It’s not often that I applaud sportswear brands or the hashtag influencers who model their figure-hugging crop-top combos. However this week, in true Elle Woods style, I’m saving serious snaps for Nike Women. In a sea of Sweaty Betty Instababes, showcasing enough rippling abs to make you want to cling-film your entire mid-section, a new kind of fitness ambassador has surfaced. Callie Thorpe, a blogger, model and first ever plus-sized columnist for Marie Claire UK, announced last week a collaboration with the sports mega-brand which will see her model their fitness gear whilst trying her hand at various exercise classes. It’s a welcome move towards inclusion from Nike which Callie hopes will inspire thousands of young women to strive to be whatever and whoever they want to be – regardless of how big they are.

It’s a message that Callie went without throughout her upbringing; a loss which she feels has robbed years of her mental wellbeing. ‘Fat people in films are always the joke – they’re laughed at,’ the 28-year-old tells me, ‘as a child, I never saw a plus size woman in a film or on TV and especially not as someone to aspire to be.  ‘They’re greedy and lazy, and even immoral. . When you’re fat, you think you’re the worst person in the world.’

Callie – who first launched her blog as a ‘diet diary’ in 2012 – is impassioned about making the world a safer, more tolerant place for people with bigger bodies. The Simply Be model is bright, articulate, well-informed about health and diet, and regularly counsels her readers and followers on issues of self-assurance, mental health and confidence. Doesn’t sound much like the lazy, selfish layabouts we see in the films to me.

‘PEOPLE SAY THEY’D RATHER HAVE CANCER THAN BE FAT’

One striking nugget of depressing self-knowledge that I’ve learnt from the wonderful readers of NOT PLANT BASED is that I – like many others – have an intrinsic fear of being fat. It’s an anxiety that continues to bubble away under the surface despite the breadth of information and logic that I have empowered myself with in the past year and a half. Although nowhere near as troublesome as it once was, it still occasionally strikes when emotional explosives crop up. I know it’s not a fear I can control, nor is it my fault for harbouring, but speaking with Callie makes me acutely aware of the silliness of it. Because, for her, the reality of her ‘obese’ BMI (ffs) means that aspects of her life will always be a bit more shit than mine.

I ask her how it feels when some skinny dickhead like me worries about their weight.
‘It used to annoy me,’she says, ‘but now I understand that we live in a world where we’re completely saturated with views of people looking seen as perfect.
‘It would annoy me when I would say, “well, I’m fat”, and then they’d reply: “no you’re not fat you’re beautiful”.’ Carrie’s response to these particularly insensitive women was simple, yet brilliant.

‘I’d say: No,’ she recalls, ‘I am fat AND I am beautiful. They’re not mutually exclusive.’ Even the sound of Callie’s voice is beautiful; her confident and upbeat attitude exudes a unique type of gorgeousness which seeps through my telephone and automatically slaps a smile on my face.  But it’s been a long, treacherous journey for Callie, and loving the skin she’s in certainly hasn’t come easy.

Always a ‘bigger’ child, Callie was told from the age of eight that her weight needed to be kept ‘in check’. The Newport-born school kid was put on a diet by her well-meaning parents from 10, and forbidden from veering away from her Weight Watchers bread and low-fat alternatives.

‘I WAS TOLD BY DOCTORS THAT MY HUSBAND WOULD LEAVE ME IF I DIDN’T LOSE WEIGHT’

‘My grandad would make comments about my weight,’ she says, ‘and it was coming from a good place but it’s hard to take. Then the boys are school would call me Calorie and horrible stuff like that.  I’d have to do my own “healthy” shop and I’d eat one thin slice of ham on one slice of Weight Watchers bread, spread with a bit of english mustard and that would be my lunch. But then I’d binge eat crisps and hide them down the side of my sofa.  I was so restricted and horrible to myself, and what started off as a small seed grew into a big plant.’

That bastard plant is something that I am all too familiar with. It is, of course, the sprouting germs of an eating disorder – at it’s heart, a deep-rooted longing to be good enough, in one way or another. When you’re least expecting it, years of self-punishment amalgamate into one, big torturous rulebook that berates you for making a chicken sandwich. Although she acknowledged her ‘disordered relationship with food’, it’s only now that Callie has come to terms with the true extent of her mental health problems.

‘Anxiety has always been my issue,’ she admits, ‘and I realise that a lot of eating habits were driven by anxiety. I suffered from cycles of starvation and addiction to laxatives, followed by binge eating. Dieting wasn’t ever about wellbeing for me, it was because I felt that I was something to be improved upon. Food became both a comfort and an enemy.’

It’s crazy to think that Callie’s online presence first began as a voice for the dieters – the then 23-year-old was convinced that if she was held accountable for her diet by an online community, she’d be more likely to stick to her restrictive diet and ultimately, lose weight.  ‘My diet diary was a pretty shit time, to be honest,’ she remembers, ‘I was just desperate to lose weight, but it ended up making my self esteem worse.’

