How I Stopped Hating My Body And Finally Embraced My Real
LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY
Welcome to Episode 1 of my brand-new podcast, friends! I’m here to empower you to feel confident just being you!
I lived over a decade of my life feeling like I couldn’t be my authentic self. I was constantly wishing I was something other than what I was, constantly comparing myself to others, and constantly striving to be this person that just wasn’t me. I hated my body and hated who I was as a person because of it.
It was a very dark time in my life where I felt trapped and depressed. I consistently asked myself, “Is it possible to stop hating my body?”
You know what? Today I can say with 100% honesty that I love, accept, and embrace exactly who I am! And you know what else? You can, too!
In this episode I walk you through my journey from hating my body to loving it unconditionally. I also dive deep into the actions I took that successfully helped me shift my mentality about my body and ultimately helped me embrace my real. So if you feel trapped, depressed, or just unhappy in the skin you’re in, this episode is for you.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
Who I am and what we have in common
How counting my macros changed my relationship with food
How honoring my body with movement changed my relationship with my body
The exact mental shifts I made that helped me successfully embrace my real
More amazing tips for building the body you want and walking confidently in your own skin
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there, beautiful human. You're listening to Embrace Your Real with me Julie Ledbetter. A podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode I dish you a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real, let's get it, let's go.
Welcome to episode one of my brand new podcast, Embrace Your Real. It is still so surreal that I'm saying that to you guys. Like what? This has been such a long time coming. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to connect with you and as I said in this podcast intro, each episode I want to empower you to feel confident in just being you. This is something that I lived the majority of my life for decade plus of my life. I lived as though I felt like I couldn't be my authentic self. I was constantly wishing that I was something other than I was. I was constantly comparing myself, which led me to strive to be a person that just wasn't me. It was like a carbon copy of what I thought people wanted me to be, which frustrated me and led me down this path of hating my body and myself even more.
Because not only was I just not confident in myself, but then on top of that, I was putting this facade on that was not me. And I knew deep down that it wasn't myself. But the world didn't, right? The world saw something. And when you feel as though you can't live an authentic life being who you are, it can feel very trapping. It can feel very depressing. Thankfully, over the course of the last seven years, I've been able to really pull apart what it was that got me into that deep dark hole. Really work through it. And I am so grateful that I am at the place where I am today. By no means am I perfect, by no means do I have it all together. But I can confidently say that I finally feel comfortable in my own skin.
I finally know who I am. I embrace who I am. And I try my hardest every single day to share myself authentically with the world. And so I just wanted to kick off this podcast by sharing my journey with you. Who am I? What's kind of my backstory? Why you should listen to me? The things that I've gone through, the experiences that I've had, how you can relate to me. Again, just going back to all of the things that I have struggled with in the past, I know them on such a deep level that I want to dig through that with you. And then most importantly, how I can offer value to you. I think that each of us are born on this earth to provide value, to come from a place of service. And if we're not serving people every single day, then what's the purpose of our life, right?
We're not here to just live for ourselves. We're here to really live selflessly through our experiences to help remind other people that they're not alone and remind each other that we're in this together. So that is kind of the overview of what you can expect this episode to be. Today's episode is how I stopped hating my body and finally started embracing my real. So without further ado, let's just dive right into it. So before I dive into the how, I want to share some backstory on where I came from and what led me to hate my body in the first place. The first time that I really remember hating my body or even being aware of it was probably in sixth grade, which is crazy to think about because I was what, 12 years old or I think about 12 years old.
But I just remember I grew up always being the more developed woman. I grew up always being the tallest one in the class. I got my period first, like all the things I felt like I was of the first of definitely my friend group if not the majority of the girls in my grade. And so I just kind of remember always feeling a little bit bigger. And it wasn't anything that my family said. It wasn't any of that. It was just, I think I just started being aware of it. And then what really started to happen was in middle school actually because of that, I was picked on quite a bit actually from various kids and bullies. And I specifically remember this time in seventh grade, I was walking down the hall to my locker during passing period and this kid came up with this cow bell that he decided to bring to school. And he was ringing the cow bell in my face and calling me a heifer and that I need to... I mean he was just saying a bunch of stuff.
