Like many young women my age I try to get to the gym at least two or three times a week. When I'm lucky I get to go every day. I know for sure that I will always go on Wednesday nights because that's when I teach my dance fitness class. On top of my weekly gym time I follow a pretty strict-ish diet (ish meaning I plan out my meals and I'm strong but I complain 24/7 about it). I try my hardest to stay away from fried food, candy/chocolate (my favorite), and unnecessary carbs (my second favorite). Believe me it's the hardest thing I've ever done.

Now before 2017 started my husband and I made our yearly goals and this time we decided we were going to follow them. No matter what. We have been holding each other accountable for nine days now and yeah we are doing pretty good. Hopefully we can keep it up. Needless to say we are actually starting to get in pretty good shape. I'm not going to lie though, we were already in pretty good shape before. We got married in September so I was going all gym and diet crazy all summer and it kind of just followed over to after the wedding (but I still ate some candy every now and then).

With all of that being said I'm trying to show you that my physique isn't something I was #blessed with. No I have always worked hard to look the way I do. In college I ran track and was on a specific diet and worked out at least three times a day and five days a week. Yeah, that's a lot.

After I quit track I slowed that down a bit but I was still going to the gym regularly. I've always been told that I'm so lucky to be so petite, but I wasn't lucky. I was working my tail off (literally) to look and feel as good as I did.

But for some reason I still had girls my age and older telling me "go eat a cheeseburger" "quit being so skinny" and my favorite "oh it won't last long, wait till you get married". Well I'm married and I'm held at the same standard to be healthy as I was before.

I know all of this seems like some long-winded rant about some privileged skinny girl complaining about how good she's got it, but it's not. As women we should be building each other up. As women we should be sharing healthy dinner recipes. As women we should not be shamming each other for what we eat, what we look like, how many times we work out or don't. As women we should be working together to become our best self.

Let's help each other, not hurt.