Episode 187: Lu talks to Chrissy King about the need for more diverse and inclusive wellness spaces, how to distinguish between internal and externally-influenced beliefs, how we can (and need to) to reduce stigma in the fitness space, and much more.
Chrissy King is a writer, speaker, strength coach, and self-proclaimed truth teller with a passion for intersectional feminism and creating a diverse and inclusive wellness industry. She has been featured in SELF, SHAPE, BuzzFeed, Muscle and Fitness, and Livestrong, among others.
She empowers individuals to stop shrinking, start taking up space, and use their energy to create their specific magic in the world. When she’s not serving her clients by empowering them to create stress-free and sustainable lifestyles and feel confident and empowered in their skin, she spends her time lifting all the weights, reading, traveling, and hanging with friends and family.
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Lu Uhrich: Welcome to Episode 187 of Real Health Radio. You can find the links talked about as part of this episode at the show notes, at www.seven-health.com/187.
Real Health Radio is presented by Seven Health. Seven Health works with women who feel obsessed with and defined by their bodies. Using a non-diet, weight-neutral approach that combines science and compassion, we help you to transform your physical, mental, and emotional health. We specialize in helping clients overcome disordered eating, regain their periods, balance their hormones, and recover from years of dieting, binging, and body dissatisfaction by learning how to connect with and listen to their bodies.
We’re currently taking on new clients, so if you’re ready to get the support you deserve in healing your relationship with food and your body, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Head over to www.seven-health.com/help, and there you can read about how we work with clients and apply for a free initial chat. That address, again, is www.seven-health.com/help. You can also find it in the show notes.
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Lu Uhrich, and today we’ll be talking with Chrissy King. But before we get into that conversation, the Seven Health team has a little favor to ask you.
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Now let’s get on with the show and into a dynamic conversation with Chrissy King.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had the opportunity to interview Chrissy, as she’s also one of the guest experts in my online program, but it is the first time that you’ll be hearing from her – and it’s also the first time we took the conversation beyond just the personal barriers to fitness and body acceptance and we discussed other things, like Chrissy’s own story around powerlifting, cultivating food freedom, and making peace with her own body.
In this episode, we also talk about finding and creating diverse and inclusive wellness spaces, which is something that Chrissy is so passionate about. We talk about redefining fitness, cultural and internalized biases, and so much more.
Chrissy and I were both surprised at how quickly the time passed while chatting about these things, so we made plans to continue the discussion in New York sometime soon – preferably over the best burger in the city. Shout out Emily Pizza! Chrissy is so brilliant, and I’m honored to be the one to introduce her to the Real Health Radio audience. Before we jump into the interview, here’s a bit more about her.
Chrissy King is a writer, speaker, strength coach, and self-proclaimed truth teller, with a passion for intersectional feminism and creating a diverse and inclusive wellness industry. She’s been featured in publications like Self, Shape, BuzzFeed, Muscle & Fitness, Livestrong, and many others.
Chrissy guides individuals to stop shrinking, start taking up space, and use their energy to create their own specific magic in the world. When she’s not serving her clients by helping them to create stress-free and sustainable lifestyles and feel confident and empowered in their skin, she spends her time lifting all the weights, reading, traveling, and hanging with friends and family.
Hi, Chrissy, and welcome to Real Health Radio.
Chrissy King: Hi! Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to chat today.
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Lu Uhrich: You and I have chatted before, and what makes me really excited is being able to do it now for a wider audience. You are a guest expert in my Mend program, and that’s the first time we recorded an interview together, but now we get to have this interview here for all of Real Health Radio and everyone in podcast land to listen to and to be able to meet you and learn from you. For those people who may not have met you already, do you mind introducing yourself and letting the listeners know who you are and what you do in the world?
Chrissy King: Absolutely. Yes, I’m so excited to be able to chat with you again, too. It seems like that was not that long ago, but it was a while now.
My name is Chrissy King. I am a Brooklyn-based writer, fitness coach. I do a lot of work with my clients around body image, and I do a lot of work in the fitness and wellness space, talking about the need for more diversity, inclusion, and just making the space more comfortable and inviting for everyone. I think the benefits of fitness and movement go far beyond weight loss, and the transformative power of strength is just so empowering. I want everyone to be able to do that in places that feel safe for their bodies and for their overall health.
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Lu Uhrich: Thank you for that introduction. You already touched on some of the things I want to cover in this interview – certainly having a broader view of fitness and discussing diverse and inclusive wellness spaces and what that actually looks like.
But before we get into some of those topics, do you mind letting us know, what was your relationship like with food and body? How has it transformed over time? Usually we get into this work that we do in the world because of our own experiences with our bodies, with food, with the way that we are showing up in the world. I’d love to hear some of your story.
Chrissy King: Absolutely. I think my story is probably similar to a lot of people who came into the fitness world. I didn’t grow up doing a lot of sports or activities like that; I was more of a reader and a writer, and I spent a lot of my time doing those types of activities.
But I joined the gym for the first time in my adult life when I was in probably my mid-twenties. The reason I joined the gym was for one thing only. I was like, I want to be skinny. There was literally no other goal in mind but that. I remember I hired my first personal trainer mainly because my sister had also joined the gym and hired this trainer. She’s my little sister, but I was kind of following her lead.
I remember my first training session with this coach because I told her what my goals were and she was like, “Okay, cool, let’s head over to the weights section.” I was like, “Whoa, pause. I said I wanted to lose weight; I did not say I wanted to get muscles.” She was just like, “I understand, but trust me. Let’s just do the session.”
Anyway, I did that first 30-minute session and it literally felt like it was hours of my life. She didn’t have me doing anything that wild, but for me, having never engaged in that kind of physical activity, honestly, for the next few days after that, I felt like I got hit by a bus. Every part of my body was in pain. [laughs] But I’d signed up for a package, so I kept going back even though I wasn’t really a fan of it and still didn’t really believe that it was going to help me be skinny, because that was my goal.
But what actually ended up happening is that after a couple of months with her, I started noticing that the things I did in my first session that were really hard weren’t so hard anymore, and I was adding more weight and I was seeing my body function in ways that I didn’t know it could do before.
My narrative growing up had always been that I was a weak person, and that was the running joke in my family. Nobody was going to ask me to help lift a box or do anything because I was a weakling. And I didn’t feel bad about that; I was just like, some people are strong and some people are weak. I’m just weak.
But strength training actually helped me realize strength is a skill just like any other skill that you have. I started getting really strong, and then along the way I got introduced to powerlifting and started using the barbell. That was when things really, really changed for me. The first coach, who was actually my original trainer’s boyfriend, introduced me to barbell work. I had never seen women squatting, deadlifting, bench-pressing. That was foreign territory to me. So I watched for a long time, and I think he saw my intrigue, so he finally asked me, “Hey, come over. I’m going to show you how to do this stuff.”
It was so cool. It just really clicked within me, and I got really good at powerlifting really fast. For me, it was a transformative thing because I was a person who couldn’t even do a pushup, and then a few months after powerlifting, I was deadlifting hundreds of pounds – probably like 150. I don’t even know where I was at the beginning. But it was such a transformative thing for me.
That really helped me start to shift the focus to seeing fitness as just something to manipulate my body to strengthen myself and seeing how strong and powerful I could be, and that strength really transformed into every area of my life and informed the way I do everything now. When I think about the work I’m doing now, I don’t think I’d ever have come to this place had it not been for that introduction to strength training.
Lu Uhrich: I really like that story, and I can relate in a lot of ways. I’m somebody who loves strength training and the excitement and the confidence in knowing what my body can do instead of what it looks like – which I heard in your story, because you talked about “I came here because I wanted to get skinny,” and then I never heard you talk about a physical change again, outside of strength and functionality and being able to do these new things and finding out that there are ways your body could move that you had never expected.
Do you find, as you work – because you’re a trainer, a coach, you work with people – do you find that that’s their experience too? They might come with you saying, “Hey, I want to change my body aesthetically,” but as they move through the process of working with you, they realize how many other wonderful things they can work through and do together in partnership with their body?
Chrissy King: Absolutely. I think definitely more so in the beginning, that was definitely why people were coming to me. And then, again, through the work together, they started seeing all these other wonderful possibilities and it became less about what their body looked like and more about what they could do.
However, these days, I think people literally come to me because they want to be focusing less on their body. Maybe that’s an area they’re struggling with, and they recognize that that’s some of the work that I do. I think that’s come with time and my work and my writing that people seek me out for that.
But 100% in the beginning, I’d say the majority of the clients that came to me reminded me so much of exactly where I was when I came to the fitness space.