I don't need to go into super big detail, but I just remember in that moment there was probably about 15 to 17 kids crowded around him, ringing this bell in my face, telling me that I'm a heifer and that I'm fat and all of these things. And I just remember going into that bathroom stall in middle school during passing period, so stressed number one that I was going to be late to my class, but more importantly, I couldn't stop crying. I was so sad. And I think that that was, honestly one of the major triggers that I faced when I first was really aware with my body. And so I think from that point on as a 12, 13 year old girl at that point I was in seventh grade. It's like you have these ideas, right? You want to cut down on food, you want to start being more healthy and, but at the same time you're also a kid, so you're kind of still a little naive.
And so it was always in the back of my mind. But I don't think that at 13 years old, I for sure had an eating disorder or disordered eating. It was more just, I had a horrible relationship with my body. I was starting to already pick it apart. I was trying to mask my emotions by being more revealing, if that makes sense. Especially in seventh, eighth grade, I thought that the more attention that I got, the better off I'd be or that it would somehow mask the emotion of what I was feeling internally. And so at that time I was about 14 years old. I have one older sister, she was a senior in high school.
I remember that specific year actually my parents did get a separation, which ended up being a divorce later on. And I think in that moment it was the combination of me struggling with my body and kids making fun of me and all of that, the insecurities that came up from that. And then also I am an Enneagram number three, so wanting to control every part of my life. I think during that time of kind of my family being my previous rock, right? They were my go-to kind of that changing, it really struck a chord in me and I felt like, well, if I can't change this situation of my parents, then I can change myself. If I don't like who I am or I think that I'm fat or I'm not getting enough attention, then that is something I can change.
And so honestly it was even in freshman year of high school, I remember feeling the need to go to the gym and to eat less. And so it was doing so much damage to me physically I started to get skinnier and skinnier. And my main struggle growing up was just a lack of eating. It was anorexia. It was never diagnosed by a doctor, but definitely struggled with under-eating, over-exercising and it did so much damage to me mentally and emotionally. I remember at that time though, I started lying to my mom, lying to my friends that I was eating when I actually wasn't, or that I wasn't feeling good because I didn't want to eat whatever they were eating. And gosh, it just felt like a trap. It felt so lonely and isolating and I just remembered I would literally starve myself until I couldn't take it anymore.
I was maybe eating 800 calories. I am five nine. And at that point I was, I mean I think my lowest weight was 110 pounds. It was very, very skinny, very, very scary. And I remember as I got older and as I started to actually show that I was getting skinnier, I remember specific people in my life reaching out to me, asking me if I'm okay. And it's kind of an awkward conversation that I feel like a lot of people don't really know how to have, especially with people that they love because they don't want to attack them, but they also want to show that they care. And so I just remember rubbing it off and being like, "No, I'm fine. I am fine." And I would then at that point would feel more self-conscious that I looked at myself in the mirror thinking that I was fat or overweight or could still lose weight.
And yet I was hearing all these other people telling me that I was getting way too skinny. So it led me to start to wear bigger clothes because I didn't want to show how skinny my arms were, how big my thigh gap was. It was just, it was this weird narrative that I was living in my head. But I never ever, ever want you to go through this experience. I don't want you to feel the way that I felt about myself. And if you have in the past, I want you to know number one, that you're not alone or if this is something that you're currently facing, I want to remind you and give you hope because there absolutely is a way out. It is totally possible to love yourself. It is completely possible to accept and embrace yourself for who you are.
And finally live as your authentic self. And so that's really what I want this podcast to be about and just showing you how to embrace your real. After high school, I kind of went into my college years and I was so terrified of gaining weight that I actually lost more weight. So living in a house with my mom where I would have to go home to her every day in high school. And it was something that I couldn't really hide from her. When I was in college, I didn't have parents to go home to, I lived in the dorms and then I lived with roommates and so for me it was like, well man, I am free bird, I can go to the gym for hours, I can not eat dinner if I don't want to, I would literally starve myself until I couldn't anymore.
And then I would go to the grocery store and I would binge on weird things like nuts and fruits and things like that that were 'healthy' but I would eat them in my car until I was sick. And then once that was over, I would get out of my car and I would go to my house and I would walk in and either go straight downstairs to my room or I would go see my roommates and act like everything was cool. And so it was just this weird time. So I just remember my lowest point was probably sophomore year of college. I just felt so out of control. I really wanted to know how to feel my body, but I was also terrified and I really wanted to know how I could be strong and lean and feel my best.
