How to Truly Love Yourself

How to truly love yourself. Five steps on how to show yourself love every day of the year.

The month of February, at least here in Madison, brings cold weather, but the thought of warm hearts.

With love in the air, it’s the perfect time to talk about how to first love yourself. Doesn’t the saying always go, “to love others, you must first love yourself”, or something along those lines?

Do you know what it means to truly love yourself? How do you feel when you love yourself with your mind and heart?

Or maybe you’re still struggling with fully loving yourself inside and out. If that’s the case, that’s totally okay. I’m here to show you five steps that helped me to practice self love.

Step away from dieting

This one was huge for me. I spent so much of my life after college counting points with Weight Watchers, trying different cleanses, attempting to count macros, and always going back to WW.

There had to be an easier way to maintain a healthy weight without constantly thinking of food in a negative way. Come to find out, there was. It’s called mindful eating.

Mindful eating is the practice of paying attention to your hunger and fullness cues. When you eat what you are craving, and only to the point of satiety {like not eating to the point of needing to unbutton your pants}, you are less likely overeat other foods that are not satisfying your cravings.

The first time I heard of this practice I thought, “won’t I want to eat ALL the carbs if I’m not counting points?”

Yes, at first I did have cravings for pasta, bread and sweets. But then, I started craving veggies and salad, fruit and healthy grains.

This was my body’s way of saying it needed foods that we’re going to fuel and not weigh me down. It’s crazy what your body tells you it needs, if only you’re able to listen and not be dictated by points, macros or calories.

Stepping away from dieting will help you to truly love yourself because you’ll be paying attention to what your body actually needs and wants.

Eat good for you foods

What does this mean exactly? You probably instantly thought of greens, salads, fruits, no carbs, less meat. But what I mean by eating good for you foods means, again, listening to your body.

Does your body react to certain foods, certain ways? Whether it’s in a positive or negative manner, you need to start to understand how to fuel your body with the foods it needs.

Journaling can help with this. When you write down what you eat during the day and how it affects you, whether mentally or physically, you start to understand what foods to eat, and which ones to avoid. Journaling can help you to notice patterns in your eating habits and how to start to fix them.

When you eat these foods that affect you in a positive way, you’re learning how to truly love yourself. Showing your body love, internally, will help you to feel good from the inside out.

Take time for exercise

Are you cringing hearing this? Taking time for exercise is so important to start to love yourself. It may not be what you want to hear, but it doesn’t have to mean running or super high intensity workouts. It just means getting out there, whether it’s in a gym or at home, and moving. 

I went to a dance class yesterday, and at the end of class the instructor said, “don’t say, “ugh, I have to work out today.” Instead say, thank goodness I can workout today!””

Those words rang so true. So many times we complain that we have to workout, rather than being happy that we have the ability to move each and every day.

Taking time out of your day to exercise, whether it’s walking the dog, running, dancing, cycling or doing HIIT means that you’re starting to show your body love.

You can start to truly love yourself because you’ve taken some time out of your day to do something that will make you feel good in the end.

Slow your mind

You may have heard that meditation is a great way to start to show yourself love.

When you take time to clear your mind from everything you have going on, you can start to become in-tune with your mind.

Your brain controls so much of what you do and how you feel, that taking a moment to slow it will help to give you more clarity.

I know I could become better at meditating, but even just taking five minutes at the end of the day to lay in bed, close your eyes, slow your breathing and think about all you’re grateful for can really help to kick out your running to-do list, or even something that went wrong during the day.

If you’re not into the whole meditation thing, yoga is also a great way to slow your mind.

You can take just 15 minutes to follow a short yoga video {this one is my favorite} and be amazed at how quickly you can start to shut your mind off from the outside world.

Yoga also helps you to open your heart to yourself. It may sound odd, but when you open your own heart to loving yourself, you can then truly love others.

Tune out the negative self-talk

This one may be the hardest of all to accomplish {maybe even harder than exercise}. So often we speak to ourselves negatively.

This is so detrimental to our well-being, yet the most difficult thing to try and turn around. I know I have had to work so hard at this one specifically.

I’ll find myself having self-doubt about this blog, at times, or even the way I look in the mirror. When these thoughts creep in, I instantly tell myself they’re not warranted.

Negative self-talk or self-doubt has no place in my mind. I instead think of a positive to my negative thought. So when I have thoughts that I’m not reaching anyone with my blog, I instead remind myself of how many people have reached out to me telling me how much they appreciate my recipes.

Or when I think something negative about what I see in the mirror, I instead remind myself that it’s all a work in progress, and I have made so much progress within even just the past year.

I encourage you to do the same when you have a negative thought creep into your mind. Find a way to turn it around to a positive thought. Those thoughts will make you a happier person. When you show yourself positivity, you will truly love yourself.

How to truly love yourself

With these five steps you can learn how to take action to truly love yourself. Start to put each one into practice. It’s obviously not going to happen overnight, but when you take it one day at a time, you can start to show yourself love.

P.S. If you’re looking for ways to start eating mindfully, journaling, or want to work in healthier foods to your weekly meals, then check out Piece of Mind Squad.

This membership program takes you through learning how to love yourself, ditching the diet and retraining your brain to eat healthy without tracking, all while taking back your time, control and confidence.