10 (Essential) Healthy Lifestyle Choices For Self Love

Want to create a self love lifestyle? Wondering what lifestyle choices naturally promote self love? Then you’ve come to the right place! Here’s 10 (essential) healthy lifestyle choices for self love, that you can incorporate into your life - with ease - to whatever level you please. So let’s start from the top, shall we?

What Are Lifestyle Choices?

So first off, just to be clear, when we talk about healthy lifestyle choices, it simply means: “the daily decisions and habits you make that affect your health, happiness and overall wellbeing.”

Now you might wonder how closely these all relate to your level of self love, and that’s where you may be surprised. You see:

• Health significantly impacts self love because feeling physically well can boost self-esteem and confidence, while poor health (especially when it comes back to things that are in your control) can lead to feelings of worthlessness, reduced participation, and self-criticism. Prioritizing your health also reinforces the subconscious message that YOU ARE WORTHY of care and DESERVE to thrive, creating a positive cycle of self love and self care.

• Happiness also greatly affects self love. In fact, there is a strong positive correlation, between feeling happy and feeling good in yourself. When you feel happy, you tend to view yourself more positively. You’re also more resilient and can better challenge negative self talk, or stop down-spiralling in its tracks. On the flip side - when you feel bad about yourself, it drives unhappiness of course too. So finding ways to be and feel happy is incredibly important when it comes to developing lasting self love.

• In short, wellbeing could be described as how you feel about yourself and your life, but it encompasses many things - from having meaningful relationships, to being financially secure; finding your sense of purpose; to dealing with everything that’s going on with the world. As your wellbeing ultimately goes back to health and happiness, it’s unsurprising that it all ties in.

Lifestyle Choices For Self Love

So now we’re clear on what lifestyle choices are and why they’re so important - let’s look more specifically at the healthy lifestyle choices for self love, shall we?

Our Recommendation: Have a read of this list, and for each healthy lifestyle choice, rate where you think your level is currently at on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being: “I really need to work on this” and 10 being: “I have this 100% covered.”

Please Note: Some of these things may sound like a no-brainer, but have a proper read, because:

1. There may be more benefits than you think.

2. It can stir up more reasons why you have to now prioritise it.

3. As the list goes on, we dig deeper into more lifestyle choices you may not have considered… So be sure to read all the way through to the end, my friends. 🫶

Think you've already got this covered? Then you can also find out for sure with our FREE Self Love Lifestyle Quiz. Give it a go & see how high you score. (It takes just 4 minutes to complete!)

10 (Essential) Healthy Lifestyle Choices For Self Love

Then, when you're ready - we can jump straight in.

In no particular order, when it comes to the biggest healthy lifestyle choices for self love, you should ensure that you…

1) Get enough sleep.

Everything feels worse or harder when you’re tired, right? And sure, there’s going to be times in your life when sleep is tough - maybe you have a newborn, or are struggling through a breakup / divorce?

But, where possible, really try to prioritize sleep and do all you can to improve your sleep to ensure you’re getting enough.

It’s crucial for your mental and physical wellbeing. As a general guide - you want to be aiming for 7-9 hours per night, as recommended by experts.

2) Drink enough water.

Focusing on your water intake is one of the simplest healthy lifestyle choices for love.

Drinking enough water is an act of self love because it supports essential physical and mental functions, preventing negative effects like fatigue, headaches, and poor concentration, and instead promoting positive mood, clear skin, and improved cognitive performance.

The conscious effort to prioritize your body's fundamental needs, rather than seeing water intake as a chore, also feels damn good. You’re looking after yourself and knowing that that is important to you, which also plays a small part in helping to build yourself up.

3) Eat nutritiously.

Now everyone has different views and opinions on what the healthiest diets are. But the most important thing is for you to work out what you want / need, and make dietary improvements you feel confident with.

As a general rule, you can aim to consume a balanced variety of foods that provide your body with the necessary energy, macronutrients, and micronutrients it needs to function, grow, and protect itself…

The good news is - swatting up on all of this can be pretty fun and interesting; not to mention empowering when you then put it into practice. Likewise…

4) Have a self care routine

It sounds so simple, right? You’ve got the basics like brushing your teeth, washing your face, having a shower, right the way to doing your morning stretches, taking time to meditate, etc.

The thing is - neglecting your self care, especially when life gets busy, is incredibly common, which is why it helps to have a non-negotiable self care routine that you can stick to.

The knock on effect if you don’t? Lower self-esteem, more stress and ultimately - a weaker sense of wellbeing, which of course also then in turn combines to affect your levels of self love.

After all, if you can’t take time to yourself every day to do the essentials - how worthy are you going to feel?

5) Exercise regularly.

Another no brainer when it comes to healthy lifestyle choices for self love, is undoubtably exercising regularly and - more than anything - making the time to do this for yourself, and finding exercise that you enjoy / also boosts your mood and makes you feel good in yourself.

