My Body and Physical Health

I woke up from a short nap a little while ago.  I'd been reading, and started to drift, and rather than fighting that feeling, decided to go with it today, within limits.  I slept for about an hour, not super deeply, but it was lovely.

When I woke up, I was feeling a little foggy and lethargic (that's what napping often does to me), so I decided I'd finish off my planned exercise for the day by doing one six minute circuit from Jillian Michael's Banish Fat Boost Metabolism DVD.  That's done and now I'm sitting down to write.

Wait!  Before I lose you (because a blog post where the first two paragraphs read like that would probably lose me), let me explain.  I've spent the last week and a half thinking, reading, researching, pondering and praying about the idea of health. I've read voices that range from an auyervedic yogi to Dr. Oz.  From diet books to women's health.  I even did a two-day cleanse last week with the unfortunate name of "Look Better Naked Two-Day Cleanse".  (Full confession - I totally picked this cleanse because it was the easiest one I came across, where I didn't have to eat anything really gross!  I could care less at this point what I look like naked!)

Health and I, at least physical health and my body, have not exactly got the best relationship track record.  In fact, we kind of ignore if not downright dislike each other.  And yet, as I settled in last week to do some of that reading and research, I was pretty aware of the need for that to start changing.

I weigh more than I ever have (a number that is creeping scarily close to the "obese" range on the BMI charts for my height). I'm also in a position to start changing some things.  I start my final practicum next week, the second last hurdle for me to cross before I'm officially a registered nurse.  I'm within six-eight weeks of being fully weaned off of the medication that I've been on for the last two years to manage moods and anxiety.  It's been a great medication, but I don't feel like I need the support at this point in my life, and it has contributed significantly to the weight gain challenges I've had in those two years. My schedule is about to be more consistent, and I'm removing a major obstacle.  I'm very aware that with coming off medication, I need to have a mentally and physically healthy lifestyle in place to hopefully stay off the pills.  And plus, in terms of a lot of other things in my life, I'm in a healthier place than I've been in a long time, so it's time to make some changes with my body and physical health.

So I did a lot of reading and research, because half the battle for me is convincing myself this is actually worth it.  I historically hate almost all forms of exercise, and when I get hungry I crave sweets.  You can see the problem.  I watched shows on neflix and on veria living to motivate and inform me.  I began to accumulate viewpoints and opinions that would work for me, and discard others.  For example, I watched a whole series with an auyervedic practitioner and discovered that I can definitely get on board with the holistic idea that all parts of my lifestyle (even how much stuff I own) impacts my health.  But I hated his method of talking about food, which treated food as utilitarian, not something to be done really for enjoyment or to be done in a social setting, but just as energy.  I can't get on board with that - it contradicts deeply held beliefs rooted in my faith that say that sharing a meal with people is a sacred and connecting practice - a form of communion that is beyond the body.

And all that reading and research ultimately led me to a few doable ideas to start making changes.  I can't get on board with spending twenty minutes a day focused on exercises for my abs, but I can use Dr. Oz's 7 Day Belly Workout Cheat Sheet, where I need to spend 2-5 minutes doing a different exercise each day.  I can't at this point commit to doing a whole 45 minute Jillian Michael's video, but I can commit to doing one (or sometimes two) six minute circuits 4-5 times a week.  I can't (and won't) go on a major diet, but I can use tools like the My Fitness Pal website to track what I'm eating, and set a doable calorie goal (usually the 0.5lb weight loss a week range). I can drink a glass of water with lime (I hate lemon in water and most other things) every day to help my body detox.  I can stick to a basic regimen of vitamins and probiotics. I can't always make it to the reccomended 10000 steps a day using my Fitbit tracker, but I can shoot realistically for greater that 6000 a day, and go from there. I can eat lots of fruits and veggies and limit gluten and starch in my diet.

And the reason that I think I can make these changes is that most of them are already somewhat in place in my life, while the others fit into a window of time and activity that doesn't feel like it will overwhelm me. For me, that's the key - to figure out what is doable for me, what I won't hate and immediately quit - and then build from there.  I'm working on that figuring out what's doable thing in the whole of my life right now, and it seems to be helping.

