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MY STORY
Who am I & why can I help you?
The name's Vicki Reckless (yes, it is my real name hehe) & I am a Curvy Confidence Coach helping creative females embrace their uniqueness and build badass confidence to go for their goals.
I grew up in the performing industry, I would stare at myself in the mirror week in & week out, comparing my body to others and even though at the time I was slim, I had it wired in my brain that I wasn’t skinny enough. I constantly felt like there was some part of me that needed to change. I remember on numerous occasions where I would think to myself ‘Oh if I just don’t eat my lunch today then I will look better tomorrow’. My hips were too wide, my legs were too chunky, my thighs touched, my boobs were too big, my arms were too wide. The voices in my head were always battling against me.
I then went off to university where I felt the need to make ‘friends for life’, because for some reason that is how university was branded to me. I spent first year so worried about who my ‘friends for life’ would be that I ended up not making that many real friends at all. I would go down to the dining hall with my flatmates and not be able to eat because I was feeling so anxious about what others thought of me and if I was making a good impression. I would look around the hall to see who I could potentially make friends with or to compare my friendships with how close the group next to me seemed.
It was at university that my obsession with outside validation really begun as well. I had always compared myself to others, but at university my focus shifted to ‘finding the love of my life as well as friends for life’. I had heard stories about lovers meeting in first year and then returning to be proposed to near the halls where they met. Now being the hopeless romantic that I am, of course I believed the same would happen for me.
So, every night out I dressed to impress, got really really drunk because I thought I needed to be drunk to make friends. Any hint of male attention made me feel worthy and loved, but when it didn’t work out my self worth was crushed to the floor every single time. I posted online using filters to make everything look perfect and aesthetically pleasing. I was constantly checking who had viewed my story, how many likes I had, who had liked my post, who hadn’t liked my post etc etc.
Fast forward to lockdown, I gained quite a lot of weight and when I first noticed the stretch marks on my hips it physically made me feel sick. I had failed. I felt that I was no longer attractive, I couldn’t fit into many of my trousers, I felt that my stomach looked weird in leggings. I started to hide behind baggy t-shirts and jumpers, just until I lost the weight, I would tell myself.
Looking back on it now, gaining weight was the single best thing that has ever happened to me.
While it brought up loads of feelings of self hatred, disgust & sadness; it also allowed me to work through it all to become the most confident body lovin’ badass I have ever been.
I remember finding lots of body confident influencers on Tiktok like Spencer Barbosa, Olivia Kirby and May Ridts & I thought to myself maybe there is a way that I can be as confident & body positive as them?
When I was at my lowest, crying in my room after finding yet another new stretch mark, I knew it was time to make a change. I enrolled in a guided self development course which helped me understand why I thought the way I did about my body and also how to rewire my thoughts.
Slowly but surely I gained the confidence to uncover my body again, to find clothing that truly made me feel like myself and I began sharing my journey on tiktok. It wasn’t an overnight thing, but by posting my body online, seeing women resonate with my feelings, saying they were so happy to see a body exactly like theirs, it inspired me to carry on building the relationship I now have with myself.
I can confidently say now that I love every inch of myself, my stretch marks, lumps, bumps, jiggly bits and all.
I now walk into social situations with confidence, not comparing myself to everyone in the room, but instead hyping others up and being my own biggest cheerleader in the process. Because after all, other women are our allies not our enemies.
I have manifested my dream relationship, which came at exactly the right moment, when I had done all of my inner healing and we have now been together over two and a half years. I don’t worry about if he’ll accidentally touch my squishy stomach, in fact I love it when he does touch it. He loves me exactly as I am and I know that I never need to change anything for him.
I run an amazing free online community called The Curvy Confident Creative Club that has grown out of my Tiktok & Instagram accounts (@vickireckless) and I also get to coach wonderful women all around the world to love themselves and build the confidence they so deserve. And I get to do it from the comfort of my dressing gown if I want to, or on the beach in Bali if I choose.
I have built a fulfilling, soul nourishing business that I get to be proud to wake up to every single day. My days are filled with excitement, the voice in my head is my best friend and I am my own biggest cheerleader throughout it all.