But I was also really, really scared of weightlifting. And so I just remember it was kind of this aha moment. After I graduated college, I actually met my boyfriend at the time, now husband Joshua, which you guys will get to meet more of. But if you're not following me on Instagram, be sure to follow me over there because you'll see a lot more of him on Instagram day to day. But he was really the first person that told me, I mean, he asked me straight up on our first date, he asked me, "Do you have an eating disorder?" And the reason he asked me, kind of a little backstory is a couple of different things. I was definitely showing signs of it. We were at Chili's for our first date, it was so romantic. I had ordered a salad and I ordered no dressing.
I ordered no cheese. And I remember pushing cucumbers, pushing carrots, pushing the chicken off to the side. And I remember just eating straight up lettuce. I mean pretty obvious, right? Like something's wrong. So not only that, but also the backstory on Josh is that he went to school for health and exercise science and sports nutrition. So he knew and had studied signs of disordered eating, signs of all of those things that you do in the sports nutrition realm. And so he was honestly the first person, definitely the first boyfriend that ever asked me if something was wrong or address me about the situation. But really the first person that asked me, "Do you have an eating disorder? Do you have disordered eating patterns?" And then for me to be able to say yes, breakdown and say yes and know that he had the answers, he had the tools, he had the knowledge, he had just gone to school college for five years and that's what he studied in.
So it was this really beautiful kind of moment where I finally was able to open up about my struggle. Previously I had never gone to counseling. It was just kind of something that I dealt with myself. I had opened up to some people that I loved friends and family about it, but it was never something that I went to a facility or anything like that. And I would say it's hard to kind of share where I was on the spectrum, but I was definitely not to the point where I was about to die. If I would have led down a couple more years or even another decade, I don't know where I would be, but I wasn't so terrible that I was laying on my death bed, but I definitely was mentally screwed up in my head and my body showed for it.
And so really the first thing, kind of the way that I stopped doing these things was the first thing that Josh kind of shared with me was like, "You've got to start eating more protein. Are you eating enough protein?" And I was like, "No, protein is going to make me bulky, protein is going to make me fat." And he said, "Okay, well we got to teach you more about it because if you think that protein is going to make you fat, then you've just been misinformed." And I mean, that's really been it. The only nutritional advice that I was going off of was women's health magazines, which are not a sounding board. So if that's where you're at I would encourage you to go to a more reputable source. But definitely not getting the correct nutritional advice that I needed.
And then and then he was also like, "Well, what else are you doing?" And I was like, "Well, I'm doing cardio." And he's like, "Okay, how many days a week?" And I was like, "I mean, for sure six days if not seven. If I feel like totally exhausted, I'll take a day off. But I mean, no days off." I was in this mentality of, I can't take any days off if I want to achieve my goals. And yet it was I was doing these endless amounts of cardio and limiting my food intake and I wasn't seeing results. I was only feeling more bloated. I was not getting results, I was feeling weaker, my energy was low. And Josh being the gracious man that he is, was like, "Okay, we just need to take a look at your training and we're going to reevaluate your training schedule and I'm going to teach you how to lift weights."
And I was like, "No, no, no. Weights are going to make me fat. They're going to make me bulky. I don't want to look like the Hulk." And so over the course of the next, that time, three to four years, I really learned all of the ropes if you would, the nutritional ropes, the weightlifting, ropes, all of those things. So some of the things that I stopped doing when I really started to embrace my real was I stopped dieting. So no more depriving myself of calories or carbs. But the key to that was if I wouldn't have met somebody like Josh who had the nutritional information that he did and also had the heart that he did to really serve me and want to help me, I feel like I probably would have been in the same spot.
But because I was able to stop dieting was because I learned how much my body needed in terms of fuel and then not spending endless hours doing cardio at the gym. Again, that was another reason why it came from Josh really showing me like, look, you can do some cardio to keep your heart healthy, but you don't need to do all this cardio. You just stop spending endless hours at the gym. And really start being more intentional about your time in the gym and start lifting weights. And I think when I really got a grasp on nutrition and learning to feel my body optimally and I'll kind of get to this, but it wasn't this overnight flip switch. It wasn't like he told me about this, he told me that I need to start eating more protein and he told me that I need to start eating more carbs and a more balanced approach.
