Stepping on her home scale last September, Toronto birth photographer Calla Evans saw something she couldn’t ignore.
A flashing red error message — as the machine could only handle weight up to 350 pounds.
“I wasn’t upset. I didn’t cry. I didn’t have a breakdown moment,” she recalls.
Instead, she decided to seek help in an unlikely place: the Internet.
“Instead of turning my back and attempting to walk around it all for the millionth time, I’m working through it. All of it. The self-hate, the turning to food to comfort me, the jealousy of others’ successes,” she wrote on her Facebook page, asking her 674 friends to recommend trainers and healthy recipes.
She braced for a wave of body shaming. What Evans got — on a platform known for posts of thigh gaps and bikini bridges, humble bragging and carefully curated perfection — was a support system.She received almost 80 — overwhelmingly positive — comments on that first post from friends, acquaintances and friends of friends she hadn’t even met.
“This post was the most honest and sincere thing I’ve read on Facebook in a long time and you have such a beautiful amount of bravery and trust to let us all in,” read one.
“I hear us sister!!! You are not alone!!! Love this and your strength!!!” said another.
“To see someone put out there on social media something that’s not happy-happy-positive was a big thing,” says 32-year-old Evans, who hopes her story of getting healthy — honestly — will inspire others, whether they’re struggling with body image, weight loss or something totally different.
And with the advice of her Facebook friends, she set a goal: to get her weight down to under 200 pounds.
She began slowly. She started exercising, with simple walks around the block with her husband, Adrian Ellis. One slow kilometre turned into two. Before long, they were walking up to 10 kilometres a night.The walks turned into gym sessions — she joined a GoodLife near her east-end home, a chain that was recommended by some of the visitors to her Facebook page — and she now goes between four and six days a week.
She added diet changes and meal planning and started tracking her calories via an app. So far, she’s lost 70 pounds in about five months.
Throughout, she’s updating Facebook, Instagram and a personal blog, posting everything from running shoe selfies to homemade granola breakfasts — documenting her journey for support but also to inspire others.
“It makes me sad that I didn’t post something sooner because I was also perpetuating that positive, social media, ta da!” she said.
