You Don't Deserve It

You don’t deserve it. I know you think you do, but you don’t. 

These are the words I used to have to tell myself on a regular basis. I had come to the realization that all the little “treats” I had been giving myself over the years were actually terrible for my mind, my body, and my overall health! Somehow, I had convinced myself that the best way to reward myself was to damage my body! And I saw this behaviour in every single person I knew…

And you probably have some of that behaviour in you as well. How many times have you said to yourself “But I deserve it” about something? But I worked hard all week; don’t I deserve a couple glasses of wine? The kids were both home sick; don’t I deserve some chocolate? I’ve been really good at eating healthy lately; surely I deserve to have a couple extra slices of pizza/cake/pie, don’t I?

No. You don’t.

Here’s the questions I started to ask myself before I’d indulge in any of these little treats: does my heart deserve having its arteries clogged? Do my hormones deserve being screwed up by alcohol? How about my blood sugar? Does it deserve the rollercoaster ride those sweets send it on?

What about my goals? Do they deserve being thrown off track? Do my kids/partner/friends deserve having someone who doesn’t have the energy, the spring in their step, to keep up with them? Does my partner deserve someone whose libido is shot to hell and who's cranky all the time because their hormones are everywhere? And what about my belly? Does it deserve the extra adipose tissue I’m piling on it? Do my thighs? 

I hadn’t realized how hidden these things were. On the surface, it seems nice to have a glass of wine, a bowl of doritos, or a slice of cake, but when we think of alllll the hidden effects that are building up in our bodies after we’ve indulged, we should ask ourselves - is it worth it? Maybe it is, once in a blue moon. But we also have to be honest about what “once in a blue moon” means. For me, that meant multiple times a week, when it should have been closer to once a month or so.

So, no I don’t think you deserve that “treat”. I think you deserve so much more. You deserve to nourish your body. You deserve to sleep like a baby at night because you have the energy to be physical during the day. You deserve to have your doctor say “Your blood work looks great!”. You deserve to be able to send the kids to a friend’s place for the afternoon because you need some alone time with your partner! You deserve to feel like you have so much energy you don’t even know what to do with it!

We make excuses for ourselves all the time. I’m as guilty of it as anyone else. But too often we pretend that those excuses are somehow good for us. If laying on the couch, eating and drinking crap, while watching a show I don’t really like on Netflix is a reward… I don’t want to know what the punishment is…

If you want to reward yourself, if you truly believe you deserve something, give yourself the reward of energy, long life, health, and vibrancy. Because that, you deserve!