And then immediately I did and everything was good. It was definitely a journey that I struggled through a lot for three to four years. And before I really got more comfortable with it. And same with the gym. It wasn't just overnight that I was like, "Oh, okay, let me just stop doing two hours of cardio a day and start lifting weights." It was definitely a mental struggle, but also I think the desire for me wanting to change so badly was there that I was desperate. I was at the point where I was like, "Okay, if you have another ultimatum, I will take it. Because what I'm currently doing right now is clearly not giving me results, but it's the only thing I know how to do." And so I think in that, just being more confident in eating enough and then also not spending hours and hours of cardio per day.
I stopped judging myself. I stopped comparing myself and I started to be more confident in who I was. And again, that was not just like this overnight thing. It was definitely just feeling like I had more control of the way to do it, if that makes sense. And so instead of depriving myself of calories, instead of spending endless hours at the gym or comparing myself, I really started to invest myself in the concept of honoring my body with movement. So I think for years and years and years I struggled with I have to, I have to go to the gym. It's not a, I get to, it was a have to mentality of a punishment basically. It was like if I ate anything or if I ate off plan or any of that, it was like I told myself I had to go to the gym to burn off the calories and it was so calorie focused of my workouts, like how many calories do I burn? That I was not even really recognizing and appreciating all of the amazing things that I was actually doing at the gym.
Really, I mean when you enter the gym like yes, you are helping yourself, you are growing yourself physically and you're developing obviously your physical muscles. But I truly believe it's a therapy, right? Our bodies are designed to move. And so when we go into the gym with this mindset of honoring our body with movement, it changes everything. And instead of depriving myself of the calories and the carbs, I started counting macros. And that was something that Josh introduced me to way back when, when I was about 22 years old was when I first started learning about macros. What are macros, macronutrients, protein, carbs and fats. How much my body needs to function optimally. And instead of judging myself and comparing myself, I asked myself, how can I transform my mindset? Because I knew so many confident people in my life and I would ask myself, all of these confident people that I knew in my life, what's kind of the common denominator?
And I came down to well, geesh, a lot of these people I know they invest a lot in their mindset, whether it's books, it's podcasts, it's audio books, it's going to seminars. It's surrounding themselves with other people that are likeminded that can really lift them up. And so I told myself, if I really want to stop comparing myself and stop judging myself so harshly, I need to learn the mindset, tools and tricks as to how to really transform my mindset. So I'm going to kind of break that down because you might be thinking, okay, that's great. You're honoring your body with movement. So you're no longer spending endless hours at the gym doing cardio, you're counting your macros, protein, carbs, and fats, and you're transforming your mindset. But what does that really mean? How do you do it? So I'm going to kind of break it down for you.
So with honoring my body with movement, before I was punishing my body with movement, I was using exercise as a punishment for the food that I ate and for the 'fat' that I had on my body where I thought that I had on my body. Now I am looking at movement as an opportunity to move my body. And it's just a really a matter of telling yourself repeatedly to change your subconscious mindset. I get to, I have the opportunity. This is a beautiful thing. Our bodies are made for movement. It's a gift from God that I have air in my lungs, that I can actually do this. And so it's really just kind of a mindset shift with that. So really every time I say, "Oh, I have to go work out or I have to get this workout. And I immediately try to change my mindset in that moment of saying, no, no, no, you don't have to.
You don't have to do anything. You get to and you have the opportunity to. And I think that simple mindset shift will really change the way that you're looking at movement. Another way that I really started honoring my body with movement was swapping out cardio for resistance training. So previously I was doing so much cardio and it was really just because I didn't have any sort of sense or any knowledge or experience in the weight room. I mean I had a weightlifting class in high school, but I still remember I was so ingrained in my disordered eating and so self-conscious that I did not even take weightlifting seriously at all in high school. And then in college I didn't really have anybody to teach me. So when I met Josh, he really gave me the ropes of the gym.
