Episode 122: Leaving Social Media & Diet Culture to Liberate Life With Amelia Hruby
Episode 122: Leaving Social Media & Diet Culture to Liberate Life With Amelia Hruby
In this episode we sit down with....Amelia Hruby.
Amelia Hruby, PhD is a writer, speaker & founder of feminist podcast studio Softer Sounds. Her first book, Fifty Feminist Mantras, was published by Andrews McMeel in fall 2020. Now, she hosts Off the Grid podcast and helps babes get their voices off social media & onto podcast airwaves everywhere.
In this conversation we talk about:
Amelia’s personal body image story- from navigating fashion, to romantic partnerships, and her relationship with herself.
How she decided to break up with diet culture & the steps to reclaiming her own body liberation.
Navigating 2nd wave shame of wanting to change your body after leaving diet culture.
How to use selfies to create a more positive relationship with your body & heal dysmorphia.
The parallels between social media + diet culture & Amelia’s decision to leave Instagram, as a business owner.
Amelia’s best practices for evaluating your relationship with social media & how to maintain a thriving business.
Connect with our guest...
Check out Amelia's website
Listen to Off the Grid: Leaving Social Media Without Losing All Your Clients
Resources we mention in this episode…
Amelia’s upcoming series: The Refresh is a 3-day workshop series for freelancers, influencers & small business owners who want to refresh their relationship with social media & chart a new algorithm-free path forward.
Ready to heal your relationship with food + body?
Grab your free Body Acceptance Starter Kit
Grab your FREE Binge Eating Solution Sheet
Book your FREE Body Trust Breakthrough Consult
Get weekly email support from me to help you heal your relationship with food + body image
TRANSCRIPTION Episode 122: Leaving Social Media & Diet Culture to Liberate Life With Amelia Hruby
Katelyn:
Amelia Hruby. Hi. Welcome to the show.
Amelia:
Hey, Katelyn, thanks so much for having me.
Katelyn:
Thanks for being here. I can't wait to have this conversation. I have been geeking out about it all week. I love your work. I can't wait to hear your story. Let's just do the damn thing. So the first question that we ask everybody on the show is your first body awareness moment. So when you think about that, what does that moment look like for you that moment where you realized I'm in a body? Apparently, this means something in the world that I'm living in? And also, how did that moment impact your relationship with food, your body, yourself moving forward, just share your story, however you feel called to?
Amelia:
Yeah, I love that you start with this question. It's so raw in a really beautiful way. So I am going to take us to a place that many millennials have been, which is the mall circa I don't know, like 2005. So my first body awareness moment happened, I think, in an American Eagle. And I have this really distinct memory, I couldn't tell you exactly how old I was. But I guess like middle school sometime. And I haven't really a clear memory of trying to buy clothes, and realizing that I was only fitting into the largest size that they had at American Eagle. And I remember kind of offhand saying that to my mom who was with me and her having a sort of like, exasperated Well, you better fix that because there's nowhere else to buy clothes. And in that moment, it just became really clear to me that my job was to fit my body into the world and the world's expectations. And that I needed to. I felt like I was being told I needed to, quote unquote, fix myself, because my body was too big. It was wrong. It was bad. And the measurement of that badness was these, you know, arbitrary clothing sizes. And that was rough. I don't know a better way to say it. I feel like this is not a story that's unique to me. I've heard other people tell this story. But I when I think back like if I close my eyes and remember, I can like see the table of American Eagle jeans in front of me. I can like feel the cheap fabric I can to this day. Anytime I see someone wearing American Eagle jeans, I can always recognize the stitching on the back pockets and it like makes me cringe. I know me. Very vivid. I'm always like, Oh, I can't do this. Totally. But yeah, I mean, it really like my first that I think is the most specific memory but just with it comes a flood of other body awareness memories in the mall, like in that era, like American Eagle, Abercrombie and Fitch or a postal like, I can smell the heavy cologne. I can hear the OSI soundtrack overhead. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's all there. It's so vivid, and I internalized just so many negative things about myself in those spaces and those moments
Katelyn:
Were you in middle school or high school? What part of your adolescence was this?
Amelia:
This would have been in middle school, probably around the sixth and seventh grade.
Katelyn:
It's interesting. My first body awareness moment that we're kind of speaking about, just in terms of this question, is also around retail in sixth grade. And, yeah, there's god, there's just something so emotional about that just with clothes in general. And also as it relates to sizing and our bodies and the emotion of our bodies, especially as women. I'm curious, having that reaction from your mom, and I think it you know, we were all living in diet culture. I'm sure your mom probably had her own experience with just existing in diet culture and her reaction and wanting to protect you perhaps in some way. But how did you internalize that? I can almost see it in my own mind that panic of oh my god, like, I don't know what to do like if you don't put these clothes. So what did you do? And how did that impact you?
Amelia:
Yeah, I mean, I honestly I did I follow the examples that I saw around me. So what I did was diet, and I got like a book on weight loss for teens. And I did all these at home exercises because I was too young to join a gym at that point in time. And I started again, in quote, unquote, fixing my body. I like took it I internalized that it was my job to deal with this, because my size was a problem. And I needed to fix that problem. So the summer between, I believe it was seventh than eighth grade, I went to work, like, went to work out. I like exercise all the time. And I dieted with pretty, like calorie counting and various methods and lost weight. And then I thought I had fixed it.
Katelyn:
So what actually happened?
