Carly Pearce Credits Michael Ray With Helping Her Love Her Body

It wasn’t that long ago that Carly Pearce struggled with loving and accepting herself. The “Closer to You” singer recently posted two photos side by side of herself, comparing how she used to look, and feel, when her self-esteem was at its lowest.

“Photo on the right is from about a year and a half ago,” Pearce wrote alongside the pictures. “I was going about 100 miles a minute, was tired all the time, was afraid of carbs and thought the only form of exercise was seeing how many miles I could run in a week. The photo on the left was this weekend.

“I’m STILL running 100 miles a minute, but I don’t struggle with fatigue anymore and have learned that weight training AND cardio make me STRONG and carbs DON’T make you fat— and you know what?” she continued. “I weigh more now, those clothes on the right don’t fit anymore, but I FEEL better and am HAPPIER than ever.”

Pearce is now opening up about that honest post, crediting her fiancé, Michael Ray, with helping her accept and love her body the way it is.

“To be honest with you, when I first saw it, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness,’” Pearce recalled to PopCulture.com. “You don’t really realize things in the moment, but I showed it to him, and I think that with this industry, authenticity wins always, and vulnerability, and that’s how we’ve always approached our relationship. He really has helped me to become the best version of myself and maybe love my body more than I ever thought that I could.”

Pearce also hopes that by sharing her own struggles, she will be an inspiration to other women who also struggle with body image.

“As a woman you have struggles, and I struggled a lot in my early twenties of trying to figure out a balance of working out and eating right, and all of the thing as a child I was bullied for,” Pearce said. “I was really tall and really awkward, just like so many of us are. I just saw that and I just wanted to be a voice to anybody who struggles, and I saw how many people struggle with that balance of loving yourself. Loving yourself doesn’t mean you have starve yourself or be super-skinny and you can find somebody to build you up in that way.”

When asked if she thinks she could have found a way to love herself without the influence of Ray, Pearce instantly knew the answer.

“No. No way,” Pearce insisted. “The sentence, find somebody who makes you better. Never knew that. Now I do.”

Photo Credit: Getty images/ Jason Davis