I “touch my body” in the shower out of self-love

Gina Rodriguez has nothing but love and admiration for her body.

The 37-year-old actress has opened up about her struggles with body image throughout her career in Hollywood.

Rodriguez recently spoke with Rachel Bilson and Olivia Allen on their Broad Ideas podcast about her battle with Hashimoto’s disease and why she’s practicing self-love.

The Jane the Virgin graduate noted how her autoimmune disease — a disorder that affects the thyroid gland and causes hormonal changes — was affecting her physique.

“I got an actor curse because it directly affects your metabolism, you know, you’re not making the hormone your body needs,” she said.

Rodriguez continued, “So sometimes you feel like you’ve lost communication with this thing, this space suit that you’re in, and you’re like, ‘Why don’t I have a clue how to change? What is this physical being?’”

The Golden Globe winner revealed that she gave herself positive affirmations in the shower “four or five years ago” because of her physical changes.

“When I bathe, I say ‘I love you,'” Rodriguez continued, wanting to be comfortable in her own skin. “‘I love you, Elbow. i love you tetas i love you neck.’ I just started touching my body appreciatively.”

The “Miss Bala” actress also pointed out that it’s still hard to break into Hollywood as beauty standards are constantly evolving and difficult to meet.

She also shared that she has a heart-shaped birthmark on her thigh and why she chose not to cover it up during her period on her hit CW show Jane the Virgin.

“It might seem like an imperfection to others, right? And with ‘Jane’ they were always like, ‘Hey, can we get makeup to put that thing on her?’ I’d always be like, ‘No! It’s my birthmark! No, it’s a birthmark! No everything is fine! You could just leave it, it’s ok, it’s a mole.” Yes, but I would be joking. I say, ‘I’m sure someone will say something about the mole. I have to cover up the birthmark,'” she said.

Rodriguez previously opened up about body image and her career in a 2017 interview with Shape, saying that there’s “a lot of pressure to look a certain way and to fit into a sample size.”

“I have to accept that shooting ‘Jane’ doesn’t give me that much training,” she explained at the time. “My body will look different and that’s okay. I’m not willing to take the joy out of my life to kill myself in the gym.”