What I Got Wrong About Body Positivity

When we listen, our bodies speak — sometimes softly, sometimes loudly. For me, it started quietly but eventually began screaming — waving red flags I couldn’t ignore any longer.

My ankles yelled every time I stood up — not to mention how swollen and inflamed they were. (Honestly, I’d forgotten what ankles even looked like, it had been that long since I’d seen mine.) My knees sounded like bubble wrap every time I walked up or down a flight of stairs. Just to name a few.

For the longest time, I chalked it up to being a woman of a certain age (you know — middle-aged lol). That it was just part of the “normal” aging process. Except deep down, I knew it wasn’t normal.

But this was so much more than my body “betraying” me…

You see, in 2019 I’d built a brand, my beliefs, my identity on loving my body – my fat body – exactly as it was. And for a while, I thought I had it all figured out. Spoiler: I didn’t.

I stood on my soap box shouting things like:

• “Thin does not equal healthy, just as fat does not equal unhealthy”
• “EFF you, diet culture!”
• “Plus-size bodies aren’t something broken that need fixing.”
• “Losing weight won’t make you happier. You’ll still have the same problems, job, etc.”
• “You can’t be body positive and lose weight.“
• “You don’t owe anyone weight loss because they think you’re too big.”
• “You’re enough just as you are – regardless of your body size.”

I believed every word of it. I lived it.

But I knew something was off… And that’s when a question hit me like a ton of bricks:

How do I stay a body positive advocate AND take care of my body – including weight loss – when doing that might make people think I’ve betrayed everything I stand for?

That’s where everything collided.

The body positivity world (and the big influencers in it) preached the same thing I had: you can’t lose weight and still be body positive. That had been my truth too — until my body reality was screaming something different.

Suddenly, nothing made sense anymore. My body needed change, and I started questioning everything I’d stood for.

Let me back up a bit…

The Little Girl Who Wanted to Be Fixed (aka – made thin)

Shit started all the way back in childhood—when I was taught that food had rules and bodies had rankings. Thin meant good. Chubby meant bad.

I grew up being food policed and body shamed…

• “Tishia, you don’t need seconds!” or “Tishia, finish everything on your plate!”
• “Are you really going to eat that?”
• “Chubby girls don’t show their tummies or thighs – you can’t wear that.” (My fave outfit – black shorts with a white cropped top with puffy pics/letters on it)
• “You don’t need that, you’re too chubby as it is.” (as some food was being taken away from me)
• “You’d be so pretty if you would just lose some weight.” OR my fave backhanded comment “You have such a pretty face.”

For years I cried myself to sleep wishing for a Fairy Godmother to wave her wand and poof—make me skinny. (Spoiler: it never happened.)

Each time I was shamed, it confirmed what I’d already started to believe: I wasn’t lovable. I wasn’t enough. I was broken. I believed that food carried moral value and my body was a problem to solve.

The older I got, the more desperate the “solutions” became—hiding food, bingeing in secret and then purging, diet pills, laxatives, endless exercise. Anything to shrink my plus-size body. Because thin was the ticket. Thin meant acceptable. Loved. Happy.

And sure, sometimes it “worked.” I’d lose weight—then gain it back plus more. Each cycle left me hating my body a little more. Hating me a little more. Until eventually I couldn’t even look in full lenght mirrors I hated my body and self that much!

Permission To Take Up Space Just As I Was… FAT and All

Fast-forward to 2018. I moved cross-country and found the body-positivity community—and a plus-size yoga instructor who said, “You have permission to take up space just as you are… fat and all.”

That was the moment I broke up with the scale. I threw it away, stopped dieting, and finally started seeing my body as something other than a project because someone had given me “permission” that I was enough just as I was even in a fat body!

plus size Modeling

By 2019 I was strutting down a runway as a plus-size model, screaming, “F*** you, world! This is my body, and if you have a problem with it, that’s on you, not me.”

Somewhere in that liberation high (and with a push from a business mastermind) The Body Positive Fairy Godmother was born. The same Fairy Godmother I once begged to make me skinny, only this time the magic was real and had nothing to do with weight loss.

