Victoria's Secret's first Australian curve and Sports Illustrated model Jennifer Atilémile takes a deep dive on her body history! The body activist opens up on learning to radically love her body, lets us in on her fitness routine, and even spills her iconic skincare secrets.
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00:00 On this journey of self-discovery,
00:01 I realized my thighs weren't supposed to be really thin.
00:05 They're supposed to jiggle.
00:06 Hi, I'm Jennifer Atillamil,
00:08 and this is my women's health body scan.
00:11 Ooh, the thing I love most about my body is my curves.
00:16 I grew up not loving them,
00:19 and it's been a journey finding myself,
00:22 which is like my body appreciation journey,
00:24 as you would call it.
00:25 Being able to figure out who I am, who I am as a woman,
00:27 and then love my body as it is,
00:29 is one of the main reasons that I do what I do,
00:32 but also one of the main reasons
00:33 that I love my body so much.
00:35 I still have a love-hate relationship with my thighs.
00:38 I grew up with my mom and my grandma
00:41 kind of constantly referring to the fact
00:44 they're a little bit bigger
00:45 than what they thought my body should look like
00:47 as a young girl.
00:48 And on this journey of self-discovery,
00:51 I realized my thighs weren't supposed to be really thin.
00:53 They're supposed to jiggle.
00:55 One day I love them, the next day I don't.
00:57 I feel like that's synonymous with women
00:59 anywhere all around the world.
01:01 Like one day we love our bodies, one day we don't.
01:03 It's just something that we're constantly working on
01:06 and constantly evolving with, but I love them today.
01:09 I love working out my booty.
01:12 It's the booty and the quads
01:15 that help support my lower back.
01:18 And it also, you know, the added bonus
01:20 is that I have a really perky butt,
01:22 and like that's awesome.
01:23 I do resistance, like strength training twice a week,
01:27 and then I try and do Pilates,
01:29 whether it's Reforma or Mat Pilates, three times a week.
01:32 And then I also try and go for a hike at least twice a week.
01:35 If I'm not gallivanting all around the world for work,
01:38 I am very strict on my routine.
01:41 My go-to healthy meal, I usually do two hot boiled eggs,
01:45 piece of avocado toast, and a cup of bone broth.
01:48 I really love to mix my avocado toast with feta cheese,
01:53 and there's this really, really amazing feta cheese
01:56 from Meredith's Dairy, which is an Australian brand,
01:58 but it's available in America, which is amazing.
02:00 When I'm constantly traveling for work and stuff,
02:02 I find it really hard to keep with my healthy eating.
02:06 So there are like non-negotiables
02:08 that I will always travel with
02:09 or make sure I pick up at the airport,
02:11 but I always like to have nuts with me.
02:13 I love cashews,
02:15 and then I will always have some jerky with me.
02:18 And then there are these amazing protein bars
02:20 that I get in LA.
02:22 So a smoothie that I love to make when I'm on the go
02:24 is this amazing blueberry and banana smoothie.
02:27 I do have a scar that sticks out to me.
02:30 It's on my eyebrow,
02:32 and it happened to me when I was three or four,
02:35 so I can't really remember it,
02:36 but I have been told about it numerous times from my mom
02:40 that I was playing duck, duck, goose
02:41 at my cousin's birthday party,
02:43 and we were running around the circle,
02:46 and we were getting so into it
02:47 that I went flying straight into the corner
02:50 of a glass coffee table
02:52 and had to be rushed immediately to hospital,
02:55 and I had three stitches, I believe.
02:57 And yeah, it's kind of permanently,
02:59 not disfigured my eyebrow,
03:00 but made my eyebrow very unique.
03:02 I have a lot of tattoos.
03:04 I can't remember how many I have,
03:07 but every time I go back to Australia,
03:09 my mom's like, "Have you got another tattoo?"
03:10 And I'm like, "Yeah, probably."
03:12 But the one that I think sticks out to me the most
03:15 is my first one.
03:17 I just finished my undergraduate degree,
03:20 and I thought, what better way to go out
03:23 and celebrate finishing university by getting a tattoo.
03:26 I'm really proud of it, and I love it,
03:28 and I, yeah, it's a forever memory
03:30 that I finished university.
03:32 My skincare routine,
03:33 it's probably one of the most asked about things in my life.
03:38 Because I've kind of lived everywhere around the world,
03:41 I feel like my skincare routine has changed
03:44 depending on where I'm living.
03:46 Everywhere has different water, has different climates,
03:49 so the products that I use in Australia
03:51 are really different to the products
03:52 that I used when I lived in New York,
03:54 and are also really different to the products
03:56 that I now use in LA.
03:57 My favorite things are really, really deep
04:01 moisturizing creams that I will generally wear overnight.
04:05 So some of my favorites are the Wellita Skin Food,
04:08 and there's an amazing Emma Lewisham 72-hour face mask
04:13 that you just go to bed with,
04:14 and you wake up with amazing skin.
04:17 My skincare routine at the moment isn't too hectic,
04:21 but it kind of still is.
04:22 Like, I have all the tools and gadgets and everything,
04:24 but I feel like I'm still searching
04:26 for my favorite product,
04:28 but that's coming 'cause I'm making my own.
04:31 So in terms of hair care, I have a pretty simple routine.
04:36 I love a hair mask.
04:38 There's an amazing Briogeo Avocado hair mask.
04:41 That's kind of the best thing that I use
04:44 after having so much heat on my hair.
04:47 I also been in denial about the fact
04:49 that I've had curly hair for a lot of my life,
04:52 and it was during quarantine
04:53 that I kind of really saw my curls come through
04:56 because my hair wasn't being heat treated
04:59 for like over a year.
05:00 So once I discovered that I had a good curl pattern,
05:05 I was like, okay, cool, I'm gonna start buying
05:07 curly shampoos, curl creams, curl this, curl that.
05:11 Anyone with curly hair knows
05:12 that if your curls aren't hydrated,
05:14 then they're not gonna be curly.
05:16 For me, my mental health is really, really important.
05:19 I treat my mental health
05:20 the same way I treat my physical health.
05:22 I think everyone has gone through
05:25 their own experience of a quarantine,
05:27 but it was really throughout that time
05:28 when I got to stop and reflect
05:31 on how busy my life had been previously to that,
05:34 how much I really treasured the progress
05:37 that I made with my mental health
05:39 when I had time to focus on it.
05:41 I see a therapist every week.
05:43 I also make sure that I exercise
05:46 because for me, exercising, even if I don't want to,
05:49 even if it's like literally going for a walk
05:51 around the block for like maybe 15 minutes with my dog,
05:54 that changes my mind frame immediately.
05:57 I've also started to meditate
05:59 and I would love to meditate more.
06:02 I know how beneficial it is,
06:05 but I also wanna say like,
06:06 even though I'm doing all these things
06:07 for my mental health, some days it's not okay.
06:09 And I think it's also having that grace with yourself
06:12 to like just say that I'm not okay today
06:16 and kind of remove yourself and, you know,
06:19 binge watch a TV show and just be on the couch
06:22 and not talk to people.
06:23 Like it's okay to have ups and downs
06:26 and that's kind of what makes you human.
06:28 And I think the more people recognize that
06:29 and rather than try and go on about their day,
06:32 like everything's fine, I think,
06:33 the better we'll all be talking about mental health
06:36 and treating it with kindness.
06:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]