Jan Shepherd has a powerful blog entry in the Huffington Post this week that will inspire anyone who knows about negative self image and yo-yo dieting. In a post titled “My Relationship with Food: A Reflection of Self,” she talks about how she gave up self-hatred for being fat, got off the dieting treadmill and found inspiration for living a richer life.

“Instead of focusing on what I was putting inside of me, I began to focus on, with acceptance, what was already worthwhile about me,” she writes. “I began to make real and lasting progress by concentrating on my core potential. It was at that point that I could fully appreciate that the before picture had little to do with food, and the after picture, little to do with dieting. It mostly had to do with my inaccurate and cruel self-evaluation.”

Having gone from size 2 to 32 in her lifetime, her inspiring story offers encouragement for finding your healthy weight after you find your emotionally and spiritually healthy self. Her awesome before and after photos show that her approach worked for her!

Read the whole story here. Visit Jan’s website.