TW: Body Positivity
A couple of disclaimers up front:

• I am sincerely hoping this will not negatively affect any collaborations with photographers, models or other interested parties, as this is not to be part of my portfolio. If it does, so be it. This is not at all how you want to see me, but I want to be open, and straight forward about this.
• Please also understand that this blog is NOT a scream for attention. I also do not need help, I have had food coaching and am under supervision in the gym I work out at.
• Though this seems like a ballsy move, this is still probably the most vulnerable you’ll ever see me, so please be respectful!

TL;DR: Please don’t assume the extreme, if I say I want to be normal weight when it’s in context of my own training I am talking about the weight that is normal to me respectively, this differs for everyone and does not have to be defined by society as “skinny”. I also do this training solely for myself, I don’t care what you think about my body or workout, especially when it’s negative or meant to bring me down.

Thank you!
Thanks, everyone, for the positive reinforcement on me going to the gym during the heatwave! I made sure I drank enough, and I managed to finish my full workout, partially because all the energizing and encouraging comments and cheers I got, They really got me energized!

“But you’re not fat”
When I tell people I’m training to get to a target weight, a lot of people would ask “but why you aren’t too fat at all?”. Usually, they assume I want to be a photo model size, like eu34 or so. Usually, these comments based on my posed, corseted and Stylized modeling pictures that I have on Facebook and Instagram that usually date from quite a while back because lately, I’ve been hiding my body. Though I’m not hiding it actively, I just don’t like the way I look right now, so I focus on the parts I do like, which momentarily is mostly my face. To honor the vessel that has carried me all my life, I’ve been meaning to do a perfectly honest photoset about it. I am giving my body a little extra attention now, so I decided to finally shoot and post it, in the name of body positivity. I would also like to point out that one does not have to be fat to want to go to the gym.

And before I get into it deeper, I would like to stress that this post is not all about explaining myself and telling you what’s going on for me, it’s what’s been bothering me about the Body Positivity community. Yes, the pictures are of me, because this is my opinion on the topic.

Sometimes people get offended by me, or others working out, as if this criticizes people with a larger body, often under the flag of Body Positivity. Please understand, that body positivity ALSO includes people with skinny, normal, chubby, athletic or curvy bodies, of all lengths and colors. Body positivity is about being POSITIVE about YOUR BODY, and not meddling with the bodies of others. Criticizing others for trying to change their body shape is NOT body positive, as a matter of fact, I feel like this has made “body positivity” often a dirty word. Long story short, do not criticize another for their body, or what they do with it, and do not get offended whenever someone does actually bring theirs up.

“Body positivity”
This photoset is about a topic that goes to my heart. When the stress, tension, amount of work and amount of people I was trying to please finally got to me, and I got the “burnout” stamp, the first thing I had to do was lessen the tension. I had already been gaining weight while working myself to the hopeless and helpless puddle of misery I had become, but over the last 1,5 years that I’ve been in a burnout, and was more or less forced to do “nothing” (we all know I can’t fully do nothing though) and stay at home I’ve gained another 10kilos. When I was younger, I got bullied a lot for being fat, and after that and the undeniable pressure that weighs upon us through society, I also felt like I had to be size mini. Back then I fooled myself into thinking of that as “normal”.

I have had a good amount of time to think about a bunch of the foundations in my life and to redesign them. One of the things I found is that for me, being a “model size” is unrealistic. I have evaluated how I look and feel now, versus how I looked and felt in the period I felt the most confident about myself, which made me draw the conclusion that personally what’s “normal” for me will be around 80 kilos because that’s how I’ve felt best.

This is also my body
I believe that you should love your body. Or appreciate it in the least. Working out is for me the way to honor my body, and give it what I feel it needs. This is because I personally feel better at a weight between 75 and 85kg, which is above the “healthy” or “normal” BMI range. But for me, around 80 feels like the “normal” healthy weight range because I felt best like that. If you have automatically dropped to a conclusion to what “normal weight” is when I say it in context of my own body, this probably says more about you than me. If you only felt this wasn’t the right wording, you could’ve asked what I meant, so that I could’ve told you it’s this 75-85 margin for ME, regarding MY OWN BODY. I Weigh 100kg right now And I do not feel good . Working out feels great to me, and such is my right. I will fight for feeling good in my own body, regardless of what “the people” might think.

I love my body. I love my body more when it’s trained.

Another thing I am doing in regards of personal body positivity is responding to multiple awesome XL sized model calls because I think It would be cool to do them, and this is still who I am right now, even though I prefer myself about 20 kg lighter.

“You are beautiful as you are” is a pretty thought, but I’m not after that whenever I mention I am going to a different weight. I just talk about it, because this is what’s going on in my head, it’s what I’m working towards. I have a goal, but please, do not invalidate (even if you don’t mean to) my goal because you think I look fine. This goes for all the other people doing it too.

Picture specific info
These are in no way meant to be Portfolio material, either for modeling or photography, because I prefer my portfolio’s stylized. The pictures I took here are purely meant to make a point if only to myself.
The “styling” I chose for this set is a bare minimum that still gets the point across. I did not want to put an emphasis on my frontal feminine parts because that’s not what this is about. I also did not feel like going naked, as that might distract from the point.
I did not stylize this portrait other than making use of gel lights in my favorite colors, to make this a less harsh experience for myself. I did not wear any makeup, I did not cover up any blemishes on my face, this is entirely unedited.
I also want to stress that this is probably pretty much the most vulnerable you’ll ever see me on the web, I was determined to do it anyway to get the point across.

Thanks for reading!
Love, Lilith

DISCLAIMER:

• This does not in any way imply that I think everyone that looks like this is “too fat” or that my opinion of you should matter to you at all(???). If you feel fine in your body how it is, and you’re chubby or whatever, the choice is yours
  If you are unhappy about it, or you don’t feel good in it, try to either accept your body for how it is or do something about it.
• If my opinion does matter to you: I do not care what you look like, period. I hope you’re healthy, and I mean at ANY size, and if you genuinely feel you are healthy then bless. if you feel like you’re under or overweight and don’t feel good about it, once again, at ANY size, then go do something about it, but let it just be for you, don’t change for the world!
• People may complain about me showing a lot of skin. If you’re seriously going to complain about that on this topic I think you didn’t get the point, and you should think about whether or not you really want to risk seeing a post like this again and make a choice without complaining about it under here.
• Please think about what You’re going to comment, as I will be responding to it seriously,
• If you still think I am not all for body positivity you might either wanna re-read the article or reconsider your definitions of body positivity.