When I reflect on the times I’ve most enjoyed moving my body—exercising in a way that has felt affirming, rather than permeated by shame—I remember going to the local gym of my hometown with a close friend as teenagers. We were both fat. Individually, the experience of entering a public fitness space would have been mortifying. Surrounded by the football jocks and cheer squad and jawlines so chiseled they could cut, our softness would’ve stood out. Together, we were still just as visible (if not more so), but somehow, it felt safe.
Instead of being humiliatingly large, we became impenetrably big. We were all broad shoulders, thick thighs, and wide bums. We moved because it was fun to do so. In those moments, we seemed to forget that, actually, we were probably there because everyone else (parents, siblings, teachers, peers, pop culture, what have you) told us we should be. After all, our bodies were walking billboards for all of the toxic narratives about fitness, wellness, and fatness that so many of us learn from childhood onwards. We were “supposed” to work out not for the serotonin, but for the potential “weight-loss benefits.”
This idea that fitness should be something we participate in solely with the intention of losing weight follows countless people for a lifetime, regardless of their size. Unfortunately, public fitness spaces can often feel like the physical manifestation of this messaging, which can ultimately make the experience pretty unpleasant if you actually are fat.
It has taken me a long time to internalize the idea that I might be able to move my body because I want to, simply because it improves my mood or gets my heart rate going. To learn now—approximately 15 years after timidly entering a gym with my best pal—that there are scholars, yoga teachers, athletes, gym owners, and even kinesiology experts striving to make fitness more inclusive boggles my brain and soul each day in the best of ways. These are people who want not only for physical public fitness spaces to be accessible and made with all bodies in mind, but also for the cultural narrative around movement and fatness to shift. To expand and metamorphose and come out of the other side as a whole new world in which we move our bodies because it feels good, rather than because we think we “have” to.
It has been a joy to speak to 10 such individuals who make up SELF’s inaugural Future of Fitness advisory board, to hear of their passion for changing things from the inside out. Whether they work at universities, hold nationwide lectures, welcome students into yoga classes, or reach thousands of fellow fats on Instagram, they all agree the things we are taught to believe about fatness—and the intersection of fatness and movement—are intrinsically flawed. They want to do better, and their belief that we can do better has given me far more hope than I had coming into this project. Even just weeks ago, I believed that while individuals might want to combat anti-fat bias in fitness spaces, the people in position to do something about it didn’t really give a damn. These folks actually do.
Meet SELF’s Future of Fitness Advisory Board: Laura Burns | Francine Delgado-Lugo | Louise Green | Christy Greenleaf, Ph.D. | Chrissy King | Lauren Leavell | Ilya Parker | Jessamyn Stanley | Morit Summers | Mirna Valerio
Yoga teacher, author, and body liberation guide
Laura Burns has worn many hats. She has roots in the nonprofit industry, where she worked as a fundraiser, volunteer manager, and trainer. But she didn’t feel people were particularly understanding of her reality of having IBS. So Burns pursued other avenues, including business coaching for creative entrepreneurs, and much to her shock, ended up discovering yoga along the way.
“I never meant to become a yoga teacher,” says Burns, who is also the author of Big & Bold: Yoga for the Plus-Size Woman. “I hated yoga. But it was because it was not accessible to me in the way that it was being presented. When I found it in a way that was accessible to me, it really changed my life. I have to thank Abby Lentz, the founder of Heavyweight Yoga, who really paved the way for people like me to exist.”
Today, Burns teaches yoga classes and workshops, and holds events and retreats, all with a specific goal in mind: “I’m a body liberation guide, and my main goal in life is to help people honor and celebrate the bodies that they have right in this exact moment.”
SELF: What are the most pressing consequences of anti-fat bias in your field?
Laura Burns: One thing I find incredibly troublesome is the perspective that teachers put on students—especially on those who are fat, disabled, injured, or old—that they’re working towards a destination that is different from where their body is now. Like going into a class and being asked how much weight you want to lose. Even the way people frame the use of props in yoga is upsetting. I believe anyone of any skill level, strength, and yoga experience can benefit from props. They are not just for people who “can’t do it,” but for everyone to experience support, stability, interest, challenge, or a fresh take on a pose that you’ve done 8 million times.
Or, picture the thin white woman in dancer pose on the edge of a cliff with her eyes closed. These are things that are incredibly inaccessible for 99.9% of the population. The idea that these physical poses or weight-loss goals are the destination is inherently flawed. The most impactful part of my yoga practice is everything except the physical. I always say that yoga plus body liberation equals healing. The body stuff is one piece, and it’s fun, and you can get more flexible and stronger and learn to be in your body more, but it’s not the focus.
