Fitness blogger Anna Victoria has a message for her nearly 1 million Instagram followers: There is no such thing as perfect body.
On May 22, the trainer — who weighs 125 pounds, with 17 percent body fat — shared photos side by side of herself. In one image she is standing and her abs are completely flat, in the other she is sitting and appears to have rolls.
“Someone recently said to me that we all have our good angles and we all have our bad angles, so why do we let our bad angles carry so much more weight than our good angles,” Victoria wrote on her Instagram post. “If you focus on how bad you look in the bad angles, at least focus on how good you look in the good ones too! … #LoveYourself.”
Victoria tells Us Weekly that the point of her post was really to encourage her followers.
“As my social media presence has grown, I have seen countless comments from girls saying things like, ‘goals’ and ‘I wish my stomach looked like that,’ but I really know that it is just a pose. I don’t walk around like that,” the 27-year-old explains to Us. “I, too, have felt discouraged when I see pictures of other fitness models who have perfects abs both standing and sitting. … I have wondered why I look different or what I’m doing wrong, when really it’s just that my body holds fat differently than theirs does.”
Victoria’s honest post garnered more than 59,000 likes and more than 4,500 comments. “This makes me feel better!” wrote one person, while another gushed, “I love you for this, Anna!”
But not everyone understood Victoria’s message. “One person wrote a comment saying ‘Oh, I feel bad for you, said no one ever,’ the Rome-based cofounder of Fit Body Guides tells Us. “The other negative comments have been along the lines of saying that my ‘bad’ side is nothing to complain about.”
She continued: “I wasn’t complaining in any way. I’m here saying this is my insecurity. I hope it inspires other women to face their insecurities and overcome them.”