Here's hoping that figuring out doable in the realm of my body and physical health is going to improve for it!

(and p.s. also in the realm of doable - I'm going to look at an elliptical machine off of Kijiji with my dad tonight! I'm thinking my neflix sessions are going to require a bit more physical activity in the near future if all goes as planned!)

Wits End

It's been a while since I've talked about my journey with my body, and that's mostly because I've found myself at wits end.

Life got busy and my motivation to work at caring for my body dropped off.

I gained back all the weight I'd lost at the beginning of the year, and the beginning of this journey, and then I added a bit of extra weight.

I'm at a place where I look in the mirror and feel unhappy with what I see, but also recognize that what I see is largely a result of choices I've made.

And can I be honest? I'm not that motivated to change my habits.  I like eating sweet things and having the occasional glass of wine or cocktail.  I like not worrying about what I eat.  I don't like exercise - never have.  Yoga classes are the only thing I've ever really enjoyed, and I just don't have time to fit classes into my schedule at the moment.

I have some thoughts on how to change that, but for the moment, I'm at an all time low in motivation and an all time high in frustration.

In fact, even as I try to write this post, I find I've run out of things to say.  I'm stuck, a bit at wits end, and not totally motivated to change any of that.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the first to find myself in this place, and I'm wondering how those of you who have been here have navigated this space?

A Minor Meltdown: Begin Again

I had a minor meltdown on Friday night, just before I needed to leave for my work shift.

The combination of some very heavy school deadlines, all the demands of a bachelorette party and wedding for my brother and his now wife, juggling church and social obligations, and adding a new job with new hours and some very heavy demands on my emotional energy to the mix didn't play well. When you combine that with burning a candle at both ends to make sure all of those things stayed relatively managed, the result isn't pretty.

It looks like several weeks of eating poorly, exercising minimally, and forgetting to take vitamins and supplements.  It looks like minimal sleep, and way more people intensive commitments than my introverted nature can comfortable juggle.  And ultimately it looks like collapsing into tears in my parent's living room as I head out the door to an emotionally demanding, physically draining late night shift at work.

And so, this week, with the pressure of several of those demands either temporarily or permanently slaked, I'm thinking about what it looks like to begin again.

To offer myself grace for the thousands of self-care missteps I've made through choice or necessity over the last three weeks, and begin to treat myself kindly again.  To eat more vegetables and less cookies.  To schedule time for winding down back into my nightly routine.  To go back to taking vitamins.  To walk or do yoga or hike.  To say no to some people commitments, and yes to the ones that really feed my soul.  To read, to write, to trust.

I'm going to loosely quote Anne Shirley again, one of my all-time favorite lines from literature.  "I'm so glad that tomorrow is another day with no mistakes in it yet."

After a minor meltdown, I'm beginning again.

Baby Steps (Continuing the Journey of Body and Food)

The conversation that took place on my last post in this series on my journey with my body and food inspired me.  It was a conversation that I was reminded of when I came across this image on pinterest this week:

Source: fightingthinspo.tumblr.com via ☮Kristyn on Pinterest

I obviously don't have a daughter right now, and maybe I never will, but this image reminded me of the comments that friends left on my last post, about their own daughters, and helped remind me of the importance of learning to love my body now, in this place of having more questions than answers.

After writing that post, I went back to my therapist and we talked about the four week experiment she'd asked me to undertake.  The experiment where I didn't count points or calories, where I didn't climb on a scale, but instead I tried to be more aware of loving my body, of caring for it.

I shared with her that I was fairly certain that over the course of the four week experiment I'd gained back nearly all of the weight I'd spent the previous twelve weeks trying to lose.  That without some sort of tracking system, I found myself eating everything in sight, and rationalizing it.  I was emotional, and craving chocolate - my body wanted chocolate - I only gave it what it wanted, right?  Not precisely a healthy or rounded way of handling things.  Her observation, after more conversation was this - that I had stopped being horrible to my body, but now I was acting indifferently, not really kindly.  She also noted that I seemed to need to some accountability.

