I was recently honored to be a guest blogger on Happiness Is Within, a blog centered around finding peace with yourself and your body. Dana, the site’s author, features a special section called Love Your Body where she asks guests to contribute their own stories. She emailed me a couple weeks ago asking me to share mine, so I decided to make my debut post on my personal past struggles with body image. Here is the link to my article on her site, but I will go ahead and paste it below.

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The Struggle
Body image is an issue that I feel passionately about. This may be because I have had my own share of struggles with my body. All my life, I have been very thin. Everyone in my immediate family is naturally thin, but I have always been the thinnest out of them. Ever since I can remember, I have heard comments from people about my weight. I knew I was pretty skinny but as a young child, it didn’t bother me much because I figured I would fill out more as a teenager and it wouldn’t be an issue. Well, I was wrong. It really started having an impact on me around age 14. This is when all the other girls in my grade had fully developed. They grew taller and had breasts and hips. I was so much smaller than them in every aspect. But it was my thinness that I was the most bothered by, and people didn’t let me forget how thin I really was. I was called every skinny name in the book. Toothpick. Puny. Stick figure. Olive Oil. That I looked like 10 year old prepubsecent boy, and so on. The names didn’t hurt me as much as the looks of disgust I received accompanied by questions like, “Omg! Do you eat?” and the rumors that flew around that I had an eating disorder.

The more comments that were thrown at me, the worse I felt about myself. I evaluated myself in the mirror and saw what they were all talking about. I was pretty bony and I hated what I saw, but I didn’t understand it because I was eating just as much as everyone else. In fact, I had quite a sweet tooth and I know I took in more calories than most people my age. So why did I look to everyone like I starved myself? It didn’t take long for me to become completely consumed by this. I felt so ugly. I would have given anything to just gain 10 pounds.

After I had let the comments of others go to my head, I started to throw on extra layers of clothes and anything baggy to hide how skinny I was. Wearing jackets and sweaters made it look like there was little more more weight on me. During this time, I tried to eat as much as I could, thinking I could gain some weight. But it was harder than I had expected. My metabolism would just not let me keep weight on and that frustrated me so much.

Taking Back Control
Later I came to a realization. Why do I need to try to change my body? I was perfectly healthy the way I was. Wasn’t that the most important thing? Yes. I knew it was. Then I suddenly remembered the positive comments from people that I had ignored before. I realized that this was the way my body was designed to be. Instead of denying it, I should be embracing it. I also came to notice how I didn’t feel bad about my body until I started hearing the negative comments. I was allowing their words to get inside my head, and I knew it was up to me and me only to block that out and regain the confidence I once had. Little by little, I did just that. It took a little time and lots of inner searching, but I pulled through. I started mentally listing things that I liked about my body and the way I looked. There were a lot of things I could name once I got all the negativity out of my mind. Before long, I could look in the mirror and love what I saw. I could go in public wearing a bikini and feel comfortable, not worrying about the thoughts of others. Let me tell you, that is a wonderful feeling.

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Feel free to leave your comments on either her site on right here. Also, I will be doing more guest posts there on this issue where I will share more stories and offer advice in the near future, so be looking out!