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In this episode of the "I Come First" podcast, our host, Amie Barsky, has a transformative conversation with women's confidence coach, Bek Antonucci, surrounding topics of body image, self-love, and radical self-expression. Bek shares her journey of overcoming societal pressures and personal challenges, including a transformative experience with a stigmatized health condition, and embracing self-acceptance and empowerment. 

The conversation dissects the impact of childhood experiences on body perception, the importance of self-awareness, and the power of vulnerability. Together, they explore how women can reclaim their narratives and find confidence through self-expression and personal growth. This episode offers practical tools and inspiring stories so that you can challenge limiting beliefs and embrace your unique selves.

What We Explored This Episode

03:11 Breaking Free from Limiting Beliefs

07:35 Reclaiming Feminine Identity

09:46 Navigating Aging with Grace and Acceptance

17:59 The Journey to Body Confidence and Self-Worth

19:42 Journey to Self-Acceptance and Vulnerability

24:23 Personal Journey of Self-Discovery

25:45 The Long Game of True Health

28:08 Future of Body Positivity and Self-Expression

Memorable Quotes

"I know that when I'm slimmer, women will compliment me. I know that when I have a little bit more juice on me, men will love it more. But the misconception is that we're doing it for someone else."

"The more I did this work, the less I reached for food to band-aid any kind of emotion. It's about finding healthier ways to cope with emotions and understanding the role food plays in our lives."

"As women, some of us are so habitual in checking in the mirror, making sure that we look okay, ensuring the fitness routine is on, eating a certain way, and checking for changes or fluctuations. Get curious about where this drive and the need for it came from"

Connect with Bek

Bek’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bekantonucci/?hl=en 

Bek’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@bekantonucci 

Bek’s Spoify - https://open.spotify.com/show/2EteUkpcHX7jcCV1f5wGWh?si=vt_dhgEaRUCErxuKic86vw

Connect With Amie

Website: https://amiebarsky.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amie-barsky/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amiebarskycoaching/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AmieBarsky?sub_confirmation=1

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https://www.amiebarsky.com/free-breathwork

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I feel as women, some of us are so habitual in the checking in the mirror, looking in the mirror, making sure that we look okay, making sure the fitness routine is on, eating a certain way, looking and checking for something changes, fluctuations, having an awareness around the physical act of what we're doing, and also the words that we are speaking. That's super powerful and actually getting curious about where it came from. Because, yes, we want to look good. I believe as women, we do want to look good, and we deserve to look and feel good. But getting curious about where this drive and this need for it came from, that's a super powerful approach to take.

Hello, hello, and welcome to the I come first podcast, where putting yourself first is not selfish, it's self care. And self care is essential. Yes, you heard me right. Here we are flipping the script, and I'm gonna show you how. I'm your host, Amie Barsky, and I'm so excited you're here. If you're tired of feeling overworked and underappreciated, this is a sanctuary where I'll share my entire journey as a guide to help you break through your patterns, limiting beliefs and societal pressures to be perfect. These juicy weekly conversations with myself and guest experts will be filled with practical tools, advice, inspiring stories, and unstoppable energy. So if you're ready, then buckle up. It's time to ignite your inner fire and make I come first your new daily mantra. Welcome back to I come first. Today we're unraveling the complexities of body image, self love, and radical self expression. It's Amie Barsky here, and I'm so thrilled to welcome my dear friend and colleague Beck Antonucci onto the show. Beck is a trailblazing women's confidence coach who's rewriting the rules when it comes to self acceptance. This episode will have you challenge those pesky voices in your head, reclaim your narrative, and unlock the transformative power of embracing your own divine uniqueness. Our conversation will inspire you for sure, possibly even shock you, making you rethink everything you thought you knew already around mental, physical, and emotional health, around confidence and radical self expression. Join us on a journey that could change the way you see yourself in the mirror every single day and the way you see the world around you. Let's welcome Beck into the room. And before we jump into today's episode, here is a quick and exciting announcement. All right, Beck Antonucci is here with us today, and I am very excited about this potent conversation we're about to have. And Beck, will you please before we get started on that, introduce yourself.

Hello, everyone. Hi, Amie. I'm so happy to be here with you bright and early from Bali. My name is Becca Antonucci. I am a woman's confidence coach and professional podcaster. So I support women to break free from any limiting beliefs that are really holding them back from living their fullest, most abundant and expressed life, and support them to be able to take really powerful and empowered and aligned steps forward into creating the life that they know that they were actually here to live.