Amelia:
What actually happened is I started myself on a decade and a half long journey of self loathing. Oh, yeah, it was, it was just the beginning of it. Yeah, the next trying to think of how old I was then probably the next 10-15 years of just seeing my body as a problem that needed to be fixed. And that really involved a lot of self internalized, negative talk and a lot of self loathing. And a lot of also, just thinking that dieting was a solution to any problem that came up in my life, and that I could just fix hard things by losing weight, which was a really, really bad cycle to put myself in.
Katelyn:
Yeah, it is so damaging, physically, mentally, and emotionally. And, you know, the shame and the secrecy that comes up in the diet cycle, I think is something that is the toughest that we don't necessarily talk about a lot when we're going through it, if at all. So what was that like for you, and in terms of just who you were disclosing this to, or how your relationships looked while you were in this period of your life, and kind of balancing your relationship with yourself and how you were showing up with other people around you?
Amelia:
Yeah, I mean, I think what's interesting, I definitely was on these internalized narratives of shame on them, I definitely had these feelings, it was a shame that was motivating me. But when I think about, like, you know, whether it was a secret or not, like actually, I was very like, applauded by my family, by my friends for losing weight. And before fixing my body, near they wouldn't have said it that way. They would have told me they were applauding me for quote, unquote, being healthy. And really, like, that's what I did, I just kept exercising, I stayed on diets really long term. And I just kind of made it my goal to keep my body in check. And then I hit high school, and all of that intersected with, you know, a new desire to date and attraction to and from other people. And then the message that like, my body was something that needed to be fixed, you know, got really entangled with all of the messaging we have around the types of bodies that are desired by others. So then it was like, well, if I'm ever going to be attractive to anyone else, I have to be even thinner than I am. And so that all got further entangled in my internal dialogue and all of a sudden, you know, dating was about controlling my body as well.
Katelyn:
Yeah, control being the underlying theme. So like so much of this and I think that it's really interesting you sharing that entanglement? I think that's true for so many of us and in your own body image journey. When did you hit that point where you realized that enough was enough something had it's just something had to shift?
Amelia:
Yeah, it wasn't for many, many years later. I actually celebrate the day it's September 20 is my diet culture breakup anniversary? Wow. Like I have a date, it's on my calendar. And I think it was September 20. It's either 2018 or 2019. I'm not going to remember off the top of my head. But basically, we can fast forward like from those high school years, fast forward a decade. And I get to my late 20s. And you know, that cycle that was like entanglement between believing my body was a problem I had to fix believing the only way to be attractive was to be thin, had just turned into this cycle of me. Kind of getting in relationships, those relationships ending me kind of crash dieting, and losing a lot of weight than me getting in the next relationship, me gaining weight, those relationships ending and really just turned into this really, really destructive cycle. And come September 20th of 2018 ish, I was living with my parents for a summer and getting ready to travel to go on this major road trip to record my road trip podcast at the time that was called 50 feminist states, I was coming off of this, like, gorgeous period of my life where I crowdfunded all this money. These people had paid for me to do all this travel to interview feminist activists and artists around the US, I had this amazing road trip planned. I was gonna travel with my partner, I was in this wonderful, supportive relationship. But I was staying at my parents house, and all I could think about was that I needed to lose weight before I did any of these things. And I was exercising a lot. And I ended up injuring myself. And I just remember that day, September 20, I woke up, and I was in pain. And I just had a moment where I looked at myself in the mirror, and I was like, Amelia, you can keep doing this. You can keep living this cycle, and you are going to hurt yourself. And it's going to be the end of things. Or you can stop. I just was like you can just stop. And that's what I did. I decided I like to sit in that question. And what I was going to do, decided I was going to stop, I went outside into my parents driveway and took a bunch of selfies of like my body on that day. I like very distinctly remember, like putting my phone up on top of the car and like posing in front of the garage. I have no idea why I picked that location. But I did. And I took all those pictures. And then I wrote, like, in my journal for a long time, and I pulled a piece of what I had written and put it up on Instagram, and like committed to this being the end of that journey. And it was I like haven't I broke up with diet culture that day. And I haven't looked back since.
Katelyn:
Did you even have the language at that time to call it diet culture? Or did you become familiar with that after this moment?
Amelia:
I did. Because I had just around that time I was also reading, Virgie Tovar’s You Have the Right to Remain Fat.
Katelyn:
That's so good, truly.
Amelia:
Yes, extraordinary book. And, you know, part of what had happened in the few years leading up to that is I really had this sort of like, experience of feminist consciousness raising, I had learned a lot about myself, I had read a lot of feminist texts by all these amazing people. And that had kind of led me into this critique of diet culture, which I like further unpacked. And I think what really happened that day is everything that I had been reading and exploring and hearing, just like integrate it into my body. And so I just like it went from being like these intellectual sort of things I knew to being something I felt to be true. And that allowed me to like really release the grip that diet culture had on me.
