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Self-love is one of those phrases everyone recognizes… and almost no one feels confident they truly understand.

For some, it sounds like positive affirmations or surface-level self-care. For others, it feels vague, indulgent, or disconnected from real life. And yet, despite knowing we should love ourselves, many people still find themselves stuck in cycles of self-criticism, burnout, emotional eating, or fear of slipping backwards.

That disconnect is exactly why I wanted to explore this topic more deeply, and why I recently sat down with Dr. Joy Bracey, a licensed therapist, educator, and someone who has lived this work in a very real way. Dr. Bracey spent decades struggling with her relationship with food and her body before losing over 200 pounds and rebuilding her life from the inside out.

In this post, we’ll look at what self-love actually means, why it’s so often misunderstood, and what it looks like in real life (beyond the clichés).

What self-love actually means

One thing Dr. Bracey shared is that self-love is rarely taught as a skill. Growing up, she heard the phrase often but was never shown how to practice it. She thought she had it figured out until a toxic relationship and years of neglecting her own needs made it clear she didn’t.

The biggest shift for her was realizing this:

Self-love is not something you feel. It is something you practice.

Think about how you love other people. You don’t just say it once and move on. You show up consistently, take responsibility, and back your words with action.

The same applies to loving yourself.

If you say you love yourself but can’t point to specific behaviors that reflect that, there may not be a self-love practice in place yet.

Behavior matters more than words

One of the clearest takeaways from this conversation is that behavior tells the truth faster than language.

You can say all the right things and still:

• Skip meals or eat reactively
  
  
• Speak to yourself harshly under stress
  
  
• Neglect your body and emotional needs
  
  
• Treat care as optional rather than essential
  
  

Dr. Bracey reframed everyday actions like meal prep, keeping her space manageable, or planning ahead as acts of love for her future self. When the behavior matches the words, self-love becomes real.

The inner critic you don’t realize is running things

Most people don’t notice their inner voice because it feels constant and familiar. But our brains are wired to scan for threat, especially social threat. Rejection, judgement, or disapproval can feel just as urgent as physical danger.

Having these thoughts is not a problem, but believing them is.

The shift is learning to observe thoughts rather than absorb them. Instead of being pulled along by every critical story, you notice it, understand what it’s trying to protect you from, and move on.

That awareness alone can change how you eat, cope, and respond to stress.

Why self-trust quiets the fear of slipping backwards

Fear of regain is incredibly common, especially for people who have made real progress. Often, that fear comes from past experiences where change was driven by punishment, restriction, or white-knuckling.

Dr. Bracey shared a powerful reframe. When you truly love someone, you don’t constantly worry you’ll abandon them. You trust yourself to show up.

And when your health choices are built on self-love rather than fear, you develop that same trust with yourself. You know you will take care of yourself, even when things change.

That trust is what quiets the panic and replaces it with resolve.

Reconnecting with your body

Many of us live almost entirely in our heads. We only notice our bodies when something hurts or goes wrong.

Dr. Bracey emphasized that self-love includes learning to reconnect with your physical experience, because your body holds stress, emotion, and important signals.

This doesn’t require complicated practices. It can be as simple as:

• Feeling the water on your skin in the shower
  
  
• Noticing where your feet meet the ground
  
  
• Checking in briefly with tension or comfort
  
  
• Paying attention to hunger instead of ignoring it

These moments of awareness help rebuild trust between your mind and body.

What self-love looks like in daily life

To make this practical, Dr. Bracey uses the idea of love languages as a simple framework for self-love. Not as a rulebook, but as a way to think more clearly about behavior.

Self-love might look like:

• Acts of service: planning meals, tidying your space, supporting future you
  
  
• Words of affirmation: speaking to yourself with respect rather than criticism
  
  
• Physical care: movement, rest, touch, basic body awareness
  
  
• Quality time: doing things you genuinely enjoy
  
  
• Small gifts: allowing yourself moments of pleasure or play

When everyday tasks are framed as care rather than obligation, the experience of change shifts completely.

If this feels overwhelming, start smaller

Self-love is a practice, and practices take time.

You wouldn’t expect to master a new skill overnight, and the same applies here. You start with one small shift, build awareness, and let consistency do the work.

Most of the effort is deciding to care for yourself and committing to that decision. The details come later.

