As a little girl, I was always chubby. As I grew into my teens I was extremely unhappy about my body. By the time I turned 22 I made being overweight the number one reason for my unhappiness. Then in my mid-twenties, I lost a lot of weight by dieting and exercise. But what I didn't teach myself was to handle stress and so, as I grew in my career , I also put on weight as I battled to handle the increasing demands and stresses of my job. This extra weight of around 10 kilos has stayed with me all through the last 15 years, even though a good 10 years of those 15, I have exercised and eaten as healthy as I could. A lot has happened in the last 10 years. I have healed myself from the trauma of all those stresses and today I have created a life where I am in harmony with the various aspects of my life and don't experience much stress. In fact, I experience deep joy in managing my business and taking care of myself and my family. But those extra 10 kilos have still remained with me. And then it suddenly dawned on me that as part of my conscious and deliberate journey of healing and loving myself, I made a conscious effort to love my body - completely and unconditionally. I would have never invested the time, effort and emotions involved in loving my physical self if I was thin and at an ideal weight. So in a way, these extra 10 kilos forced me to love my body more than perhaps women who are at an ideal weight and who are thin as per social standards. And when I say love I really mean love, accept and being grateful for my gorgeous body. When I look at myself I see a gorgeous and beautiful woman with curves and all. And I love and admire it all. But this is not where I started, I started at a place where I was sick of seeing myself overweight and hated my body. I started where I was deeply unhappy in the present moment because I did not have the body I wanted. This unhappiness was eating away my present moments and robbing me of experiencing any joy in my life. By making the effort to love my body, the temple in which my soul lives I have liberated myself of the beliefs that say that you are only successful if you are thin and beautiful. We, women especially have this pressure on us to look a certain way which is identified as being successful and that is why we must make loving ourselves a priority. We cannot spend another day hating our bodies and putting ourselves down. Yes by all means, take good care of yourself. Exercise well and eat right but don’t ever berate yourself or feel ashamed of your body. Make it a habit of loving your body unconditionally no matter what weight it is at.