Katelyn:
I so appreciate you sharing this Amelia because I think this is so important in anyone's journey of their relationship with their bodies and, and their selves. And I went through this as well too, but there's a reason why people diet beyond just wanting to manipulate your body into being a certain size, but there's an entire culture around it. That's why we call it diet culture and that community is so strong and that it touches on such a primal level. And so when we don't have the awareness of feeling safe. In a community outside of that, I mean, the water so thickly most of us when we're swimming in diet culture, don't really know that anything else exists. And it's just what we've been passed down generation after generation. And it's what we're taught. And it's really just ingrained in us on such a cellular level, cellular level, especially as women, but in your expression of your story, this is really powerful to actually begin to understand there is a different community that I can engage in, that is going to foster a more loving relationship with myself for my personal expression. However, however you want to describe it for us, but I think that's so important, because for many of us, there is that fear of like, well, yeah, if I give this up, like I'm hurting my body, or I hate myself in some way, or I just don't feel great, or my anxiety is through the roof, around food, and how I feel in my skin, but what's the alternative, if we don't really have a clear understanding of a supportive community outside of that, there's no reason to make a change. So the fact that you set that up for yourself, I think is, is really, it's so valuable. And I think that's really important that you're sharing that with us today. So I appreciate it.
Amelia:
Yeah, I think everything you just said, kind of reminded me of two different pieces of the journey. And for me, I think, and I think this is happening culturally as well, like we're seeing critiques of diet culture become more and more mainstream, you know, even the fact that when I say the word diet culture now, you know, everybody knows what I'm talking about. Whereas, like, even when I was in, you know, 2018, when I broke up with diet culture, a lot of people didn't know that phrase, like, didn't know the concept. But as we see that shift, which I think is so important, what I'm hearing from more and more of my community is this new thing that's happened, not me, it's not new. But this experience many of us are having that I have had, which is now I know, I'm not supposed to believe in diet culture, or want to manipulate and change my body. But I feel like I want to anyway, so now there's just this extra layer of shame of like, Shit, I'm not supposed to feel that. But I still feel that messaging inside of me, what do I do with it? Like before, the shame was, for me, the shame was like, Oh, my body's bad, I have to fix it. And then the shame shifted into like, Oh, I'm not supposed to believe my body's bad, I have to fix that. I believe that just layered on top of the original shame. And I think that that's a really challenging place to be. But for me, it was really like a growth edge was the space I started to see through the cracks. But it took time for like that, again, that like intellectual knowledge to be caught. Like for me to really feel it in my body, it took so much. And I wish I like had a step by step of how I did it, because I know that would be so helpful. And it was, but I, for me, it ended up happening in this kind of really hard way of you know, injuring myself and having to feel that and that kind of like breaking me open. And I don't want everyone to have to have that journey. But I think it's such a real part of the experience at this stage. And then you know, once you get past that growth edge once you like, really do are like ready to let go speaking to what you just said Kaitlyn like, well, what comes next, like I had to totally relearn how to feed myself how to relate to my body, how to, it felt almost like being a small child again, because all I knew all of my narratives around food and around movement came from diet culture, and I had to start over.
Katelyn:
Yes, I can still relate. And I think that most people can who have similar experiences in really letting go of diet culture and coming back to that intuitive relationship with ourselves. It is a relearning process. It's an unlearning. And it's a relearning. And I think that one thing that you just said that I think is really valuable is yeah, I totally agree. I don't I don't think that every single person has to have this rock bottom moment where it's like a physical injury or something reasonably debilitating, just like making it glaringly obvious that you have to make a shift. Yeah, that's going to be real for some people. But for you, it sounds like you were all already starting to become interested in that language. I mean, even just by reading Virgie Tovar's book, before having this moment and starting to just get curious about what are other opinions out there and other communities? And where does this stem from and just that curiosity alone, I think can be enough of an entry point for so many people into just beginning to rebuild that relationship with yourself. And I am so glad that you brought up the shame piece around wanting to still change your body even knowing this. I don't think we've ever talked about this on the podcast. And honestly, this is something that I'm navigating for myself right now. And I'm curious to hear how you navigate it. But as women who you know, we're all living in an anti aging culture. There are so many things that I find myself questioning around, why do I like, Why do I wish this was different? Why do I feel like I want to enhance this or change this in some way, whether it's coloring my hair, or, you know, picking up a certain face cream or considering getting any type of like, you know, like Botox or anything like that. First of all, disclaimer, I think that whatever choice you make for yourself is your individual choice. And I don't think that there's any room for shaming anybody's choice and doing any of those things. I think it's really personal. But it is like it does bring up this new level, especially in the feminist movement of okay, well, that should, which is like, so we just need to get, you know, get rid of it altogether, but like what I should be doing or shouldn't be doing, and the shame that's attached to that. So how have you navigated just this kind of new wave of shame around getting past this second chapter and, and diet culture and whatnot? What are some tools that you really lean into?
Amelia:
Yeah, I mean, it's hard. Like, you just said that, but I just want to say it again, like, you know, I am years into my breakup with diet culture, I am years into my journey of so much awareness of body positivity and fat feminism, and the successes and failures of both of those movements. You know, I know it intellectually, I know it in my body, and it's still hard, like, I still have these feelings come up. And I think it's, you know, because it just helps me recognize that diet culture is so insidious, especially because we learn it at these super, like, formative moments of our life, right? Like we're talking about middle school, the years when we just began to become who we are as people. So before I offer tools, I mean, I just share, you know, even a recent challenge I've had of these negative thought patterns, I was just going through something in my relationship with my partner, and we're kind of having, we're struggling with something. And my first thought, like that came out of nowhere to me, it was like, oh, I should lose some weight that'll make this better. And I was like, What the hell familia like, Wait, where'd it just, it's so deep. And so I say that to say, like, I don't have solutions. But what I can say is, when that thought emerged, I was very quickly able to be like, Wow, that's a problematic thought. And I know where that comes from. And I'm gonna let that go immediately. I could see it, and I could recognize it. And I could release it very quickly, like, almost instantaneously.
