The #1 Key For Getting Started On Your Journey: Approach and Attitude! All of us want to look and feel our best, but does sweating help you develop a sense of self-love? Well, if you ask me, the “Woman with the World’s Deadliest Thighs” (a title given to me by ‘the’ Stan Lee, creator of Marvel Comics), I’d have to say the answer is “sometimes”.  Sure, working out can help us feel good about ourselves, but often that is just a fleeting moment in time. I spent my entire life wanting to have smaller legs. Just as I started to become aware of my body image in the early 90’s, Kate Moss (aka ‘the heroin chic’ model for Calvin Klein) took centre stage for what was considered beautiful. Sadly, I’d wind up spending most of my life chasing a thigh gap and trying to make myself smaller, instead of focusing on real issues. I worked out obsessively and counted every calorie that came close to my mouth. From drug addiction, to becoming hooked on cough syrup because it nulled my appetite, I would do anything to try and feel better about my body and the size of my massive legs. However, no matter how much sweat I poured out onto a treadmill, or how many tears I sobbed from my eyes, I could never “love myself” for longer than a few minutes. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I started to wake up to the stark reality that women are conditioned by the media and advertising to believe that our self-worth is equated to our exterior. And if that exterior wasn’t a blemish, cellulite, dimple, divot, stretch mark, or fat free canvas that looked like a polished stone, we’d never find happiness nor someone to love. Furthermore, we’ve all been conditioned to see other women as our competition- subconsciously programming our minds to believe that females are inherently bitchy, backstabbing, jealous, over-emotional, and weak beings. All of which, couldn’t be further from the truth. It was this awakening that propelled me to create my brand, GRRRL Clothing. As an empowerment activewear line for women that refuses to use traditional sizing, photo manipulation, or push one body type in our ads that is representative of less than 5% of women globally, we motivate our community to truly focus on what the body can do, as opposed to what the body looks like. Having this approach and attitude towards “sweating for self-love”, makes the entire process more enjoyable and obtainable. Historically, women have approached fitness as some kind of punishment. It was something we had to do in order to be accepted. Instead of wanting to get strong and powerful as a goal, we were focused on weight loss and “toning”. Which today, I remind women that “toning” is for printers. Women are born with a pain threshold that is through the roof. For God’s sake we have the ability to push a tiny human out of our bodies and somehow forget about the pain. We have bigger hips for the purpose of childbearing, and therefore, have bigger lower halves. If I had a dollar for every time a man told me he wished he had my legs, we’d all be sitting on my private island right now basking in the sunshine. Instead of approaching exercise as some type of chore, focus on the miraculous things your body is capable of, and what type of goal you’d want to achieve such as feeling less out of breath, more energized, and perhaps far stronger than you’ve ever been before. Sweating absolutely helps strengthen our sense of self-love but changing our mindset around why we’re sweating and who we’re sweating for, is far more important. We’re at a tipping point in human evolution where young girls need to be empowered to be strong, and not fit into whatever the trending box is for women of the current decade.