This Before-and-After Proves Weight Isn't What You Need to Lose This Summer

Megan Jayne Crabbe, author of Body Positive Power is pretty well known in the Instagram world for encouraging women to love their bodies, and as a woman who's conquered anorexia, she has the most important message you'll hear this Summer: "You do not have to lose weight to be worthy of wearing a bikini." Megan shares, "I used to spend every single Summer starving and sweating to get the body on the left, telling myself that I was only allowed to be seen in swimwear once I'd hit that goal weight (and even once I did, it still wasn't enough)."

Not once did she ever hear the message that she should stay exactly the same, embrace her body, and just enjoy Summer. The message was that unless her body looked a certain way, she shouldn't dare be seen in a bathing suit. But this year was different. "I didn't set a goal weight to hit before my holiday. And I didn't sit by the pool sucking my stomach in and worrying what everyone else thought about my body either." She went outside and "laughed and played and ate and swam and wore every damn bikini I own without changing my body one bit. And guess what? It was so much better than all the self-hatred-filled holidays that came before."

Megan goes on, "Because the only thing I really needed to lose through all those years wasn't weight. It was the bullsh*t idea that a bikini body is something that you have to earn, when in reality I had one all along. We all have bikini bodies already, and we all deserve a summer in the sunshine. 💜💙💚🌈🌞"