Stop the B.S. and the B.O. (Stop the Body Shaming and Body Obsessing)

As a food and lifestyle writer, I am passionate about healthy eating — I don’t stuff my face with greasy or processed meals as a rule, because I choose to avoid added salt, sugar, preservatives etc in food as they are linked to the risk of developing high blood pressure, diabetes and other degenerative diseases. If something has a long list of chemical man-made ingredients I won’t touch it. This is just my preference and it is what works best for me, my body and my long term health. I grow my own vegetables and I don’t use pesticides in my garden, because that’s a shared space with wildlife: birds, insects, neighbourhood cats all come to visit. I couldn’t bear the thought of using poison to get rid of slugs, for example. They are my arch enemy but I just try to allocate a few “sacrificial plants” for them to munch on.

I digress. I want to talk about our obsession with bodies, both fit and unfit. As a society, we all seem to be entitled to an opinion; not only that, we are supposedly even entitled to pass judgment on other people, as if that was our divine right.

Trigger warning. If you are suffering from an eating disorder, it is best not to continue reading this article.

In my formal career as a massage therapist, I have worked in an eating disorders clinic and I am fully aware that mentioning weight can be triggering and I don’t want to cause distress.