At the height of her eating disorder, she stopped getting her period, lost her hair and had “dark thoughts.”

Australian body-positive influencer Bella Davis, 27, finally made peace with her body and started gaining weight, though she developed a new problem — fear of having sex with her boyfriend.

In a YouTube video on the digital platform Shera, which is dedicated to empowering women, Davis shared how she came to love and accept herself as her body changed.

Not only does she celebrate herself, she uses her Instagram account, where she has 200,000 followers, to encourage other women to love themselves.

“My partner, who I’d met five years prior, was attracted to my old body – it was the body they were first intimate with. I was aware of my body getting softer,” she said.

“I’d get so in my head wondering if he’d notice my stretch marks or my stomach getting rounder,” she continued. 

Davis’ partner still loved her and thought she was beautiful, but she still struggled with her confidence.

“I got so in my head, I wouldn’t enjoy being intimate because my body had changed,” she said. 

“I’d always struggled with it, even when I was thinner I struggled with feeling confident in the bedroom,” she added.

She thought that since she met her partner when she was thinner that he wouldn’t want to be with her anymore after she became healthier.

“I had many tears, and many times of saying ‘I’m done I don’t want to do this’” she said of the challenging intimacy with her partner. 

She couldn’t believe that her partner found her beautiful — a thought that made her want to run and hide.

“My lightbulb moment was one night in particular when I had once again rejected intimacy. I was crying in the bathroom with the door locked,” she recalled.

“I wanted to be touched, held and wanted to be intimate,” she added.

She said she didn’t feel worthy of being touched — but she knows that everyone is worthy, no matter what they weigh.

“Every body, regardless of weight, is worthy of being touched, held and loved, so you can’t stop yourself from receiving that,” she said. 

Davis detailed her longtime struggles with body image, which began when she was just 16 years old. 

“When I was 16 I entered a bikini body boot camp that was for 12 weeks,” she explained.

“Everyone there was around my mom’s age – 30s, 40s, and 50s – and I almost felt like I had to prove that I could lose the most amount of weight.”

That’s when her eating disorder started and she began overexercising and would wake up at 5 a.m. before school to go on runs.

 “I developed disordered eating without even knowing. I was obsessed with exercise and making myself smaller — it was awful,” she said. 

“From 16 to 21 I really struggled, until I finally realized what was going on and got help,” she said.

“One of my friends was quite concerned because she had never experienced body confidence issues and I thought everyone had,” she added. 

Davis said she lived with her dad at the time and he didn’t know how to help her.

When she was 21, Bella discovered she might have an eating disorder when she was Googling her symptoms. 

“I remember finding it online and thinking ‘Oh my god I think I have that.’ I then tried to get help from a doctor and a psychologist to try and understand what was going on,” she said. 

That’s when she went into recovery. Then in 2020 during the pandemic, Davis stopped exercising to give her body a break.

“I actually found peace with my body. For once in my entire life I was listening to what my body wanted, and was eating for joy,” she said.

And in 2021, her period returned and her hair grew back. She still sometimes had negative thoughts about her body, but she was able to manage them better.

“I realized I can treat my body kindly and healthy,” she said.

Now she shares photos of her body to encourage other women to feel comfortable in their skin and embrace everything about themselves including body hair.

“I also speak about my body hair, which I used to be so uncomfortable with. I wanted to share my journey, embracing my body, and just felt like I wanted to use Instagram like a diary, “ she said.

“I don’t have to love my body every second of every day, but it keeps me alive, allows me to move, dance, and do loads of things,” she added. 

She is normalizing all of the changes in her body and feels worthy of all the love she receives.

“We don’t have flaws or imperfections, hip dips, stretch marks, rolls, are just normal features of a body simply existing. You only have one life in this body, and that life is not meant to be spent criticizing your body,” she said. 

If you or someone you love is struggling with an eating disorder, you can get help. Call the National Eating Disorder Association helpline at (800) 931-2237 or visit nationaleatingdisorders.org.