So, we tweaked the experiment, and I'm taking baby steps forward.  I'm working on forming healthier images of beauty.  On actually appreciating my body - noticing the myriad of things it does for me each day.  I'm working on noticing the parts of my body that I genuinely like, and focusing on them.  I'm working on being kind to my body.  I'm working on eating more fruits and vegetables, and listening to what my body wants, but filtering out the voices that like immature children ask for desires rather than needs - for chocolate instead of strawberries or carrots.  And I'm counting calories again.

The counting thing works for me.  This has never been a journey solely about weight.  Yes, I'd like to lose some weight (between 15-25 pounds if I'm honest), but it's not about weight particularly.  I'm recognizing a need to love and respect myself - to really see myself as a whole being.  To not have my body be only a utilitarian accessory that I only notice when it fails.  To see my body as the temple I reflected on when I first began writing this series.

Source: emilymcdowell.posterous.com via Jen on Pinterest

I'm recognizing, too, that how I care for myself has a direct impact on my ongoing struggle with mental illness, depression, anxiety, and self-image.  That how I treat myself is a strong indicator not only my own physical health, but my social and mental health as well.

On the wholly practical note, pinterest and counting have been helpful.  I've found exercise tips and images that spoke truths I needed to hear on pinterest.  And counting, well, counting just gives me a target.  I use a website and iphone app called "Lose It!" and have found it helpful, especially as I've personalized it with the foods I eat most regularly.  As someone who has pretty much always despised exercise (with the possible exceptions of synchronized swimming and yoga), it's motivating to me that I earn extra calories through daily activities like walking and house cleaning.  Counting calories isn't an exact science for me.  I'll probably never weigh and measure everything I eat, and I'll probably never have a perfect week of food consumption, under the limit every day, saying no to everything that someone somewhere might deem unhealthy.  But I'm learning that this caring for my body thing is about moderation.  About those baby steps my counselor and I have talked about as necessary in restoring any relationship.  That the goal is to have more good days than bad days.  That sometimes the glass of wine with friends is a good thing, or the celebrating with a decadent restaurant meal is a way of thanking my body and treating my emotions.  That even if a week has more bad days than good, I get to keep trying again and again.

So, I'm counting, I'm looking for new images of beauty, I'm trying to find ways to be gentle and loving to my body.  I'm eating more strawberries (berries in general, really), and I'm hanging out on pinterest.  And I'm using Lose It! (if you happen to use it, let me know - there's a friend feature that can help add accountability).  Baby steps, folks.  The next one is going to be creating a list of all the different little things that I can do to "feel good" on a given day - body, soul, and spirit.  A sort of handy daily checklist that I can refer to.  Another way of adding a bit of accountability to this process for me.

I'd love to hear how this journey has been going for each of you.  Have you been taking baby steps? Giant steps? Are you the need accountability type?  Are there things that are unfailingly on your own "feel good" lists?  The conversation about this journey has been so helpful for me.  Don't let it stop now!

Revisiting Thoughts on the Body and Food

I was pretty sure when I wrote my last post on this topic that the next post I would write in this series would be detailing the way I was managing to "control" my struggle with food and my body.  How I was losing weight, changing my diet, and being successful at those things.

That's not the post I'm sitting down to write today.

The truth is, I think I have more questions than answers.

I read that last post to my therapist, and she asked me to take a break from the plan for weight loss that had been working for me for the first three months of the year.  She asked me to take a break and spend some time learning how to honor my body.

In the month or so that I've been doing that, I've learned that I'm not very good at it.  I've learned that discipline and willpower are not my strengths, and that an at times addictive personality just might another challenge I'll need to face. I'm fairly certain that I've gained back the weight I worked hard to lose (almost half of my goal) over those first three months of the year.  I've been procrastinating on the homework she assigned, because I just can't quite figure out how to write a letter of appreciation and gratitude to my body.  It hasn't been that hard to do as she asked and do one nice thing for my body each day.  She set the limits wide, and since I live a generally healthy lifestyle, it wasn't hard to think of things like walking the stairs instead of taking the elevator, drinking lots of water, and using my SAD lamp as little gifts.

