Men Have Body Image Issues Too. A Conversation with Jonny Landels

Today I am chatting with Jonny Landels, a former diet culture-obsessed fat loss coach turned Intuitive Eating coach and Health at Every Size Advocate.  He spent YEARS fighting his own body but a couple of years ago, managed to turn things around and now adopts a non-diet approach.

I was really interested to get a male perspective on the impact of diet culture and Jonny feels incredibly passionately about ending the stigma, when it comes to discussing disordered eating, body dysmorphia and body image issues amongst men.

We touched on the following topics during our chat:

• We spoke about Jonny's transition from fat loss coach to weight neutral coach and how his clients reacted.
• We talked about cultivating a healthy relationship with movement when historically it's associated with dieting and self-punishment
• How to know when too much is too much

I am so excited to bring you this conversation and love Jonny's passion and conviction for his work.

If you're interested in working with Jonny, he mainly hangs out on Instagram OR you can see what he's got coming up through his website.

Are you simply fed up with hating your body? Are you stuck in the 'earn and burn' cycle when it comes to exercise?
You are not alone and your body is NOT the problem

Please reach out if you would like some support. We both have limited slots for Intuitive Eating and Strength Coaching, so get in touch with Christine or with Ela.

AND if you enjoyed this episode, please share and follow the 'Find Your Strong podcast' and if you have time, write us a short review. It would honestly mean the world. Love to you all, Ela & Christine x

Transcript

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Christine Chessman: Hello! I have a quarter of an episode coming up for you, so stay tuned. I am chatting to Johnny Landville's, who he was. A former fat loss coach

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Christine Chessman: and has pivoted in the last few years to being an intuitive eating and strength training coach

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his message is really strong. So he is very passionate

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Christine Chessman: about helping men speak out about issues surrounding

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their bodies, how they're feeling their training, etc. Disordered eating body dysmorphia.

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Christine Chessman: Johnny's gone through a lot, and he has really done the work around, changing his own relationship to his body, to movement, to eating, to foods.

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And he's doing his best to kind of spread that message and destigmatize

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Christine Chessman: so take the stigma out of men talking about eating disorders, disordered eating, or how they feel about their own bodies. And I think it's incredibly important in this

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Christine Chessman: diet culture and this.

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you know, die obsessed industry, that we're both working in.

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Christine Chessman: So stay tuned. Listen to my chat with Johnny, and let me know what you think. Lots of love to you.

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Christine Chessman: So welcome to another episode of the find your strong podcast I have. I always say I've got 3 in store, but this week it is very true. I am talking to Johnny Landel. How are you?

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Jonny: I'm great, Christine. Thanks for having me. How are you?

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Christine Chessman: Yes, I'm okay. I'm kind of enjoying that. It's not half term if I'm on. But I've been kind of excited to have you on for quite a while, I think, working in this non diet space. It tends to be quite a small community, and you tend to get to know other fitness, professionals and intuitive eating counselors.

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Jonny: So I just wanted to hand everything over to you and ask you to tell us a bit about your story, and how you find yourself doing the intuitive eating, coaching on strength training, coaching, that you're currently doing. Well, how long have we got? I'll try and keep. I always try and keep it convincing a bit longer, but the condensed version is that I was like, always quite active

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Jonny: as a teenager, but like more in sports like. So I played Rugby and Cricket a lot as a Rugby player. I played it quite

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Jonny: decent level, for as a teenager, so I was playing a lot of Rugby. A lot of the time.

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Jonny: So I, playing for 3 different teams at 1 point in my in my period, because I was playing for my school first team. I was playing for my city under 18 team, and then I was also playing county under 18, and it it's all the same season. So so peak level. I was training several times a week, playing 2, 2, or 3 games a week. That was even one time when I had a

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city final game, and then, directly after that game, at the same Rugby Club. It was north of England tryouts.

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Jonny: and at this age I have no idea about sports, nutrition, or anything, so I'd like didn't eat so didn't have any, you know. I think

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Jonny: I can't. I can't recall or not but like because my mom was always dieting when I was growing up like I probably wouldn't have had like luxury sports and things like that for like those reasons, and I just the tryouts. I was terrible like crumpets up, and it was. It was pretty disappointing period for me. But I, looking back then, but like II know the area of my ways now.