Within a year, Callie’s “diet diary” turned from a weight-loss website to body-confidence blog, From The Corners of the Curve, due to an ‘epiphany’ that came about when she stumbled across the body positivity community.  ‘I was looking for swimwear because I was going on holiday,’ she recalls, ‘and I came across bloggers like Gabi Gregg and realised that women like me do travel, wear fashionable clothes, have a great life, love their bodies and they are healthy,

‘It just made me think, why am I doing this to myself?!’ It was a u-turn that took Callie from part-time blogger and chronic dieter to full-time writer and model; her face plastered all over billboards as part of advertising campaigns for the likes of New Look, River Island and Evans. A hopeful indication that – sometimes – it pays to be exactly who you are.  But despite her global success, Callie still struggles. Mainly because, when you’re a size 24, society makes it very hard for you to truly love yourself.

‘A doctor told me to lose weight, otherwise my man would leave me,’ she says.  ‘I went because I was having issues with my sleep – I have a neurologically diagnosed sleep disorder which is nothing to do with my weight. I said I had anxiety issues and she wanted to recommend me for bariatric surgery. ‘ In a bid to improve her fertility – on the recommendation of her doctor – Callie visited a healthcare assistant who’s solution was for her to control her food intake via a food diary.

‘I did it for a week. The healthcare assistant saw I’d eaten sweet potato soup and told me I wasn’t having enough carbohydrates. It was ridiculous. I know everything there is to know about nutrition – I’ve been told how many calories are in things throughout my entire life!’ And given the experience of some of her friends, it seems that Callie got off lightly.  ‘My friends were told there was no chance of getting any help for IVF unless they lose weight. One of my friends was told she wouldn’t be able to adopt because she was fat.’

It wasn’t until she saw a gastroenterologist last year that Callie finally got what the rest of us take for granted. After tearfully explaining her life-long battle with anxiety, self-doubt and disordered eating, the kind woman (obviously) apologised on behalf of the NHS and wrote her a referral to an eating disorders specialist.

‘I never thought I fit the criteria of having an eating disorder,’ she says.  ‘I’d tell the doctor that I’d eaten so much and made myself sick and they’d say, oh go to the healthcare assistant and lose weight. I shut the door to that because I couldn’t bare the constant shit that comes along with it.’

Now, Callie is on her fourth set of CBT for anxiety and food issues and is awaiting her first appointment with an eating disorders psychologist. She’s never spoken openly about it before, and in doing so she hopes to encourage ‘others to get the support they need too’.  ‘Now I’m thinking about a family with my husband, ‘ she says, ‘it’s more important than ever to address those things for the benefit of myself so I’m focusing on intuitive eating.

‘If I wake up in the morning and decide I want to have two breakfasts; toast and peanut butter and then some eggs; I try to let go of the punishment and let my body have what it wants. The other day I really fancied potatoes. Before, I would never ever have eaten potatoes because I thought they were the devil. But now, if my body wants it, I have it.’

Other anxiety-busting tips Callie swears by include Mindfulness (the Headspace app is her particular fave) and swimming.  ‘Sometimes I don’t even swim properly,’ she says, ‘I have an underwater MP3 player, so I can’t hear anything except the podcast or music I’m listening to. I just look up at the ceiling whilst lying on my back and float, it’s really relaxing.’

As a fully fledged fan of Callie and all that she’s about, it makes my stomach churn when she speaks of the horrific, evil abuse she’s been subjected to at the hands of faceless Internet trolls.  ‘People tell me that my husband is going to be a widower because I’ll die of Diabetes before him,’ she tells me, ‘and they say they’d rather have cancer than be fat.’
Fucking hell. But it’s a sticks and stones situation for Callie. Not only has she got more important shit to deal with, but such insults aren’t exactly original.

‘Do they not think I’ve thought of all those things? I’m petrified of diabetes. I don’t want to go blind, lose my limbs or die! Of course I don’t.
‘If I wasn’t saying I was scared, I’d be lying. But it’s not as simple as losing weight – it’s not the answer. And if you’re not sleeping with me, married to me or paying my bills then it’s none of your business.’

Speaking with Callie has made me all too aware of my own privilege. We may have similar fires to fight inside our heads, but at least that’s where my battle stops. For Callie, the abuse isn’t only self-inflicted; it’s unleashed by the rest of the world too.  And so, keeping herself mentally well isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity.  And despite what certain doctors may have you believe- that isn’t achieved by losing weight. I ask if she knows of anyone who has successfully dieted and managed to keep the weight off whilst still preserving a healthy relationship with food.

‘No. No one,’ she says. SHOCK.
‘Whatever happens, I will always love food and it will always be a big part of my life,’ she says.

‘It’s really important to live happily. And if happiness means a big bowl of spaghetti with parmesan, then so be it.’  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Spaghetti….