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Lu Uhrich: We can really get into it now, just to even have the conversation right here, right up front at the beginning of this interview, around the idea that to want to lose weight and to want to change your body – and I know you’re somebody who feels similar to me in this – it’s not wrong. We’re not going to judge or shame anybody who’s like, “I have these feelings about my body and I think my body should change,” because that’s part of being a human living in the culture we live in that is so thin-centric and body-focused and has these very limited beauty ideals.
But to know that you can come and be welcomed into a coaching experience with you, Chrissy, or with me, or whoever somebody chooses to work with, and know that “Hey, I can be honest about where I’m at now and also I can be open to the possibility that my mindset could change around this.”
Chrissy King: Absolutely. I totally agree with you, and I think it’s so important that you brought up the fact that there’s no shame or anything wrong with wanting to change your body. I think sometimes – I’ve seen this a lot with my clients – it’s this feeling of like “in some ways I know that that doesn’t have to be the thing, but I still desire that,” and it causes a sense of shame or guilt around it.
Again, as you already spoke to, this is just the result of living in the society that we live in, in the culture that we live in. There’s never a reason to feel bad about any of your choices about your body. Your body is your own. I always say your body, your business. So you get to make those choices for yourself, and it’s okay to hold lots of different feelings about your body or about bodies in general at the same time.
Lu Uhrich: Yeah. I know you ask a really powerful question – I forget where you asked it; maybe in a Self magazine article – where you called your readers and your audience to question, but are you making these choices? Maybe it was the New Year’s article. But like, are you making these choices because of your personal autonomy, or are you making them because of cultural influences, external influences that are telling you the way you should be or look or move? I thought that was a really powerful question.
Chrissy King: Thank you. I do encourage people all the time, my clients or just people in the world, to ask that question. For one, I think it really takes a little bit of time to sit with that and to really think through your feelings about it.
Again, getting into this conversation about diet culture or the idea that thinness equals health or thinness equals beauty or higher social status or all these things, those messages are really, really pervasive in our culture today. So it’s really hard sometimes if you don’t sit back and really think about it. It’s really easy to get confused about, “Is this my thought or is this the messaging all around me?” Sitting with those feelings and those thoughts really helps us come back to our center, I think, to be a little more grounded about things.
I just think always, when something pops up – those automatic feelings that come to mind sometimes, like you look in the mirror and you’re like, “I need to lose 20 pounds” – the question I always say is, get really curious with those things that pop up. Don’t feel bad about them, but get curious of them. Why do I need to lose 20 pounds? What does that 20 pounds mean? Does it mean that I’m healthier? Does it mean I’m prettier? Does it mean I’m thinner?
There’s no right or wrong answers throughout that process; it’s just getting to the core of what is actually behind the things that come up for us.
Lu Uhrich: Yeah, it’s like those underlying beliefs of “I think losing 20 pounds means this.” Once you can pinpoint that belief, it’s easier, then, to differentiate between your own personal feelings and convictions and the convictions and ideas that have been given to you by the culture and environment that you live in.
It’s easier to see, “Oh, do I really believe this? Is this really true?” once we’ve narrowed it down to the core belief instead of the basic “Look at me, I need to lose 20 pounds.” That’s not actually, like you said, the core of it.
Chrissy King: Right. Also, you’re so right – it’s like, is this belief mine, or is this a belief that was taught to me? That really is the essence of it. Whose belief is it that I’m holding?
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Lu Uhrich: For people who are listening and are like, “Maybe I need to go through that process, I have to take that inventory,” how can they tell what belief is theirs and what is more coming from the culture? Do you have any tips or ideas for how they can differentiate or start to notice, “Wow, this is coming from somewhere deep within me” versus “This is coming from something that I’ve learned from my environment”?
Chrissy King: I don’t think there’s a set of rules about how to tell, but I think some things that come to mind right away for me, or at least things I’ve found helpful for myself – going back to this example of “I want to lose 20 pounds.” Not even want, “I need to lose 20 pounds,” because need and want are two different things.
The thing that comes to my mind personally is “I need to lose 20 pounds,” and then I say, why do I need to lose 20 pounds? My idea is because 20 pounds is going to make me “healthier.” So then, what does healthier mean? I take an inventory of my personal life and I’m like, I’m feeling good every day. I’m moving well. I have energy. I’m sleeping well. I feel really good every day. Then what is that 20 pounds actually going to do in terms of making me “healthier”?
Or another thing that comes to mind is “if I lose 20 pounds, I’ll be prettier,” for example. For me, right away, I know that that’s not my own belief. That’s something that was taught to me. The size of your body does not have anything to do with how pretty you are, and also, beauty is subjective. So I know that those aren’t my own beliefs. I know these are just things that I’ve seen in the world and I automatically have internalized as truth when it’s not truth.
So I think some of those things are really easy to see and some of them are a little bit harder. I think it gets harder because we do know that we live in a society that is very thin-centric. There’s actual studies that have been done that people living in a thinner body get treated differently in the world. They get promoted more at their jobs. Those are actual facts.
That’s where I feel like things can get really difficult for people because there are a lot of privileges that come with living in a thin body – besides being able to navigate the world better, like traveling, for example, on airplanes, all those kinds of things. That’s where things get really tricky, because there are real advantages in the world to being thin.
Then it becomes less about what you think is a believed system or a learned belief versus, “What do I want my experience to be in the world?” It’s unfortunate that people have to make that choice – and they don’t have to make that choice, but I should say I think the thing that we need to be working on is general is making the world less fatphobic so that those systems of oppression aren’t in place for people with different body types.
Lu Uhrich: Right. Even as you were talking, I was thinking of trans individuals and this other very nuanced, complicated place where they may want to gain weight or lose weight based on the gender ideals and how that affects, then, “Okay, no, maybe this actually doesn’t change who I am. And also, I get treated differently based on how much I pass as my gender, so I may want to move closer to that in ways that can get tricky when it comes to diet culture and when it comes to fitness and all of that.”
There’s just so many layers. It’s really nuanced. I love the process you talked through. I actually just wrote an article on the Seven Health blog about a similar process. It starts just like what you shared, with curiosity and asking those questions, and then going to challenge, like you said, “Will this really make me healthier?”
Getting that critical thinking piece in before you can go, “What are the possibilities here of other ways that I could be healthy, if that’s something I’m pursuing? Or other ways I could feel more confident, if that’s what I want?”, before you can make a change out of that place that you were in, stuck in body negativity or having maybe disordered eating or disordered fitness experiences.
Chrissy King: I think that’s so accurate and so important. I think the other thing that I know for myself through personal experience is that when I set my mind on like “When I reach this weight or when I get to this certain size, everything’s going to be great. I’m going to feel confident in my body. I’m going to be happier,” all that, what actually happened for me is that when I reached those goals, I still didn’t feel like I was enough. So then it was always like, “I just need to do this now. Now I just need to change this part of my body.”
While you’re going through the process of fat loss or physique change or whatever your goals are, I always tell people, it is just as important to work on loving and accepting your body in all its iterations, because the reality is you can change everything about yourself and if you don’t change where your self-worth is coming from and where your value comes from, it doesn’t matter what changes you make on the outside. You’re going to get to the other side and still feel unworthy. So yes, excellent point that you brought up.
Lu Uhrich: Even as you’re speaking, I think too, it’s one of those things – we can do all the things to try to change our bodies, but you and I both know biology wins out. We can’t control our bodies down to these very specific measurements or sizes that we think we can. It does fight back for our survival, for our own good. Also, bodies just change naturally from age or hormonal changes, pregnancy, an accident. There are so many ways that our bodies can change. We are outside of control around that.
But like you said, the things we can really control and work through are our mindsets and our beliefs and the way that we then take those things out into the way that we operate and treat ourselves and treat others. Focusing on that part that we can actually control and affect in a way that’s sustainable is so, so important. I’m glad that’s something that you talk about often and work with your clients on.
Chrissy King: Yeah. What you said is just so poignant, because bodies are made to change. I think that’s a thing that we forget. We literally came out of the womb as a few pounds, and then we get to this point where we’re like, “Okay, this is the weight I like and I want to stay here forever.” Bodies just change. Things outside of our circumstances and our control happen. Our bodies are not going to remain the same forever, and that’s just a reality of being human.
I think the sooner we can accept that and conceptualize that and understand that, the easier we have at accepting. And not even just accepting, but also getting to a place where we – and I know this gets a little whatever when people start talking about loving themselves, but I think the relationship I have with myself is the most important relationship in the world because the only person I’m always with is me.
I really, truly do believe that it’s important for us to get to a relationship with ourselves where we really honor and respect and love our bodies because we’re with ourselves all the time. We have such an easy time showing compassion to other people, but we have a hard time showing ourselves that compassion, and yet we are the most important relationship in our lives.
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Lu Uhrich: Absolutely. I so agree. It’s made me curious about something about you personally. We heard at the beginning of your story in terms of how you came into this work, which was you wanted to get skinny. You went and saw a trainer, you started lifting.
