Emily Barker Instagram – Comparison really is the thief of joy 😇
I used to be skinny… Like really skinny! To the point where size 6 clothes were too big for me… and I was genuinely pretty proud of it!
Being on DWTS for the last 6 years and starting at 18 years old, you’ve probably seen my body change over the years.
Growing up in the competitive dance world, my relationship with food and how I perceived my body weren’t always positive.
I started competing at 7 and struggled to eat because of the nerves leading up to competitions which led to bad habits with food. At 9 years old I was moved to an older category because the only boy I could dance with in my area was 13 so I competed against older girls, which is where I first began to develop comparison issues. I would analyse my body next to the older girls who were clearly more developed and fitted their skimpier costumes a lot better than 9 year old me. At 14 I stopped competing and fell out of love with the sport and never thought I’d dance again.
At 17 I took my PT exam with the hope of starting my own fitness business, but 3 months after passing I was offered my first role on a paid dancing gig to travel the world and I just couldn’t refuse. I fell back in love with dancing but began to slip back in to my old mindset of forcing my body to be as small as possible.
Trying to be skinny is really tough. It’s tough every time you eat a biscuit then you have to run on the treadmill for 30 minutes to burn it off. It’s tough starving yourself for 3 days before a photo shoot then bingeing on anything you can find 24 hours after. It’s tough doing a 2 hour dance show and not eating after incase you look big in your costume the next day.
This mindset is something I had inter-grained over years of body comparison. I continued this for years of my dance career, until lockdown hit. I’d finished season 4 of DWTS and decided to get my dumbbells out and start using my PT qualification again and set up @madhotfit.
⬇️ REST OF THE CAPTION IS PINNED BELOW ⬇️ | Posted on 12/Apr/2023 03:09:15
