So over the last few years several feel good slogans have turned up and has been embraced. But over time these slogans are twisted by people into meaning...well whatever they want to believe it means. Love Your Body is one of these such slogans. You hear this all the time, Love Your Body, embrace your shape and accept yourself for who you are etc. Somewhere down the line the slogan Love your body became…. It's OK To Be Fat. And some people seem to be down right ecstatic about it!
Well I hate to break it to you(actually no I don’t) but that is not what it means. When you love something, you take care of it, nurture it and want it to last a long time. You do not treat it like a piece of crap you use and abuse. By and large Americans do not exercise(oh we have gym memberships but we don’t go) and choose poor nutrition.
Most people seem to be in an odd form of domestic violence/abusive relationship with their bodies. We feed ourselves(and our children) horrible fast food daily. Or worse, we cook at home yet we fry everything in so much grease the actual natural taste of the food along with the healthy nutrients, vitamins and minerals contained within are cooked away. Another slogan that LYB is tied to is Don’t Deprive Yourself or Treat Yourself. These have been used to justify endless snacking and bad decisions. Say you eat good for 3 days straight, so you decide I’m going to treat myself and then proceed to eat pizza,breadsticks and drink 2-3 sodas. Well you just consumed in one sitting about 1200-1500 calories (more than half of the daily calories needed for a general person) and you just shot the last 3 days straight to hell. If your goal is to lose weight it will not happen this way. LYB has morphed into an excuse to accept your unhealthy lifestyle.
Now some would say I’m advocating a strict diet without any comfort food. Not at all, what I’m advocating is self control.
We can’t control much in our lives when you think about it. We were born into a society of predetermined laws. They tell us what we can do(legally) and what we can’t. They tell us the consequences of our actions also if we do something against those laws. We can’t control the weather, we can’t control who we fall in love with. What can we control? What we eat. Unlike the laws of the land, we can make the occasional bad food decision and not pay dearly for it. But if we continue to make poor decisions, there are consequences. And worse yet, we (as parents) impose our decisions and said consequences on our children.
I am by no means saying everyone needs to have a 6 pack of abs, hell I don’t. But height/weight proportionate seems like asking too much these days too. I am simply saying we should take better care of ourselves. We all aren’t supermodels, fitness magazine cover models or bodybuilders. But we can be healthier by making better choices every day. Here are a few choices we can make that can help ourselves and our children:
*Limit your fast food excursions to the weekends. By cooking more at home, this makes your kids and you enjoy a more healthy, flavorful and nutritious meal.
*Bust out the grill! Forget pan fry and deep frying everything. A simple propane grill is a great option to cook your beef, chicken and seafood. Barbecue anyone?!
*Pack more fruits such as oranges/apple slices and pineapple chunks as snacks. These fill you up at the desk a lot better than a candy bar from the vending machine. How long has that been in there anyways?
*Get out on the weekends with your spouse or kids. Come up with some outside activities that all involved will enjoy. It doesn’t have to be all day but a morning at the park or something similar will get you moving and off the couch.
And if this hasn’t dissuaded you (or you enjoy being big) and you truly love your body the way it is then do not cry to me or anyone else about having self imposed ailments like Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and other weight related maladies. After all, you love your body and chose to 1. eat the way you did to gain the weight to get diabetes etc and 2. more importantly you have decided not to change your habits. The only person who you can blame is yourself.
Just remember one thing, your body is the only place you have to live.