Now your goals have surely changed, because I know you’re still lifting and I know you still enjoy moving your body and I know fitness is still important to you. I’m curious if you would be willing to share with Real Health Radio: what sort of goals do you have now around movement and fitness?
Chrissy King: Yeah, my goals have changed so much over the years, in fact. Even when I started strength training and doing all that and really loved it, I still wasn’t at a great place mentally in my relationship with fitness and nutrition because I was really obsessive about training. I was obsessive about not missing workouts. I counted macros for a long time, even during that process.
It took me years and years. I gave you a snapshot, but it took me years and years to get to a better place. There were times that I would miss anything but my workout. It didn’t even matter what was happening; I was not going to skip my workout. I set it up in a place of “I just love it so much,” and I did love it, but it was also, again, this obsessive desire to control my body, what it looked like, the output, all of those types of things.
And even with strength training, I started powerlifting and competing, and then I switched that focus about the scale to the numbers. I was getting my worthiness from how much I could lift and if I was coming in first place in my meets, and then comparing myself to other female powerlifters. Like, “Oh my God, I’m not as strong as her. I’ve got to train harder.” So it was lots of obsessive behaviors throughout this process.
But these days, it’s so refreshing to be in a better place with my relationship with fitness because I recently moved to New York. I’ve been here about 3 months now. I came from the Midwest here. I have a lot of other transitions happening in my life. Lots of changes. 2019 was a big year for me in a lot of ways. Not necessarily things you celebrate. I just had a hard year, is the moral of the story, and fitness wasn’t on the forefront of my mind.
Even when I moved here to New York, I was training once or twice a week, and I was happy that I was training once or twice a week. It was fine. Now I’m more into a routine, so I usually make it to the gym about three days a week. It feels so good because I love when I’m there, and when I don’t make it for whatever reason, I’m totally okay with that too.
The thing that has really, for me, solidified that I know I’m in a much better place is that I can look back at weights that I was lifting probably 3 years ago that I could not walk into the gym and do today without hurting myself. [laughs] And I’m okay with it, because I recognize that my relationship with fitness ebbs and flows too. That was a priority for me then. Being able to squat 400 pounds is not a priority for me right now, so it’s okay that I can’t do that.
Also, being here and just moving – all the things that you do in life help me appreciate the functionality of fitness. I’m like, wow, I’m so happy I’m strong. Wow, I’m so happy that I train regularly. Wow, I’m so happy that my body can do these things. It feels really good to not feel obsessive and to really do movement that feels good.
Lately, powerlifting hasn’t felt like something I’m interested in, so I’ve been doing other forms of movement – more kettlebell work and more bodybuilding style training – and I’m having a great time doing it. I’m like, that’s cool. Maybe someday barbell stuff will be something I’m desiring again, and when that happens, I’ll go back to it. I’m really just allowing my body to move in ways that feel good.
Lu Uhrich: I love that you have such a loose grip on it, where it’s “Hey, it is what it is. Yes, I have some goals, I have some ideas around the schedule I’d like to keep, but when I don’t, it doesn’t disrupt the way my life” – the way I’m sure it disrupted your life when, like you said, you would abandon anything but make it to your gym. You had to be there for lifting and to get to your workout, but you’d miss just about anything else.
Was there a pivotal moment, or was it just over the course of time that you began to look at exercise as less transactional or even compensatory or competitive with yourself and always having to lift more, do more, go harder, be stronger? What do you think shifted those ambitions to more “for the joy of it, for the functionality of it, for the connection with my body”?
Chrissy King: I think there’s a couple of things. One thing I know for sure shifted my relationship with “I must do every workout or else” is just life. I was really busy. I was working a full-time corporate job. By that point, I had also gotten certified in personal training, so I was training nights and weekends in person. I would try to get up and get to the gym by 5 a.m. and then go to my corporate job and then come back to the gym and train, and I was burned out.
My workouts were suffering, obviously, because I was sleeping like 4 or 5 hours a night, but then still trying to get my body to perform at the same level. I was just exhausted, and I ended up getting injured. It was because I was asking my body too much. I think that for me was the first time I realized that something had to give. Either I was going to train less or not as intensely, or I was not going to train clients as much. Something had to give, because I couldn’t do all the things.
So I started to pull back on my training a little bit. Not so much that I wasn’t going as frequently, but I was not asking myself to do as much. I think I cut back to 4 days a week, where I had previously been at like 6 days a week, and my sessions were not as intense as they were prior. I think that was really great because then I also realized, oh, this is okay. I’m only training 4 times a week, and look, everything’s still fine in my life. This is okay. This is a good thing.
And then over the years, as I got more involved in my own journey with my body image and coming to more peace with all of that part of fitness, and then recognizing I think more and more why so many people don’t feel comfortable in fitness spaces – that’s when I started recognizing, what is the point of fitness?
By that point I had recognized that I don’t believe that the sole purpose of fitness is for weight loss. I think that’s just one of myriad options of why one can engage in physical activity. I started to realize, wow, how beautiful would it be if people just came to the gym because they enjoyed it, because it’s empowering, because they like the way it makes them feel? The more I examined that, the more I examined my own relationship with fitness.
I think it was just through that process that I let go of the reins and I recognized that I don’t have to be regimented. I don’t have to make this a chore on my to-do list. This can be something that I do because I enjoy doing it, and it’s okay to change the course and direction to do different forms of movement that feel good – even if that means not strength training. I went through a period where I didn’t feel like going to the gym, and this was when I was still living in the Midwest and it was summertime. I would just walk every day and enjoy nature, and I recognized that’s a beautiful way to engage in movement as well. It doesn’t have to be one way.
Lu Uhrich: Yeah. I tell my clients, listen, if you’re out throwing a ball with the dog in the backyard or playing with your kids, that’s movement, and that can be a form of enjoyable movement if that’s something that lights you up, that you feel attracted to. It doesn’t have to look a particular way.
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You were getting on this topic that I’d love to delve into a little deeper around the idea that fitness isn’t about the way that we look, and there’s so much more to it. I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on that. What else is fitness? How else can we define fitness? Because I think culturally, at large, we have this idea of “fitness looks like this.” Chiseled abs and defined shoulders and – I don’t know. You know the fitness look that we see. It’s usually a tall, thin white woman with muscles. That’s what it is. And yet fitness is so much more broad than that. It’s nothing about the way that we look. I’d love to hear your thoughts there.
Chrissy King: Yeah, it’s so interesting. I wholeheartedly agree. When I think about the word “fitness” and what images come to people’s minds, it’s definitely the things you described.
Actually, lately – and I still don’t have all my thoughts around this resolved, so bear with me as I talk through this – but lately I’ve been thinking about even what the word “fitness” means. Again, fitness is not about a way that we look. It’s not about a certain size. It’s not about a certain shape. It’s not about any of those things.
When we start to talk about how to measure being fit, I just think there’s no way to talk about that. We could say “fitness is the ability to walk a mile with ease.” Then when I think about that, that’s so ableist, because people who are wheelchair users could never walk a mile. They could roll themselves a mile, but couldn’t walk a mile. That doesn’t mean they’re not fit. So I’m just thinking about how to move away from that word and how to reframe that whole narrative.
But anyway, the point is, when I came to fitness or to exercise, movement, whatever, I had in my mind what I was supposed to look like. That first time I walked into the gym, in my mind, I was like, “I need to be skinny because that’s what people who are in shape look like. That’s what people who are fit look like.” And we know that that’s not true. There are people in all different body types that do amazing feats of athleticism all the time.
There’s a woman – her name is escaping my mind right now, but I see her all over Instagram because she’s in a larger body but she runs marathons regularly. I can’t run a marathon. I’m in a smaller body than her, but I can’t even run a mile – I can run a mile, but I’m just saying, I can’t run long distances at all because I’ve never trained to do that. And yet some people will look at that body and say she’s not in shape and make judgments about her fitness level or her health based on that. It’s ridiculous.
On the flip side, there are people who are in very thin bodies who, again, couldn’t do any fitness-related activities whatsoever, but people would assume that maybe they work out because of how they look.
I just think we have so many ideas about how bodies are supposed to look, and then we ascribe people’s ability levels, their health levels to what the exterior looks like. It’s just not true. We have example after example of this all the time.
Last week or last couple weeks, you probably saw there was some controversy because Jillian Michaels made some comments about Lizzo and how she looked and why we’re celebrating her and it’s not going to be funny when she has diabetes, or something to that effect. Again, that’s disheartening, because here is someone who is a fitness professional making general comments about Lizzo’s health based on solely how she looks.