As the body positive fairy godmother, I shouted body positivity, fat acceptance, and taking up space unapologetically in a plus-size body.

I believed every word. They were my truths. My gospel.

I just didn’t realize that even Fairy Godmothers can outgrow their wands…

The Gospel According to Old Me – you can’t be body positive and lose weight

It was a gospel I preached with conviction — until my own body called my bluff.

I said it loud and often: “You can’t lose weight and be body positive.”

That message saved me when I needed saving. It helped me untangle my worth from the scale and stop chasing approval that was never going to fill me anyway.

But over time, the words that once freed me started to feel like rules. Rules about what a “good” body-positive Fairy Godmother could say, could do, could want. Rules that didn’t leave much room for… well, real life (aka health/body issues).

I didn’t stop believing in body positivity… I started wondering if it had space for me – for women who love their bodies, but also want to feel better in them!

It was disorienting, like realizing the map you’ve been following doesn’t lead where you thought it would.

The Moment Body Positivity Met Body Reality

Fast forward to end of 2024, beginning of 2025. My body was screaming for help, and my brain kept whispering, but body positivity.

So I kept ignoring my body aches and pains and pushing down something that kept bubbling up inside – wanting to lose weight...

because what would it mean if I did something about it?
Would I be a sellout?
A hypocrite?

The truth was, I was terrified. Not of my body changing, but of what people would say if it did. I’d fought so hard against diet culture that even thinking about weight loss felt like betrayal.

I didn’t want to be “that person” – the one who preached anti-diet, body positivity, fat acceptance, and then “gave in.”

But at the same time… my body was hurting more and more. Every day felt like a tug-of-war between my message and my body. Between who I’d been and who I was becoming.

It’s a strange kind of grief when the beliefs that once saved you stop fitting. Like realizing the armor that once protected you is now too tight to breathe in.

That’s where I found myself — standing in the gap between body love and body reality, trying to figure out what the hell came next.

Choosing Myself Over My Message

I was tired of pretending I didn’t notice how bad things had gotten. My health sucked. My quality of life sucked.

So, I made a decision that terrified me. To do something that went against what some of the biggest body-positive and fat-acceptance voices had preached — what I had preached.

Even after deciding, I wrestled with it for weeks. I argued with myself. I cried. I tried to talk myself out of it. Because I’d seen what happened when other body-positive advocates chose weight loss — they got absolutely beat up online.

But I digress…

No matter what, no matter how long I tried to keep fighting it, the truth kept bubbling up:

I COULDN’T KEEP SACRIFICING MY HEALTH JUST TO KEEP A ‘BRAND/MESSAGE’ ALIVE!!!

So I hit record. My hands were shaking. My voice quivering. My heart pounding.

But I did it! I made a video for my community, the people who had trusted me, followed me, believed in my message, and I told them:

I was choosing to prioritize my health.
I was choosing to lose weight… as a body positive advocate!

That might not sound radical to some people, but for me — the Body Positive Fairy Godmother — it was earth-shattering.

Because that video wasn’t just about weight loss. It was about integrity. It was about choosing truth over performance.

It was about saying out loud what I’d been quietly battling inside: I’m not betraying my message — I’m evolving it.

And maybe, just maybe, this was what real body positivity looked like.

The Truth I Stand On Now

Here’s what I finally understand now – the part I couldn’t see back then:

Being body positive and wanting to lose weight can coexist.

They don’t cancel each other out.

And through all of this, I’ve learned a few more truths:

• You can reject diet culture and still want better health.
• You can celebrate your body and still make changes that help you feel good in it.
• You can say, “I love this version of me,” while also saying, “I deserve to feel better.”

That’s not hypocrisy. That’s growth.

But maybe the biggest most loving thing I know now is this:

Body positivity doesn’t cancel out body autonomy.

Body autonomy means I get to choose what’s right for me — even if it doesn’t fit neatly into someone else’s ideology.

And it means you get to do the same.

No one else lives in your body.
So they don’t get a vote.

AND that’s the freedom I was chasing all along…