Imagine a friend or loved one told you their car stopped working, and they couldn’t figure out why.

Upon further investigation, you learned their car was simply out of gas, and you asked them, “Why didn’t you just go get gas?”

“Because I didn’t realize I had to keep putting fuel in my car,” they reply. “I figured I only had to fuel it up once, and then it would always run.”

Maybe there will come a day when cars run without needing to be refueled or recharged, but right now, that’s not our reality. Your car needs refueled or recharged in order to keep running, and you know something?

It’s the same with YOU. And I’m not only talking about healthy fuel for your physical body.

I’m also talking about the way you recharge the rest of you, because you’re more than just a body. You have a mind and you have emotions, and depending on your belief systems, you also have a spirit.

When you neglect any piece of you, by neglecting your self-care for that piece of you, eventually that piece runs out of fuel.

When that happens, you grasp for anything you can get your hands on, like alcohol, junk food, substances, or escapist behaviors, to try and fuel yourself.

One way or the other, you need fuel. If you’re not doing it proactively, you’ll do it negatively.

A mistake a lot of people make with their self-care is that they only do it until they start feeling better, then stop.

Like the person at the beginning of this post who stopped putting fuel in their car, the person who stops their self-care thinks that because they’re feeling good (i.e. their “car” is running), they don’t need to keep fueling themselves.

“I’m feeling good, so I don’t need to keep up my self-care,” they tell themselves.

Not how it works! You’re feeling good BECAUSE you’re keeping up your self-care, and without it, you’ll eventually run out of fuel, just like a car.

When that happens, you’re more prone to overeating, eating crap, and doing other unhelpful things, all in a desperate attempt to fuel yourself because you stopped fueling yourself in HEALTHY ways.

To be clear, this is not me saying it’s A-Okay for you to go off the rails because you’re ignoring your self-care. You still have a choice.

What I’m saying is, instead of abandoning your self-care because you’re feeling better, only to run out of fuel and make yourself prone to backsliding, stick with your self-care so you can KEEP feeling better.

Design fueling yourself in healthy ways into your life, because if you don’t design it in, you make yourself prone to doing it by default. Or, even worse, you run out of fuel and HAVE to stop, either from burnout, a nervous breakdown, or a serious physical healthy problem.

Prioritize your self-care and stay fueled with healthy food, water, sleep, and activities or quiet time that help the rest of you recharge!

Have you created your free Code Red Lifestyle™ network account yet? If not, here’s how to get your account!

1) On your computer, create your account at www.CodeRedLifestyle.com/App.

2) If you want the network on a mobile device, go to the App Store or Google Play Store and search for Code Red Lifestyle.