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Body positivity advocate Anna O'Brien opens up about her health

The influencer is embarking on a wellness journey.
/ Source: TODAY

Anna O’Brien, a lifestyle blogger and body positive advocate with more than 800,000 Instagram followers, is addressing her health.

In an emotional YouTube video last week, O’Brien, known a Glitter and Lazers on social media, revealed that she wants to embrace a “more active lifestyle.”

Physical activity, O’Brien explained, has always brought her “immense joy," but sometimes her size prohibits her from doing things she loves.

O'Brien said her weight is linked to trauma she experienced as a little girl.

“I had a really traumatic childhood, which I don’t even talk about,” O’Brien revealed. She described her upbringing as "abusive."

“Part of the reason I am overweight is because of the drama in my life and because of the ways I coped with it,” she said. But it goes deeper than that.

“In a lot of ways, my weight has protected me and helped me. Sometimes weight can provide a barrier, a boundary, a safety that maybe we don’t realize,” O’Brien shared. “I now feel, based on my own discovery and my own work, that my body is a shield I don’t need anymore.”

“I want it to get to a place where I don’t feel like it’s masking me anymore,” she added.

O’Brien, who has lipedema, a condition that causes access fat to accumulate in the lower part of the body, said she expects to hit roadblocks along the way.

“I’m not looking for a miracle, and I’m not going to be sad about my life until I get thin. That’s not what this is about,” she assured fans. “It has very little to do about weight. It’s about recognizing that I have been hurt — and that hurt has affected the choices I make in my life.”

O’Brien also opened up about her wellness journey in a powerful Instagram post Monday.

"I am working on changing the purpose food and exercise serve in my life. This isn’t me starving myself to meet some standard. Instead, I have held onto immense guilt for things that happened to me as a child that frankly I never deserved and have absolutely no reason to feel guilty for,” she wrote in part. “These changes are a beautiful reflection of me getting to a place to shed that guilt.”

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