The Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast

BEE #151: Self-Care Beyond the Mirror: Finding Confidence Inside and Out

• Kristin Jones

Share episode

Message me with comments or questions

What does real self-care look like? For years, I silently judged people who focused on their appearance—thinking it was shallow or vain. But a recent experience completely shifted my perspective.

In this episode, I share how I went from dismissing appearance-based self-care to realizing that true confidence comes from honoring both the internal and external parts of who we are. From my journey with hormone replacement therapy to a Halo laser treatment that sparked the comment, “You’re 57, by now you should just be okay with it”—I’ll unpack the moment that changed everything for me.

Self-care isn’t just bubble baths or meditation, and it isn’t just skincare or workouts. It’s about choosing practices—inside and out—that make you feel strong, confident, and aligned with your values. When we stop labeling certain types of care as “shallow” and others as “worthy,” we free ourselves to create resilience and self-trust that radiates through every area of life.

If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s “okay” to care about how you look—or questioned whether you’re doing self-care the “right” way—this episode will give you the permission you’ve been waiting for.

Connect with me online:

1. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristinjonescoaching/
2. You Tube channel, Kristin Jones Coaching: https://www.youtube.com/@KristinJonesCoaching44

3. You Tube channel, Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@breakthroughpodcast-44
3 . Website: https://www.kristinjonescoaching.com

If you want to learn how to stop nighttime eating, get my 3 Day Nighttime Snacking Reset: https://go.kristinjonescoaching.com/nighttime-snacking-reset

Needing more specific and direct support for your emotional eating and overeating? Check out my online course, Stop Dieting Start Feeling, and my personalized coaching program, Breakthrough To You.

If you found this episode helpful, don't forget to leave a review on the platform you used to listen and share it with your friends on your Instagram stories. Also, be sure to follow me on Instagram @breakthroughemotionaleating, and don't hesitate to slide into my DMs to share your thoughts ...

Speaker 1:

Do you want to lose weight but struggle to stay committed to a meal plan because you constantly feel hungry? Does food provide you comfort when you're bored, angry, lonely or sad? If so, you are in the right place. My name is Kristen Jones and I'm a life coach specializing in emotional eating and weight loss, and I'm also a lifelong emotional eater. I want to provide you with information, motivation and support so you, too, can learn to manage your issues with food and develop a healthy relationship with yourself. Welcome to the Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast. My name is Kristen Jones and thank you so much for joining me this week. Name is Kristen Jones and thank you so much for joining me this week.

Speaker 1:

So this week's episode is going to be pretty personal and it is going to be a little bit of a reflection of not only what is going on in my life at the current moment, but also something that I've been thinking a lot about, probably in the last since the beginning of the year, probably in the last eight or nine months, and it's the idea. It's the idea of self care, but it's that there are two different types of self care and that there is nothing wrong with either type of self care. So I'm going to talk about the two types of self-care and I think you'll understand. I think one type of self-care kind of gets kind of not poo-pooed but kind of diminished, or people get viewed differently because they use that type of self-care, and that there is a balance that needs to be achieved between the two types of self-care for them to be healthy and for them to get you the outcome that you want to have. So welcome, super happy you're here. So we're again going to dive into self-care.

Speaker 1:

So self-care at its basic root, at its core, self-care is anything that you do for yourself that makes you feel nurtured, makes you feel nurtured, makes you feel cared for, either physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually. So in any of those realms you could do something that's going to make you feel good, make you feel taken care of, confident. Any of those things Most people think about self-care that we do that is reflective on the inside, something like, um, you know, taking the time to take a nap. Um, taking the time to uh, actually, that would be more physical. Uh, you know reading, reading a book. You know reading something that's inspiring. Um, taking the time to listen to a podcast. Um, uh, you know, taking a bubble bath, any of those things, those things that you do for yourself, that give yourself journaling, um affirmations, any of those things are things that you do to kind of feed your soul. So that would be the the spiritually and the emotional side of you.

