Find yourself, love yourself

Find yourself, love yourself. That's my mantra since I discovered body positivity and changed my mindset forever. But let's start at the beginning. I grew up in a little village as a pretty-faced chubby little girl. I've been criticized and bullied for my appearance my whole life. I received the first critique on my body when I was in the nursery. Yep, sadly that's my first memory of someone else shaming my body and hurting my feelings. I think kids are the worst when it comes to competing, hatred and bullying. So back then, the girls in my group were mostly skinny and as far as I remember I was the only chubby girl among the others. Even though I tried to fight this with my strong personality and show no interest in what others said to me, at the end of the day I was still hurt and felt like I wasn't as good as others, which eventually led to self-assessment issues and depression. Therefore, my family always said to me that it's OK, I don't need to care about what others say, 'they are just jealous' and things like that. Well, it didn't work. As I turned into a teenager I started binge eating. Basically, I turned into a couch potato, after school as I would get home, I would just start eating and watching TV, I would do my homework and bang, "it's dinner time!". I was way too overweight by the age of 18. I remember having problems with choosing the right photo of myself for the yearbook as a senior and I couldn't choose as I didn't like myself on any of the photos. Diet? That was the last thing I wanted to think about. Rebelliously, that was not an option. Every time I tried, I failed. The lack of education about how my body works, nutrition and so on was a crucial problem as well. And then, I remember being shy and insecure about my body when I had my first boyfriend. And then him, he taught me a lot of things about acceptance, about what beauty means and about openness and finally, he taught me to believe in myself. This was the biggest push on my journey. Eventually, I started to believe in myself and started to see myself differently. I accepted who I was, but I still wasn't happy. I didn't feel quite well in my body, I didn't feel healthy. And I wanted to be healthy. Going up the stairs and barely breathing wasn't something that I wanted anymore. Thus, I researched how can I lose some weight. I knew that I never want to be size 0, initially, I didn't even have much expectation towards myself, I just wanted to give myself a chance to have better health. So I started dieting and I did some light, basic sport, like hiking, swimming. I educated myself about nutrition, sport, health and nonetheless, stamina. During a year, I lost 30 kgs. In the meantime, I discovered the body positivity movement, which helped me a lot. Plus-size models, like Ashley Graham, for instance, encouraged me every day to keep up, find what's important and to love myself as I am. I got lots of compliments at that time, good health and self-confidence. I'm still not size 0, I'm 'regular' size if there is such... but the most important is that I feel like myself every day I wake up! And that's the only thing that matters, to accept yourself and your body, even if it is 'not perfect'. This whole journey taught me to be patient, to accept myself and to only care about what really matters for me and that was health. Fun fact: That boyfriend who encouraged me and taught me a lot of important values is my fiancee now! The takeaway from the story: find yourself, love yourself and keep those close who get the best out of you!

#bodypositivity #acceptance #selflove