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On her new website, Let's Be Game Changers, Essena is sharing a new video highlighting the dangerous measures she took to achieve a body deemed "perfect" by society's standards. In the video, she talks about how she would save pictures of fitness models she considered beautiful as a reminder of the look she wanted to achieve. "From a young age, I had this idea that to love myself meant to look like these girls," she explains. Now, she's realized that, though she was able to reach these standards of beauty, it wasn't through healthy means.

Essena is also making a point to explain how she shouldn't be the fitspiration some of her followers saw her as, that she wasn't an inspiration for being fit or healthy, just "an inspiration for meeting society's impossible standards for women," calling her excessive exorcise and extreme dieting "not inspirational."

"Being as slim and as toned as I was in the picture is not creating world change," she says. "It's [just] creating other people to want to be as slim and toned as I am."

Watch the whole video below.

You're My Inspiration from Essena O'Neill on Vimeo.

We're so glad Essena has learned how to stand up to all the body expectations she felt restricted by, and that she's encouraging girls all over to learn how to be happy, healthy and comfortable in their skin.

Are you following Essena's new blog? What lessons has she taught you?

Photo and video credit: Essena O'Neil

by Ilana Bernstein | 2/1/2016