Then I saw a quote from Lizzo later that week – and I don’t necessarily think it was in response to Jillian; I don’t know the timeframe – but it was essentially saying, “For someone like myself to be a fat black woman who consistently works out, but people make assumptions that I don’t because I have rolls, a big butt, and all this, I think it’s really empowering, and that’s why I do what I do, because how amazing is it for other young girls to see that you can work out and go to the gym and you can do all these things and it doesn’t have to be with a goal of having six-pack abs or a small body?”
I think that gets at the core of the message that we’re talking about here. That doesn’t have to be the thing. If that’s the thing, cool, but that’s not the benefit. The benefits of movement are sleeping better, feeling better, having energy, joy for movement alone, the transformative power of strength. There’s so many reasons that we can engage in movement that have nothing to do with how we look. I just think we have to stop attaching the narrative of health and fitness to body size.
Lu Uhrich: I definitely had some words about the Jillian Michaels/Lizzo thing – which will be months behind us now. I think this episode will come out the first week in March, so people will hopefully have heard about it by then and taken the side of understanding that Jillian is fatphobic and that’s problematic.
But I think that Lizzo is so great and so athletic. I know there was a meme going around and someone’s like, listen, could you do a 2-hour show where you’re dancing constantly and then you’re singing and then you’re playing the flute? That’s some serious physical exertion, and she does it so well and so beautifully.
I previously had interviewed and connected with Akira Armstrong, who is one of her dancers. Her team, Pretty Big Movement, dances with Lizzo. They work so hard all the time and move their bodies in such beautiful ways, and the team is made up of women in larger bodies and fat women, and they are extremely athletic and so in love with what they do and the art of dance and movement. It’s something so inspiring, and yet, yeah, when we trim down fitness to meaning you have to look a certain way, that limits so many people from being able to experience, like you said, the joys of fitness.
I often tell my clients, if we could shift the focus from the cultural ideal of fitness to more your personal feelings or your personal preferences around how you want to feel and how you’d like to function in your personal life – because that takes into account, like you said, if running a mile is fitness, somebody who is in a wheelchair is never going to be fit. And we know that’s not true. So in their personal life, what does functioning look like? Functioning well in their personal life under their personal circulates. How do they want to feel in that wheelchair and in their life in the way that they navigate the world?
If we look at feel and function as this idea around fitness, it takes it away from how we look entirely, and yet there are so many goals we can set and so many ambitions we can go after just with those two different objectives.
Chrissy King: I 100% agree. Again, it’s so much of the same with my own clients. Exactly what you said: how do you want to feel in your body, and what do you want to be able to do in your day-to-day life? Let that be the basis for how you’re making measurements about your “fitness.”
For me, that’s also so helpful when we go back to this idea of fighting against narratives against what our bodies should look like or the weight and all these things. If your goals are to feel energized and to feel excited to go to the gym and to be able to run around the backyard with your kids and you’re doing all those things really well and crushing it, then it becomes less about what the number on the scale is because you’re feeling exactly the way you want to feel, and you’re functioning exactly the way you want to function, and that is the goal.
Lu Uhrich: Absolutely, and there’s so much more joy in that than pursuing something that may never be available to us, because we know that even if a body size is available to us temporarily, it’s usually not long-term if we are being disordered around exercise and eating to get there. It’s really this dangling carrot that’s always just a little out of our reach. Like you already previously said, you still end up feeling horrible about yourself, even if you get down to the weight you want to or you have the physique that you think you need.
When it comes to feel and functionality, those are things that, one, we get to change as our lives change, like you said. Like, “Hey, there was a time I wanted to be at the gym and I wanted to be lifting barbells, and now I would rather do kettlebells, and I’m showing up in these different ways.” You get to shift without feeling like you’ve somehow failed or fallen off some fitness wagon. No, it changed because your life changed, and it’s about you and how you are navigating the world right now.
All the rest of our life plays into how we best want to move and feel in our bodies – which is, again, so much more attainable than this idea of one ideal look as being what fitness is all about.
Chrissy King: Yeah, I totally agree. I think it’s so important, too, because like you already said, life changes. Priorities change. I think so often in fitness, too, one thing we haven’t really touched on is that the representation of fitness so often is young and agile adults. We miss out on older adults and different body ability status.
Again, those things are just as important, and fitness isn’t just for thin young white people. It’s for everyone. It’s so important that we see that representation of people in mainstream fitness spaces because the benefits of strength training for older adults are just as important as they are for younger adults, as you know. So yeah, I just think all of these things and changing the narrative around mainstream fitness is really important.
00:42:25
Lu Uhrich: I’d like to get into that. This is one of the tenets of your work, is that you want more diverse and inclusive wellness spaces. I think that that is so needed in our culture. There’s probably listeners – and you and I can talk about this, too, and we have talked about this in a past interview – we realize that the wellness space is actually not inclusive at all. But there’s probably some people who maybe aren’t in the same circles we are, in the same industry, or haven’t stopped to take a look who are like, “Well, anyone can go.”
You and I know that’s not actually the case, but I’d love to hear more. What about wellness spaces right now isn’t diverse, isn’t inclusive? I think that can start a really wonderful conversation of how we go about changing it.
Chrissy King: Absolutely. You’re right in that, sure, anybody can go, but it’s like, can I go there and feel safe and welcome and seen and heard and understood? Those are the things that I think are missing from the fitness space.
I’m going to use one example that I think is really important that a lot of people don’t think about enough. If you go into a typical box gym, they have a women’s room and a men’s room. That doesn’t take into account for trans individuals, gender nonconforming, gender non-binary. Think if you’re a trans person walking into a gym. Where do you feel comfortable going to a changing room and a locker room? How do you feel comfortable going into a space like that and feeling like you belong, or that you’re even understood, that someone has considered you? Because they haven’t considered you at all if that’s the situation.
Here in Brooklyn, I train at a gym called Strength for All, and it’s a Women’s Strength Coalition gym. When you walk into the gym, there’s gender neutral changing facilities, there’s gender neutral bathrooms. That was done really intentionally. There’s a Trans Lives Matter flag up, there’s a Black Lives Matter flag up. There’s so many things up in the windows so that when someone’s walking by the gym, they understand that no matter what your background is, we’ve got you here, and you are welcome to come here and you’re going to feel safe and seen and supported in this space.
I talked a minute ago about a bodybuilding class I joined. I joined there; again, I just wanted some accountability. I was missing that sense of community, of working out with other people, because I’d been training solo for so long. The first day of the class there were seven of us, and the instructor asked everyone to go around the little circle that we had, introduce our name, our pronouns, and why we wanted to join this class and what brought us here.
For one, the pronoun thing is really important. We can’t make assumptions about what someone’s pronouns are. It’s a simple act that makes people feel comfortable, but also, besides that, it normalizes the activity of asking someone what their pronouns are. I hear people say all the time, “Oh, that’s not a big deal. People are just sensitive.” It’s like, no, actually, asking a simple question like “What are your pronouns?” goes so far in making people feel comfortable, and it literally is not hard at all. It’s not a difficult act for any of us to do.
But then the thing that really was inspiring to me is that when people were going around that circle, talking about why they joined, there were two to three trans or queer people who were like, “I came to this gym because I was walking by and I saw the trans flag in the window and I felt like, wow, okay, I feel safe about going to this place.” The person’s like, “Then I went to the Instagram account for the gym and I saw queer people being represented on the Instagram page, and I was like, wow, this is a place that I could go and actually feel safe and understood in this gym, and they’ll understand my unique experiences in the world at least better than other places would. I know this is a place that I can go and train.”
I think when you live in a very cis heteronormative world, we forget about things like that because if that’s not your experience, this world makes it really easy to not have to think about it. Same as living in a thin body. The world makes it really easy for you to never have to think about the experience of other people. Or if you live in any privileged identity, this world makes it really simple to not think about the other experience.
If you just took a minute to take yourself out of whatever your identity is and think through the lens of a marginalized identity, whether it be a person of color, black and indigenous people of color, or someone in a larger body, or a disabled body, you’ll see that the things that we take for granted in our everyday lives aren’t the case for everyone else.
I think the fitness space is just – a lot of spaces are behind, but I think the fitness space is particularly behind in taking an intersectional lens or approach to fitness.
Lu Uhrich: Oh, for sure. One of the things that I was thinking of as you were talking about how easy it is to make assumptions when you have several intersections of privilege – and most people in most gyms do – is also this idea around the reason everyone’s there is obviously to look the way society says a fit body should look. So it’s obviously to lose the fat and get a super-toned body, get the six pack, have whatever muscles you are focusing on or working on, but have it look a certain way.
Then what I’ve seen happen – and friends of mine in larger bodies have personally experienced – is when they go to the gym, it’s like they’re celebrated for being there. There’s this insinuation like, “Look, you got up off the couch and you came to the gym. Good for you. Thanks for trying.” Whereas for somebody who’s in my size body, I walk in and they’re like, “Yeah, way to kick ass. You’re so fit.” Whatever people are saying.