If you were to reflect on a truly inclusive future for your field, what would that look like?
Within yoga, those who want to lead teacher training or build studios often get certified through a governing board like Yoga Alliance. I would like to see these organizations build inclusivity into their criteria because these studios are clearly not going to do it on their own.
Then we need to see a shift in the perspective of the people running these studios. Studio staff, teachers, and owners need to receive training on how not to be a dick to fat people and how to be welcoming and inclusive overall. This will require a complete shift of the entire way that everyone thinks, but the real change needs to come from more people rejecting diet culture and doing the work of unpacking their own anti-fat bias whether they’re fat or not, because everyone has it. It colors our perception of spaces and people and what is normal and acceptable. We need more people to care about this other than fat people.
Is there anything else you’d like people to know about your mission?
One thing I always talk about is the importance of allowing yourself, especially people in marginalized bodies, to have a yoga practice that truly suits your needs and accepting that those needs can change on a daily basis. We live in a culture that really cultivates productivity. We have internalized capitalism so well that the powers that be don’t even need to enforce it because we enforce it. In yoga spaces, for example, we see that people treat yoga as an exercise, right? Like, “I need to sweat and I need to go hard, and I need to go every day for an hour, and I need to be making progress towards something.” But that’s not yoga. That could be good exercise, but yoga is not about that.
Allowing ourselves to find the yoga that we need at any given moment is real self-care. It’s being present in the body enough to realize what you actually need and not forcing yourself to go, go, go if what you need is to stop and just be, to practice that embodiment and softness. Especially as fat people or people in marginalized bodies in general, we’re taught that we have to prove ourselves. We are told that we don’t deserve softness, gentleness, ease, and pleasure the way that other people are taught that they do. Your yoga practice can be that gift to yourself.
Francine Delgado-Lugo
Certified personal trainer, movement and strength coach, cofounder of Form Fitness Brooklyn
When asked what she does, Francine Delgado-Lugo says she helps people “make space for themselves to build their capacity for self-love and confidence through movement and strength coaching.” As the cofounder of Form Fitness Brooklyn alongside her business partner Morit Summers, she has created a body-positive women-led space within the real world to do precisely that.
After having a child, Delgado-Lugo felt, as so many people do, that she should change her body or return to the body she was “supposed” to be in rather than the one she now had. “I hired a trainer, and I was working with someone who did a great job of showing me that movement can help you feel good,” she tells SELF. “I’ve built up my own sense of confidence, and along the way, body transformation became less of a concern. It was more about the things that my body could do and just my overall feeling of health and well-being.”
It is precisely this separation of fitness and weight-related transformation that Delgado-Lugo hopes to share with others.
SELF: What are some of the most pressing consequences of anti-fat bias in fitness?
Francine Delgado-Lugo: I recently read about how so many girls at a really young age are already thinking there’s something wrong with their bodies and that they should be on diets. People are making these decisions about themselves and their bodies as children, and these negative thoughts are taking up space in young people’s minds during an important developmental stage. They’re growing into young people and adults who then hold onto these thoughts.
Anti-fat bias is another way to hold people at a disadvantage. It’s a reason and has always been a reason to bully people. There’s this belief that weight loss is how we mitigate all of these various diseases that people are experiencing, all of which have been lumped into “obesity.” Even just the term obesity has defined fatness as a disease and epidemic.
Where do we start when it comes to combating anti-fat bias in fitness?
As people committed to fighting against anti-fat bias, what we have to do first and foremost is continue to create space. There are all these different ways in which that happens, including the physical space. Of course, not everyone has the capacity or the resources to physically create a space. It comes from a place of hard work and privilege that we were able to do that. But there’s also social media now. In the digital space, there is so much opportunity to create visibility. It’s not up to just fat-bodied fitness influencers to do it on their own, though.
The most important thing is for all of us to be able to reclaim our bodies. People will be less reluctant to enter these spaces when there’s greater visibility, greater opportunities to find fitness gear that actually comes in their size, and greater ability to show up to a gym where the trainers actually understand how to make modifications or where the equipment is actually something that fits different body types and shapes. We must really believe that all bodies are good bodies.
If you were to reflect on a truly inclusive future for your field, what would that look like?
A truly inclusive space is one where people enter and no one feels guilty about what they ate over the weekend. No one says they “feel fat,” despite not being fat, just as no one says, “I feel disabled” if they are not. A truly inclusive fitness space means that staff members look different too. Not as tokens, but as intersections of identities. A truly inclusive space doesn’t do January 1 fitness challenges for the sake of managing weight or diets.
