I used to desperately want to be fat free. I’m not just saying that I wanted to eat only fat free items, I’m saying I wanted my body to be fat free. It’s what I saw in magazines and advertisements and I couldn’t understand why my body just wouldn’t change to be how I wanted it to be. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t get rid of of my body fat. For years I hated my boobs, I refused to accept my curves, and I couldn’t find a way to be comfortable in the skin I was in.
I realized something recently: I no longer want to be fat free. After ten years of thinking that I was “different” and not quite good enough, I am happy to have body fat, I am happy to be a woman. I am happy to be different and to no longer have goals defined by societal pressures of “beauty.”
Fat free is not for me. In retrospect, I can now see the beauty that I always had and just never knew. Don’t let your own insecurities allow you to lose sight of your worth the way I did; know that it is in your differences that your beauty shines. Allow yourself the freedom to find a healthy body weight and healthy body fat percentage and to be strong enough to say that “fat free” (or unrealistic and unhealthy body expectations) is not for you.