What if everyone decided to start eating healthy and exercising because they loved their body; not because they needed to lose weight? What if a healthy lifestyle was like waxing your brand new Lambourghini or getting its oil changed? You already know it's a hot, amazing machine, and you're keeping it nice. Making it better, even. You don't really see people out there waxing a rust bucket that they hate.
So why name out bodies treated like that? Why is my body, no matter what I do or no matter how hard I try, never good enough?
Let me attempt something.
My body isn't the ideal image I have for it in my head.
I don't have six-pack abs or [That singer Mom likes]'s chiseled arms, but my body is perfect the way it is.
What if my goal toward a healthy lifestyle was to make my body the strongest, healthiest, most well-oiled machine that it possibly could be? But if I did all that I do without a single regard toward the outward results it has on my appearance?
Would all of reality stop? Would the earth stop and reverse direction?
I still really want those things for my body. I want six-pack abs and chiseled arms, if for nothing else but my own achievement. And I do plan to attain them, somehow, someday. (Preferably sooner than later.) But the health and maintanence of my body needs to come first and foremost from the love or my body. God's Word says that He formed me and my body before time, and created me in His image. Who am I to say that what He designed isn't good enough?
Health needs to first start in the mind - realizing how incredible you and your body are and creating a desire to be treated well - and then act wisely upon that desire.
That's what health is - not looking like a model on a magazine, but falling in love with who you are, where you are, and treating yourself in the way that brings the most honor and respect to both you and He who designed you.
Meaning, if God designed your body to run on fuel - so give it the good stuff.
He gave you joints and muscles, just like gears and engines - work them so they stay prime condition.
He gave you a brain more complex than the most powerful supercomputer - excercise it and feed it good thoughts, so it knows what it can achieve.
Basically,
Realize that God made you a masterpiece. Learn to love yourself. Never stop improving.
Basically,
You are incredible. Treat yourself that way.
