The dynamic relationship between food and self-love

If you wanted to understand my angle within fitness on self-love and self-worth better…this would be the post to read.

I’ll candidly explain how my own journey with food (and fitness, but this one is about food) shaped it.

You know what I was just thinking the other day?

That I haven’t worried about, counted, stressed about,

what I ate and how much,

decided to eat less because there was a big meal the day before,

decided to eat less because there was an excess of calories coming later,

thought about calories in general....

in I don’t know how long...

Years and years, perhaps over a decade (I think at around the time I became pregnant/mom for the first time).

I couldn’t tell you when it exactly changed, but THAT it changed slowly but surely to a complete freedom of food has been the best thing.

Because there was a time where all of the above would be all day, every day on my mind.

And that’s a horrible way to live.

Truly.

It’s exhausting.

Food and our body can be our focus of control if we might not feel in control in certain area’s or our life in general.

That’s me speaking for myself anyway.

I eat because I enjoy it.

I eat because I like fuelling my body.

Sometimes they are the same things,

Sometimes they aren’t.

I eat when I’m hungry.

I eat because it’s there 🤷🏻‍♀️, tasty and/or out of boredom.

There’s truly no hard rules.

And...no guilt or obsession.

And.it.is.the.best.feeling.ever.

Now, I want to talk about the (possible) elephant in the room.

You might think: “easy for you to say with your body-shape and perhaps genetics”. (Which is fair. Genetics -metabolism and fat disposition- can play a huge role in what your body will/can look like).

Or “but you’re still kind of ‘skinny’ -I hate that term with all my might by the way 😣- so are you really practicing what you preach?”.

But that is completely missing the point.

This is NOT about my body. It was never really about my body.

It is and was about my mindset, my mental health, my relationship with myself.

I know that I'm not alone in having (or still are) struggled in this area.

And, if me opening up about it helps somebody (even just one person) to realize that you don't have to live this way.

That you don't have to feel this way...than it's worth it.

So what changed for me?

I had to get truly so fed up with the mental energy consumption around food and calories.

Fed up with the way I felt and being honest about how I treated myself and why.

Self-love and self-worth became big things on my radar.

Wanting to be healthy, feel better emotionally and mentally and being able to set a healthy example for my kids, became one of my biggest missions.

Fitness and food became my main teachers on that journey.

How I thought about those topics.

What my internal chatter was around these topics.

Helped me shed light on how I related to myself, how I was doing and where I needed to check in some more.

Are you willing to dive in to those messy, yet life-changing topics of self-love and self-worth?

Are you ready to get real ‘real’ with yourself?

Tune into your behaviour, beliefs, inner-chatter around food and exercise.

And just take note. No judgment. If anything… a ton of compassion and kindness.

See what comes up.

Realize you have been treating yourself like that for a reason, but if you find different reasons...you will find different ways. ❤️