Following chronic self esteem probs in teens and anorexia and then bulimia, in my late 20's/early 30's I really got to grips with myself, got off the whole diet/binge bandwagon, and allowed myself to eat and live without condemnation. I became about a size 22/24 but, I can honestly say that I had loads and loads of confidence and felt good about myself.
Following a tragic and early family death, i decided to take up regular exercise, and without that being the goal, I lost several dress sizes and became about a size 18. Cue loads more confidence, feeling sexy, wearing really gorgeous figure hugging clothes and feeling reallly good about myself.
Get pg, after 17 yrs of marriage, don't put on loads of weigh, in fact am slightly smaller post pg than before ~ 16+ size.
However, have terrible pnd, my hair starts to fall out bigstylie when ds is 4 months, and have to have it all cut short, (my hair was long, straight, glossy and pantene worthy). You all know about lack of sleep, overwork, stress etc, and despite the fact that I still exercise religiously and am still size 16/18, i feel old, haggard, fat, ugly and generally horrible.
Watched a Gok revisited last week, the big, butch blonde who discovered gorgeous sexy woman, and went on to be a plus size model, act and be a comedienne. And she said that she had always longed to be in a skinny body for just one day and that she could honestly say that she didn't feel like that any more........well that's how I used to feel. I used to feel sorry for my skinny friends who hated their body's and were constantly dieting, because I had accepted and come to love my curvaceous bod and wouldn't change it for the world.... how can I get that back? I want to have confidence and love myself for who I am now, not how I looked 20 years ago (this is probably an issue coz it's our 20th anniversary this year, folks used to say I was a bit of a stunna back then, sorry if I sound up myself ~ will put a pic on my profile and you can let me know!)
Please help. What can I do? We have a party on 18th October and a family meal 1st November, and I want to radiate joy and sex appeal, but more than that, I really, really want to get back to feeling confident in my own (flawed) skin, so that I can be a good role model for my son.