When self-love becomes the foundation, habits stop feeling like punishment and start feeling supportive. 

Dr. Bracey put it perfectly: you cannot do this without loving yourself. You have to put action behind those words and let that be your guide.

If you're showing up, reading this, seeking support, taking steps to care for yourself… you're already 90% there. The details will work themselves out over time. Your commitment is the most important thing, and that has to come first.

Want to hear the full conversation with Dr. Joy Bracey? Listen to the complete episode for more insights on building a genuine self-love practice that actually supports lasting change.

Connect with Dr. Joy Bracey:

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Website

Podcast: The Easy Weigh Out

TRANSCRIPT:

Disclaimer: The transcript below is provided for your convenience and may contain typos, errors, or grammatical inconsistencies, as it has not been professionally edited or proofread. Please enjoy it as-is and read at your own discretion.

Please note: The content shared in this podcast and blog post is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider for personalized medical guidance.  

 Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Can we start out, Dr. Joy Bracey with you, introducing yourself a little bit to my audience and just letting them, know a little bit and if you're willing to share just a little bit of your own personal journey. 'cause I always talk about how I don't have people on the podcast that are just intellectually smart, which I know you are.

But also your, your lived journey is just invaluable and I followed you a really long time on social. I'm just wondering if you can share a little bit of that so that they have some context. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. I, of course, follow you and everything that you're doing is amazing and I just love the way that you help people, so I'm glad to be in your circle.

I am a licensed professional counselor and I've worked in the addiction field for 20 years. I also weighed between 250 and 350 pounds for 25 years. Mm-hmm. My relationship with food was messed up though for my whole life. My mom was a teen mom and she would leave the bottle in my mouth all the time, and so my baby teeth were rotten in black from having a constant drip of baby formula, and so I suspect that my food relationship was screwed up before I ever tasted food.

Food was everything comfort, love. It was the way that I coped with my trauma and with any problems, and so I felt. Like anything that went wrong when I was a kid, I thought I was, and I say this with the most love, I've reclaimed the word fat. I don't think fat is a bad word. I was, I felt fat.

And so when I was mistreated by anyone or neglected or whatever, I thought it was because of that, even though I wasn't. Now in retrospect, looking at this and knowing with my 20 years of experience working in addiction and everything that we've learned because of the research with GLP ones, knowing that this wasn't my fault, that this is a brain thing, has been huge.

It's the thing that I am most excited in my work to give to people is this. Ability to release the shame around obesity. It is a medical problem with medical solutions. Of course, being a therapist, I think that the mental health aspect of it is super important. Also, it goes hand in hand

but yeah, so I run support groups for people who are taking this medication or trying to lose weight. I run a nonprofit addiction facility and I'm an adjunct professor teaching self-awareness. I really focus on a lot of self-love teaching in my content and I lost 200 pounds, using GLP ones and having gastric bypass, so. Congrats. Thanks for sharing your, uh, just, gosh, you do a lot, you help a lot of people. Can we start out with you just telling us why is self-love so important? Because I feel like when people hear that term, it's very.

I don't know, like trite, it's sort of like, oh, you just need to say you're doing great to yourself. And I don't think that's at all what you mean. No. So can you just give us like context for that? Oh, I love that you asked this question because Yeah. It's like, oh, self-love club. I'm pretty, I'm enough.

Yay. I, you know, my mom when I was growing up, she wasn't the most well-equipped mother, as I mentioned. But she talked about self-love a lot, but she never taught me how to do it or what it was. She just said, you gotta love yourself. And so I thought oh yeah, I love myself. Check it. Mm-hmm. Yep. I got that down pat.

People talk about it a lot and it's like, spa days. And I'm like, well, I can't do that. I can't afford that, but I do love myself, and then I got into a toxic five year relationship with a narcissist and learned just how much I really didn't. So when you get the, these big red warning FIEs, I'm like, okay, wait a minute.

I weigh 350 pounds. My partner makes me feel terrible every single day. He makes me doubt my own reality. Where's the self-love? Wait, let's think about this. I was not taking care of myself mentally, physically, emotionally, in any way. And so I had to come to Jesus about what does self-love mean?

And I did a deep dive that's as the academic in me would do. I started researching and teaching. Yeah, because teaching helps me learn. It's always been my way. I would say the number one most important thing I've learned about self-love is that it's a practice. Mm-hmm. We love to say we love ourselves and then move on.