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Jonny: But because I cause I had my mom, who was always dieting, and my dad, who was a bigger bloke himself. I was quite conscious about my own size and shape, and I'd had certain comments growing up would be, you know.

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Jonny: being bullied for being fat and that kind of thing. And I didn't internalize that a lot. So when I got into my 1819 uni years. I started going to the gym instead of playing Rugby.

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Jonny: and that from the gym I quickly found crossfit, and then from crossfit. I kind of found that, like it was a perfect combination of the gym plus the competitive nature of Rugby that I loved.

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Jonny: and I just went like all in on crossfit. So when I was then studying my masters I was. I was crossly training so much, and then, my masters. I got a lot closer to the people at the local crossfit gym than I did like anyone in my Master's degree. So my friendship groups and my social life quickly revolved all around the crossfit. Gym, so that led me to kind of starting to coach there, starting to be a part of the community there.

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Jonny: and when I finish my master's degree. I stayed in Wales for another sort of 6 months before I moved to London.

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Jonny: and then, when I was in London, I was like I wanted to go to sort of the best cross gym, but it was really expensive. So I got a job and basically spent all my spend money on going to this. Cross the gym with a with an idea of like, I'm gonna coach for this gym one day like, that's what that's what I'll do.

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Jonny:  So I did that Kippa came across the coach, and all this while I was really obsessed with how heavy I was and and what I look like. I've done different sort of meal plans, mental health, subscriptions, diet plans, paleo diet, like these kind of things in and out, in and out of the time.

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Jonny: and I've never really found where I felt happy with my body composition, especially within the crossfit space. So when I was 24, a friend of mine from my my Rugby days. He was posting a lot of before and after men on Facebook and talking about this like cool thing called flexible dieting, where you could eat what you want and get shredded, cause all you have to do is track your calories and macros. So I signed up to work with him

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Jonny: and that led me to become incredibly lean at the age of like 25. So I was training twice a day crossfit, wise to get better at the sport. I was coach as I was across the coach full time, and then I was tracking all of my calories and Macros, and I just got incredibly lean, incredibly incredibly lean.

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Jonny: and people were like, how have you done this? You know what great transformation! How did you do it? Can you teach me. Can you show me how to? And that's where my coaching business was born? Basically because so many people at my crossing gym are asking me how I did it. So it's like right well, I'll I'll coach you out to do the same thing.

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Jonny: and that was in 2,015 throughout that next sort of 5 years

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Jonny: I found myself yo yo in

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Jonny: up and down from this like incredibly lean position. So whenever I wasn't tracking calories or macros, or trying to fast or do something quite extreme I'd find myself gaining weight and feeling negative about that negative about that weight gain. And so it was a kind of constant struggle back and forth for myself.

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Jonny: and because I was now coaching people full time on how to like, lose fat and keep it off.

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I kind of always felt a bit like a bit of a fraud, really, especially each time I had to kind of go up and down.

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Jonny: Interestingly enough, now that I've done a lot of work on my relationship with food and myself, I look back at all of those periods of time. I'm like at no stage where you ever what someone would call fast. Not that is a bad thing, but that's how wrapped up. I wasn't my my own image in my way at the time

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Jonny: that even if I gained a bit of body fat, it was like the worst thing in the world that could ever happen. And it wasn't until about 2020 21,

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Jonny: when I was, I was actually doing another coaching certification.

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Jonny: because I've done a number of them up to this point

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Jonny: I was doing a coaching certification that was much more about trying to get clients better results. It was more about psychology and behavior change and all the rest of it. So my my reasoning was well, I've got good

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Jonny: knowledge on nutrition next size. Now, from the years that I've been doing this, but I want to learn how to be a better coach. And it was in this coaching program, where they mentioned the term disordered eating, and started mentioning the

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Jonny: you know, the mind sets and the behavioral symptoms, and everything around, the kind of anxiety around food, the preoccupation with way in shape, the compulsion to have external control through fasting or calories, and the anxiety that that brings the compensation methods of like either lowering your calories or over exercising. You know all of these things for me.

