I truly wish there wasn’t a “weight loss industry”.
I wish there was a more prevalent self-love industry.
We all know that weight loss sells, self love doesn’t.
I don’t believe in setting weight loss goals.
In fact, I don’t weigh myself.
I feel weight loss goals are lifeless and not based on our true desires.
The idea of having an ideal weight, for me, is complete bull shit.
Do I think it’s important to feel comfortable, healthy and confident in your body? HECK YES.
However, I feel when we measure our value, our life, our feelings, and our worth by a number on the scale, which can fluctuate daily, it’s an utter waste of time and energy. It shifts you away from a place of self-love.
It’s not a realistic goal. It’s not a realistic feeling, because it’s not a feeling.
Who gets excited about setting a goal like this? “I want to lose 10 pounds.”
Wow, fucking exciting.
Stop setting weight loss goals.
Start creating healthy habits and inspired action steps.
Truly, it’s not about the weight. You know this, but you don't quite believe it.
It’s about how you want to feel. It’s about showing yourself that you’re worth committing to. It’s about feeling more like yourself in your own body. It’s about creating healthy habits that serve you, your body and your life.
Losing weight is a losing game.
What would you like to GAIN?
How about gaining healthier habits and a healthier love of the self.
When you lose weight, it’s almost as if you are losing a part of yourself. You strive to lose pounds (numbers) and forget about your daily happiness because most of the time you are so focused on the numbers (calories eaten, calories burned, steps, weight, etc.) you disconnect with everything going on around you.
What I feel is that people desire to release the weight, habits, feelings, and emotions that aren’t serving them in order to open up love-filled space to the habits, feelings, and emotions that they know will serve them, including self-love. So, let's shift the way we think about it and how we set our goals.
Do people desire to lose weight? Yes.
Can losing weight feel good overall? Yes.
I don’t have an issue with that, but I don’t think it should be a main focus or goal. I feel many people are out of tune with what their bodies, and more importantly life, need. They are more in tune to what society tells them they should do, should look like and should weigh.
The word should is also bull shit.
This isn’t a surprise. You’ll meet many people who say that “your worth is not determined by a number on the scale”, yet they endlessly exercise, count calories, work to burn off yesterday’s calories, set weight goals, obsess over body fat, and consistently criticize themselves in their bedroom mirror in the silence of their own home, telling themselves they will feel happier when they are at their “goal weight”.
I see this. I see this a lot. It’s the unspoken words, the feelings that come from the written and spoken words, the pictures, the feelings emitted into the universe, the unwritten feelings. I know this, because in the past, I have felt this.
I'm not judging, but I feel that my own personal journey has made me more sensitive to this feeling, this thought pattern, this act of saying you love yourself, when you’re actually treating and talking to your body and yourself like your own worst enemy. It creates imbalance. It’s a silent struggle.
Saying one thing and feeling another way is confusing.
It’s a silent struggle that needs to stop.
If we were to peel back the layers of weight loss and losing weight, we would find a woman, a possibly tired, yet amazingly love-filled woman who desires a change, a positive love-filled change. A change which she can commit to for a lifetime. One in which she feels empowered, strong, and confident with no desire to compare her amazingness to that of someone she has never met on the internet, her neighbors or her friends.
This woman already knows she has let the focus of being her true self get put on the back burner and let the monotony or “busy” of the day-to-day take over what she truly knows is best for her body.
She has let her love for herself slip away. She has lost the relationship with her higher self, tunes out her intuition and has let go the love for her body. She feels the need to serve others, but in the process of serving others, she has neglected how she wants to truly serve herself.
She longs for a stable love-filled foundation where she can confidently look into the mirror and say “I love you. I love you for the imperfectly perfect life you have given me.”
There are many different stories and bountifully diverse women that want to make positive changes, but the changes they desire can’t be measured by a scale. A positive life shift can’t be inspired by a meaningless weight loss goal. Heck, some women set weight loss goals because they feel like they should (as they see everyone else doing it).
These women are going to be driven by something deeper and that something deeper is uniquely personal to each and every woman. I can’t define it for others, but as women, we know. Deep down we know what we need, but we feel starting with a weight loss goal is the answer.
