I remember the day I signed up for WAG.

I was so excited! It was a big decision though. I remember asking myself: Who was I to have a nutrition coach? Why do I deserve to have a goal like weight loss? Why do I deserve to pay someone to help me get there? What will my friends think when I tell them I don’t want to go out drinking every weekend anymore? If my mother had known I was paying monthly for someone to tell me how to diet she would have burst a blood vessel.

I’ve always found it hard to convince myself that I deserved things. When I first joined the workforce I told my family that I wanted to only work four days a week so I could try and focus on athletics one extra day. That conversation didn’t go well. People in my family are not athletes or creatives and we don’t deviate from the plan. I felt pretty unworthy of even trying to step outside the mold, to be perfectly honest with you. It wasn’t in my blood.

But something always felt off about that attitude. I mean, my last name is Sheriff. Doesn’t that mean I come from a long line of authority and leadership?! I wanted to do something more for myself no matter how unnatural it felt.

Getting a nutrition coach is one of the first things I ever did to say “bye bye” to the forces making me feel unworthy. Even today, I can’t believe how that one act of “selfishness” has changed my life forever.

I had never invested in something like this before. At first, the intent was to lose weight and become a mega-babe that the world couldn’t deny, but in reality, it ended up becoming the catalyst for cultivating a life of self-love, appreciation, and respect (and maybe a little gumption).

My nutrition coach taught me that I deserved to be fussy about my nutrition. I deserved to have someone be my cheerleader, commiserate with me and talk to me about my extremely irrational fears.

I deserved to know what food made my body feel good and aligned with my goals. It was okay for there to be no good or bad foods. Food was just food. I also deserved to be flexible around that if I wanted to eat out with friends, too.

I deserved to understand how different foods were made up and what their roles were in my body. I DESERVED to learn that information for the rest of my life.

I deserved to have a complicated order at restaurants and I now know I have the right to ask how it’s prepared. Being “fussy,” even if not forever, taught me a lot about food and food quality.

This self-investment helped me shape a new attitude which bled out into the rest of my life in very big ways. I deserved to at least ask a guy I was vibing with (my now husband) if he wanted to make out with me in the parking lot (even though I’d only known him for like, five minutes).

I deserved to email Adee Cazayoux (the CEO of WAG) and weasel my way onto this team she was creating. I didn’t deserve a response, but I deserved to try (but she responded, so that was cool).

I deserve to go to yoga class and have my instructor speaking soothing, woo-woo stuff to me while I rub my own temples every day even though I have a million other things on my to-do list.

I deserve to surround myself with people who lift me up and remove those from my life who don’t.

What I’m trying to say here is that you deserve all this good stuff too. If that’s getting a nutrition coach as I did, that’s awesome. If it’s getting a different kind of coach, telling someone you like that you’re into them, forking out for a massage every week or taking a day off work just for self-care and Netflix once a month, you 150% deserve to do at least one of those things too.

You deserve to:

  • Go to yoga even though you already had the morning to yourself today.
  • Eat dinner no matter how much you think you overate yesterday.
  • Listen to your body and not go to the gym even though you didn’t go yesterday either.
  • Go to the gym on vacation if that’s what you really want to do. You also deserve not to, if that’s what you’re feeling.
  • Eat highly nutritious food.
  • Have a safe place to talk about your emotions.
  • Ask for your meal at the restaurant exactly how you want it.
  • Get a massage.
  • Say “no” if you don’t want to do something and “yes” if you do.
  • Buy clothes that ONLY make you feel good about yourself.
  • Unfollow social media accounts that make you think negative things.
  • Be loved and let go of those who don’t love you.
  • Take time for yourself every day.
  • Pursue what you want to pursue and take a break when you need time to revisit what that is.

If you don’t feel ready to say that you deserve these things right now, I get that. I’ve been there too. At least tell yourself that you deserve to start trying to get there.

My way to get there was Working Against Gravity. What was, is or will be your way? I want to know.