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Jonny: so is

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Jonny: at that point. I was like man, you know. This is probably why I've been struggling so much with my consistency.

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Jonny: and it was a it was then I started looking into intuitive eating. So I started reading a lot more about intuitive eating. Then

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Jonny: both between the years of 2021 to sort of last year, 2023. That was when I was toying around with intuitive eating. I was talking more about the concept. So I was. I was not coming out as a full coach, but I was like

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Jonny: almost using hunger and fullness to help people with their relationship with food, and then be like, you'll probably lose weight. As a result of this type thing I was kind of like towing the line and because of all of the

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Jonny: the education I'd been had was very weight centric and was very weight normative, you know, in terms of like, let's help everybody lose weight. You know obesity is the worst thing in the world type thing. It took me a long time to even read the health of every size book.

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Jonny: And then, after reading the book and reading the research, and it still took me a lot of time to kind of start to overcome that weight bias myself. and start to be fully comfortable with talking about health at every size and a weight. Neutral approach. And it was only sort of last year where I was like.

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Jonny: you know, I'm taking this stance now, and this is my journey up to this point, and

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Jonny: you know it took me a lot to kind of come out and say, Th, this is now what I believe in, especially when you fill up a kind of identity, person or business around something that's completely polar opposite. Really.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah, I mean, there's so much there's so much there, Johnny, to unpack. Thank you for sharing that and I think you know I think you're not alone. I don't think many of us who are, you know, wit mutual trainers.

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Christine Chessman: or intuitively, I don't think we've come to it easily. so I think it's always come from the background of. you know, maybe disorder dating or aiding disorder, or just

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Christine Chessman: you know it, behaviors that are normalized and the fitness, industry, and to be brutally honest, I think I became a fitness instructor so that I could exercise

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Christine Chessman: for a living so that I could kind of maintain my weight and all of that good stuff. So I think

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Christine Chessman: I think the fact that it's taken that time. It's taking you to do all the research to do all the work. you know. That's that really matters, because you can then help your clients because you have gone through all of that. It's not been just a quick.

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Christine Chessman: like quick transformation into the non diet space. But I was. I was wanting to ask you in terms of your clients?

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Christine Chessman: Have you had clients that have stayed with you, and maybe evolved their approach

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Christine Chessman: as you have? Or is it mainly a new demographic that you have now reach.

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Jonny: I have had a couple of clients stick with me throughout, and and then it's that kind of continued conversation, of Where does this sit with my sort of own desire to like lose weight and or improve my body composition as as a result of of my working with you and II sort of said to them at that time, look, we're going to talk a lot about

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Jonny: intuitive eating and honoring your body's appetite. And we're gonna talk about how that's much better than the obsessive, controlling stuff that might have been the way before, which was only leading to negative behavioral outcomes anyway.

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Jonny: And if you're happy with doing that, we can then combine that with health, promoting behaviors.

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Jonny: value paired actions with sort of nutrition and fitness, and let your body react the way it might react through kind of years of consistency with those methods.

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Jonny: And I said, as long as you're okay with that. And and they said, Yes, and we've continued on that basis. So it's because it's it's one of those where you'll know from. You'll know as well from years of sort of strength training. But that can be

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Jonny: changes in people's composition through years and years of strength. Training, because muscle growth is a real thing. It just. It affects people differently for a different speeds on that different gradients.

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Jonny: And so it's interesting. I've got a guy who's been working with me since 2020, and we first died with just walking.

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Jonny: but then I slowly introduced him to the gym like one times a week, twice a week, 3 times a week, and now he's been going 3 times a week consistently for the last yearable, and when we look at his cause he quite likes using a dexes scan rather than weighing himself quite regularly, and but he wanted to track his own sort of muscle gain.

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Jonny: It's very interesting to see that muscle gain over that period of time. But when it's not from a place of session about it, it's from a place of now like he genuinely loves going in, and he's using free weights rather than machines and stuff. So that's a really cool

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Christine Chessman: Jenny to see. And likewise another woman who was a powerlifter.

