You're listening to The Confidence Podcast. Your favorite coaching podcast oozes in with motivation, inspiration, and confidence to help you boldly take action on your dreams.

On your host, Trish Blackwell, internationally recognized confidence coach, best-selling author, and founder of the College of Confidence, the most encouraging place on the internet.

I teach go getters in life, how to take their thoughts captive, how to step out of the shadows of self-doubt, and how to courageously step into their purpose with confidence.

It's time to pump our confidence muscles and train our thoughts y'all. Let's get started.

Hey guys, it's Trish Blackwell. You're listening to The Confidence Podcast episode number 469.

Today we're talking about confidence strategies for your body image. It's been a hot minute since I've talked and done an entire episode on body image.

If you go back way into our archives, which you can find all of the shows, all 469 episodes, plus 34 bonus episodes that I did when the show was called something different, all on my website just go to TrishBlackwell.com and you'll hit the podcast tab.

And you got it all there because I know some podcast apps don't display all of my episodes and if you've ever been curious if they're available, they absolutely are.

You got to go to my website. That's it. Easy peasy.

And so just for context, the only reason I got into coaching and confidence coaching and the work that I do was because originally my driving passion was to help people with body image.

My driving passion was to help them and overcome and men overcome the prison of body dysmorphia and binge eating and compulsive exercise and insecurity in the skin you're in.

In fact, that's what I wrote my entire first book on. It's called the skinny sexy mind. You can find it on Amazon or on my website because it took me so many years to find freedom.

So so many years of feeling alone and feeling stuck in my body and hating myself and blaming God for the body that he gave me and being critical of it and wishing it was someone else's and and that I looked different and then I would it was just it was a constant struggle for two decades of my life.

And so in this episode of the podcast, we're going to be talking about that struggle exactly what I went through.

And I'm going to give you the aerial view of it. I'm going to be sharing with that long battle with poor body image what it looked like and really what it did to me.

It wasn't the body image that the body changes that really were they weren't even obvious to anyone. I maybe it was five pounds heavier than I am now. I pretty much look the same.

But the person I was on the inside is very different. I felt helpless. I felt powerless. I felt disappointed in myself.

I felt like I had let God down because I wasn't using my life to the fullest. I felt so self centered. I felt defeated and I felt like there there was no hope for me. I did not believe in the possibility of change.

And so I started my coaching business when I started creating change in my life and and God started healing me by by healing my my mind. And so I want to share with you a little bit today's show how I went from being body dysmorphic to body confident.

And those of you who have heard my show before or heard me and read my books, you've heard stories where my body dysmorphia was so strong that I wouldn't look at pictures that other people took of me.

That I would avoid mirrors that I would wash my if I could not avoid mirrors that when I washed my hands on a public bathroom I always keep my eye gaze down.

Or if I could stand to the side of the sink to wash my hands so that it wouldn't have to see myself in the mirror because sometimes I would like myself in the mirror, but sometimes I wouldn't.

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