Katelyn:
Well, it's so interesting and hearing your story, because, yeah, I think we all have experiences like that, where we want that quick solution, and how rooted in control that is, and also, from what you just shared about how formative these experiences are for you, but really, for all of us, too. But my mind immediately goes to Oh, of course, it's because you learn at that moment in American Eagle. When things felt out of control, when you literally were being told, like you have to fix this otherwise, you don't get to wear clothes, which talks about a primal need, right? Like you have to work close to function in society. And actually, knowing in that moment, I can fix this. I can just manipulate my body to find the solution for solving this problem. I think, like, I don't know if that feels true for you at all? Just that kind of assessment?
Amelia:
Oh, yeah, that feels so true. It's like I learned in that moment that and it was compounded in what I learned about attraction and relationship jumps that like anytime something is wrong with my body or with my relationship, I should lose weight. Like that's what I internalized. And as much as I've done to like release that I was surprised that it still came up, it still came through. And so I think the best tools I've found for releasing the shame on any level is just to be honest with myself, and kind of go through what I just mentioned, like to be in tune with myself enough that I recognize the thoughts that are coming up. Because I think in the past, I would have just started exercising and not even realized that I was having this thought, like, I would have immediately just like gone into the behaviors instead of pausing to be like, what's coming up that's motivating me to do this right now. And we're just gone straight to the gym. Like, that's definitely what I did after in many hard moments in relationships. And there's nothing wrong with going to the gym, there's nothing wrong with like using movement to process big feelings. But that's not what I was doing, what I was doing is trying to get control of an problem by changing my body, as you've so nicely put it, so accurately put it. But I think now what I really do is I, I am very aware of my internal dialogue, and I listen to it, I recognize it. And then I am able to release the thoughts that come up that come from trauma or come from pain, or come from shame or come from those shoulds. And the ways I release those, there's a lot of different ways to do that, you know, sometimes it's breathwork, sometimes it's journaling, sometimes it's shaking, sometimes going for a walk, sometimes it's talking to another person about it. There are many different strategies for the release and the clearing. And then you have to put something else in the place of it right, because in that example, I'm talking about, like, I still had to work through this with my partner, what we were going through. Instead of bypassing that, by just trying to get control over my body, I actually had to go deeper into it with them. And it required a lot more conversation. And I had to recognize I was still really upset even though I had been telling them I wasn't upset. And eventually, that led to a much like deeper and more radical healing than ever would have come from my like attempt to have a shortcut through control.
Katelyn:
Yeah, I love that you just said shortcut because it you know, in our mind, it is that quick fix that we're all sold. And it's just the band aid for not wanting to have those type of conversations or touch to those deeper emotions. And I also think that's so primal as well to as human beings, we don't like to be hurt. And you know, whether we recognize it or not, in the moment, our mind is telling us like danger, this, this conversation is painful in some way. And it's much easier to just go to the gym like you're talking about. And find a just more surface level solution. So many things, so many things here. And I appreciate you bringing this real life experience into the conversation right now. Because I think it's something that we can all probably relate to, in our own ways and find different circumstances and examples that are parallel to yours that you're sharing. And I think that self awareness piece is, you know, I'll speak for personal experience that's been one of my most valuable tools in my own journey as well to just paying attention more to those thoughts that can feel really scary sometimes to pay attention to, and going a little bit deeper with those thought patterns and the thinking and everything. So that's something we can definitely just let simmer in this conversation. And for everybody who's listening take that tool and start applying it in your life wherever it feels accessible for you right now. And I think the other support tools that you just shared are amazing, too. How, how does social media fit into all of this? One of the reasons why I was so excited to have you on as because of your mission and your message around social media and how you live your life and how you run your business. But in terms of body image and your relationship with social media from a mental health perspective, can you just kind of turn the page and start sharing your story around your relationship with I guess Instagram right?
Amelia:
Yeah, definitely Instagram. Yes. So I'll just like do a spoiler upfront and say that I left Instagram forever in April of 2021. And since then have kind of started a movement of other people leaving Instagram. And now that I've given that spoiler, I will back us back up to what happened before that. So just like a quick rewind, actually, to that day that I broke up with diet culture, because I already mentioned I like took a bunch of selfies, and I posted them on Instagram. As this like statement of like, I am breaking up with diet culture, this is my body, here I am. And after that, I start I found taking selfies to be a really great way to be in conversation with myself. And with my body specifically, and taking selfies kind of gently forced me to look at my body externally like to have a picture of it and look at it. And at first that was really uncomfortable. I really didn't enjoy it. Definitely some like dysmorphia and other things, struggles with recognizing myself. But I just kept showing up to that practice. And I really was able to get to the other side of all of that fear and learn to love myself in the process. And so I kind of joined the like selfies for self love community or sort of sorts on Instagram, or you know if it's a community but lots of people post selfies yourself love using that hashtag. And I started just sharing more and more. And then over time, I built this little mini curriculum that I called, like the selfies for radical self love practice group and I hosted these practice groups of people taking so I would record these voice notes that would have different themes around selfies and photos and body image and feminism and gender. And then we would like share the notes in a signal group. And then everyone would take selfies with prompts I share and we'd share them with each other. And we all have this like beautiful liberatory experiences sharing selfies in that small group, and then sometimes also on Instagram. And it was so powerful. I love sharing selfies. And it taught me to love sharing my body on social media. And I shared all of these images of myself eventually, just like in my underwear hanging out being fat because a big part of my journey too since leaving diet culture did involve quite a bit of weight gain. After I stopped policing my body at every turn, after I stopped controlling and manipulating it, I gained weight. And selfies were the way that I learned to look at that neutrally. And eventually to like love and accept my body in all of its forms. And so selfies for radical self love just became a big part of my life. And it was like my primary practice on Instagram. That's what I was sharing there. And there's actually like a free email version of that content like a free mini course you can get from my website if you want to explore your own selfie practice and cultivate a selfie practice to help you cultivate self love. That's like the beautiful part of the journey.
