Self-esteem, self-image, and self-acceptance are connected and play a significant role in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself and self-image is how you see yourself. Low self-esteem and self-image can impact and compromise your quality of life, affecting your ability to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Positive self-esteem and self-image can help you maintain a healthy lifestyle and stay motivated. Self-acceptance means learning to love your body, not being dependent on others for acceptance, not comparing yourself to others, focusing on your strengths, and recognizing things you want to change. Self-acceptance is instrumental in developing a healthy self-esteem and self-image.

Self-acceptance not only improves self-esteem and self-image, but also increases your likelihood of maintaining a healthy body weight. For some people, self-esteem and self-image is primarily connected to body weight. Some people have low self-esteem and self-image because they are overweight. Other people are less likely to be impacted by their body weight and have high self-esteem and self-image, despite being overweight. Although body weight plays an important part, it does not always predict if an individual will have high or low self-esteem and self-image.

When trying to lose weight, self-esteem, self-image, and self-acceptance play a role. It is common for people to automatically judge and criticize, instead of accept and validate themselves when developing a healthy diet and exercise routine. Learning to have self-compassion is part of self-acceptance. Once you learn to like and accept yourself, it is easier to have a positive self-esteem and self-image. To truly be more self-accepting, we must start telling ourselves that regardless of all your negative self-referencing thoughts, we have done the best we possible could. Ultimately, with self-acceptance you will have a positive self-esteem, self-image, and begin to believe you deserve to live a healthy and happy life.