lifestyle

"When I feel like crap about my body, this is what I do to feel better."

There’s an easy fix for those moments when you’re feeling less-than-great about your body. How did I not know about this before?

When you’re flicking through social media and you find yourself flooded with images of your friends, relatives, and random people you follow on Instagram parading their bodies around, what do you do?

If you’re anything like me, you feel a pang of jealousy inside you. Your mind starts racing with uncharitable thoughts and excuses as you subconsciously compare yourselves to them.

But there’s a fix for this feeling, and it’s about to empower a whole lot of women around the world.

Read more: Whenever anyone talks about body image, something strange happens.

Last weekend, I was trawling through my feed while wearing daggy pyjamas, my hair in a bun and my face make up, but not pimple, free. I follow a lot of models, actresses and other famous people – not out of jealousy, but out of genuine interest. The only downside to this is that, in amongst the photos of their extravagant lives are their heavily-edited, highly-retouched photos of themselves and their bodies. And this does not always do good things to a woman’s self esteem.

Photos like this do not do good things to a woman’s self esteem.

But here’s where the fix comes in. There’s a website that’s groundbreaking in its concept, delightful in its aim and utterly brilliant at its core.

ADVERTISEMENT

It’s called MyBodyGallery.com, and it reminds women that they’re beautiful, that their body is normal and that they aren’t alone in feeling like shit about themselves from time to time.

You might also like: It’s great to endorse positive body image. But it’s even better to actually do something about it.

All you have to do is select your height, age, weight and shape, and you’re immediately hit with hundreds of images of women who look just like you.

When you see these women, you instantly realise the truth: these women are lovely. They look great. If that’s what I look like, I’m ok with that.

When I tailored it to my body, these were the results.

The site is a great reminder that you’re not abnormal, you look beautiful and you have nothing to worry about.

But the real message is this: you would never be as critical about another person as you are about yourself. You should be your own best friend – and you’d never tell your best pal that she is anything other than beautiful. So start talking to yourself like you would talk to your sister or your best friend – tell yourself that you’re beautiful, strong and brave. Because you are. And you deserve kindness.

Click through the gallery of examples from MyBodyGallery.com