If you knew me before two years ago, you’d know someone completely different than you do if you would've met me in the last year or two. I used to criticize my appearance every chance I got. I couldn’t put on a new outfit without critiquing at least three different aspects of my body in it, and there was not a night I went out where there weren’t some tears first because I hated how I looked. Shopping for new clothes was a NIGHTMARE, and I usually ended up buying way larger clothes than I needed to so they would be baggy and not tight to my body--most of the clothes I owned before college don’t fit me anymore because they’re too large. I didn’t lose any weight, either, I just realized they never truly did fit me.

There was even about a month of my life in high school where I taped black construction paper over the mirror because I was so sick of looking at myself, at how ugly, how overweight, how imperfect I was. I over-analyzed everything I ate and worked out not because I liked to work out, but because I felt I had to...because gaining weight had been the worst thing I could imagine.

I’m not saying all of this to shock anyone. I haven’t ever had an eating disorder, which many women my age have dealt with. The behaviors I’m describing are shockingly, and sadly, quite normal behaviors that most--not just many, but MOST--of my female friends went through around that age as well.

This normalcy is why I think everyone needs to work on the way we view our own bodies. The way we act towards ourselves whether we love our bodies and cherish them, or criticize and hate them shows our friends, our family, and children how they should act towards their own bodies. You may not mean to, but when you dislike your body, you are sending the unconscious message to others that THEY should dislike their body. If something is wrong with yours, something must be wrong with theirs, and they should want to change it. This only further cements the message that the media tells us: that our bodies are inherently bad, and we should buy a million products to change our appearance.

The person I am today couldn’t be further from the girl I used to be. I’m actually obsessed with how I look. I stare at myself all the time. Like, every day when I wake up in the morning I go to the mirror and look at myself and think DAMN, I look good. Not because I think I’m so attractive, or more attractive than anyone else, I just know that my body is exactly how it should be, and I think it looks great because I look happy, I know I’m healthy, and I look 100% me, not like anyone else wants me to look. I love the way I have a bit of a belly. My stomach isn’t flat and it never will be, because at a healthy weight, that just isn’t how I naturally look, and I’m good with that. I have a pretty average sized butt. It’s never going to be as big as every girl I see posting theirs on Instagram, and that’s cool. Their butts are great, too, I just don’t need to look the same as them to be happy now. I’m obsessed with myself and my body, and I’m not apologizing for it. I think everyone should be obsessed with themselves because everyone looks exactly as they’re supposed to.

I’m done exercising to lose weight, although I do still exercise almost every day because I’m obsessed with it. But it’s great now because instead of doing the same high-calorie burning workout every day, I can do whatever form (cycling, running, swimming, yoga, lifting, pilates, etc) of exercise I want to that day to stay in shape. I still eat really healthy foods, but I do so because they taste good to me, and I know that what I put in my body is important and I love my body, so I want to take care of it. But when I want to eat half a box of girl scout cookies, I just do it. I eat when I’m hungry, and I stop when I’m full. I don’t spend an hour at the grocery store anymore, deciding which applesauce or box of pasta is going to be the least amount of calories. I just buy my food usually based on what’s cheapest, (to be honest that way makes a lot more sense).

I love my body for what it can do, not for what it looks like. I love my body because I have ears that listen to my friends and family when they speak, the chirping of birds outside, and some pretty awesome music. If my ears are pointy or stick out or have any “undesirable” trait, it doesn’t matter because ears aren’t given to us to look good, they have a purpose. I have hands that love and care for those around me. They give hugs, hold the hands of others, and help me perform daily tasks. My legs aren’t here to look good in a picture or entice men or make other women jealous. They’re here to help me get from place to place every day, here to help me run races I never thought I could, here to help me jump and run and be free.

I used to hate this picture of my dad and I finishing a 10k last June.

The moment I saw it, I despised it. You can see how pained my face is from running, and how sweaty I am. My legs look awkward, and I’m wearing a sports bra that was slightly too small, so my stomach is puffy and pinched. My dad loved the picture because it showed us both doing something we love to do together, so I sucked it up and ordered it for him for Father’s Day last year, and it’s framed in our house. I used to cringe every time I walked past it, but now I smile. If I quit being so critical, I can see so many great things about the picture.

That particular run was my first race after four ankle surgeries and not being able to consistently work out for two whole years, AND it was my first 10k! That’s something to be proud of, not how I looked while crossing the finish line, even though when I stop criticizing myself for no reason, I realize I really don't look so bad. Recently I ran another race and saw a picture of me at the end of it (the cover photo for this article), and although I don’t look perfect and posed in that one either, I love that picture because it shows me finishing a race I’m really proud of. My body helped me recover from serious injuries and four ankle surgeries because it loves me. My body literally spends every second of every day performing functions that keep me alive, and it’s about time I started showing it some love back.

The main reason I changed is that I just got so sick of hating my body. It was exhausting, really. I was just so done caring all the time. Instead of just going places, I had to go there stressed about what I looked like, stressed about if others thought I was fat, miserable because I thought I looked fat, and more. I had to sit up straight if I wore something showing my stomach because god forbid I sit down and have a stomach roll. It was exhausting to not be able to just exist and accept myself the way I was, but instead, keep trying to change myself for NO reason.

