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 and let's go.

Hello and welcome back to another episode on the Embrace Real podcast. I'm so grateful that

you are here with me today. Today's episode is a little bit different. We're going to be going

back to some of the most powerful body confidence reminders that I've shared over the years. Like the ones that have helped me the most and the ones that you've told me that you've personally come back to again and again. Because here's the thing. Body confidence isn't something that you achieve once and have forever. It's not a destination that you arrive and suddenly everything just clicks into place. Some days,

you're going to wake up feeling steady and sharing your skin. And other days, you're going to wake up immediately start picking yourself apart. And if you're in one of those heavier seasons right now where you're just like looking in the mirror and that feels really hard, where getting dressed, feels frustrating, where you're constantly comparing yourself to who you used to be or who you think you should be, I want you to know that struggling does not mean that you're failing. It means that you're human. And this episode is for the woman who's tired of waiting to love herself before she starts living her life. It's for the woman who knows logically that her body isn't the problem, but still feels the weight of comparison and pressure every single day. It's for the woman who's doing the work but still has hard days. So today, we're going back to the foundations. These are the reminders that have helped me rebuild my relationship with my body over the years. And my hope is that at least one of these is going to be exactly what you need to hear today. Before we dive in, though, I want to share this because it's exactly why I do what I do, and it feels very fitting for today's subject.

She gave a five-star review and said absolute godsend. These shows are a saving grace for me.

Julie's passionate words of wisdom for nourishing her body and loving herself unconditionally

has really saved me. I had such a negative body image and negative mindset

around myself. It was disabling. I discovered the podcast during 2020 lockdown and have not looked

back. Thank you, Julie and crew for this podcast. God bless. I love this so much. Thank you so much for

taking time out of your day. Like this is why I do what I do. I'm so grateful for you. Thank you for being here for over

six years. I can't even believe that 20, 20 is six years ago. It feels like it was just yesterday. But grateful for you. Thank you for taking time out of your day to send in this review. All right, let's get into it. Here are my best tips for feeling more competent in your body, not someday, but right now exactly as you are. Firstly, you are allowed to be where you are today. Let me start here because I think that this is the permission that so many of us need but never give ourselves. Like you are allowed to be exactly where you are today. Struggling with body confidence doesn't mean that you're failing. It doesn't mean that you're ungrateful. It does not mean that you're weak or that you've done some, you haven't done enough work on yourself. It literally means that you're human. Body confidence is not a destination that you arrive at and stay forever. It's not a finish line where you cross over and suddenly never have another day that feels hard. Some days feel steady. You wake up, you get dressed, you feel good in your skin. Other days, though, they feel heavy. The mirror

feels harsh. Your clothes feel wrong and you spend the whole day very hyper aware of your body in a way

that just feels exhausting. Both of those experiences are part of the process. And the sooner that you

stop making the hard days mean something is wrong with you, the sooner you can actually

move through them with more grace. I used to think that if I was

having a bad body image day, it meant that I hadn't healed enough. Like I was supposed to get to this

place where I love my body 100% of the time and never struggled again, but that's not real life.

And holding myself to that standard just made the hard days feel even worse because I was layering

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