The gym equipment of a truly inclusive space has higher weight capacity on it. The seats on the stationary bikes are wider and broader, so that all kinds of bodies can actually fit on them. There’s space for wheelchair users, or someone who needs to come in with a stroller. These nuanced steps make a world of difference.
Louise Green
Certified personal trainer, founder of Big Fit Girl, president of the Size Inclusive Training Academy, author, and SELF columnist
In 2007, Louise Green became a mother to her son. When she was ready to participate in exercise again, it was difficult to find spaces where her needs were met and where she felt fully comfortable. “I was living in the biggest body that I had ever lived in,” Green tells SELF. “And I just remember seeing other larger-bodied folks coming into [these spaces]. Nobody really asked them how they were doing, or if they needed anything different. Then at the next class, those people wouldn’t be there. I started to realize that there’s a serious gap in fitness culture, and nobody in 2007 was addressing it.”
While she was on maternity leave, Green decided to do something about it. In 2008 she opened a fitness bootcamp in Canada exclusively for plus-size people. The idea that plus-size folks not only deserve a space in fitness but deserve an exclusive, safe space in fitness ruffled some feathers, she says. In the time since, though, she’s continued to center size-inclusivity in her work.
After completing her own training in coaching, Green has launched the new Size Inclusive Training Academy. At present SITA offers a 15-hour course called The Size Inclusive Fitness Specialist aimed at fitness professionals. “In the future we plan to build out a team of educators so that we can get that message and that education scaled out on a broader spectrum, and do smaller one-hour and 90-minute workshops,” she says. “I’d also like to train those who may not be fitness professionals but still work in the realm of wellness in some capacity.” In the meantime, her books Big Fit Girl: Embrace the Body You Have and Fitness for Everyone: 50 Exercises for Every Type of Body are excellent resources for those who’ve historically been made to feel left out of movement practices.
SELF: What are some of the most pressing consequences of anti-fat bias in your field?
Louise Green: The biggest consequence is that just as we are living under beauty idealism, we have fitness idealism, and it’s a huge deterrent for a lot of the population. In terms of fitness advertising, we’re selling a supposed “end result” of what we assume people want, and we’re presenting that in a youthful, white, ripped, lean package. Anybody that falls outside of that representation or that identity will experience a serious gap in accessibility to fitness, just based on the psychology of people not seeing anything relatable to themselves.
We don’t often see larger-bodied people, different ethnicities, older people, or people less able in movement who are demonstrated in a positive light where they are kicking ass as an athlete or they are really enjoying themselves while being active.
If you were to reflect on a truly inclusive future for your field, what would that look like?
I would like to think that our industry will someday get on board with different language and different education. In fitness certification textbooks and on websites, we’re still seeing a lot of “end the war on obesity” kind of talk. We’re still projecting the objective that we are “killing obesity,” we are “eradicating” fat people. We need to turn the industry on a dime and rebuild it.
If we look at how many fat people engage in fitness, statistically there’s a big gap there. A lot of people think it’s because they don’t want to or it’s because they are lazy, but it’s actually because we have done a really crappy job at making it accessible. When I’ve been able to create environments where people feel safe, larger-bodied people absolutely want to come and move their bodies.
Is there anything else you’d like people to know about your mission?
A lot of people come to the table with fitness trauma, apprehension, and trepidation about moving their bodies because of past negative experiences. My three-point mission is to reach those women, tell them that they can rewrite their fitness stories, and show that there are people in places who will support their needs.
The other pieces of the puzzle are working with brands and advertising agencies to be more representative and to understand the impact on our national health if people in diverse bodies are not represented. Finally, I want to educate industry professionals. If we can do that, we can create real change.
Christy Greenleaf, Ph.D.
Professor of kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Few people would’ve considered a young Christy Greenleaf to be larger than “average” in body size, let alone fat. In the world of figure skating, however, she certainly was. Being a skater meant Dr. Greenleaf was under constant pressure to maintain a low body weight and to engage in restrictive, unhealthy diet and exercise behaviors that were framed as precisely the opposite.
“I became interested in body image and disordered eating early on in my career,” says Dr. Greenleaf, who is now a professor of kinesiology (the study of movement) at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, after pursuing a doctorate in exercise and sport science. “A number of years ago, a colleague of mine exposed me to the concept of weight stigma, and it struck me that in health and fitness, weight-related stigma is a pervasive kind of bias that is presented to people as being ‘for their own good,’ which was parallel to what I experienced as a skater.”
