'Not a before picture': Saskatoon group champions body positivity
CBC
January is often marketed as the month for fitness-oriented resolutions, but Cierra Giesbrecht says this narrative is harmful, and furthers the idea that a person's self-worth is intertwined with a number on the scale.
"That's a huge message that needs to be heard around this time, when everybody's pushing that weight loss," said Giesbrecht, who is a Saskatoon-based confidence coach and content creator. "It's OK just to exist in your body right now and not have the goal of weight loss."
Giesbrecht is the founder of Curvy Club YXE, a recently launched group for plus-sized people in Saskatoon. Her outreach is driven by her own self-acceptance journey.
People are biased against plus-size people, and often assume someone who is not thin must be engaged in a constant effort to shrink, Giesbrecht said. She's wants people to know plus-size people shouldn't be perceived as works-in-progress.
"I am not a before picture. I am not needing to always be in the conflict. I'm not actively trying to lose weight. That is not my goal. Whether that happens or not, that's okay," Giesbrecht said.
Curvy Club YXE hosts an online community group as well as monthly outings. They've included a variety of classes like spin, yoga, pole and self-defence. There's also been a pool party. Some of the activities are events people might have been hesitant to go at alone, fearing judgment.
Giesbrecht said the club is meant to help people feel worthy as they are, and she said the response has been positive.
"It's really changed my outlook on myself. I was struggling a lot before finding this community, not really accepting myself, not really happy," Andrea Karwandy said.
She discovered the club on social media, and said attending an in-person event for the first time was daunting and anxiety-provoking. It was being held in a new place and she didn't know anyone involved.
However, the risk paid off and she had an "amazing time."
Karwandy said she spent years trying to lose weight, pushed by society's expectations.
"I always felt like I had to be a certain size in order for people not to judge me, that I wasn't fully accepted unless I would fit into the cookie-cutter shape that society seems to want people to look like," Karwandy said. Now she's flipped her perspective. "Even though I am not the smallest I've ever been, I'm the healthiest I've ever been."
Giesbrect said she's creating a resource list of Saskatoon service and health-care providers who have proven safe for plus-size clients.
She said often service providers don't know how to work with plus-sized bodies, or health-care practitioners respond to all concerns with a recommendation to "just lose weight."
P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch is looking for 50 substitute bus drivers, and it'll be recruiting at three job fairs on Saturday, June 8. The job fairs are located at the Atlantic Superstore in Montague, Royalty Crossing in Charlottetown, and the bus parking lot of Three Oaks Senior High in Summerside. All three run from 9 a.m. until noon. Dave Gillis, the director of transportation and risk management for the Public Schools Branch, said the number of substitute drivers they're hiring isn't unusual. "We are always looking for more. Our drivers tend to have an older demographic," he said.