What is Health?
In my search for health and well-being, I have gotten into the eating disorder clinic at St. Joe's. As part of the introductory testing, I was asked a question. Without using a number, what does it mean to you to be healthy. My answer - I don't know how to define health without numbers.
Isn't that what our society is about. Health is defined in terms of weight or size. If you are a 9, you are healthy. If you are a 14 or 16 or (gasp) a 22... Well you are not.
I wonder, can one be healthy without being a size 9?
Can one be unheathly and be a size 9 (or whatever that number is for you).
Looking back to highschool, I think, perhaps, I was healthy... I could play the sports I wanted to, I could run the hike into Cameron Falls, I didn't have many activities that I couldn't do or limitations... I certainly wasn't an olympic athlete, but I could do what I wanted. And I didn't fit into the numbers that I thought meant I was healthy. At the time, I thought I was grossly overweight... And by classical definitions, I was (according to the body mass index).
So, what does it mean to be healthy?
Can I ever get to a point where I can accept my own health and feel good about who I am?
Can I ever get to the point where all my good points... my strengths are not negated in my own mind by my excess poundage?
I'm not sure. We'll see!
posted by Erica @ 6:33 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Very interesting thoughts...interesting question....this is a typcial response but for me I am realizing more and more, the mental health has to be there before the physical health will ever be. I have to sort out in my mind why food is more then nutrition for me. Don't get me wrong food can be a sentous and pleasurable experience and should be but to a point...when I have eatten more than I need to fuel my body...something else is going on. So part of being healthly is getting to a certain place..feeling good about who you are...how your clothes feel to you, not their size...how your body feels when you dance or play a sport..not your BMI...how your heart pumps and you arteries flow...not how a flat tummy looks. As my mentor Oprah W says...you can't pray your way out of fat you have to work and when you know better, you do better. What do I know? I know that food is my drug, how I stop feeling or thinking too much... I have to some how figure out how to quiet my thoughts, stop being affraid of failure, rejection, feeling sad, feeling trapped...I don't want to feel what I really feel...how else do we deal with things that seem too painful to endure? Therapy? God does not seem to take it away. I really frighten myself sometimes. Like in Harry Potter, if someone looked in the Pensive into my thoughts...it would be like those dementors sucking the happiness away from all who looked in...that is why I don't want to think...so for now I say pass the ice cream and maybe tomorrow I will be able to pass it by...Lord Jesus have mercy on us!
You are more then welcome to share your issues... I have an "open-blog" policy!
And, hey, I was thinking of seeing if you wanted to take your kid swimming with me and my sister and our kids sometime?
But, I don't know how to contact you.
So, if you are interested, email me sometime with your contact info! Or pass it along through TU.
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