You Have to See This.

I know, making up for lost time on my blog, right? But I’m reading stuff on the internet and when something is too good to pass up, I gotta go for it. I saw this article on unretouched stars, and I had to draw your attention to it. WARNING- it does have risque pictures. You know I’m all about being all you can be, being as fit, strong and healthy as possible. What you see in magazines is not that. NO ONE is that perfect, thin, whatever, and to hold that up as an ideal to try to live up to is ridiculous and counter productive. While I will never publish provocative or scantily clad photos of myself, I am very fit. Guess what? Really strong abs do NOT equal a skinny waist. Very strong obliques lead to lines over your hips and in your mid section that would get airbrushed out if I was posing for one of those shoots. Very low body fat means less chestage, meaning most of these skinny girls with big cleavage have been digitally or physically enhanced. I would rather see fit people as the ideal, rather than skinny. I read an article from someone working for Men’s Health, and he said that some of the men’s fitness models weren’t really strong, as a lot of them starved themselves to get those “ripped abs”.

Please people, NONE of us will look all that hot at 70, however, how healthy you lived your life will determine a large part of the quality of life you have at that age. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. The person who wins the marathon is the one who prepared for the long haul. Live your life for the quality of it, not the look. Paul, in the book of Corinthians says:

1Co 9:24 ¶ Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.
25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.
26 Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air;
27 but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Seriously?

Sorry, can’t resist this one, apparently the family of a woman in New Zealand is suing for wrongful death after the woman died of a heart attack. She was addicted to Coke Cola, and drank over 2 gallons a day. She also smoked a pack and half of cigarettes and ate little else. The coroner cited low potassium levels as a contributing cause.

Suing? Addiction? I’m sorry, if you can’t figure out you have a problem when you are doing something that far outside the norm, how is that ANYONE else’s fault? If she wins, look out Jim Beam and Jack Walker, every alcoholic in New Zealand will have greater legal grounds to get you.

And you, dear reader, if you are sitting there reading this, saying “I love my ____, and I don’t care if it’s bad for me.”, how much of it are you consuming? And what is it replacing? Maybe this woman will be a wake up call to at least cut back on ______.

Fitness Redefined

I reposted another person’s quote, “The relationship with your body is the most important one in you life, you can’t divorce your body.” on facebook, and a friend of mine corrected me and said, “Your relationship with Jesus is the most important one in your life.” He’s right, but that made me think about what the relationship between fitness and faith is, and why I think fitness is important for faith.

The way I look at it is that:

1Co 6:19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own;
20 you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Some people refer to their bodies as a “meat suit”. The gnostics, the earliest heretics that Paul railed against, saw all material objects as evil, leading them to either engage in hedonism (what you do with your body doesn’t matter to your spirit) or Asceticism ( the flesh needs to be denied or despised.) The way I see it is, God created your body, he made it just for you. How you treat it is how you treat a gift from God.

Much of what we do for enjoyment is not good for our bodies. The results are physically evident. Some of those things are considered sins by many religious people. Drinking to excess, promiscuous sex, drug use are all recognized as being detrimental to our physical health, and our spirits as well. The Catholic church lumped gluttony in there as well, and that is one that many  Protestant Christian churches dodge around. I would say, is there a difference between drinking to excess and eating to excess? I would go further and say that there is nothing wrong with drinking in moderation, just as eating in moderation is good. While promiscuous sex is prohibited by the bible,  sex within marriage is good. Do we see a pattern? Careful, disciplined love for our bodies is a way we can show our appreciation for what God has given us. We cannot show our love for God directly, other than prayer. We can’t send Him a card, bake him a cake, or buy Him lunch. We can care for each other (number 1), our bodies(number 2), and the planet he gave us (number 3). Or maybe tie 2 and 3 together, ’cause how can you care for your body if you’ve trashed your house (the earth)?

It is easy to make physical analogies to spiritual principles. It is also easy to get carried away with those analogies, or to take it literally. You can be very focused and disciplined in how you live your life, yet be completely spiritually bankrupt. You can take me to task for this post, and tell me I’m all wrong, but I would need convincing. Most of the time, when there is something wrong spiritually, it is reflected in some form of physical dysfunction- addiction or avoidance in some form. Most of the time, where there is spiritual balance, there is physical balance to one degree or another. Let me know what you think. If you think I’m wrong, please take the time to make a cogent argument, I’m listening.

More Support.

I know, do I have to keep hammering on the benefits of exercise? Don’t we all know it by now? No. If we did, we wouldn’t be talking about the obesity epidemic. The quote below came from an article I read today from balanced living blog. This is a quote from Rachael Ray:

“I didn’t start meaningful exercise until I was 40 and I feel really guilty about that now that I’m a few years into running six days a week. I really feel like I missed out a lot in my adult years,” the now-43-year-old tells omg! from Yahoo!. “I wish I had those other 25 years back between when you’re forced to go to gym class and where I’m at now. There were a lot of years where I thought that just working really hard was the equivalent of having exercise every day in your life, and it really isn’t.”

Ray — who also hits the gym every morning with her husband of six years, Jon Cusimano — insists that it’s not just exercise’s physical benefits that have turned her into a workout junkie. “It really makes me feel mentally so much more on point, so much more even. I don’t lose my temper. I don’t get lost in the middle of the day,” she shares. “I just have a much cleaner, clearer vision every day and I can get so much more accomplished mentally by moving physically every day.”

C’mon, does it get any better than that? I love what she says about “forced in gym class”. Anyone who reads this would think I’m some kind of athlete. Anyone who knew me growing up would be astonished at that. As a teenager I actually said, out loud, and meant it:”If my legs were paralyzed it wouldn’t change my life much, everything I love is mental.” My, how times have changed! I was uncoordinated, had lousy balance and didn’t like team sports. I still can’t run well. If they had a way to have kids explore their interests in things like lifting, martial arts, yoga, non competitive aerobics, etc. Then maybe kids wouldn’t be so anti gym. Gym should be about making you the best you, not about seeing who’s the best at dodgeball, and humiliating those who aren’t. Anyway, once you learn to love your body and what it can do, it changes everything.