As a little kid, I was always pretty chubby, but I didn’t necessarily mind it until I was in middle school. During that time everyone was shopping at Brandy Melville, and so one size only was the status quo. I always disliked that since I knew everyone’s body was different, but I followed the bandwagon and wanted to wear the shorts everyone had from Brandy. This led me to work out and just trying to become a smaller size. Throughout middle school and high school, I was always stressed about being skinny and looking a certain way. I guess it wasn’t until the quarantine lockdown that I started to become much more comfortable with myself and didn’t necessarily need the feel to fit a certain image that people had of me, and these are some of the reasons why.
I came to accept that we look different depending on our angles
Initially, I would stress about how I looked skinny standing up but not sitting down, I would try to make myself skinnier while sitting down or just sit in a way that made me look thinner even if I was in an uncomfortable position. By learning that my body looked different depending on how I was sitting/my angle then I stopped worrying as much and began to focus more on if I was comfortable or not.
My weight has nothing to do with how I look
Whenever I would weigh myself, I would stress myself out and believe that weighing over a certain number made me fat or unattractive. I came to realize that a number is simply just a number and it doesn’t define how I look nor does it make me less attractive. I see the number now more as something that’s just used more for taking care of one’s health, but it doesn’t define how one looks.
Being more body positive/getting rid of body dysmorphia
By this, I mean that I wasn’t too focused on having the perfect body. I was okay with having stretch marks, or acne, etc. I understand that it is just part of the body to have different marks or imperfections and I was okay with it now. This was what had me stressing about my body image most of the time. I would look in the mirror and even though there wasn’t anything wrong, I would stare at myself for a long enough time to just create imperfections for myself. I would look from one angle and another until I could find what wasn’t perfect so I could fix it. At first, I had always just seen celebrities with perfect bodies and skin, but after learning that many of them get plastic surgery and still use filters, I came to understand that no one has a perfect body and I should be happy with mine.
So these are some of the ways that I manage to become more body positive in the last year and be okay with what I look like rather than trying to change. Hope some of these work for you and that you too can be more body positive!