Body Confidence

Body Confidence

Warning: This is going to be a long ass post, so get yourself a snack or call over your favourite pet, sit back and relax.

This is not a post about 'eating healthy' or 'tips on having a healthy lifestyle to improve self-esteem' because honestly, yes, eating healthy and exercising can give you a confidence boost, everybody knows that already, but what about just loving yourself without having to make any major physical changes?

 

Majority of articles and blog posts I have come across on how to feel good in your body have mentioned some form of exercise or diet change but I think that people should learn to love themselves as they are before they begin any major change.

I know what I just said may sound contradictory but hear me out. I have found that in general people, myself included, tend to start their fitness journey for the complete wrong reason. A lot of the time people start working out to achieve the "perfect Instagram body" without actually realising how much work goes into having that certain type of  physique. So they work and work constantly, maybe even begin following some crazy meal plan where they only eat 1,000 calories a day hoping that they will look like the men and women they see on their social media, then they become frustrated and maybe even depressed because they aren't seeing the results they had hoped for, and that's where everything goes wrong.

I have been in that place, I was in it for 8 years, now bare in mind I'm only 19 so that's a good chunk of my life. When I was a kid, I was so confident in myself and my looks. I didn't care what was in magazines or the internet because I knew I was hot AF ( as a 10 yr old..btw),  I even remember thinking that it was so ridiculous how girls my age were so influenced by the women they saw in the media, just love yourself, you're all beautiful, I thought. But then, I got older, and started to get self conscious. I then got extremely depressed. I was in a very dark place at 12-14 yrs old. I then started working out to look like the other girls, but kept falling off the wagon and back into depression over and over again never knowing why I couldn't keep it up or why I still wasn't happy. This was until the beginning of my last year of High School where I had a slight "glow up". I felt much better about myself for a good while, but then I started feeling down again and it wasn't until the summer of when I finished High School that I realised why.

This whole time I had been looking to achieve an impossible goal. I had wanted to so desperately look like all the girls I saw on Instagram, have their hair, body or face that I completely lost sight of the real reason I was supposed to be doing this. I just wanted to be happy and healthy.

The truth is, you are never going to look like those other girl, why? because you're not them. you are you. I can not emphasise enough how important it is that everyone reading this realises that. If the only reason you want to change your body is to be pretty or to look like an Instagram model , you will not succeed. You will never be satisfied with your results which will then equal to you possibly developing very serious health and mental disorders.

Before you being to make any change with your body you have to make sure to love yourself as you are. This is so so very important and the whole reason why I decided to make this post in the first place. The only way you can ever be happy with any progress you make is to do it for the right reasons, which is to improve on what's already there and what already is beautiful on its own.

   Working out, eating healthy, this should all be done to improve yourself not change who you already are.

That is exactly what I realised at the end of my final year of High School. Since realising this, I have become much happier, much more positive and a much nicer human being in general, all because I can finally love myself the way I am. I do still have off days of course, where I feel down or not as cheery, however, when I am having those days, I look in the mirror, and just compliment myself, and then I try my hardest to just not let the negative thought enter my brain. I distract myself by hanging out with friends, writing, or even watching my favourite movie or TV show. I try and avoid social media also, for that period. I find this helps me to just focus on the good and the positive.

   I can really tell a difference in the way I now view other people too. Instead of comparing myself to other women, and thinking why can't I look like this, I see them and think what exercises I could do to get her stomach, or her legs and how I could improve my diet to be even healthier. I have noticed that instead of comparing, I've started researching. Which is a very big step up from what I used to do before where I just scrolled through pictures and compared every last inch of my body to someone else's resulting in me feeling even worse.  

I know very well that this is much easier said than done, but trust me, the more you practise finding the good in yourself, the easier it becomes and eventually it just becomes a habit. What also helps is surrounding yourself with good and positive people that up lift you and support you no matter what.

Every single one of you reading this right now is an amazing, wonderful and an incredibly beautiful person. Never let anyone have enough influence on you to make you view the world in a negative light.

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Thank you so much for reading!