21 Reasons (#20)

Due to some work commitments and Mr and Mrs Swell's now annual sojourn to the South of France (not the bit that was recently on fire, thankfully), the FMS offices are going to be closed this week, next week and the week after. Nevertheless, as always, we don't want to leave you totally FMS-less, so we've lined up 21 Reasons, one daily picture (or two or three), plus one reason why we love doing what we do, as if we were explaining it to one not so convinced of the glory of the muscular female.

Enjoy!

#20
TRANSFORMATION



I was overweight. I had an eating disorder. I was an alcoholic, a drug addict, depressed. Such stories have been told on more than one occasion here on the blog, and countless times in the world of female bodybuilding, enough times to make me think weight training should be a recommended treatment on the NHS for all of the above. But it's not just in extreme cases that the sport transforms lives - bodies and, crucially, minds. Having a muscular physique has definitely changed me on a psychological level, said Dawn Alison in 2010. It has made me confident and gives me a feeling of power and control over myself and how my body looks, feels and functions. Growing up I always seemed to be at war with my body and hating the skin I was in. It has hugely raised my levels of self-esteem, self-worth, and self-love, all of which I had little or none of prior to my involvement with bodybuilding.



Even the prior self-loathing isn't necessary - Theresa Ivancik, Shannon Courtney, Diana Schnaidt to name but three, were conventionally attractive before, in Diana's case enough to have a reasonably successful career in modelling.
Life doesn't have to have been bad before for muscles to make it so much better.