Dr. Selflove: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Body

I have never been skinny. Growing up, I was pretty average-sized, but once puberty hit, all hell broke loose. I got hips, and breasts and curves that no 11-year-old girl knows what to do with. With this came a lot of attention. Attention from other 11-year-old boys, fascinated with my prematurely developed body, attention from 11-year-old girls, bullying me for looking different, and attention from my step-mom.

In my teenage years, I wasn’t really fat. I was average, if not slightly larger than average, but by no means a behemoth of a girl. I only understand that now, looking back at pictures, because the way that my weight was addressed seemed to indicate otherwise. My step-mom always made comments about my size, some backhanded, often not. It seemed like I got a daily reminder that my weight was holding me back from true happiness in life. That if only I wasn’t SO fat, I could have more friends, or more boyfriends or better grades. To her, the root of all of my teenage problems was my size.

I was discouraged from playing sports because I was too big to play. I joined color guard my sophomore year, as a way to feel good about myself and participate in a team activity. This notion that I was just too large to function as a human being was perpetuated by my color guard instructor too. Mind you, I was a size 13 in high school. So by no means was I unhealthy or physically unfit to twirl a flag.

Because day in and day out I was being told that my body was why I was unhappy, I started to hate it, loathe it even. I stopped taking pride in the way that I looked. I stopped trying to be good at school or make new friends because there was really no point since my body was apparently the problem. I started binge eating. I never got into the whole purging thing, because puke grosses me out, but I would starve myself during the day, then binge eat at night. And because I hated my body so much, I stopped respecting it. I gave in to the attention from teenage boys. I allowed myself to get into situations far above my maturity level because for once, someone didn’t care about my size.

The feeling that someone, albeit a horny teenage boy, thought I was beautiful gave me a rush. But I would sit home and cry because I still felt empty. That attention still didn’t make me feel like a worthwhile person.

Don’t worry; my story isn’t all sad. Once I got out of high school, I started to see the light. I met my now husband, and made friends who loved me no matter what I looked like. I wouldn’t say I love my body at that point, but I was on the road to recovery. Shortly after my husband proposed, I told my parents, and the first thing my step-mom had to say was that if I just lost some weight, I would find someone who really loved me. For the first time in my life I looked at her like she was crazy, and that was when I started to put the pieces of my broken teenage-hood back together. I wasn’t the problem. She was.

It wasn’t after I got married, at 285 lbs., that I realized I needed to reevaluate my life. The binge eating had caught up to me, and although I had everything I ever wanted, I wasn’t truly happy with myself. After diet after diet, I finally realized that the problem isn’t only what I eat or don’t eat, it’s in my head. I had to reverse the years of emotional abuse that related my self-worth to my pant size. That was also when I started to run. Let me tell you, running at almost 300 lbs. (on a 5’1 frame) is HARD. It hurts, and you feel like you are dying, but at the end it feels so awesome. I ran my first 5K at 285 lbs. and even though I finished in more than an hour, I finished. That was the day I started to love my body.

It really set in that my body, albeit grossly overweight, was strong. So I started to test its strength. I started running more, and faster, to see if I could do it. I started lifting weights and doing yoga and I even did a mud run obstacle course. And yeah, it was hard, but my body did it. My body isn’t perfect, but it is the one I’ve got. And it is stronger and more beautiful than I had ever imagined it could be.

A few weeks ago, I was at a high school choir concert to see a friend’s daughter perform. After the concert, a girl and her mom came up to us to talk to my friend. In front of all of us, the girl’s mom made a comment about her daughter’s weight. It struck a nerve in me and it took everything I had to not say something to that woman. It took me 15 years and 150 lbs. to repair the damage that my own step-mom had made, and it crushed me that this girl might have to fight the same fight. I refuted her mother’s comment with an awkwardly shouted “you’re beautiful!” with the hopes that she would take my words to heart.

I can’t change my past, but if I try hard enough, I can help other women change their future. I truly believe that every body is beautiful. Whether your thighs touch or you breasts sag or ears are
crooked, every body, big or small, is beautiful because its yours.

