Call it self-love, self-acceptance, self-appreciation, or self-respect. 

It’s tempting to think “I’ll work on that when I lose the weight”, or to hope that self-acceptance, love, and appreciation will just happen when you lose weight.

You might think that self-love, self-acceptance, self-appreciation, or self-respect is some fluffy, woo-woo, touchy-feely distraction from weight loss.

Or you might think that you need to choose between self-acceptance and weight loss. 

You don’t. 

And if you want to get a body AND life that you love, put it on your priority list. 

1. Self-acceptance is not complacency. Often, we have a fear that if we accept ourselves, we’ll completely let ourselves go. But this isn’t real self-acceptance or real self-love. You can love yourself and want to improve. There is room for self-love and for goal achievement at the same time. It’s all about the emotions behind your actions.
2. Body and self-acceptance isn’t just about loving what your body looks like. That isn’t the whole story. Your body is not just a decoration. It’s the vessel for your spirit and your emotions and your mind. It allows you to move through life and experience all kinds of amazing things. We can’t limit our appreciation of ourselves to what our bodies look like because we are so much more than that. We wouldn’t only love our spouse or our kids because of how they look, so we don’t want to do that to ourselves either.
3. Self-acceptance is also not impossible. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been hating your body. You can change. This doesn’t mean it will be easy. There will be challenges and there will be ups and downs. But it is possible, and it will be worth it.
4. Self-acceptance is not going to be the same every day. It’s going to be easier some days and harder on others. Progress is not going to be linear. Choose to look for opportunities to improve every day, and forgive yourself when you make mistakes. Those old, patterned mean thoughts are going to come up, but we don’t have to react emotionally to them.

I’d love to know, what does self-acceptance mean to you? Is it something you’re working on?

-Tanja x