Learning to be body positive

 Kimono H&M, Vintage necklace, Vintage Belt,  

Not entirely sure how I felt when I cam across the photo of myself stood there on the slopes of a hill whilst on holiday in Looe ( you can see the photo on my instagram) but I knew how I felt when mum took the photo, I was disgusted at the size I was. Simple as that. I hated myself. For a while I knew I wasn’t happy with my size, but it’s not until you have a full body shot of you taken that you realise really what you look like and what others see. Well when I say what others see I mean first appearances. I was never confident when I was big, I had about as much game as a pubescent boy, not that it mattered work meant way more to me then any man did. I was looking at the photo of me but it wasn’t  me, that holiday me and mum spent together will forever be one of my happiest memories, but I never felt that I was that big but when I look at it I was hiding and that’s no life. 

Now when I look at the photo I don’t look at it with disgust I’ve learned to look
past that, I see someone who was exactly the same inside as I am now, I
felt at the time I shouldn’t feel pretty because my waist size was
bigger then average. It upsets me profoundly that I let a lot of media
views of women and other peoples views shape me so that I felt I wasn’t
good enough. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel pretty, I just felt not pretty
enough, I shouldn’t dress nicely, I shouldn’t take the time and pride in
how I look, how dare I want to look pretty, well not enough to have
confidence in myself. Don’t get me wrong when
I was this size I personally was unfit and very unhealthy my asthma was
awful and my depression was pretty troublesome.

It is only in recent times that I have come across really strong, powerful and body positive women online and real life, that has changed a hell of a lot about how I view myself and how I view other women. Since loosing my weight my skin has had really bad break outs, yep it’s sucked my confidence out of me again making me realise that we wont ever be 100% happy with what we have, but thats ok things change and we should embrace the life around us and make changes where we can.

If I have learned anything from my constant journey is that we are only
given one body, its fragile, it feels pain, it changes and sometimes we
don’t get on with it and quite often we treat it badly. We want better
for our bodies. and I got mine to a point where I wasn’t happy with it, I
got it to the point I would hide it from the world and from myself. 

In the end I did it for
me, I didn’t want to be unhappy with myself forever, forever is a long time. I could stay the
weight I was and live unhealthy, treat this one body I had badly so I wanted to stand up and take steps to make myself happy, to not hide what I was given and be proud and feel pretty and that honestly comes in all shapes and sizes confidence comes from within, it truly does. Make yourself happy for yourself and that’s whats important. I am often worried when I talk about loosing the weight online. I do
just because I don’t want people to think that being larger is something
that’s wrong or something they should change. For me I wasn’t happy in
myself I wasn’t confident and I wasn’t healthy.  I thought I wold put some mini steps in place for you to be a little more body positive about yourself.

Get out of your head – The things you tell yourself about yourself aren’t always real they’re often over worked negative thoughts about yourself, step away and try and think of something positive about yourself.

Find your happy outfit – I always have an outfit I go to to make me feel sassy, mine is a skinny jeans and a lovely top. put it on and feel confident.

Don’t beat yourself up – its ok to have a down day we all do don’t let it take over.

Exercise – this helps me feel more confident in myself, yoga is great for this!

Positive thoughts – Write down at least 2 ( a day) positive thoughts , feelings and observations of yourself put them in a jar and when you’re feeling down go back to it and you’ll have all these fab things about yourself