Katelyn:
Yeah, no, I love that. And I think that it is whether or not you're posting it on social media, which we can get into in a minute. But I think the art of taking a photo of yourself from a very neutral standpoint, neutral to positive, I guess can be so healing in the journey and especially what you're talking about in terms of bumping up against some of those dysmorphic. Those dysmorphic wounds. I think that for anybody on the journey that can come up and it most most often does. So looking at yourself from that mindset of really just yourself and your expression and, you know, not evaluating or scrutinizing but just you know neutrally being in that relationship with yourself to that positive relationship on on that spectrum I think is so good.
Amelia:
And I would say to like, the first step is just being in like an honest relationship with those images. So like the first task of the mini course, The first thing we did in the practice groups, the first day is always just like, set a timer for five to 10 minutes, take selfies for that amount of time. And then like, Get cozy, get out of journal, and go through the selfies for the same amount of time you spent taking them, noticing and writing down what comes up. Because I love that, like, for many people, taking selfies, like looking at pictures of yourself can be so hard and so painful and really challenging and even triggering. And so I think like the beginning, like the baby steps into this practice is just that honesty with like, what does looking at images of myself bring up for me. Because what I found over time is that like, as I gotten better and better relationship with that image of myself, I was able to, like, translate it to my relationship with my own embodiment, and with my body. And at this stage, I don't take very many selfies, I really have kind of moved through that period of my practice. At first, I needed the externalized image, I needed to be in relationship with the pictures. And then over time, I was able to be in really beautiful relationship with my body itself.
Katelyn:
Yes, I love that. It's that relearning again, and I think, you know what we were just talking about with food, like learning how to eat again. And everything. I think this is so valuable in terms of that foundational first step in building just a neutral relationship with yourself. Because like, you're like you're saying, it's not even really a thing anymore. But it was it served you to kind of get you to this place right now.
Amelia:
Yeah, it was so important. I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't be here without that practice. And because I think it's about if what we've been doing what I was doing in like, dieting and exercising was about controlling my body, I was trying to always exert power over my body. And it's hard to quit doing that. And I really had to learn to like it’s not about having power over my body, it's actually about letting my body lead me. And it's a journey to get from that like one the power over to like, having power over your body to letting your body be powerful. There's a lot of steps in there. And so selfies were a tool that were really beautiful and powerful for me in that and sharing them on social media, honestly, like, allowed me to build a community around it, you talked about community earlier, like, I share the selfies because I wanted other people to engage with me and engage with them. And I wanted both, like I was searching for community on kind of both different places in the journey. Like I wanted people who were ahead of me in their self love Journey to see what I was doing and cheer me on to get to where they were. And I wanted people who weren't maybe as far as I was yet to see what I was doing and feel brave enough to start. And Instagram was such a beautiful place for me for that for a few years really was wonderful.
Katelyn:
So you already spoiled the exodus of Instagram. So I mean, this is so lovely having this amazing chapter with your relationship with yourself and this community that you're building online and all of these things intersecting. When does it start to go awry?
Amelia:
Yeah, so, um, I'll say up front, like my decision to leave Instagram did not necessarily like directly have to do with the selfies in the sharing. I definitely did get a handful of really just like fat phobic comments on my photos. Not a ton of them. I was never like trolled, or doxxed or like had any real issue. But I can like very clearly remember the few times where people would just say like really shitty fat phobic things in the comments on my photos. And, you know, I like to block and delete and move on. That was a small piece of my journey to leaving Instagram. But really, I think the short version of what happened is after kind of the success of the SE courses, I ended up getting a book deal for actually a different project I was doing on Instagram, sharing feminist mantras. That was part of part of how I did my feminist consciousness raising for myself and read all these things and I turned them into affirmations and I share those every Monday and so I had another Instagram practice called feminist mantra Monday and I shared mantras every Monday, you can still see them on my Instagram account. And that became a book called 50 Feminist Mantras that was released by Andrews McMeel in October 2020. It's an illustrated journal, it's wonderful if you want to like, if you're kind of just beginning your feminist practice, or you want to like deepen or integrate it, it's a great tool for that. But as I started, once I got my book deal, I put a ton of energy like time and money and my own energy into growing my Instagram following. And I did that I got up to I think almost like 2700 followers, I started at like 1000. And it went up to like, 2700 over the course of the year. So pretty decent pace for organic growth. And I hit the end of 2021, No, I hit the end of 2020. And I was just so burnt out on Instagram, I was like, wow, I am putting so much of my time and energy here I am creating so much content, the algorithm is showing it to so few people. What am I doing? I don't think this is, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. And then right around that time, Instagram also like released a new version of their terms and conditions. That was one of the more like substantial changes they've made of the money they've made over the years. And that just made it very clear that by using Instagram, you are consenting to them tracking your behavior across your phone, tracking the location, like where you are, what you do, what's on your camera, what's in your feed at all times. And that was just incredibly misaligned with my entire mission of helping people liberate and empower themselves in their communities. I just felt like that increased surveillance of social media platforms, and the fact that they're profiting off of us being there. You know, the same way I talked about how like I saw cracks in diet culture before I could really leave like I was just seeing major cracks in social media, and my value system and what I was like preaching or practicing online,
Katelyn:
well, I love that I love that you just brought up that comparison or that parallel, rather. So let's run with that. Because I'm curious from a parallel perspective, seeing the cracks in social media, where you also starting to build a community, you're kind of research what other communities would look like outside of social media, just kind of doing your due diligence, like you did when you were, you know, kind of exiting diet culture or beginning to?