But think about if you're a mother and you have children and you love them, or if you're partnered up with someone and you love them or your parents or whoever. If you say I love you to a person, you have to back that up with action. You have to do things and even just one thing isn't enough.

You have to keep doing things. Like the person is, you're accountable to them. You could hurt their feelings, and then you have to apologize. You have to be accountable and you have to show it all the time. But we say what we love ourselves. Check and where's the behavior. Mm-hmm. Tell me the list of things that you do to show yourself love, and if there isn't.

A list, then you're probably you probably don't have a self-love practice. And I think a lot of things that I do for self-love, I never thought of in those terms, but thinking of them in self-love terms helps so much. For example, my meal prep. My, the way that I'm committed to not leaving my house without knowing where and when I'm going to eat, what I'm going to eat throughout the day.

Not because I'm restricting myself, but because I wanna make sure that I Joy, who I love so much, has enough to eat of things that help her meet her goals and make her feel good. Yeah. And so that is a self-love practice. Keeping my laundry folded, clean, folded, and put away, and not letting that build up is self-love.

Mm-hmm. So we have it in our heads that those are chores, but really those are things that we do to take care of ourselves. Thinking of everything in those terms and. When you can do that, then this journey of losing weight takes on a whole new meaning. I am not here to fix myself, that I'm broken or that I need to punish myself.

I am loving myself and supporting myself and making sure that I get what I need and it makes it a joyful thing to do. You can't do this without loving yourself. You just have to put it in those terms for yourself and put some action behind those words. I really like how you say it's a practice and really like daily, you have to figure these things out.

I've always really liked the phrase behavior as a language. Mm-hmm. Because I think we only think about words that come up, but a hundred percent what you're saying, you show yourself and others. What's it like 70% is , more cues of what we're doing with our body and stuff like that.

It's not just the words that we're saying. Right? That's right. Words are pretty meaningless if there's no behaviors to act, act. You know, to back it up. Right. I often find people are saying these things, but then the, the internal dialogue is way different compared to what they're saying externally or, the behaviors of how they're treating themselves are quite wretched.

So I'm wondering, when you first started this, how did you discover things that for you meant self love? I think once you bring something to your awareness, it takes on another. Level. So for example, we have this inner critic, when I first, it was brought to my attention, I was hosting a retreat and the survey of people, the women that I asked, what do you wanna learn out about at our women's retreat?

They said, oh, I wanna help with my inner critic. I was like, oh, great. I don't have an inner critic so I can help them with that, right? It's funny, right? Then I started listening to the voice in my head and I was like, oh dang. I'm really mean to myself. And just bringing awareness to that voice in my head took away the power it had over me.

A lot of our behavior, the addictive behavior around food, for example I would eat. A whole pint of Ben and Jerry's probably five nights a week. And that was a very effective way to cope with being a single mom with a big career, getting my doctorate while raising four kids by myself. Yep.

And being a CEO of a nonprofit I was doing a lot and ice cream really. Got me through that. The problem is I was approaching 50 and the health consequences were piling up and I was feeling very out of control of my health and the scale was climbing. Tuning into that voice took the power away because I was turning to food to quiet that inner critic without even realizing that's what I was doing.

I was the stress of it was triggering the eating, and I didn't even take the time to process what I was doing to myself. So I think the most important thing that I learned about self-love, and especially as it relates to losing weight, is that you have to be so honest with yourself and tune in to how you really talk to yourself.

What are the things you're criticizing yourself about? What are you telling yourself about the limits of your life? Are you treating yourself as your own best friend? Would you talk to other people the way that you talk to yourself? And nine times outta 10? The answer to that is absolutely not.

Yeah. And that is so important because if you want, if you wanna be able to eat out of a place of joy and abundance and peace, instead of having this fraught relationship with food, then we have to be calm in ourselves. We have to be. Centered and just coming from this place of love. And then when you eat a cookie, it's about the cookie tasting good. Which is so much more joyful than eating cookie. To kill your pain. Yeah. To numb the voice in your head. Yeah. I What do you say to people that, I've had people in my groups before that say. I literally, I can't catch the voices.

