This post will be short but I hope it is helpful to you. February is Love Your Body Month (LYBM) in metro Atlanta, sponsored by the Eating Disorder Information Network (EDIN). Positive Nutrition often holds a free workshop sometime in February or early March that involves the promotion of LYBM. Personally, it is always from a perspective of knowing how my body was created by God and wanting to take care of the one body I've been given. Eating well is one of the ways I take care of my body, along with sleeping well and moving well. Our bodies are healthiest when we nourish them with good food, give them enough rest, and balance our movement with the right amount of activity. We are incredibly individualized, and each of us has the cues to tell us when to eat, when not to eat, when to sleep, and when to be active. Part of what I do as a dietitian is help people gain knowledge about the science of nutrition while learning to simply follow the cues that were built in to their own bodies. So I encourage you this month to think about ways to love your body - not ways to love yourself and puff up your ego, but ways to take care of yourself and recognize that the world only has one of you. I'm closing this blog post with quoting
Psalm 139. Please read and consider the meaning.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,"
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
...
Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!
~Psalm 139:1-18,23-24 ESV
