Hey there beautiful human you're listening to embrace your real with me Julie Ledbetter a

podcast where I empower you to just be you with each episode I dish you a dose of

real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self.

Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real, let's get it, let's go. Hello, and let's go. Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Embrace Real Podcast. I am so

incredibly grateful that you are here spending some time with me today. I am so

excited about today's episode because we are talking all about seven things

that I learned from building more muscle. I don't know if you know my story but I

used to have an obsession with being skinny no matter what.

And when I say no matter what, this is a complete understatement

because I would go to absolute extremes to become skinnier and skinnier.

I completely sacrifice my health, my my relationships my experiences and all of the things just to be

Skinnier this is how obsessed I was nothing else in life at that moment mattered except for me getting smaller.

It was my number one priority.

It was everything that my thoughts were consumed by, but thankfully I met my husband who at the time was my boyfriend and he really woke me up to

recognizing the damage that I was doing. He showed me that in fact I didn't need to be skinier and I don't need to sacrifice all of those things.

But I'll be honest, breaking those toxic habits and breaking free from the belief that I thought I needed to be skinnier was hard.

I can't explain to you just how hard it was.

It took a long journey from obsessing about being skinnier

to properly nourishing my body,

to honoring my body and eventually building muscle.

Muscle weighs more than fat, so building muscle was extremely hard for me at first

because the number on the scale was rising.

...