Healthy Habits: Disciplining the Body
When I first saw the topic I was going to write on today, I had a bit of a laugh. I myself, like many of us probably, do not feel like an authority in the discipline of working out and eating healthy.
Don’t get me wrong, I have my moments, my seasons, and have always kept to some sort of physical regiment, because I do value a general pattern of health and activity in my life. But compared to my husband’s convictions—and many others’, I’m sure—my discipline is laughable.
And that’s what most think of when we think of healthy habits, when we think of “disciplining the body,” don’t we? In a culture obsessed with weight, our minds run straight to the pursuit of low BMI and high greens-content. Perhaps we too, are in pursuit of this. Or perhaps we run away from it, rejecting the dominate messages around body-image and embracing anything that makes us feel “happy” and “blissful.”
I would argue, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Because, in truth, our bodies are one of the few concrete things God has given us in this world to truly steward. It’s one of the few things only we have control over, and something we cannot seed to someone else. And so, in that regard, our health and discipline do matter.
But healthy habits pertain to much more than how many salads we eat, and how many work-outs we log at the gym.
Unhealthy lifestyle habits like binge-drinking, pornography, promiscuity, drug use, and eating disorders are the first that come to mind as pitfalls; aka the ‘big ones’.
But what about some of the sneakier ones?
What about a lifetime of chronic stress because of workaholic tendencies, lack of sleep because we stay up too late watching Netflix and looking at our phones? What about when we make light of our “comfort food” as something to get us through emotional days and then look the other way when chocolate bar after chocolate bar, wine bottle after wine bottle disappears from our cupboard?
These habits can be just as dangerous a pitfall as the ones we deem ‘big’, and in some ways, more dangerous because they’ve become “acceptable” in our culture. We can get away with them and no one will call us on them.
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So, glorify God in your body,” 1 Corinthians 19:6
If we were to take this verse seriously, I think we might feel more conviction about some of those habits the world has deemed ok, but which may prove detrimental to our bodies in the long term.
And, if I may digress a bit, we can’t truly talk about habits of the body without talking about habits of the mind and heart. Because from these two, all actions flow.
We cannot conquer our emotional eating, without realizing why we ‘emotionally’ eat. What areas of our heart are we drowning in sugar, carbs and caffeine?
What patterns of behavior have we learned and put value in, from our parents or spouses maybe, that give us a measure of value ourselves. Has our work ethic become our idol, our source of validation?
Has our phone become our escape because it’s easier to scroll endless content rather being alone with our thoughts? Because we have become dependent on the dopamine of instant content in a life where we feel dissatisfied?
No amount of simple “habit changing” is going to change any of that, unless we deal with the root of these problems.
We need to take our overwhelming feelings to the feet of Jesus. We need to re-surrender our identity and value to the King who’d call us worthy of His love. We need to, perhaps, seek professional help in all the other areas of our heart and mind that have too much bearing on our actions. And we need to pray for opportunities that lead to freedom from addictions and unhealthy mind-sets so that we may, as the scripture above says, ‘Glorify God in our bodies’ once again.
And next time we find ourselves struggling to make the healthy choice, the God-honoring choice, maybe we can remember the cost with which our soul has been saved. Maybe we remember that our bodies are not our own, and we must care for them better than we have been.
Because He’s not Lord over only a few compartments of our lives, but over it all, and shouldn’t our lives reflect that? I know I desire for mine to. <3