Learning to REALLY Love Myself

This is what mine and Chris's typical Saturday night tends to look like:

Chris: I'm hungry
Me: Me too

Chris: Let's cook together
Me: Okay, that sounds nice, what should we have?

Chris: Pizza sounds good, we can make pizza, what do you think?
Me: Umm...I don't want pizza, pizza sounds heavy.

Chris: Okay, what do you want then?
Me: I don't know, but I know it's not pizza...

...and then this I-don't-know-what-I-want-and-I-don't-have-anything-to-offer vicious cycle begins (spoiler alert: we ended up making pizza and it was delicious!).

So I've been trying really hard to self love myself regularly. Some days it's great, some days it's harder to find that love for myself. It's hard to explain...but often times I determine my self worth on my appearance rather than my amazing internal attributes. I know, this is shallow and vain but hear me out.

I wrote about my relationship with food not too long ago regarding my unhealthy habits, weight gain and finally finding love for eating healthy and working out (and losing a few pounds in the process). Well, to go back to that story I remember feeling really on a high when I was at my lowest weight (a weight I had never been in my life) and felt worth something. Because you know, people notice, tell you how good you look and of course you feel good. That summer I backpacked through Europe and gained 15 pounds. Coming back it was hard. Nothing fit like it did before I left, I felt fat, ugly and honestly worthless. It took a loooooooong time to get back on my feet and feel better about myself and return to my healthy habits.

Although, I still struggle with the self love part.

I am on this constant search of BALANCE called YOLO; living life to the fullest while also living a really healthy lifestyle (and I'm talking mostly in terms of my diet). Healthy means many things, yet, I tend to just equate it to the diet I eat and if I exercised. Not my relationships with people, or my whole physical and emotional well being, just my weight and diet.

In my mind (constantly) I struggle with body image. Like, I see myself and tell myself this isn't it. I am going to get leaner, fitter, healthier, and then I see wine and pizza and think, well just live your fucking life! And in those moments I do, and then I wake up with regret thinking if I ate something healthy I'd be closer to my leaner, fitter goal. And it's a constant battle.

So the pizza suggestion....mmmm. I wanted it. Like fuck yeah pizza sounds delicious! But I was like, wait, you drank wine last night, ate fried chicken, tonight you're supposed to eat healthy. Tonight shouldn't be pizza but healthy.

And I didn't realize this until we were on our way to the store to blindly buy ingredients for a mystery dish (because we veto'ed pizza after my mini meltdown).

"I know why I am being so difficult."
"Why?"
"Because I don't feel good about myself, I feel ugly, fat, bloated, insecure. I feel like I should eat healthy because I had pancakes for dinner the other night and fried chicken last night. But I also WANT the pizza, and wine. And to cook with you and enjoy our night together and produce something delicious. I also want to live my fucking life and enjoy what I am doing with the man I love. I want to stop valuing my self worth on my appearance. I want to love myself for the person I am, the people I surround myself with, the energy I put out in the world. I want to just enjoy life. And if that's in a form of delicious pizza and wine tonight, let's do it. Let's make pizza!"

We did. The whole process was great. We listened to music, cooked, talked, drank wine and enjoyed each other's company. And, what's cool is I woke up this morning feeling good about the experience. No regrets. Just love- love for Chris, for the food we made last night and most importantly- myself.

This was a turning leaf for me. Although I know I might revert back to my negative ways in the future, the beautiful thing is I know I am capable of having an open and honest discussion with myself and value my self worth more than just the way I look.

Do you ever have struggles with self love or evaluate yourself based on one particular thing? Please share, because I'd love to hear about how you self love!