In this follow-up to my post entitled “Stewardship or possession“, I talk about the care of our bodies, which in a way are our ultimate possessions. How do we and how should we regard and care for our bodies? We each only get one body during our lifetimes. How do we want to spend our last years of life? As invalids, caught in a painful, dreary existence or as vibrant individuals who are still able to move around, spend meaningful time with others and travel to see the world?
I thought it’d be worthwhile to take a photo from December 2012 and put it side-by-side with a photo taken this month (December 2013).
If you’ll remember from a previous post, I am a raw foodist. I was also slowed down for a couple of months by an ankle fracture which required two surgical interventions. And yet, this was my progress. I’m satisfied with it.
I plan to grow even more. There are certain measurements I want to reach. I am so glad I started bodybuilding again.
Here’s a triptych where I included a shot taken in March of this year.
Happy New Year!
Just wanted to publish here a post I wrote on Facebook this morning about body image and the recent controversy surrounding its representation in the media:
Something I don’t get: people are making such a big deal in recent times about being thin and how the fashion magazines are promoting it. They’re making it into a huge issue, as if the plump girls are being persecuted and they’re putting it as if this has been going on forever.
Truth is, this is only a recent thing. Until the 60s, it was a plump girl’s world. Yes, all the way from antiquity to the 1960s or so, people liked bigger women. The thin ones were the outcasts. Nobody wanted them because they were too skinny. They were told to put on weight. There were ads in magazines everywhere for fattening creams and lotions and vitamins and lard and all kinds of stuff to help girls put on weight fast and become “attractive”.
So here’s what I think: all this bulls**t be damned, if you want to be plump, be plump, if you want to be thin, be thin, but do yourself a favor and stop blaming others for your body type. If you’re plump and you’d rather be thin, stop complaining about fashion magazines and learn to love yourself. If you’re thin and would rather be fat, well then, you’re in luck because there are a ton of processed foods out there to help you achieve your goal.
And if you like yourself just the way you are, congratulations! You’re one of the lucky few who get what it’s like to enjoy life. Go on enjoying it, we typically only get 70-80 years of it and we shouldn’t waste it complaining! 🙂
When we wear suits, even without realizing it, our body adjusts its posture to fit the clothes better. Depending on their cut, they may pull on our shoulders or the back of our neck, even imperceptibly, distorting our posture over the course of our day. Even more so, sleeves and shoulders may also not allow full or proper movement of our arms, which means we’ll be even more restricted. Add to that the feeling that we get when we put on a suit, which tells us that we should behave and move differently, and we’ve got a recipe for potentially bad posture, which leads to ill-feelings and other health issues over time.
Instead, I propose we always think of our clothes as subservient objects that we use. We are not used by them, even if they’re an expensive suit. We dictate how we move and feel when we wear them, and if a suit won’t let us move properly when worn, perhaps the cut isn’t good enough. You know, it’s been said that a great suit made by a great tailor should feel like a pajama on your body: light, airy, enabling full movement and correct posture, breathable, molding to your very shape. If our suits don’t feel like that, we need to start looking for better suits.
We also need to actively correct our posture throughout the day, which is why I put together this video:
Hope you enjoyed it!
All of us have probably heard at one point or another that it’s good for us to walk barefoot once in a while, either on grass or on the beach. It’s the sort of information that we file away and don’t remember to do all that often, until we find out why it’s important.
In these three videos posted here, Dr. Stephen Sinatra explains why walking barefoot (or grounding, as he calls it) is important for our health.
Enjoy and apply his advice! It’s backed by the wisdom of our forefathers and by current scientific research, and it’s also really easy to do.
Raoul Pop 