“Your body is not the problem” is the motto of fitness instructor Kim Stacey who believes that the industry is too focused on size and weight, alienating so many people who could really benefit from the magic of exercise.
Personally, I love working out – it makes me feel great – not just physically but mentally. I’m less anxious, I sleep better, and I completely see where she’s coming from. When I joined a gym two years after having my son I was so self-conscious and wore baggy t-shirts to hide my 'mum tum'. But if you have had a lifetime of struggling with body image, it might be impossible to even walk through that door.
Kim’s gym is in the leafy, affluent suburb of Jesmond in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and as she welcomes me in, I notice cards from clients. “I had one last week saying, ‘thank you for making me enjoy exercise again’” she tells me proudly. “It’s all about getting that enjoyment, knowing that your body isn’t wrong just because you’re a different size”.
It’s taken Kim a long time to get here, after years battling with her own relationship with exercise and dieting. Like others, during the first Covid lockdown in 2020 she became obsessed with fitness and calorie counting. She took part in a weight loss challenge with her former gym and was determined to win. “I was the smallest I’ve ever been, the fittest I’ve ever been, but the most anxious”, she tells me. “I got very ill and I felt like a failure”. Burnt out from working two jobs, single handedly raising her son and trying to lose weight, Kim knew it was time for a change of career. Having dieted all her adult life, as well as her teenage years, originally her idea was to move into body image coaching. But she was drawn towards a gym having “always loved fitness” and how it made her feel. “I wanted to get fit without attaching it to numbers” Kim explains. With the ever-growing popularity of fitness apps and trackers she feels it’s going too far. “It’s getting to the point where – for some people – an obsession with health is becoming unhealthy”. Body Image Fitness is now three years old and has 25 local members as well as an online community of 160. Kim has team of 12 instructors with classes running every day – ranging from yoga and Pilates to dance and burlesque.
Kim tells me that it has taken time to build up a regular customer base, largely because it “takes time to build up people’s trust” but also because it’s difficult to market. Rather than drawing people in with promises of a 'body transformation' like some gyms do, her ethos is more – “you’re fine the way you are but come and move because it’s fun”. So, who comes to Body Image Fitness? Typically, it’s women in their 30s and 40s who have had a 'lifetime of dieting.' And it’s not all plus-sized people, as Kim points out, “all different bodies can suffer with body image”.
“A lot of clients have had some kind of eating disorder” she explains, “and don’t want to be triggered by calories”. It is Kim’s non-diet approach which has now led to her working with the NHS. She was invited to talk to primary care workers about weight stigma and now they are looking to enrol patients onto Kim’s online programme, rather than signing them up to the likes of Slimming World.
“We’re not focussing on the number on the scales” Kim emphasises, “instead we look at things like blood pressure, whether you’re pre-diabetic, things that to me matter more. A number on the scale doesn’t really tell you much about your health”. From hearing people’s stories Kim knows that there are many out there who don’t exercise because there is too much negativity around it. “I think that’s so sad” she says, “one of the healthiest mentally and physically that you can do is exercise, but the fitness industry is ruining it”.
Kim has many plans in the pipeline, including collaborating with actress and body image activist Jameela Jamil, as well as creating a training course for health professionals so that fitness for health reasons isn’t always focussed on fat loss and BMI. “It’s about educating people, getting people to listen to those with lived experience” she explains. “People in a larger body who are trying to access health care and fitness, to know what barriers they are facing.”
Sadly, but perhaps inevitably, putting herself out there on social media has led to some negativity. “I’ve had a lot of people questioning my qualifications because of my size” Kim tells me. “Another popular one is that I’m ‘promoting obesity’”. She says she sometimes feels sorry for these people and rightly believes that this hate, this unkindness, is more about them than her.
For Kim, since she’s started accepting herself and her own body, it’s filtered down into other areas of her life. “My head is now full of ideas rather than anxiety towards food” she laughs. “When you start to realise that, actually my body’s fine the way it is, you start to really know your worth. You start being more accepting of the people around you as well and the way you treat them changes, as well as the way you treat yourself.
“It sounds cheesy but it just makes the world a better place”.
Find out more about Kim Stacey and Body Image Fitness on her website or on social media.
