How I Move Candice Brathwaite
Best-selling author, TV presenter and fashion guru on ITV’S ‘Lorraine’ explains how exercise has led to self-fulfillment and body image acceptance
I have given in to my natural body type. I eat when I am hungry and exercise five days a week
Iwas a seriously committed ballroom dancer as a child. Tap, jazz and the foxtrot were my types of exercise. When I got into performing arts school, aged 13, it became very much about your physicality. I still remember standing in the baguette queue for lunch one day and a dance teacher walking past said to me, “Don’t eat that if you want to do ballet”. It was absolutely the thinnest I’ve ever been in my entire life, but in my friendship circle, I was regarded as one of the biggest, at size 8-10.
I hated sports day at school because as a black girl in south London, there was this pressure to be uber fast. I was never the fastest, but never the slowest, either. Although I wasn’t a cool kid, I would never get picked last in PE – but that was because I always bunked it! I’d use my period as an excuse. I wasn’t totally unsporty – I ended up becoming a massive netball fanatic in my early teens. For my lack of height, I was quite a good goal shooter.
I don’t feel great about my body every day, but I actively search for influencers or bloggers with my body type. I’m very personal about that, because I understand if it’s not me seeing myself, a woman who is a firm size 16, that’s going to cause an imbalance. I know first hand how hard and how destabilising it is to maintain a body type that isn’t natural. It’s borderline insanity, a completely horrific way to live life, so I’ve given in to my natural body type. I eat when I’m hungry, eat chocolate, drink wine and I exercise five days a week.
I respond to a size 18 girl working out with bits jiggling more than a fitness influencer.
Fitness influencers make me feel a bit small, and their energy makes me competitive. Even when I’m on my Peloton, I immediately swipe the leaderboard off – I’m not interested in racing somebody else’s output. I follow Lizzo, but I have to actively not go into her comments section under a post of her working out or showing off an outfit that she’s rocking. Those comments sections will be riddled with fat phobia, racism, or misogynoir – or all three. I internalize that because I’m not that far off from Lizzo’s body type.
I don’t enjoy cardio. It feels like self-flagellation, and that’s coming from someone who has run the London marathon and two-ultra marathons. Before kids came along, I was part of a wellknown London running collective called Run Dem Crew. A lot of my friends were also running, and it morphed into that thing of, “Should I run to be skinny?” For me to achieve a svelte figure, I’d have to not eat, which isn’t healthy. So I started thinking, “What exercise do I actually enjoy doing?” and that’s when I found weightlifting. I started it two years ago and it’s absolutely what my body is geared towards. I also succumbed to the Peloton peer pressure and I’m obsessed.
Nowadays, we can’t get away from this Brazilian Butt Lift, big-bottomed and wide-hipped culture. My latest book, Sista Sister, is a manual for black girls that I wish I had growing up – but what would I tell my sporty younger self? To do the stuff I enjoyed the most. Why didn’t I seek out a netball club to join? Why did I engage in sports that I hated for so long? I’d also laugh at the teacher who told the young girl in the baguette queue and tell her how in 20 years’ time, women are going to die for my figure.