Today, educating our future fitness leaders to be welcoming of all shapes, sizes, and abilities is at the heart of Dr. Greenleaf’s mission. “I teach a class that’s required for our majors called Sociological Aspects of Health and Human Movement, and we talk a lot about social determinants of health,” she explains. “When we talk about physique, we spend some time kind of trying to disentangle health and weight or BMI. It’s a tough nut to crack, but I want to help them wrap their brains around the idea that not everyone’s body has to be thin. Not every thin body is healthy. Not every fat body is unhealthy.”
SELF: What are the most pressing consequences of anti-fat bias in your field?
Dr. Christy Greenleaf: A lot of students who end up in kinesiology have been involved in sports with some level of success and enjoyment. This means their experiences might not be representative of the general public in terms of motivation, goals, or how their bodies respond to activity. It’s a bit of a challenge trying to help our students understand that they will have to work with people who might never have been involved with sports or physical activity, or whose bodies work differently than their own. So when someone exercises and their heart is beating faster, that might be scary or feel quite uncomfortable, which means their instructors have to take things more slowly.
Sometimes students are also drawn to kinesiology because they have lost weight, and they think anyone should be able to do it because they did it, and that it’s people’s own fault if they cannot do the same. There is a blaming mentality that shows up. The misconception that making people feel a little bit bad (or maybe a lot bad) is somehow an effective mechanism to create behavior change is a very pressing problem. There exists a notion that if people feel good about themselves as they are, there is no motivation to change, and change is required for good health. There is all this healthism-based morality attached to making sacrifices in the name of health when, really, this causes so much harm.
Where do we start when it comes to combating anti-fat bias in fitness?
There are a number of really concrete actions that fitness facilities, recreation centers, and folks who organize health promotion or physical activity programming can do. One is hiring people of different body shapes and sizes. One of the things that’s really impacted me is taking yoga classes with diverse instructors. You witness firsthand people who are strong, flexible, coordinated, or who have amazing balance, and they come in all different body shapes and sizes. Seeing people in positions of authority who are knowledgeable and competent can be powerful, not only for helping to lessen some of the assumptions we make about health and body size, but also for making spaces more welcoming.
The language that’s used in marketing a facility or a program can also be quite powerful, so avoiding weight-loss messaging feels imperative. There’s so much research indicating that none of that is effective and that it actually sets people up for failure and a cycle of dieting.
Is there anything else you’d like people to know about your mission?
You know what I feel quite excited about as I work? The students I’m seeing really do want to help people, and they’re fairly receptive as they develop a more sophisticated understanding of some of the complexities around the body and weight, and they get a little more insight into how weight-related stigma is quite damaging. It does the opposite of what they would like to do, which is help people.
Over time I have become much more direct and explicit in communicating with students that they have a responsibility as health professionals to promote health equity and social justice within health and that they have a real opportunity to make a difference. I feel like they are excited about that. I would love to see more kinesiology or exercise and sport science programs make that a priority. We’re training the future leaders of physical therapy officers, health and fitness trainers, wellness coaches, and corporate fitness directors, after all.
Chrissy King
Certified personal trainer, writer, speaker, antiracism advocate, and creator of The Body Liberation Project
Like so many people, Chrissy King first came to fitness out of a desire to lose body fat. “Through this long journey of figuring myself out, however, I started working on my own relationship with body image,” she tells SELF. “I became a trainer. I started seeing clients, and I recognized that pretty much every client I came to was also struggling with body image.”
Hoping to share what she had learned, King started writing about body image and her own experiences within fitness. She began pushing for the industry to become actively anti-racist and welcoming of all sizes. With a background in social welfare and justice, she began unpacking the ways that fitness harms rather than helps.
“We know fitness is beneficial in so many ways,” she says. “But it can also be really destructive to our physical health and our mental health when we are approaching it through the guise of wanting to always shrink our bodies and be smaller and thinking that the answer to our happiness is on the other side of fat loss.” Through The Body Liberation Project and collective, she hopes to spread an alternative narrative.
SELF: What are some of the most pressing consequences of anti-fat bias in fitness?
Chrissy King: The entire fitness industry is preying on people’s insecurities around bodies. When you see messaging about “dropping the holiday pounds,” or “burning off turkey calories,” you ingest the idea that fitness is a tool for shrinking our bodies only, that we should all be focused on that as a source of inspiration and motivation for being in the gym. This turns so many people away from participating in fitness, making them feel like they’re failures because they’re not losing weight or they’re not looking the part (whatever that means). It’s so harmful because fitness and movement are so important for so many reasons: stress relief, cardiovascular health, sleeping better. Instead, we hyperfocus on fat loss.
I always think about how this time last year was hard for all of us for so many reasons: COVID-19, the racial trauma that so many of us were experiencing, job loss, income loss, family loss, all of these things. Movement, even from home, could have been so instrumental for our mental health. Unfortunately, so many people don’t have access to that for a lot of reasons, but oftentimes it’s because they have been made to feel they don’t belong there.
