Why Scarlett Moffatt wants us to get moving
Scarlett Moffatt never imagined herself as someone who would be ‘into’ mindfulness.
“If you’d said to me two years ago: ‘You’ll like mindfulness’ – I’d have laughed,” the 31-year-old says with her characteristic Geordie humour. “It’s one of those things where you’re getting in tune with yourself – and I’m like, ‘No, that’s not me’. But it has massively improved my mental health. I think it’s nice sometimes to block everything out and just take a moment.”
She’s so taken with mindfulness, she’s even tried to get her friends to do affirmations and meditation – to varied success. “They laugh, and I’m like: ‘It’ll change your life’.”
Moffatt admits she only started looking after her mental health when it “declined”. She says: “We always try and look after our bodies, and actually the two are intertwined.”
Exercise is a big part of how she looks after her mind: “A lot of people exercise to lose weight, and I want to try and change that stigma. Yes, it’s important to be healthy, but exercise also releases dopamine – it makes you feel really proud of yourself that you’ve done something constructive that day.
“When my mental health took a bit of a nosedive, that’s when I really started to make an effort, to make sure I was looking after every aspect of my body.”
That’s why Moffatt has teamed up with This Girl Can (thisgirlcan.co.uk) to launch classes empowering women to get into exercise – perhaps if they’re a beginner, or haven’t worked out in a while. “Sometimes, we associate exercise with it having to be a struggle, like‘ no pain no gain’ and all that type of stuff,” she says. “But actually, that’s not the case – a lot of the time it’s just nice to get your body moving, get the dopamine going and get a little bit of a sweat on” – something Moffatt says “helps your mental health so much”.
Moffatt’s own relationship with exercise has been a bit of a rollercoaster. Growing up, she did ballroom and Latin dancing
“for enjoyment – it wasn’t to try and change the way I looked or anything like that”, she explains. “It was because I absolutely loved it – I love the feeling of being free and having a dance around.” Things started to change as she got older, with Moffatt saying: “Honestly, social media has a big part to play, because it almost feels as if you have to have a six-pack to be at the gym,” – and it reinforces this “pressure to look a certain way”.
This pressure is something that’s plagued Moffatt for years, but now she’s at a happier place with her body. For her, body positivity comes from “being kinder to myself”, she says simply. “I realised I was missing out on quite a lot of life, because I was so focused and worried about what other people would think. I remember going to Vegas and missing a pool party, because the thought of being in a swimsuit was making me so anxious.
“That makes me so sad that I missed out on such a fun day, all because I was bothered about what other people thought.” That’s why body positivity is something Moffatt really wants to champion, “Because I don’t want anyone else to ever feel the way I felt”.