Fighting Negative Body Image

Happy Tuesday, everyone!!

I hope you are all doing amazing and your week is off to a great start. I had a fun weekend in Scottsdale with a couple of my girl friends from college, it was so nice spending time with them. After work today, I went to my first Orange Theory class and absolutely LOVED it. I can’t wait to start my fitness journey with Orange Theory and hopefully see amazing results. Today I am getting very personal and sharing my struggle with body image and how I am constantly combating the body image stigma. I hope you all enjoy!

I have had body image issues since middle school when I hit puberty. I was in that awkward, chubby stage and felt so uncomfortable in my own body. All throughout middle school, I had body image issues and vividly remember getting made fun of for my body and getting called fat. I remember when graphic tees were in style in eighth grade so I wore a Candy Land shirt to school one day and someone said “did you eat the game before putting on the shirt?” I went home and cried because I was so hurt and ashamed of myself, but the saddest part is, I wasn’t even overweight, I was just a little chubby from puberty and my body was changing quickly.

Fast forward to high school when I began playing competitive soccer and became obsessed with working out and weighing myself 24/7. I lost around 30 pounds by practically starving myself and working out for a couple of hours a day, every single day. After playing competitively in high school, I got a soccer scholarship and played in college. My unhealthy habits carried over to college and I soon found myself unhappy and burnt out with the lifestyle I was living. After battling injuries and constantly being sick from having a weak immune system, I finally quit my soccer career and moved closer to home to finish school, which is when I got my health back.

I’m sharing this long, emotional story with all of you because my lack of positive body image, always feeling the need be “skinny” and impress others is actually what led me to blogging. I started blogging about lifestyle and fashion and met so many empowering women along the way, which is the most uplifting feeling in the world. Blogging has made me feel so comfortable in my own skin and has made me love myself simply by surrounding myself with people who support me and appreciate me for who I am and how I look. It is so hard to not consume ourselves with the media around us and tell ourselves we need to be a size zero or we aren’t pretty. I love being able to show my real self and show how I dress my body type so that other women with the similar body types can feel empowered to shop and feel confident as well.

To wrap everything up, I thought I would share 3 tips that have really helped me fight the body image stigma:

1. Know you are good enough, no matter how much you weigh and the number on the scale is JUST A NUMBER, it does not define you.
2. Surround yourself with people who lift you up everyday and push you to be the best version of YOU. Life is too short to surround yourself with negative people or people who constantly put you down.
3. Wake up and give yourself three compliments while you are looking in the mirror and getting ready for the day. We are so quick to put ourselves down and say negative things about ourselves. Give yourself compliments and tell yourself you are beautiful, just the way you are

Xoxo,

Jonica