Do you love your body is it easy to?

Do you love your body? I wonder how many people would answer yes?. Most of us have bits we don’t like, bits we do, bits we hate. Body image is such a tricky issue and we have so many elements tied into it – insecurities, confidence issues including stuff that goes right back to our teenage years and maybe even childhood. Memories from being inside the H&M changing room thinking “Why am I doing this to myself?”

For me personally, having battled with my weight since my teens I always knew that slim was the ideal. Not sure how I knew this and where it came from. Was it from my favorite 80’s TV shows Neighbours or Beverley Hills 90210?! Or was it hearing all the mum of my friends talking about the latest diets?

I remember always comparing my body to other girls and wishing i had a smaller tummy, Fast forward to my 20’s and i was a size 16 and found food a complete comfort, that and lashings of white wine to wash it down with. I was always on a diet and hated every aspect of my body. I took diet pills, drank diet tea or poo tea as i called it as all it did was make you poo and tasted awful! And spent most mornings stood on the scales and getting depressed that I hadn’t lost one pound overnight, despite eating salad ALL WEEK!

It’s only in my late 30s that I’ve had a bit of a “oh well” attitude towards my body. I’m a mum of three children and this is as good as it gets. Running a business and running my children all across the place leaves me no time for the gym (or so i tell myself). Its so ingrained in most of us to look in the mirror and be critical about what we see. That little voice popping up in our head picking flaws about our tummys and boobs. It’s no real surprise growing up in the 80s/90s with all the continuous magazine article on the latest fad diets those things were pretty extreme! These days with running Bloom Baby Classes Stockport and having the girls I’m using up a lot of energy and setting up and packing away of the classes gives me my daily dose of exercise.

Between you and me, I still don’t love my body, I still don’t feel confident about my lumps, i try to cover up at the beach on our holidays. Though I shouldn’t I should be a positive role model to my 3 girls. It’s easy to scream “Love your body!” but it’s another thing actually doing it. What i personally think would help me a little bit more is a change in how women are represented in the media. We are constantly bombarded with imagery of awfully looking underweight women, and this is what needs to stop.

This is where blogging comes in, more and more people are letting us into their lives, average people, average or not average sizes being themselves and letting us into their lives. This is great!! We are no longer being restricted to what the mainstream media want us to see.

So come on ladies, remove that awful filter off your profile pic we all know you weren’t born with animal ears and stop taking profile pics from high up in the air. Show us you are normal like the rest of us and maybe one day we might all become more accepting of ourselves.

How do you feel about your body and what advice would you offer?

Victoria Jennings - Owner Founder of Bloom Baby Classes, Multi Sensory Baby Development classes in Stockport, Cheshire, Manchester, Tameside, Hyde and High Peak.