Body Image - Postpartum Struggles

So we’re starting right off the bat with this blog with something a little heavy (okay well pun not intended lol).

It’s hard for me to admit that I’m at the heaviest I’ve ever been aside from pregnancy of course. I look at myself and want to cry and it sucks. I get told I should go easy on myself, that I just had a baby, but it’s hard when for nearly 2 years now I have felt like my body isn’t my own. This stretched out soft belly, it’s hard to accept this is what I look like.

I’ve always struggled with body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and just general self-esteem issues. I would love to sit here and tell you that you should love your body but it’s hard to do that when you don’t love your own. It’s funny when I look back at old pictures and remember absolutely feeling disgusting and fat at the time and now wishing I looked like that again. But here’s the thing I treated my body horribly in my teens and early 20s. I would starve myself, purge, self-harm, take substances that made me not hungry, I’d obsess over workouts. I was at my lowest weight and yet I was still never happy. I’d tell myself, “I’ll love myself when I hit this certain number on the scale or when I dropped to this exact size by whatever random date” and when I didn’t hit those goals, I’d be so disappointed in myself and then I’d binge. I was trapped in this negative feedback cycle for years and still in a lot of ways still trapped in this toxic way of thinking. It’s hard to love yourself. But I think I’ve finally reached a point where I understand that you need to love yourself as you are because you could be the tiniest little thing and still hate your body. Like the photo on this post: this was taken in May and I never posted it anywhere because I hated my arms and thought my boobs looked saggy, now I look back and think damn I looked pretty good!

I’m tired of not loving my current self. It’s not fair to myself, and most importantly it’s not fair to Aria. I don’t want her to ever feel like how I feel. She’s the most perfect sweetest little girl and I would be devastated if she did some of the things I did out of self-loathing. So yes, I’m going on this journey for me but also for her.

Here’s some things I’m going to try to do to not only improve my mental body image but also my physical.

· Daily gratitude on what my body does for me

· Daily gratitude on a feature I like about myself

· Intuitive eating – asking myself am I hungry or bored, not feeling pressured to finish a meal when I’m full, eating without scrolling on my phone so I’m fully focused on the meal

· Generally, stick to my meal plans for the week

· Get my body moving 3x a week to start and move up to 4 then 5 when I feel stronger

· Get back into therapy

I’ll be documenting my workout routines, share some of the affirmations, and lots of good nourishing food posts. Yes, I do have a certain physique goal in mind but that I won’t be sharing because it doesn’t really matter. This is a journey of self-love and I think we can all stand to love ourselves a bit more.

Xoxo Meish