Gabourey Sidibe used to regard her body as "an enemy".
Gabourey Sidibe
The 'Empire' actress secretly underwent bariatric surgery last year after trying for over a decade to shed the pounds and though she feels like she has "won" her battle, she feels like she has "wasted" a lot of time being "mad" at herself instead of treating herself kindly.
She said: "I think I saw my body as being outside of myself; it was like an enemy, beside me not in me. And now I've won.
"I wish I hadn't wasted so much time being mad at it. Because if I'd started treating it better sooner, I wouldn't have spent so many years hating myself, I wouldn't have allowed that negative energy to be around me.
"Life is really, truly all about choices and decisions. I wish I'd made the choice to love my body sooner. But I finally have."
While the 33-year-old actress thinks she is "beautiful", she will never truly believe trhat other people share that opinion as she's spent so long being told she is "ugly".
She told People magazine: "It's kind of sad, but I'll never quite be convinced that anybody that really is outside of my tribe thinks I'm beautiful. Not because I don't think I'm beautiful -- because I do.
"I'm so beautiful, because I look like my mom, and I look like my dad, and they're beautiful. So the mask just is there for me to be beautiful.
"Other than my very obvious beautiful f***ing features, like my cheekbones, my skin-tone? Get out of here. Gorgeous!
"My entire life, I have been conditioned to believe that I was ugly, from everybody outside of my tribe -- from people that are inside of my tribe, at that."
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