Self Love- Easier Said Than Done

Before- 2009

After- 2017

Like many of you, I have so many issues with myself and the way I look. It all started from the age of 14 for me when I started getting acne and my first boyfriend cheated on me... many many times. I stopped eating, I became anorexic, I got help. I still didn't love myself. I have fought with eating disorders since my teenage years, even now when I'm 23 I still get the urge to starve myself because I don't like what I see when I look in the mirror.

When I was 18/19 I got told I was fat and too 'curvy'... I was a size 10/12. Yes, I'm 5ft3 but I was a healthy weight and I was in proportion. I became pregnant when I was just about to turn 20 and during my pregnancy I developed gestational diabetes which makes you pile on so much weight and is very dangerous for you and your baby. I had my 9lb10 baby via csection 5 days before he was due. To say I hated my new body was an understatement. I knew what I'd done was a miracle, I'd grown a human inside my body and given it life but I couldn't adjust to my new shape. I'd always been curvaceous but I was also toned... I just turned to fat. I weighed in at 16 stone and by the time my son was 1, I knew I'd had enough. I dieted, I exercised- I started to like what I saw and then I fell pregnant again with my daughter.

I made sure I didn't get gestational diabetes, I ate healthy food all the way through. I did, however, become severely anameic, go figure. Never getting pregnant again. Aneamia doesn't make you put on weight, but it makes you extremely tired and you don't feel like doing a lot, so my weight crept back up. I had my 9lb3 daughter and went up to 14 stone after she was born (12 days late, not that I'm still bitter). It was then that I decided to try a fad diet which was the skinny coffee diet.

I got my weight down to just under 11 stone in 3 months. But guess what, I'm still not happy with what I see. I still jiggle. I still don't fit into my size 12 jeans. I still cry when I look in the mirror and I am the lightest I have been since before I had my first born. Once you doubt yourself in how you look, there's always a voice inside your head that tells you 'you can be skinnier, you can lose more weight' and you listen to that voice no matter how much you weigh. Battling an eating disorder is one of the hardest fights I've had and it's still on going.

But why do we feel the need to be 'thin'? Can we just blame it on social media and magazines? Or do we blame society too for making it the norm to follow the skinny trends in the papers?

I've never been on the other end of the scale of being thin and wanting to be bigger, chances are I never will be- but I can understand it's difficult to be on that end too. People constantly telling you to eat... like excuse me, you should see me on take away night when I demolish 2 pizzas, a kebab, a large chips and a small village to myself and then tell me I need to eat more.

The reason we can't 'self love' is because we have made our idols impossible to live up to. We need to learn to accept that every body is different and that is okay. It's difficult to look in the mirror and feel content with what you see but the thing is, your body is what makes you, you! The mole you have on your arse, the scars on your body, your mono brow that comes back a week after you've had it waxed (seriously, I can't tame it) they are all individual to you! Love them with every bit of your being and learn to embrace your differences.

You are beautiful, never forget that.

Thank you for reading!
B x