interesting. A couple years ago, I happened upon this guy and he had a website called fit to fat to fit. And he had been a super in shape guy, like ripped his whole life. And he had all these clients.
00:27:26
Speaker
who he was helping to coach and go through nutrition and exercise. And they kept telling him like, you just don't know what it's like to be on this spectrum. Like you just don't know the challenges we have to overcome. And so he decided he was going to spend six months gaining as much weight as possible. Stop working out, eat like shit, like what his clients have been doing, and then prove to them that he could get fit again in six months. So he gave himself a year to do this project.
00:27:53
Speaker
Needless to say, it took longer than six months, but what was fascinating was he talked about just how different his mind became when his body changed and going back to the gym and being self-conscious and having to overcome your body's lack of motivation because like when you're obviously not giving it good nutrients, you don't get a shit about anything because you're, you're not, you don't feel good. So like you don't have motivation to go to the gym and.
00:28:23
Speaker
I just thought that was a really incredible social experiment. He's now back to being super fit. Of course, this is the pedestal, which he promotes all of his programs off of, which is fine. But I just thought it was really fascinating that someone actually went in and did the work and then proved the point that so many average people are trying to say is this is not just
00:28:44
Speaker
about motivation. This is not just a lack of desire to be healthier. Like there are some real mental health challenges and physical challenges that come with being fit. And especially in America, because we have made work the center of our lives, which for the majority of us happens in a desk at a computer. So we are very sedentary to our lives. And then you have to take care of, you know, your house, your kids, and don't forget, you should be getting 10,000 steps a day.
00:29:12
Speaker
But don't ever get it from work because you need to work because the company is paying you for those eight hours like don't even think about going and getting a bathroom break. But you should also be fit and you should be cooking organic healthy meals. But nevertheless, don't forget that inflation is absolutely fucking insane. And grocery bills are between 25 and 35 percent higher than they were.
00:29:31
Speaker
Two years ago, it's all impossible. It feels very much like the monologue from the actress America in Barbie. It's all just very impossible. There's so much more to this topic than people sometimes are willing to give space for. My husband and I, we're on this
00:29:51
Speaker
along with our sobriety, we are doing like a health challenge. And part of that is tracking macros and exercising, you know, and getting our steps in. But I have really failed at tracking the last three weeks because I feel like I have PTSD around that and around tracking food. Because when I was on that dance team, I did track my food, punish my body if I ate over
00:30:15
Speaker
Mind you, like I'm literally starving my body, like a thousand calories and running six miles is absolute torture. Um, probably explains a lot of my joint issues. Um, so I haven't been doing it because like part of me also believes like tracking macros indefinitely is completely unsustainable. I think it's okay to do it for a little bit. And I know that mostly I just need a protein heavy diet. It doesn't all have to be meat.
00:30:43
Speaker
I really want to start incorporating more vegetables. I want to eat more colors. And I feel like that should be good enough. You know what I mean? Again, that whole spectrum thing, in order to take my health seriously and to lose weight, I don't need to track every single bite of food that goes into my mouth. That just feels so asinine to me. So let me ask, in your current journey in this health challenge with Heath, is weight a big proponent of it?
00:31:15
Speaker
I think part of it is that him and I are both at the heaviest we've been in the 12th. You're the oldest you've ever been. I know. I know. It seems so silly. I think it's part of me is I don't mind the clothing size that I am now. I'm uncomfortable with
00:31:34
Speaker
feeling like I can't fit into some clothes. Um, and not feeling like fit, like the fitness version of me, like, I don't mind the weight, like the number doesn't really bother me as much as like the, I didn't have tricep muscles for the first time in my life. Like I've always had like quad muscles and triceps and delts and things like that. And I just really noticed the lack of muscle. And for me, that's really affected like.
00:32:01
Speaker
just my ability to do my job and carry gear for eight hours a day. So for me, I've been really focusing on the like eating well, but maybe not tracking every single damn thing that goes into my mouth. We still have like our cheat day where we don't have to track anything. You get to have like a really splurgy dinner, which is super tasty.
00:32:20
Speaker
And then for me, it's working out lifting five days a week. And then you have to get 8,000 steps a day, at least six days a week. And we have the treadmill. So even if it's raining, we still have the option of walking on the treadmill and watching, you know, Netflix or something. And so I think that the movement has been more motivating to me than getting on the scale. Just because like, again, I follow this awesome girl named Sam and her Instagram is the Sam plan.
