A healthy outlook

IT’S before and after, but not as we know it. The two images show Taryn Brumfitt with a normal, curvaceous body and lean and sculpted, competing in a bodybuilding competition. You would assume that the former was “before” and that the pictures tell the usual story – woman loses weight to achieve the perfect physique and, thereby, happiness. You would be wrong. In fact, it’s the opposite.

When the Australian mum released the images on the internet, she wanted to send out the message that, having gone through agonies of self-loathing, causing her to put herself through a punishing fitness regime, she had finally come to terms with her natural shape. She hoped to find a sympathetic audience; perhaps reach out to others struggling with body-image issues. In fact, she received more than 7,000 emails from women around the world – proof, beyond doubt, that she had struck a chord.

Among those profoundly affected was Laura Agar Wilson, a health coach and blogger from Durham. Having struggled with her weight since childhood, she had made a similar decision to take back control. Laura, 34, who runs her own website, wholeheartledlyhealthy.com, has organised a screening of Embrace, a documentary in which Taryn travels the world exploring the issue of body image. She feels it has an important message.

“I think the media dictates to us a lot of our beliefs in terms of what a healthy body should look like and I think the film unpicks that and explores why so many of us hate our bodies,” she says. “I know the woman who has created the film was driven by what she was seeing happening with her very young daughter and how she was feeling about her body.

“I had one woman come to me the other day saying, ‘What advice can I give my eight-year-old daughter? She’s sitting on her bed crying because other children are calling her fat.’ I think what connects it all up for me is that, as a generation where we’re having children, it’s actually about setting the example, because, as the film puts across, it’s reaching fever pitch.”

Laura knows only too well the risk of becoming fixated with how you look. A few years ago, she decided to lose weight, successfully reaching her target – yet this came at a heavy cost. “My relationship with food wasn’t very healthy,” she recalls. “I became obsessed with it, which is known as orthorexia. I’d lost quite a lot of weight so I was very, very thin. I was just into an underweight BMI and my menstrual cycle stopped.”

This provided the shock that Laura needed. As she and her husband James were keen to start a family, she realised that she would have to change her attitude. Over the next two years, she gradually regained weight – but it took fertility treatment for her to have her son Finley, now two. She feels that many women underestimate the effects – both physical and psychological – that obsessive dieting might be having on them.

“I got to the point where I was so healthy it was destroying my life,” says Laura. “I had to take a look at that and I think that inspired my passion for supporting women to see that it’s not about the number on the scales. It really made me realise that my worth had nothing to do with weight or the size of my jeans. A lot of women are almost brought up to believe that your worth is tied up with how you look and how much you weigh.”

Though Laura feels the media is, to some extent, culpable, she recognises that the issue is complex, with social media platforms like Instagram playing a part. She can see signs of progress, with more magazines featuring normal body shapes, but was dismayed by the election of Donald Trump, renowned for his objectification of women.

“I saw this fantastic quote that ‘Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history’,” says Laura. “With the amount of energy it takes to think about food, there’s not a lot of space for anything else. If we’re going to be a generation that stands up to what, for example, Donald Trump stands for, we need to have energy for that.”

For Laura, diets simply don’t work, promoting habits that are ultimately unsustainable. What she advocates instead is a shift in focus away from how you look to how you feel. “I think the difference is how you see it,” she says. “Some people eat healthily and exercise to lose or maintain weight; I eat healthily and exercise to live life to the full. I think it’s a subtle but important difference.

“A lot of women tend to say, ‘When I lose two stone, I’ll be happy’ – I think that’s what we’re sold – but that’s not the reality for most women. The statistics show that diets don’t work but so many women hold onto these things.”

Laura, a qualified health adviser who works with clients both face-to-face and online, advocates a holistic approach which, though requiring commitment, is far more likely to be successful. “Making the effort is figuring out a way of living healthily forever,” she says. “That might be a bit scary, so it might be, ‘How can I live healthily for today?’ But ultimately, it’s how you can maintain a balance.

“For me, healthy eating is about having energy to be able to play with your kids; it’s not saying that you can’t have the occasional treat – my favourite is a cinnamon roll. I’ve been at the sharp end of beating myself up and I think it can lead you down an unhealthy path. I think it’s predominantly about self-care and self-love. I think if you see a healthy lifestyle through the lens of taking care of yourself it subtly changes the energy around that and makes it a little bit more positive.”

A major passion of Laura’s is food and she has written two books, Grains As Mains and Coconut Oil, containing tempting, nutritious recipes, which she also publishes on her website. She feels that women shouldn’t worry too much about their BMI, which she considers a crude indicator, but instead trust what feels natural to them.

“Women have babies and all that kind of stuff and I think ultimately if you’re eating well and moving your body and doing things that make you happy, that’s great. I think that’s a big component that’s overlooked. We’ve got this message that we should all be a static weight our entire life, but our bodies are in flux and we need to embrace that and be okay with it.”

Her final piece of advice? Go and see the documentary. “I think every single woman should go and see the film,” says Laura. “I just think it’s a really powerful thing that every woman should watch to inspire them and help them look at themselves differently.”

• Embrace is on at the MetroCentre Odeon on Saturday, February 25, at 3pm. W: https://uk.demand.film/embrace/

W: wholeheartedlyhealthy.com