Like most women, Jo Encarnacion has seen her body change shape and size over the years. But despite all the shifts, this San Francisco-based lifestyle blogger and life coach isn't bashing herself. Instead, she's celebrating her acceptance of these changes by posting about them on Instagram.
On October 6, Encarnacion, 35, shared a series of photos of herself from various points in her life—during workouts, in fitness competitions, and just being at home, looking in the mirror. Encarnacion's goal? To demonstrate how unlike typical before and after images, her health and fitness journey has been anything but linear.
“These days my body is the softest it’s been all year,” she wrote. “I haven’t had the energy or capacity to train or workout as hard as I have because it leads to feeling too drained to focus on issues of the heart and soul. Some days I’m a warrior other days I’m a worrier and that’s perfectly OK with me.”
She explained that for years, she tried to attain the body type that she felt was society's ideal, believing that her “stretch marks, loose skin, and soft short frame was not enough.”
“From 2013-2016 I chased the idealize and romanticized vision of what a healthy body ‘should’ look like not realizing that I was still conditioning my mind to believe in things that weren’t true to my soul,” she wrote.
Encarnacion also included this quote in her caption: "If we make self-love or body acceptance conditonal, the truth is, we will never be happy with ourselves. The reality is, our bodies are constantly changing, and they will never remain exactly the same." She then urged readers not to base their self-worth on appearance.
“Today I’m just going to work on what’s good for my soul and that is to love and embrace the roller coaster of life that this body and warrior of a woman is on,” she said. That's empowering advice for everyone.
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