Bridget Malcolm, who has also modelled for Polo Ralph Lauren and V Magazine, shared in a revealing Instagram post that she’s been “at war” with her body.
“This girl is not fat,” she wrote next to a photo of herself in a bikini. “I remember around when this photo was taken, I had been told that I needed to lose weight. Not for the first time and not for the last time."
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Bridget also wrote a post on her blog where she dived deeper into her body image issues.
She wrote that in August, "I threw away my scales, my measuring tape and my body checking." She said she also got rid of all of her clothes from when she was at her smallest size, and deleted her gym selfies and "progress shots."
"Basically, I wanted no point of reference any more of a time when I was smaller, or larger. I just wanted to stop looking in mirrors and telling myself that I was ‘too fat,’ and ‘not doing enough.’”
She says she also started eating more healthily and stopped allowing herself to feel guilty about what she ate or how she worked out.
"I cannot tell you how many times I went to bed with my head whirling–trying to get me to latch onto how much I ate at dinner, or during the day, or trying to convince myself to change my diet, start training hard again, start tracking my size, just start doing more. It felt like two steps forward, one and three quarters step back."
But now, she says, she’s done with negative body talk. She orders what she wants at dinner and tries to avoid looking in the mirror.
The best part, according to Bridget:
"I have gained weight. And I do not give a f*ck about it. My life is so much more than my jean size. And every day when that voice in my head tries to tell me I am worthless, it gets a little easier to shut it down. I am setting myself free slowly."
Fans flooded Bridget's Instagram post with support, thanking her for her honesty and sharing their own stories with body-shaming.
In a follow-up post, Bridget thanked fans for their support. "I am completely overwhelmed by all your love," she wrote. She promised to write more about body image soon.
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"Today make the choice to love the body you inhabit," she wrote, "and take back your strength, because you are always enough."
Amen, sister.
This article originally appeared on Women's Health US