Learning to love yourself

One of the greatest struggles I have always dealt with is learning how to love myself. Yes I love the woman I have become and I love everything about my body but it has not always been so. For many years I have struggled with my self image and struggled to accept the person I was, the person I am. It is not always easy to look in the mirror and see the beauty in you. To stare at yourself and say I love me, I love that girl I am staring at. Truth is when you have been put down so many times it becomes very difficult to see any good in you or see the beauty in you.

It then becomes very easy for you to compare yourself to others. I wish I was her. I wish my body looked like hers. I wish I had nice hair like hers, or lips like hers, eyes like hers, skin like hers and the list goes on. Why is it that as women we tend to compare ourself so often to other women. I have had the lowest self esteem for so long that it took me a long time to build up my self confidence and see the beauty in myself. I still do sometimes compare myself to other women, but when I catch myself doing it, I take that thought and remove it from my head. I know I am beautiful and though I do not have the perfect body and I never will I am beautiful . Although I have stretch marks all over my tummy from having two children I have beautiful skin. Those stretch marks are a reminder of the long hard nine months I carried each of my babies and all the pain and suffering I went through to bring them to this earth and made sure I did everything in my power to have two healthy children. I know we can't predict our children will be healthy but you bet your butt I did all I could to make sure they were healthy. It is so important to accept our scars and faults and accept that we are beautiful. To accept that there will be others that are better looking than us. And you know what I say to that if someone is prettier than me, she has nothing on me.

So what is the point of this blog and how does it relate to fitness you ask.
I dedicated this blog strictly towards health and fitness not really putting myself into it. So I am switching it up a little. My best writing comes in when I put myself into it and I wanted to start it fresh with this blog.
Before I started my fitness journey I truly had to learn to love myself no matter how big I was. I was 180 pounds and I struggled with that and struggled to love myself. It was when I started to love myself I decided to do something about my weight. It was then I developed a passion for health and fitness. I loved myself enough to do something about my weight and my eating. And although there are times like yesterday I over binge I never let that be an excuse to not get out of bed the next day and exercise, or use that as an excuse to eat an entire bag of chips. Might I also add that I don't usually eat chips yesterday I had to make a point to my family that I choose what I eat and what I don't and eating unhealthy really just screws you up the next day because there is just a lack of energy.

The key to truely be successful and to stick to your fitness goals is to first learn how to love yourself and your body. That is key number one. There are many other factors to consider but the number one factor is learning to love yourself. I love myself enough to sacrifice some sleep to wake up everyday early enough to make sure i get my workout in and why I choose to eat healthy.
Embracing me and loving me.