Tess Holliday Tries Her First-Ever Big Mac After Body-Shaming Followers Tell Her to ‘Lay Off’ of Them
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The model’s friend joked that “she’s the worst fat person in the world because she has not eaten so many staple fat foods”
Tess Holliday Tries Her First-Ever Big Mac After Body-Shaming Followers Tell Her to ‘Lay Off’ of Them
Tess Holliday has “proof that plus size folks stay winning” — and it all starts with a Big Mac.
The 36-year-old model and her friend, makeup artist Alyssa, said in an Instagram video that they both get body shaming comments that tell them to “lay off the Big Macs for a few.”
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Holliday, though, has a “fun fact” — she’s never actually had one.
“She’s the worst fat person in the world because she has not eaten so many staple fat foods,” Alyssa joked. “And the Big Mac is one of them that she’s yet to enjoy.”
To fix that, the pair decided to order “$80 worth of McDonalds” and finally have Holliday try her first Big Mac — and film it for the body shamers.
Big Macs in hand, Holliday took her first bite and was immediately impressed.
“Wow, that’s delicious,” she said. “Wow.”
“Learning how to be a fat person one day at a time,” Alyssa told her.
Tess Holliday Tries Her First-Ever Big Mac After Getting Body Shaming Comments to ‘Lay Off’ of Them Tess Holliday | Credit: Tess Holliday Instagram
And after just one Big Mac, Holliday is officially on board.
“It’s very messy, but I would 100% eat these every day like the internet says,” she joked. “I am so sad I had never had a Big Mac before.”
Holliday added in the caption that their ability to make light of the situation shows how strong they are.
“Just further proof that plus size folks stay winning bc if there’s one thing we are good at it’s turning trauma into comedy😜,” she wrote.
RELATED VIDEO: Tess Holliday Is ‘Hyped’ to Get Back to Hot Pilates: ‘Fat Folks Like Moving Their Bodies’
“I feel grateful that I’m tough enough to talk about this, but I’ve since taken a lot of steps backwards in my recovery,” she wrote. “I’ve regressed. I haven’t eaten today. It’s 11 o’clock and I’ve had two sips of coffee, and I feel sick. This has been extremely hard on my mental and physical health.”
Holliday said, though, that therapy has helped her through this process, along with being around friends who are aware of her diagnosis and gently help her eat.
“I remind myself that my feelings are valid. I go to therapy. Talking about it has helped. I surround myself with people who can gently say, “Have you eaten today?” or, “Let’s have a protein shake.” I make sure I have things in my house that are easy to grab and eat. Moving my body makes it easier for me to feed myself because it makes it harder to ignore the feelings of hunger.”
Holliday said that for “people who are struggling, I say to find support.”
“I literally would not have been able to do any of this if I didn’t have that help.”
Tess Holliday on her anorexia recovery: ‘People said I was lying’
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Content note: This story discusses details of disordered eating.
Nearly a year after being diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, Tess Holliday is sharing the challenges of recovery—a process that is often nonlinear—in a new essay for TODAY. “I feel grateful that I’m tough enough to talk about this, but I’ve since taken a lot of steps backwards in my recovery. I’ve regressed. I haven’t eaten today,” the model wrote. “It’s 11 o’clock and I’ve had two sips of coffee, and I feel sick. This has been extremely hard on my mental and physical health.”
Holliday first shared her eating disorder diagnosis in May 2021. “People said I was lying," Holliday wrote in her essay. “There are people who believe I was saying this to get attention. I’ve had some people say, ‘You’re doing this to stay relevant.’ I laugh because I know it’s untrue, but it’s so indicative of what a large problem this is.”
Eating disorders in people with larger bodies are likely severely under-diagnosed. A culture of fat bias and harmful stereotypes about the connection between body weight and health tells us (wrongly) that all larger bodies are unhealthy, that all people struggling with eating disorders are thin. But harmful restrictive eating isn’t exclusively a problem for thin people—eating disorders can’t be generalised to a certain body type.
Medical practitioners, even those with good intentions, aren’t immune to anti-fat bias. In a 2018 study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, researchers found that mental health trainees were more likely to diagnose a client presenting with symptoms of an eating disorder with anorexia when the client was described as “underweight” or “normal weight” vs “overweight.” They also recommended fewer therapy sessions for the clients described as overweight and normal weight than for the underweight group.
