My Journey To Body Love (yep, it’s full of secret confessions!)

I’m just going to come right out and say it; I think 99.9% of females have had a serious body image crisis at some time in their lives. When I think about all the amazing women I’ve met in my 32 years, including friends, family, colleagues and of course, countless clients, there are only really one, maybe two that I can think of who haven’t had a total body meltdown at one point or another… and maybe that’s just because they haven’t ‘fessed up to me yet!Today, in honour of a little initiative we’re supporting this month from our friends at Vie Active, I’ve decided to open up and show a little honesty, so here’s a timeline of my own body love-hate-love-accept story (it’s a little long, but everyone loves a good confession, right?).Here goes...

• As a young kid, I was really badly bullied at school (bashings, bruises, insults, the lot!)
• Then somewhere towards the end of Grade 6 (the second last year of primary school up in QLD), my Dad told me this, “babe, you need to become the sporty kid… nobody bullies the sporty kid”.
• My response was, “whaaatttt but I’ve NEVER been sporty!? You can’t just become the sporty kid, that takes actual talent!” to which Dad replied, “Nah! I’ll teach you over the holidays…”
• During that Christmas break, between Grades 6 & 7, my absolute legend of a Dad spent every single day training me. He’d wake me up at dawn to take me for a run, sneak out of work early to take me to little athletics, hired an expert to help me learn how to do long/high jump and throw a shot-put properly, then made sure we got in a proper, old-school calisthenics and sprint session every weekend. He even dragged me up the coast and made me run laps of the sand while he surfed – I couldn’t stop until he’d caught, “the wave of the day!” and then we’d head off for brunch and a laugh. He enrolled me in a local touch footy comp and I started playing for a team of awesome girls who made me feel loved and accepted.
• And BANG! Just like that, I went into my final year of primary school winning a bunch of races, enough to score me the title of Athletics Champion and a TROPHY! Holy-Moly! I was also part of a football team that was training and playing every week, winning titles and having a blast doing it. Here’s what that did for me…
• The bullying stopped. I felt truly part of something… a movement… a secret club… an entirely new world!! Here’s what else happened…
• Body love enveloped me like a warm summer wave. I LOVED that my body was strong, fast, capable. I adored that the more work I put into improving my endurance, speed and strength, the faster I moved up the sporting ranks. New levels of competition, State rank, driven and passionate friends who all pushed each other to go faster and get better.
• This new body was THE BOMB! I loved every muscle and never for a second did I think about what I actually looked like. It was all about what I could do and how fast I moved.
• I was lucky enough to stay in that body-love bubble all throughout high school. I didn’t understand why some girls refused to eat at lunchtime and others complained about how “fat” they were. I just wanted to do my training, compete and play. I also took up dancing, which indulged my creative side. It was heaven!
• Then all of a sudden, high school came to an abrupt end. I went to a university that was very academic and creative, but didn’t have a sporting bone in its body. Nobody “did” sport anymore. Everyone just wanted to look good, party hard and, well, be super skinny.
• All of a sudden people weren’t talking about sport at lunch time anymore, they were talking about the latest diets, the cutest guys, the best fashion houses and the hottest nightclubs. Once again, I didn’t fit in.
• Eventually all that image talk got to me. I looked at my muscled legs and broad shoulders and all I saw was that I wasn’t as stick-thin as other girls’. I started calling myself, “big”, “bulky”, “manly”, “ugly”, “wide”. In reality, I was none of these things. I was probably about a size 8!
• For awhile there, around 9-12 months, I had very disordered eating patterns and I really, very honestly disliked (ok ok, more like hated) myself. I didn’t want to go out, I was obsessed with weighing myself, I thought food was the enemy. I became very boring and grumpy, sick looking and horrible to be around.
• Then one day, entirely randomly, I stumbled across a casual hip-hop dance class. The instructors were passionate, full of energy, totally athletic, a little bit corny and all-round bloody GREAT!
• Suddenly, I was surrounded by athletic, dynamic people again. They were more concerned about how I moved than how I looked and they celebrated great choreography, not skinny legs.
• Within a few weeks, I was back to my old self – passionate about life, revelling in movement, excited about making my body stronger, not weaker and smaller. It was a real revelation for me, a wake up call.
• Since that time, I’ve always been very careful to focus on what my body can achieve and how lucky I am that it can do so many wonderful, active things. I’m equally as careful not to indulge in negative body talk with other women, who might take something I say the wrong way.
• When I moved into the corporate world, I did so with a plan to earn enough cash to someday start a business that helped other women understand what a gift their bodies were and how special it is to be able to move athletically and learn cool new stuff. To create a community of inspiring, strong women who celebrate each other for all the things they are, not all the things they are not.
• Now, every trainer that works at Bottoms Up! and also my second business, Agoga, is the kind of passionate and x-factor packed person that makes other people feel good about themselves. Each of them accept their bodies and are excited by athletic improvement, or living a fun and active lifestyle that makes them feel alive. They’re not perfect, but they’re perfectly wonderful, happy and driven people that show their appreciation for what others have achieved, not how they look. We all love training together, laughing together, sharing our wins and fails (we like to say FAIL stands for, “First Attempts In Learning”). We’re also surrounded by literally hundreds of great clients that we love to death.
• And guess what? Although I’m still an everyday woman, with everyday body (and wardrobe!) concerns, choosing to surround myself with such passion and fun and community means those old body worries haven’t haunted me for years, nor do I think they ever will again. Myself and my team are much more concerned with making sure we steer other women away from the self-loathing path and into the life-loving zone than we are with whether we have the flattest abs in the personal training world, and I’m proud of that.

OK, enough of my story already… the reason I’ve told you all this is to explain why I was SO flattered when my talented friend, Noa Ries, from activewear label, Vie Active, asked me to be part of her Love Your Body, Move Your Body month.The whole premise of this idea was to encourage women to exercise because they LOVE their bodies and feel good after a workout, as opposed to because they hate their body and are chasing change.Of course, change is a handy by-product of regular exercise, but the Vie Active team are reminding us that you should get moving because it feels good, makes you feel happy and alive, and helps you feel part of a community, rather than for more superficial reasons.We’ve run a few cool, public events this week for the Vie Active crew and as part of the campaign, Leash & I created today’s video workout, titled “GIRLS”.The video was shot and edited by one of the biggest body-love campaigners I know, talented actress and video producer Julia Hunt, from becomingjuliet.com (OK yes, she also happens to be my sister, but hey! She’s cool alright! Hehe).Have a peek at the video, rope in a girlfriend to try the workout with and if you need a little body love and haven’t tried Bottoms Up! yet, get involved… there are a whole crowd of lovely, inspiring BUFettes waiting to make you feel loved and special.Move your body because you love your body gals!!See you at training ;)Libs xx