Lena Dunham gets brutally honest with before-and-after weight photo

Lena Dunham Instagram
This is the kind of before-and-after we like. Photo credit: Instagram.

Lena Dunham has posted a powerful message on social media addressing her weight gain and body positivity.

The Girls actress took to Instagram on Tuesday to post side by side photos of herself.

"On the left: 138 pounds (63kg) complimented all day and propositioned by men and on the cover of a tabloid about diets that work," she wrote, alongside a photo of her looking thinner.

"Also, sick in the tissue and in the head and subsisting only on small amounts of sugar, tons of caffeine and a purse pharmacy."

"On the right: 162 pounds (74kg), happy joyous and free," she continued, alongside a photo of her from this week, snapped by the paparazzi.

 "Complimented only by people that matter for reasons that matter, subsisting on a steady flow of fun/healthy snacks and apps and entrees, strong from lifting dogs and spirits."

She concluded the post writing that "even this OG body positivity warrior sometimes looks at the left picture longingly, until I remember the impossible pain that brought me there and onto my proverbial knees".

"As I type I can feel my back fat rolling up under my shoulder blades. I lean in."

The post has garnered more than 460,000 likes.

Dunham has been open about her health issues in the past, including her battle with endometriosis. Earlier this year she had a hysterectomy.

"In addition to endometrial disease, an odd hump-like protrusion and a septum running down the middle, I have retrograde bleeding, a.k.a. my period running in reverse so that my stomach is full of blood," she wrote in in an essay for Vogue in February.

"My ovary has settled in on the muscles around the sacral nerves in my back that allow us to walk. Let's please not even talk about my uterine lining."

Dunham later tweeted that she chose to share her battle with the disease for other women in similar circumstances.

"Your body failing you is a loss that's hard to explain and yet the amount of messages I've gotten from women in a similar predicament has been so overwhelming, loving and heartening," she wrote.

"Sixty million women in America are living with hysterectomies and those of you who've shared your plight and perseverance makes me feel so honoured to be in your company."

Newshub.