I could make excuses - that this was the worst month ever to remove limits.  After all, it was the final month of the semester, and I was stressed beyond my limits by group work. Who could blame me if I had one cookie, or ten? Who would blame me for wanting to go for drinks with the girls after class, and deciding I needed a big juicy hamburger to go with the drink (after all, I'm a light weight when it comes to alcohol, and if I don't eat, well, half a drink can make me seriously tipsy.)

But the excuses ring hollow as I've pondered what I'd write here.  They're just that - excuses for a lack of self-discipline.  Excuses for not treating my body well.  (Though I wonder if the guilt I feel for failing, and then making excuses is equally negative for this journey.)

I don't have any answers today.

I have a lot of questions.

How do I learn to see my body differently?

How long will it take?

Can I create limits without them being a mechanism for control? A mechanism for beating back fear? How do I do that?

What does healthy look like in my circumstances?

What are the lines between healthy choices and those self-care moments when chocolate or a drink with the girls really is a helpful thing?

Am I attractive?

Can I ever be attractive to others if I don't believe it about myself?

And most of all, what does Jesus think of all of this? How does he see me? How does he ask me to care for my body?

I don't have answers, just a lot of questions, and I'm inviting you into those today.  I'd love to hear your questions, or just your thoughts about your own journeys with your body and food.

Friday Reflections, March 2, 2012

Given that yesterday I shared in greater depth about my journey with food and eating disorders, it seems somehow appropriate to share some reflections from Henri Nouwen on the spiritual value of sharing a meal today.  Nouwen's thoughts on this subject have shaped some of my passion for sharing meals with friends, and for cooking, and fit nicely into the themes I seem to be exploring in this space lately.


The Meal That Makes Us Family and Friends

We all need to eat and drink to stay alive. But having a meal is more than eating and drinking. It is celebrating the gifts of life we share. A meal together is one of the most intimate and sacred human events. Around the table we become vulnerable, filling one another's plates and cups and encouraging one another to eat and drink. Much more happens at a meal than satisfying hunger and quenching thirst. Around the table we become family, friends, community, yes, a body.

That is why it is so important to "set" the table. Flowers, candles, colorful napkins all help us to say to one another, "This is a very special time for us, let's enjoy it!"

Admitting A Disorder (More Thoughts on the Body)

On Monday I started talking about a new journey I've been walking with Jesus the last few months, surrounding my relationship with my body, and my relationship with food. I wasn't planning to get this intense this quickly in sharing some of my journey with my body and food, but then I discovered that in the United States, February 26-March 3, 2012 is Eating Disorder Awareness week, and I knew it was time to tell this piece of my story.

Food and I, well, we have a conflicted, love-hate kind of relationship.  I love food, but my body has often hated it.

If you ask my family about me as a child, they might tell you the story of the time my cousin (five weeks younger than me) was crawling around the house, eating a cracker, when I spotted him.  Apparently my immediate response was to follow him, and eat any crumbs or bits he dropped.  I grew up thinking of myself as "chubby" and this fit with the family lore.  There are comments about my love of food, and my weight that were made by male members of my family burned in my memory permanently, causing an ache, and helping me define myself.

Years as a synchronized swimmer meant that I never developed the "I look horrible in a swimsuit" complex that other girls dealt with.  I knew I didn't look great, but I loved the water, and the sport, and, well, you couldn't participate without a swimsuit.  I was comfortable standing in front of a crowd in my one-piece, or teaching a class, while continually aware that my figure was far from the cultural ideal.

It didn't help that the women in my family are tiny.  In case I've never mentioned, I'm the only girl in my generation on both sides of the family, so the women I had to compare myself to were parents, aunts, and grandparents.  My mom's generation in particular is comprised of tiny women.  The fact that as I hit puberty it became clear that my body was a throwback to my grandmother's generation, with, well, curves, did not help.

But mostly, I didn't worry too much about it.  I was continually aware of those extra five or ten pounds I needed to lose, but I spent almost no time on a scale, and just chose not to focus my thoughts there.