If you were to reflect on a truly inclusive future for your field, what would that look like?
In this future, all that aspirational language does not exist. There are no before and after pictures. There’s no demonizing and moralizing of food, as in some food is good and some food is bad. Instead we’re thinking and talking about food and movement as things that make us feel good and energized and nourished, and recognizing that that’s going to be different for every single one of us.
It’s important to celebrate our bodies but also recognize that sometimes our bodies don’t perform the way that we want them to perform, and that some people don't have access to bodies that do the same things. I also want us to talk about that in less ableist ways, which includes working on our language. When it comes to truly inclusive, body-positive fitness spaces, it isn’t just about being welcoming but also about creating spaces designed with all bodies in mind.
Is there anything else you’d like people to know about your mission?
When I think about the work I do, I refer to it as body liberation. This is more than just, “Do I love my body?” Loving our bodies is important, and I want all of us to unapologetically and radically do so, but I also want us all to realize that loving your body does not mean that you won’t face anti-fat bias in the world. It doesn’t mean that systems of oppression or systemic issues won’t still affect and impact us.
Body liberation asks, “How are we working to dismantle these other systems so that all of us can feel free to live in peace with our bodies without the systemic consequences that we experience?” The body-positivity space is often hyperfocused on self-love, but you can’t self-love yourself out of oppression. I want us all to find personal liberation in our own bodies. And then I want us to work toward collective liberation for all of us, so that we can all reside in a place where we feel safe and healthy in our skin.
Lauren Leavell
Certified personal trainer, corrective exercise specialist, and barre instructor
Lauren Leavell became a personal trainer and fitness instructor out of a desire to share her positive experiences with others. Although she has never considered herself an athlete, she has been exploring exercising and engaging with movement for the last decade. Although there were times when fitness was enmeshed with diet culture in her own journey, she realized upon recovering from her struggles with disordered eating that fitness was still very important to her.
“Fitness brings me joy, and I feel so connected to myself and to my body that I wanted to potentially facilitate space for other people to feel that way outside of the lens of diet culture,” she tells SELF.
Accessibility in fitness is also one of her guiding principles. “My mission is to make fitness as accessible as I can,” she says. “I realize that I cannot do that for everybody, but I am trying to make it a little bit better. If other folks like me who are in different spaces than I’m in—queer spaces, disabled spaces—can all get together and cast those nets, we can cover a lot more people and bring more folks into the world of movement and fitness in a way that isn’t going to retraumatize them and expose them to negativity.”
SELF: What are some of the most pressing consequences of anti-fat bias in your field?
Lauren Leavell: Across the board, people in larger bodies, disabled bodies, or marginalized bodies are experiencing adverse effects in many sections of their lives because they are treated inhumanely. The pressure and the negativity that surround larger bodies moving—exercise clothing only going up to a certain size or being harder to find, for example—mean you’re going to stand out more.
It might sound silly, but clothing is important to talk about. If you can’t find a sports bra in your size or you can’t find activewear that is a little more mainstream, you’re going to feel even more on display. We need to think about giving people the opportunity to come into our spaces, which means also thinking about things like the size of the doors, or bathroom cubicles, or equipment. These spaces are just, at every level, not created with fat bodies in mind.
Where do we start when it comes to combating anti-fat bias in fitness?
It’s definitely a combination move. The onus is on the folks who are running fitness spaces and who are maybe in the societally acceptable body type associated with fitness. They should be the ones working internally on their anti-fat bias to shift the energy and the ideologies of their spaces. I know so many trainers and instructors who aren’t looking at people in plus-size bodies as projects, and they really aren't focused on weight loss. But we need to communicate that openly when weight loss and dieting are what sells. It’s difficult to shift the narrative of an entire gym to show, “We’re not really going to lean on this anymore.”
We can’t expect people to put themselves out there and be hurt again without building spaces where people feel comfortable. This comes into hiring and training more diverse staff, then setting the ground rules within your facility, even if it’s as simple as not having a scale accessible in a locker room or having larger towels; things that just make people feel like they are seen and they have options.
If you were to reflect on a truly inclusive future for your field, what would that look like?
One thing that has come out of a more virtually connected world is that people are engaging with fitness and exercise purely because they enjoy it. Looking a certain way or being a certain shape are not as influential. An inclusive future would be people trying things because they want to and feeling the freedom to engage in activities without the pressure to change their bodies to conform to, traditionally, what those activities produced.
