Dani Wallace

“I had spent so long learning to love and accept my body and rid myself of the inherent fatphobia that society impresses upon us that contending with the idea I needed to change my body, and quick, felt strange. I was a 38-year-old, size 24 woman, who weighed 19 and a half stone. Loving our bodies is not something we – particularly women – are conditioned to do, especially when we are considered plus-sized or ‘overweight’… To have embraced my size, and show up in the world unapologetically, had taken a considerable amount of work…

Even though I knew that my body was about to change dramatically [from having gastric band surgery for health reasons], keeping the spirit of truly loving myself as I went through this process was really important to me…

I wanted to approach my decisions in celebration of myself. My body, after all, has got me through the darkest of times and I wanted to take a moment to appreciate it before it changed forever. I wanted to prove to myself that my body can still be sexy, whatever size it is.

Connecting with myself by documenting where I was pre-surgery helped me see the importance of loving myself at every stage of my life, and incentivised me to continue doing so proactively and intentionally, rather than merely accepting this is what I am.”

(As featured in The Metro, “I love my plus-size body, so I was gutted to be told to lose weight for my health” – 28th January 2022)