Welcome to the Balance Black Girl Podcast. We're putting Black Girl Magic in motion.

This show is dedicated to reinventing wellness for women of color.

I'm your host Lestrandra Alfred.

Welcome back to the show. I am so happy to be bringing you another feel good Friday episode.

I love these episodes where I can just come talk directly to you, talk directly about a

wellness or mindset topic for us all to work on together, and I really appreciate you tuning in. So today's episode is about a topic that is really important. I mean, I think all of our topics are really important, but I think this one is something that definitely impacts most women on a daily basis and

men too but you know I don't know how many men listen to this podcast but that is body image is something that for most of us has had a significant impact on us,

or we have had significant experiences with in many different forms and I think

that that still applies regardless of what body type you have. And that is largely because you know unfortunately in a lot of ways our bodies are not our own we are

Judged by what we look like. We are perceived differently depending on what we look like or

what our bodies may look like or our size or what features we have and we unfortunately live in a society where it is really hard to just

be and it's kind of always been that way and then you couple that with the past decade or so with

social media with us being able to see imagery constantly and feeling bombarded with

images that if they don't look like us

or if it just seems so unattainable,

then that can feel really, really overwhelming.

But what I really want to question is one, why are certain body types celebrated over others?

And two, where do our body image issues come from?

I know for me personally the times in my life

where I have especially struggled with body image the most

were actually the times that I was the most engrossed in fitness and the world of fitness and

working in fitness and wanting to be seen as fit and working out all the time and worrying that if I didn't look a

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