Most women suffer from negative body image. From the time we are young, we are conditioned to think that the only beauty is one that is thin. Growing up, we had Barbie dolls with perfectly upright breasts and a flat stomach. No wonder so many of us, feel ashamed about our bodies.
Body Shaming
While I was in Steamboat, I walked into a store called Overland. As I was trying on shearling coats, I asked the woman behind the counter, why there were so many smalls and barely any large coats. She looked me over and said, “We typically get very fit people here in Steamboat.” And with that, I started to feel ashamed of the way I look.
I gained weight due to the COVID lockdown and have been having a hard time losing it. I’ve been on almost every diet, been to nutritionists, diet doctors, and the like to find that nothing is working. And yet, I felt ashamed.
A Body to Love Part 1
That’s why when I was reading, Angelina Caruso, author of A Body to Love — How to Cultivate Community, Body Positivity, and Self-Love in the Age of Social Media, it resonated with me.
Angelina is a young woman who faced a long battle with Anorexia. It got to the point where she was hospitalized twice during High School to try to cure her illness.
She takes the reader on her journey from facing that she had a problem to recovery. Throughout the book, she talks with the reader about overcoming some of the obstacles that they may face.
A Body to Love is Angela’s journey through her deepest dives and talks about how social media and building the right community helped her to overcome and recover from the illness.
A Body to Love Part 2
Angelina started an Instagram account but at first, she stayed anonymous. She was seeking motivation from people in the fitness area and also she started following others on their road to recovery.
In A Body to Love, she goes into detail about how you can start your community, from starting a page to using hashtags and connecting with the community.
Today, Angelina is an influencer with more than 160K followers. She’s only following 260 people but her average “likes” are more than 1000 on every post. In the book, she tries to share her secrets on how you can use social to help in your recovery.
It was an interesting read, well-written, and worthwhile for anyone going through a negative relationship with food. You can pick it up here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1642506850/.