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Jonny: but from Covid she was really really inconsistent with her own movement, both in the gym and walking, and she went from living in London and having a commute to work every day to moving back in with her parents.

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Jonny: And so then it was a big. It was a big behavior change piece actually to get those behaviors up and running again.

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Jonny: and reduce a lot of diet, compensatory behaviors that were going on in terms of sort of binging and restricting, and all the rest of it. So I've had just a few stay with me. I actually had one client who worked with me before my switch, and he'd lost a a fair bit of weight actually.

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Jonny: But then he got back in touch because he he basically regained it all, and he felt very ashamed about it, and this time we went through a lot more of the intuitive eating work and the body acceptance work and everything. And although he did start to see some changes in his body again.

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Jonny: from certain behaviors that he hadn't been as consistent with just through a a house move and job change, and all the rest of it. You know all these different reasons.

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Jonny: He noted the extreme difference, and how he spoke and saw himself this time around, whereas the time for it was like, even though it lost loads of weight. The time for it still wasn't good enough. It was still like I still had to go over here still, you know, still searching for more and more and more, rather than the second time coming from a place of acceptance

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Jonny: and then value driven behavior. It was a big shift in how he saw and spoke to himself, and the biggest change was kind of the getting over the empty weight bias that he had in his own mind.

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Christine Chessman: I mean, that's incredible. Those stories. And it's kind of do you find it's you're setting different goals and people are having different markers of

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Christine Chessman: progress. So that's kind of something I work with clients on. You know. Progress might have been in the past to fit into a certain dress size or to look a certain way, whereas now it's kind of you wanna climb the hill. You wanna run a 5 K. You wanna get off the floor without paying you want to. And you know, there these progress markers, which means so much more

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Christine Chessman: which it can take time to do that. That switch and that mindset shift. But it's, you know, when when I get the comments back from clients that are suddenly able to get off the floor with like pain or able to. It makes me so happy. It just makes me. It's like it's changing how they feel in and about their bodies.

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Christine Chessman: which has nothing to do with their weight

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Jonny: or their body composition, which is something really powerful, isn't it? Oh, yeah, yeah. 100

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people

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Jonny: want to work out and work with personal trainers because they want to feel fit, healthy, able, and confident. And so it's it's reminding people that you're actually working towards the same goal.

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Jonny: But you're just doing it in a much more sustainable and evidence-based

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Jonny: way rather than focusing on things that are unsustainable and actually going to just cause. This is why I remind people is that

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Jonny: if if these sort of diets or macro plans or fasting programs, it also works in the past, and they wouldn't be talking with me in the first place.

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Jonny: whereas the fact that they are we're showing that, you know they've never been happy with how they look, or they never been happy with with who they are, for various reasons. And so it's getting to the real bottom of that, which is a lot of that sort of self image, self talk

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Jonny: and, as you said, they're like value. Driven behaviors that are consistent with fitness can then provide you with such a massive quality of life improvement because of the ability to move your body in new ways that you weren't able to before

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Christine Chessman: nice. It's it's interesting to me how you know with it sounds really obvious. But fitness, industry, and diet culture are so interlinked. Obviously, even though really they are should be quite separate entities, you know. Let's work on our fitness and obviously sports nutrition that aside, etc. But it's trying to untangle that

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Christine Chessman: movement from weight loss, and I have a number of clients. I'm sure you have the same who are very much. They moved when they were dieting.

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Christine Chessman: so when they died a day up. Their movement and movement probably always felt a bit shit because they were undernourished and under fed, and felt like. There was a punishment they had to move. It was so. It's trying to rebuild that relationship to movement. I find

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Christine Chessman: quite a tricky piece.

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Jonny: I don't know if you've had an experience there. Oh, yeah, both personal and with clients. Because, as you said, it's

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Jonny: if you're doing that because you're hitting your step, count so you could lose spot. It's like, well, you're forcing yourself to go on a walk rather than moving for genuine like enjoyment and passion, or for health or health, promoting reasons, and with movement, as you said, if you're doing a lot of movement, but you're under nourished and under fuel, it's gonna feel worse. Feel more tired feel more lethargic

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Jonny: be more sore, you know you'll recover worse and a lot of time you also do exercise that you don't necessarily enjoy.

