Hello, my friends!

Things have been exciting lately. My baby is learning how to walk! And now she thinks she can do whatever she wants, go wherever she wants.

Which also means more changes in the routines I thought we already established.

But that’s okay.

Every time there’s a disruption in my plans, I find myself saying, “That’s okay.”

I’ve been telling myself that a lot lately.

And I don’t think my younger self would have said that nearly as easily.

Back then, a plan not working out felt like something I needed to fix. Or push through. Or do better next time.

Now, I’m much more likely to accept that this is what life looks like sometimes.

And the more I notice myself doing that, the more I realize that the biggest thing that changed when I changed my lifestyle wasn’t my diet, my workouts, or even my health.

It was the way I treated myself.

For a long time, I thought being hard on myself was part of being disciplined.

Stop being lazy.

Just do it.

Get it done.

That was pretty much how I talked to myself.

I’m a physical therapist.

I gave patients advice about taking care of themselves while struggling to follow that advice consistently myself.

I tried.

I exercised and dieted on and off for years. I went to the gym. Lifted weights. Did home workouts.

But I failed so many times at being consistent.

And I felt ashamed.

I should know better.

I’m supposed to be a good example.

Why can’t I just do this?

So I kept coming back to the same answer:

Try harder.

When I started kickboxing 5 years ago, I would literally imagine myself punching and kicking my cancer.

I was angry at the cancer.

Angry at my body.

Scared.

I wanted some sense of control.

Honestly, I think I needed that at the time.

But looking back, I can see how much of my relationship with health was built around fighting.

Fight the cancer.

Fight the resistance.

Fight the part of me that didn’t want to exercise.

Push through.

Get it done.

I thought that was what strength looked like.

One year after I started kickboxing, I decided to really change my lifestyle (especially my diet).

This time, I knew one thing:

If I made this another thing I had to do perfectly, I was going to make myself miserable.

So I planned for imperfection early on, to counter my perfectionism.

Sometimes I wasn’t going to finish the workout.

Sometimes I was going to eat ice cream.

Sometimes things weren’t going to go according to plan.

And I was going to keep going anyway.

At first, that was just practical. I thought I was learning how to let go of perfect so I could make this lifestyle work.

But while I was letting go of perfect, something else was happening:

I was getting good at forgiving myself for not being perfect.

If I didn’t finish a workout, I didn’t have to make myself feel bad about it.

If I ate the ice cream, I didn’t have to turn it into this big thing.

I could just eat the ice cream.

And continue living my life.

Little by little, the way I experienced health changed.

Every plant-forward meal felt like another chance to nourish myself.

I started getting excited to plan next week’s meals and go grocery shopping with my family.

Every kickboxing class felt like another chance to move, learn, have fun, and laugh at my myself for not getting the combo right.

At some point I realized:

I actually enjoyed taking care of myself.

I wasn’t constantly trying to force myself to do it anymore.

That was not the transformation I expected.

I thought changing my lifestyle would require me to become harder on myself. Instead, it taught me how to be kinder to myself.

And the funny thing is, being kinder to myself didn’t make me stop trying.

It didn’t make me lazy.

It didn’t make me care less about my health.

If anything, it became easier to keep caring for myself when I didn’t have to punish myself every time I fell short.

A meta-analysis of 94 studies involving almost 30,000 people found that self-compassion was positively associated with health-promoting behaviors.

I don’t take that to mean self-compassion is another trick we should use to make ourselves more disciplined.

I think the more useful lesson is simpler:

You don’t necessarily have to be hard on yourself in order to change.

You can want to grow and still be kind to yourself while you’re growing.

Keeping up with my health in this stage of my life is hard.

I teach about adjusting and iterating.

Dialing things down when you have less capacity.

Dialing them back up when you have more.

I believe all of that.

But it’s still hard. I’m not going to pretend that it isn’t.

When you have a new baby, you’re not really in good control of your time.

I can make a plan. Think I’ve finally figured out our routine. And then my baby changes her mind.

So much of what I plan doesn’t work out the way I planned it.

And that’s fine.

Sometimes I’m tired.

Sometimes I’m frustrated.

Sometimes I really wish I could do more.

But contrary to what my younger self might have thought, I genuinely don’t feel bad about myself for having to dial things down anymore.

I know and trust now that this is the natural unfolding of life.

There are times when I have more capacity.

There are times when I have less.

Back then, so much of my focus was on progressing and leveling up in different areas of my life.

Now I’m learning to enjoy the process no matter how slow it is.

To allow myself to be a work in progress.

And I think that has helped me keep going.

There was a point when all I wanted was for the cancer to go away.

And of course I did what I could.

But eventually, I came to a place where I felt okay whether it stayed or went away.

Either way, I could do what I could, love my body, and enjoy my life.

The cancer eventually did go away.

But I don’t want my love for my body to depend on my body doing exactly what I want it to do.

I don’t want to spend my life fighting myself.

I still have goals.

I still want to take care of my health.

And I still believe that making your health about something bigger than yourself can give you a powerful reason to care for it.

Your family or whatever mission you have in life that you need your health to fuel.

I still believe that.

But I believe this too:

You are worth taking care of.

I thought changing my lifestyle was going to be about becoming healthier.

And it was.

But somewhere in all those years of practicing how to take care of myself, I also became kinder to myself.

I’m still learning.

Still adjusting. Still a work in progress.

I just don’t feel like I have to fight that person anymore.

If there’s a healthy habit you’re working on right now and it feels like you’re constantly fighting yourself to make it happen, maybe the first question isn’t:

How do I make myself try harder?

Maybe it’s:

What’s actually getting in the way?

I made the Healthy Habit Friction Finder to help you figure that out.

You tell it the habit you’re working on, answer a few questions, and it helps you identify what may be making that habit harder than it needs to be—and what to change first.

Let me know what you find out.

Talk soon,

Grazelle 🌱