Hello Darling Heart,
My life’s work is helping women fall in love with themselves by creating a healthy and joyful life. And what I see as a universal thread that is woven into every woman, myself included, is how badly we feel about ourselves.
Feeling bad about ourselves takes many forms:
**We don’t feel “right”
**We feel that we don’t do enough
**We feel less than in many areas of our lives
**We don’t realize how powerful we really are
**And for most women, some form of body hatred is always there, ranging from feelings of being disgusted with our bodies to mild dissatisfaction with how we look
Our culture puts a huge emphasis on weight as a measure of health, we are bombarded with messages and images that show us that a very specific body type is healthy and attractive. Those messages are driven by industries that make billions of dollars of us, the more inadequate we feel, the more likely we are to buy the next fix. It is very interesting that when I work with women who fall into the cultural ideal, they are just as plagued with the same bad feelings about themselves and their bodies.
Health is something that is measured by many things. A healthy weight is one of them, but a healthy weight has a much wider and more flexible range than what we are shown. If your body size is creating health issues like diabetes, heart disease, fatigue, if it’s limiting your movements and ability to function, than losing weight will be a healthy step.
A powerful way to look at weight loss is by realizing that it is not THE GOAL but THE RESULT of changes that we need to make. It is an invitation to start a healthy journey. And it is a door to look at our issues. To create a lifelong healthy body we need to be willing to turn every stone, look at every pain, heal ourselves with tenderness, self acceptance and lots of self love.
Loving and accepting ourselves means that we accept our need to change, grow, evolve and learn. Accepting our struggles with love, will help us to make changes more easily.
We also have to realize that health is not a number on the scale.
It is about how we live
How we feel
The choices we make
There are many measures of health and they are all connected. If we take steps to improve in one area, we will make progress in all areas.
Take a look at the following measures of health.
Ask yourself how healthy am I in this area?
What do I need to do to improve?
HOW HEALTHY ARE YOU?
~ How do you feel about yourself?
~ How much energy do you have?
~ Do you have healthy and strong hair and nails?
~ Do you have healthy and clear skin?
~ How active are you?
~ How is your sleep?
~ How is your mood?
~ How is your focus and memory?
~ Are you optimistic and positive?
~ Are you judgmental and critical towards yourself and others?
~ Does the body you have support the life you want?
If there is an area of your health you need more information and support with, please email me at contact@healthnutgirl.com and I will be happy to share more about that.
Please don’t feel overwhelmed if you realize that you need to make improvements in many areas of your life. Just focus on the next small step.
Sending you a huge hug.
xoxo
Rachel
