For years, Nathalie Emmanuel has struggled with her body image.
The actress, 32, who stars in “Fast & Furious 9”, covers Women’s Health for the magazine’s July/August issue and opened up about the “unhealthy” standards she compared her own body to.
“You know how on Facebook it shows you a memory of yourself from six years ago or four years ago? A picture came up on my phone, and I went, ‘I look so great!’ But I also remember that at the time [of that photo], I thought I was overweight and needed to do all these unhealthy things,” Emmanuel explained. “We just beat ourselves up constantly, and we’re never perfect enough.”
And the negative self-talk made her “change how I interacted with exercise and decide what I wanted to get from it.”
Soon, she says she fell in love with yoga.
“What I love about yoga is there’s no pressure to be the best at it,” Emmanuel explained. “Even if you just lie on your mat for the hour and breathe with intention, you’re doing yoga,” she said, explaining that her interest in the practice began when she was 18 and struggling.”
She added, “My mental health was deteriorating, and I took my first class in reaction to it.” And she explains that she’s kept up with it ever since.
“F9” hits big screens Friday.
