Vicky Pattison found her search for "perfection" to be exhausting.
The 32-year-old TV star admits to having previously had an unhealthy obsession with her own appearance, confessing that her desire to look perfect actually made her feel miserable.
She shared: "I look back at pictures of myself and how obsessively I trained and how downright miserable I was – I was just trying to cover it.
"I was definitely training to maintain some sort of image in a desperate search for some aesthetic which doesn’t exist. Instagram has created a sea of perfection and we are no longer interested in ‘normal’.
"I’ve realised, getting into my thirties, normal is the thing we should be striving for, and happiness and contentment, not perfection. Perfection doesn’t exist and it’s very tiring."
Vicky has endured a turbulent time over the last 12 months, as she’s secretly battled depression, dumped her cheating fiance, and lost her best friend and her grandma.
But the brunette beauty – who split from John Noble after he was pictured getting close to other women in Dubai – has come through her struggles thanks to therapy sessions and healthy eating.
Vicky told The Sun newspaper: "The best feeling is being healthy and for some reason, I mistook what ‘health’ was.
"I thought it was a number on the scales or fitting into a size eight.
"But being healthy is waking up before your alarm clock goes off, smiling more, dancing in the street and not being bothered anybody is watching."
Vicky has also come to the realisation that she has no reason to feel embarrassed by her past relationships.
The former ‘Geordie Shore’ star – who is now dating property developer Ercan Ramadan – said: "I probably pushed for the fairytale of marriage and kids too hard and with the wrong people.
"It’s no secret I pick the wrong men and in the past I haven’t had the healthiest of relationships.
"I’ve always maintained with a partner, if you fall out of love with me that’s fine – or if this relationship starts to break down, let’s cut our losses.
"I’ve got no problem accepting defeat. Everybody has failed relationships. There’s no shame in it. But please, don’t ever make me feel stupid, don’t ever disrespect me, don’t ever embarrass me."
Vicky Pattison says her search for ‘perfection’ was exhausting