Speaker 1:

But there is a whole other side of self-care that is geared towards taking care of yourself physically. So physically it could be, you know, getting your hair done. It could be, um, having, you know, having a facial treatment. Uh, it could be working out. It could be, um, you know, getting your getting your toes done, getting your nails done, and that would be something that would have impact you physically.

Speaker 1:

And I feel like oftentimes and maybe it's just me, maybe it's the way that I had viewed it when I was younger that always seemed to me to be a little indulgent and I'm going to be honest and say that I was kind of a little judgy about like people who did that kind of stuff, like, oh, they're all so wrapped up in themselves and I've realized as I've gotten older that there is such a huge impact and reflection that it can have on other areas of my life that, as long as I make sure that I maintain the balance between all of those areas of my life the physical, the mental, the emotional and the spiritual and I I maintain the balance between all of those areas of my life the physical, the mental, the emotional and the spiritual and I take care of myself in all of those areas and there's balance between the four areas. That that's when it can be really, really impactful in an incredibly positive way, and that we really need to be open to looking at all sides of self-care, both the physical side as well as the internal side. So that's what we're going to talk about today. So the benefits of self-care are huge because self-care helps build resilience, it helps you feel cared for, it helps you be able to easily manage when things are difficult, because you feel taken care of, you feel valued, you feel like you've given yourself value and you've given yourself things that you need Um you. We have a tendency to be less reactive and we're more present um in the moment and we show up for ourselves and for others with more energy. And it builds more confidence and more confidence and belief in ourselves, because every time we follow through on taking care of ourselves, we are reinforcing to our brain that we are valuable, that we're worth the time or worth the effort, and that, in turn, then builds self-trust and allows us to be able to trust ourselves, trust the decisions that we are going to make and trust how we treat ourselves and how we treat others. So there is a huge power in also having self-care be physically based, so physically or appearance focused self-care.

Speaker 1:

And again, totally honest and I'm going to be completely transparent that I used to be very, very judgmental about this, about like, oh, why would people do that? That's so shallow. And I have to be honest now that it was really, frankly, just ridiculous of me to do that, because all the while I was thinking, gosh, I'd really like to be able to do that, I'd like to be able to do that, but I want to be better than that. There's nothing. There's no being better or being worse. It's I wasn't being honest with myself about how I felt about it and um didn't necessarily ever talk about it, but I know how I felt inside. And the honest truth is that most people, if they're completely truthful, care about how they look, and that's not a bad thing. That is not a bad thing Taking care of yourself, valuing yourself, giving yourself whatever you need to have the life that you want to live.

Speaker 1:

Everybody's life can be different. There's no cookie cutter, there's no um list of things that people want to have in their lives that makes their lives better or complete. It's just everybody has their own, uh, their own criteria for what makes their life the way they want it. And I think, as I've gotten older, I've gotten more comfortable with, with the idea of, yeah, it's okay to want those things and it's okay to be honest about it, and I don't have to be embarrassed and I don't have to be, um, ashamed. And and I will I will tell you where this is going and that there have been things that have been said to me very recently, um, about some of the things that I'm doing, and, and for a moment it made me like like, oh gosh, am I, am I doing the right thing? And then it was like, no, I need to do what's comfortable for me.

Speaker 1:

So, really, this podcast is more about doing what's right for you and being honest with yourself about what it is that you truly need in your life to make yourself feel complete, feel valued, feel loved and to feel worthy of your own attention. So, about well, eight months ago, you all know that, if you, if you have followed my podcast uh, eight months ago I started hormone replacement therapy. I will be completely honest that if I had not met my hormone doctor's wife in my yoga class she's one of my yoga students If I had not met her, I would still be doing what I had been doing Achy joints, not feeling good, not sleeping at all. Um, would not be, would not be feeling in any way as good as I feel now, because I just thought that that was just the way things had to be and I've talked about this in other podcasts, but it was. I really wasn't taking care of myself because I really didn't even know it was an option. I didn't even know that that type of self-care was something that I could do. And so I really, as I have gone more in the direction of of and it's not fighting aging, it's just understanding that there are things that I can do, that I'm comfortable doing, that can help my aging process. And everybody gets that decision, gets that right, has that right to make the decision in their life of what is best for them and what's going to make them feel comfortable, make them feel confident, allow each and every person to walk into a room and feel as good about themselves as they possibly can, both internally and externally.

