I’m going to come right out and say the thing I’ve never actually said before: I love my body. In all its imperfections, jiggles, and sensitivity – I love it.

Let me tell you, though, this has been a very long time coming. Like most, I’m obsessed with looking, being, and feeling my best, in all aspects of life.

I always have to have the best grades, the best friends, the best looks. With this overwhelming ache to be the best comes my irrational need to control everything. So, when something happens that’s out of my control, my natural reaction is to find something else I can control and control it even better.

This is how I became completely consumed with everything I eat, everything I wear, and how I look.

What started as an innocent photograph of Kate Moss as my screensaver turned into me doing everything in my power to look like her. I thought, everything sucks now but it won't once I look like her. Silly me, that’s not how that works.

I was totally and completely consumed with the diminishing numbers on the scale and the shrinking size of my blue jeans, that I was losing touch with reality and my health.

Though I was the smallest I’ve ever been, I was very unhappy and I was mean to my body. I starved it, I made it do things it didn’t want to do, and I made sure it knew how much I loathed it.

Let me tell you, it isn’t worth it – the constant Instagram stalking, photo editing, fad dieting thing; it's not worth it, especially if you take it to the extreme like I did.

What is worth it, though, is taking care of your body – whatever that may mean to you. If your body likes ice cream for dinner and cereal for breakfast, give it that. If your body would rather wade in a lake than run marathons, give it that.

Life is far too short and far too precious to be treating our bodies like shit, which is one of the greatest realizations I have come to.

I realized, there’s no point in hating my body anymore. When I hate my body, I’m too hungry, I’m too full, I’m too tired, I’m too guilty, I’m too blah, blah, blah.

By hating my body I’m wasting so much freaking time focusing on what I don’t like and how I want to look that I’m missing out on my life – the life that wants to sip lattes in front of the Eiffel Tower, eat potatoes in Ireland, and chug hot cocoa in Aspen.

It’s coming to the realizations that one, I’m the one who must live with my body, so I might as well like it and two, this is the only body I’m going to get. If I continue to loathe it, scold it, try to make it look a way it isn’t meant to look, I won’t have my body or my life for as long as I want to.

By obsessing over the bodies I see on social media, in magazines, and even around me, I’m missing out on enjoying the body that’s been so graciously given to me.

Instead of starving it, I feed it with foods that will nourish it, making it strong and ready to take on any workout I throw at it.

Instead of hurting it and tearing it down, I build it up, giving it the most muscular definition it's ever had.

Instead of telling myself I need to do this that and the other thing to look like someone else, I’m taking care of my body, finally enabling myself to look the way I’ve always dreamt of looking: strong and confident.

By loving my body, I’m constantly amazed by the things it can do. I’m able to run faster for longer. I can lift heavier. I can squat longer. I can flex my biceps and see sculpted muscles. I have more energy and you know what, I’m happy.

I’m happy with my strength, my confidence, and I’m happy I love my body.

And though it may seem like it may never happen, you will love your body too. You will love its flaws, imperfections, and qualities. You will love it more than you could ever love an Instagram model of fitness guru. You will love it because “You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful” – Amy Bloom.