You Deserve to Lose Weight

I know. The title of this post sounds odd, but give it a chance.

Often times, when I decide to go on a diet, I'm in a bad spot.  What I mean is I feel fat, totally unattractive, undeserving, and just overall, horrible about myself.  You know how they say, you would never let another person talk to you the way you talk to yourself, sometimes? Yea, that's usually how I'm talking to myself (worse, actually!) when I'm declaring "diet" time.  I have a very brief millisecond of hope before it all goes down to h$ll because at the end of the day, I'm just not in the right mindset to even give myself a chance at what I had hoped for in the first place.  Following?

Hope is a great thing.  It drives us, it feeds our soul, and sometimes it's all that keeps you going.  However, having misdirected, unrealistic or incorrectly-supported hope can be really detrimental.  It results in severe disappointment, which can set us even further back than where we started.

Now, the pursuit of losing weight isn't the devil either.  If done in a healthy way, it is downright swell. So why do so many of us struggle to lose weight, even healthily (i.e. gradually)? It's often because our hope to lose weight is fueled with self-hate, rage, and impatience.

The secret is knowing, believing, breathing the fact that you deserve to be healthy, happy and energetic!  You deserve the lifestyle change to a healthier one.  You deserve a life of body appreciation and love.  This secret is soooo often overlooked.  In an urgent impulse to get rid of the 'junk' we forget to realize the bigger picture.  If you don't believe me, think back to the last time you panicked when your jeans felt too tight, and thought to yourself "Oh crap, I'm gross and fat. I need to lose weight. Fast," and then dove head first into some ridiculously restrictive diet.  Did that last? Probably not.  Did your jeans fit soon thereafter? Probably not.

If you want to become healthier for good, the first step is loving the person you see in the mirror- realizing all of the life that you deserve and you're going to have because you deserve it!  Then the healthier lifestyle habits like eating cleaner, keeping active, drinking plenty of water and getting enough sleep.  Those things will come- in time.  You may be thinking "in time?"  Yea, in time, but it will last a lifetime.

So the question now is: Do you deserve to lose weight? Do you really, truly believe it?