What I love about Instagram is that it has the ability to connect you to those that you may never cross paths with. I can’t remember when or how I decided to follow Leslie on Instagram, but when I saw her stories about seeking people to interview for discussing body health and wellness, I raised my hand. To be honest, I don’t have these conversations often. Even though it’s something that gets brought up, there’s still a stigma to it. I’m not sure what it is and I was hoping that my discussion with Leslie would help me get clarity.

The answers to her questions are ones that I think about frequently. However, she was the first person I ever told them to. It felt crazy to say it aloud for the first time. I may have rambled and it may have been because I’d been holding onto these thoughts for so long.

• How do you generally feel about your body currently?
• When you don’t feel good about your body, what do you do?
• When do you feel great about it?
• What are your thoughts around body positivity?
• What are your thoughts on body neutrality?

My immediate takeaway was that I’m glad these aren’t job interview questions because I did a terrible job of answering succinctly! I could’ve spent more than just the 30 minutes speaking about all of this with her because it’s such a huge topic. In the end, I’m glad that I didn’t know the questions ahead of time. It allowed me to answer honestly and brought up some feelings that I didn’t realize were there. Here are were my own takeaways:

• I think a lot about the things I could be changing in my lifestyle to be happier with my body, but I rarely make those changes ie) cutting alcohol, exercising more regularly.
• Everyone’s ideas about health, wellness, and their body are so different from each other. Some people like waist training, others like being skinny, and some just don’t care what they look like. I don’t myself discussing this often with my friends or network because I don’t know everyone’s comfort level.
• Social media and what I post on Yow Yow! sometimes causes me to second guess. I stress about what I’m posting because it may trigger someone else and not knowing other people’s triggers are heavy. I’m not sure where the boundary is and I wish I didn’t have to think about this.
• I did not know what body neutrality was and need to spend more time enlightening myself.
• When health, wellness and body topics come up, I am not the one who initiates it.

When we started Yow Yow! this was never a topic that I thought about touching. 19-year old me just wanted to get through college and figure out my career. It’s important now as I watch my parents age and those around me that I figure out the best way to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Yes, I should’ve realized this sooner. Of course, I should have. A healthy lifestyle is paramount to our lives, and if we don’t have it, how will we be able to live a long and fulfilled life? But after taking on this journey, I have also come to the conclusion that I’m not the only one to think this way. Only recently has my friend made the decision to look at health supplements from somewhere like Gold Bee Nutrition to improve her own personal health and wellbeing, and she has seen some great results. But this should’ve been done sooner, which is why I am fully committed to improving my own life going forward.

Taking care of myself goes beyond mental health and now that my metabolism has slowed a bit, physical health should play a larger part.