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because you think that's going to be the best thing for you to do for that aesthetic result.

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Jonny: So for me, it was like

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Jonny: I went through a period last year of being really inconsistent with my exercise for the first time in a long time, and it was because I was

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Jonny: assessing that

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Jonny: before, when I was in competitive crossfit. The goal was competitive crossfit, and so the training excessively made more sense. But there was also a tie into the ex aesthetic benefit of that high level of activity. And then, when I came out of that

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Jonny: competitive nature, are still working with an individual coach, and so still doing, sort of an hour and a half of wait, training and sort of combined training a day.

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Jonny: But it was more about.

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Jonny: must. It was more about like functional training as opposed to pure crossfit, and there was less intensity involved. It was more aerobic

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Jonny: but on top of that I still made sure to hit my step count, and I still did extra things like I might cycle to the gym and back, or I might go on an extra bike ride or things like, I'm still doing quite a high levels of activity.

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Jonny: And when I stripped all of that back because all of that was this kind of compensation, of not wanting to let myself go in quotation marks.

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Jonny: This last year, I was like, you know. Do I even enjoy

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Jonny: kind of cross with start training. So I sort of get my toe back into it with with the gym that I'd move to. I'd I'd left my one to one coach, and I was kind of exploring a lot of things myself.

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Christine Chessman: and I just was just like, I'm not really buzzed by any of it. So it took a bit of a backseat

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Jonny: for me to sort of think through things. And II came out the other side of that to be like. No, I genuinely do like loving like lifting weights.

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But how can I make that more consistent? And how can I

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Jonny: do that with maybe some aerobic activity for my health, that is of in a more sustainable manner.

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Jonny: And I walk my dogs regularly now, but I don't out my steps or anything. It's just because

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Jonny: they need exercise, and I enjoy the exercise as well. So it's like, it's it's good for both of us. So I try to help clients achieve that. So same piece of

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Jonny: you've got to genuinely enjoy it. Otherwise you're not going to keep it, and it's interesting because I do feel so much better now.

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Jonny: exercising well fed, like I can look back at all of those times training crossfit where I was trying to get Lena

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Jonny: and be like, you know. You probably lost your energy here because you were just white eating enough, and people people have asked me like, Oh, would you have been as good without that level of obsession.

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Jonny: and I was like, well, I probably would have been better. Because I've been eating more.

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Jonny: I'm not so I need to lose weight to get better at gymnastics, or I need to. You know, it's like run when runners and cyclists say, like, I need to lose weight to get better. My sport. It's like you don't at all. But there's a lot of that language.

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Christine Chessman: You know what I think. It's really hard. I think I still feel like we're swimming upstream in a huge way, and the the language is everywhere. You know this kind of

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Christine Chessman: fat phobic diet culture, languages, and sometimes it is really hard, and especially if you're early on in your journey to kind of move away from that, it can easily drag you back and it do you ever find now, when you're doing exercise? Do you ever get that feeling like you've got to push it harder? You've got to that almost the punishing voice is that still in there? Do you find it's easier now to push it away, or is it? Are you kind of more disconnected from it.

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Jonny: It it does come, it does come back.

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Jonny: And I think that's why I said that I had to sort of take a step back from things and reassess, because

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Jonny: when I was working with my one on one coach

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Jonny: before I it's the only reason I left

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Jonny: his services was that sort of we moved. We moved house to where I am. Now and then there was a the gym that I was training at before was much, much further away. So I was training at a commercial gym. But it was a Jd. Gym, so I had like weightlifting platforms as well as machines out of function area as well. So it was a really great place me to kind of do. A mixture of Olympic weightlifting and machine based lifting and do some like rowing and

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Jonny: kind of keep that lifestyle, whereas then, when we moved here we were around the corner from a across fit gym again.

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Jonny: and it's the much closer.

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Jonny: My wife decided that she wanted to start kind of doing classes, so I was like, Oh, maybe I'll I'll get my 20 classes again and kind of experiment around a bit. So I just sort of said to my coach, Look, I'm gonna kinda just experiment with things and just sort of toy around with it. But from being back in that crossfit space, because there's quite a few competitive athletes at the gym around the corner from us, they're quite decent.