My first bout with food problems came in eleventh grade, and it started a pattern that continued for the next fifteen years or so, off and on.  Nearly every day I'd throw most of my lunch away (this after eating minimal or no breakfast), because I felt ill.  It fluctuated, and eventually passed.  (It should be noted that somewhere in those years was the onset of my battle with severe depression, and all the spiritual questioning that came with it.)

I lost probably 10 pounds that year, without trying.  I just couldn't eat.

The weight came and went for the next few years, my ability to eat nearly almost diminishing to nothing during the more highly stressful periods of my life.  I subsisted on cookies, bread, crackers - anything and everything that was loaded with carbs and generally fit into the sweet or bland categories of consumption.  The rare times I was hungry, it was sweets that I craved, and my body wasn't satisfied unless I ate and ate a lot.

It was manageable, though, with more weight gain than loss (though never anything excessive), until I traveled to Malta about four years ago.  When I think back on that trip, and my relationship with food around it, what stands out to me is that the moment the trip became real, the night I went out for a goodbye dinner with my family, I became instantly sick.  I returned home from that meal, vomited unexpectedly, and ultimately ate almost nothing for the next five days.  The first food I consumed was on the airplane.  I also spent those five days begging God to quiet my notoriously picky stomach for the next month or so, knowing that I wouldn't make it through the trip if my stomach and its aversions acted up.  He did, and I ate comfortably (for me anyway!) until the day I boarded a plan in London to return home.

In the months following my return, my life began to fall apart - a process that altogether took more than a year.  Relationships shattered and my emotions shattered with them.  My body couldn't cope.  I spent days and weeks and months fasting, in an attempt to please people, to please God, to bargain my sacrifice for some sort of relief that never came.  Over the course of that year, I lost somewhere between 25 and 30 pounds.  I worried silently about the weight that slipped off without me ever trying, but always silently, because it was nice to have this newer body, this tinier body that people were noticing.  It was a conflicted thing the noticing.  I was sick, ill, broken all the time, emotionally shattered, but my body had never looked better.  I'm nothing if not often described as bluntly honest, and I spent a lot of time that year answering compliments and questions about my weight loss with the honest truth "no, I haven't been trying to lose weight, I've just been really sick."  Ironically, when I looked in the mirror, my body looked the same through my shattered eyes.  I didn't see my waist-line, I saw the tired and sad eyes, the soul that was always out of step.

I was afraid to say it out loud, but I began wondering if I was fighting a new battle with mental illness, this time with an eating disorder.  When someone in my life challenged me specifically on eating habits, on embracing life, I grasped at it, and immediately implemented a strict regimen of meals.  For months I used stickers on a calendar to display the fact that for maybe the first time since I was a child, I was eating three meals a day.  It worked for me, this grasping for control.  The weight loss stopped, and I even gained a little.  I still didn't have to worry about what I ate, since my emotions were still in shambles.  I never said the words "eating disorder" to anyone, though deep down I knew that this was what I was fighting to control.  I'd had years to make peace with admitting that I suffered from depression, but adding other diagnoses to the list felt overwhelming.  I carefully avoided questions from my doctor at annual physicals, skirting the issue of eating habits without ever lying - working the system just so.  And I managed it.  No more fasting, no more excuses to starve myself - just a strict three sticker a day regimen - one on the calendar for each meal I consumed.

I was proud of this success, and I shared it, celebrated it.  I didn't tell anyone about the fears that haunted me.  I didn't tell anyone about how I wondered what would happen when my body would again fail me by rejecting food.  I didn't talk about and tried to ignore the fear of waiting and expecting another of the usual onslaught of a week or so where food would just not be an option.  I just forced myself to eat those meals, and celebrated with stickers and with pride every little milestone - a day, a week, a month, three months, six months - I had this under control, or at least that was what I was telling the world.

After life finally seemed to hit bottom, I spent some time with a friend who rather forcefully (though gently) pushed through my objections to seeking professional help.  I found a therapist and began the work of piecing a life back together, but I never mentioned the challenges with food.  After all, I still had them under control.  I may not have had an appetite, but I didn't have trouble eating three small meals a day anymore.  I still craved mostly sugar (likely the calories my body simply wasn't getting), and indulged those cravings.  My weight had stabilized - I wasn't gaining, I wasn't losing.

