Here’s something I’ve never really told anyone: I’m a size 18. I weigh more than I ever have, and about a year ago I reached a point of hating my body so intensely that I started turning down social invitations because of my preoccupation with how I look.
And here’s something I never really expected to be able to say: six sessions with a body-confidence coach changed all that, unlocking a degree of body positivity within me that is still deeply rooted 12 months on.
What led me to a body-confidence coach was a conversation we’d had more than a year earlier, when we’d met on a training course. I’d explained how ill at ease I had become within my body, and described feeling constantly torn between a compulsion to try to transform it and a deep desire to learn to accept it.
‘You know you can do both,’ she’d said, or words to that effect, and I felt as if my brain was a computer that had gone into shutdown