I don't know what's there. Because I think sometimes it's like, it's kinda like music, right? It's like always on in the back, like a low grade viral infection, right? Like you're not even aware it's there. That's right. And I feel like part of that is because we're so busy in life that we almost don't have time to hear ourselves, 'cause we're always getting something playing or somewhere.

What do you recommend for those people that are in that spot? Well, believe it or not, just hearing us have this conversation will be enough for most people to bring it into focus. And we are so busy that our brains, so to give you just a little like brain science piece of this, our brains don't care about our happiness or our cholesterol, our long-term health, and they just want us to be alive today.

And if you think back to like early man being accepted by. The group of people that you were born into was really important for your survival. Imagine like cavemen. If you're rejected by the human group that you live with, you're out of a cave. You're getting killed by a. Big cat or something, on the side of your mountain.

Social acceptance was a matter of life and death and to a certain extent it is today. I mean, babies are born very vulnerable. They must be accepted by their group to survive. Yeah. Or put with a group that will accept them. Right. Our brains are wired to make social acceptance a matter of life and death.

Our brains don't know the difference between a big cat trying to chase us down on a mountain and kill us, and your best friend not returning your text messages for three days. Yeah, there's no difference. There is anxiety there. It feels like a matter of life and death. Your brain is always trying to detect social threats, threats to your acceptance in your tribe.

Mm-hmm. It goes into overdrive and runs us. Instead of being a tool for us to use, which our brain should be, it runs us. It is always giving us this feedback like, oh, look at that. She looked at you with her eyes sideways. Like she doesn't like you. Well, well, he's judging you. He thinks you're this and endless chatter trying to detect any possible threats for your survival.

And so that's why our brains. Do this to us. It tortures us because it's trying to protect us. I say in quotation mark, which is obviously not needed and very unhelpful. Most of the time, about 90% of the thinking that we do, we don't need to do. So that's the first thing, understanding why this is happening to us and that we don't need it.

Yeah. So when you are trying to play psychic and think that you know what other people are thinking, mind reader, just starting the practice of being the observer of those thoughts instead of the recipient of them. So for example, when I say, oh, they're judging you. They don't like you. I say to myself like, whoa, that was an interesting thought.

I am observing that thought versus being the one who's beat down by it. I am no longer the recipient of all of that self-criticism. I still observe it 'cause I'm human and I still criticize myself. It's like a shift, oh, I heard that. Why are you here? What are you trying to protect me from?

You're just. Afraid that you're gonna lose your best friend, or you're just afraid that you're not gonna get this job and you're trying to protect me from shame, embarrassment, rejection, I hear you. And move on. That is a whole shift that will change everything in your life. Literally everything will be different.

And that takes practice. It goes back to that practice. You hear the thought, you notice the thought, you give it some attention. Oh, why are you thinking that? And. With time and practice, it becomes more and more immediately to your awareness. My brain still will run away and I'll be thinking these things and it might take me a second to catch it, but I'm quicker and quicker these days.

And the quicker you get, the less you are subjected to, and then the less those thoughts dictate your behaviors, which shape your reality. Yeah. The less I'm paranoid about he and she, what they're thinking about me, the less I act. That way, the more people are gonna receive me warmly. Yeah, because people don't like that.

They don't want you acting paranoid and putting so much importance on what they think. You know what I mean? It's uncomfortable for people. So anyway, it's a self-fulfilling thing. And what this makes me think of, I was gonna ask you this later, but I'm like, it fits in here. So when people have lost a lot of weight, they're always so worried that they're gonna regain it.

And I always joke like that, tomorrow it's gonna be back on. Right? It's like they're just gonna cough and everything comes back. And it's like they are very, I relate to this, right? They're very much so a different person. But I think it relates to this aspect of they have the thought and they totally believe it, and there's none of this happening where they're just observing it.

I would say observe and don't absorb. It's like it's what you're talking about with that. Yeah. What things do you offer to the people that are worried about the regain? Because I find this, like everyone in my community has this. Yes. And I totally relate to that. In fact, when I losing 200 pounds, when it first.

Like when I was first to maintenance, I remember this one time I was eating something that I don't eat a lot, but some sugary thing. I love dessert. I'm a dessert fan, like number one. Managing my sugar intake and how I allow myself to be, to feel free with food is of utmost importance.

