The Secret to ❤️ Body Love ❤️

The Secret to ️ Body Love
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It all starts with loving yourself as you are. Not as you could have been, or would be, or should be. Just as you are, today, in the present.

Photo by Chris Carroll Photography, HMU Lauren O'Leary
Photo by Chris Carroll Photography, HMU Lauren O'Leary
SOURCE: Instagram, @melparrishplus

For most of my life, I bought into the idea that I was not enough because of my size. I was constantly engaged in efforts to change myself so that I could more closely resemble what I considered to be the archetype for body perfection.

“If I can get a ‘perfect’ body,” I believed, “then I will be enough.”

Enough for the love of my life, enough for an amazing job, enough for the perfect living situation, enough for the life of my dreams.

Two nights before my wedding I was lying in the bathtub, crying because I hadn’t attained body perfection. I didn’t feel like I was “enough” for the life that was already unfolding around me.

“I am bad, I am wrong, I don’t deserve the love of a great man, I don’t deserve a spectacular wedding day,” I was saying to myself.

Then it clicked.

“You have the love of a great man, and you are going to have a spectacular wedding day, whether you feel like you deserve those things or not,” said a voice somewhere inside of me. “At what point are you going to get over feeling like you aren’t enough and start enjoying your life?” the voice challenged me.

I chose, in a single moment, to change that. I made the choice to embrace my body exactly as it is. I have had to recommit to that choice many times since then. But from that moment on, my life changed in the most amazing and delightful ways.

Nowadays, I don’t worry about changing my body. My body is not the problem:the way that I felt about it for most of my life was. So I work on how I feel about my body, and practice amazing self-care, instead of trying to attain some ridiculous standard of body perfection.

My bathtub moment was the moment that I decided to start loving myself exactly as I am. Since then, the life of my dreams has become my reality in every way.

It all starts with loving yourself as you are. Start today!

Check out the #healthyatanysize community to find support and connect with other women who are working on this, too!

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