Tag: #selfcare

Love and my body

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Photo by Ebony at https://www.erboudoir.com/

This is an email I sent to Ebony (link above) after a photo shoot that exceeded all my expectations!

This is a story about a personal step out of my comfort zone. A photo shoot that was designed to have me look sexy. I had agreed to ‘implied nudity’. Something I was always going to do ‘when I got to my goal weight’. Then I saw Ebony’s add on a facebook page and decided it was time. Life is too short!

Hi Ebony,

I’ve been thinking ever since I saw the photos about how to explain to you how much they mean to me.

So I apologise for the long email in advance. I want to share the history so you understand a bit of how I feel.

I first remember being size conscious in my early teens. A family friend (a man in his early thirties at the time) made a comment about it.

Actually in primary school dad asked if FT on my art smock stood for ‘fat tummy’. I recall that so vividly. Fat was such a negative term to me.

I started my first diet at 16.

I dieted from then until about 4 years ago. I was either dieting or feeling guilty for not dieting. All the time. Every day. For years.

My weight yoyo’d and always ended up higher than it started.

For 30 years I fought my body. I felt like a failure. I hated my fat. I hated how I looked. 


I didn’t let it stop me from doing things, but I would be self-conscious a lot of the time.


Then I met the amazing Zoe who became my dietitian due to food intolerances. It was she who introduced me to healthy at every size (HAES).

Over the next 3 years I gradually started to accept my body. Accept its size and appreciate what it could do for me. Accept that I was not one of the 5% of people for whom diets worked. Accept that focusing on health and fitness was a much better option.


I stopped feeling as self conscious. I stopped wanting to diet. The scale shared a number that was more like a shoe size than a horror film.But I never expected to love my body.


Then your photos came through.


And I LOVED how my body looked. Even my belly as I arched my back in one of the photos I purchased. It looked sexy. I looked sexy.

I never thought I would like the photos of me that you took, I did it for the experience.  I was wrong. Looking through your proofs I was loving how my body looked for the first time I can ever remember! Even when I dieted myself into a size 8 I did not love my body!


What you did for me is something I will be forever grateful for. It is life changing.


Thank you is not enough, but I will say it again anyway.


Thank you.

~*~*~*~*~*~

I want to add that I expected to find one, maybe 2 photos that I didn’t hate.
I purchased 30, that I love! I could have purchased more!

Putting Yourself First

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Image by me (Fiona)
Story by me, based on an interview with Niki

Niki’s story had a real impact on me. It gave me a perspective I had not considered. And it changed my behaviour.

Niki’s story starts with her getting a beautiful new puppy recently. A German Shepherd called Lexi.

When Niki began socialising Lexi at a local park, she discovered many people were comfortable having their dogs off the lead, despite it not being a leash free area. But Niki was not.

When her daughter was about 7, she suffered a serious dog bite that required emergency surgery.  “And it was so intense that by the time I carried her from the car to emergency, they didn’t know if I needed help or she did because of the amount of blood loss. ‘Cause anything in the face is big, you know, and we didn’t realize at this stage that it had ripped her ear in half as well.”

Getting a new puppy, with her razor sharp teeth, triggered some fear. But it was going to the park with strange dogs running towards her that triggered post-traumatic stress.

But what made Niki really uncomfortable was having to ask strangers to change their behaviour to accommodate her needs.

“It is a really challenging thing to do because it’s going against what you normally believe about how you should behave or how you should act or things you should say. Because it’s about thinking about yourself. I needed to do this for me.”

Niki had to find the right way to tell her story as some people responded aggressively to her request.

“People just take it for granted that it’s OK to have their dogs off leads and one of the reasons that it is not is because accidents happen, and dogs do bite. And just because you’re comfortable and you know your dog, that’s great, and that’s fine in a leash free zone. But when it’s a park area with kids playing, and you let your dog run through, that’s really unfair to other people.”

Niki went on to talk about her reflections about her comfort zone as a result of having to ask others to please leash their dogs. “And I think the comfort zone thing is about understanding. The radius of comfort around you when you’re comfortable is quite big, but when there’s trauma or pain it is very tight. It took almost everything I had within me to articulate: I can’t cope, this is hurting. This is feeling really traumatic and then it made me think how many other times have I adjusted my radius or my comfort zone just to accommodate other people?”

The reason Niki was able to push through this time was because her daughter was also distressed by the situation, “because this meant so much to my daughter, I thought what a perfect thing to kick start for me that I need to start realizing I shouldn’t be adjusting my radius. I just need to find the right language to say this is at the end of my radius of comfort.”

I am personally really pleased to say that 9 out of 10 people responded well to Niki’s request to leash their dogs. Though I do wish it was 10!

One lesson Niki took from this experience is that it is ok to put yourself first! This was a huge lesson for her and has carried into all aspects of her life. “I was able to bring it into a work context. Someone made me feel uncomfortable in a work meeting and I was able to call it out. ‘I don’t know if you realize your passion is spilling across as aggression, so can you just clarify for me because it hit my radius [of comfort]?’”. The response she received was thanks – the person involved had not intended their passion to come across that way.

Niki has a special message to finish with today – she asked me to let all the other people who have shared their stories via this blog know that they touch people’s lives. It was reading all the stories that empowered Niki to speak up. And motivated her to share this story with you.

Thank you Niki!