But, and I remember thinking that very thing like, oh, that's it. I'm gonna gain the weight back. Gaining 200 pounds would take a whole lot of eating. Not just one day of indulgence, but it, that is like a go-to feeling. I think it's very common to everyone and I think that we've talked about this before, but trusting yourself.

If you have done this from a place of self-love where your meal prep, the working out that you do, whether that's walking or strength training or whatever, I think those are the two most important things. Whatever you're doing to lose the weight. Think of that as your self-love practice.

Then you can learn to trust that you are going to do what it takes to take care of yourself because you love yourself. Because the same way when I had children, there was never. A thought in my mind of, oh, what if I all of a sudden stop loving these children and stop taking care of them? What happens if I just forget to feed 'em dinner for weeks?

Of course I never thought that because I'm so committed to loving them and taking care of them, and I understood the responsibility of that. So that was never a single second in my mind. The way that we love ourselves should be that apparent to us my insurance denied my medication for the first time.

I've been on Tirzepatide for three. And a half years. Hmm. And in 2026, I will not have it covered by my insurance for the first time. And it's a bummer. I'm certainly like, shoot, now I gotta figure that out. But there has never been one moment. Where I thought, what if I don't have the medication? What if I gain the weight back?

No, because I have done the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life, losing 200 pounds, and I know that I'm gonna take care of myself, I am not gonna be put back in the train where I was. Nobody's gonna do that to me. Nobody has that much power over me. I'm gonna figure it out. I will do what I have to do.

When you said it has to be that apparent, I think that pe like fear drives people when they're losing weight and then they end up where they would've dreamed every day to get, but their perspective is like constant fear and all of those type of things.

'cause they never built self-trust throughout, they might've been. Calorie counting the whole time, it's just always a lot of the time coming from a very scared place. So I feel like there's this disconnect between where they get to where their body is and where their mind is.

Right. Do you think that's part of self-love that like bridges that gap to coming more to acceptance of where you are? I think it's part of human nature and our society, the way that we are to be completely outta touch with our bodies. Our body we don't think about it. You're not sitting there thinking, oh, I have arms, I have legs.

We are totally out of our bodies in our heads driving around in these little like body vehicles that we barely give any consideration to unless they're hurting or something. We don't think about it. And so we are not taught about this mind-body connection where. We are one being with all of these aspects to it, where our body is just a part of our, existence.

We just separate from that. Yeah. And I think incorporating our body into this. Whole self of ours. 'cause we really live from this place of our internal experience. When I ask you tell me about, something that happened when you were four years old, you're probably going to tell me something through your eyes that you saw.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You're not going to even be thinking about how big were your little feet? Yeah. You know, how, how were your knees knobby or chubby were , what was happening with your socks? What was happening? Were you hot? Were you cold? The body experience of whatever that memory is probably not even a thing you're going to think about.

You're all in your head. What were you thinking about it? What did you see? That kind of stuff. Brain perceptions versus the body perceptions of things. When the truth is our bodies hold our trauma, our bodies are storing up all of this stuff that we have to process through. Building that trust and that connection between our bodies and ourselves.

It's not a separate thing. I can't take care of myself if I'm not taking care of my body. That is one hugely important thing that I learned, I really embraced body positivity. So losing weight was not a vanity thing for me. In fact, it was a little bit challenging to let go of my curves 'cause I really identified with them.

Mm-hmm. But realizing we are more than our bodies, but also that our bodies are a part of who we are and they deserve our attention, our appreciation, and our care. When you say that you can't do it without taking care of your body, that's so beautiful. How do you, how do people start to get more connected to their body?

Because I know people have a lot of different thoughts on this. If someone has, never clued in, they've never thought about hunger signaling, never thought about when they have a headache, is it from stress? Like just nothing. Yeah. Where do you start with that? Most people have some sort of spiritual practice, whether they say a morning prayer, whether they are manifesting, whether they are meditating, whatever that is.

I think putting, injecting in a moment of body awareness. Here and there, I'll never forget this. I have my next door neighbor is a somatic healer and she teaches me, I go to her classes of somatic healing and I've done one-on-one coaching with her, and it's been extremely powerful in my life, getting in touch with my body and in my body.

One time I was preparing for my 50th birthday party and I'm a type a very organized, like things have to go right, kind of gal. And there was a, my alarm was going off and someone had broken the alarm thing on my door. There was this beeping, incessant, when I'm trying to get ready, there's a rush.