So good. And speaking of limiting beliefs, I would really love to dive into a conversation that you and I were personally having not that long ago around body image and around the pressure as a woman to stay Fitzhe, stay thin, look good, stay young, all the things. And so my first question to you, Beck, is, how can women effectively challenge and reframe these negative thoughts, these limiting beliefs, specifically about their bodies, especially when it's ingrained in us from years of societal conditioning?

Yeah, great question. I think, number one, having an awareness that we do it in the first place and noticing the frequency at which this pattern is playing out, I feel as women, some of us are so, so habitual in the checking in the mirror, looking in the mirror, making sure that we look okay, making sure the fitness routine is on, eating a certain way, looking and checking for something changes, fluctuations, having an awareness around the physical act of what we're doing, and also the words that we are speaking, that's super powerful. And number two, which is a lot deeper awareness is great. First step two is actually getting curious about where it came from, because, yes, we want to look good. I believe as women, we do want to look good, and we deserve to look and feel good. But getting curious about where this drive and this need for it came from, that's a super powerful approach to take.

I love that. And I totally agree with the insight to look deeper, because I know for myself, you know, from a very young age, I had made a promise to myself to always have a flat stomach, and that's absurd as a 1011 year old, but because I was in an experience at the beach with my mom and some friends, and my mom has always been a heavier set woman. It's just how she's built. She's never been into athletics or fitness or healthy eating. And one of my friends had commented, hey, my God, look at Amie's mom. How fat? Wow, she's so fat. And I went home and I was like, oh, my gosh. Well, if I get fat, I won't fit in. I won't belong. I won't feel love. They won't accept me anymore. And that was so much pressure that I put on myself. And so that, for me, was an insight to my body image. Dysmorphia. And I agree with you. Like, I still want to look good, like, I want to feel good, but I do it for me now. I don't do it for somebody else. I don't do it for the sake of belonging or fitting in anymore.

Yeah, I love that. I had a similar experience. Yours was maybe your stomach that's played out. Mine was my arms. I started drinking at age 18 when we finished high school. And I had a male best friend and he's just a boy that tells his female best friend the things that you probably wouldn't word the way that you word them. And he turns to me and goes, oh, I was talking to mum and she said, your arms got fat or your arms got chubby. This thing about my arms stayed with me forever because also I have a naturally athletic body. So for me it's either I do exercise and they look quite muscly, and then I would get insecure about that, or I don't do exercise and they would look, in my 18 year old's eyes, chubby. Like my best friend Josh from high school told me. And this stayed with me. Even now, I still notice. As much as I really love boxing and it's one of my favorite workouts to do. A part of why I love boxing so much is I love how it makes my arms look. It's so deep.

I hear that. I hear that. I so relate. There was a point in my life where I was always getting complimented on my own. And then I got a little insecure about. I was like, oh, my gosh. And I started wearing less tank tops and things like that. Because as a competitive gymnast, as a professional dancer, most of my life, you know, we have this athletic build and, you know, pros and cons to all of it.

It's kind of like when you mentioned about the twelve year old, the same thing showed up with me for body, but also for money. My dad said something to me about money when I was twelve in the hallway of my house and he gave me $30 and I was meant to come home with change, but he didn't tell me to bring him change. So I spent the full 30. And when I came home, he was the hallway with me and he asked me where his change was and I was like, I don't have any. My girlfriend Steph and I went out playing, and we were like, let's spend it all. We're kids. We're like, we got $30. Let's buy lollies. And so then he told me off and he said to me, your mother would never spend $30 on herself. And in that moment, the same way you made that promise to yourself about your stomach, I made this promise to myself of, I'll never have a man ever be able to tell me what I can and can't do with my money, and I will never have a man tell me that my mum wouldn't be able to spend $30 on herself. And so it's created something healthy because I'm a great and high achieving woman that loves to create a lot of money. However, it's interesting to notice where it comes from. And when I unpack it all the way back, it comes back from there.

