We often measure our progress on our physical appearance successes; how much weight we have lost, how many inches we have lost or how much muscle we have gained. But are these the most important changes?
The ‘progress’ that we celebrate is normally to do with aesthetics, but are we forgetting the most important parts of our journey. Changing your physical appearance can be done in about 10 million different ways, some are healthy some are not. You can lose 3 stone, but still be deeply unhappy. Or you can add 10kg of muscle and still feel small. In a world fixated on appearance we regularly overlook what is going on inside of us – we forget about that personal journey that we have with ourselves and our mental health.
A large part of the population are overweight, however, losing weight in unhealthy ways doesn’t make it sustainable and certainly doesn’t mean that all of your troubles and worries go away. Just like if you are underweight, putting on weight isn’t the answer to all your problems. You need to get deeper than that. You need to get to the bottom of your ‘why’.
Why are you over weight? Why do you want to change the way you look? Why are you underweight? Why are you unhappy? There are so many questions that you need to ask yourself. Now, on some occasions, genetics and health reasons are the answer to some of those questions so fixing them in sustainable way will help you to have a healthier body. However, people often have deeper reasons for wanting a change.
The relationship that we have with ourselves is the most important relationship we have in our lives. It has a knock an effect to everything we do. If we view ourselves negatively how can we expect to lead happy lives? If we are extremely hard on ourselves how can we relax and enjoy life? In a world fixated on social media and vanity it’s easy to get swept up in it and have superficial expectations of ourselves, but we must not forget the important things in life.
Our mental health is crucial to having a happy life, not how many abs you have. So just remember to understand WHY you are doing what you are doing. Get deep, you don’t have to tell anyone else, but you need to understand yourself. Celebrate the mental achievements and improvements as well as the physical changes. Progress isn’t all about how great we are looking, it is also about how great we are feeling on the inside. Be a little kinder to yourself.
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