It’s just a totally different tone. One is like, “Obviously you’re supposed to be here, you’ve been here, and you clearly do this all the time” and the other one is like, “Oh, so good for you for doing something about your body” – which is so infuriating. And it happens all the time.
Chrissy King: Absolutely. I’m glad you brought that up. Again, back to the same circle that we were in, one of the other individuals in the circle basically said that this is their first time being in a gym in a couple of years because they had a really bad experience with a trainer that they had. The experience was that this individual really wanted to get stronger, and they were really excited about that, and this trainer was like, “No, you need to lose weight. I’m going to help you accomplish that because you’re overweight.” That was not the person’s goal whatsoever, so she was very scarred by the experience and hadn’t been to the gym in a couple years because of that.
Again, you’re so right, people are so quick to take these idealized standards of beauty and put them onto other people. Like, “Clearly you must be at the gym because you want to lose weight.”
Also this idea that you just talked about of celebrating the activities of people in larger bodies like it’s some special feat. Like “Wow, that’s so inspiring that you’re here.” Same thing you said, like “Good for you, you got off the couch and made it in here.” Like they’re supposed to be there or not supposed to be there or whatever in relation to everybody else in a different body type.
Again, these are the things that literally happen in the gym all the time, and it’s a good reminder for me to hear these stories because I think – and you may agree – sometimes I get very insulated in my space of people who have similar viewpoints and perspectives, I forget – not even forget, but I just don’t remember how prevalent it is outside of my little circles.
The fitness space is literally the Wild, Wild West, and this stuff happens so frequently. It really turns people off to movement. Again, I feel like that’s such a disservice to people, because movement is so empowering. I’ve seen how empowering it’s been in my life, and it makes me sad that people don’t have that experience or don’t have the opportunity to have that same experience because of really negative experiences in the gym.
00:50:40
Lu Uhrich: I want to get into – and I do eventually want to talk about Women’s Strength Coalition, because you brought it up as you were sharing about your gym. It’s so rare to have experiences like the ones that are happening in your gym. I want to know what you think about what we can do as individuals who are in these fitness spaces, the Wild, Wild West, as you said, to really push back.
I know personally, I’m a big phone caller, so I call the gym pretty frequently when there’s an instructor who’s talking about losing weight or who’s focusing on “the bikini body” or whatever it is that they’re saying that they think is motivating. I’m a recovered individual from disordered eating and exercise. I know people who I’m with that are as well, and those words can be triggering.
I also know there’s several people in that group in the classroom that I’m in who I don’t know at all, and I don’t know their stories, and I would never take for granted that they aren’t currently suffering with negative body image or disordered eating, that people that are there in fat bodies or, like you said, in bodies beyond a certain age or people of different statuses of ability, what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling at some of the things that the instructor says.
So I’m real big on calling, but what I’ve found is – at least at the gyms that I’ve attended – it’s a lot of they’re mad at me for calling, and they really don’t understand. And even if I try to explain it and give my professional take on it – because this is what I do, day in and day out – they’re not quick to go, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense” or “Thank you, we’ll take that to heart.” It’s more like, “Doesn’t everybody want to come to the gym to lose weight and look like the fitspo that’s on Instagram?”
It’s so hard to get past that. So what do we do to change these spaces?
Chrissy King: Honestly, in total transparency, I do think it’s a bit of an uphill battle, and I think it’s because fatphobia is so deeply rooted in our culture that I think the average fitness participant doesn’t even understand or see the ways in which this is operating. I say that because I have conversations with people who are friends, who are not necessarily in the same space or haven’t done a lot of work in this area, and they don’t totally get it either.
So you’re absolutely right that if you call it in – which by the way, I think is fantastic; I think we should all do that regardless – but you’d be surprised. I mean, you’re not surprised, but I think some people might be surprised that you don’t get the response you think you’re going to get because for us, it’s so crystal clear that this is a problem.
I think overall, the fitness industry thrives – when we think about it, the diet and fitness industry is a multibillion dollar business, right? The industry thrives on making people feel like they’re not good enough in their current bodies. Like you have to go to the gym because you need to change the way you look. That’s the messaging that we get. “Get your bikini body. Get your six-pack abs. Take this pill, take this supplement. Do this, that, and the other because if you do this, you’re going to attain this perfect body or this perfect physique” or whatever. Again, like you said, it’s that carrot dangling in front of people.
So when you look at most fitness marketing and most fitness talk, it is very much about “You’re not enough where you are right now, but if you do this thing, you could be there. You’re almost there.” I think it’s so pervasive that people don’t even recognize it so much, so it does make it really challenging.
However, the things I think that we need to be doing in our daily lives – like you say, when you see things happening, it is our responsibility – I feel like with anybody with privilege, it’s our responsibility to call those things out. Meaning picking up the phone and taking the extra time, or asking to speak with someone when you’re at the gym and something happens, and being okay with it being an uncomfortable situation.
So many times, I think when we have to speak truth to power or speak truth to whatever situation, it is uncomfortable. But I always remember that it’s really uncomfortable to be – like if you’re talking about racism, for example, I always say it’s really hard to speak up about racism for people. I understand that it’s uncomfortable to talk to your friends or family. But it’s also uncomfortable to be the victim of racism. You don’t get to take a break from racism in the world if you’re a person of color.
I think we have to always take ourselves out of it and be like, “Yes, this is uncomfortable; yes, I might not want to have this conversation with this person. But I need to do it anyway.” I also think when you go to a fitness facility, talk to the manager about, “Hey, have you ever thought about having gender neutral changing facilities?” I’m telling you, I’ve had this conversation with people, and their face looked like I was – they were lost. They had no idea what I was talking about. [laughs]
Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s still important to have those conversations.
But I think the thing that all of us can do in our lives that is something that is easy is that we need to first start with examining our own implicit bias. I think this is particularly important for fitness and wellness practitioners, to be looking at our own biases about bodies, about weight, about race, around all those types of things, because we all have them.
I think it’s really important to acknowledge that having bias doesn’t make you a bad person; it just makes you human. It’s really simple to be like, “No, I’m not biased against fat bodies. I’m not biased against black or brown bodies. I’m not biased against queer bodies,” but that’s just not true. We all have biases. Actually, if you just google “Harvard implicit bias test,” there are all these implicit bias tests that you can take around race or ethnicity and body size and all these types of things, gender.
It asks you a series of questions, and it’s really fascinating because you can’t trick the system no matter what. And I say that from experience, because I’ve taken a lot of them. Even as a person who has done a lot of work around my own internalized fatphobia, I took this test last year around implicit bias around bodies, and it still said that I had a slight preference for thinner bodies. I know that I’ve done so much work around unlearning my fatphobia, but that goes to show how deeply embedded most of these things are in all of our lives.
So I think it’s so important to call out the things we see in our everyday lives, and I encourage people to keep doing that. I think it’s equally important to make sure we’re examining our own bias in our own lives and working to uncover and change that as well.
And then I think the other thing that’s a really important part of this conversation is I feel like in the world of social media, people get a lot of accolades for calling out these type of activities or making posts about this stuff, and I think that stuff is really important. I think it’s vital, actually. But I also think more important than that is having those difficult conversations with the people that we can effect change with in our everyday lives. That means our friends, our family members, the people around us.
I think it’s so important for people with privilege to be having these difficult conversations with those people, and more importantly, to be doing it with compassion – not from a place of “I’m a good (whatever) person, and you’re not a good (this type of person), and I’m going to help you be better,” but from a place of “Listen, I’ve made some of those similar mistakes. I have compassion for you. Let’s talk through this. Let me help you understand.” Not in a condescending, “I’m the savior, I’m going to show you a better way” way.
Lu Uhrich: That’s something I can totally relate to in my own personal life with dear, dear family members. This is based on police brutality on black bodies. The way that I can so clearly see it and they couldn’t, and me going, “I could make some big comment, I could post on social media, but right here in my own family, there’s a dissonance here. There’s a disconnect, and I want to deal with it.”
Seeing now, just to share with the audience, whether it’s about fatphobia, whether it’s about racism, whether it’s about ability status or financial status, to be able to have those conversations with people that we are close to and just share honestly – again, like you said, not because I’m better and you’re worse, but because I see something maybe you haven’t seen yet, and let me give you a new perspective – it’s just so powerful to see months, years later, the shifts that can happen in one person and how now that one person goes out and talks to their people, and how change happens then from this little ripple effect.
Sometimes I’m like, “But it’s too little, too late. It’s not enough.” And yet that’s how all change happens. So I love that you offered that, yeah, maybe we can go talk to the gym, maybe we can make the phone calls and talk to people in these spaces that we don’t know, but what are we doing to talk to the people that we do know and share with them?