Amelia:
Yeah, I mean, I think astrologically in my natal chart, my moon is in Gemini, so I'm just like an information gather all of the time. And I think in 2020, or maybe late 2019, Shoshana Zubov released the book Surveillance Capitalism, which is like a ginormous book I have never actually read all of but I read all the coverage of the book. It's like 900 pages long, I don't have time. But it really laid out all these steps between like, now, businesses make money off of surveilling you. And you've opted in to that surveillance often without even realizing it. And so yes, I was reading all of this. And I was just I don't know, if I wasn't really researching like other communities or places to be per se, I actually like started just like, with similar to how to diet culture, I did some reading around like maybe why this is bad. I had this real internal pull to make a change. And then I kind of leaned into my creative practice. So you know, when I was leaving dye culture that became selfies, I was leaving Instagram that became these like resources that I made. So I made this really great list of all of the tools I was using, instead of Facebook, Google and Amazon and my life. And then I made the most popular piece of content I've ever made, which was a list of 100 ways to share your work and life off social media. So that list is gone all over the internet. It's a part of my living social media toolkit. It's currently being translated into and published in Korean. It's like really traveled far and wide, I think because so many people are realizing that social media you know, for me, it was like a values problem of like surveillance is not aligned with my values. But what I hear from so many people is it's a mental health crisis it is induces this sort of compare and despair. I don't even know mentality that we have have to leave for our own well being.
Katelyn:
Yeah, I totally, I mean, I am navigating this for myself right now. And I think that one of the things that is so important, and I really would love your take on this, but our relationship with our bodies is a relationship, our relationship with food is a relationship and our relationship with social media is a relationship like, really? I am navigating this in terms of well, how do I want to show up in this relationship? And is this relationship serving me anymore, because part of being in a relationship with human beings is you can break up with a friend, or a partner, or just anybody in your life, a job that you're not aligned with anymore. And I think that it has been the most empowering part for me to just land with recently, in the past six months, even just deciding that like, Okay, what is my role in this relationship? What is Instagrams role in this relationship? And is this filling me up or dragging me down? And, you know, feeling into my personal values and my business values? And just, is this all aligned right now? And so what are your thoughts around that just in terms of using the idea of Instagram as a relationship or social media in general? Because I'm sure there will be a lot of people listening to this who are like, well, I don't love it, but I'm not ready to leave it. So how would you? How would you offer tips or advice or wisdom around that?
Amelia:
Yeah, well, first, I just want to affirm that I definitely think about like it in terms of a relationship as well. Something I say or like a story, I recount on my podcast off the grid that I kind of skipped in this telling of how I left social media is that, you know, I think actually the like, if I was gonna have a leaving social media anniversary, well, I do. I left on April 9 2021. That's the day I actually left. But the day I realized I needed to leave was the day that I sat down and did this, like intense journaling and wrote this really long list of all of the new boundaries I was going to have with Instagram. And I was like, I was like, this relationship is not going well. I know what to do. When that happens, I have to put boundaries in place. Like I've been to therapy, I got this. So I did that, like made that list. And I got to the end of writing the list, I got to the end of writing about the boundaries. And I had this like lightbulb moment where I was like, oh, oh, shit, basically, I was like, the only other times in my life, I've needed this many boundaries. To stay in a relationship. Were codependent relationships, where I was anxiously attached to people who were not, like, reciprocally supportive of me. And I had to leave those relationships to take care of myself. And when I realized that the exact same thing had happened again, with Instagram, that's when I finally got the fortitude to leave. That's when I finally was like, all right. I promised myself I would not continue the patterns of codependent relationships I've been in, so I have to get off this app. And so I definitely think of it that way. The way you're talking about, like a relationship, and for me, it was one of codependency. And I don't think that just like I truly believe, like, I've seen the social dilemma. It's, it's written that way, like the soft like, these apps are encoded to force us into these relationships with them. It's not just that, like, we're not strong enough to, like, resist it. It's like no, like, the algorithm is serving us things to try to make us stay on the app. And so you know, and it's not simply like the social dilemma, per se, where there's like a human back there being like, Oh, she's about to leave a server or a picture of her ex or whatever. I'm not saying that's happening. But I am saying that, like IT trends toward that. So I just wanted to name it like that. That's how it felt for me. And I understand that everyone's at a different place in their relationship with being on social media. So I think that like what it comes down to is, I can say for me, at first I got really honest about my values, and then I recognized that this was not aligned with my values. And I stayed for a while. I was like, Well, I do other things in my life that aren't aligned with my values. Maybe this is just one of those things. And then when I just like felt that, like I got that aha moment about it being a codependent relationship. I was finally like, Oh, I really have to leave, it wasn't an option anymore. But I think that what I can share coming out of that as like the best if I have any advice or tools is just to encourage people to, again, be really honest about how Instagram makes you feel. And so if you're not sure about that, you know, do some experiments like open that, again, to take the same way tool idea with the selfie is sort of or a version of that tool, which is like, open your phone, open the app, set a timer for 10 minutes, scroll, and just make notes about how you feel like, is it excited? Like when do you laugh? When do you feel weird? When does the picture make you stressed? When does an ad annoy you? When does your best friend's baby laughing like bring you joy, like just kind of do a feelings journal about your relationship or like when you're on this app. And also, probably when you think about it, even when you're not on it, notice those things as well. And that'll allow you to kind of be honest with yourself. And then I think there's also a layer of like assessing, especially for business owners. And this is what I talk about on the grid a lot like, what are your values? And are your marketing practices in alignment with those?