It’s that exact bias that makes it so hard for people in larger bodies to get the help they need. “So many people who are in larger bodies have messaged me and said, ‘I never thought I restricted until you started talking about this,’” Holliday wrote. “It’s been very empowering, but it’s also made me incredibly sad… It’s tough when you hear the word anorexia and it’s only equated with one kind of image. It’s detrimental to so many people, including myself.”
Holliday shared that it was her dietitian who first broached the idea that she might have an eating disorder. “When she said anorexia, I laughed. I thought, ‘Do you see how fat I am? There’s no way that word could ever be attached to someone my size,’" Holliday said. Her dietitian referred her to a psychologist who confirmed the diagnosis. “I still struggle with wrapping my head around, ‘How can I be in a fat body and be starving?’ Then I realised that bodies of all sizes and shapes starve,” Holliday wrote.
When someone in a larger body restricts their eating in a harmful way, it may be diagnosed as atypical anorexia. “Despite official clinical recognition, atypical anorexia nervosa is under-recognised and widely perceived to be less severe than anorexia nervosa,” according to the Acute Center for Eating Disorders and Severe Malnutrition. The symptoms are the same as with typical anorexia patients, except “the individual’s presentation weight is within or above the normal range,” according to Acute. “Patients with atypical anorexia nervosa experience the same incidence of binge eating, purging, psychiatric comorbidity, use of psychotropic medications, self-harm, suicidal ideation, severe depressive symptoms, and obsessive/compulsiveness as classic anorexia nervosa.”
Plus-size model Tess Holliday shares her perfect response to body-shaming woman
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Britney Spears calls out ‘hateful’ paparazzi for body shaming her on holiday
Photo credit: Britney Spears - Instagram
Britney Spears took to Instagram yesterday (24 January) to criticise the paparazzi for body shaming her, branding the media “hateful”.
Speaking to her 39.2 million followers on the social media platform, the singer said: “Paps still show pics of me on the balcony with fat rolls!!!! The media has always been hateful to me!!!”
Alongside a series of holiday snaps, in which she could be seen sunbathing in a bikini and dancing in a crop top and shorts, she added “I know my body is not perfect by any means but I also know I definitely don’t look like that!!!! Guess I should stay at the gym for three hours like Sam does lol… NEVER.”
In the comments section, fans and celebrity friends alike jumped to her defence and praised her for speaking up. “Queen your body is beautiful! Nobody in this world is perfect so don’t worry! We love you” said one fan, with another commenting: “You are absolutely gorgeous the way you are! Do what makes you happy!!”
In a follow up post, Britney shared a video of herself sunbathing and revealed to her followers that she hasn’t been feeling well as of late. “I think I have a small bug… the only thing that is similar to this feeling is when I was pregnant” she wrote in the caption. “It’s the nausea that is the worst… It’s like I can’t wake up so I go to the gym trying to wake my system up!!! It’s like clockwork.”
The singer continued: “I break my first sweat then I go to the bathroom and throw up… it’s absolutely horrible but then I stay at the gym because I don’t want to go home and lay sick in bed… I keep going and [at] night I go dancing and my system starts to get clarity.” She then explained that this has “been going on for a month”, adding that she’s lost two pounds as a result.
Commenting further on the paparazzi that have allegedly followed her on holiday, Britney said the media are “hiding” outside her room. “If you’re outside my room trying to get another cheap shot of me… please go f*ck yourself and leave me alone” she said. “I should be able to run around naked if I choose to.”
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Freedom to run around naked for all? We certainly support that.
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Breezy Johnson, the top U.S. downhill skier, pulls out of Olympics with heartbreaking injury
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Breezy Johnson was an Olympic medal favorite in the women’s downhill. (Photo by JURE MAKOVEC/AFP via Getty Images)
Breezy Johnson’s journey to the 2022 Olympics began with a ruptured ACL, continued with more torn ligaments and a pandemic, and brought the bubbly American skiing star “some of the lowest points of my career and life.” But, she said, “also some of the biggest highs.”
As the Games neared, Johnson began accelerating down European mountains, faster than she ever had. She entered 2022 second in skiing’s downhill World Cup, as the top U.S. alpine medal contender not named Mikaela Shiffrin.
