Body Image

In school, I am studying body image quite a bit.  A common theme is that young girls and women have poor body images and judge their bodies harshly, due mainly to media.  What I'm learning is that we need to teach young girls and women that they don't need to judge their bodies based off of unrealistic, photoshopped people.  I agree.

However...

Something that has been on my mind lately is how many people take this concept too far.  I do agree that we need to teach females and even males for that matter, how to build a healthy body image of themselves and a healthy self-esteem.  But, I think we also need to teach them how to take care of their bodies.  Being overweight is not healthy.  Most people know that it can cause heart disease and diabetes, but many do not know that being overweight can cause a multitude of other health issues to arise.  Click here to read about health risks associated with obesity.

Our bodies function much better and even live longer when we take care of them.

We focus so much on teaching girls to love their bodies, and that they are perfect just the way they are.  Which is important.  But it's also important to know that we ALL could stand to live a little more healthy of a lifestyle.  In teaching these girls to love themselves just the way they are, we can also, unintentionally, be teaching them that they don't have to strive to be healthy.  We could potentially be teaching them that its acceptable to be overweight.

I do agree that girls and women should love their bodies, and not covet what others have.  Because God did created us, He created us in His image (Genesis 1:27), and he saw that His creation (us) was good (Genesis 1:31).  I do believe God wants us to take care of the body He has given us.  If our body was good for Him, the creator of everything we see in this life, then we should consider it good as well.

Our goal should be to understand that our body is created by the Creator.  He considers our body good, we also, should be grateful and thankful that God wanted to created us, and we should consider His work good.  In glorifying God and the body he gave us, we should WANT to take special care of it.  Our body is what He gave us to live this life in.  It should be important to take the very best care of it we can.  By striving to take good care of our bodies, I believe God see's this as a sign of honoring Him.  We are bringing Him glory by acknowledging that our bodies, His creation, is worth taking special care of.  Obviously, I'm not God, and I don't know His thoughts - but these are simply my conclusions based off my understanding of Him.

Take time today to do something healthy for your body.  It will appreciate it.