Loving your body

To start, I first need to explain that I am NOT a person who typically enjoys working out.  Just 3 years ago I feared the gym, and thought that people who went to the gym were obsessed with their bodies and would implicitly hate me on principle.  A lot of that changed when I met my husband, who just so happens to be a personal trainer. 

Over the past few years my mindset has changed drastically, but I still struggle daily with my body image.  Often I find myself standing before my closet dibilitated in making a decision and then weeping because I hate my body.  It's an emotional struggle for both me and my very patient and kind husband who works hard to convince me that the way I perceive myself is incorrect and that my worth is not found in my image. 

A few months ago God rocked me with a huge realization.  For years I have heard people saying, "You just need to love your body".  This gospel of "loving your body" is preached by women's magazines and even Oprah.  However, I don't think a lot of people truly understand what that means.  As a woman I would look in the mirror and say, "Maybe if I work really hard, and lose  (Insert absurd amount of weight here), maybe then I'll be able to love my body".  However, what I didn't realize is that I was confusing "love" with lust.  I couldn't love my body because it wasn't something I could look at and say, "Damn, I'm sexy. My body is lust worthy".

Thinking of love, true love, I realized that love is an extremely active verb.  True love is a daily action. I love my husband, but if I only told him that I loved him, and then starved him, beat him up, and treated him with great disdain, I don't think he would believe it.  No. Love is active.  It's something that is happening constantly, and is not just an emotion.

So, what is loving your body? It's daily taking care of yourself, eating things that are good for you and giving your body the exercise it needs.  It's treating yourself with respect and not just loathing the circumstances you are stuck with.  It's using the gifts God has given you to it's fullest. I work with a few disabled people and it has opened my eyes to how much more appreciative I need to be of my body! I can walk, run, swim, and jump! Why am I not thanking God for those abilities, and USING them??


This six month journey I am on is a path I am taking to help keep myself accountable to loving my body.  What steps are you taking?



1 Corinthians 6:19 "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own"