Then, on Jan. 8, with the Olympics less than a month away, she crashed in training and cut her knee.
Two weeks later, she crashed again, and “immediately felt a massive crack,” and then a gut-wrenching reality setting in.
“Sorry, guys,” she announced on Tuesday. “I just can’t.”
Johnson withdrew from the Olympics, citing “a large chunk of cartilage” in her knee “that is partially dislodged.” She said she considered pushing through it, flying to Beijing and competing anyway. She decided it was neither “realistic” nor “smart.”
And so, after a “roller coaster” four years, she was heartbroken.
“I wanted so badly to realize my dream of becoming an Olympic Champion,” she wrote. “To bask in the glow of that sunset. But the reality is that the risks, and there are always risks, are no longer worth it.”
Breezy Johnson’s journey
Johnson became intimately familiar with those risks in the fall of 2018, several months after finishing seventh in her Olympic debut and setting her sights on Beijing. That September, she tore her right ACL in training. She missed the entire 2019 season. While preparing for the following year, a “freak accident” sidelined her again. She tore her left PCL, MCL and joint capsule, she said. “I tore some cartilage off the bone,” she added. Another months-long recovery awaited her.
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And yet, all she wanted to do while enduring monotonous rehab was return to the hill. Alpine skiing, she acknowledged, “deals injuries to about 100% of its athletes,” but she loved it — always has and still does. She became enamored as a child in Idaho. As she grew into an Olympian, the 80-mile-per-hour thrill made her feel alive.
When she couldn’t experience it, during those 22 months between competitions, “my mental health suffered a lot,” she said. She documented her struggles after the ACL tear in a series of journal entries, or “patient notes,” that she published on U.S. Ski and Snowboard’s website. “I’m scared. I’ll admit it,” she wrote in the first one. In the third, two months after the injury and shortly after a second operation to deal with a skin infection, she said: “This is hard. Really hard.”
In the next, she described feeling “anxious and depressed.” She wanted to run, to jump, to ski, to feel in control of her body and her life again, but she wasn’t. She instead felt “bound to a set of rules that I hardly understand and that seem to constantly tell me no.” She watched World Cup races, and cheered on teammates and competitors, but truthfully, she wanted to beat them. She felt her “muscles trying to jump out of my skin and into my television screen,” to do just that. She simultaneously worried, and wondered whether she’d ever get back to her best.
VAL D’ISERE, FRANCE - DECEMBER 16: Breezy Johnson of Team United States during the warm up of the Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup Women’s Downhill Training on December 16, 2021 in Val d’Isere France. (Photo by Alain Grosclaude/Agence Zoom/Getty Images)
She hated that uncertainty, and the patience it required, so she pushed — back from the first injury, then again from the second. She worked with Alex Cohen, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s sport psychologist, and others, to regain control. To set modest goals. To recapture her stability and speed.
She returned to the World Cup circuit in 2020. She returned to podiums, again and again, in 2021. Now years removed from the injuries, she was skiing better than ever before. Only the reigning Olympic champion, Italy’s Sofia Goggia, stood between Johnson and Olympic downhill gold. Even after her first training crash, which she initially described as a “tumble,” she was named to the 11-woman U.S. alpine team, as its top medal contender outside of Shiffrin.
She returned to snow in Cortina, Italy, last week, at the site of the 2026 Olympics, with an Instagram post that proclaimed, “I’m baaack.”
But on the second day of downhill training, after a blistering first day, she landed awkwardly and flew into the netting that borders the course. An MRI soon diagnosed torn cartilage. Surgery would be necessary. The Olympics, she realized, would have to go on without her.
“This sport is brutal,” she wrote Tuesday. “Someone asked me yesterday why we do it. And at times like these you wonder. But the truth is that, for me, the feeling of racing is the feeling of being truly alive, and so I will keep coming back every time. Because that feeling of skiing fast is worth everything.
“Luckily,” she continued, “I’ve been a big fan of ski racing since I was a little kid. So while I always wanted to win an Olympic gold medal, I have a lot of other goals in ski racing. Goals that I can work on for the next four years. Before I return, hopefully, to the hill that stole this Olympic dream from me, for another shot at that gold medal.”
She concluded with two words — “2026 baby” — and hashtag: “#lfg.“Let’s f***ing go.