Women feel this way because society and others tell us this is the way. These are the unspoken rules and steps to get “there”. Yet, we don’t know where “there” really is. This is the way to make a change. Losing weight is what will help you feel better in your body. “Lose those last five pounds and you’ll feel better in your body. That will help.” they tell themselves.
Stop. Don’t believe it.
It usually doesn’t work, because when those five (or more) pounds are lost, there’s still that desire to make more changes and seek “happiness” and the cycle never stops. The obsession with "counting" doesn't stop. The process of constant transformation, mostly irrelevant, takes over and the act of listening to the self and loving the self is lost. It’s hidden. It’s buried deep.
It’s lost by not loving yourself in the present. Loving yourself NOW, perceived flaws and all. It’s that self-love that everyone talks about but hardly anyone truly understands, let alone practices.
It’s hard to define and understand self-love as it’s different for everyone. Sadly, self-love can be the most difficult thing we face in this world. Yet, it’s the most natural thing you can do for your body and your life. It’s also the most powerful form of personal transformation. Yet, since it doesn’t “sell” and there’s not one pill, shake or program to buy and try, it often goes unpracticed.
Not unknown, but unpracticed.
Self-love is a practice;
it’s a self-love practice, not a self-love perfect.
I’m not perfect at it, but I've made a lot of progress with it. I’m aware. I’ve been awakened to it, both the need for it and the lack of it.
Self-love doesn’t have a number, body shape, dress size, body fat percentage or societal norm.
It’s a fucking inside job, which makes it that much more amazing, but as women we can be our own worst enemies making it seem to be the most difficult J-O-B. Thus, making it easy to avoid it and leave it behind, burying it deep with all of our painful emotions and feelings.
Here’s my thought, don’t make it a “job”, realize it’s a practice and practice it. Practice daily.
There’s not a right or wrong way to practice self-love. Practice daily in the morning when you wake up - when you wake up tired or when you wake up fully rested. Toss in self-love when you take a shower, when you look in the mirror, when you put on your clothes, when you eat your breakfast, lunch and dinner, when you move your body, and when you do the activities in your day-to-day life that light you up.
Love on yourself. Love on yourself HARD.
If you don’t love on yourself, you’re showing others that it’s not important to love on themselves. If you want to show the world more love, start with loving yourself. If you start to make a weight loss goal, dig deeper, make it more than about the numbers, make it about how you want to feel, what you want to LOVE.
While my business is in the health and wellness industry, I sometimes despise what I see. I dislike seeing "professionals" ask if people want to lose weight. (Sadly, I used to do it, too.)
What’s worse is that it’s the norm, it’s the norm that it’s okay asking people if they want to lose weight or assuming that’s what they want or are looking for. It’s almost a more common question than asking “Hey, how are you?”. However, I often see more people asking if you want to lose weight or make “xyz” change in your body than actually connecting with people and asking “How are you? What do you feel would make your day (week, life, etc.) better?”
Check in with others. Get them to share how they’re doing. Not the superficial “good” but deeper than that. Build trust and listen, listen to understand, not solve, judge or assume. Check in with yourself daily, too. ("Hey self, how are you? No, really, how are you?" I'm not joking, do honest daily self-check ins.)
Truth is, I know people want to lose weight for a multitude of reasons, but there needs to be a bigger WHY, a stronger reason and a way for them to feel into what they desire more of in their life and honor themselves.
I DO feel self-love is the missing bridge.
It helps build a solid Healthy YOU foundation.
It feels pretty shitty to feel shitty in your body, but do you know what that shitty feeling really is? A sign. It’s a sign from your body that something is off.
Your body is telling you something needs to change. I’m pretty sure that change is NOT based on your body telling you to jump on the scale and BE a certain weight, specific size or body fat percentage.
It’s telling you to listen in. Listen in closely. Listen in to what it has to say.
What it has to say is:
“I love you.
I’m here to take care of you and
I want you to love me back.”
Creating a healthy life foundation starts with focusing on self-love.
If you want to get a free start in focusing on your self love journey, you can download your Naturalita SHINE + Adventure Guide below and stay tuned for my upcoming Inspired Holistic Goal Creation online workshop. Create inspired goals that fuel your life, not drain your energy and hope.
