BodyWorks

LOVE: Essential to Healthy Living
Patrice Jones, contributing editor

What is love? Love is an extremely powerful emotion that involves a warm personal attachment to something or someone. It involves enthusiasm, passion, strong predilection and affection, amongst other things. As it is a very personal emotion, individual definitions may vary tremendously, due to life and relationship experiences. However vast the definitions, there is one very common component of love; we cannot live abundant and plentiful, healthy lives WITHOUT it!

To love someone else, we must first know what it is to experience a complete, unconditional love of self. Loving yourself requires a complete decontamination of negativity and is accompanied by an undying desire to live life abundantly. Self-love is a sense of awareness of all the components, no matter HOW complex, that define your uniqueness and individuality. Once we have discovered self-love, we can then share that love with others unconditionally.

One of life’s deepest loves, second to the unconditional love we have for our creator, is the love of our “temple’. Our bodies are the shells of our being; they are the temples that house our mind, spirit and soul. Without a healthy, thriving body, we become unable to care for ourselves and the people we love most. We must maintain and cultivate our temples daily through healthy diet and exercise.

  1. “Love is patient” — Be patient and realize that physical healthiness requires a lifestyle change; it’s not a fad diet or temporary fix. Give your body and mind a chance to learn new things and adopt life-long behaviors that will enhance your quality of life. Healthy weight loss and maintenance is just one small piece of the big picture.
  2. “Love is kind” — Be kind to yourself. Begin your mornings with positive self-affirmation; practice positive self-talk during workouts. Kindness and positivity in YOUR life, starts with YOU!
  3. “Love is not envious” — Do not be envious of the healthy-living achievements of others (i.e. weight loss). INSTEAD, be inspired and motivated to shift your OWN mind into healthy-living success. Realize that part of loving yourself is learning to accept your complexities, while striving to be the best ‘YOU’, every single day!

One of the most pertinent components of love is passion. Develop a passion for LIFE! As we learn to fall in love with our individuality, we gradually begin to develop brand new ideas that help us identify our purpose. Do you know what your life-purpose is? To love life, is to celebrate it! Take the time to find and celebrate our passion, purpose and zest for life. No matter what age you are, or which stage of life you’re in; find your passion, LOVE IT and LIVE IT! Healthy-living will feel so much better with a love of YOUR passion.

Patrice A. Jones
Certified Personal Trainer
Founder, FRU-FIT Affordable Fitness
202-255-5565
PatriceFRUFIT@gmail.com
FACEBOOK: FRU-FIT Affordable Fitness