Loving Yourself

Today, I can stick a finger in the waist of my fat pants.

After months of calorie counting and many more months of sort of working out, I think I learned something about self-loathing. I think self-loathing is punishing yourself for being you, when you don’t think you’re good enough to love as you are. When I would skip working out for weeks, because I’d skipped once, it was because I’d written myself off as a failure, like an abusive parent or something. I thought I’d slipped down some slope and might as well free fall to its depths.

What does it mean to love yourself? I asked, and you answered:
“Loving yourself means believing you have value and worth and deserve respect and compassion. It means truly hoping for the best for yourself.”

“Maybe ‘tough love’ is good self-love: pushing yourself to excel, and rewarding yourself for a job well-done. Or maybe just being comfortable in your own skin.”

“I think the practice of Love should be the same for yourself as it is for others. …Do you want only the best for your best friend and believe they shouldn't needlessly suffer through judgment- always.”

Loving yourself, I hypothesize, is acknowledging that you’re on a walk, so that when you trip and fall, you get up and keep going. You are not scaling a deadly mountain grasping for approval at its peak! One day, uh, many days, I’ll eat way more than my calorie budget or say a nasty thing I didn’t mean. The next day, I should refocus on eating right and speaking love, because I still believe in myself like a loving parent.

Soon enough, I'll be able to stick two fingers in my fat pants.