If you don’t take care of your Body where will you live?

This is one of the quotes on my kitchen boards for this year. There’s a lot of talk and in general awareness about body image, healthy diets – vegan, gluten free, plant based diet foods, lactose free and the list is endless. And my dad was telling me that there are umpteen books on losing weight and they keep on coming but still people have issue losing weight. And we were wondering about why that is? This blog is about two topics really a) body image concept b) losing weight.

Before that, let’s talk about why weight/diet figure so much in our daily lives. Let’s start with a story.

In a remote tribal village – some tribals were shown pictures of our best models. And their response was unanimous – “She will die soon, she is so thin. How can she have babies?” End of Story.

And in our world for most women – they are not thin enough. My husband wonders if there’s something inherently wrong with women’s eyes.

Why such a contrast between these two views? I have a theory and it’s got to do with marketing. Whatever we see around us which is labelled as beautiful includes thin, hour glass figure women. Think about it for a second – the perfume, models on online shopping sites, all the actresses. Everything in media that denotes beautiful is indicated by a very small section of women who are of a completely different skeletal structure. And most of this is subconscious and it has been embedded so deep in our minds that it has become another of those socially accepted mental models. There’s a lot of awareness of it but it will take time to completely eliminate it.

Tribals on the other hand who have never been exposed to our media had a completely opposite view. So, now we are at least aware of one reason why we think of weight/body image in one particular way. And even though I am writing the blog I would be lying if I said that I did not believe in the beauty hoax. I am guilty, especially coming of a 20-day detox on liquid diet.

Let’s explore the topic of diets and why losing weight is so difficult. When I was a kid, we had a guy come to our school for a talk and I remember this from the talk
He told us the story of this great leader who had amazing will power. People asked him what was the reason behind his will power. And he said it was very simple, all he did was shake his head from one side to the other. And others were like really – that is so easy. And then he said, “Well, you have to do this when somebody offers you an ice cream or asks you to play when you have an exam.”

For some reason that story stuck with me – it is about saying no when somebody offers you chocolate/sugar/butter. We all know these items are not good for us but we still eat them. If you have amazing will power then you know what to do. And if not then start with awareness – everytime you eat an item that you know you should not be eating – eat with awareness and very consciously. And there will come a time a when the desire itself will give you up. Until then it’s one day at a time as the famous Bollywood actor Amir Khan says in this youtube video

I will finish off with explaining my Title – In India Temples are a sacred and holy place. You keep them really clean and think only pure thoughts while you are in a temple – so treating your body like temple as the same idea behind it.

Here’s to shaking our heads and temples.