Seeing more examples of people doing certain activities would also free up a lot of space for people to move, and to move away from, “Oh, if you’re big, you should play football. And if you’re tall, you should play basketball or volleyball.” I really hope we change up that narrative and allow people to engage in things that they enjoy.
Ilya Parker
Owner of Decolonizing Fitness, LLC, physical therapist assistant, certified medical exercise specialist, educator, and freelance writer
As a Black, nonbinary, transmasuline person who exists in a larger body, Ilya Parker is no stranger to the ways that the fitness industry has historically excluded folks who don’t fit a certain mold. “I created Decolonizing Fitness to make a lane for marginalized populations through my medical background, physical therapy, and my social justice background,” he explains. “I merged those things together to form a more grassroots approach to providing affirming and supportive fitness services.”
Decolonizing Fitness is an educational resource for coaches, trainers, studio owners, and anyone else within the realm of fitness who is invested in welcoming marginalized people into their movement practices while decoupling the industry from its toxic roots. In addition to creating a warm community online, Parker works toward educating the greater fitness community so that weight-neutral approaches become standard practice.
“I would love for Decolonizing Fitness to be one of the go-tos for folks who are new to the fitness industry or who want to learn more about being inclusive,” he says. “I have created a guide of sorts, The 10 Essentials of Inclusive Fitness. My ultimate goal is to be really infused in some of the educational literature that is around, like fitness curricula and training.”
SELF: What are some of the most pressing consequences of anti-fat bias in your field?
Ilya Parker: Anti-fat bias shows up systemically in any institution, and I really view fitness as an institution, especially toxic fitness culture. Similar to all of the harms that in particular superfat and infinifat folks experience systemically, the fitness industry does some of the most harm because of its links to diet culture.
Diet culture is embedded in fitness, which means we literally extend harm to fat folks, just as we do within the medical-industrial complex. It’s highly important for those of us who are practitioners and anyone who wants to engage in fitness to understand that the core of much of the fatphobia and anti-fat bias that we see, especially in Western culture, is projected through the fitness industry and the wellness industry overall, both of which teach us that to be “well” or “fit” is to lose weight and to actively harm fat bodies.
So, Decolonizing Fitness was birthed from the need for fitness to be more inclusive and affirming to our most marginalized populations, specifically those who are not only marginalized in fitness but aren’t celebrated in any type of way.
Where do we start when it comes to combating anti-fat bias in fitness?
What I’ve really been trying to show is that inclusive fitness is not a separate bubble of a community. Inclusive fitness is a practice that needs to be incorporated into any space. And in real-life spaces, obviously, that just doesn’t happen, especially mainstream fitness spaces. But one thing that has come from the COVID-19 pandemic is that fitness is more accessible in online spaces. It’s important early on for fat folks to attach to these communities online, which will provide affirming care for them.
If you can attach yourself to an online space, learn some of the ways that toxic fitness culture shows up, connect with people who have experienced the same thing, and find affirming trainers and spaces who will help you to explore what it looks like to have wholeness and support in fitness and wellness spaces, then you can detach yourself from the toxic narrative of mainstream fitness.
If you were to reflect on a truly inclusive future for your field, what would that look like?
It’s a future where bodies—the aesthetic parts of our bodies—aren’t even a thing. Where we are the experts of our bodies and we are listened to from the time we enter the fitness arena all the way through our journey. We’re supported when we are still trying to work through our internalized fatphobia, and then we’re also celebrated and elevated and amplified, especially those of us who have several intersecting identities of oppression. I want to see this from start to finish, all the way down to fitness curricula and being taught how to work with and support people in larger bodies, particularly those who also carry chronic medical conditions. I would love to see that.
Jessamyn Stanley
Award-winning yoga teacher, author, entrepreneur, SELF columnist, cofounder of The Underbelly, and cofounder of We Go High, a North Carolina–based cannabis advocacy organization
It is almost impossible to have a conversation about fatness and fitness or to reflect on our contemporary fat fitness leaders without thinking of Jessamyn Stanley. Stanley is a powerhouse. The Underbelly, her digital wellness platform dedicated to “creating space for everyone to be themselves and to live their truth” has drawn over 107,000 people to its Instagram alone. (She also stars in the cover images for the feature story accompanying this package, which you can see here.)
It has been 10 years since yoga saved Stanley’s life and nearly as long since she’s been sharing her practice with the world. “I came to yoga through depression, which is a pretty common way that people come to any kind of movement,” she tells SELF. “Yoga provided me a lot of relief, so I started sharing my practice on social media because I wanted to connect with others. So many people don’t see themselves represented in the mainstream, and my platforms have become a space where people can see themselves and find the freedom to be themselves.”
