Louise Green Dishes on Body Size Acceptance (and Her New Book)

Despite the fact that nearly 70 per cent of North American women wear a size 14 or larger, society still sees "plus-size" as the “wrong size"—and Vancouver’s own Louise Green is on a mission to change that. An amazing plus-size athlete, personal trainer and longtime advocate of size acceptance, Louise spoke to us about her new book, Big Fit Girl, and gave us her own tried-and-true advice for feeling confident at any size. Call us inspired! —Noa Nichol

Tell us about your book, Big Fit Girl. Why did you write it, and why now?

I wrote Big Fit Girl because of my personal experiences navigating the world of fitness as a plus-size athlete and personal trainer. After countless conversations with my plus-size clients, I learned that many feel left out of fitness culture. I realized that there was a serious lack of relatable information available for those who want to become more active, but fall outside of cultural fitness ideals of being young, lean and ripped. This book is for the rest of us! Big Fit Girl is so very timely because, over the last few years, body positivity has really started to come into its own. There couldn’t be a better time for Big Fit Girl to launch.

Today you run half-marathons and host boxing classes, but you weren’t always so active. What motivated you to make the change?

I made the change after I had hit rock bottom in my unhealthy lifestyle. For many years, I had tried to achieve better health through fad diets, but could never adhere for any length of time. I was constantly hungry, and always ended up breaking my diet. This left me feeling like a failure, and deeply impacted my self-esteem. One day I’d had enough, and decided to join a Learn to Run 5K clinic. It started as yet another attempt to lose weight, but this time things went differently. To my surprise, our leader was plus-size, like me. Seeing a coach with a larger body switched something in my mind; I stopped wanting to whittle my body down to a conforming size, and instead focused on building the healthiest and strongest version of myself, in the body I already had.

Read the rest of our inspiring interview with Louise, here.