a new commitment

I've been doing an awful lot of reading and reflecting lately on our health--probably because I work in a hospital.  I cannot tell you the number of patients I see who are in their 50s and 60s who are here because they have made choices in life to not invest time & energy in caring for their bodies.  The number people here with blocked arteries from cholesterol, organs shutting down because of obesity, people whose hearts, lungs, and bones aren't kept strong because they chose not to exercise or watch their diets etc is rather astonishing to me.  Please don't read this wrong--I am certainly not saying I have this all figured out or I am in any position to pass judgment on others, but it is definitely something I have spent a great deal of time lately thinking about.  Maybe it's because I was raised by nurses who always valued family walks, bike rides, and playing all day in the swimming pool.  Maybe it's because we didn't have nintendo or extravagant cable TV growing up, so the number of hours we spent in front of a TV was limited.  Whatever it is, the amount of time most Americans spend sitting sedentary while continuing to feed their bodies the number of calories they'd need if they were living an active life is troubling to me.  It used to be that we didn't have all the research we do today, showing us what we should be eating, or how we should be taking care of our bodies, so certainly many grew up unaware of the problems that are caused by our diets, but the reality is that we DO know better today.  If we want to put a little time and energy into thinking, reading, and asking questions about our diets today the information is at our fingertips.  Theologically I think this is significant.  God commanded us to care for our bodies, he only gave us one, and I've been the witness first hand many times this quarter of what happens when that one body shuts down.  Our bodies are deemed the temple of the Holy Spirit, God saw our bodies and declared them to be good upon creation.  There is a new movement among Christians called "Body Theology" and I think this is essential--our bodies DO matter!  How we treat them, what we do to them, how we care for them, feed them, strengthen them.  Certainly we all have physical differences as to what we can and can't do, and I don't believe we all need to train for marathons (which is good because I hate running) but I DO think we need to be paying attention to what we are told to do to care for ourselves.  If a doctor says you need to be doing weight-bearing exercise or taking walks every night, well maybe we should take that advice seriously.  

I've mostly thought about this in terms of what we choose to put into our bodies these days.  As the one doing the grocery shopping & cooking in our family, I see it as my God-given responsibility to do my best to ensure that my family (granted it's just 2 of us now, but one day it will be more) is fed in ways that honor this command to care for creation and ourselves.  I'm learning a lot about the types of foods we need and am starting to make some changes in how I shop and prepare food.  Instead of using butter to saute veggies, I'm using a little olive oil which has fats in it that actually help the heart.  Instead of making frozen french fries on hamburger night, I'm buying a sweet potato and cutting it into french fries, tossing it with olive oil and italian seasoning before baking it.  Takes about 10 minutes more than the frozen fries and gives TONS more nutrients--and cuts out the fat that otherwise would get smothered onto a potato in the form of butter and sour cream.  Spinach is the lettuce of choice in salads these days, which is one of those "super foods" we are all encouraged to eat as much of as possible--when served fresh and not mixed with cream, butter or other sauces it's an amazing source of iron, calcium and other things we all need more of.  

I'm not writing this to make anyone feel guilty for how we eat, but more to share with all of you this new journey I'm on.  As we enter into summer I'm making it my goal to find ways to incorporate as many fruits and veggies into our diets as possible, and want to find new ways to cook and serve them.  My new favorite magazine has been a huge help, it's actually a Martha Stewart publication called Body + Soul and is full of information on balanced, healthy lives--eating, exercising, managing stress etc.  Feel free to visit www.wholeliving.com for more, and join me on this journey and commitment to care for the one body God has given us!