Just over a year ago, Sophie Allen, a 26-year-old from Melbourne, Australia, almost died from a perforated bowel. This medical condition is caused by a hole in the bowel, which then allows the bowel contents to leak out and cause a potentially life-threatening infection.
Thankfully, Allen’s doctor was able to save her life by repairing the hole through surgery, but Allen was forced to spend a month recovering in bed.
During this time, Allen lost all her muscle mass and found it incredibly difficult to do the simplest things, like walk up the stairs. These limitations were conditions Allen knew she didn’t want to live with, so she vowed that she would begin exercising as soon as possible.
It took a few more months of recovery, but when Allen was able to get out of bed and begin working out, she took to it with intense passion.
Over the course of the year, Allen decided to begin sharing her fitness journey online, on her Instagram account. Many people were supportive of her endeavor to build up her strength and fitness – but others gave her a stunning amount of hate for posting photos of her body.
Particularly on some before-and-after shots, where Allen juxtaposed her “Week 0” body to her “Week 58” body, people online would criticize her body, saying that the photos and transformation were “fake.”
Others even said to her that she looked “worse” now, because she’d “lost all [her] booty and curves.”
“You look best in the second picture. Such a shame,” read one comment.
Though Allen knew the negative comments would inevitably come with sharing her physical transformation photos online, she was still “shocked.”
“Some of the stuff up there is just nasty, really offensive, and really unnecessary. I’ve had to block a few people that were saying some really awful things,” Allen admitted.
When asked how she handled this backlash, she explained, “Initially I felt really upset, but I know my journey is my own, that I’m not doing this for anyone else aside from me. It is really hard to see people saying I haven’t gained anything, when I works so hard six days a week to build muscle and burn fat.
“I’m so happy with my body, and I want to motivate people to feel empowered and confident about their hard work,” she finished.