This was something that I got into the habit of leading up to my wedding day and it’s honestly, it’s something that shouldn’t be underestimated.

See, so often we put it off or make excuses. We’re “too tired” or “don’t have enough time.” But shift the level of importance you put in it - seriously.

Not only does exercise improve your physical health (which can too, help with body confidence), but it also improves mental wellbeing, releases feel-good endorphins, boosts energy levels, helps you to sleep, and improves overall self esteem.

When you truly start to look after your body, the way you feel in your mind, dramatically improves. (Trust me.) So if this is something you know you’ve been neglecting - now’s the time to home in on it; even if that’s by starting small to begin with… Even the smallest of changes compile up to create big wins.

6) Stop / reduce substance use.

Next up, we’ve got to talk about the use of smoking, alcohol and drugs. After all, these are all lifestyle choices - the decision of what to put in your body, but you can’t forget the effects that it then has.

Now, I’m not going to try to tell you to be a complete saint - NO SMOKING, NO DRINKING, NO DRUGS.

Personally, I only drink on special occasions / social events on weekends, and even then - I try to reduce it now. (I used to be a pretty big binge drinker as a coping mechanism.)

But - review it all for you, personally. Look at your substance use, look at what you’re gaining and also the flip side of what it’s costing you - what you’re losing.

Think about your physical health and more so than that - your mental health. Are these really things that you want to continue, would recommend others to do, or that you want to continue to do? Do you really NEED to do it? Weigh it all up, then make the right choices or changes for you.

Just remember: you deserve to be the happiest, healthiest version of you.

You, yourself, just as you are, deep down within your core, without any other substances - are enough; are capable; are confident. Take a step back and remind yourself of all of that. Be brave.

7) Take time for the things you enjoy.

Let’s talk about hobbies / personal leisure time next. These are things that can be done alone, but don’t have to be. You can share these things with friends, family, your loved one, where they align.

Hobbies promote self love by reducing stress, boosting self-esteem through skill development, and providing a sense of purpose and joy, leading to improved mental and physical well-being.

They can foster mindfulness allowing you to really live in the moment, can create social connections with people who enjoy the same things, enrich life with new experiences and knowledge, and help combat boredom and negative feelings. 

Essentially, they allow you to switch off, and simply LIVE, doing things that bring joy to your life, in even the smallest of ways. So if you’re unsure of your hobbies - now’s the time to try some new things out and explore…

8) Surround yourself with the right people.

One of the healthy lifestyle choices for self love that isn’t talked about enough is the choice of who you surround yourself with.

Remember - numerous studies in social psychology and neuroscience support the idea that you become like the people you surround yourself with.

So if you’re surrounding yourself with negative, toxic people - you’re going to pick up on that.

Not only this, but people either lift you up, support you, inspire you, encourage you, or they can seriously drag you down. And this of course heavily influences the way you feel in and about yourself.

So this is undoubtably a lifestyle choice you need to review - no matter how difficult it may be. Just know that you are worthy of being around the right people.

And hey, remember - we have our FREE Self Love Community available to remind you of this.

9) Allow yourself to set boundaries with people.

Setting boundaries is another healthy lifestyle choice for self love, because it involves making a conscious and ongoing commitment to prioritizing your needs and well-being.

This can be another tricky one, because it requires a fundamental shift in how you approach relationships, manage your time and energy, and protect your personal space. But it’s absolutely what leads to a more balanced and fulfilling way of living. 

Setting boundaries means being able to say “no” when you need to, being able to call out bad behaviour / “mistreatment”, and being able to express yourself.

It’s not unreasonable or demanding, and when everyone around you has their own, and you each respect one another’s boundaries - it leads to the healthiest, most compassionate, caring and respectful relationships.

10) Commit to continuous learning.

Last but not least, I wanted to finish with the lifestyle choice of learning.

And yes - learning can be considered a lifestyle choice because it is an ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge that can be integrated into one's daily life to foster some serious personal growth.

Learning promotes self-love by building self-esteem and confidence through accomplishment, fostering a resilient and positive mindset that helps navigate challenges, and enabling personal growth and self-discovery that leads to a deeper appreciation of oneself.

Learning has been my go-to healthy lifestyle choice for self love for over a decade now. It’s what’s developed my greatest sense of self, and pulled me through the toughest of times when I’ve been feeling down.

Ask yourself - what do I want to learn more about, and how can learning this really help / support me?

Unsure where to start? Then our Self Love Plan can actually be the perfect guide for this. We’ll not only help you establish the best areas for personal growth, but also provide all the tools, guides and information to get you there. It’s pretty transformational, to say the least.

That’s All For This One

Andddd, that rounds things up.

What would you say are some of the healthiest lifestyle choices for self love?

Let us know in the comments box below. (Signing up in order to comment, takes LESS THAN A MINUTE - NO JOKE(!) & then also gives you access into our community as an added bonus too.) So be sure to get social - you now know the benefits of this. 😉

We’d love to hear what’s helped you and we know others would too.

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