lets talk: body confidence

January 1st. More like December 26th, I decided to commit to the gym and make a change in my body this year (2019). Since then, I’ve been hittin the gym 3-6 times a week and feel like I’ve been killin’ it. Originally I decided to purchase and film an activewear haul but that idea did not last long. I visited Walmart and purchased the clothes without trying them on and headed home.

A couple weeks later I decided to finally try on the active wear so I can film the video (not so I could wear them to the gym, haha isn’t that silly?) After trying on the activewear (and noticing I am definitely no longer a size small), I went back to Walmart to return the activewear and look for a bigger size. And that my friends, is when I saw all of these beautiful swimsuits.

At that moment I decided to forget the activewear and purchase every bathing suit I liked and film a swimsuit haul. It would be the perfect way to combine my fitness goals with my YouTube goals by giving myself and other motivation. While looking at the swimsuits from Walmart I thought, I’ve been working out, these should look great on me. But a week later when I finally tried tried them all on, I couldn’t help but feel pudgy and like NONE, pero like nada, of my work at the gym was showing.

“Good thing I didn’t post everytime I went to the gym”, I thought to myself. People would have been like well we can’t tell.

And that my friends is what goes on inside of my mind. While I’d like to think I’m body positive and love having curves, and thick thighs, I also stare into a phone app for on average 2 hrs a day per week looking at girls with their perfectly big butts and flat abs and think that I need to look like them.

I continued to edit the video and then uploaded it to YouTube. When it was time to post I got scared. All these thoughts came up. Am I skinny enough, will people notice how my skin color isn’t perfectly even throughout my legs and bum? aaah so many thoughts. So I finally decided to post a story explaining how nervous I was to post. The responses I got were not what I was expecting:


After receiving so much positive feedback, I decided to just post the video and let it go into cyberspace. To my surprise it’s gotten the best feedback that any of my videos have received in the past year!

So now, let’s talk about what you’re here for: body confidence. Body confidence shouldn’t come from what others say about you or even defined by what we constantly see on our phones. Body confidence should be defined by oneself. Don’t like how you look? Find out why? Write out all the things YOU’D LIKE TO IMPROVE about yourself (notice how I didn’t say “don’t like about yourself”). Then most importantly write out all the things you like about yourself.

Here let’s use me as an example:

Things I would like to improve about myself:

  1. consistency

  2. flatter tummy

  3. more toned thighs

  4. moisturized skin

Things I like about myself:

  1. skin tone

  2. breast size

  3. strong legs

  4. eyelashes

  5. my lips

Now that we’ve talked about the things we like and want to improve about our bodies. Let’s talk about confidence. Confidence comes from repeatedly completely the tasks that align our actions with our goals. Let’s say you want to get better at playing an instrument, the more you play it the better you’ll become at it, therefore the more confident you will be. The same goes with your body! For me I’d like to be more consistent in the gym so I can see the results in my tummy and thighs. The more I visit the gym and work on these improvement areas is the more confident I will become.

Going back to the swimsuit haul: I filmed this video to motivate myself and others to work on improving themselves. What are some things you would like to work on to improve yourself? Also, what are some things you already like about yourself? Think about these things often then set daily tasks in place so you can meet your goals and most importantly improve your body confidence.

Until next time my loves,

Shannon Ashley