About Jess

Jess is a married 20-something living in Colorado with her husband and their dog Max. She has been writing since the age of 5 and just never stopped. Jess has always struggled with her weight and body image and is finding her way to body enlightenment through healthy living and yoga. She likes talking about movies, politics, fashion, gender issues and feminism. @skinnyjeansjess

source:- http://www.literallydarling.com/blog/2014/01/14/dr-selflove-learned-stop-worrying-love-body/

All About That Bass

Makes My Dayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Healthy Is The New Skinny

Tell me about the Healthy Is The New Skinny campaign. Why did you start it? 
Healthy Is The New Skinny is not about size—it's a change in our mindset. Girls are extremely critical of their own bodies and how it needs to be changed in order to be more "perfect." Most of the concern revolves around weight and size: If you complement a girl, you say, "OMG you look so skinny"; girls eat or don't eat with the goal of being "skinny"; girls work out with the goal of being "skinny." This mentality is extremely dangerous, and Healthy Is The New Skinny is challenging not only how the media portrays beauty, but also our own motives and mindset. If we can do things in our life to be healthy instead of skinny, we will be much more successful and happier than chasing an unrealistic goal. Girls are hurting themselves in the pursuit of beauty, and Healthy Is The New Skinny is taking a different approach to an industry that consists of two extremes. We think healthy bodies are beautiful bodies and that having a healthy body image means treating your body right! 

Do you think it's tougher than ever for teen girls to maintain a positive body image in today's culture? 
Most definitely, yes. I mean, this is nothing new—issues with body image have always been prevalent in our culture. However, I do think it has gotten tougher not only for teen girls, but for women of all ages, to maintain a positive body image. Everywhere we look, there is this "ideal beauty" continuously shoved in our faces, but unfortunately this ideal beauty is just one extreme. It's an unattainable fantasy composed of underweight and photoshopped bodies. Women are never exposed to what is natural, healthy beauty since we don't have examples of that in the media. Women and girls don't have anyone to show them that it's okay to be healthy and happy, and that they don't have to conform to this so-called norm that really isn't the norm at all. 

You personally had to deal with poor body image during your years as a model. What thoughts plagued your mind at that time about your looks? 
You know, when people see models, they only see the final, retouched product in the magazines, billboards, and commercials. They put models up on pedestals and forget that at the end of the day, they're just like other people. They have insecurities just like everyone else, sometimes even more because they're constantly being criticized, and it's like always being under a magnifying glass. I remember when I was working, I never really felt like I was being true to myself. I was always doing what made other people happy, but without having much regard for my health. The more weight that I gained [to do plus-size modeling], the more I was rewarded for it, yet when I lost weight [to try to do conventional modeling] I was never thin enough. No matter what I did, I could never win, and there was always this sort of false confidence in everything that I did. 

As someone who has struggled with my body, I can honestly say that learning to love and accept oneself is not an easy process. It's not as simple as looking in the mirror and telling yourself that you're beautiful, but that is the first step in the right direction. You have to make the decision for yourself that you're going to take back your body and not only change the way you think about it, but change the way you treat it as well. Your health is important, and when you make the decision to be healthy, you definitely begin to feel it; then before you know it, you'll start to believe what you've been telling yourself. 

You also helped create a modeling agency for girls and women of all sizes called Natural Model Management. Why did you decide to do this? 
There seems to be a real disconnect between what the public wants to see and what the fashion industry thinks they want to see. Fashion keeps force-feeding us these unrealistic expectations; meanwhile, girls and women want to see females of all shapes and all sizes and all colors—not just one extreme or the other. This isn't about skinny versus curvy, but rather skinny and curvy and every type of body in between. Look at every public fashion forum online and you'll see millions of girls chatting and blogging about how they wish they could see bodies like theirs in fashion, not just really thin or really curvy ones. There's this growing demand to see more figures that are in between the agency standards, which has created a huge void, so I thought it was really important to create Natural Models as a way to not only fill that void, but to show people that beauty really does come in all shapes and sizes. One particular size or shape isn't more beautiful than another. All women are real women. 

How can teens get involved with the Healthy Is The New Skinny movement?
One of our main focuses right now is to build a team of ambassadors in high schools across the U.S. who can spread the word and raise awareness about Healthy Is The New Skinny. We're looking for high schoolers who are passionate about helping change our culture's perception and standard of beauty, who want to actively participate in our PUP (Perfectly Unperfected Project) program, and who want to bring Healthy Is The New Skinny to their schools. So if you would like to be involved or even make a donation to the PUP program, you can visit healthyisthenewskinny.com and send us an email! We're so excited about our HNS tee shirt campaign too, so make sure you order yours today! 

Source:- http://www.teenvogue.com/beauty/health-fitness/2011-12/healthy-is-the-new-skinny/?slide=1