Chrissy King: Absolutely. I love that you shared that story because it just matters so much. People all the time ask me, “How do I use my privilege?”, and I think that is the way that every single person in the world can be using their privilege, by having those conversations. And the ripple effect, although it does seem small sometimes, is really powerful and really far-stretching.
For me, that’s the way that we’re going to create change, more so than just social media posts. And I get it, because you get more accolades and praise for the social media posts most of the time. But the real work is having the difficult conversations with the people close to you.
Lu Uhrich: I do like that you brought up the Harvard implicit bias tests. I do think everyone should go and take them. I’ve taken them before too. I also think a really easy way to – well, I guess first you have to setup and curate your social media to be seeing all sorts of bodies and all sorts of people, but once you do that, the next step then to question your implied biases is to scroll and think about which things you stop on and which things you scroll by quickly.
For myself, even as somebody who has a wide range of people in my social media, a wide range of bodies and gender identities, I can notice in myself – I’ll often stop myself and go, hey, why did I scroll past that? Why did I scroll past that and land on this one? Usually that’s me digging up my own internalized biases and ideas about people or bodies or choices or visibility.
We can do that in our own – and a great place is to go, hey, is my social media curated to see all types of people? And if it’s not, we start there. If it is, where are the ones we’re staying on, landing on, paying attention to, and why are we scrolling past the other ones? It’s just a fun little inventory to take sometimes to get us closer to understanding who we are. Like you said, as humans, we all have that. We all have these internalized ideas and biases. It’s important that we then investigate them so that we can move past them, and we can’t investigate them if we don’t first identify them or know they’re there.
Chrissy King: Yeah, I love that. I’d never even thought about what you just said about the scrolling on social media thing, so I’m going to put that in practice this week. That’s really amazing. Thank you for sharing that.
01:02:10
Lu Uhrich: Yeah, of course. I want to talk a little bit about the Women’s Strength Coalition, because I think another thing that we haven’t talked about so much – we’ve talked about race and ability status and gender identity, and we’ve talked about body size, but we haven’t talked about financial ability. I know with Women’s Strength Coalition, there’s that aspect of it too, where the work that you’re doing there – and I believe you’re the vice executive director?
Chrissy King: Yes, correct.
Lu Uhrich: Super cool. I want to hear more about your position, and I want to hear more about Women’s Strength Coalition and what it does, because it seems like they’re also taking into account people’s financial ability to be in places where fitness is encouraged and where they’re able to move their bodies and to gain strength or pursue fitness in whatever ways they want to.
Chrissy King: Yeah. I started working with Women’s Strength Coalition not even a year ago, actually. It’s been less than a year. I’ve been familiar with their work for a long time. I’ve done other one-off projects with them in the past. But I came on as an actual official member of the team in I believe April of last year, April 2019.
I was honored to be able to come on because I’d been a huge fan of their work long before that. Again, our mission is really increasing access to fitness, sports, and strength training for everyone in a variety of different ways.
I’d say most people are familiar with WSC through the event Pull for Pride, which happens in June, Pride Month, every year. This year it’s in 15 cities across the U.S. and Canada. It’s a deadlift competition with all the proceeds going to the LGBTQIA community. It’s really cool because people rally and literally raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for participating organizations, and it’s amazing. We are honored to be able to donate all of those funds to organizations doing great work in that community.
In June of 2019, we opened our first training space, which is called Strength for All, and it’s located here in Brooklyn. It’s a really unique space because it is all donation-based and sliding scale. Basically, we have memberships as low as $20 a month, and then multiple times a week there’s donation-based classes. Literally whatever you can donate is what you pay.
It’s really important to us, but just in general, it’s really important because – I think about how much money I’ve spent in the past on trainers or just working out at facilities that had really great strength training equipment. Of course, you can always go – most places have, like here in New York, we have our Blink Fitness, which is $20 a month, but it’s a box commercial gym versus going to more of a strength and conditioning based gym. They tend to be more expensive. I’ve trained at both over the years, and past maybe the first year in fitness, I’ve always been in more specialized strength and conditioning gyms.
I think I just took for granted that I could afford to work out there, that I could afford trainers and coaches that really taught me how to powerlift. I didn’t have to go on Google and learn it – although you can do that. I just took for granted that that was something that was accessible to me because of my financial background that wouldn’t be accessible to a lot of people. When you’re worried about making ends meet, having the ability to spend extra additional money on fitness is not something that everyone can do.
So Strength for All has been really great in that it has allowed people to come in at all different backgrounds and socioeconomic status levels and be able to work out in a gym and work out in a space that feels really safe and inclusive and welcoming to people. It’s been such a joy being here the last few months and actually working out there myself as a patron, and seeing how important and special it is to people that get to go there, and hearing people in the gym even talk about why they come there and why it’s been important to them and how good it feels to work out in these spaces.
And to also be able to come and work out in a space where you see people from all different racial and ethnic backgrounds and see people of all gender identities is such a special thing that I don’t see at a lot of gyms that I walk into. I should mention there’s lots of other gyms across the country doing great work like this as well, but this is the first place where I’ve had a chance to train in this type of environment. It’s just a really, really special thing.
In terms of the sliding scale memberships, they’re as low as $20 and up to $120 a month, and it’s an honor-based system. We just take people’s word for it. You go on the website and sign up for what you can afford to pay, and that’s it. You come and have access to the gym.
We’ve been really blessed. Having a donation-based, sliding scale gym and still having expenses can make things tricky, obviously, especially in a place as expensive as New York. But we’ve also been blessed with so many people who’ve been super generous. We have a generous Patreon community, and we have lots of people who volunteer to work hours at the front desk.
It’s just really all worked out, and it’s been a really beautiful experience – so much so that we moved to a bigger space in November, and still that space is completely filled up. I went the other night and I was like, wow, this place is starting to feel a little crowded now. It’s just been really beautiful because the word has spread within the community that this is the place that people can come and feel good about working out.
Lu Uhrich: I so appreciate that, and I’m glad you said there’s other places around the country that are doing similar work. I want to see even more, for sure. The sliding scale and making sure that everybody, for all reasons, that all barriers have been taken into account, or as many as we can now see – I’m sure everyone’s always willing to learn more and see more and do better – but knowing that there’s so many of these barriers that have been thought of to make everyone feel welcome and to give everybody access – and financially, that’s a really big thing.
How many times are people like, “Why don’t you just go to the gym?” or “Why don’t you just get fit?” They make assumptions about people because of their bodies or because of even a health status without taking into account, where do they live? Do they have access and opportunity? Financially, is it something that’s even feasible for them? There is so much privilege, and like you said, taking for granted of the access that we have and the ability that we have to do these things.
I love that there’s a gym in New York that’s saying, “Hey, this is for everybody, and we will make it so. We’ll have donation-based classes. We’ll have a sliding scale, and we will trust you to be honest when it comes to showing up.” Did you say that it’s a 501(c)(3)?
Chrissy King: Yes, it is.
Lu Uhrich: So people can donate?
Chrissy King: Yeah, people can donate, which has been really helpful. People, again, have been very generous. Even the idea of opening up a 501(c)(3) gym, people are like, “What? What are you doing?” [laughs] We’re like, it’s going to work out. And it has, and it’s been really great.
01:09:30
Lu Uhrich: That’s so awesome. I want to shift a little bit – we’ve talked about fitness and movement; that’s part of your experience, personally, and part of what you share about online and in your social media spaces and in your writings for different places.
You recently-ish – I guess in September, or maybe October – wrote an article for Shondaland about your trip to Madrid that was more food-based. Here on Real Health Radio, we like to talk about people’s relationship to movement, to their bodies, and also to food. So in this interview, I’m excited that we’ll be able to do all three of those things with you because you had this experience in Madrid where you really, truly embraced eating intuitively and freely and had such a liberating experience around food. I’d love to hear more about it.
Chrissy King: Absolutely, I’d love to talk about that. I had the opportunity to go to Spain in September, and it was interesting because I knew one person was going. She invited me on this trip and she was like, “It’s going to be some other women.” I was like, “I’m in. I don’t even need to know anything else. I’m coming.”
Then I got there, and Spain is beautiful. There’s so much food, so much culture. We were really fortunate because this friend had a friend who lived in Madrid, so she had an itinerary the day we got there of all the must-do food places, all the things to do.
I just remember being so present in every moment and having so much joy that I got to be there, and having so much joy trying different food and really enjoying. I had a moment while I was sitting there, feeling so overwhelmed with gratitude, and it made me really reminisce on how far I’d come in my relationship with food.
If we backtrack a few years, I talked a little bit earlier about tracking macros. I was a hardcore macro tracker for a very long time. It got to the point that it just wasn’t healthy for me. I remember my low point with that being like I couldn’t go on a weekend trip without packing all of my food for the weekend. Literally, physically, it made me too anxious to do.
