When I say body positive, I don't mean just glorifying obesity and telling women that they shouldn't have to improve upon themselves to be happy.

I absolutely believe in being body positive, and I believe that in order to truly love yourself, you need to treat your body with the proper respect. To me, that includes loving your flaws, improving the condition of your body and exploring your strengths as a human being. Being body positive includes exploring your mind (for it is part of the body) and improving your skills as a person. It includes lifting weights because you want to be strong. It includes shoving pasta down your throat because you've had a bad day and you've been working hard on your diet so you deserve a little cheat.

When I say body positive, I mean tailoring what society says you should be doing as a person and doing your own thing. Deciding for yourself what you want to do for your body.

So, I decided that to love myself, I have to nourish myself rather than punish myself. I have decided to fill my body with the proper foods and drinks, give my body the exercise it deserves and dressing my body in a way that shows that I love myself enough to improve myself.

It's not perfect, but, then again, working to love yourself is not a perfect process. It requires a lot of positive thinking and actively pushing out the negative thoughts that have festered in your mind over many, MANY years. It involves falling in and out of love with yourself over and over until you get it right. It takes a lot of nourishing yourself and letting go of everything that held you back before, whether it be the misconceptions of going to the gym, fear of judgment, reluctance to try to foods, exercises, etc. You have to let it go in order to start loving yourself the way you need to be.

I learned from a young age that hating yourself because of other people's perceptions of how you look will not make other people like you any more than they already don't. So, I stopped caring what other people thought of me; however, I also stopped caring what I thought of me. Naturally, my body went to crap.

When I first approached the idea of losing weight, I struggled because I had originally believed this idea that you shouldn't have to lose weight to feel good about yourself. And, well, you still shouldn't. However, you should still strive for better improvement, and I didn't understand that for the longest time. I was told constantly that I was not fat, I was beautiful. I knew this wasn't true. I didn't feel beautiful. I felt very fat and for a long time, I let that control how I was around people. I never had a lot of friends. I was incredibly shy. I didn't have any positive thoughts toward my body. My mind and body were a train wreck, and I was in no position to try and stop myself from crashing.

So, I didn't. But now I am.

I'm twenty years old now, and the person I was in high school is definitely not the same as I am now. Do I still have negative thoughts toward my body? I sure do. I wish I didn't have a fat roll right above my hips. It gets rubbed raw like crazy, and I don't look good in pants at all. Are there parts of my body that I absolutely love? You better believe it. I love how soft I am. I love how my butt looks in leggings.

I learned that to be body positive is not just glorifying obesity and telling women that they shouldn't have to lose weight to be positive toward their body. While the latter is true, the former is not. Being positive about your body is treating it with respect. What respect means is a personal decision for you.

Be positive about your body. Give yourself some respect and credit. You are working much harder and making more progress than you think. Give your body, mind, and soul all the love you can muster. You deserve it.