How a Little Self-Love Can Impact Your Healthy Lifestyle

When building a healthy lifestyle, self-love has a greater positive impact than self-sabotage. While self-sabotage may feel good at the moment, self-love lasts longer.

Love is not a feeling. It’s an action. And while learning to love others is an important human experience, so is learning to embrace self-love and put it into action toward an improved quality of life.

‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Mark 12:31)

I was speaking to a friend recently and doing some health coaching and I asked her about her workouts as part of her daily life routines. There was a pause, and I could almost hear the self-loathing in her sigh and the feeling of somehow being “less than” because she wasn’t working out as much as she’d like to or “should” be, according to her or someone else’s standard.

To me, my question – and the answer – was just DATA. Data that I required to coach and advise her on nutrition.

To her, there was an EMOTION tied to it.

Negative Self-image

Health, wellness, diet, nutrition, fitness, exercise, and resolutions are all buzzwords as we head toward the end of the year. I have found that words like diet and resolutions leave us feeling “less than.” Like we haven’t reached success yet. That we are somehow not enough.

What if we were to take the emotion out of it? What if we were to look at things like scale weight, body measurements and before photos simply as data? As the information we track.on our way to a healthier life.

So often, when Jim and I coach people toward a healthier lifestyle, we encounter resistance over this tracking process. To us, it’s data. Data we use to adjust and tweak to get you the best results.

Borrow From Our Belief

We don’t look at you with judgment. We look at you as human beings on a path, a journey – just like we are – toward being your healthiest, best self. You are worthy. And you deserve to LOOK and FEEL your best. You.Are.Good.Enough! But don’t take my word for it. Take YOUR word for it.

Allow yourself more love, more grace, more forgiveness, and more self-love toward your healthy lifestyle.

Regardless of the size, shape or condition of your body, it IS a temple. Stop beating it up. Stop beating yourself up.

• When we love ourselves and our bodies, we will no longer talk about going on a diet. We’ll talk about living a healthy lifestyle and making healthy choices.
• When we love ourselves and our bodies, we’ll see the scale weight as data. Data that will tell us if we are on the right path, or if we require an adjustment. It is a number that reflects information from the prior day (or days) stimulus.
• When we love ourselves and our bodies, we’ll embrace a healthy relationship with food, viewing nutrients as fuel. We’ll eat healthy foods with optimum nutrients to help us live life fully.
• When we love ourselves and our bodies, we’ll ensure we get enough sleep each night. We’ll make sleep a priority.
• When we love ourselves and our bodies, we’ll pay attention to our mental health. We’ll invest in self-care and other tools to ensure our mental health is as strong as our physical health.

Confront your own self-sabotage.

If, however, we beat ourselves up and don’t show ourselves this self-love when building a healthy lifestyle, we’ll experience guilt and shame, and, ultimately, we’ll find it easier to abuse and self-sabotage ourselves, our bodies, and our health and wellness goals. Our energy level may drop and we may think of ourselves as bad instead of separating our self-worth from our choices.

Think for a minute. When you’re beating yourself up or feeling sorry for yourself, it is easier to grab a box of cookies, a bag of potato chips, or a bottle of wine, put on your PJs and curl up in front of the TV.

When we love ourselves, we give ourselves the nutrients and exercise our bodies require to energize us through life as athletes, wives, husbands, moms, dads, partners, caretakers, employees, bosses, leaders, and contributors. When we love ourselves, we put that self-love into action toward a healthy lifestyle.

Eating well can be the biggest act of kindness you can show yourself. And while self-sabotage may feel good at the moment, self-love lasts longer.

If you found this article helpful and want to say thanks, click here to buy Lori King a coffee.