Interestingly enough, a huge part of the change started with two men commenting on my body. One guy had I slept with at the beginning of my sophomore year called me “kinda chubby” to some friends we had in common, and those friends told me what he said. Instead of crying about it, I laughed (okay, I cried a bit first). Weirdly enough, I hated my body for years on end, but the first time someone else insulted it, I realized how stupid it was. I know I’m not chubby (but I’d be just as rad as I am today if I was), and hearing someone else say it somehow hit home that I needed to stop all the criticism.

This self-love train came at a great time because last year I began to have problems with my thyroid. In a short explanation, a thyroid does many things, but one thing it controls is metabolism, and mine is whack. I lose a lot of weight quickly, gain it back, lose it, gain it back, over and over and have little control of it.

One of the times I had lost a lot of weight I was at a pool party, and a friend of a friend came up to me and told me he thinks I need to eat a burger. I thought that only happened to people in bad T.V. shows, but he actually said that. It was yet another reminder to me that people are going to judge my body no matter how thin or thick I am, so why not just love the way it looks? I’m so thankful my road to self-acceptance came at this time because I can’t imagine how I’d deal with my thyroid problems otherwise, honestly, with how much weight I lose and gain. Now I just love myself no matter what weight I’m at that month, and that’s the end of it.

It's tough, though. I was in my cousin's wedding last fall and she picked out these BEAUTIFUL bridesmaids dresses. I was so excited to wear the gorgeous dress and even more excited to be in the wedding. But when I tried it on, something happened. Between the time I measured myself/ordered the dress and the wedding date itself, I gained a bit of weight, so the dress was a bit tight on my stomach, and my stomach didn't look slim and flat as I imagined it would, but a bit round, and you could see my stomach outlined. I struggled for days with whether or not I should buy one of those stupid undergarments that most women wear that suck in your stomach and make it look smooth or just be me. I finally decided, thanks to body positivity, that I wasn't going to wear one. To hell with it, if you can see my stomach, it's because it's there. I exist. I don't want to disappear, I want to take up room. So I didn't wear it, and when I got there I saw that most of the other bridesmaids did wear one, and that was fine. I had a great day being there for my cousin and enjoying her wedding, and I looked great because I looked happy and content.

Here's a picture of my brother and I on the dance floor that I would have hated a couple years ago but I absolutely love now. I see a girl who isn't perfectly slim, and I see the same girl not caring whatsoever. She's too busy enjoying her time on the dance floor with her brother to worry about silly things like how she looks.

The switch to acceptance is no quick feat, and there will certainly be bad days, but you have to take self-love and acceptance step by step. There are days I absolutely hate my body and revert to thinking it’s disgusting and gross, but I continue on anyway, and try to have less bad days than good. Think about it this way: your entire life you’ve been told by the media that your body isn’t perfect. Take stretch marks or cellulite, for example. There are tons of shows where the characters complain about theirs. There are products lining the walls of your favorite stores, saying they’ll get rid of them for you if you only pay a ton of money to get rid of something that isn’t a problem in the first place. We photoshop them off of models, and we hide them from our family and friends. We hear, all our lives, our role models insult their own stretch marks and cellulite, so it’s going to take more than a few days to erase all of these messages we’ve internalized. I’ve only been around for 21 years, and the older you are, the tougher it’s going to be. But it’s so, so worth it. Things I used to hate about my body I now love, and I feel so much more confident.

I wear whatever I want 24/7 and it feels amazing. When I feel someone staring at me in public and I know they don’t like how I look in whatever I’m wearing (in their mind I’m too fat to be wearing the crop top I am, my butt is too big/small to be in those shorts, my boobs are too big/small to be in that shirt, my legs are too large to be wearing that size of jeans), I just shrug and feel sorry for them that they can’t appreciate everyone’s body around them. I love when thin girls wear crop tops, I love when thick girls wear crop tops, I love when straight up extremely overweight people wear crop tops, I love when men wear crop tops. I also love people who hate crop tops and never wear them, because we can all wear whatever we want.

The craziest thing and something that needs to be acknowledged in my opinion is that the body I'm in isn't even that far from what the media depicts as beautiful. I'm definitely larger than most models, significantly larger, but not considered large in society. I'm white, the same as most models, and the skin color that most people think looks better on women (which is BS!!! have you seen a single woman of color in your LIFE? They are killing it!). I was born as a woman and didn't do any transitioning to get here. So as long and hard as my body acceptance journey has felt, I do need to acknowledge that although this story is common among women like myself, many women have it much harder, and that privilege must be recognized.

What body positivity means to me is that I can be happy no matter what I look like, because I'm here to do more important things than just look good. I'm here to be a good daughter, sister, cousin, friend, employee, and student. I'm not here to look pretty or be thin, and it means I look just as good right now as I would if I lost weight, gained weight, or made any other changes to my appearance. It means I love the way everyone else looks, and I try every day to help others love themselves. It means I look the best when I am confident, whether that’s when I’m naked, partially clothed, or wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants. It means when I look at men I don’t judge them if they’re short, skinny or anything else society tells men they shouldn’t be because body dysmorphia is a human problem, not a gendered one. I don’t like people judging or commenting on my body, so I don’t participate in double standards and make fun of theirs. Loving myself means improving my life in so many different ways, and starting a new generation of people who have more important things to do than getting on a scale or counting calories every day.

Get out there and rock what you’ve got. You look great.