New Year Body Confidence

Jacket - River Island, Bodycon dress Blue Vanilla

Body confidence is something that I have always struggled with and every New Year I keep telling myself that this is the year that I will eventually grow to love my body and stop worrying, but it never quite happens. I'm blessed to be surrounded by lots of glamorous, beautiful people both in my private and professional life and sometimes that comes with quite a lot of pressure to look good. Despite how much I diet and keep fit, I never quite feel good enough. 

Approximately four years ago I made a New Year resolution that unknowingly to me would change my life. Having noticed how much weight I was gaining and how much it was affecting my confidence, I decided to go on the biggest diet of my life. I went from a large size 18 to a size 8 in just over a year and also appeared in Reveal magazine as a result for slimming down. For awhile I felt like I was on cloud nine loving every moment of new slim new figure, but shortly after I hit rock bottom and became obsessed with monitoring exactly how much I weighed and everything I ate - in fact I was borderline on having an eating disorder and if I hadn't fallen in love my husband who taught me to seize the day and stop worrying about calories, i'd still be stuck in the same old rut counting calories in strict numbers and not enjoying my life as much as I do now.

The New Year is often a prime time for those wanting to lose weight or change their bodies and there's very little mention of learning to love the body you already have. Through being bigger and being smaller, I learnt that it wasn't my weight that was the problem - yes I was overweight and needed to do something about it, but it was more the fact that I didn't love myself and appreciate my own body for all its good points and flaws. My New Years resolution this year is not to lose weight or try to see what size I can get down to, but to learn to accept my body and be happy whatever size I may be. The photo above shows me embracing my curves in my new bodycon dress from Blue Vanilla which originally made me feel self conscious, but looks and fits so good I wanted to throw caution to the wind and wear it. After all no-one looks like they do in the magazines and we're all human - we all have flaws. Body confidence is when your inner confidence shines through and that's one thing I definitely need to improve on.

My other New Year resolutions are:

• To try save money towards a house deposit.
• To travel more - even if it is a short car journey to somewhere in the UK I haven't been before.
• To spend more time with my friends and family. Last year my friends were heavily neglected due to my very hectic year.
• To work on my blog and continue to improve my writing.
• And finally to put more time aside to spend with my husband each week. The poor bloke barely gets to see me when I'm working or blogging.

What are your New Year resolutions?