Katelyn:
Well, let's pivot to business because you have this amazing resource and honestly have built a business on helping business owners run successful companies without using social media, which I mean, I can vouch, I've really dipped my toes into all of your content in the past few weeks. And it is so valuable. So I really encourage everybody to also just check out all of the resources and everything that you offer. But that I think is a legitimate fear that so many business owners have that intuition of around around, okay, this is not aligned with my life or the business that I want to run. But I don't know, I don't know how to do anything successfully without it, or I'm scared that my business will go to shit without this. And I'll speak you know, from personal experience not so much anymore, because I've taken a huge step back from social media, not entirely but a big step back. But it still comes up for me when I do think about making the official decision to stay or leave. So how would you? How would you offer wisdom around just the fear of having a successful business? Yeah, without social media?
Amelia:
Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing I would say is like, you have to feel the fear. Like being for me, that has been, every everything we've talked about today, like my journey with my body, my journey with diet, culture, my journey with my business, my journey with Instagram, like, the first step has always been feeling the fear, like you can't bypass it, you have to go through it. And so I think, first recognizing that you feel fear, then spending time with it, figuring out what you're afraid of. For so many of us it's failure, but then like, what is what is that mean? Like? What is the failure? Is it that you won't make as much money as you made last quarter when you were on social media? Is it that you won't get new clients? Is it that your business will entirely fold? Is it that you're going to lose your side hustle and just have to rely on your day job again? Is it that this is your full time business and you're afraid like if you lose it, you're gonna go broke and bankrupt? I always start by naming the fears. Sorry. If anyone's like, wow, Amelia, you just said everything I've ever thought and I hate you for it. Sorry. If you can't tell there's my internal monologue graph. I love it. Like you know, thanks for letting us into your brain. Yeah, all thoughts I've had all in my fear journal and I don't have a fear journal. But I'll in my journal, when I have journaled about fear, maybe you should start if your journal like burn it every so often, like clear it, you know, I wouldn't just hold on to those things forever. But that can be a good practice, like every new moon, like have a fear journal, and then every new moon you like, burn it, release it, send it away. But I think the first thing I would say is just like, recognize the fear, sit in the fear, name, the fear. And then I like to I really I have such a direct communicator, like I just start confronting the fear. It's like I have conversations with them. I'm like, All right. Fear that I'm going to go bankrupt. Are you real and half the half of my fears aren't even real possibilities. And then that kind of helps me get to the ones that could happen. And then I start to figure out out like, okay, then I have different strategies. If I'm in a really good, if I'm really centered, and I can handle it, I will start to feel into what it would feel like if that specific thing happened. If I'm not in a good place, I won't do that, because I don't need some time. You know, sometimes that'll lead me to spiraling and it's not productive. But sometimes when I can, like, let myself hold fear, let my body hold fear and realize that it's okay. I'm, like, keep going. So that's, that's my first that's kind of a long foray into fear. But I think that's like, the first thing I would say. And then when I really talked about on the podcast is there are so many ways to set yourself up for success around this. So if you think maybe you want to leave social media, I can promise you the answer is not just like, logging off ghosting everybody and not showing up, they're like that will impact your business negatively. Or your if you're not in the business, like your friendships probably like, I'm such a Capricorn rising, I'm like, let's make a plan. And that's what all the tools and the leaving social media toolkit are for. It's like, okay, if you want to leave, the first thing we need to do is figure out what are your other marketing channels going to be? And how do we start moving your community to those spaces. So when I left Instagram, I did like a six week long push of getting people onto my mailing list, getting their emails, and I captured I think about like 20, or 30% of my Instagram followers actually joined my list, by the time that I had done that, and it took all six of those weeks to get them there. Like it was a whole extended process. So I think like, the first step is feeling the fear and being open to what can happen. And then the next step is like, move through the fear and then get like really creative and imaginative, and expand your idea of what marketing could look like and how you could get clients or how you could sell products. And then after you like go through that expansive period, then you kind of contract again, and actually make a plan for what you're going to do, and how much based on the timing based on how much energy you have based on your capacity. And that arc is really what off the grid is about. And it is also what a workshop series I'll be teaching this August called the refresh it's going to be about, it's literally going to walk you through the steps of clearing the fear, weaving the web of all of the marketing possibilities for your business, and then making a map of what you want to do going forward. So I guess that's kind of a plug, if you want to do that with me Come hang out in the refreshed and August, it's gonna be a good time.
