Personal and Intellectual Growth

It should come as no surprise that weight loss has a lot to do with your mindset and mental state. If you're depressed and overweight, chances are you will continue to be overweight and weight loss will not be a successful venture. However, when you work on your inner self, weight loss will come almost naturally. Why is that?

SELF LOVE IS THE KEY!

I know, I know. It sounds really corny and cliche. But if you sit back and think about it, I mean really think about it, then it makes complete and perfect sense.

I'm taking a quote from one of my favorite Youtube Weight Loss vloggers, Shanti: "Too often, we get ourselves into this 'If, then...' way of thinking." For example, we may be thinking to ourselves, "IF I can fit into a size 8 skinny jean, THEN I will love myself." Or "IF the scale says 140, THEN I will be happy". But when we do this, its like setting our self up for failure. Why? Because we're making our love for ourselves or our happiness within ourselves a CONDITIONAL thing, when it should be UNCONDITIONAL.

Consider this thought: We should love ourselves first and foremost, inside and out, before we can ever share our love with another person.

Did you know that most people who lose a large amount of weight, will inevitably gain it back? Ask yourself why this happens. Some will say its because of laziness or unhealthy food choices. But if you think about it, its really because of one simple fact: When that person was in the process of losing all that weight, he/she was only concerned with the outward and not the inward.

So, how do we fix this? Its obvious that everyone is different and everyone has differing opinions on how to remedy this. Here's my opinion:

Spend some quality time with yourself and your thoughts. Keep a journal. Read a book. Enrich your mind and stop trying to BUY your happiness. Day in and day out I see all these people (or 'friends' as facebook calls them) who are posting all these things about how wonderfully happy they are, how perfect their lives and their love is, or the worst offense: posting picture after picture of all the materialistic things they buy. My friends, you can buy everything that the world has to offer, and you can preach to everyone in the world about your so called 'happiness', but one fact remains tried and true: If you have to advertise, then it just isn't true!

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to work on my inner character. Yes, I too need to work on who I am as a person. I'm still young and there's many things I need to learn (yes Dad, I said it). I'm interested in learning what others have learned about life and love. And I'm hoping that I can apply some of those things and some of that wisdom to my own life.

Everyday I wake up, I try to love myself a little bit more. And you know what I get in return? I get to love my husband a little bit more. I get to love my son a little bit more. In return, I get the motivation to get up, get out and go to the gym. I begin to enjoy all the small things that life has to offer: the roof over my head, heat in my house, the coffee in my hand, the keyboard at my fingertips, and the ability to help others at the very same time that I'm helping myself.

I came across a wonderful quote yesterday. I put it in my video update, but I'll share it here as well:

"Change yourself, and fortune will change with you."

And there you have it. That's what I really want to get across in this post. Work on yourself, and who you are on the inside. If you're honest with yourself, you will find that you have many flaws (just as the rest of us do!) and that you could better yourself, your family, and your life in general by addressing those flaws and trying to overcome them......if possible. And guess what? Weight loss will come, it only takes time. Time and self love.