Scores of folks are drawn to the way Stanley teases apart cultural misconceptions around movement practices to create spaces that feel committed to wellness, spirituality, and social justice. “The most important thing to me is that all human beings know that they are necessary,” she says. “That you are necessary, that everything that has happened to you, especially the bad things, the scars that won’t go away, the memories that you can’t let go of, all of that is important.”
SELF: What are the most pressing consequences of anti-fat bias in your field?
Jessamyn Stanley: The biggest consequence is that so many people believe they are not able to practice yoga because of what their body looks like. The reality is that yoga has absolutely nothing to do with what your body looks like. Yoga is about accepting the change that is inevitable in life; that our bodies will change. This moment will change. What we care about will change. Ultimately, yoga means “to yoke,” to bring together. It’s all about bringing together the different pieces of ourselves that don’t necessarily make sense. So whenever this reductive fatphobic idea of what it is to practice yoga is championed, it means that fewer people have access to a thing that is meant for all human beings so that we are all able to thrive in this life.
Where do we start when it comes to combating anti-fat bias in fitness?
It’s really helpful to remember that anyone saying you can’t do something is repeating something that they believe about themselves. They’re not talking about anything related to you. It’s not just yoga, either. It’s anything you would like to do in this life. But if we specifically focus on wellness and health, any type of movement, modality, like running, Crossfit, swimming, ballet, boxing, all of these things, you can have any body type and practice them.
In terms of combating one’s own internalized anti-fat bias, my biggest tip for anyone who wants to start a yoga practice but doesn’t feel good enough is to start at home and start from where you are right now. Don’t try to get the perfect outfit. Don’t try to find the perfect teacher. Don’t decide how many days per week you should be practicing or how long you should be practicing. If you have a yoga mat, that’s great. If you don’t have a yoga mat, that is also great.
Start with one pose and just say, “I am going to practice this pose. This is going to be my pose.” Maybe the pose is a corpse pose. Maybe the pose is downward facing dog. It could be anything, but find a pose that works for you. Just try to focus on breathing. When you build that confidence in your breath and in your connection of your breath and the movement at home, then it makes it easier to carry that practice from your home to studio classes.
If you were to reflect on a truly inclusive future within your field, what would that look like?
What we can offer children is actually for every adult to look within themselves and see the internalized bias, the bigotry, the self-hatred, and just be present to it. It’s not even about fixing it or changing it—just be present to it. Notice. Through that noticing, we can create space for us to share a new idea of what it means to be healthy and to be worthwhile as a human being. We can create a whole new narrative that we then share with our children and then they share with their children, and then so on and so forth. But it’s really got to come down to doing that internal work on a personal level and letting it influence those around you.
Morit Summers
Certified personal trainer, author, and founder of Form Fitness Brooklyn
In a fitness realm where so many people of size are reluctant to enter IRL workout spaces for fear of abuse or a lack of physical access, inclusivity-led spaces like the women-owned, body-positive training studio Form Fitness Brooklyn are imperative.
Having been a fat kid growing up, Morit Summers, who in addition to being Form’s founder is the author of Big and Bold: Strength Training for the Plus-Size Woman, knows firsthand the bias that can follow people in larger bodies. She discovered joy in movement at a young age, though, with the help of a personal trainer who didn’t perpetuate those feelings of shame. “When it was time to go to college, the only thing I really enjoyed was being in the gym,” she tells SELF. “So I decided to go to school for kinesiology and exercise science, and I wanted to become a personal trainer to help people like my trainer had helped me.” She’s been training for nearly 16 years now. Much of her work now revolves around helping plus-size folks get stronger, not smaller.
“I believe that women are stronger than they realize and can gain so much physical strength but also confidence and mental strength with what the gym can offer,” she says. “Every single time I work out, I’m working through a mental feat. I leave feeling more accomplished, and I want people to know that they can do that too.”
SELF: What do you think are some of the most pressing consequences of anti-fat bias in fitness?
Morit Summers: Most of the time, there is an assumption that when a person walks into the gym, they want to lose weight. When people are working with trainers, the goal that the trainer believes is what the person wants—or the goal that the trainer wants—is what is put on the client. So many times, people come into these spaces because they want to get healthier in some way, but the trainer will immediately assume thinness and health to be one and the same. I want to get the word across that everybody has their own goals.
Where do we start when it comes to combating anti-fat bias in fitness?
There’s so much work to be done within the fitness industry. For starters, gym owners and personal trainers need to look outside of themselves. I would say that 99% of trainers get into the industry because they just like working out, because they want to “look good,” right? It’s a very selfish, narcissistic industry. As trainers, we are supposed to want to help people, but helping people doesn’t mean assuming those people want to be or can be like you. Trainers need to be educated to understand that the general population, whether someone is fat or thin, just wants to move and feel good and have a long life.