And then, somewhere in the process of therapy, Jesus and I started talking about medication to help my ongoing battle with depression and anxiety.  I never wanted to admit that need.  I wanted to do this on my own terms, and admitting a need for medication felt like a failure.  Feeling defeated, but convinced this was something Jesus was inviting me to try, I landed myself in my doctor's office and described what I'd been dealing with.  She listened, addressed some of my fears and concerns, and then handed me  a prescription.  I started taking it about nine months ago now.

Medication in combination with ongoing therapy has made all the difference in the world in my emotional, mental and spiritual health, but it highlighted my issues with food in new ways.  When I started the meds, I spent a week in bed.  My body reacted strongly to this sudden onslaught of chemicals it had learned to live without, and the period of adjustment was rough.  I didn't eat that week, lived on 7-Up (the only thing that sounded good, and the only time in more than 10 years that I'd been able to drink a carbonated beverage), and slept for hours and hours at a time.  The next month wasn't much fun.  The nausea passed, but my appetite was gone, and I was back to forcing the issue with eating.  My fears were back in force, as I felt my carefully controlled world slipping.  And then? A month in we adjusted the dosage, and on the first day of the new dose I woke up feeling truly good for the first time in probably five years.  I didn't look back.  My appetite was back in a real way for the first time since high school.  I ate anything and everything, without considering consequences.  My body didn't seem to be changing, so I didn't worry.  I wasn't battling the nausea I so often had with emotional stress.  I was HUNGRY, and that was huge.

Except that last November I tried on a dress and it didn't fit.  A couple more incidents over the holidays landed me on a scale, and I discovered that the medication and appetite had had consequences.  I'd gained 25 pounds, because I'd never learned to manage my eating habits.  They'd been broken so long that I didn't understand the way "normal" worked.

And that has left me here.  Today I'm saying out loud that I have an eating disorder.  Not the typical kind you think of, but there is unhealth in relationship with food, and I think that this is something that's important to say out loud.

As the new year began, I came up with some goals for handling my newfound appetite, and for losing some weight, and I'll talk about those in posts to come, but today, in this week where awareness of eating disorders is being raised, I'm going to say it out loud - I suffer from a mild eating disorder.  And in the invitation to say that out loud, in the invitation of that honesty that I've felt from Jesus over the last couple months, I am finding freedom, and a renewed invitation to heal.  I am finding healing in the new ways I'm managing my diet, and I'm finding freedom in not needing to fear my body.  And I'm going to walk through some more emotional healing, starting by reading this post to my therapist the next time I meet with her, and inviting her to help me work through this part of my life as well.

So, again, I invite you to journey with me, but today I also feel Jesus smiling at each of you, offering his presence in these journeys with our bodies, and with food.  Offering healing and His delight in each of us.  Offering to let us step more fully into the light.  Won't you step into this in your own journey today?

A Temple? (Some Thoughts on the Body)

                        Source: tonedcurves.tumblr.com via Lisa on Pinterest

I have for quite some time now been staring at a tab with the above image displayed on it in my web browser.  The tab has been open for days, weeks even, as I ponder the words in the image, and ponder the way they relate to how my heart is being shaped in this season.  It has been open, and I've stared at it as I pondered how on earth to broach this topic in this space, and if I even would.  This topic feels like a risk.

It seems funny to say that talking about my relationship with my body and food seems like a risk.  In this space I've spoken openly about my journey with mental illness, spirituality and other very personal things.  Things that are in some ways nearer and dearer to my heart, more personal in many ways than the topic of my body and food.  But talking about this feels risky.

And yet, I don't believe it's an option to NOT talk about it.  This is something new, something that is being outworked in my life, something Jesus is drawing my attention to.  For a couple of months now, I've been quietly paying attention to it, noticing it, dialoging about it in select trusted circles.  And now, quietly, though I by no means have it all sorted out, I'm going to start talking about it here in this space where I share the ways my life is being shaped, moulded, and changed.  I imagine it will take more posts than just this one and that this, like mental illness and spirituality and all those other personal things I share in this space, is a journey that will be an ongoing topic of discussion.  But, for a little while, I'll probably talk about it regularly as I explore in writing these things that are surfacing within me and demanding my attention.