So deep and so, really, the point of all of this is it can come in any area of life. It's what we are surrounded with in our environments as children, you know, as little girls. We see and we watch and we observe and we're sponges. We're just soaking it all up. And in those moments, we're very vulnerable to go, oh, well, this is just the way it is, you know, this is the way it's supposed to be. And the truth of the matter is, the world is changing. Women are changing. We've swung the pendulum one way. Now we're coming back to a place of, I feel like reconnecting with our feminine, our essence, our softness, our vulnerability, our bodies, our image, just our expression in life. And we get to really own that from this adult body and understand, like you said, the awareness. Oh, here I have this awareness, and now I have choice, because now I have this awareness, I have this knowledge, and I've done the inner work in the healing. And so when we're reclaiming this narrative of our bodies back from the external influences, how would you use a powerful tool for confidence and self expression around that?

I love powerful questions like the question of who is doing the doing. Like, is it your twelve year old on the beach that is wanting to be healthy, wanting to be fit, wanting to have the flat stomach? Or is it Amie, the woman who feels worthy because both can play out in our current reality? Is it my twelve year old? Is it my twelve year old with my body? Is it my 18 year old with my arms? Is it my twelve year old with my money? That's a great question. When it comes to body image, even a five minute, like, starting really simple, a five minute morning mirror practice where you actually look and receive yourself, because some women won't actually look at themselves in their eyes. And you can unpack that and you can edge that into a bigger process. You can take your clothes off if you're comfortable with that, you can take your clothes off, and you can do some kind of embodied movement. Like, for me, for a long time, I would brush my teeth and tell myself, just look at yourself in the eyes while you're brushing your teeth, and I would want to look away. I found it so challenging just to be with myself. And then I was walking around my life screaming like, I want people to see me and realizing if I had this body, then I felt safe with people seeing the body, but still not fully safe with them seeing me. So starting with the self, if it's just eyes to begin with, then the body, then the stripping away the clothes, then the movement. That's kind of the four steps that I would invite you into taking to really be with yourself.

Absolutely. These are really great and powerful tools and something I've used with myself, specifically around where I'm Athena in my own life, as a 51 year old woman who's experiencing the transition between having perimenopause to menopause and the body changing and the cellulite happening and the wrinkles and all the things that are coming with age. And damn if I'm not doing my damnedest to age gracefully and coming to a place of acceptance of, like, okay, I know that doing weightlifting is going to help more with my bone density and my muscle mass. At this age, where I wasn't that much of a weightlifter before, I'm definitely adding that into my regimen now, you know, more and more frequently. And I'm also doing some of those practices going, okay, I also get to accept where I am and use my power of choice and make sure it's coming in a way that's as healthy as possible.

Yeah, I mean, I thought I was in a really great place with it, and it's such a conflict, and I think a lot of women will resonate with this, and maybe you will when you do have a high value for health. And then that high value for health means that you make a lot of healthy choices. You drink the healthy water, I drink the healthy water. I eat the healthy food. I move my body every single day. I do the cold plunge. I swim in the ocean, and I actually love to do all of those things, but I also do love the way that it makes my body look. And then I had a freak injury recently where I thought I broke my foot. I had soft tissue damage. And this huge fear arose within me that I didn't expect to happen, of how it would impact the appearance of my body if I couldn't work out the way that I do. And as that was happening, I thought to myself, I'm gonna fall pregnant in three years, and there's gonna be a complete surrender of control. And my cousin, she was the first of our generation to fall pregnant, and she's very active. And she just said, falling pregnant, Washington so hard. Because she goes to me, my whole life, I've been conditioned not to put on weight. And my whole life, she had a real battle with food when she was a little girl. She was an obese little girl. So her body image has been a huge part of her journey. And she said, Rebecca, to gain weight, I know that you are, and there's nothing that you can do to stop it. You can't change your eating. You can't stop it. You can't exercise more. You can stay healthy, but you just have to surrender to the fact that for the next nine months, this is happening. And I just feel that that will be such an interesting experience for me to go through.

That is another level of pressure as a woman when there is a pregnancy and when you're nurturing this other life inside of you. Now, I haven't had children, so I don't know the experience. And there's a part of me that feels similar that, my gosh, what would that have been like for me if I were to get pregnant and gain all this weight in all the things? And there's a part of me that would be like, wow, that'd be a really good excuse. However, I think in retrospect, like, wow, the aftermath of that, I know wouldn't be healthy. And, of course, I would want the baby to be as healthy as possible, so I'd probably, you know, be pretty mindful of what I put in my body.