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Jonny: It was very much like a mirror of like. This is the last I used to live. Johnny, you know, used to be the person who could do all of these movements and do all of these things, and

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because I still have a certain level of ability technically in terms of my ability.

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Jonny: I was asked to get involved with certain group competitions and things, and I was like, well, you know, when I enjoy it, will I not? And it was that kind of combination if I did enjoy it. But there was also a lot of comparisons to my former self. It was like man. You would have done so much better that in the olden days, you know, and like, you used to look like that because you used to live this lifestyle. So I had to really kinda take a step back from it.

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Jonny: because back when I was at JD.

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Jonny: You know, it was like nobody gave a shit while I look like, or you know how much I could snatch, or if I could do Muslims or not, it was just like everybody was just in there doing their own thing and across the gym. Nobody cares, either, but because I think it's a lot more in your face. I think it's easy to get caught up in those comparisons. So yeah, I had to kind of catch myself.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah. And I think that's it's it's kind of normalizing that for anybody who's on this.

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Christine Chessman: This I hit the word journey, but I always end up using it, and it's it's normalizing the fact that it will take time, and you may find that stepping back from movement, or any movement that you have been doing obsessively or overdoing actually, a step back from it can be really helpful.

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Christine Chessman: I certainly find that with running running is one thing that I've got a strange relationship with. I still love it. But I used to be a Marathon runner, and all of that, and had a certain pace, and

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Christine Chessman: there were certain expectations, you know. Oh, you're a good runner, you know that. And

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Christine Chessman: and I think now I run socially, and I run with friends.

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Christine Chessman: and I try not to push myself, and any time that I go for a longer run. I find it quite difficult. So I'm just at this point going. That's okay. I'm making peace with

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Christine Chessman: stepping back a bit until I feel ready. And I think that's

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Christine Chessman: that's a really good thing for people just to keep tuning in to themselves and and seeing how movements making them feel.

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Jonny: Yeah, 100% 100% like I can. I can relate to that definitely. Your your relationship with running sounds very similar to mine, with crossfit and fitness in terms of that like level of ability.

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Jonny: And even the

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Jonny: level of fitness I'd achieved allowed me to do things like running a lot more successfully. So it's interesting when I would kind of go on a casual run, or whatever like. Wow! I don't find this as easy as I used to be at all, but it was reminding myself that it was really interesting, because

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Jonny: the level of training I now do is a much more

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Jonny: sustainable level of training for my lifestyle, and for most people, you know, like a few times a week, freeze 5 times a week for like an hour. It's like when you're an adult, and you've got kids. You've got a job. You got all these things like that's very reasonable. And if we look at the

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Jonny: the amount of exercise you need to improve your health, for example, is that like 150 min, plus type thing of aerobic activity? So if I added up all my walking, and all of my weight lifting and stuff like I'm fine. I'm doing better than I need to. But then I still saw a drop in my level of sort of strength and fitness, because it's just so much less than what I used to do. So it's like, so of course, I'm gonna see those. Those that negative decline

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Jonny: because the level of exercise used to do is 8 to 9 sessions a week plus experts is like

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Jonny: it's not sustainable unless you're a professional athlete, and and I think it is, seeing that drop and fitness you have to back that up with the fact that but that would not have been sustainable for the rest of your life. That would not, and that would have been detrimental, probably to your health and fitness. Long term.

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Christine Chessman: But I wanted to ask you. I wanna before I kinda just chat away and forget about my questions. I wanted to ask you about being a man in this space. So you know, my clients are 99% female.

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Christine Chessman: And you know oh.

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Christine Chessman: and there's there's a great charity called men get eating disorders, too.

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Which I think is a cracking name for a charity. But II was very struck by the fact that I went to a map Hague event, where he was talking about mental health.

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Christine Chessman: and he was talking about the stigma attached to it. And he said, If I just look around the audience, it was 95% women. He came to his talk

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Christine Chessman: and he says, You know, it's just. It's the silence, the mental health aspect, he said. It's the silent killer, because men just do not talk about it. And I'm wondering for yourself. I mean, it's amazing that you're speaking out.

