Yesterday I read an article about positive body image and making friends with the mirror on the Oprah website by Author Amy Bloom -- and it got me thinking.
Because it is now one year since I began to try and change the way I felt about myself and my body.
I've had a lifetime of dieting and exercising -- from the age of 12 when I first wrote "I will be thin" over and over in my diary -- to 24 years later and me on stage in a body building competition with the body I had been striving for all those years.
It was during the days after the competition that I began to realize that I had been searching all those years for happiness in the wrong place, and my world began to crumble around me. Acknowledging that my behavior around food, that my obsession and hatred for my body had stopped me from really living my life, I began to struggle with chronic anxiety, couldn't stand to look in the mirror and didn't want to leave my house.
One year later and things couldn't be more different. I am in a place I never believed existed, where food isn't an issue, where I don't look at myself every day and see only the bits that repulse me, where my mind is free from an almost constant battle and argument about what to eat or not eat.
This is a place I am sure many people find it hard to believe exists. What percentage of time each day do most women spend thinking about food or their bodies?
Oprah Winfrey (someone who has inspired me since my childhood days of watching her show) now aged 62 and who shares frequently on Super Soul Sunday the joy that comes from accessing your true self, has had a public and up and down struggle with her weight and body image most recently signing with Weight Watchers.
If you asked me six months ago what message I'd want to share with the millions of children, teens and adults struggling with their weight, food and body image I would have said "positive body image, we need to help people love their bodies"
Now my opinion and answer has changed.
Yes you can learn to accept, even love your body, but from my experience even that doesn't lead to true joy. What happens if the body you have learnt to love and accept changes again through ill health or age. Do you still retain the positive image you had or do you have to rebuild it for the new body you have now?
During my transformational year I discovered that to access the true joy within me and to live a life free of obsessing about my body I'd have to learn to see all that was truly beautiful about me was within, and all that is truly beautiful has no reflection.
In an ideal world I would love for everyone to feel how I do now, for no one to feel the need to diet and change their bodies. But perhaps more realistically I would love if Oprah and Weight Watchers who have shared a desire to create a more holistic approach to dieting would consider supporting people in feeding their true selves too. With not only points for food but for gratitude, kindness, self-care and generosity each day because these are the things that will guarantee a positive effect and a lasting joy in the way a scales or measuring tape can.
You are so much more than your body and everything amazing and beautiful about you exists already inside
If you would like to find out more about how Hannah Lilly transformed her life you can read her story in the recently published bestselling book -20 beautiful Women Volume 3
http://20beautifulwomen.com/hannah-lilly/