I'm preparing this huge dinner party. I was stressing, I think I started cussing like y'all would never, y'all never imagine Dr. Joy being like this. I was having a moment. And it was, she didn't even let me get far. It was like about to come out. She could see it. My, I was, the sound of that beeping was driving me nuts.

And she goes, find your feet. Find your feet, find your feet. And I stopped in my tracks and I brought my awareness to my feet. Feel where your feet are meeting the ground. Right now, are your sit bones in a chair? Are your elbows on an armrest or are you sitting back in your car listening to us right now?

What's happening with your body? Where are your feet? Where are your legs? Are your hands dry or moisturized? Is your hair brushing against the back of your neck? Are you itchy anywhere? And just as I said that, I felt a niche. So just literally like taking. 30 seconds to check in and feel your body is so powerful.

And then the hunger thing, oh gosh, that is so important. People, first of all, so many people get on this medicine and they get so upset that they still feel hunger. Yeah. Like we need hunger. Hunger is a matter of survival. Our brains give us hunger and fullness so that we can survive, so that we eat enough to survive on it.

I need 1400 calories if I'm in a coma. In a day. Yeah. You add regular moving around and exercise and we're up to near 2000 calories that I need just to maintain my weight. I need to feel hunger or else I would never stop and eat. 'cause I'm a busy lady and I have lots of things to do and food eating isn't always a priority, but thank God I have hunger to let me know it's time to eat.

Getting in touch with your body and just taking a minute to think about it, give it a little bit of your attention, you could do it while you're driving. You could do it while you're in the shower. You could do it when you're on the toilet. You could do it. All the time.

It doesn't take any extra time. We all have 24 hours in a day nobody has more or less than that. You get to choose where you put those 24 hours and sometimes you can multitask. You know, I really like how you talked about incorporating it into maybe a practice that you already have

yeah. Because I think people think of this as an external thing. I, I, I feel like one of the first areas that I started to do this was. In the shower, just feeling the warm, like the way that the water was hitting my skin. And it's, and then I've just come to this practice of being like, when I take a shower, it's just a luxurious time.

There's nothing super magical happening. No, but it's like. I dunno. It's like you just get these few minutes and that we have water running and I don't know, I'm like, it's, it's like just an, it's an interesting way that I start my day. What do you find are people's, what they define as self-love.

Because I'm like, can we give people some ideas? 'cause you've mentioned a few, but what do you tend to see? Well, one thing that I love to do, and, okay, so I say this with, caution, but I like to refer to the love languages because even though it takes a lot of criticism, this model, because it's not research based or anything like that.

It was just one guy's idea that really resonated with people. And I think if you take it in that. VA that it's just an idea, one way to look at your self-love practice. I love to look at it that way. Yeah. I have these, I'm gonna show you. Okay. I have a jean jacket. Okay. And I buy patches for it. And I just bought this one yesterday.

This is my. Gift giving self-love, I love to buy my inner little girl. Like, okay, I have this on my Kleenex box. This little guy who hangs out on here, he is just a little penguin with a little tushy there. That is how I show my little girl love. I buy her little things. Am I doing x of service for myself?

I talked about like laundry and meal prep. And I frame it in that way. Everyone does these things for themselves. But when you put it in a lens of self-love, I am right now making this meal so that future joy has some food because I love her. Then the act of doing the cooking, which you have to do anyway, takes on a different meaning.

It's a luxury, it's something wonderful you're doing for yourself. There's the acts of service, there's the gifts. What about words of affirmation? What are the words you're telling yourself? Are you giving yourself loving words? And what are the other ones? Physical touch. Are you taking luxurious showers and baths?

Are you exercising a little bit? Are you moving your body? Are you giving your body loving? Touch are and loving thoughts versus critical thoughts. When I look in the mirror, I literally see the extra skin and the wrinkles and things like that. But I say to myself, look at the evidence of everything that I've been through.

Thank you body for doing all this for me. Incorporating the physicality of your body into your self-love practice. That's four of 'em. I, there's one more. I, it's quality time, I feel like one quality time. Are you giving yourself quality time? Are you taking time for yourself? Like right now I have a couple of paintings that I wanna do and I, I love to paint, but I haven't given myself a lot of time to do it.