I remember this trip with my family and my in-laws – I was married at the time and I was with my in-laws, and I packed all my food for this 3-day weekend. Probably 2-½ days, to be honest. We were going to this restaurant, and I told them I was going to stay in the car because I had my own food. They were like, “Okay, that’s fine.” I think they thought it was weird. They were really generous about it, because they came back out a couple minutes later and were like, “We asked the restaurant if you could bring your own food in and they said it was fine.”
I just remember at the moment, I was like, “What am I even doing right now?” I’m on vacation for the weekend, and I was going to sit in the car and eat my own food because eating something off the menu was too terrifying for me because I was going to mis-track a few macros that day or something. Even taking the food inside and sitting there while everyone was eating other food and I’m literally eating some room-temperature food that had been in the car all day – I was just like, “Wow, what is life? I don’t want to live like this anymore because this is actually really bad. I feel sad that this is what I’m doing with my life right now.”
I think that was the last weekend. I just went, “You know what? I’m not tracking anymore.” It was really scary. It was terrifying. But I knew that’s what I needed to do for my own sanity and wellbeing.
Fast forward to then being in Madrid, and I was like, wow, this is so beautiful. I came into this week, for one not knowing anybody except for the one person. In the past, I would’ve been really self-conscious about what I looked like and my body and how people were going to view me, and none of those thoughts entered my mind. Never once was I like, “What are people going to think about me?” or “What are they going to think about what I’m eating?” I just ate, freely and unabashedly, anything that I felt like eating, and I enjoyed it. I was really present with the moment.
It was such a beautiful experience because I think one thing that diet culture has done is robbed us of the pleasure of food. I know some people don’t like to talk about food as a pleasurable experience, but I actually think it is. I think we don’t savor experiences, we don’t savor food, we don’t savor moments because we’re so transfixed on calories or what we should and shouldn’t eat or food guilt. It was just such a beautiful moment to realize how far I’ve come in my own personal journey and relationship with food.
01:14:10
Lu Uhrich: Yeah, and you can talk about food as pleasure anytime here. [laughs] We all feel pretty strongly about that. It is such an important component of our eating experience because food is connecting and it’s cultural, and it’s so many things beyond just this idea of “calories in, calories out” or “proper” – whatever that means – macro ratios for maybe goals or ambitions you have.
That picture of you eating lukewarm food out of Tupperware containers with your friends and family or your in-laws at the time in a restaurant, it just feels so sad and defeating, and yet I can personally relate. I’m certain so many listeners can relate as well, and that “step back and take a look at my life” moment of “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to live like that.”
What did it look like for you then to shift? Did you feel like it was just a snap of the fingers and “I’m out,” that that was an extremely pivotal experience? Or was there a lot of this tug-of-war with your mind and also maybe your heart or your deeper sense of knowing and intuition about needing more freedom around food at the time?
Chrissy King: No, it was definitely a tug-of-war. I did immediately stop tracking, but it was not easy for me, and I definitely was a little bit at war with the whole process.
But the one thing I will say is that even though I wasn’t “tracking,” if you’ve been tracking macros for years, you know what you’re eating even if you’re not putting it in that calculator. So even though I wasn’t tracking anymore, I was mindfully still tracking. I was still kind of doing it without using the calculator. It was a slow process to get away from that, because again, you just know sometimes when you’ve been doing something for so long. And I had a history of being a very repetitive eater. When you’re a repetitive eater and you’ve been tracking, you really know what you’re eating.
So I was really at war with it for a long time. I genuinely think it took me several months to get back – maybe even a year; I don’t know exactly – to get back to a place where I really felt like I was trusting my body and listening to my body about what I needed and what I wanted and what I desired.
I think food can be really triggering – and I don’t ever say that I have any type of eating disorder, so I think even more so if you’ve suffered from an eating disorder, you can be triggered by food things or people’s comments or other people’s eating or ideas around food for a really long time that can bring up those feelings again. There’s been plenty of periods in my life since then where I’ve thought about food in ways that probably weren’t healthy because I think, again, when you’ve been doing something for so long, those old habits go away with time. It’s not an immediate process.
Also, for me, when I ever find myself getting – I really don’t get caught up about food stuff. Very, very rarely. But we start talking about stuff like body image, those thoughts still come to my mind occasionally. I don’t think any of us are immune to that. But what I always remind myself of is that life is really, really short in the grand scheme of things.
This week, if you’re listening to this, this week Kobe Bryant passed away with his daughter in a helicopter. I’m not a basketball fan; I never have been. But I know who Kobe Bryant is. Death has this way – especially someone that maybe in your mind you didn’t expect that. People die every day, but then certain times people die, it hits you differently. My dad died unexpectedly in January 2019, and I had this epiphany about what I wanted my life to be like. And then Kobe passed away this week, and his passing for some reason brought up a lot of those similar feelings again for me.
The thing I always remember is that life is really, really short. I think about myself sitting in that restaurant, eating out of that Tupperware container, or how much time I spent obsessing about how I look, and I realized that life is too short to spend my moments on things like that.
At the end of my life, I want to have a life full of amazing memories and beautiful times I’ve experienced with the people that I love in my life, and none of those memories are going to be – no one’s last thoughts about me are going to be about that summer I had six-pack abs or how great my body was. That’s not the important thing.
So I always try to bring myself back to that point, to really appreciate this moment, this day, my abilities in this body right now, the experience I’m having right now, because life is just really, really short. It’s fleeting. For me, in my opinion, it’s far too short to be stressing about food or that workout you missed or how your body looks in this outfit. It’s just not worth it to me.
Lu Uhrich: Yes, exactly. Life is meant to be lived. I’ve been feeling the same way. I think we’re having this collective experience of grief – and I know for some people it is complicated, but a collective experience of grief around Kobe’s death, the death of his daughter, and everyone else who was in that helicopter.
Hopefully it does give people a moment to step back and say, “Hey, how am I living my life? How am I going to be remembered?” Because you’re right – in none of the legacies, in none of the tributes to Kobe have we heard anything about – I mean, we might be hearing about how inspiring of an athlete he was, but we’re not hearing anything about his training program or his body fat percentage or what he ate. We’re hearing about the impact that he made on lives and the inspiration that he was for so many, and collectively we’re feeling a loss because he was someone who was a part of our culture and just a pillar in the athletic community and beyond.
And death closer to us, like you shared about your father passing – many of us, all of us, have experiences with losing loved ones and going, “Okay, let me pull back here and think about what I want my legacy to be, how I want to spend my time.” Like you said, it’s all about being present, because we can’t go back and change the past, and we absolutely cannot predict the future or continue to live into it, because when we live into the future we’re not being here and we’re not being connected and effectual with the people and the places and the environment around us.
So yeah, that really is such a great lesson. And having that lesson inform our food experiences is wonderful.
I know you say in the article that to you, food is about experience, culture, and memories. I’m wondering if there’s any food experience you had in Madrid that you want to share with us, where you still have these really great memories or you can still even taste the food that you were eating or hear the laughter around you.
Chrissy King: Oh, 100%. When I think about that group of women that I went with, I made friendships that I will keep ongoing. We’d go to this bakery in the morning, and they have these amazing chocolate croissants. We’d walk there every morning, almost. I think about that all the time. I literally do.
And when I think about Spain, or occasionally I’ll see something that makes me think of our experience, a lot of times it is something to do with food. I’ll send a little message or text to our group chat on WhatsApp or a picture of this, and like “This made me think of Spain” or whatever. Those are memories – just the amount of laughter and fun that we had will definitely stay with me forever.
Actually, it’s a funny thing now, but I got really sick one night in Madrid. It was after this big group dinner, and we all ate the same thing, but I was the only one that got sick. I have no idea why, but I just kept saying that it was the oxtail that made me sick. It could’ve been any of the things I ate. But I was at a restaurant last week and it had oxtail on the menu, and I sent a picture and I’m like, “Never again in my life.” [laughs] People were laughing about it.
So it’s just things like that. But I tried oxtail. It was the first time I had tried it, and I was like, wow. It was really great when I had it. Not doing it again, because I have bias against oxtail now, but it’s just those kind of memories that I think about and that bring me so much joy.
01:22:40
Lu Uhrich: Absolutely. For people who are listening and they’re like, “That sounds so inspiring to be able to have these sort of moments, to walk to get croissants with my friends and be laughing all the way, and even make jokes about things that didn’t work out so well in eating experiences, because I got to have them and I got to be there,” and they’re thinking, “Oh man, that sounds so great, but here I am. I’m one of those people just like you, eating out of Tupperware and feeling really committed to my macros or MyFitnessPal or whatever it is,” what would you advise as the first step to disengaging from the heavy control of food?
