Self-Love or Self-Discipline?

Sometimes my ethos could be confusing. 

I’m all about loving yourself and listening to your body, but I used to pride myself on the discipline and self-sacrifice that I needed to show to get lean.

Even still, I find I need to use self-discipline to make myself go for a run when I really don’t want to.

But is that self-love? Is that listening to my body?

The thing is - our minds don’t always tell us what our bodies need, for a number of reasons.

If your mind is telling you that you are too tired to go to the gym, you might not go. But there is a high possibility that you will actually feel great afterwards, with more energy, plus all the other benefits of training.

If your mind is telling you that what you really want is a bag of sweets, you might just eat mindlessly. But maybe your body was craving calories from not eating enough nourishing foods and would benefit more from a high protein meal, to keep you fuller for longer.

So how can you step back and tell the difference between what your body wants and what your mind is telling you?

Experience.

I’ve been in this game long enough to know that when I do go for a run in the evening, I’ll end on a runners high - rather than tired, like my mind was warning me before.

I know that if I find myself craving sweets or high-calorie food, I am probably not consuming enough food for my current levels of activity.

But that experience came from practicing self-love, not from practicing self-discipline.

It came from allowing myself to have the bag of sweets when I thought I wanted it and, rather than shaming myself for a lack of self-discipline, I used it as a learning tool and observed that I only really wanted them because I was hungry and planned on what I would do next time.

When it came to running, I thought I would only ever do it when I was really disciplined. But over the years, I’ve realised that training or any exercise, is a form of self-love.

Self-improvement is self-love.

So if you are the kind of person who is running off self-discipline, and you are afraid to lean into the self-love and listen to what your body really needs, I urge you to!

You will then gather the experience needed to know what you really need.

Sometimes it can be a day on the couch - but you’ll soon learn that every day on the couch will not serve you, and that your body will need to move.

Sometimes it will be pizza in the evening, but you’ll learn that pizza every day does not make your body feel good, and you’ll crave nutrients.

If you need help with the mindset shift and finding that self-love, you can sign up to The Furnace today.

Here’s the website with all the info and here’s the checkout page so that you can skip the waitlist.

If you’ve any questions before signing up, feel free to reply! 

Thanks for reading,

Siobhan “Sometimes pizza is a form of self-love” O’Hagan