00:32:44
Speaker
And she is a ball of walking muscle and she looks amazing. Like her body is toned, but she weighs as much as I do, but she looks nothing like me because she is super fit. And so I really admire that, that yes, like aesthetically, she is very pleasing because her body is like so toned, but it's never about the number. It's all about her strength training and like what feels good in her body. And that's more of the mindset that I really
00:33:13
Speaker
gravitate towards right now like I love the fact that I've been lifting all of my heavy dumbbells and I need to go out and buy the next set up because I'm maxing out and I need heavier weight like that feels so good to me versus oh I lost two pounds on the scale so I say this more because I think you know your body can probably pretty well not ease I'm not gonna say easily but it can get to that sort of where you can see the muscles right so maybe you're not worried but you're aesthetically
00:33:42
Speaker
looking for a goal, right? Whereas I think of me or I'm really proud of what I can lift and I know I'm like so incredibly strong and you can't really see any of that. You know, like it's all buried beneath that. Well, how do you feel about that?
00:34:03
Speaker
I think like I said is sort of like a day-to-day thing and it really only I can't remember if I've said this to you before but it's a situation where if I were the only one existing on earth I would not give a fuck but because I'm surrounded by society and other people and other people's
00:34:22
Speaker
I'm gonna say this it's not to make you feel bad at all so please don't take it that way but like talking to friends who care so much about their own aesthetics in my head because I'm a human being I'm innately like self-centered my initial feeling is like okay well if they care so much about their aesthetics what must they think of me you know I mean
00:34:42
Speaker
Actually, I can tell you what I think about you. I've always thought that I'm like, I bet Jamie can out lift anything that I put down because she does fucking CrossFit. That's what I think about you and I think that I've never thought poorly of you or of your habits or besides your mixing things in your wine that I will die on that hill.
00:35:05
Speaker
But I think just because I deeply appreciate you as a person and who you are, and we've had so many conversations about this, I don't think I've ever once had the thought of like, if Jamie just ate differently, if Jamie just went on a run, I've never thought, you literally did the Murphy challenge. And I was like, there is no fucking way in hell I could ever accomplish that. I literally told my husband, I'm like,
00:35:33
Speaker
I'm like, how do people do this challenge? Like, how do you just like wake up and you're like, yeah, I'm gonna do the Murphy. Like, what? Can you explain to people what the Murphy is that they've never heard of it? I think it's the Murph. Okay, hold on, I wanna make sure we get it right because it's honoring a warrior hero. Okay, so the Murph challenge. It is a mile run, and then you do a hundred pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats, and you can do them in any sort of order, and then you do another mile run.
00:36:04
Speaker
The point is that no. That's what the Murph is. The point is no. I did modified pull-ups, okay? Whatever. You still did it. When I'm telling you that Orange Theory murdered me two weekends ago and I'm still suffering, that is what is so badass about you, Jamie.
00:36:28
Speaker
whoever like comes to you with an opinion can just shut the fuck up because like your body's looks and aesthetic has nothing to do with what your body is actually capable of and I think that that would be my final message. I went through so many years of just saying I wish I looked as strong as I felt
00:36:47
Speaker
which like some days yeah I do wish that like I look back if you guys want a deep creep on my Facebook like I have a photo from when I was a professional dancer on there and I was at my most fit I am proud of how I got the not sorry I am proud of what I look like in that photo I am not proud of how I got there because I remember exactly how starving I was during that photo shoot I remember that I went home and still counted every single potato chip or whatever I ate that night
00:37:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's so interesting. I feel like it kind of relates to our money podcast where it's like no matter how confident I feel in myself as a strong person, it's constant work. Just like with money, no matter how much wealth you get, you always are going to identify as your poorer self.
00:37:35
Speaker
And there's just going to be constant work that needs to happen where you are thankful for your body, where you're listening to how it feels rather than what it aesthetically looks like. And I guess just assessing your goals and where do you want to be? What do you care about in terms of your body and what it can do and what you want it to be able to do? Yeah, there's, um, last story I'll share because I know this is a long one, but there
00:38:03
Speaker
There's this makeup artist that I follow and I don't want to like out her. So I'm not going to say who it is, but she had gained a bunch of weight during her pregnancy. And she recently posted this Instagram story about like,
00:38:15
Speaker
See how I lost 90 pounds. And basically like she had a lot of health issues. Like it got to a point where she had very high cholesterol, like was verging on diabetic, all this stuff. So like she went on osmpic. She lost enough weight to then go work with a plastic surgeon who then literally tapered her body and like made it. So she had like the Kim Kardashian like taper and then like larger hips, which you cannot get in a gym.
00:38:41
Speaker
you actually have to go get that surgically done. And then she continued to lose weight from there. And now she looks like very aesthetic, like what every Instagram filter tells you you have to look like.
