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I’ve never been very big on cooking, and since being diagnosed with juvenile diabetes I developed a strained relationship with food. It’s a bit of a chore, really. Gorging on a delicious treat needs to be calculated against the amount of insulin or exercise I will need to do in order to bring my blood sugar down to an acceptable level. A low blood sugar means I have to force feed myself even when I’m not hungry. I guess it’s because of this strange and forced friendship with food that I never really got into cooking… which doesn’t really make sense but it’s something I’ve just realised in the last 6 months or so.

When I first started learning about Health at Every Size principles I realised that my relationship with food would have to change. In order to eat intuitively I’d have to actually drop my food defences and think about the things my body wanted me to eat. A part of my self motivated “food counseling” has been taking photos of the things that I make. I’m also a big fat perfectionist, so I find myself making really fiddly things instead of just slopping stuff on a plate. Maybe I should work on that too

I started by making cupcakes, because everyone was making them and I wanted to join in. They’re fun and it’s easy to do pretty and creative things with them, but I think I’ve almost exhausted the humble cupcake. It was by making cupcakes that I discovered the joy of sharing food – something I have never really experienced until I started baking. Some people assume that I make these cupcakes just for myself, but they don’t see how I share them with my friends and family whenever I go visit!

In the next few months I want to learn more and more recipes, and take photos along the way of all my results. I find that when I take a photo of something I can properly document it and pat myself on the back! It might sound like a very simple sort of thing to most people, but I really struggle with food sometimes and I’ve found that cherishing my meal has helped me so much. Maybe a similar approach can help other people who feel similarly… but at the very least you can make pretty things to eat, share and reflect on!

I did a vlog version of the “How to love yourself in 8 really hard steps” today because I thought it might be good practice to get into the swing of talking and making videos. I actually surprised myself – I think I had about 20 minutes of babbling that I had to edit fairly brutally in order to come under YouTube’s 10 minute limit!

Please watch, rate, comment, subscribe and give me your first born child’s toenails. I bronze them and sell them on Etsy as earrings.

I held my first ever clothing swap on Sunday, and even though the numbers were down it was still a success. Everyone took home something new (to them!) and we all had a fabulous time trying on clothes and shoes and making silly outfits. I got the idea from Screw Inner Beauty, in which Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby talk about clothes swaps as a way of weeding out the clothes from your wardrobe that make you feel bad about yourself. You know, the “I fit into these for five minutes back when I was 17″ sort of garments that you only hold onto as a sick kind of motivation to lose weight.

If you’ve known me for five minutes, you’ll have probably seen me launch into a tirade within seconds of someone mentioning diets or weight loss, because I feel very passionately about every person accepting and loving their body in this present moment… NOT if they lose weight and NOT if they manage to fit into something. I think Health At Every Size has the potential to not only do wonderful things for body image but for health – mental and physical.

Because I’ve had quite a few years worth of exposure to the Fat/ Size Acceptance movement, I figured that I may as well host a body positive clothing swap despite my party hosting fears (what if no one comes? etc!) I’m pretty glad I did host the party, because it made me feel like I had primed a few more minds for loving their bodies. In my opinion, when people push aside their conditioning and start to fully accept themselves, it’s when the most amazing transformations happen. I’ve seen it in myself, and I’ve seen it in friends and people I’ve met online through various forums and communities. Through honouring our bodies, it’s like we flip a switch and instead of honouring what other people think and societal limitations and conditioning – we start to do things we’ve always wanted to do. For instance, I have longed to run but it’s only this year after meeting Sue, a personal trainer that I introduced to Health At Every Size, that I have discovered I can run. I am strong. I can do all these wonderful things with my body that society has told me I shoudn’t be able to do.

So, it might be just fashion, but it’s something a lot of people care about, and it’s a key part of styling “the self” and sculpting our identities. The fashion industry has the potential to exclude individuals, but if we work together we can pool resources and make each other feel good. Thank you to Sonya, Kat, Mem, Tash and Zoe for attending my little experiment, I hope you found some garments that make you feel great and a sense that you don’t have to abide by the limiting body, fashion and identity rules that we’ve all been subjected to.

I hope to be involved in hosting these swaps every once in a while, and to stage swaps on a much larger scale. Sydney has the Swap ‘Til You Drop event, but I want to organise a proper plus sized swap event in Brisbane! To be honest, I’m not even sure there’s a straight sized swap event in Brisbane, and while it’d be awesome to cover a whole gamut of sizes, I’m not sure how practical it would be to stage. Talk to me if you’ve got a venue or resources, I’m dead serious about making this happen! It’s my goal to make Brisbane the body positive capital of Australia (for now, and then I’ll move on to the other cities!)

Photo by Kate O’Brien

I haven’t spoken much about body issues here, or about how I’m a fat advocate, but I figure this is as good a platform as any to discuss my own issues with fatness*. It is not acceptable to pick on, alienate, ostracize or discriminate against fat people, and I’m continually astounded that it’s still seen as totally ok to do this – within the media and on a person to person basis. One of the things that really gets me going is the lack of a basic necessity for all humans who wish to participate in “civilised society” – clothing.

This year I have been focusing more on my fitness, and I have adopted a Health at Every Size approach to my exercising and general wellbeing. I don’t believe you need to be thin to be fit, and I’ve certainly proved to my new personal trainer that I am fitter than even she expected! I have been wearing a denim skirt to exercise in, but it limits movement and does not wick away perspiration. So I’ve been trying to find plus sized active wear… and surprise, surprise, it’s really hard. It makes me want to break my no swears rule! So instead, I’ll capslock…

WHY, IF SOCIETY WANTS ME TO BE THIN, CAN I NOT FIND CLOTHES TO EXERCISE IN? It just doesn’t make sense.

If alarmist news reports are worth believing, why is it still acceptable for retailers to relegate a mere 2 metres squared out of their hundreds of metres available to plus size clothing. Even worse – I have been into more than one retailer who puts the plus size clothes right next to active wear… WHERE YOU CAN’T BUY CLOTHES FOR EXERCISING IN A PLUS SIZE!!!!! I don’t get it. Are you trying to shame customers out of your store?! Do you not want my delicious fat dollar? That’s ok, I’ll take it overseas and buy things on the internet instead, even though I shouldn’t have to!

Another hilarious paradox is the odd abuse you’ll cop as an exercising fat person on the street. WTF? It’s hard to take the taunts seriously when you’re the dude who is literally treading the healthful path and your aggressor is sitting on their arse in a car (moving at 60 kph, what a chicken!)

Apparently there are retailers in the US who sell tights and sports bras online, but I refuse to accept that this is the only option. I am on a mission to bring well priced, great quality active gear for plus sized humans to Australia. If you can help, I would love to hear from you. If you are an Australian retailer already covering this angle, your marketing is not working. I can help you. (Also, I’m not talking about bike shorts that go to size 20 because the size bracket for fatness goes well beyond that – fatter people want to wear proper active wear as well!)

I have lots of fat friends. If you do right by us, we’ll do right by you! The Fatosphere is wider (lol) than designers, retailers and manufacturers realise.

* If you even think about commenting to tell me that fat is unhealthy, I will probably mock you into oblivion. Read this first and come back when you can comprehend your own bigotry.