I sound like your mother, but yes, you should take your vitamins!

I sound like your mother, but yes, you should take your vitamins!

For 15 days, we’re exploring the topic of making our health and well-being a priority as part of the 15 Days to a Healthier You series. You can read Day 1 here, Day 2 here, Day 3 here, Day 4 here, Day 5 here, Day 6 here, Day 7 here, Day 8 here, Day 9 here, Day 10 here, Day 11 here, Day 12 here, and Day 13 here.

I used to be one of those people who felt like you could get all the nutrition your body needs from food alone. But my husband encouraged me to start taking a high-quality multi-vitamin on a daily basis years ago and after I experienced the difference that it made in how I felt, I was sold and have been a faithful vitamin-taker ever since!

The truth is, when I take my vitamins, I operate so much better, get sick less often, and have so much more energy. Every once in awhile, I’ll be out of vitamins or forget to take them for a few days and I’ll begin to wonder why I’m feeling more lethargic and run down… and then I’ll realize I’ve not taken my vitamins in a few days!

If you’ve not been taking vitamins and you’re wanting to possibly start, here’s my encouragement to you:

1. Commit to Trying It

I encourage you to try taking a high-quality multi-vitamin for three months and see if you feel any difference. If you don’t, at least you know you’re not hurting anything to be getting some extra vitamins and minerals. ��

2. Do Your Research

There are lots of other vitamins out there to consider taking, but do your research before you just start popping pills. Too much of a good thing can sometimes be just that — too much.

In addition, I would recommend scheduling an appointment with your doctor to have routine bloodwork done to see if there are other vitamins or nutrients you’re deficient in. It’s very possible that your lack of energy is due to anemia or some other vitamin deficiency you’re experiencing and simply adding some additional vitamins or supplements might make a major difference.

3. Make It Part of Your Routine

I used to be really, really bad about consistently taking vitamins. Then, I learned a trick: I had to make it part of my routine. Instead of just trying to remember to take my pills sometime during the day, I made vitamin-taking part of my evening routine.

Now, it’s become such a habit, that I pretty much can’t go to bed unless I’ve taken my vitamins. And I feel so much better as a result!

Note: Many people will say it’s best to take vitamins in the morning. Because the multi-vitamin and 5htp sort of make my stomach queasy if I take them when I’m awake, so that’s why I’ve opted to take them at night.

Plus, I actually remember to take them then! I figure it’s better to actually get them taken — even if it’s not the ideal time — then not taken at all. ��

The Vitamins & Supplements I Currently Take

Over the years, I’ve come up with what the perfect vitamin combination is for me. I occasionally tweak it, but for the most part, I’ve kept it the same for quite some time. My favorite multi-vitamins are the NOW Foods Special Two Vitamins. I’ve been taking these for a long time and they really make a difference.

I also take a probiotic, Vitamin D-3, and 5htp.

I also LOVE essential oils! Some of my favorites are Balance and Calming, Immune Strength, Thieves, OnGuard, and Tummy Rub. I don’t use these daily, but more on an as needed basis.

Day 14 Project

1. Do you take vitamins and supplements? If not, I encourage you to consider adding at least one quality multi-vitamin as a daily habit.

2. Do your research and decide what multi-vitamin is best for you. Order or buy it.

3. Decide when you will take it as part of your daily routine. Let us know in the comments!

Looking for some more practical help?

• Want to work on getting more vitamins and nutrients from your food? Check out these Top 10 lists from Dr. Axe for ideas of what foods you should be eating.
• Wellness Mama has an extensive list of the vitamins and supplements she takes, why she takes them, and which vitamins and supplements she feels are important for kids to take, too. She also has a great post on Why You Can’t Out-Supplement a Poor Diet. I don’t agree with all of her conclusions in either article, but it provides some great food for thought.
• Looking for a gummy vitamin for your kids to take that is also fairly high-quality? We love the SmartyPants Kids’ Gummies.

(Note: The links in this post are affiliate links, and we will be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking through our links. Read our disclosure policy here.)

For 15 days, we’re exploring the topic of making our health and well-being a priority as part of the 15 Days to a Healthier You series. You can read Day 1 here.

Before we go any further in this series, I think it’s important that we define self-care. It’s a term that gets bandied around a lot and I think it is often misused and abused.

The reality is this: I don’t want to just survive life. Thus, I’m not looking for survival tactics.

I want to thrive. I want to live life as my best, boldest, and bravest self. I want to live up to my fullest potential.

Yesterday I talked about the importance of making our health and well-being a priority, but I want to be clear: I’m not making self-care a priority so I can cope with life. I don’t want to limp along through life just trying to make it.

I want to prioritize self-care so I can succeed in life. So I can grow stronger, embrace life more fully, love more enthusiastically, live more generously, and serve others more wholeheartedly.

The Difference Between Self-Care & Self-Comfort

I heard Megan and Kelly on the Sorta Awesome show recently discussing the differences between self-care and self-comfort and I thought it was really profound. I think it’s important that we define what this looks like in our own life. It can be easy to confuse the two.

What Self-Care Is: Making our health and well-being a priority. Listening to and attending to what our body and soul needs so that we are able to live our lives with energy and purpose.

What Self-Care Isn’t: Numbing ourselves from reality, using coping mechanisms, or turning to addictive behavior to try to survive life.