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Christine Chessman: Do you tend to have a female audience.

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Christine Chessman: or quite mixed.

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Jonny: So in terms of my like.

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Jonny: I'd say my audience on social media. If I believe the insights on Instagram. It's more, it is more women, but not by like a large amount. And then client base.

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Jonny: I'd say off the top of my head is probably 50 50 and the most recent clients that I've accepted

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Jonny: on board have all been men.

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Christine Chessman: And I and I tried to talk more about it in that. That reason, too, is one of those things where I've never fully niche towards men. But my

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Jonny: mind set is going further and further there, for the reason that you just said

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Jonny: so like Matt, hey? Just like, look at this out outfit in front of me like it's mostly women. And when you look at the research around body image. Specifically.

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Jonny: there's a big number of people of both sexes, of all sexes that are like, I feel more comfortable

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Jonny: if I'm with a group of people who are of the same sex as me to share these kind of concerns. And

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Jonny: I think then, if you look at some place like you said. Men get eating disorders, too, but there's also a mental health charity called Ambi's Man Club.

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Jonny: They they host men's meetings every Monday evening at 7, and they've got meetings all around the country now.

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Jonny: and you go. I've never been but the way that I've got a friend who's a ambassador for one and the other side of Leeds, and

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Jonny: it's like you go, and you can speak or not. But you kind of benefit from being there in the chat. And when you do speak, like people are there to support you. And it's just to sort of share your struggles, basically like, have a brew, and, you know, have a brew, a biscuit and a chat type thing. And and so that's really great, because, like that, clearly feeling more comfortable to talk about it, because there's so many other guys that are there talking about it. So I think it's

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Jonny: it's just the more we talk about it the more it will come through, but I think there is a stigma around

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Jonny: men sharing that in terms of they don't want to feel vulnerable. They don't want to feel weak. They don't want to feel like

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Jonny:  I think a lot of men lack a lot of self-compassion.

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Christine Chessman: And that

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Jonny: they take the responsibility bias of weight. Quite personally, you know a lot of it being like, you know. I'm sick of

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Jonny: being this way, and it's my fault lazy, and I eat too much, and you know it's very, very sort of negative self-talk

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Jonny: and having grown up as a lot, I can tell you that the banter that you have between mates when it gets personal can be.

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Jonny: That's the kind of voice you hear in your head, really. Well, you know, it's because I'm

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Jonny: I'm fat. I'm lazy, and I eat too much shit. It's like, well.

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you're not really going to move forward. If that's your sort of self talk.

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Christine Chessman: it's it's kind of like challenge in those harmful stereotypes that oh, for men, it's just they just oh, it's fine, a bit of banter. And it's like, you know, it only impacts women. And it's it's it's a, I think, finding a voice to just stand up and go. Actually, it's impacting. It's impacting me as well. I'd like to talk about it. I'm just wondering for you. Did you have somebody to talk to at the time when you sort of were really struggling? Were you able to talk to your friends and your mates, or

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Christine Chessman: wasn't more tricky.

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Jonny: so I probably only started talking to my mates about it when

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Jonny: I was going through a lot of the meeting reading, because up until that point I was the guy that was like, you know, I was the one he was called so with the fat Kid, and then was the personal trainer

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Jonny: who, like his mates, were turning to for advice and and chat about it and stuff, and it's interesting. So I don't think my mates ever really realized the full extent of where my obsession was. Until it was

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Jonny: 2018.

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Jonny: We went on a ski trip for a friend's stock, do you?

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Jonny: And in one of the sort of app prey ski bars that we were at, you know there was people sort of taking their tops off and things like that. And I was like, Oh, you know, I'm not gonna do it because of them.

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Jonny: you know, I've really let myself go. And and my name was just like, what the hell are you actually on about? Like, you are literally the most jacked one here, and he was like, and you are more jacked than like everybody who's who's sort of like already got their show off type thing.

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Jonny: And it was so interesting to hear his perception of what that was versus my own. I mean, a few years later, when we run it. Funny enough another ski trip for another friend.

