Instagram influencer's secret body image battle

All Asha Holland wants is for women and girls to feel good about themselves.

The Instagram influencer, who lives in Perth, says she didn't intend to start a body positivity movement.

However the 23-year-old found that the more real and realistic her posts, the better the response.

It was her own battles with body image that led her to want to help others.

"High school was okay, but I always seem to be a perfectionist," she tells 9Honey. "I was focused on grades and studies and then started studying sports science.

"My first look into the health and fitness world was as though it was all magical," she says. "I thought I'd found all the answers to live and happiness."

Soon, her perfectionism came out, again.

"I became obsessed with the thought of following all the rules, eating the right things, exercising religiously and then found myself stuck in a negative cycle," she says.

"Looking back now, I became so disconnected from everything because I was so insecure.

"I wasn't being me because it was all about perfection and getting positive comments about how I was looking and how fit I was getting," she says.

"Inside, I was struggling.'

Asha says it got to the point where she couldn't get through a day without losing focus.

"I couldn't get through a shift at work and collapsed due to stomach pain," she says. "I was severely under-eating and over-exercising and my body couldn't keep up.

"Looking back, I feel like I subtly knew I was stuck in an unhealthy mindset," she says. "At one stage I started body building to put on weight, thinking it would fix everything.

"I stepped on stage and won shiny awards but had never been more unhappy. That's the moment I realised how lost I was."

Asha says she went through a long period of time not knowing what to do. She visited a doctor for help.

"She came back to me and said, 'Asha, if you don't stop you're probably never going to have children."

That was her light bulb moment.

"It was just so emotionally triggering," she says. "I had never really sat down and thought about what mattered to me before and something I knew I desperately wanted one day could have been taken away because I had pushed my body so hard.

"I realised I had to change."

Asha says she had to retrain her brain to stop following strict rules about health, at the same time as make peace with putting on weight on her road to health.

"That's where the name Alternatively Healthy came from," she says of her Instagram account. "I had all these rules about what I could and couldn't eat, or how I had to exercise.

"I went through a long phase of still being scared, but even now that I weigh more

She eventually began to see a psychologist who helped her reach a point of health and happiness she'd never achieved before.

"So much of what we focus on with women and girls is about their insecurities, but what I am learning is that I can be a good influence to show them what actually matters in life.

"At the end of my life if I look back and had the perfect body, it's not going to fill me up as much as living a happy, healthy life that's right for me.

"I hate the idea that there's only one way to achieve this... I hope that the AH journey can inspire girls to realise that you are allowed to do it YOUR way."

You can follow Asha's journey on Instagram @alternatively.healthy and visit the website at www.alternativelyhealthy.com.au.