What do you really want for yourself? 

I want success, stability, a sense of well-being, love, happiness, and above all, health, things I imagine that you may want to, in whatever proportion suits your needs.  But health isn’t just something we acquire by having certain numbers appear in a doctor’s screening. Health is about a life of happiness and love.

So what’s is healthy for you?  Healthy is not Dallas Cowgirl platinum blonde or Allie McBeal paper thin. 

Healthy is going out each day and knowing that you are going to do something you love, whether it’s your job, playing tennis after work, singing, dancing, or just playing a board game with friends or your kids.  It’s about maintaining balance and stability in your life and remembering what is beautiful about you, knowing yourself and listening to your body - taking what you need, but not over-indulging in any one thing.

According to a recent study written up in an article in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, women who focused on health at every size and maintaining stable social support networks had longer-lasting improvements in their eating habits (“Health-At-Every-Size and Eating Behaviors: 1-Year Follow-Up Results of a Size Acceptance Intervention,” in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Nov. 2009).  As health at every size gains more traction, some people grow increasingly vociferous in their opposition to the notion that health is perhaps better influenced by behavior than weight. And I think it can be about even more - or less, depending on how you look at it - than that.

As a physician, I’ve seen people in the hospital who are 300 lbs and completely content with stable family and home-lives; their cholesterol levels were low and in the normal range because their healthy lifestyles led to lower levels of stress.  Is that to say that they were always healthy in a conventional, medical sense? No, not necessarily. But they were happy, surrounded by friends and family, and enjoying their lives to the fullest.  Isn’t that what you want for yourself?

Contribute to your health by loving others and loving yourself.  Be secure in who you are, no matter your size, and others will want to be around you. 

So, go home today and consider writing a love letter to yourself.  Tell yourself how amazing you are and why you love your life - I bet you’ll start getting the response you desire.

To learn more about having a loving relationship with yourself, check out Golda’s Soul Food post.