"This is how you do upright rows. This is what rear delt is, bicep curls." I mean all of the basic movements. And so I think just in learning something new, I found a love for it because I felt more confident around the weight room. I remember the first probably three to seven workouts. I definitely relied on Josh a lot in terms of the weight room, I can remember the second week that I was weightlifting, I was starting to feel more comfortable because I was doing similar movements from what he showed me the past week. And then from there it was just over time I think whatever it is they say it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. It was just something that the more you do it over and over and over again, the more comfortable you get, the more comfortable you get with the environment and things like that.
So really swapping out cardio for resistance training. And then I stopped the mindset of I have to work out six or seven days per week because I was exhausted and it wasn't fun. And that was something that I identified was like, if I want to make this fun, if this is something that I want to keep doing, I need to only do it for a certain period of time. I can't do it for six seven days a week. So I told myself four or five days that seems realistic to me and my workouts previously were hours. They were two to three hours I would say. And that's what I thought. I thought that I needed to do these two to three hour workouts to get a good workout in, but really learning effective ways of moving around the gym, superset, circuit training, all those things.
And so now I really never work out for more than 60 minutes for sure. I would say my Movement With Julie App workouts, if you're not familiar with already. I mean go to movementwithjulie.com but it's my weekly workout app and I would say they're 40 to 55 minutes max. And that's for about three to four of the workouts. There's five workouts per week inside the app. So I never work out for longer than 45 minutes. And then just I think building on strength, focusing on building strength and I'm really just focused on feeling strong, feeling heart strong, feeling physically strong, feeling mentally strong. And so my circuit training, my superset training is great for that. So really building strength and realizing that everything that I'm doing right now is building my body stronger and really focusing on that instead of focusing on all the things that my body can't do. Because I think you can get trapped in this comparison even with working out, when you're looking at girls on Instagram and you're asking them, how much weight are you lifting because you're comparing your weight to their weight.
You have to remember that everybody starts somewhere and everybody has naturally stronger genetics in a certain body part or they've been just been training longer or whatnot. And so there's so many variables in that. And so I think really for me, it's just a matter of focusing on being strong for me and nobody else. Okay. So moving on to counting my macro. So I said that was one thing that I stopped doing. I stopped depriving myself of calories and carbs and started counting my macros. Now I told you I learned macro counting from Josh. So this was definitely a key critical component and helping me change my mindset. Because honestly, if I wouldn't have had somebody like Josh to teach me the ropes, to teach me how to count my macros, what macros even were like before that, I had no idea.
I saw nutritional labels and things like that, but I never knew and what a macronutrient was. And I never knew how to count them, let alone what my body needed. And so before I was depriving my body of what it needed, which caused me to work against myself, it was trying to walk up an escalator that was going down. When you try to do that, it's just hard. But once I learned how to properly fuel my body and actually giving it what it needed, that's when things started to change, which was so crazy to me because for years and years it was like I thought the less calories I had, the less carbs that I ate, the better off I was, the skinnier I'd be, the better I'd feel. And it was the exact opposite because I was starving my body from so many macro nutrients that it needed.
Basically, I want to give you just an overview of macros. So there's three macronutrients. So there's protein, there's carbs, and there's fats. I think as a society we are very misinformed of what macros are. So let me just give you a basic example of what each macronutrient would be in terms of a food. So protein would be like chicken, that would be a pretty much straight up protein source with some fats, a straight up a fat source with a little bit of carbs. So it'd be avocado. So that would be a healthy fat and then a straight up carb source would be bread, bagel, things like that. It's very funny to me and it's crazy when you are not aware of macronutrients you could easily get tricked into thinking like, "Oh I get my protein from, let's just say peanut butter."
I hear that a lot. Like, "Oh, but I'm eating peanut butter so I'm eating enough protein." And the reality is it's, I mean that's a main fat, a dominant macro with a little bit of protein and a little bit of carbs. But I think it's really important to learn the basics of macros. If you're interested. I do have a free eBook it's called Macro Mounting for the Everyday Woman. We'll link that in the show notes below. But just kind of an overview is your body needs every single macronutrient for a different reason. So protein is going to help build your muscles. It's also the macronutrient that actually keeps you fullest longer. So if you are finding yourself hungry, you might have a deficit in protein if you are eating enough but you're still finding yourself hungry. Maybe you need to eat a little bit more protein because that does keep you fuller longer.