Yeah, I mean, well, I'm really honest with people about the experiences that I go through. I'm praying that I don't have wild cravings. My mum, when she was pregnant, she just craved pickles, jarred piggles. So I'm like, I'm good with that. Let's go. But my friend was asking me, he goes, why was this such a triggering experience for you, for you to hurt your foot? And what would happen if you gained weight? Wouldn't you just gain weight? And I'm like, yes. And he goes, but what would happen once you gain weight? Couldn't you just be happy with yourself like that? I'm like, no. And he said, why? And I said to him, I'd just be so disappointed in myself. I disappointed in myself that I made choices that weren't good for me, that had me feeling that way. That's just what comes up for me of it's such a double edged sword, because I know how good feeling, healthy feel. Cause I fluctuated. I know you guys work in pounds. We work in kilos. 20 kilos is quite a lot. I'm not a tall woman, and so I've gone from, like, almost anorexic and I was severely bulimic for almost ten years to gaining 20 kilos to be up to 70, which isn't a huge woman. However, it's subjective based on your own beliefs of self. So those fluctuations for ten years, yo yo dieting, restrictive dieting, fitness competitions, that was a lot for my body to handle. But to get me the 20 kilos less was too much. But also the 20 kilos more is also too much for my body. And the choices that I had to make to gain that, like, the compulsive food eating, they were behaviors that weren't healthy either.

I can really relate to that. When I was in my deep, dark depression, I was in a very tumultuous marriage. I was in confusion of my life with my career. Like, everything was unsettled. And Ben and Jerry were my daily date nights. Like, seriously, a pint a day. Like, I was an emotional eater. And I would hide it. Like, I would never do it in front of my husband at the time. I would wait till he leaves, and I'd sit down and I would, you know, scarf it up and just cry my eyes out. And that was probably the heaviest I've ever weighed. At five four, it was 125 pounds. And for me, for someone who's been lean and healthy and all of that, that's like, you know, pudgy and out of shape. And when I had a little belly and I had little pooch and I had little back, what do they call those? The little rolls in the back? And I was really feeling and looking at myself and getting even more depressed about it, thinking, well, there's nothing I can do about it. And then, you know, there came a time in my life wherever I decided to change everything. But I remember those moments of just feeling so discouraged about life, about my health, about everything. And it was not a fun time at all. And I'm so glad that doing the inner work has allowed me to heal all those parts of me that I was just self beating up. And the inner critic was super loud and the fuck up. You messed your whole life up. Now what are you gonna do?

I eat from pleasure. I actually love food. I love chocolate. I love making sure that I enjoy every meal that I ate. I had a partner once, and he didn't know me when I had an eating disorder, and we loved eating together. He was like, it's so weird to think about you with an eating disorder. And I was like, why? He goes, because you love food. But I had so much shame around owning food, loving food, being seen to be enjoying food. If you saw me enjoying food, I would feel shame and embarrassment. I had this almost pride of restricting my food, only eating green salads and green vegetables and chicken. The more I did this work, the less I reached for food to band aid any kind of emotion. And I also think because we attached the weight gain to a painful experience, also drenched in shame, like eating the pint every night when your husband doesn't know. Like, I would eat a jar of nutella and I would eat the whole thing, go and replace it because it would be in my parents pantry, eat the replaced jar and have to replace that jar, like a whole 700 grams jar of nutella. But however, I'm like, if I was traveling with my partner, who I was in love with, and we were in Italy and we were eating the pasta and drinking the wine and having the antipasti and the gelato, and then we were doing the walking, but we still gained a bit of weight. We got back from three month trip and we're like, well, we put on a bit of weight, but we had the best time. I think I would look in the mirror and see a different sized woman in comparison to someone that was hiding away in a cupboard eating a jar of nutella or a pint of ice cream, not wanting anyone to know.

