Extremes

I once got a C+ on a speech a wrote in college because I got so fired up about the topic that the Professor said it was more like a rant than a speech (it also may have had something to do with her being a bumper-sticker supporter of the person I was ranting against Ooops!) Anyway, I came across a seriously disturbing article in the NY Times this week and I will try my best to just share and avoid ranting, but I can't promise anything.

The article is titled Bridal Hunger Games: Losing Weight in Time for the Wedding. It's worth the click. You will be amazed at how this Style Section article seems to glorify, or at least normalize, these extreme wedding weight loss trends. The highlighted method is receiving a 10-day feeding tube through your nose which pumps you a mere 800-calories a day while you go about your everyday business (minus eating food). Is it really more of an inconvenience to go to the gym a few times a week than to walk around with a tube in your nose explaining to the sympathetic onlookers that you are not dying of cancer, but instead trying to drop a few pounds for your wedding? This isn't an obese woman looking to be mobile again; these are slightly overweight women looking to be immediately skinny. I don't understand how this is legal, really.

Leading up to my wedding, I definitely had some weight to I wanted to shed. I started teaching two classes a day, running in the mornings, and popping avocados like candy. Sure, it took more like 3 months than 10-days to get there, but I felt pretty awesome on my wedding day. I can't imagine how sickly someone would feel walking down the aisle like they just voluntarily spent a week in the hospital. Eating a little smarter and staying active may be the old-fashioned way nowadays, but it's always going to be the healthy way.

Even still, I can't help but to disagree with the saying, "Nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels" because I can think of at least a dozen things that taste better than anything feels and I plan on eating them occasionally :)  But as extreme as the mentioned fad procedures are, I definitely need the basic, basic reminder that there is no substitute for healthy living. No doubt this insanity is going to grow in popularity and feeding tube centers could put Weight Watchers out of business one day, but I'd rather just eat me some salad please.

There has to be a balance, a middle-ground out there somewhere. The Word says we should neither treat our bodies like crap nor obsess over them.    “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Corinthians 6:12)  While our bodies may just be earthly, temporary things, my Creator gifted me with a body, and I want to honor Him simply by choosing to respect it. I really do.