I Saw My Stomach in a Video Today — And Everything Unravelled

Because body acceptance isn’t something you “achieve” and get to hold onto forever.

Today was the first day of my seventh weekend of yoga teacher training.

Turning up to that sacred, safe space and a room full of souls I genuinely love, has become something I look forward to all month. Yoga teacher training has asked a lot of me. It’s forced me to confront things, to stretch myself in ways I didn’t expect. But I always leave feeling lifted. Spiritually rinsed. At peace with my place on this path.

Today felt like that.

I loved my lesson plan, especially after sharing it with my mentors and peers and feeling their belief in me. I felt confident enough to start practicing with friends and family in the coming weeks. I came home full of motivation, purpose, and drive, thinking about class themes, imagining potential venues, brainstorming all the way home.

And yet…

After dinner, when my son was snoring softly in his bed and the plates were in the dishwasher, I sat down and opened Instagram.

My yoga teachers had shared a video of our group flowing together, supporting each other in balance, moving in sync, a moment that showed how deep our bond has become and how transformative this experience has been.

But all I could see was my stomach.

The way my leggings clung to it.
How round it looked.
How it moved when I moved.

And for the first time in a long, long time, I felt hatred.

Real disgust with my own body.
It sent a genuine chill through me.

I’ve fought for years to love the body I’m in.

I’ve loved it through every kilogram lost, every heartbreak and setback, every physical block, every kilometre I’ve run and grown through. I’ve reasoned with the way my son was cut from me, the way I was slashed open to keep him breathing. I’ve learned to accept the way I take up space, the skin stretched, the womanly shape of my hips, pelvis, thighs and bum.

And in that moment all the peace and acceptance left me.

I was only hate again.

Prodding and pulling myself in the mirror.
Thinking immediately of what I could eat the next day to make it shrink.
What I could wear to cover it up.
Googling “belly fat workouts” and “ways to make tummy smaller” even though I knew all the answers and the science behind it.
“How to lose weight with a thyroid issue”
“Tummy tuck in the UK”
“Mounjaro cost UK”

I felt lonely.
Vulnerable.
Ashamed.

I felt fat.

And “fat” is a funny word. I am overweight, I always have been, but I rarely think of myself that way anymore.

Over the years I’ve learned to measure my body differently.

In energy.
In strength.
In resilience.
In the miracle of growing and feeding a human.

Fat became almost irrelevant. Even after losing 25kg since giving birth to my son, it’s not the word that defines how I see myself.

But tonight, everything crashed.

A sudden relapse into body hatred that honestly took my breath away.

So I took a cold shower.

I washed every part of my body slowly, feeling it move under my hands, forcing myself to remember everything it has carried me through. Everything I’ve survived in it. Everything I’ve overcome in it.

I tried to wash the hatred away.
I put on comfortable underwear.
I stood in front of the mirror.

I tried, really tried, to find the compassion I know I’ve worked so hard to cultivate.

I cried.

I took photos of myself in different lighting, posed and unposed. I reasoned with myself. I breathed.

And then I wrote this.

Because healing isn’t a straight line.
Because body acceptance isn’t something you “achieve” and get to hold onto forever.
It ebbs, flows, comes and goes. It drags demons from you you thought you’d exorcised.
Sometimes it slips through your fingers for a moment. Sometimes an old voice comes back.

But tonight I’m choosing to speak louder than it.

This body is still the one that carried me here.

And tomorrow, on my mat, in my car, carrying my child, in the sunlight and in the face of my own hatred, I will keep practicing loving it.