Body Image & Confidence : My Experience

Hey There! 

Now today's post is something rather different for my blog and to be quite honest with you all it has taken me a while to actually sit down and put my thoughts into writing as it is such a personal and sensitive topic for myself. I Really want to bring much more of a realness to my blog and talk about things that have effected myself and I'm sure many others and to hopefully to start a wider conversation regarding different topics and issues. 

Today I wanted to talk about 'Body Image', now those words can have very different meanings and connotations for many different people, The National Eating Disorder Collaboration describe Body Image to be 

'The perception that a person has of their physical self and the thoughts and feelings that result from that perception.'

The subject of Body Image has really taken over a lot of 2017 for myself as I decided to based my university dissertation around the impact that negative Body Image can have on a individual. I defiantly wouldn't say that I am at all an expert in this field but I can share my personal experiences with you all and discuss what I have discovered during my research. I am hoping to turn this into a bit of a series of blogpost as I honestly think I could sit here all day and write and write (basically what I did for majority of 3rd year!). So for this post I thought for this post I would let you know a little bit more about myself and my experience with Body Image. 

So just a little introduction to myself in case you haven't read any of my previous blogpost's, I am currently 21 and have recently graduated from university where I studied Dance Practices. I have been dancing from the early age of 3 and it has always be a massive part of my life and is the thing that I find the most pleasure in doing. Being a dancer can unfortunately sometimes can have some negative connotations especially when it comes to body expectations and stereotypes. For me growing up the perfect dancer was portrayed to be beautiful, tall and thin and I know I'm not the only one who felt that in order to fit into the industry we had fit into those 'cardboard cutouts' that society had created for us. Of course these stereotypes aren't just relatable to dancers, females in general in our generation feel like they have to conform to look a certain way and fill others expectations. 

Growing up I can't really member ever really paying much attention to how I looked and I didn't ever really wear much makeup until my late teens, for my I started to become more aware of my body form around the age of 16. This is probably the same for a lot of young girls, as we start to become a lot more aware of how we look, our bodies are changing and we may want to start impressing a  certain boy or girl, this is of course mixed in with a wide range of new emotions and feelings which can add to our stress and anxiety levels (whole other topic!). I was always a very active teenagers as I was constantly either dancing or taking part in whatever sport I could, so looking back my body was in pretty good shape even though I may have not thought that at the time. I remember listening to my friends talking in school about different diets that they were trying and personally It was something that I had never really been interested in as I always tried to eat pretty healthily anyways, but listening to other people made me more aware of food and what I was eating. This then lead on to me going through stages of not really eating much at all for the amount of physical exercise that I was doing. I have to say I never believe that I had any sort of 'eating disorder' although throughout my late teens and early 20's I felt as though at point my eating habits did come rather disordered.

Moving onto when I started university, being surrounded by so many wonderful dancers made me realised that the stereotypes really didn't exist, everyone on my course was all different shapes and sizes yet that did not change their passion and ability to move across that floor any less gracefully. 

Although I have to say my time at university was probably when my feelings of negative body image really took a toll on my mental and physical self. I would probably put a lot of this down to the stress of university and personal issues (broken hearts and all that good stuff ;) and a injury that I had during my time at university. 

Very early in my training at university I injured my back which results in me not being able to take part in classes for a periods of time during the 3 years that I was in university. This had a real impact in my confidence as I had to watch everyone else progressing whilst I was taking steps backwards, when I was able to dance I feel as though I was holding back with fear that I would injure myself again (which often did happen).Whenever I wasn't dancing I really wasn't happy, I felt like I would start gaining weight because I wasn't doing my usual amount of exercise, that mixed in with the heavy workload amounted to me subconsciously skipping meals and I saw a definite change in my confidence and anxiety levels. I would be dancing all day burning calories that I wasn't consuming then working all weekend, this can very quickly turn into a vicious circle. I am one of those people who really doesn't like to talk about how I am feeling as I know there is always someone else that Is facing a tougher battle of their own, so I kept quite about how I was feeling. Luckily I have some wonderful friends who really did help me during those times, especially my lovely friend Darren who used to cook me dinner to make sure I was eating something. 

Skipping forward to now, I have to say I believe through researching the topic of Body Image in depth I know have a greater understand of how to control my feelings and how to implement positive change. I mean I still have periods were I can't stand my legs or my big bum but other days I embrace them, I think for me its think strategically and find a healthier way to achieve my goals , 'Ok, I don't like my stomach, what can I do about it? maybe I could create a workout routine with a meal plan to match'. I do have to say that I do sometimes slip back into my old ways of sometimes 'going off' food and not making the smartest choices but its about my realising my mistakes and working with them. 

I understand that you may look at me and be thinking 'what is she complaining about? I would love to have her body!', well I'm sure the girl who I think looks 'perfect' has the same insecurities, body image is something perception of themselves and what others think doesn't always play a part. So remember everyone's idea of 'perfection' is different but really perfection doesn't exist and we should all embrace who we are and remind other to love themselves, and yes you may want to lose weight or even gain some weight but don't do it because you want to impress someone or look like that girl with all the likes on Instagram, do it for the only person who is important, YOU!. 

It seems crazy to me reading this over, like I'm actually telling people about this! I know that there is a lot of people out there girls and boys that have had much worse experiences with body image than myself but your journey is just that 'YOUR'S'. I really hope me talking about this can help you or someone you know in any little way, please if you know someone who may find these post that I'm making useful please send them the link and Id love to have a chat with everyone in the comments!. 

Here are some links that you may want to visit if you feel you need further support <3 

Younge Minds 

Be Real Campaign 

The Mix 

Clinical Partners 

Thankyou so much for reading this post

hopefully it will be the first of many similar. 

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Lots Of Love 

Holly 

Xx

“To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.” 
― Simone de Beauvoir

Images taken by MRH Productions