Ellie

'For as long as I can remember I’ve always loved food. I was never a particularly picky eater and always had a big appetite. Even today I spend most of my time planning what I can have for my next meal. I grew up in an active family and was a very active child myself, so it never mattered that I ate what I wanted when I wanted. I was probably the healthiest I’ve ever been when I was eight years old, I had a huge appetite but then I spent the next three hours running it all off. Most importantly however, I never thought about it. As a child you rarely do. Then when I was around ten or eleven years old I went through puberty. I was one of the first in my class to do so. Suddenly I was filling out and towering over the other girls. It felt like the worst thing in the world. I remember several different adults telling me how lucky I was; how tall I was going to end up being. This has ended up being very ironic as I never really grew again and am still only 5’2 today. When I got to secondary school I lost my desire to play sport as suddenly it wasn’t ‘cool’ anymore. We would spend countless hours trying to avoid P.E lessons and breaking into a seat seemed like a nightmare. So, while I gave up a lot of what made me so active, this didn’t curb my love for food. My metabolism slowed down as I matured and as a result I put on weight. When I look back at photos of me now between the ages of 12 and 15 I really didn’t put on that much weight. However, by the time I was 14 or 15 and it became clear I was actually going to be shortest in my class, I felt frumpy, podgy and unhealthy.

I made the decision there and then that I was never going to be beautiful. I spent my GCSE years firmly believing this and it undoubtedly damaged my self-confidence. When I was 15 years old and studying to take my GCSE I went through an experience that taught me just how short life is. And I decided that if I wasn’t happy with the way that I looked then I needed to change it. I went back into the sixth form and threw myself into the gym. Suddenly I was exercising regularly and I watched the weight slip off, I loved it. By the time I was 18 I was living in New Zealand on my gap year working a job that was the furthest thing from demanding. I entered a half marathon which gave me more and more motivation to work out. Before I knew it I was exercising five or six times a week and running 20+ km a week.

Exercising is definitely a good thing and it is something that I definitely still prioritise today. However, when I was travelling and training for my half marathon I was exercising for the wrong reasons. I was pushing myself because I wanted to look a certain way and because I wanted to keep shredding those invisible pounds that no one could see but me. It was only after several people commented on how small I was looking when I came home from New Zealand that it hit me. I never wanted to be that girl whose number one priority was her appearance. It took a long time but now I always try to focus on what is really important in regards to body image, the way that you feel and not the way that you look. I still try to exercise regularly and eat healthy, but I do it because the love the way it makes me feel.

That is not to say that I don’t have my insecurities, because I think everyone does, but I do try to channel them into something more positive. I know that in the future I will want people to remember someone who was kind, thoughtful and generous, not someone who had the perfect six-pack. If I could go back to that not-so-podgy 14-year old, I would tell her that there are more important things in life than what you look like and that she should stop spending so much time looking in the mirror and more time enjoying the present.'