"The food you eat can either be the safest and most powerful form or medicine or the slowest form of poison." (Ann Wigmore)

This quote hit a raw and poignant place when I read it for the first time a month or so ago.  I was about a month into a new habit of paying very close attention to what I eat and noticing how it affects my body.

This whole thing started sometime in mid-November, when I tried on a dress I hadn't worn in a while - a  dress I was planning to wear to an engagement party being held for my brother and his fiancee.  It didn't fit.  It should have fit.  I was convinced that it had been shrunken accidentally in the laundry by the last person who wore it - a friend I'd loaned it to - one who usually wore slightly larger clothing than me.  I was frustrated that my dress didn't fit, but didn't connect it to my body.  Over the next month, a few other encounters with clothes from my closet that fit differently than I expected them to led me to dragging out the bathroom scale sometime around the beginning of the new year.

Twenty-five pounds.

Twenty-five pounds.  I'd never in my life worried about weight or what I ate, but it seemed that the combination of a medication I began taking about eight months earlier to treat anxiety and depression, and the appetite that I had for the first time in a decade as a result of the medication had taken their toll.  I'd gained twenty-five pounds.

The number registering on the scale ushered in a new season of life in my body.  Suddenly, this thing that I never acknowledged unless it somehow failed me, was demanding my attention.  It was calling for me to notice it, to notice my habits surrounding it, to be open to them, and to letting Jesus share with me how he sees me in a new way.  I've explored how Jesus sees me quite a lot the last few years, and fallen in love with him more deeply along the way, but I don't think we've ever talked about my body.  Why would we?  My body was utilitarian, and I preferred to ignore it, rather than acknowledge it.  I was afraid of it too - afraid of it failing me, afraid of acknowledging that I couldn't control it at times, afraid of acknowledging that I failed it.

Around the same time as the numbers registered on the scale began to signal that there was something I needed to pay attention to, my friend Christianne began to write about her own journey with her body.  I found in Christianne's words the comfort that comes from realizing that a journey that seemed strange and odd to me was perhaps not quite so strange and odd, and was not one that is being walked alone, but one that was and is walked out continually by people all over the face of the planet.

And so with the awareness of the scale and the comfort of knowing that this was not a journey that I was the first or only one to walk, I began to walk.  I made plans silently as the new year began, starting with setting the goal of losing those twenty-five pounds over the next six months to a year.  I explored ways and means to help me achieve that goal, and I began to listen to my body more closely.  I began to prayerfully put this new awareness in front of Jesus, and wait to see where he would guide.  I became aware of the others who were talking about caring for their body, consuming food in a mindful way, discussing the fact that our bodies are holy.

I've never had to think about weight or the food I consumed - my physical response to my emotional and mental state took care of that.  I would gain a little weight when times were good and I felt stable, but I never worried about those pounds, because the one thing I knew about my body was that it consistently failed me.  That times would get bad again thanks to the battles I fought with depression and anxiety, and those pounds would melt away along with my appetite, and sometimes my ability to keep food down.

I'm going to talk more about my relationship with food in the future, but I want to highlight this - the only thing that I trusted about my body was that it would fail me.  I had learned that this was it's one consistent behavior.  My brain chemistry would get wonky, the hard times would come, and my appetite would disappear.  I didn't notice or acknowledge my body except to berate it.  To be frustrated with it. To wonder why it continually let me down.

In Christianne's first post in her series on the body, she shared a question she asked Jesus, "Help me to learn how you view my body, and help me learn how you want me to care for it."

She posted that question about a week after I'd really begun in earnest to notice my body, to try to treat it differently, and in that question I found words for the things rolling around in my head and heart.  As I began to ask Jesus how he saw my body, and what he wanted me to know about it, the first thing that sprang to mind was a passage of scripture that talks about our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit.

