Warning: The content below may be considered triggering to some.
Megan Jayne Crabbe was diagnosed with anorexia when she was just 14 years old. Now, nine years later, she has dedicated herself to promoting body positivity.
“It took me 2 years to claw my way out of anorexia,” the 23-year-old body-positive blogger wrote in an October 2015 post on her website Bodyposipanda. “[Two] years, one institutionalization, one hospitalization, and countless tears from the family members’ hearts I’d broken along the way. I had chased the holy grail of thin with everything I had, traded in every part of me to end up 65 lbs., barely alive, still worried that people would see my stomach fold as I sat in my hospital bed.”
After five years of battling anorexia, Crabbe became a body-positive advocate who uses honest images of herself, posted on her Instagram page and her personal website, to spread body love. Crabbe’s most recent post on Instagram is a side-by-side photo. On one side is a photo of Crabbe two and a half years ago, while she was in the throes of her eating disorder. On the other, you see her as she looks like today.
It’s a powerful “before and after” photo that reminds us what a body-positive transformation truly is.
“On the left is me 2 1/2 years ago, just before I found body positivity, and on the right is me today. You’ll probably notice the most obvious thing I’ve gained between these two pictures: weight,” Crabbe wrote underneath the image. “But there are so many other things I’ve gained as well. I’ve gained mental freedom. I’ve gained self love.”
In only a day, the photo has received more than 75,000 likes and 3,600 comments.
“I know the world wants you to believe that the less you weigh the happier you’ll be. I know I’m supposed to feel ashamed of this transformation,” Crabbe continued. “I’m supposed to vow to lose the weight, I’m supposed to spend my life chasing the body on the left and buying into the idea that I’ll be more valuable once I get there. But I’m not going to do that.”
Crabbe ended her post by asking people to leave behind the search for the “perfect” body: “It’s time we took a stand and refused to keep hurting ourselves in the pursuit of a ‘perfect’ body that doesn’t even exist,” she wrote. “It’s time for us to [realize] that we’re already good enough. It’s time for us to take our power back.”
Head over to Crabbe’s Instagram to see more of her powerful body love posts.
Need help? Call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.
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