I've been busy with the holidays and with work and trying to put some things out into the world, and I haven't taken that quality time, so I need some quality time for me. That's. Painting, playing with my dogs, spending time with my kids, quality time, doing what I wanna do, that's one way to just very practically outline here are five categories of things that I can do to show myself love.

How am I doing it in each of these ways? Yeah. I love that you bring this up, the different categories to think about. 'cause it's, I do something with people called the list of a hundred, where I'm like, I want you to write down all the things that are different, whether you are physically doing something different, you're thinking different things.

You asked people around you different questions. Just to give them the evidence of how far they've come. Yeah. But when I'm really thinking about it, that list of a hundred that I'm asking them, it's to quantify these different categories. That's right. That's right. Describe it differently, because sometimes people are like, what do you mean a hundred? Where's it supposed to come from? And I'm like, you know, you went to the doctor, you go to the gym. Like, yeah, there's a lot. So this is like, I think this is really concrete and people are gonna resonate with that. What if they're overwhelmed when they start out?

'cause they're like, wait, I need to notice the thoughts and I need to think of what I'm doing. And yeah, they're overwhelmed. What words do you have that kind of. Because I, I, I'm assuming you're gonna say it's a process and a practice and like it, it involves with time, but what, what like words of encouragement maybe would you have for them?

I would say, anyone listening, probably adults, right? They've been through some things, they know some stuff. And if they said, I'm gonna learn to play the piano, are they expecting to be doing an orchestra symphony performance like solo on day two? Probably not. They probably understand that they're gonna start out hitting one key.

They're gonna sound terrible. It's gonna be a mess. But the practice is how you get to be the concert pianist, that goes with anything we wanna do. When I first started my weight loss journey, I was taking the medication, I was working through some deep emotional things. Yeah. And I was, I started strength training at the beginning.

I was not doing any cardio. I was certainly didn't have the nutrition and protein down. Like people come in thinking that they're supposed to get a hundred grams of protein right from the start, and they're supposed to know how to do that and, right. It takes time. You gotta takes some, how you say that?

Because I'm like, no, this takes us maybe a year for you to figure out what fibers you, like what proteins you like, day one, you don't have this solved. Yeah. No, no. And it's okay because this is a commitment for the rest of your life. There's no deadline. I never did count calories.

Not one single day of the 200 pound weight loss or maintenance to restrict myself ever, ever. I always only did it to educate and or to make sure I was getting enough of what I needed, I don't do anything different now than when I was losing the weight. Not one thing. It's all the same. And that's the commitment.

Why does it have to be in a hurry? You just start with one thing and then add on another thing. But as far as getting overwhelmed or thinking that, like tuning into the thoughts and all that? No, that. If you start tuning in, you're going to find stuff that needs to change,

you're gonna want to change it, and that is going to take time. Just tuning in and giving it your focus is a huge win. That's 90% of the effort. That last 10% brings you to a place of peace that takes a long time. But the hardest part by far is going from being a person who is ruled by these unruly thoughts.

Mm-hmm. That is making life miserable without your awareness. Yeah. The biggest transformative thing that you can do is turning, being from that person to a person who's paying attention to what the voice is saying. Yeah. That's it. Once you do that, the rest is a process. It's gonna take time, it's gonna take practice, and you don't have to be an expert at it on day one.

I'm not an expert at it. I've been doing it for years. I teach it, and I still have to practice it. Definitely some days get me worse than others. I, this is just really beautiful how you've talked about it. I think a lot of people listening are just gonna, like, they're just gonna ex exhale when they hear this.

Also the fact that you're like, this is the 90% and that last 10% is what's gonna be all the years and the lifelong and right. That's really beautiful too. 'Cause I think people always think there's like a, there, there, i'm gonna have this figured out and then I just move on and I, because they think that they end up getting really exhausted with the journey.

I was seeing some patients today and one of them vocalized to me that they're just, they're like, I just don't wanna do anything anymore. I'm exhausted by this process. And when it really came down to it, it wasn't that they felt exhausted with meal prepping or doing this or doing that was like collectively them thinking, I'm gonna have to do all this drudgery for life.

And it's like, but do you think about it as drudgery? Like, right. That's the first thing. Yeah. That shaped your experience. Yeah. How you think of it. Do you think that there's anything with this that we didn't talk about? Is there any, like questions ever that you like, routinely say ask people?