So true. My relationship with food today is much different. Like yourself, I definitely enjoy it. Now, I'm not. I wouldn't call myself a foodie because my life here, in my daily life, I eat fairly, fairly clean on the daily. And it's when I go out to dinner, it's when I go out and enjoy a night out, that's when I will still, you know, choose something good. Because I just love healthy food primarily. I'm not a big pasta person. I'm not a big carby person. I just never have. But I definitely enjoy desserts, that is for dang sure. Ice cream is my favorite food in the entire world. I will name it, I will claim it without any shame or guilt. These days. I have a very good relationship with food now. I do enjoy chocolate as well, and I do try and pick choices that are better for me, and I do indulge because I just want to enjoy my life at the same time. And I think in the end, it's like, at the cost of what am I costing myself? Joy and pleasure and simply exciting, simple things in life. Like the tiny things in life that I get to enjoy. I'll just share a quick story when I go back home to see my family. Custard is the thing. So it's like frozen custard. It looks like the swirl on a cone. And the way they make east coast custard is like nowhere else in the entire world. It's just made out of, like, cream and egg. And I don't even know what it's in it, but it is absolutely delicious. And I full of fat and sugar and all the things, and it's full of pure joy for me. And my sister will laugh at me because I'll go almost every day. If I'm there for five days, I'm like, I get five days at custard. And sometimes I'll go overboard a little bit. And again, I'm just enjoying my life. If I'm on the east coast for five days out of the entire year, then I'm okay with that. What would you say is your most unexpected way? You've seen body acceptance transform women's overall confidence and maybe even their life trajectory.

I'm going to say something really wild right now, but for me and a lot of women that I've worked with getting her, that was. I feel that body confidence has not come. And feeling worthy from our appearance has been something that women who resonate with my message have really fought for. And it hasn't been creating something healthy for their lives. And it's been something really hard to disconnect from because, you know, we're taught by the external world that money makes you good. A beautiful body makes you good and valuable. The car, the handbags, the shoes, everything outside of us makes us good and valuable. And we strive for all of these different things in Instagram and Instagram following, and we keep working towards something, and none of those things are actually working. And it's actually creating a lot of suffering in our lives. A lot of women who have come to me didn't know what personal development is, until they saw me doing it, a lot of women come to me, and they're like, I don't know what you're doing, but I want to do what you're doing, because I've tried everything else, and none of those things are working. And sometimes the breaking point has to get so painful for us to actually do something drastically different. And so for me, it was getting herpes. And for a lot of women who follow my journey, it was that because then the pain became so great. And the shame of hiding away in the freezer, eating the tub of Ben and Jerry's every night, almost felt bearable in comparison to doing something about it. But the shame of now knowing that I carried a stigmatized virus I didn't want anyone to know about, that I could never get rid of that. I could never stop eating the ice cream one day, could never get rid of this thing. That was the inner work journey that healed my body image to the degree that it has, that supported so many of my clients, to then create deep love and acceptance for themselves as well.

And sometimes, you know, we assume when it comes to the unexpected that it might be a big trauma in our lives, and it could be big or small. It's not measurable in our bodies.

For me and for a lot of women, that resonate with what I've gone through. Walking into a doctor's office thinking of one woman and walking out grieving an STI free version of you and now having this whole life in your mind that's forever different. That was big. Capital T. Acute trauma.

And, you know, these experiences that we go through that can change so much in our entire lives. Would it be fair to say that obviously, in the moment of the diagnosis and the learning of this now, looking at it in hindsight, a blessing again.

For me, I say the best thing that's ever happened to me, like, at the time, felt like the worst. I thought it was life ending. I was only 25. I didn't have any tools, any resources. I didn't have anyone that I believed that I could trust. My safety felt like it was ripped from me. I had no idea that I felt unsafe. I just felt like there was nowhere that I felt like I could belong and that I could share. But I didn't understand what the nervous system was. I didn't understand where my fears of rejection came from. So to be a young woman, I know 25 is still 25, but to be 25 without resources, I was, like, flying blind in a world where no one was talking about the kind of conversations we all have now. Didn't know what vulnerability was. I didn't know that truth and vulnerability creates acceptance. And now I just all of a sudden was walking around feeling like, no one's going to love me, no one's going to accept me, a man's not going to choose me. I thought all I had was my body, and now that's been ripped from me. So it was really hard to be with. Really hard. But now I'm like, best thing ever. So glad that God gave that to me. Thank you.

Yeah. Because of what I'm hearing is, in all of that, you really came to a huge place, place of self acceptance of everything, full ownership of your entire life, and being able to do that deeper work and being able to do the deeper understanding, to tap into your vulnerability, to tap into your feminine, to tap into your ownership of the power of choice, the power of money, and the power of acceptance, the power of emotions and the power. It's all powerful stuff. Not from an egoic away, but from a true essence of like, whoa, this is who I get to be in the world. Full expression means I give less fucks about what other people think. It's not to say that we're not ever affected because we're still human, but it's a matter of like, okay, you know what? It's okay if you think that way. I'm okay with that, because I know who I am. I know who I am. As a woman in the world who has done work, who has seen a lot within ourselves to go, I accept me as I am.