Chrissy King: Honestly, I recommend go off the tracking, but I recognize that for everyone, that might feel like too big of a first step. I respect and honor that.
Do something just super small. Do something that you enjoy, that maybe you haven’t allowed yourself to do. It could be something super simple like having cream in your coffee, God forbid, right? If that’s something that you like but you’ve always put as off-limits, just start with doing something, that small action.
I think when you start to do that and you recognize everything’s still okay, like “I had that cream in my coffee every day this week and everything’s still fine,” it builds the confidence to take one more small step and be like, “What would it feel like if I didn’t track my breakfast? Maybe I track the rest of the day, but I didn’t track breakfast.” You can start to make small changes that don’t feel as overwhelming or as big as quitting everything, all the tracking, at one time and start to feel comfortable with those smaller steps. I think it’s something that we can all put into practice and can make that transition feel a little bit easier.
Lu Uhrich: I love that advice. I tend to tell people similar advice to you, and then this idea of once you do those small things, you put the cream in your coffee, you don’t track breakfast, you have a snack without putting it into your app, you realize – this maybe dates me, because no one talks about Chicken Little anymore, but I always say the sky didn’t fall. Everything’s fine. The sky wasn’t falling. It’s okay. Life moves on.
Just having those small, simple experiences, you’re right, adds up to something bigger over time if you allow it.
01:25:00
You know me, probably, from speaking within my Mend group. One of the things I love to ask is about the barriers that you see. We’ve talked about a lot of barriers with fitness in terms of what is stopping people from moving their bodies and finding joy in lifting or cardio or exercise in general. What do you see as the barriers for people finding peace and joy with food, and not just looking at it like it’s simply fuel?
Chrissy King: The diet culture altogether. When I see messaging around food via the internet or fitness magazines, it’s really disheartening. I understand wholeheartedly why it’s difficult for people to develop a better relationship with food, because I think also diet culture has gotten really savvy. Maybe people don’t say things like “good” and “bad” anymore, but they just switch those out for words like “highly palatable” and “nutrient-dense.” There’s still this idea that some foods are better than other foods.
And again, when you look around, there’s all this messaging around should you eat gluten, should you not eat gluten? Should you eat dairy, should you not eat dairy? It’s bad for you, this thing is going to cause this, you should go keto. There’s so much information and advice out about food, I think it’s super overwhelming for people.
I think it’s really hard for people to just recognize how to eat in a way that feels good for their bodies, that makes them feel well, and that also is enjoyable and sustainable for life. Again, food is so closely tied in fitness to what you look like that it’s very convoluted. I think the barrier to people being able to do that is just the overwhelming amount of information available and the ways that we talk about food.
Again, our talk around food and diet is so deeply engrained in everyday life that you hear literally everywhere – very seldom do I go places where I don’t hear a woman saying something like, “I probably shouldn’t eat this, but I’m going to eat it anyway” or “I’m going to have to pay for this later at the gym” or making disparaging comments about food. I don’t know. Sometimes it feels – I hold so much space for people who are still trying to figure this out, because it’s really, really hard.
Lu Uhrich: I asked you for the barrier, and you’re like, “all of the world is basically the barrier right now.” And it’s so true. It is. It’s everywhere. It’s infiltrated fitness and food and health and all of those things now. There’s rules around, ideas around eating that really keep people from being able to do it freely and let it just be a part of life instead of this main focus that takes us away from actually living.
So I agree with you that diet culture is the biggest barrier to having peace around food. That’s why I’m so thankful that you do the work that you do in the world, helping people not just with the fitness side, but sharing about your food experiences too, and having conversations around nutrition as well.
01:28:10
We’re getting close to the end of our time together, and I want to make sure that the listeners get to find out more ways that they can connect with you and get in touch with you. I know one of the things that you have going on is this Glow Up Retreat. Could you tell us a little bit about it?
Chrissy King: Yeah, absolutely. I’m so excited that you brought that up. The Glow Up Retreat is a retreat that I host along with two of my friends, Allison Tenney and my friend Shirin, @wholeheartedcoaching on Instagram.
It’s a 3-day retreat, and we literally call it a sleepaway camp for grown-ass women. It’s happening Memorial Day weekend. It’s in Manitou Springs, a little bit outside of Denver. This is our second year doing it. It’s hard for me to describe because I’ve been to a lot of retreats myself, and honestly it’s not like any retreat I’ve personally been to. It’s equally parts fun and empowering. There’s also a little bit of self-work. We do tons of activities that are really fun.
Each day there’s one main workshop. I’m going to be doing a whole talk on body liberation. My friend Shirin’s going to be doing some mindset work. My friend Allison’s going to be doing some stuff about community building and friendships in adult life. But then the rest of the day, we have activities as a group. We go hiking, we have s’mores on the campfire, we have dance parties. It’s just so much fun. I can’t really describe how amazing it is. It’s an all-inclusive weekend, so all of your meals, everything is there, it’s taken care of.
What’s so beautiful about it for me is I think as adults, it can be hard and difficult to make connections with new women sometimes, but this, I can honestly say the most beautiful takeaway for me was seeing so many people make real, genuine friendships. Now these women have traveled together after the event last year. They stay at each other’s homes in different parts of the country. It’s been so cool to see. We get together whenever we’re in someone’s area. There’s little get-togethers.
So it’s been really cool. I recommend it for anyone who’s looking for community with other likeminded people. I think making new friendships in your thirties can feel difficult sometimes, or challenging, so if you’re looking for a space to really connect with people with similar values, I highly recommend checking out the Glow Up Retreat. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
Lu Uhrich: Great. Tell me – and we will put it in the show notes too – but where can people find out more about it? Is there a website for the retreat?
Chrissy King: The website is www.theglowupretreat.com, and we’re also the same on Instagram, @theglowupretreat.
Lu Uhrich: Perfect. That’s one place people can get more of Chrissy in their life, and your other co-hosts as well. Also, you and I talked before recording, but you have a podcast out that I have found really enjoyable and entertaining. I told you I’m waiting to listen to the last episode that I’m really looking forward to, because you and your co-host are sharing your personal stories of friendship and connection with each other. Can you tell us a little bit about your podcast, in case people want to hear more about you?
Chrissy King: Absolutely. Our podcast is called Two Girls Talking Shit. My co-host is my friend Shirin that I was talking about. She’s my co-host. Honestly, when people ask what it’s about, I’m like, listen, it’s like you’re coming to your girlfriend’s house and having a glass of wine. We’re just talking about life stuff.
It’s really fun. We have so much fun talking to each other. It’s been really cool for me, because I think one thing that doesn’t always come through on my personal Instagram is that I love having fun and joking around. You get to see more of my personality on the podcast, so it’s been a really fun process. And honestly, we’re just having really great conversations.
This last episode was our last episode for the season. It was a bonus episode where we tell each other our favorite stories about ourselves. It was really fun, really beautiful. I think we don’t take enough time often enough to share with our friends how much we love and appreciate them or what our favorite things are about them. So it was really enriching for both of us.
So yeah, come listen. We are Two Girls Talking Shit. We’re on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, Libsyn, and our Instagram page is @twogirlstalkingshit.
Lu Uhrich: I’ve been listening on Spotify. For the Real Health Radio listeners, obviously we talk a lot about food and body here on this podcast, and there is a whole body episode on Two Girls Talking Shit, so you’ll want to check that one out for sure. But anything else that is intriguing to you, I say go ahead and listen, because they’re all really great episodes.
Chrissy, how else can people find you? Website, social media? Where do you want to send them if they want to connect with you further?
Chrissy King: My Instagram is @iamchrissyking. Same on Twitter and Facebook. But arguably I’m on Instagram the most, so you’d be best served to find me there. My website is www.chrissyking.com.
And then later this year, I’m going to be doing some workshops across the country all around body liberation. So stay tuned, follow me on Instagram, sign up for my newsletter to be the first to find out about some of those cities and dates. I’m really excited about that as well.
Lu Uhrich: Oh, I’m excited for you too. We’ll make sure all of those links are in our show notes, so listeners, you can go check them out. Chrissy, thank you so much for speaking with me today. I really had a great time talking to you, and I know that our listeners are going to take away so many wonderful lessons.
Chrissy King: Thank you as well. This was such a beautiful conversation. I can’t believe the time has flown by already, but I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me.
Lu Uhrich: Of course.
Well friends, that’s all for this week’s episode. Please be sure to head over to the show notes if you want to learn more and link up with Chrissy.
As I mentioned at the start of this episode, Seven Health is again taking on new clients. If you’re interested in working together to redefine and reimagine fitness, heal your relationship with food, and be present in your life and in your body, or if you simply want to find out more, head over to www.seven-health.com/help and apply for a free initial chat with us. Again, that’s www.seven-health.com/help.
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