Speaker 1:

So when I I originally so about four days ago, I'm on day four of my recovery from having a halo laser treatment, and I have since I was I'm 57 now, since I was probably 35, I have been regularly having precancerous cells burned off of various parts of my body. I get a skin, I get a body check every six to nine months and I get a number of cancers burned off. And we've gotten to the point now where it's like they don't even want to burn them off anymore. Now they want me to do these deeper layer, deeper level treatments and they involve lotions and things that take anywhere from, like you know, a week and a half to two weeks and they can be extremely painful. And I've done them before and I opted because of the, the services that my, that my doctor offers in his office.

Speaker 1:

I opted to do a laser treatment not only to treat these precancerous cells, but also because I felt like I wanted to see what it would do from a surface standpoint, about some of the sagging that I'm seeing in my skin and, in particular and I'm going to tell you this is the first time I've talked about it and I'm going to be talking about it on my Instagram as well. It's the first time I'll be talking about it is that I originally wanted to do this because I was seeing a texture change in the skin on my legs and for the front of my thighs and it was so impactful to me. It was making me not want to wear shorts. I was extremely self-conscious about it and I kept telling myself, oh, you don't need to worry about it, you don't need to worry about it. It was like, no, it was really bothering me, because those of you who know me, um, and you, and if you follow me for any length of time, um, you know I am extremely active in, um, in in fitness.

Speaker 1:

I teach classes. I'm a Yogi. Um, I teach fitness classes. I'm a Pilates instructor. Um, I do the reformer. All these things. I have a lot of different areas. I'm a runner, all of these things, and so, as I have noticed over the last two years, this skin in my legs has gotten really, I mean like sag dropped. I mean it's like, really, you know those? I think what is the one? Is it? Oh gosh, I forget who the lady is, um, jane Seymour. Jane Seymour has those commercials for crepe away. Okay, that was me. Like the crepe away cream have had. Have gotten. That doesn't work.

Speaker 1:

Um, so I I knew I needed, I needed to do something. I needed to see if there was something that I could do that would help. And so I went to see, um, uh, carlos Sandoval, who is the director of aesthetic wellness at my doctor's office, and we consulted about my legs initially first, hadn't even thought about doing my face, and then we decided that we would do, and I have, I have. I had a few cancers on each one of my legs, so I knew I needed to get those done anyway. So have done both those things. So I had my legs done, at the backs of my legs. So I knew I needed to get those done anyway. So have done both those things. So I had my legs done at the backs of my hands done. I had, um, my face done and my neck done, and I'm going to be honest and tell you that my backs of my hands I have had hands of a 90 year old since I was 15. So these babies, this was all because I just had some cancers on the back of my hand. So did those, and I would love it if my hands were a little bit smoother because they're pretty rough, but anyway.

Speaker 1:

So I have done this procedure and I was telling somebody about it the other day and I was mentioning and I was showing them my legs, and the first thing they said was well, you're 57 years old, you by now you should be just okay with it. And I was. And you know, like, why did you? That was basically like why did you do it? Because you should. You should be okay with it. Why do you? Why do you even care? And and it wasn't about nobody else sees it Nobody else sees what my legs look like. I see what my legs. It makes us feel is the only thing that matters.

Speaker 1:

And so when I noticed this eight, nine, 10 months ago, I didn't just jump in and do it. I really worked on okay, how do I, how am I feeling about myself, how am I doing? And I did a lot of internal work of why are you feeling this way, what are the feelings that you're having about yourself, about your aging process, all of the things. And I really worked through that in order to come to the place where I felt comfortable doing my hormone replacement and and then taking that next step of of having this laser treatment. And so that's one of the things that I think is really important that everyone recognize is that there is nothing wrong with doing something that makes you from a physical appearance for yourself, makes you feel confident, makes you feel beautiful, makes you feel powerful and gives you that uplifted feeling.