Katelyn:
I'll be there. I love it. I love it, I have a thought that I want to share. And I want to grab your perspective on this before we wrap up today as well, too. And I also want to hear just your vision for your hopes around social media and whatnot. But I think that going back to the relationship piece of it there, there are some people there are many people who will hear this and be like, what, like, I love social media, I love having a business on social media I couldn't like this brings me so much joy, this brings me so much just inspiration and I just eat it up, I love it. And that's awesome. Like my perspective is great, like, do like be in that relationship. But for many of us also there is that little nudge of hey, something is not working like something is not right, something feels off and just starting to pay attention to that whether you have a business or you are just on it for social engagement in general. And coming back to the awareness piece that you were already talking about around just the thoughts that are coming up. And beginning to pay attention to those thoughts a little bit more regularly can be so helpful because it is important and one thing that's that's really kind of stood out to me recently is just kind of chuckling to myself because there are so many people who choose different marketing paths and when you bring up a certain tool they're like wait, what like I've never even been on that platform before yet. They're having they're running a successful business like for example, I I never go on Tik Tok there. There is one account that I follow and it is the only account because I love her so much. bicoastal grandmother, I hope to have her on it I don't use it at all. And there are people who are making so much money on that platform running very successful businesses having a blast on it and I'm just like I don't even know the first thing about it. You know what I mean? or LinkedIn or Snapchat or For people who aren't on social all together and do just direct, you know, business to business through picking up the phone, like you have all this in your kit that I really recommend everybody to get. But there, when you find a way to do business in a way that works for you and brings you joy, that's all you need to know. That's all you need to figure out there. There's not like a one a one right way that everybody needs to follow. And that's something that I'm really trying to lean into for myself. As I navigate my own relationship with social, what are your thoughts?
Amelia:
Yeah, I mean, it goes back to what you said earlier about diet culture, like we're all look alike. Part of the appeal, even of diet culture, is that we're all looking for that quick fix, right. And diet culture tells us it exists in the form of, you know, dieting, and social media tells us the quick fix exists in the form of social media. Like, and then, you know, I think also, with so much of business going online, and like online business becoming its own world, we have so many people kind of stepping into these roles of like teachers, mentors, guides, coaches, saying, like, I have solved it, here's my, like, do business this way, and you will make money act like, you know, $10,000 a month, $100,000, a year, a million dollars, whatever. And I think that, you know, the biggest thing that I'm trying to explore on off the grid and encourage people to realize is like, someone else's out of the box solution isn't going to fit you. And we have to empower ourselves to choose what like, figure out what works for us. And sometimes something you really want to work for you doesn't work for you. You know, sometimes it does, sometimes something that works really well, one time doesn't work another time. And so one of the tools in the toolkit is a database for creative marketing experiments. Because I think the other thing I really think about is like, there's not, I don't just get a market one way. And that will always work for my business, like things change all the time. Even if I don't change the platforms change how they work change, like I was just listening to a podcast, you know, people who used to run their entire business on Facebook ads saw business plummet when Apple stopped letting apps track people's behavior on their phones. Right. And so now people have had to learn totally different ways of marketing and selling. Because the service just stopped like is less effective when it's not surveilling people without their consent. So, you know, I think that like, that's a very specific example. But business is always changing. And part of running a business is learning to lean into that flow and embrace change. While attuning yourself to what works for you, and not simply like expecting out of the box solutions from other people to be a quick fix for your, for your business. And that can be so everything we've talked about is just, you know, also reminding me of like, this beautiful thing that Audrey Lorde says that I don't have the quote off the top of my head, but the to paraphrase it, it's like, once you feel liberation in one area of your life, you start to demand it in every other area of your life. And for me, I really can see the domino effect of like, feeling that liberation from diet culture. Like when I the more I studied and learned about feminism and became involved in feminist organizing like the as I started to liberate myself and feel liberated communally from patriarchy, or from sexism like that dominoed into diet culture that's dominated into like, social media surveillance, it's it impacts every area of my life, I started my business because I wanted to be liberated from my job. I just think that I imagine everyone listening to this podcast, who feels or desires that liberation from diet culture. It only empowers you to want more from other areas of your life. And that is beautiful. And it can also be really hard. It just leads to this series of like, beautiful, I think like creations and distractions that come and my life now. Everything about my life is different now than it was in 2018 when I broke up with diet culture, like every single thing, but it's beautiful because of it.
Katelyn:
I love it. There's so much depth when you allow for that level of liberation and that depth can feel so scary at first, but man, I echo so many things that you just said and I so appreciate you and your truth and everything that you showed up with it. This conversation and your vulnerabilities. So thank you so much. I could talk to you for hours or so. Part two, because so many other questions I have like, when did you get into feminism? Did you ever go on that road trip? or anything? So we'll have to have you back. But before we do, where can everybody connect with you, grab these amazing resources, get into your world, all the things.
Amelia:
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. You can find my personal website and everything I've done, written, created about selfies at ameliahruby.com. And then you can find all of the resources for leaving social media through my podcast Off the Grid, which you'll find it softersounds.studio/offfthegrid. And you can find off the grid podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts, just search off the grid, leaving social media.
Katelyn:
Thank you, Amelia. We'll link everything in the show notes to keep it simple, but I appreciate you and I'm so grateful for this conversation. Yeah, thanks so much, Katelyn.