If you were to reflect on a truly inclusive future for your field, what would that look like?
Someone recently asked me about fitness being essentially discriminatory, and I explained that fitness is in no way, shape, or form inherently discriminatory. Movement and exercise don’t discriminate against body types or people. It’s the way we have been taught to think of these things that is discriminatory.
In my dream world, I would be able to team up with all of the folks who I know do this inclusivity work really well. We’d get up in front of people—maybe all of the trainers of the world—and we’d explain that we have the power to make such a difference in the world if we just let people enjoy movement over some unnecessary goal.
Mirna Valerio
Outdoor athlete, author, and advocate for inclusivity in fitness
Mirna Valerio is perhaps primarily known as a trail runner, but she is also a cyclist, a skier, a writer (both of nonfiction and fiction), and an advocate and trainer for diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI). “What people know me for the most is being an ultramarathoner who is fat and Black,” she tells SELF. “Those are identities that people think are not typical in those spaces.”
Before her ventures in fitness, Valerio taught Spanish and music to kids and adolescents for 18 years. Throughout her time as an educator, she began leading DEI efforts, ultimately becoming the director of equity at the last school she worked. Thanks to this background, she now does a lot of similar work in the outdoor industry, including anti-racism and social justice training for large companies such as snowboard manufacturer Burton.
In terms of her own athleticism, Valerio hopes to continue to push her body and move in different ways. “I want to be that person who people can look up to and say, ‘Hey, Mirna did this 50-mile race. I want to try that too. Maybe I can’t do 50 miles, but I can do 5K.’ Or, ‘Mirna is climbing today. Maybe I can try that,’” she explains. “I want people to see in real-time, here’s this fat person doing these things unapologetically. I want to show people that we should be able to enter any space that we want to. Obviously, we can’t right now. Not every space is hospitable for everyone. But I want to get closer and closer to that.”
SELF: What are some of the most pressing consequences of anti-fat bias in fitness?
Mirna Valerio: At present, people won’t enter fitness spaces because they are afraid of remarks and assumptions about their bodies and their lifestyles. They’re afraid of being shamed for existing. They’re afraid some personal trainer is going to be an asshole to them, so they won’t sign up for sessions because maybe that trainer is going to immediately go and weigh them as if weight loss is the only reason that they might be there.
There’s a lot of research behind the effects of shame on fat people. We’re supposedly trying to encourage folks to be healthy, whatever that means, but shame does the exact opposite. It increases people’s stress levels and triggers their fight-or-flight responses. I recently spoke to the Vermont Medical Society about weight stigma in medical care. All of this fear pours into everything that we do, including fitness and beyond. For example, say you have arthritis and you know it will be helped by moving. But if you go to a doctor and rather than helping you find a way to move the body you have now, they tell you, “You’re morbidly obese. You’re going to die. You need to lose weight,” you might be deterred from trying to help the arthritis at all.
Where do we start when it comes to combating anti-fat bias in fitness?
We can start with ourselves by curating our social media. Make sure you are very discerning about who you follow. You want to be inspired. Are these people who you’re following being shameful, bodywise? Is all their content about losing weight? Is it all about how many calories you’re burning? Is it all about shredding? You’ve got to be very discerning about that because social media affects our lives and our sense of self-value.
If you want to get a personal trainer, I also recommend that you call the gym before attending. You can say something like, “Hey, my name is so and so. I’m looking for a personal trainer. This is what I would like from my sessions, and this is what I don’t want.” Or more specifically, something like, “Hey, I want to learn how to lift weights. I don’t want somebody counseling me on weight loss. That’s not what I'm here for.” It’s really hard to do this if you’ve never advocated for yourself, and it’s easier to do it on the phone when you’re not in front of somebody.
If you were to reflect on a truly inclusive future for your field, what would that look like?
Inclusive fitness holds space for all types of bodies, genders, colors—whoever, both as participants and leaders. Whether it’s a high-intensity class or not, all kinds of bodies are up there leading the classes. You also have all kinds of people on the wall or in your ads, not just the very thin, very white people. Right now it’s like those are the only two ways we are told we can be: a white woman and a white guy. But there are so many different ways to be.
I don’t want instructors to lead with the question, “How many calories do we want to burn today?” Everyone in a fitness space should have an awareness of eating disorders and what constitutes triggering behavior. We all need to understand that all types of bodies have eating disorders, so the more we can stay away from those triggers, the better our fitness experiences will be.
Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity. See more from SELF’s Future of Fitness package here.