That's a courageous path to walk. I mean, I remember when it happened, I was crying on the beach to God being like, why? Why me? And I just heard a voice saying, Rebecca Antonucci, when are you going to learn how to love yourself from within? And that was how I knew that this was as much as I was like, I hate that this is happening to me. I would trade shoes with anyone. And literally, that's how painful it felt to think that I would trade shoes with anyone on the planet. And I still get DM's now of women saying, I would take a car crash, I would be in a wheelchair. I'm like, no, you wouldn't. You really wouldn't. They're like, no, I really believe that to be true. I would trade anything rather than to have this experience. And I get it because I was once there. But having that connection with God and hearing that, I was like, really? This is what I had to go through to get to the part within. But my protection was so strong, and I was so committed to the body, was going to be the path that that had to happen for me to be able to actually feel safe enough to go within. Because I was so cracked, there was nowhere else to go.

And sometimes that's exactly what's needed when there's nowhere else to go. It's just like, this is it. This is the thing. This is the thing that's gonna knock me into the next evolution of my life. And that thing could be divorced. That thing could be a loss of our death of a loved one. That thing could be a rape experience. That thing could be a horrific car accident. That thing could be herpes. That thing could be fill in the blank with whatever that thing is for people out there who are going through something, and we do, we feel like it is the worst thing in the entire world that could ever happen.

Yeah.

And that we are completely broken and shattered. And the beauty of it is, as humans, we are resilient. As women, we are so resilient.

Yeah

So thank you for sharing all of that. I really appreciate it. I was wondering, what's the most damaging misconception about thinness or fitness or body image that hold women back from fully expressing themselves?

I think doing it for someone else. Like, I know that when I'm slimmer, women will compliment me. I know that when I have a little bit more juice on me, men will love it more. And when I'm in my stuff, people will say, oh, you know, men like you bigger. They don't like you. So fitness and strong and athletic. And I think it really shouldn't actually matter. All the compliments from the women, great. All the compliments from the men, great. The misconception is, like, that we're doing it for someone else, because ultimately, it's how I wake up and feel within myself. People said to me, men love you with five kilos, stop working out so much. Men love you, blah, blah, blah. I know that I'm beautiful. I don't think I'm ever not gonna get some attention from a man. I'm not doing it for him. It's how I feel. Wake up up. So that I think, is really loud for me.

Yeah. And that to be doing it for ourselves is absolutely priceless. I remember there was a moment in my life, I don't know how many years ago. My guess would be about six or seven years ago. I was really, really thin, and I was dieting hard for a particular photo shoot because I was a fitness model at the time and all the things. And so externally I was getting lots of compliments and, oh, you look great. But my internal dialogue, my internal energy was so in a state of depression, in a state of confusion, a state of like, insecurity after insecurity. I mean, it was harsh talk inside. Even though the external was validating, it didn't put a smile on my face, to be honest. I put the fake smile on. Thank you, thank you. Oh, you're so sweet. You know, but it wasn't fulfilling me at all. It was when I really looked at the truth of what was happening for me. I was just really healing from a lot of masculine wounding, healing from rape experience that had come back up in my mind, that was hidden in my subconscious for 20 something years. Like all this stuff was coming forward and I was like, who the fuck am I? It was so confusing. And very much a moment of exploring my internal landscape and putting on a little bit of weight after that actually felt good. It felt good to go, mmm, I can relax now. I can actually just be myself and not feel so strict and so rigid in my daily patterns of, you know, you need to have a certain image out there in the world, you know, and that pressure of society.

Yeah, I mean, I'm the same. I came back to Bali and I said to myself, because in Bali you can work out for one, two, 3 hours a day and still have a big work day and be present to life. And there's a part of me that loves how my body looks on the other side of two to 3 hours of working out. And I know that I'm going to have a baby in three years and I know that I'm going to have a partner soon and it's not going to be realistic to work out for more than 75 minutes in a day. And so on the days I'm like, oh, I could definitely fit another one in. I'm like, just a healthy amount. Which means that my body doesn't look like the way that my body looks when I work out two to 3 hours, seven times a week. And I got to be okay with that because I really believe in the long vision and the long game and any, any kind of short term results that isn't sustainable for my life actually doesn't feel good because I know it's going to go. At some point I get to be back in that relationship of working towards what true health really means to me. And that's maybe a really great question if anyone stayed to the end that they get to sit with because I can't define what true health is for you. Just like everyone telling you when you're fake smiling, saying, thank you, thank you. Like, this isn't true health, but it might look externally to someone else who doesn't know what's going on internally. So when I'm working out two to 3 hours a day, everyone's like, you're so ripped. I'm like, thank you. But is that my true health? Or am I walking around saying, this isn't sustainable? Rebecca.