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Jonny: I talk to my mates about it being like, you know.

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Jonny: when you guys used to call me fat and Joe cry, and things like that that did have a really lasting effect on me. And they were like. you know, they were able to say sorry and stuff and being aware of it at that age.

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Jonny: And I think that's it is difficult, because

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Jonny: I

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Jonny: mates with a lot of men, and in large, certain groups where there is a lot of banter thrown around.

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Jonny: And so you've got to have a level of a sense of humor for certain things, but I think it's there's more coming out now of like. If there are genuine things that you can't control, you don't say the make out it, for, you know, like I'd never take the make out someone's.

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Jonny: you know, shape of their nose, or like A hair color, or their height, or things like that. But then, being called fat was like, it's almost as if it's okay within that person's control. But both those things are false, like, it's not okay, and it's not within your control. So

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Jonny: I think there's just more education on that coming out. Now.

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Jonny: I think the passion of mine would be talking about sort of wait, stigma and and body image to sort of teenage audiences, particularly when they get quite vulnerable around

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social media usage and stuff.

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Christine Chessman: I mean, I think that would be so valuable. I've got 2 teenage daughters, and I can certainly say it's been a difficult ride. Trying to serve battle, diet, culture and images are everywhere around us.

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Jonny: and you know as yourself, as a as a new father that almost becomes just. You get more passionate about it not wanting your your child to go through what you went through at that time?

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Christine Chessman: So it gives you that extra push of that extra incentive, doesn't it.

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Jonny: But I just want to say, thank you for talking to me today, cause I have about 10 more questions. But I did say half an hour. So one final one.

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Christine Chessman: one final question, scale or no scale. I think we know the answer to this. But you know there, there is a lot of people that I know and work with, who wanna keep the scale just to check in now and again. And I'm a big advocate of dumping the scale and not having a scale in your house. But I just was interested on your perspective.

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Jonny: Yeah, I mean, I see on your side of the spectrum.

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Jonny: But I understand that going from weighing yourself regularly to not at all is of a huge quantum leap.

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Jonny: So then I would support somebody with making that overtime, you know, questioning their thoughts. If well, why do you feel like you need to check back in

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Jonny: what are you? You know. What are you concerned of

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Jonny: how does seeing the scale way affect your emotion and your action for the day, and kind of reminding themselves of all those things like, I think, to scale weight.

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Jonny: It's a reminder of

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Jonny: a weight, a weight, centric approach and goal. And then, if that leads to a negative body image trigger, which then leads to a negative emotion which then leads to certain behaviors which are conducive with sustainability and kind of monger and values is like

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it's not serving you.

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Christine Chessman: And it's it's very hard to kind of follow any kind of intuitive eating approach. If you're constantly looking at the scale as a measure of your health, your fitness, your etcetera, because your body will change, especially as you start eating differently. It takes a minute for your body to adapt and then settle, and you know, weight goes up and down. And I think

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Christine Chessman: personally, I agree with you 100%. I think if you can see a way to get rid of the skill, even for a little bit. You can get rid of it and say I can buy one again if I absolutely need to. But just see what it's like beside it and go from there. I think that's the absolute best. You've sorted me out brilliant, and I'd love to come in up for you, Johnny, where, if we wanna work with you? Where do you hang out? How can we work with you? Tell us everything.

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Jonny: Best place to come and hang out is on Instagram, because that's where I share. Like all of my content. I'm usually on some of the platforms, but just not most frequently at all. And II have have a group program and of course.

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Jonny: which is called beyond the Mirror Club, which people can check out, which is sort of a combination of a self-paced

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Jonny: into the meeting program with with group calls and a training program. But I do once one coaching as well. So best places. There's a link in my bio where you can book a sort of free chat with me.

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so if any of those things interest you. You can always just chat with me about what's best, but also just get a good.

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Jonny: a good bit of information of where you are and how to go forward, even if you don't work with me at all. So yeah, I always just love to connect to the people

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Jonny: that's brilliant, and I'll put all that information in the show notes. But for now, Johnny, thanks, Amelia, for joining me today.