There are over 27 millionphotostagged #fitspo on Instagram. Most of them, like a lot of “fitness inspiration” on the Internet, depict slender girls dressed in Lululemon designs, flawlessly illuminated by natural lighting spilling onto their yoga mats. Men bearing oiled up, six-pack abs and before/ after photos of alleged weight loss are also popular images in this theme.

On Instagram, Pinterest, or other visual-based social media outlets, #fitspo pics are meant to inspire others to achieve their health and fitness aims. But what if your stomach will never be flat , no matter how many crunches you do? What if your yoga selfies garner more comments about how big you are rather than how well you just executed crow pose?

Meet the plus-size #fitspo community, a loose collecting of fitness fans who are challenging stereotypes and shaping what it means to be fit by posting photos of themselves living healthy and active lifestyles. We may not ensure manyplus size bodies on adsand mainstream media, but social media is flooded with images of women celebrating all shapes and sizes under a slew of hashtags, like #CelebrateMySize and #EffYourBeautyStandards.

Plus-size # fitspo stars post pics and videos of themselves doing the exact same things other #fitspo folks do: eating clean, whole foods; drinking green juices; twisting their bodies in a difficult yoga pose; and sweating it out on an afternoon jog. Oftentimes, the caption to these pics doublings as a body-positive pep talknot “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” but “Honor my curves.”

“It’s empowering when someone who looks like you does what you wishes to do, ” fitness and lifestyle blogger CeCe Olisa told the Daily Dot. “It constructs it seem more attainable.” Two years ago, Olisa began blogging about her healthy lifestyle journey and launched the hashtag #PSPfit, named after her blog Plus Size Princess. Today more than 10,000 Instagrammers have use the hashtag, prompting her to create a @PSPfitaccount.

After a few years of lifestyle blogging, Olisa decides whether to document her transition from preoccupying over weight loss to embracing her size on her website. “I started it as a place to be open, honest, and transparent as a plus-size both women and what that looked liketo date, to shop, to go to places, to fall in love and live in New York, ” Olisa told. Readers took to it. She said she has a six-figure monthly reaching on her blog and almost 20,000 adherents onInstagramandYouTube.

The first time Olisa heard she was overweight was in her doctors office as an 11 – or 12 year-old girl. Feeling judged and ashamed, she tried fad diet and starved herself, merely to binge eat in the evenings. “My life now is about unravelling a lot of the disruptive behaviors that Ive had and espousing who I am, ” she said. A few years after she wasdiagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, an endocrine system ailment. If untreated, the condition can lead to heart disease and diabetes.

When Olisa began openly discussing her health in her blog, she found that others closely related to a hardship she had coped with privately for so long. “Women feeling like they were alone in that and then seeing someone who is living a healthy lifestyle and just trying to balance all that out is really powerful, ” Olisa told. “I get emails every day from girls telling those things.”

Another star of the plus-size #fitspo world is yoga instructor and body-positive proponent Jessamyn Stanley, who was nominated for a Shorty Award this year in the Healthy Living category. Visibility is the most important part of the body positivity motion, she said, so she utilizes her body to put an end to skinny fitness stereotypes. Stanley posts images of herself practising yoga to her 147,000 followers on Instagram and has dozens of YouTube videos where she presents off her yoga moves.

“I think theres been major improvement, ” Stanley said. “If social media is any indicator, were definitely heading in the right direction.”

Fans can also purchase guided yoga videos from herEveryBody Yoga scheme. As Stanley explains on Cody, the site which sells her videos, “I’m familiar with the difficulties that come with practicing in a larger body, and Ive designed these workouts and this series to move at a comfy pace, but to also be challenging regardless of your age, gender, experience or body size.” She believes, as she explains on the page for her beginner yoga class, “Larger-bodied people are just as capable of moving freely as a smaller-bodied person, and I believe that it is so important to assures a larger-bodied person completing postures and moving freely with confidence.”

This belief sums up the motivation for plus-size #fitspo stars. “Healthy curves at every sizing is my motto and is really important, ” Olisa explained. “Loving your body and healthy living is the most empowering thing you can do and everything else will flow through that.” As people obsessively surf online for the most recent health fads and trendy workout routines, body-positive leaders remind us what the movement is truly about: adoption and self-love.

Photo via CeCe Olisa