I always say this - To love thyself is so liberating! To get to a place where you can look at yourself in the mirror with love and appreciation without condemnation sets you up to becoming the you that you really want to be. What does loving yourself mean? How do you show respect to your body?
I did notice that when I used to have the diet mentality, once I have a bad day or become moody the first thing that got hit was my so called food restrictions. I would binge on the things that where off limits because in my head it was a way to show that I was not happy. I was rebelling! My body will be punished for the way I feel, and that had to do with my thought process.
You are a spirit being, you have a soul i.e your mind, will and emotion, and you live in a body. Your body is a house that needs to be treated well to become a home. A place where you are comfortable in, a place where you honour and treat with dignity. Often times you know the state of a person when you come visiting and the house is unkempt, the grass has been left to keep growing wild, the house has not been swept for a while etc. In the same way the state of our mind can be seen in the way we treat our body. We lose touch with our body and do not see the signals that our body is giving us either to slow down, get adequate sleep, eat adequately or exercise and this brings me to my first point on how to honour your body;
1. To listen to the signal your body gives you and have a self-care tool kit. What are the things you do for selfcare to feed your spirit and soul? List them out and have a 'go to' list. In doing this you are honouring your body by taking care of your mind. There is a saying: choose when you are strong who you want to be when you are weak. Have a self-care list to refer to when things get rough and edgy so that your body does not take the hit.
2. Take a stand to feed yourself the right nutrients, hydrate and eat adequately. It might be hard at first to know how much to eat especially if you have been on a diet for a while and been told exactly what to eat but I put together a hunger scale for my clients to use as a guide to start noticing when they are physically hungry and when they become full. You can get a download of this guide here. To give your body adequate nutrients is giving your body the strength it requires to serve you and function at its best. So here is a question to ask yourself: Are you giving your body adequate balanced meal, fruits and veggies regularly?
3. Lifestyle choices: What lifestyle choices are you making on a regular basis to honour your body? Do you have a regular exercise routine to keep functioning optimally both mentally and physically? Do you have a plan to make sure you have cooked real whole food regularly? What are doing to make sue you are not constantly operating on stress mode? What kind of company do you keep in terms of friendship? Do you have friends that pull you down and leave you feeling drained and unworthy or friends that lift you up? Are you having the right human connection? You become the average of the 5 people you spend your time with. Your lifestyle choices are so important to honouring your body because the state of your mind determines the state of your body.
I encourage you to treat your body like a luxury item, treat it with dignity, treat it with love, give it a healthy lifestyle because you are so worth it.
Till next time my friends, keep winning!
Cheers
Sylvia
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