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wellbeing BODY TRUIAS The duo behind the Keep It Cleaner health and wellness app, Steph Claire Smith and Laura Henshaw, share how to love and respect the body you're in S toph 5 slory & | read a quote that really resonated with me: ‘It's not learning how to love your body: it's unlearning how to hate it The reason | love this quote so much is that it gets to something really important: nobody is born hating their body. Those negative habits and thought patterns are learned. Unfortunately, there will probably always be underlying pressure to look a certain way. Throughout history, there has always been an ‘ideal body type’ That ideal has changed wildly to fit whatever values and standards society happened to celebrate during each particular era. Shouldn't this tell us that alt bodies are beautifully unique? If your body type doesn't happen to be trending this year, so what? Why should you hate it? No matter what you do, you can't possibly look like someone with a totally different body shape, so why put yourself through the crappy journey of trying to? ‘As much as | understand the temptation to chase a body trend, | also understand when someone says they're just trying to look the way they used to, because that ‘was me. Growing up. | was super sporty and a little lean bean. had visible abs from the time I was 10. ‘And although ‘abs’ are commonly depicted as ideal (in this era, at least), as a teenager | didn't really like my stomach. J envied my schoolmates with curves and felt like my muscular body was ‘boyish. Boys often bullied me for being flat- chested. | wouldn't say I truly struggled with my body image, because this didn't change the way I looked at exercise or food at the time, but that soon changed. | started modelling full time when | was 18. At that point, | was Steph Claire Smith and Laura Henshaw encourage people to fip the narrative on body insecurity by focusing on the things about their body they are grateful for and like. an Australian size eight and hada very balanced view of exercise and dieting. | moved to the United States for a little while when | was 20 years old, and between the age of 18 and 20, | suppose you could say | developed a more adult-like figure. When reps from the US modelling agencies would measure me, they'd comment about how my measurements had increased since they signed me a year earlier. Being the young, driven model! was, I was determined to try and change that. They took my profile off their website and told me | would go back on when Host weight. Only after that would they be proud to send me to castings and let me represent their agency. Prior to this experience, exercise had been something | did because | enjoyed it — something | did to stay healthy. But after hearing the ultimatum from the agents, | felt | had to get my measurements back down to where they were when | was a teenager. Exercise became a task, an obsession — something | had to force myself to do. looked at food differently, too. | picked up binge-eating patterns and became overly careful about what | put into my body. Restricting foods that I loved became my new normal. Instead, I'd binge on whatever food I'd allow myself to eat right up until the point of feeling sick (sometimes even making myself sick). It was a horrible pattern and. a horrible time. i a
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