Should You Just “Love Your Body” as It Is?

Don’t let others ding you for wanting to improve your body composition. You get to decide how you want to look and feel.

And you can have high standards while also being healthy and happy — you can control calories without copping an eating disorder, exercise every day without developing a dependency, and love your body without losing perspective.

“But can’t you just love your body as it is and skip the rest?” some ask.

Maybe.

But remember — holding yourself to high standards is a flavor of self-love because it signals optimism and trust. It’s you saying to yourself, “Goldarnit, I can freaking do this!”

What’s more, the preservation of high personal benchmarks is also a contribution toward the preservation of high social and cultural ideals and an implicit rejection of that which is evil, ugly, immoral, defective, and degrading.

In a depraved, diseased, and dysfunctional society, being healthy in body, mind, and spirit is a revolutionary act — a recognition of the personal responsibility to embody and uphold worthy virtues and values, because if we don’t, who will?