What I say most, and I'm not sure if I said this yet today, but is that it is so important to fall in love with the process of taking care of yourself. Let that be your guide and your focus at the beginning. You, it's only one thing at a time. I didn't. Start out with my daily protein water prep and my morning protein, coffee all figured out.

I mean, I got that recipe over some time, and if it gets overwhelming, just take a step back because you have the rest of your life to do this. And by the way, this 90 10% thing is same with weight loss. And anybody who's lost a significant amount of weight would agree with this. I think 90% of the effort is deciding and committing to trying.

Yeah, because I said I was never going to lose weight again. I was over it. I had done it so many times and regained it. I didn't wanna ever go through that again. So 90% of the work is saying, all right, I'm gonna try this again. I'm dedicated to myself and I'm gonna do it. The rest of the 10% is actually doing it, and that just takes time and repetition.

But the big effort is that mindset thing. People who come to my support group, I say, well. You're 90% there because your mind is there. You are committed to taking care of yourself. You're taking these extra steps to make sure that you're successful, you're getting yourself medical treatment, and you're making sure that you are emotionally supported, you're a winner.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. You will figure this out. It's just a matter of time and figuring out the factors, what's the dosage, what's the. Fibers. You like the proteins? Like what? Exactly? The details will work of themselves out over time. Yeah. It's your commitment. That's the most important thing, and the thing that has to come first, and that's the biggest part of your effort.

I cannot agree with you more because of the patients that you know, you'll be like, okay, you know, you keep showing up, right? And they're and they're like, there's no other option. I'm like, there you go. That's right. That's exactly right. There's no option to quit. You're like, the way is forward and then you figure out what path.

But it's like you, you're not able to go back anymore. We've burned it. It's not there anymore. Yeah, that's right. So we've given away all of our plus size clothes, or whatever it is. If you've gone down a size, you get rid of those because you're not going back. Totally. And once you have that resolve, you got this.

That's the key. And to me, I never could have developed that level of resolve without self-love. Yeah. That's where that comes in for me. It's like, okay, I am really here for myself. I am not gonna abandon myself. My insurance says they're not gonna pay for the medicine. Well. I'll figure something out because I'm not going back.

Yeah. My life has opened up way too much. The weight loss has meant for me a completely different life, and I mean that with the most love for my former self, I was doing the best I could with what I had. I had no idea how much my life was limited by being in a 350 pound body, and I have so much compassion for myself and enough compassion for my future self to say, we're not doing that again.

Yeah. We are not. We are not. Thank you so much for coming on today. Just everyone that's listening, they're gonna have an actual understanding for how to start this, but I know that this is a long process and you need a lot of help with it. This is so exciting that you do these groups

can you tell everybody how can they find you? Best ways to reach out. Just tell us a little bit about what's coming up for you. We'd, we'd love to know all of that. There's a lot. I do create content, ma mostly on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. You could find me at D-R-J-O-Y-B-R-A-C-E-Y, Dr.

Joy Bracy. I'm Dr. Joyce, Dr. Joy bracy.com. You could sign up there for the support groups and certainly email me with any questions or reach out on social media. And I also have a podcast called The Easy Way Out, W-E-I-G-H with Dr. Joy Bracy, where we go into all these things and a lot about my own personal journey and decision to have bariatric surgery and the impacts of that.

And I'm also writing a book, but I don't, I'm not announcing the title yet, but I'm working on that. 'Cause I just, I love helping people with this. It was always my dream to help people with it, and I knew I had to figure it out first. I'm so excited to be here and to share this with people. I really feel.

It's such a blessing and an honor to be able to share this journey and give people hope because truly, if I can do this, anyone can do this. I never thought this was possible for me, ever. I followed you like from the beginning. Yes. And I, it's just, it's like you never changed.

I don't know. Do you know what I mean when I say that? Like, you were always an amazing person and sharing amazing stuff and. But hearing how much had to change inside you. What's so interesting is when I've been watching these videos over all these years, I didn't know a lot of that, you know?

Yeah. And I think that's the really interesting thing when you think, oh, I watch their videos, I know everything. It's like, you kind of don't a little thing here and there, but just when you've explained this more, it's just like, thanks for giving us that look in. I can't wait for the book and everything.

That's gonna be amazing. So just thanks so much. Thank you for having me. This has been a pleasure. I look forward to just chatting with you more.