The Life of Bryony

Regular listeners will know this is not a podcast where we glamorise weight loss stories or before-and-after pictures. As someone with a long history of eating disorders, I’ve spent years rejecting the idea that our worth lives and dies on the bathroom scales. But in this episode, I sit down with Ruth Corden to talk about what it means when healing your relationship with your body does involve losing weight – and how to do that without feeding fatphobic bullsh*t. Ruth talks honestly about living in a fat body, food addiction, “food noise”, and starting semaglutide – not as a vanity project, but as a lifeline for her health and sanity. We get into thin privilege, weaponised body positivity, fertility grief, shame in the GP’s office, and how lifting heavy weights helped her finally feel at home in her skin. It’s not a weight loss story. It’s a story about finally inhabiting the body you live in.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
Got something to share? Message us on @lifeofbryonypod on Instagram.

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it – it really helps! Bryony xx

CREDITS:
Host: Bryony Gordon

Guest: Ruth Corden

Producer: Laura Elwood-Craig

Assistant Producer: Sam Rhodes

Studio Manager: Sam Chisholm

Editor: Luke Shelley

Exec Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ashley James is back with me, after our main episode on body image and shame, and we get into the three things that keep her genuinely grounded when her kids are up at 5am, her social battery is dead, and the wellness industry is telling her to “just get up an hour earlier.” We talk about why female friendships feel like soulmates rather than side characters, the joy of getting completely lost in a really good book, and how certain quietly obsessive hobbies can switch off the noise in your head in a way Instagram never will.

BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
Ashley’s new book, Bimbo, is available to buy now.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
Got something to share? Message us on @lifeofbryonypod on Instagram.

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it – it really helps! Bryony xx

CREDITS:
Host: Bryony Gordon

Guest: Ashley James

Producer: Laura Elwood-Craig

Assistant Producer: Tippi Willard

Studio Manager: Sam Chisholm

Editor: Luke Shelley

Exec Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week I’m joined by broadcaster, DJ and author Ashley James for a big, honest conversation about women and the shame we’re taught to feel about our bodies. We talk about how that shame starts in girlhood – from periods and pubic hair to the way we’re told to shrink ourselves and ‘bounce back’ after birth – and why so many of us learn to make ourselves smaller to be lovable, acceptable, or just left alone.​ Ashley shares how diet culture and punishing exercise ruled her life for years, what finally made her say “enough”, and how she slowly unpicked all the messages that told her she should hate herself. If you’ve ever hidden a tampon up your sleeve, worried about your “belly fat”, or felt like your body was somehow wrong, this episode will help you feel seen – and maybe start being a little kinder to the person in the mirror.

BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
Ashley’s new book, Bimbo, is available to buy now.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
Got something to share? Message us on @lifeofbryonypod on Instagram.

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it – it really helps! Bryony xx

CREDITS:
Host: Bryony Gordon

Guest: Ashley James

Producer: Laura Elwood-Craig

Assistant Producer: Tippi Willard

Studio Manager: Sam Chisholm

Editor: Luke Shelley

Exec Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After our main conversation about the messy, beautiful reality of motherhood, I had to ask Lorraine and Rosie all about the three things they each cannot live without. From the people who keep them afloat to the tiny rituals that make the chaos feel manageable, Lorraine and Rosie share the everyday lifelines that help them survive and actually thrive as mums and as a grandmother–mother duo. We talk about leaning on other women, finding comfort in unlikely places, and why it is never “needy” to ask for help. These are the unfiltered, practical things that make modern motherhood just that bit more bearable.

BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
Rosie’s new book, Mother to Mother: Navigating Motherhood Through the Generations, is available to buy now.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
Got something to share? Message us on @lifeofbryonypod on Instagram.

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it – it really helps! Bryony xx

CREDITS:
Host: Bryony Gordon

Guest: Lorraine Kelly & Rosie Kelly Smith

Producer: Laura Elwood-Craig

Assistant Producer: Tippi Willard

Studio Manager: Sam Chisholm

Editor: Luke Shelley

Exec Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, to mark Mother’s Day, I’m joined by actual daytime telly royalty: Lorraine Kelly and her brilliant daughter, Rosie Kelly Smith. We talk about what really happens after you have a baby – the bits the antenatal classes and “what to expect” books never quite prepare you for. Rosie opens up about her C‑section recovery, postnatal anxiety, dark intrusive thoughts and the terrifying street incident that left her scared to even leave the house with her baby. Lorraine shares how it feels watching your child become a mum, why women are so used to looking after everyone else, and how you can let yourself be mothered too. We chat therapy, medication, and the importance of building your own village when the old ones have disappeared. If you’re pregnant, a new mum, or still healing years on, this one’s for you.

BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
Rosie’s new book, Mother to Mother: Navigating Motherhood Through the Generations, is available to buy now.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
Got something to share? Message us on @lifeofbryonypod on Instagram.

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it – it really helps! Bryony xx

CREDITS:
Host: Bryony Gordon

Guest: Lorraine Kelly & Rosie Kelly Smith

Producer: Laura Elwood-Craig

Assistant Producer: Tippi Willard

Studio Manager: Sam Chisholm

Editor: Luke Shelley

Exec Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.