Speaker 1:

But it can't all be dependent upon that physical change. The physical can't be the only thing we're relying on to make us feel that way. We have to be feeling that way all the time. We have to be feeling and I'm going to also preface with there are going to be days that you're going to wake up and you're not going to be feeling it.

Speaker 1:

No matter what, you're not going to feel positive physically, you're not going to feel positive mentally, and that is just part of being a human being, and it's one of the most important things that I tell my clients now is that we cannot beat ourselves up because we have down days, because that is just the roller coaster of being a human being. Doesn't mean you're less than, doesn't mean you've lost your, your, your mojo. You haven't lost anything. It's just part of being a human being that we go through ebbs and flows, and that is all okay, but that self-care of having that be a consistent thing in our life is what's really going to ground us and keep us feeling grounded in who we are, how we feel about ourselves, both mentally, spiritually, emotionally and physically, and so all of those things go together to make you that whole person.

Speaker 1:

And so I guess, in reality, the reason I'm saying this is, and the reason I'm even doing this podcast, is because I want people to remember that it is okay to take care of yourself, it's okay to want to honor yourself by doing something kind for yourself or doing something for yourself that makes you feel good. We're not trying to fix ourselves, but we can honor who we are and we can honor ourselves and give ourselves the things that make us feel beautiful and make us feel wonderful and allow us to internalize that and hold on to that and not solely rely on the reflection in the mirror. Work on the other stuff as well, but don't just dismiss the physical because we feel like that's vain or we feel like that's shallow. It's not shallow. It's not shallow to want to have your hair look nice. It's not shallow to want to, you know, work out, to feel good and to feel, to feel and look the way you want to look. There is nothing wrong with that and I follow a lot of people who are very much um about you know it's.

Speaker 1:

It's it's like a crime if you want to improve yourself, because it's it's just this, this overall, it's it's just this bashing of people who do that, and I don't think that's necessary. I don't think it's, I don't think it's healthy and, honestly, it is no one else's business. If you want to do it, or I want to do it, or anybody in your life wants to do it, people are entitled to do whatever they want to do to make themselves feel good, as long as it's not hurting anybody else. So that, more than anything else, if you can walk away with one thing from this podcast, I would say that absolutely 100%. Do make self care about what makes you feel good in all four of those areas and try to hit an area every, every week, every day, every, you know, every time you do self-care. Self-care should be something that we do regularly and it should be something that we're hitting all four of those areas and making ourselves feel as good as we can in all aspects of our lives. I think it's just so, so very important.

Speaker 1:

And again, we don't want to become too much going in one direction or the other. We want to have a balance. We want to always be looking at all four things, and we always want to be looking at how am I honoring myself? Not am I trying to fix myself. How am I trying to honor myself and put myself in a position where I feel powerful, I feel encouraged, I feel valued and I'm giving myself what I need? I'm not feeling like I'm going to let other people dictate how I'm going to take care of myself. Only the only person who knows how to take care of you is you. So do what you need to do. I'm here by giving you permission, all right. So I hope that that you know. I hope that what we've talked about today kind of gives you that little bit of spark or that little bit of of encouragement to think about all four of these areas. How can I give myself self-care in all four areas Mental, emotional, spiritual and physical?

Speaker 1:

Don't don't keep the physical out just because you're afraid of judgment. Don't make that a part of it too. They all encompass and come together to help with your confidence and your belief in yourself and for you. For you to show yourself worthiness is the best gift that you can give, because other people can do it all the time. But if you don't value it and you don't think that you're worthy of these good things, no amount of what anybody else does is ever, ever going to make it real, and within you, you have to do it for yourself.

Speaker 1:

Does is ever, ever going to make it real, and within you, you have to do it for yourself. So do what's going to make you feel the best in your life. Have an amazing rest of your week. Thank you so much for joining me and go out and figure out what is going to make you feel good, what can you afford, what feels right for you, and then go out and do it. Take care. Have a great week. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. If you are interested in learning more about how I can help you understand and manage your emotional eating, including the use of hypnosis to uncover the root cause of your eating, go to my website, kristinjonescoachingcom.