My love of all things liturgical caused that phrase to conjure up an incredible set of memories and images.  Images of beauty, of holiness.  Memories of the first Catholic mass I attended at St. Mary's Cathedral here in Calgary, and of the churches I sat and prayed in in Rome and Malta.  Thoughts of the four and a half years I spent studying to obtain a degree in church history, and the feeling of setting foot in some of those places several years later when I travelled to Europe for the first time.  Memories of being a small child, and having my first "job" helping my grandparents who worked as church custodians - cleaning bathrooms, watering plants, cleaning glass, and carefully dusting the pews each week.  Mental images from childhood of watching pilgrims prayerfully ascend the steps to St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal, and more recent ones of the moment I stood before a priest in St. Peter's Basillica in Rome, to receive the ashes in the last mass of the day on Ash Wednesday, of the feeling of the ashes on my head as I stood in the center of that magnificent church.

I thought about temples as I read through Leviticus in my daily scripture readings, encountering the strict commands that God gave to his people about the construction of this place of worship - about the beauty and awe it should generate.  I thought about temples as I considered the churches, cathedrals, and sacred spaces that I've visited all over North America and during my time in Europe.  I thought about how these are the places that have been made sacred, set apart for God to dwell in, to meet with his people in.  And I thought about the maintenance devoted to these spaces - how their sacred nature demands care.  And then I returned again to the passage of Scripture that seemed to be Jesus' immediate answer to my question.

Eugene Peterson translates the passage like this:

Or didn't you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don't you see that you can't live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.  (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 The Message)

As I explored the context of these verses and the passages that surround them, I came across others in the same chapter:


You know the old saying, "First you eat to live, and then you live to eat"? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that's no excuse for stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body!


God honored the Master's body by raising it from the grave. He'll treat yours with the same resurrection power. Until that time, remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master's body. You wouldn't take the Master's body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not. (1 Corinthians 6:13-15 The Message)

Three things became strikingly clear to me, and are the things that I continue to ponder daily.

First, my body is a temple.  It is a sacred space, set aside for God to reside in, and for Him to meet with me.  The implications of that stun me.  I've heard the passage in context of arguments for not smoking, not consuming excessive amounts of alcohol, and even the need for regular exercise.  All of these were arguments that meant little to me.  But hearing Jesus remind me that I am his temple?  That was a different story, and I find myself pondering the implications of being a temple, given my associations of temples with sacred space, holiness and deep beauty.  I find myself pondering the fact that a temple is designed to display the glory of God, and maintained to continue that display for ages to come.  It leaves me with questions about my own display of God's glory.  Questions about the teaching I grew up with that it is the inner beauty that displays the glory of God, and the inner beauty only.  Questions about how it is that I care for this temple - how I maintain it so that it continues to display God's glory.

Second, this phrase in Peterson's rendering of these verses jumped out at me: "Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body!"  My body is an honor given to me by Christ.  That's a thought that is going to require some further meditation and conversation with Jesus.

And finally, my body is created with the same dignity as Christ's body.  Hello!  Did you catch that in the passages I quoted?  It stopped me in my tracks.  Peterson's version reads, "...remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master's body. You wouldn't take the Master's body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not."  It's a rather striking image, this age old question of "Would I take Jesus there or subject Him to that, and if not, why am I taking myself there, or subjecting myself to it?"  I have a thousand arguments to answer those questions and justify various things in my life or the life of others around me, but it boils down to this: when this is a personal question, when I am talking with Jesus and he is asking me if I am treating my own body and how I see it in the way I would treat and see his body, I need to stop and think a bit.


And so I'm pondering, and asking questions, and listening, and implementing new habits and practices.  And I'm going to talk about those things here.  I set out to write one post about the changing way in which I am relating to my body, and my history with my body, and as I wrote I discovered that I have stories to tell.   For the next while I will share these stories and ponderings and questions in this space, and I'd like to invite you to journey with me as I talk about food, about my body, about being a temple, about weight and eating, about health and self-image, and coming into myself more fully.  You're welcome to come along, and I'd definitely love to hear your thoughts and interact with you about this.  Feel free to leave a comment, or to email me at the address in my profile.