Courtney Black, like millions of young girls in America, looked in the mirror one day and decided she didn’t like what she saw. Whether it was her stomach, her thighs, the small of her back or the way her shoulders curved up to meet her collarbone, anything was “wrong” if you looked at it hard enough and there was only one solution in sight: dieting.
“I lost so much weight that people would comment on my Instagram saying that I looked like I was dying,” she explains in an interview with Mirror, “When I was younger, I just wanted to be as skinny as I could. I loved long skinny legs and tiny little waists.” At 5’3”, Courtney eventually dropped to just under 100 pounds by excessively restricting her calories and adopting a vigorous exercise routine – waking up at 5:00 a.m. every day to run 8 miles and more. After time, however, she realized how ‘miserable” her life had become. Deciding it was time to get healthy instead of skinny, in the summer of 2015 Courtney completely revamped her diet:
” At first, it was a slow process as I was scared of certain foods and it was terrifying to see how I was putting on weight.
But as I got over my fears, I slowly reduced the excessive amount of cardio exercise that I was doing, began to introduce carbs into my diet and upped my calories.”
Now, instead of skipping dinner and substituting it with an apple or low-fat yogurt, Courtney has a diet full of healthy carbs like oats, vegetables and sweet potatoes supplemented with berries and lean protein like chicken. “I’m quite the big eater now and I try to make all my meals as big as possible. And I train at the gym 5-6 times per week simply because I love it! I split my sessions into muscle groups rather than just cardio.”
But more than that, Courtney “I’ve embraced my curves now and realize how attractive they are.”
[H/T Mirror]