The key thing of this whole chapter is body positivity. I just realised that the term 'body positivity' is alien to so many people. Why do those two words feel so foreign on the tip of your tongue? It should literally be the norm and a trend for people to love themselves.

1. Realise that you're perfect and really beautiful regardless of whether or not you meet other people's beauty standards.

If you have a thigh gap you're beautiful.

If you have thick thighs that rub against each other you're beautiful.

If you have a soft, pudgy stomach you're beautiful.

If you have small boobs you're beautiful.

It literally doesn't matter, whatever happens you're beautiful!

2. Look at yourself in the mirror each morning and say to yourself, "Wow, I look even more beautiful today than I did yesterday."

These days, people promote the idea that not loving yourself is "cute" and that it is enviable for someone's self-esteem to be low. It's like there's this social stigma that it's wrong to love yourself or be confident. I'm not saying that you need to boast or be overconfident but like, I kind of want to see myself living in a generation where people love their bodies and accept themselves for who they are.

3.  Accept compliments(!!) When somebody compliments you, accept it. Don't try and counter the compliment like just accept the fact that somebody thinks you look fuego asf today.

4. Do things that make you feel happier about your body, not for other people but for yourself. So yes, I do advise you to do yoga and go jogging in the morning and have a healthy smoothie for breakfast once in while because it does make you feel better and a lot healthier tbh :)

5. Stop associating your health with your weight. You can be overweight and healthy. You can be underweight and unhealthy. We need to stop focusing on the numbers on the scale and start focusing more on our health.

6. Love yourself more than any other human being in the world could. Like the only humans that we can truly depend on at all times is ourself so give yourself a compliment now and then.

You're beautiful and I hope you know that now :) By Zara 🌟 [a gorgeous igbo girl]