To help you understand where I’m coming from with this, let me give you a really practical example. Let’s say your child fell down and skinned their knee and it was bleeding pretty seriously. Yes, you should comfort your child, but you also need to care for your child by getting the bleeding to stop, getting medical attention (if necessary), and bandaging up the wound.

Comfort can be very important, but it’s not enough if our souls are bleeding. We can’t just slap a warm hug or chocolate ice cream and a chick flick on as a bandage labeled “self-care” and think that all will be well.

No, we need to stop the bleeding. And often, that means we first need to determine where the bleeding is actually coming from in the first place.

To me, this is what self-care is. It’s not a temporary fix that might make you feel better in the moment but does nothing for you long-term. Self-care is dealing with root causes, healing from deep wounds, and working on permanent solutions to struggles.

Pay Attention to the Pain; Listen to Your Tears

Until you are willing to admit there is pain, you can’t figure out where it’s coming from or how to fix it. So today, I want you to get really honest with yourself and ask: What’s bleeding? Where does it hurt? Am I trying to cope with life because I’d rather avoid a painful situation? Am I self-medicating in some way in order to mask what I’m really feeling deep down?

That’s how you get to the heart of what’s hurting and discover where the pain points are. These answers might not be obvious at first. They might require some intense soul-searching. They might dredge up things you’d rather stuff down and pretend don’t exist. They might invoke tears or a knot at the pit of your stomach.

Pay attention to the tears. Pay attention to the anxiety rising inside of you. Don’t dismiss it. Don’t run from it.

Instead, when you feel the tears or the anxiety, stop and let yourself stay in it. Ask yourself, “Where is this coming from? What triggered this? Why am I feeling this?”

What Does Your Soul Need?

Remember how yesterday we talked about how taking care of ourselves will look different for different people and I encouraged you to make a list of what energizes you? Today, I want to drill down further and I want you to really ask yourself, “What does my soul need?”

This is a question I’ve really been asking myself the past 6 months as part of my Year of Rest.

I’ve talked about the Year of Rest multiple times on the blog and on social media. So many people have commented with things like, “I’m sure that’s been amazing!” Or, “Are you feeling all rested and refreshed?” Or, “It must be so incredible.”

The truth is: It has been wonderful — but not at all in the way I was expecting. I was expecting a year of rest to be filled with more sleep, more time with my family, more fun, more reading, more time for things I love. And it has been that… and that’s been wonderful.

But what has completely caught me off guard is that it’s also been a year of ugly crying. I’m not a crier, usually. I can be the only one in a group to experience something deeply touching without ever shedding a tear. I’m known to be stoic and non-emotional.

That’s all changed this year, however. I’ve probably cried more tears than I have in all the past 20 years put together.

As I’ve been weaning myself off my addiction to “hustle” and intentionally sought quietness and stillness in my life, I’ve struggled to figure out who I am without all of the noise, the accolades, and the accomplishing.

I’ve realized that the busyness was a bandage I tried to slap on. Instead of addressing deep wounds and aches and longings in my soul; I tried to medicate with productivity.

It felt good in the moment. It numbed the pain. It filled the empty spaces. And as long as I kept up the out-of-breath living, I didn’t have to confront the reality or deal with the broken parts of me I’d rather hide.

I realized that instead of dealing with the pain and hurt and hard situations of life over the past number of years, I’d stuffed them down deep, pretended they didn’t exist, and heaped on more busyness to distract myself.

What Self-Care Looks Like in This Season for Me

As I’ve asked myself, “What does my soul need?” I’ve realized that self-care in this season has been me allowing myself to cry. Allowing myself space to really feel. To acknowledge the pain. To open up with safe friends in safe spaces about how much my heart feels broken by situations in my past.

Self-care has meant letting other people see the under-belly of who I really am. It’s meant welcoming people into the authentic messiness and rawness and not apologizing.

It’s been ugly and real… and oh so healing for me! Allowing myself the space and permission to feel, the permission to acknowledge the pain, and welcoming people in to see that I’m a broken, hot mess some days, has made me so much stronger, happier, and healthier than I’ve been in, well, probably ever.

Self-care has also looked like making weight-lifting a priority, giving myself permission to gain a little weight, becoming more spontaneous, working a whole lot less, experimenting with new things, saying “yes” to what once would have seemed way too crazy for me, sleeping more, and making space for a whole lot more fun in my life. {Read more about all of this here.}

Note: Want to talk more about this with me live? I’d love to have you join me on Periscope (around 8 to 8:15 a.m. CT) and Facebook live (around 8:30 a.m. CT) every morning where we’ll be discussing each day’s topics more in-depth and you can bring your questions, chat with others, and we can share together what we’re learning! (You can watch today’s Facebook Live video here.)

Day 2 Project

1. Is there deep pain or past wounds you’ve been trying to stuff down, hide, or run from for a long time? Give yourself permission to acknowledge these, cry about them, grieve your losses, and process the hurt with a safe person. {If you feel comfortable sharing in the comments section here, I welcome that. You are also more than welcome to email me privately if you’d like a safe place to share. I would be honored to listen and pray for you.}
2. Ask yourself, “What does my soul need?” Give yourself time and space to really contemplate and ponder that question. If you feel comfortable, tell us in the comments section what self-care looks like for you in this season of life.

Resources to Check Out:

• Listen to this episode of the Sorta Awesome Show that inspired this post.
• Want to stop sleep-walking through life? Be sure to grab a copy of my online course, Make Over Your Evenings.

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Original article and pictures take moneysavingmom.com site