Danika Brysha is a plus size model who started an incredibly successful meal delivery service. She has been featured in places like People Magazine, InStyle, Shape, & PopSugar. While she is one of the most positive, beautiful people I have ever spoken to, it’s not without a lot of suffering and deeply emotional twists and turns in her backstory. Today we’re talking about the personal transformation that happened along that process.
Danika’s opening up about an eating disorder that led her to some extremely dark places of self-hatred and destructive habits. After hitting rock bottom mentally, emotionally, physically and financially Danika was able to heal all this self-hatred and those destructive habits through a variety of tools that she is now able to share with thousands of women all over the country.
Not only is Danika responsible for her meal delivery service named Model Meals - to help “model” what healthier eating looks like and how healthy food can lead to healing in many different ways, she is also the founder of The Brunch Series, a women’s empowerment event that completed an 8-month tour last month across the US and is now available virtually. Both of these businesses are Danika’s way of giving back, and her work will only continue to help empower more and more women to know that they too can live a life of their dreams.
What we’re talking about
Eating disorders
Surrendering
Finding herself after losing it all
Creating checklists and thinking positive
Self-care checklists
Eating Disorders
“I decided when I was young that if I could just lose weight maybe I could be a model. And if I was a model, I would be happy.”
For most of her life Danika struggled with food and her body. She had eating disorders while growing up, she was bulimic and was constantly dieting. Danika wanted to be a model, so she made weight loss her purpose.
Surrendering
“If we can find ways to surrender how we’re going to reach the dream, the chances are we’re going to reach the dream in a way that we don’t have to hurt ourselves.”
After a decade of putting all her energy into weight loss and following her dream of being a model, she was still roughly the same size and surrendered to the idea that she was going to shift her energy elsewhere. Just a few months after this moment of surrender, Danika was approached by modeling agents who asked if she wanted to do plus size modeling.
Finding Herself After Losing It All
Danika started living a healthier life and eventually lost weight, but she then also lost all her modeling jobs because she wasn’t big enough anymore. She went from being paid 6 figures as model to having nothing at all. Danika dug deep and started focusing on finding her passion and her purpose. She started looking at what she was doing with her time, what she loved and what lit her up. This is when Model Meals was born.
Creating Checklists and Thinking Positively
Danika started making checklists of the things she knew would help her get to the end of the day and not binge eat. She intentionally started changing the way she thought and realized that it totally shaped her life.
Self-care Checklists
This is a tracking or accountability tool that you can use every day to ensure that you are doing your self-care, changing your mindset and that you’re on the right track to your goals.
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