Your carbs are going to help you with energy and then fats are going to help you with hormones. That's just kind of on a basic level. I can definitely get more in depth with it and I do in my Macro Academy and Simple Online Academy. But for time's sake, the overview of macros, protein, carbs and fats, your body needs a specific number. Everybody's number is different based on your age, your weight, your height, your activity level, all of those variables. So for me, counting my macros ensures that I'm giving my body exactly what it needs each day. So I'm not depriving myself of calories. I'm not depriving myself of carbs, fats, or proteins. I'm eating enough of what my body needs to fuel my body to build muscle and to burn fat, depending on what phase I'm in. So think about macros as not eating too much or too little.
It's about fueling your body to eat enough. That's basically overview of macros. So over the last seven years, I have counting my macros and obviously I feel my best when I nourish my body with nutrient dense foods. But the beautiful thing about macro counting is that allows you to eat whatever you want in moderation, fitting it into your daily allotment of macros. That is a huge thing. I talk about a lot on my Instagram, Instagram story, is not depriving yourself of your favorite foods because that's the key to sustainability is learning how to fit your favorite foods in moderation into your daily allotment while still reaching your goals. And I really think that that could be a whole nother podcast episode, just like on how I worked through food fears and things like that because going from someone who previously restricted so many different food groups like Pop-Tarts, cereal, ice cream, pizza, all those things, I was like, "No, no, no, I can't have those."
And so when I learned that I actually could eat those foods in moderation and still reach my goals, it took me a good amount of time but slow and methodical and over time I was able to finally start incorporating those into my daily intake and still reaching my health and fitness goals. And I truly believe that that is one of the biggest keys to my success long-term. And just maintaining my dream body now for almost seven years. And learning how to fit those favorite foods in moderation, not saying no to social events anymore, anything like that. So the biggest key to macros is recognizing that everybody's macros are completely different. So my macro ratio is going to be completely different from your macro ratio because we're at different parts in our journey, we might have different goals, we definitely have different metabolisms, different age, different height, different way, all of those things.
So just remember that each person's macros is different. Like I said, I do have a free eBook that kind of gives you a formula of how to get your customized macros step-by-step. So I'll link it in the show notes below for you to download. Overall macro counting, like I said, has completely transformed the way that I look at food and has helped me no longer restrict my calories, restrict my carb intake.
And then lastly, going off of transforming my mindset. So instead of judging myself, comparing myself to others, really learning how to honor my body with movement and counting macros were a huge mindset shift in and of itself. So switching my mentality, like I said previously of movement, not being in punishment but movement being a way to celebrate my body. And then macro counting, having switched my mentality from foods being good and bad versus fueling my body optimally for what I need based on my goals, where I'm at and also just my current needs and wants in terms of food, satisfying what I really want, if I want pizza, allowing myself to eat pizza in moderation.
And so that has been a total mindset shift in terms of no longer comparing myself and also kind of being more aligned with who I am. But some other mindset shifts were really learning that the current size of who I am is the size that I need to be. My body is my body and my body should not be compared to anybody else's body on the internet, in real life and really learning to look at my body through eyes of
love, through eyes of acceptance, through eyes of grace and joy and gratitude.
And I think one of the biggest things that has really allowed me to do that was to monitor who I am allowing in or who I am not allowing inside of my mind on a daily basis. So we have on average, I think it's over 75,000 thoughts per day I believe that we each have and so just really monitoring what I'm allowing in, who I am allowing in and remembering that that is so, so important when it comes to all of the thoughts subconsciously or consciously that you're having on a daily basis. Especially just for example, I went through my Instagram following and I deleted probably over a thousand people based just simply because I was like, I can't follow these people. These people are not giving me confidence. They're not speaking to me in a way that's enhancing my mindset. If anything, they're leading me down a road of comparison and I don't have time for that anymore.
Just unfollowing people. No shame. An easy exercise that you could do is go to your following list and go through each person that even your family, family, friends, things like that. Instagram is great now we have this mute feature where you don't have to unfollow them because I know that that can be a whole thing in of itself, especially if it's a family member. But you can mute them and so you no longer have to see them in your feed. Ask yourself if this person is enhancing your lifestyle. Is this person enhancing your mindset or are they leading you down a path of comparison?