Yeah. I'll speak for myself as a professional dancer for many years, as a competitive gymnast. My body, now, there's stuff coming up that I'm like, ugh. You know, my spine, my hips, and all of the things. So really being mindful of how we move our bodies and what's going to actually give us the longevity and the vitality that we truly desire, you know, in the long game, instead of playing the short, quick game, which most of us are playing, self included at times in my life. Right.

I mean, I have gone to the gym consistently since I was 18, so I wouldn't say it's too short. But there's also other elements. Like, in Bali, it's fun. In Bali, it's bright and vibrant. In Bali, there's community. It's like, I don't go to a nightclub. It's like loud music. It pumps me up. Like, I have a really good time as well. So there's other aspects to it, the social aspect that contribute to the joy of doing the thing. But for me now, I just continue to check in. Like, is this a healthy choice? Is this coming from my value for health, or is this coming from my desire for my aesthetic to look a certain way, and then I'll know what choice to make.

Exactly. Exactly. And I love that it's the daily check in. What do I need right now? What's. What feels good for my body right now? So, speaking of visions and the future, how do you envision the future of body positivity? And what roles does self expression play in shaping that movement?

Yeah, I think just making sure that you're true to yourself and loving yourself exactly the way that you are. I don't enjoy being a part of any kind of movement. Like, body positivity is my thing. It's, like, not definitely a past version of myself, but I really believe that humans being super true to themselves and being willing to express all of themselves is such a part of feeling good in your body because then you feel at home within yourself, regardless of what.

Your house looks like I love that so much. Because the truth of the matter is we want to be around. I want to be around people who feel good energetically, you know, who are vibrant and add value to my life. And I add value to their lives. So their shape, their size, their skin color, their eye color, their hair, it doesn't matter to, to me at this point in my life, that is the least important part. It's how are you as a human being? How do you show up powerfully for yourself? How are you leading your own life and infusing when it comes to communities and connections and quality time with people? Those are the things that I cherish. Now, are there any last words you want to share before we bring our conversation to a close?

Oh, I always usually tell podcasts when they ask me this, for the person to ask, regardless of what this brought up within you, whether it was around body image or even the conversations around a capital t trauma happening and feeling like everything's been ripped from you, asking yourself the question of what is it that I'm avoiding? I feel like that will be really telling about whatever it is that's showing up in your life right now.

I love that. I love that. And how can people reach you back?

You can come over and find me on Instagram over at becantinucci, and I'm the one that responds there. So come over, have a place, send me a hello, and we'll have a chat.

Amazing. I love that. And I said it before and I'll say it again, please. My intention here as a podcaster, to have epic humans on this interviewing and connecting with and sharing is not to use it as a television, but to use it as a telephone. Like actually connect with Beck, get with her, hang out with her on Instagram, have conversations, have conversations with me. Come in to our dm's and share what's going on in your life and know that you're not alone. Know that you get to be held and seen and heard and celebrated for whatever the heck it is. That, to me, is what I'm up to and what Beck's up to. Be of service the best we can. So please know in the end that you are so loved and you matter. You matter in the world. All right, Beck, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for bringing your love, your light, your stories, and your vibrancy. I appreciate you. Until next time, have a beautiful day.

Bye.

Thanks for tuning into today's episode. I know your time is valuable, and I'm so grateful that we get a chance to share this space together. If you're wanting more from myself or any of my guests right now, I am a hell yes to that. I love your enthusiasm so let's make it happen. Simply check out the links in the show notes for all the information on the latest offerings, programs and possibilities to connect outside the space. Or feel free to send me a DM on Instagram. Amiebarskycoaching and of course if you have any reflections or feedback I am all ears. Also, if you feel this episodes supported you will you please leave a rating and a review. Your reviews really help people to discover the show and if you know of anyone you feel would benefit from this podcast please pass it along. A special thanks to my parents for always watching over me and for my team at fullcast for making this show possible. I can't wait to be back in your ears next week. Trust me, you won't want to miss this next episode load.