Do you ever feel overwhelmed that maybe you aren’t doing enough or being enough compared to others you are following on social media? Do you ever feel disconnected from being fully honest with your emotions and feelings, fully aware with what you have in life, or fully present with your loved ones? Do you ever feel the constant need to document, record, capture, and share special life moments with others on social media? If you answered yes to some or all of these questions, you are not alone.
If you’re not a morning person like me, you’ll understand how hard morning routines truly are. I cannot tell you how many books, articles, blog posts, etc. that I have read on how to have a “successful start” to my morning. And while most of what is written is good, it wasn’t enough. I still felt empty. I still felt unsatisfied. I still felt like there was something missing to truly set up my day in a way that would help me know I didn’t have to figure everything out on my own….or even check everything off my to-do list. That’s when I discovered that there’s something beautiful that happens when I start each morning in God’s Word.
If you’ve been following my “New Year Without Shame From Diet Culture” blog series, then you know that today is part 3. In part 1, I shared with you 3 ways to improve your well-being without focusing on weight loss, body manipulation, or food restricting. In part 2, I emphasized the importance in finding joy in your physical movement/exercise. In part 3, (today) I will share why it’s important to not engage in diet-talk with yourself or others because let’s be honest, it can be really hard to stand above and resist diet culture. But, I’m here to remind you that you do not have to participate in conversations about diet or weight loss, if you do not want to. Even if others still decide to.
Have you ever asked yourself what is the driving force and true motive behind why you workout or why you want to start working out? If you have, have you answered yourself truthfully? Have you really dug deep and been honest and transparent with yourself about this? As I shared last week with you, this one subject has caused and brought me a lot of pain and confusion. For the past almost 8 years, I have worked out with the intention of either weight loss, weight maintenance, or body manipulation. While these three reasons sound “normal,” the truth is, these shouldn’t be the true motives behind our desire to either exercise or start exercising. If you have worked out because of these same reasons, I want you to give yourself grace, but also know that you don’t have to do this anymore.
I don’t know about you, but I am seeing diet talk everywhere! In the checkout isles as I buy our groceries, magazines oozing out diet tips and tricks. As I hop onto social media, ads galore about food swaps and food demonization. And especially when we have the tv playing in the background for our dog, morning shows talking nonstop about weight loss and exercising with the intention of changing your body shape. It’s literally everywhere.
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