Another mindset shift that I have really invested in over the last couple of years is writing in a gratitude journal every morning. This has really helped me shift my focus on things other than my body. I know you've probably heard it a thousand times how effective it is, but truly, truly writing in a journal has hands down transformed my life, my productivity, the way that I feel as though I am more present in my life. Actively looking for opportunities, grabbing hold of the current and present opportunities that are given to me every single day that maybe I might've looked over. But I just think that the gratitude journal, which I'm going to do a whole nother podcast on has transformed my mindset.
Another mindset shift has been looking at my body for what it is. It is my body. So I think previously I was looking at my body and then saying, how is my body in comparison to this girl's body? Or is how is my body in comparison to this or my body even in comparison to five, 10, 15 years ago. And really just looking at my body right now for what it is. Looking at it in the mirror, staring back into my eyes and saying, "I love you. I love you." That has been so transformative in just building the relationship with myself. I think that's a relationship that we often neglect or we don't think is as important. But our relationship with ourself is one of the most important things that you could ever have.
So really through movement, through mindset and through macros, I felt as though I started to become more comfortable and competent in my body, which allowed me to be more comfortable and confident in who I was as a person. So thus embracing my real, and I think once you can start embracing your real and embracing everything that your body can and will do for you, you stop dwelling on the things that you can't do. And it's so incredible to see the amazing opportunities that come when you really open yourself up to the world as you and not as a carbon copy or trying to be a second rate version of somebody else. Just remembering that the world needs you. I have so much of my story, you guys have just heard about it. It's really, I mean, it's every single day it's writing my story, every single day it's making an active decision to embrace who I am, to embrace who I was created to be, to embrace my body for all that it is instead of dwelling and everything that it isn't.
And I think the moment that I really started to embrace myself authentically was the moment that I was able to connect with people on such a deeper level. And it's true, the saying authenticity breeds authenticity, transparency breeds transparency. It's so true because the moment that you start to open up about who you are or what you're struggling with, or the things that you may be previously struggled, you'll be so pleasantly surprised in maybe not the best way, because sometimes it's really sad that you guys relate on a specific topic, but you'll be so surprised at how many people actually relate to you too.
They raise a hand and say, "Me too."
And so I just want to encourage you to start to open up and if any of these things that I've said to you today or something that maybe you struggled with or you're currently struggling with, shoot me over a DM. I love connecting with you guys. I love reminding you that you are not alone in your struggle. And also reminding you that there is hope because I think there's a difference between us standing in a struggle being like, this is something I struggle with and letting that consume us. Instead, I want you to stand in the struggle and say, this is something that I'm struggling with or I've struggled with, but my story's not over. And remembering that and telling yourself in that moment, I might be struggling with this right now, but my story is not over. And I think that will open the door. It will give you hope. Remembering that you can grow, you can get past whatever you're struggling with. It is possible. And it's just a matter of really opening up to other people, opening up to yourself and being okay with asking for help is really important.
So in conclusion, your journey might not look like mine. It might look like mine. It might have pieces of the story that I shared with you today that you might be able to relate to. But either way, I just want to remind you that you are not alone and you can do this. I am so, so excited to join you on this journey of yours. I cannot wait to see where this takes you. It has been a wild ride for me over these last seven years, but has been the most fulfilling thing I've ever done.
So if you enjoyed this episode, I would love for you to take a screenshot right now. Tag me, @juliealedbetter. Yes, it's with an A in the middle, on your Instagram story. I love, love, love chatting with you guys in the DMS. So be sure to shoot me a message. We'll chat. I would love to know your struggles, what your current struggles may be, something that you are so proud of overcoming or something that I can better help you with. After all this podcast is for you. Remember that I am so, so grateful for you. Thank you so much for listening. I cannot wait to hear your thoughts around my Instagram and if you loved this episode, be sure to press subscribe. By doing so, you officially begin your journey toward embracing your real.
All right, sister, that's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you're not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so @juliealedbetter. Yes, it's with an A in the middle for that daily, post-workout, real talk, healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple podcast to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.