Owning your body

What does it mean to own your body?

Yes, to claim ownership over the physical self you have been given by God at the moment of conception.
not to be subject to the judgments and condemnations that you yourself or more often, others heap upon you.

it's not an easy concept to explain.

but i believe that ownership of your body begins when you look at the mirror and realise that love it or loathe it - the lack of curves or too many curves and the flat chest or the full bodied chest, the body is yours. you can't trade it away or give it away, and certainly you carry it around with you. everyday. all the time.
and you make a choice to take full responsibility for it, and to care for it by protecting it from unwholesome judgments and unreasonable expectations, either from yourself or from the rest of the world.

looking back, i remember turbulent times when i was grossly overweight or to put it medically, obese. without descending into the gory details,i recall low moments of utter self-hatred and a feeling of slow sluggishness caused by bouts of said self-hate and drowning myself in too much food. way too much food.

while i still am overweight now, there are curves where there weren't any before, and i can buy a wider range of clothes.
one of the biggest changes i found in myself of late was in wanting to own my body, coming to love it and wanting it to be healthy and strong. not sluggish, slow and lazy.

owning my body meant deciding to make sensible food choices, to choose stir-fried over deep fried, soupy noodles over Hokkien fried noodles, plain over sugary, vegetables and tofu over meat, oats over nasi lemak.

it also meant taking a commitment to exercise and to ramp up physical activity more seriously. not to give it the sort of lip service once a year exercisers do. trying out new exercises and new machines in the gym which i used to be afraid of gave me a sense of accomplishment and confidence in varying my usual gym routine.

there are relapses, and i have binged eaten more times than i care to remember. but in every relapse, i remember that this body is mine, and i care for it and love it for all it has given me and continue to give.

nobody can tell you this - you have to believe it first. i'm still miles away from my target optimum weight, but at least it's a goal in sight, not something i never even dreamed of being able to achieve.

so own your body. love it. listen to it, and it will tell you when it's really hungry and when you are stressed, unhappy and need some other form of comfort.

dieting books will give you all kinds of advice, and i m not really qualified to comment, but my two sens' worth is take the sensible and above all, own your body. the change doesn't begin outside, it begins in your mind.