If it does not serve you let it go, even if it’s hard.

How many of us have turned to self-abusive tendencies to deal with stress? Maybe we turn to things like over/under eating or exercising, loss of sleep, or another bad habit to keep our mind off the things that are hurting us, or to soothe the pain of the things we choose to repress.

Our emotional self begins to suffer which affects our physical self. We start to suffer from exhaustion, our skin breaks out, we gain/lose weight, we get jittery or irritable. We feel like we are losing control which makes us try to micromanage other aspects of our life.

Although it’s hard, the best thing we can do is build our best self by evaluating what separates the healthy from the unhealthy in our lives, and how we choose to respond.

Personally speaking, whenever I have dealt with situations that I felt were out of my control I turned to abusing my body with food restriction, purging, or over exercising.

I would spend days at a time, which turned to weeks, not eating. Punishing myself for a situation I didn’t want to deal with. It was easier to deal with the pain of an empty stomach or to kneel in front of the toilet and vomit up everything I ate than to deal with what was really hurting me. When I had a stressful situation my body shut down, I lost my feeling of hunger and I could stay awake for days at a time because that’s what I trained my body to do.

When we are in toxic friendships/relationships/situations, we will never be able to give ourselves what we need the most which is respect, admiration, and love.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I started to learn healthy coping skills and how to take back my life. Unfortunately, some of the damage I’ve done has had lingering effects. I have hurt up my metabolism and suffer from Body Dysmorphic Disorder, however, I work on both of those to the best of my ability.

The best thing I could have done was to link up to a support system. I met other people like me and we leaned on one another to get us through the hard times. Using my past situation to help others healed me the most. I have never been in a better place than I am now.

I have recently been asked to form a support group of women in my town who face the same sorts of struggles every day. I feel honored every time someone reaches out and asks for help because taking that first step is scary.

I’ve worked a lot on body acceptance and positive body image. Of course, we all have our moody moments, but that’s life and we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t.

What I’ve learned is that surrounding myself with the most genuine of people and doing the things that bring me the most joy has been the key. I cannot contain the happiness and then the rest of the self-care chips fall into place.

So, get out there today, take a look at life, take the things that aren’t serving you and “chuck it in the fuck-it bucket,” because in the end you goal is to build a happier and healthier you.

You have to transform today… it’s Tuesday, duh!