From a size 10 to a size 16, the four women you see here bare not just their bodies, but the honest - and sometimes harrowing - stories behind them. By Jessica MontagueBianca Dye, 36, breakfast radio/TV presenter, size 12-14
Funny and fearless, Bianca Dye has long been a role model for curvy girls everywhere. but behind her confidence she has battled her own body demons.
"A lot of women have a love/hate relationship with their bodies and I’m no exception. What I hate, however, is when people cast judgment over other people’s bodies when they have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes."
“In my early 30s, my career took off – I had my own radio show on Sydney’s Nova 96.9FM, a weekly newspaper column and I was on TV. I didn’t know how long the career high would last, so I just took the ball and ran with whatever came my way. During this period, I was eating like a horse, downing champagne every other night and had no respect for my body. I was also naturally skinny – around a size 10. Friends warned that I couldn’t keep going like this forever and something had to give. Sure enough, it all caught up with me and I soon hit a wall. Hard.
“I couldn’t sleep. I felt like I had ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] all the time. I was getting pins and needles in my arms. Eventually, I was diagnosed as having an anxiety disorder. As far as treatment went, I felt like I had two options: give everything up and take time out for myself or keep all the balls in the air and go down the medication route. I chose medication – it was there to ease the anxiety while I was on the path to getting my life back in order. For me, the meds came with a small warning: weight gain was one of the many side effects. (Of course, not all medications make you put on weight, but you need to do your research.)
“In the first 12 months after taking the medication, I put on a lot of weight and got up to a size 16. All of a sudden, I became the ‘funny fat girl’. Media bigwigs started saying, ‘Her career is over. She got fat.’ I felt like I was screaming, but no one was listening. I wanted people to understand my situation – that one in four people suffer from anxiety and have issues in their life they have trouble dealing with. I wanted to tell them that not every person who puts on weight is downing Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Eventually, I decided to wean myself off the medication with the advice and assistance of a medical professional – not just because of the unhealthy weight gain, but because I felt the pills were artificially papering over my problems. I needed to be a grown-up and face them head-on.
“I’ve since stopped leading such a crazy lifestyle and have taken up walking every day, so naturally the weight has dropped off. It’s been a difficult journey to get to this stage and I feel it’s important to share it. I didn’t want to talk about it openly, but I’ve found when I do, others who are going through the same issues feel so much better about admitting their pain. We need more people to open up. I’ve learned to love, care and nurture myself, but also understand my journey is far from over. When I look down at my body now, I think ‘this is the body of a survivor’.”
Fiona Falkiner, 26, former The Biggest Loser contestant and plus-size model, size 14-16
After shooting to reality TV fame and losing 30 kilos, Fiona Falkiner suffered a stressful period during which she regained most of what she’d lost. Finally, she’s found her “happy” weight and is at peace with her body.
“Going into The Biggest Loser house when I was 22, I weighed 101 kilograms. Up until that point, I had an extremely negative body image – I wouldn’t go to the beach and avoided going anywhere where I knew my body would be exposed.
“I ended up losing around 30 kilos on The Biggest Loser which was amazing, but not something I could maintain on the outside world. After the show finished, I was thrown back into reality and had to deal with a lot of change as well as being a poster girl for weight loss. I relocated from Melbourne to Sydney – not the smartest thing to do as I left behind the support of family and friends – and I found trying to uphold a strict diet and exercise routine physically and emotionally stressful. In the aftermath, I ended up putting 26 kilos back on.
“The past few years have been an absolute roller-coaster, thankfully ending on a high. These days, I lead a happy, healthy life which includes keeping active in the gym and eating a diet high in protein and wholefoods. In recent years, I have accepted and embraced the body I have – curves and all – and it is even helping me forge a successful career as a plus-size model. I know I don’t have what is perceived in this day and age as the ‘perfect body’, but what does that mean anyway? It’s so much more important to be healthy and live a happy, balanced life. Would you believe, when I go to the beach now I have no qualms about proudly wearing a bikini?
