I started this blog to share knowledge I have gained in the course of my own (and my clients’) journey toward health, happiness and a healthy weight. And perhaps the most valuable piece of advice I can offer is this: it is more important to take care of yourself than anything else you might do in your lifetime.

We women often find ourselves in roles where we take care of other people selflessly for years on end. I myself have a 1-year-old son who is the center of my universe, and to say that he is still in the high-maintenance years is an understatement (as evidenced by the dark circles under my eyes from last night’s wakefulness due to his teething). :) And I’m married to a wonderful man, my best friend, and I do what I can every day to support him however I can.

But there’s a reason why parents flying with children are told to put their own oxygen masks on first: if we’re not breathing, we’re not able to care for anyone else as well either. If we’re not well ourselves, we aren’t capable of being all that we can be elsewhere in our lives.

The same is true whether we’re talking about the foods we eat, how often we move our bodies (i.e., workouts and other activities that tax the body and ultimately make it much stronger), or whether we take the time out of our incredibly busy lives to do things that are good for us individually. By that, I mean anything from taking a long, hot bath at the end of a stressful day to taking the time to write in a journal about the day’s events to really any specific thing that is just for us, just for YOU and no one else.

Back in the days when I was a sick person — what I laughingly refer to now as my former life, which really was just the life I thought was normal until I changed my health by changing my diet and activity level — I went through a period of time once where I literally got sick with something new pretty much every week for nearly a year. My doctor at the time tried very hard to help me (and sadly didn’t get very far, for it was my diet that was the biggest culprit in my health woes), and one thing in particular that he said stuck with me.

“Jennifer,” he said. “The body is like a battery. You can’t just keep taking and taking energy from it without stopping now and then to recharge it.”

That was the first time in my life when I started understanding that *I* had to give back to my own body in order to have a chance to get well. Likewise, in a stressful life (and who among us has no stress in their lives?), not only do we have to nurture our bodies, but also our souls.

On this late Friday night as I wrap this up, let me ask you this: What do you do on a regular basis to take care of yourself? Do you generally eat healthfully? Do you work out routinely? Do you take time to be with your friends/spouse/kids/significant other/family even when you’re at your busiest? Do you take time away from those people to give back to yourself? Do you take the time to feel simple pleasures on a regular basis, uninterrupted by day-to-day “busyness”?

If not, I highly recommend brainstorming a couple simple things you could do starting today. And when I say simple, I mean simple. Choose something that seems manageable today or tomorrow, and make it happen. If you enjoy it, schedule it again in another couple days, or at a minimum once a week. Small changes add up.