Societal Beauty Standards and Self-Acceptance
00:38:53
Speaker
And I don't, I'm not shaming her in her journey whatsoever, but like I deep dove into the doctor that she went and saw him and he's based in Texas. And literally that is his specialty is the Kim Kardashian body.
00:39:08
Speaker
I shit you not. I think that that gives greater credence to the unattainable beauty standards we're giving to people right now, men and women, that you literally have to go under the knife to get what people are selling is the new standard of what your body should look like.
00:39:28
Speaker
Like women who I would say had more of like a boyish frame. So like a very rectangular frame, which I know I have myself and like, honestly, no booty whatsoever. Like that's their before photo. And then literally after it looks like a Kardashian. And I'm like, first of all, like I'm not going to lie, like kudos to that surgeon because that's some fucking magic. But like what message is that? I don't know. I think that's where the whole gray area starts to get even grayer for me. Cause I'm like, at what point do we support people?
00:39:57
Speaker
in choosing that they want to buy a body and they can totally do that? Or where's the level of like, maybe just accept yourself and love yourself and not spend $20,000 on a body that doesn't define you in your life. It's so hard. I think of that all the time with like filler and Botox too. Like I am a proponent nowadays. I wasn't always this way, but I'm a proponent now where I say like, whatever you want to fucking do, Godspeed, like,
00:40:23
Speaker
If that's what you want, I'm so happy for you. But you're right, it's sort of like if I'm giving that to someone, not giving that, but if I'm like removing my judgment of someone who decides to pay for their body and their looks, I feel like there shouldn't be assholes on TikTok saying like fat people don't deserve to exist.
00:40:44
Speaker
You know what I mean? Let's just get rid of everyone, basically, is what I'm saying. A nope, no people universe. A nope, just blobs, really. It's kind of like in the Pixar movie Soul. We're just going to be like these little souls floating around. No tangible bodies. Yeah, that's great.
00:41:02
Speaker
Oh, it's, it is very hard. And it's very hard because there is that line where it's like, if you don't support me, you're against me. And I think that that is a big, that theme of thought is very prominent in the social media era, where if like, if you're against, like, if you're not for me, you're against me. And I think that that comes down into politics.
00:41:23
Speaker
money, body, sex, relationships, whatever it is. And so I don't know. I just think this kind of spurs the conversation of like, where does the line exist for you? And what do you want to give value to? So I think it just comes down to each person because some people value the way that their body looks so much that they would spend their hard earned dollars, which when you think about dollars, it's really, you're spending your time because you once worked time to gain that money. Now you're going to take that money.
00:41:53
Speaker
and do something with it. So if they value that so much that they want to go do that, it's like, yeah, good luck with that. I also hope you go to therapy because you went and got that surgery for a reason. And that's more of what I'm concerned about for people is like, when you take something to an extreme like that, it feels like a mask covering up something else. And that's where I fear that the mental damage around this era of bodies is a bit frightening.
00:42:19
Speaker
I think to end on a high note, Dr. Peter Atiyah in Outlive, I think the best fucking chapter of that book is the last one, which is he talks about mental health and he basically says like, nothing I've talked about in this book matters if your mental health isn't right.
00:42:35
Speaker
If you have not dealt with your little T, big T traumas, then nothing matters. It doesn't matter if you get so healthy to fight cancer or cardiovascular disease or degenerative disease or diabetes, none of that matters if your mental health is destroyed because your brain affects so much fucking more than we realize, I think, and that's kind of his point at the end.
00:43:03
Speaker
Oh yeah, because you can do all the physical stuff, right? But your brain can literally make you sick. Yeah. So people, bottom line is go to therapy. Go to therapy. Sponsored by BetterHelp forward slash rule followers. That is a joke. We are not sponsored, but that would be really cool if we were. But if you want to sponsor us, that's fine.
00:43:22
Speaker
Yeah, I would say though. Yeah, go go to therapy people. It's so good. So yeah, get your mental health, right? Make some goals. Love yourself or not. Womp womp. Go eat a vegetable. Go for a walk and some some chocolate too. Yeah, it's called balance people. It is called that. Why do you think there are chocolate covered oranges? It's called balance.
00:43:45
Speaker
Ah, okay.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:43:47
Speaker
That was fun. If you want to support us, you can subscribe to us at wherever you're listening to us, and you can give us a five-star rating, leave us a little review, follow us on Instagram at... Rule.followers Tell us what you thought.
00:44:08
Speaker
Yeah. Also, what other things do you want to talk about? Like, like, what do you guys want to hear about our big T, little T traumas? Like, can we open up any other wrap up holds for you? Happy to take requests on the line. Happy to take requests for trauma. Oh, good stuff. All right. Love you guys. Love you. Okay. Bye.