We live in a world where if you are perceived as anything less than perfect you are judged and often vilified to the judger’s heart’s content… but what if the judger is you? Can you love yourself as you are?
Loving yourself as you are does not mean there isn’t room for improvement, but you can only make improvements when you accept yourself as you are instead of treating yourself as a project that needs to be “fixed”.
Vanity over appearances will always sabotage your mental well-being and end up sabotaging your most well-intentioned efforts at reaching your fitness goals. If your mind isn’t right, your body will not follow.
One thing is challenging yourself to reach your fitness goals and another is sacrificing your loved ones, friends, your day-to-day to generate controlled and “perfect” scenarios to help you succeed. Remember you will have to come live in the real world sometime.
There are no perfect situations and control is sometimes out of your control. I’ve been there. I still struggle daily with relinquishing control over what I can not engineer to my liking. So what do you do? Stop going out because there will be temptation out there impeding your goals? Not have a cookie ever because it messes with your bottom line?
When you attach your goals to that type of diet-mentality you will inevitably fail. How many times have you fallen prey to the diet roller coaster because you wanted your results to be immediate? How about being flexible instead and really listen to what your body is telling you? Are you really craving that cookie or do you want it simply because it’s there? If you are really craving it by all means please have the cookie!
Also, how about actually eating slower and really savoring your food instead of scarfing it down mindlessly and then wondering why you’re still hungry? It takes about 20-minutes to realize you’re full but if you ate your plate in 5-minutes instead, you know what happens, right? Yeah, you do. You go back for seconds and then wonder why you’re so stuffed. We’ve all been there. No judgement here.
When it comes to your mental well-being and fitness what you are after is “progression”, not perfection. “Perfect” leads to a dieting mentality of, “Well I had a cookie, I guess I’ll just eat the whole box.”
A healthy relationship with food should be more like,“Mmmm! I loved that cookie,” and continuing to your next meal as if you haven’t missed a step because you haven’t! When did having a cookie become such a terrible thing?
Ask yourself what the basis of your goals are beyond solely aesthetics and go from there.
Do you want to:
-Have a better quality of life?
-Improve digestion?
-Relieve your joint pain?
-Reduce brain inflammation?
-Improve your mental illness?
-Be able to play with your kids without getting tired?
If you figure it out, you’ll have a better chance at building healthy habits long-term.
In health,
