Mind and body, body and mind.

Who here has watched The Biggest Loser?  Basically everyone, right?

In my opinion, weight loss shows are the bane of the body positive movement, and here's why: the entire show, be it one episode or a whole season, leads up to a single moment- the moment of the big revealing.  Everything is leading up to the moment where you finally get the "money" shot: the before and after.  Whether it's jumping through a blown-up picture of your old body, or coming down a staircase to stop at a cardboard cutout of your former self, there is always a big moment in which you see the end result, the final goal, the ultimate transformation.

Here's where I get really aggravated: whenever you see interviews of people who have lost a significant amount of weight, they reveal their "new" body and then talk about their "old" body as if it wasn't really part of them at all, as if it was a body they were trapped in and that this "new" and supposedly better body is the "real" them.

One of the many things I think Western culture has lost touch with over the years is the perception of body, mind and spirit as one entity.  In our Western mode of thinking, we look down at our body from our mind as if it's somehow separate. In many cases, women refer to their body as an "it," as if our body is simply an object, not part of us but simply where we live, as if our body is some dilapidated house we have to reside in for now, until we can do some major home improvement projects and really make it our home.

Here's what those people have missed: your body is absolutely intrinsic to who you are.  You are not better than your body and you are not worse than it.  You are part of it and it is part of you, and possibly THE most important step in ending body hatred is realizing this.  Those "weight loss success stories" may have lost a lot of weight and changed how their body looks, but it's still the same body, plus or minus a few fat cells or some muscle tissue. 

You do not live in your body.  You ARE your body.  For better or for worse, every freckle, scar, wrinkle and stretch mark is a postcard along the road of that little adventure we call life.  Why would you not want to embrace every little thing that makes you the person you are today? I hope that by learning to embrace your body as your home, you will also learn to show it a little more kindness and realize all the incredible things it does for you, without asking anything in return. #