What would happen if you respond with love?

It’s a new year, and a time when talk about resolutions and weight loss ramps up.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the clean slate that a new year brings, and I love dreaming about fun experiences I want to invite in my life or the places I want to travel this year.

But the kind of resolutions that make me feel like I. Must. Change?

No, thank you.

For many years, I started January by picking a new diet or new way to monitor my eating. The plan was usually restrictive in some way and meant to make up for my poor eating through the holiday season.

The process of failing (again) triggered my overly-developed mean girl, and the cycle of beating myself up was sure to follow and make me feel even worse.

In the last few years, I’ve done a lot of work on my own thinking around food. 

I’ve learned to tame the spin cycle of emotional eating, to stop beating myself up, and to ever-so-slowly…be kinder to myself.

A few years ago, when I found my jeans feeling snug during the holidays, I had a thought that was nothing short of revolutionary.

“Hating myself never works, so I need to figure out how to love myself through this,” I thought.

Wait…what?

It was like flipping the bird at my inner mean girl (and believe me, she’s still there…I’m just working on putting her on mute more often).

Then my brain got to work figuring out what love looked like.

That week, it looked like walking a little bit more. Drinking more water. Then I did it again a couple of days later. Then I went to yoga. I drank more water. 

I took simple, small actions to care for myself, and show love to the body I have.

It wasn’t about punishing myself by spending hours at the gym. 

It wasn’t about vowing I wouldn’t eat any more sugar (how realistic is that?). 

It wasn’t about focusing on the number on the scale.

It was simply about caring for the body I have because she’s worth caring for.

Author Brene Brown writes about this in her work, “A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life.” 

Was this what self-compassion felt like, looked like?

I wasn’t sure, but I was willing to play with it some more, and find out.

Here’s to a more loving and playful relationship – with ourselves – this year.