I’ve struggled with my body image my whole life

My family is from Argentina, I was born and raised in the US, but visited my extended family often. Argentina is known for their beautiful, model looking women. Subconsciously that was ingrained in my head. Comments were made if I gained a few pounds. Jokes were made because my (American) bathing suit bottoms covered too much booty. That was the beginning of my yo-yo dieting which led to depression, borderline anorexia and later binge eating. I was a mess!

In college I did research and wrote a paper on body image in South America, specifically Argentina and Brazil. I learned that Argentina and Brazil has the highest rate of anorexia, bulimia, and plastic surgery. Did you know clothes are purposely made smaller than what the size says? I didn’t until I did this research. (WTF?) You know what that does to our minds, right? It messes with it and makes us think we need to lose weight!

Learning this infuriated me. No wonder I was so fixated on my appearance, compared myself to others, yet was never happy with my body.

If you ever shamed your body, compared your body to someone else’s, restricted your foods, or yo-yo dieted you are not the only one. The diet industry strives on this because they make millions off having us believe we need to be on a diet.

This is why I, Vanessa Flores, owner of the Strong Fit Life created Unleash the Beast, a membership for people who want to get strong, fit and achieve an unstoppable mindset. It doesn’t matter what you look like on the outside, what matters is how you feel on the inside. I believe that if you focus on achieving something you didn’t think you could accomplish the experience changes you on the inside.

I have helped hundreds of clients focus on get stronger physically and mentally and not focus on loosing weight. Because when you have that unstoppable mindset it goes beyond that mat and spills into all areas of your life.

This is so important for us who hold leadership positions in the work place and for us as businesses owners because if we don’t have that confident feeling coming from the inside then we question every decision, every task we do and will never step out of your comfort zone. Not stepping out of our comfort zones takes us further away from our dreams, our goals, our ambition.