“All my life I’ve been told, ‘You’ve got such a pretty face’, or ‘You’ve got such a lovely smile’, but that kind of compliment rolls over me now. Beauty is not only on the outside, it comes from within. A genuine feel-good moment that sticks in my mind was when my first love looked me deep in the eyes and told me I was beautiful. It meant so much because I knew he was talking about the whole package. Finally, it was not just about me having a pretty face. I was being acknowledged in the most romantic way for being myself, both inside and out. It
doesn’t get much better than that.”
Tiffani Wood, 32, singer and business owner (wired2sound.com.au), size 10
Ten years on from Popstars and the all-girl group Bardot, Tiffani Wood reflects on how fame, motherhood and divorce have all influenced how she sees herself.
“When I was a member of Bardot [the band formed through hit television series Popstars in 2000], our mantra was work first, eat second. Our schedules often went so late into the night, there wasn’t any point having dinner. Suffice to say, it wasn’t a coincidence each of us lost a huge amount of weight. There was also a bit of competition within the group – just like being back at high school – and pressure from management to look a certain way. I remember one night, Sophie [Monk] was pulled aside and told she was too fat and needed to lose weight. I think that is one of the main causes of her weight fluctuations over recent years.
“Like many people, my weight changes depending on my personal life. For me, being in a relationship means gaining weight; being single means losing it. When I fell pregnant with Lillian, I ate whatever my body was craving, and prior to giving birth, got up to around 85 kilos. Post-baby, however, I sometimes felt the pressure to shed those excess kilos. I’d see super-fit mums speed-walking with their prams and think, ‘Oh my God, I’m not walking next to her’. I invested in one of those suck-in miracle suits and would take Lillian with me to the supermarket so people knew that I wasn’t just ‘fat’.
“Of course, post-baby your body doesn’t snap back to its original shape. Recently, I was at a red-carpet event when a radio host stopped me. ‘That dress looks really great on you. So do those stretch marks,’ she said referring to my boobs. I replied with a polite ‘Thank you, I hear every woman has them,’ then walked off.
“I would go through pregnancy another 20 times if it meant getting something as amazing as Lillian at the end of it. As a role model for my daughter, I’ve made the decision not to go off what other people say or think, especially when it relates to my body.
“I’m currently going through a divorce with Lillian’s father, so the stress of the separation, moving house and being a single mum has taken its toll on my body and eating habits. I’m a little more underweight than I’d like to be and have revisited the whole mind, body, spirit philosophy to help bring balance back into my life. I’ve also been reading a lot of self-help books, eating organic food and will get back into ‘body balance’ classes. I believe your wellbeing is all interconnected and physical appearance is a reflection of what’s going on inside.”
Kate Holden, 37, writer, size 10
In her memoir, In My Skin, Kate Holden tells of her journey from good girl to heroin-addicted prostitute. here, she explains why in her darkest hour, she learnt to love her body.
“As a teenager, I hated my body. I used to get out of the shower and look at it in the mirror in horror. It was so uncontrollable and there was so much of it – I remember thinking it would be great if I could just cut it all off. Even though I was never overweight,
I would wear huge clothes to cover it all up.
“I was 24 and just out of university when I started taking heroin. It was the perfect drug for me – negative feelings about my body were overrun by amazing physical sensations and I welcomed the way it numbed me. Heroin is a powerful, all-consuming drug and it wasn’t long before I began working as a prostitute to fund my habit. The way I saw it, it was better to use my body – something I had never had much regard for anyway – than to resort to stealing. To my surprise, I developed a strange respect for my body through working in the sex industry. After putting it through so much, I was suddenly aware of its strength and capabilities. Being naked in front of people will do that to you – all the things I’d hated about it, other people celebrated. I’d be walking down the street not just feeling sexy, but powerful. I don’t want to sound like being a prostitute made me love myself more, because it was a lot more complex than that. It was like discovering something you’ve had the whole time, but didn’t even know it.
“I became clean on January 13, 2001, at the age of 29, and started my life afresh. Now in my mid-30s, I have a lot of respect for my body. For years I gave it a really hard time – pain, humiliation, illness – so I have to give it enormous credit for coming out of the experience alive. I’ve still got scars on my arms from my days as a heroin addict, but I don’t believe in getting cosmetic surgery or tattoos to cover them up because they’re a reminder of my journey. My view is: take it or leave it – this is who I am and where I’ve been.”