Marathoning Mom Inspires With Bikini Photo

Still high off her first-ever marathon one week earlier, Rachel Hollis decided it was time to flaunt the body she’d worked for, and the body three babies took a toll on.

“I thought, it’s not going to get better than this," she tells TODAY. “You ran the 26 miles, and I had been training for six months. My body is never going to be smaller than it is right now, so if there’s ever time to show off your belly, this is probably it.”

She shared the bikini photo from a family vacation to Cancun on the Facebook page for her business, The Chic Site.

“I have stretch marks and I wear a bikini. I have a belly that’s permanently flabby from carrying three giant babies and I wear a bikini. My belly button is saggy… (which is something I didn’t even know was possible before!!) and I wear a bikini,” she captioned the photo. “I wear a bikini because I’m proud of this body and every mark on it. Those marks prove that I was blessed enough to carry my babies and that flabby tummy means I worked hard to lose what weight I could.”

Those babies are now 8, 6 and 2. And Hollis, who says she grew up a little chubby, didn’t start focusing on losing weight until after they were born.

“I feel like I’ve worked so hard to lose the weight. Those marks are always going to be there. Without plastic surgery, there’s no way I’m getting rid of that extra skin. It is what it is,” says. “I had been working so hard training for this race and I felt so proud of my body. It’s never ever going to be like a Victoria’s Secret model, but I think I look good and my husband wants to make out with me, so I’m doing something right.”

The best part? The photo is completely candid. While she initially instructed her husband to take “100 photos” and she would choose the one she liked best to post, this one came after a total fail.

“I had tried to take this posey, pretty shot, and I looked so awkward that it didn’t work. I started laughing, and that’s when he happened to get that picture,” she says.

Staged or not, she worked the camera. And she has over 370,000 Facebook likes to prove it.