Self Love with Type 1 Diabetes

Self love with type 1 diabetes is so important to your mental wellbeing. I’m going to share with you three tips that helped me shift my perspective from hating my body to loving my body.

Self Love with Type 1 Diabetes in 3 Easy Steps

1. Appreciate your body’s strength & resilience

I know it’s easy to think here, “my body isn’t strong, it’s weak… it failed!” but I want you to think about this: you are breathing, you are fully functioning, you are happy, you can exercise, you can run, you can dance, you can do ALL of these things DESPITE one of your life-sustaining organs being “out to lunch”. Now THAT is strength! How many other people can say that? Your body is dealing with a lot. High blood sugar (anything above 140mg/dL) is a huge stress on the body, yet still your body is serving you and showing up everyday like a champ! Which brings me to my next step…

2. Talk to and treat your body with love & respect

The more you honor your body the better it will treat you. A honored body is….

- Fed nourishing foods, not empty calories and restrictive diets. One of my favorite books about nutrition is Sally Fallon’s book Nourishing Traditions.
- Honored with movement, not punished with exercise.
- Spoken to with gratitude, not hate.

The more you take care of your body the more it will take care of you.

3. Don’t use your diagnosis as a scapegoat & don’t let it become your identity

This was the hardest obstacle for me to overcome. In the early years of my diagnosis I blamed everything I didn’t want to do on diabetes.

All night binger? Can’t bc diabetes.

Spartan race? Can’t bc diabetes.

It’s true what they say; if you say something enough times you’ll start to believe it. I started to believe I actually couldn’t do these things because of diabetes which of course made me really hate my body. But what I hated even more was when other people started seeing me as this person who couldn’t anything because of diabetes.

There is NOTHING a person with diabetes can’t do (of course other than make insulin or maybe join the military).

The first step to getting out of this victim mentality is to blame NOTHING on diabetes. NOTHING.

If you don’t want to go on an all night binger bc you really like getting 8 hours of sleep, then blame it on THAT and NOT diabetes.

If you don’t want to compete in a spartan race bc you think it might be too hard then either start training for it months a head of time or just don’t do it. But DON’T blame it on diabetes because there are lots of people with diabetes that DO do those things, and they do them despite having diabetes!

Self Love with Type 1 Diabetes Just Takes a Switch in Perspective

With diabetes we are thrown a curve ball in life. But how you react to that curve ball is a choice. You can either let it hit you right in the face or knock it out of the park and hit a home run!

If you liked this article then you’ll love my other post, Diabetic Rules I DON’T follow!