I recently had an experience that has helped me realize the impact my self-talk has on the way I feel. For the past 5 weeks I've had my daughter with me so I've spent most of my time with her, including going to Disneyland and a family reunion, but during this time I've also been doing the following:
- Eating a ton of junk and more food than I need
- Stopped working out, although I've gone on a lot of walks
- Thinking and saying negative things about myself
Last Tuesday I was awake early in the morning and realized I needed to relieve some stress I was feeling, so I went jogging. Wow, did I feel good (and sore) afterwards! Because I felt good I started thinking positive things about myself, and as a result I started eating less food, which in turn made me feel better about myself, and so then I felt like exercising... etc. I realized it was a cycle! Which of course I knew but now it made more sense to me.
I've found that as I've consciously made an effort to change my negative thoughts about myself into positive ones, I truly have felt better. Over the past few weeks when I was thinking negative thoughts about myself I felt fat and thought I was fat, but then when I changed my attitude and started talking positive about myself I have felt beautiful and believed it.
I put together some simple charts to help illustrate this cycle of behavior:
Negative Cycle:
Positive Cycle:
Another way to view the Positive Cycle:
This has really helped me over the past week and I feel SO much better about myself by saying "I'm beautiful" when I look in the mirror instead of all the negative junk I was saying the weeks before. So when you look in a mirror, look into your eyes and tell yourself you're beautiful and believe it, because you are! As you continue to do this you will come to believe it, because it's true!
2 comments:
I've been in that cycle of negativity. *sigh* But what is really hard is to have to handle a husband who LOVES to eat ALL the time and A LOT. I thought three rolls of sushi would be plenty for us both, but he wants to get two more just for him because he's that hungry. Boggles the mind. And makes me sad.
My sister, who gained weight after being married, and later lost it by exercising and counting calories said that it took her a long time to realize that she didn't have to eat as much as her husband did. I think most men need more food than we do but for some reason we feel that if he eats (or gets to eat should be more accurate) a lot we should (get to) eat a lot too.
It's a real challenge to lose weight when your family has a lot of food/snacks/junk food in the house... but you can do it!
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