Why I love my body

You’ve probably been told time and time again to love yourself, to love your body, especially if you’re a young female. But you’ve probably also been through a few experiences that have made you hate yourself and your body. Whether it’s not fitting in to old jeans, catching a bad angle of yourself in a mirror or being told you have a “healthy appetite”, we all go through times of lower self confidence.

Unfortunately some struggle more with low self confidence and can feel extremely sensitive to these moments and comments.

I was one of those people and I ended up with an eating disorder at age 20. I’m now happily on the other side of that horrible hill, and can look back at it knowing how much I’ve learnt. One thing it taught me was that the human body is amazing.

You can do amazing things with your body. With hard work and commitment you can control your body, make it lose fat, gain fat, gain muscle, change shape, become more flexible. You can push it to its limits and run marathons, climb mountains, cycle from London to Brighton, swim the Channel. You can create new life! You can do an unlimited amount of incredible things with your body.

But after recovering from anorexia I truly appreciate the things my body did for me. When I was at my lowest weight, my body went through more changes than just reducing in size. My heart rate slowed down dramatically, at one point to as slow as 28 beats per minute, resulting in me staying in hospital for a night.  I found it difficult to concentrate for a long time on tasks, I was always thirsty, I slept a lot more, I had tiny little hairs all over my body.

All of these were responses to me not feeding myself and being a dangerously low weight. My body was fighting for me because I wouldn’t fight for myself. My body was saving as much energy as possible, trying to stay hydrated, trying to keep warm. My doctor described it as a state of hibernation. Even when I’d almost completely given up on myself my body kept me alive.

I know that unfortunately this isn’t the case for everyone, and sometimes the battle goes on too long and the body loses. I’m so thankful that the support I received meant that I dragged myself out of the hibernation and I’m even more thankful to my body for keeping me going while I was unwell.

So I love my body. Not just because I’m damn fine. And not just because I can use it to dance and run and swim. But because it saved my life.