Are you familiar with the Bible verse, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8? This is one of my favorite verses. It tells us that there is a season for everything. I don’t know about you, but that brings me great comfort and peace knowing that I don’t have to do or be all things, all at once, all the time. Everything has its own time. It’s own season of life.
I don’t know about you, but I am on social media almost daily. It’s the platform I use to write my blog, to run my online digital shop, to minister to others through sharing the word of God. It’s a part of my life. But lately, I have started feeling burned out from it. I think social media can be an excellent tool, but it can also cause a lot of pain, exhaustion, confusion, and unnecessary comparison and feelings of not being or feeling enough. This is where I found myself at the end of December.
If you’ve been following my “New Year Without Shame From Diet Culture” blog series, then you know that today is part 3. In part 1, I shared with you 3 ways to improve your well-being without focusing on weight loss, body manipulation, or food restricting. In part 2, I emphasized the importance in finding joy in your physical movement/exercise. In part 3, (today) I will share why it’s important to not engage in diet-talk with yourself or others because let’s be honest, it can be really hard to stand above and resist diet culture. But, I’m here to remind you that you do not have to participate in conversations about diet or weight loss, if you do not want to. Even if others still decide to.
Have you ever asked yourself what is the driving force and true motive behind why you workout or why you want to start working out? If you have, have you answered yourself truthfully? Have you really dug deep and been honest and transparent with yourself about this? As I shared last week with you, this one subject has caused and brought me a lot of pain and confusion. For the past almost 8 years, I have worked out with the intention of either weight loss, weight maintenance, or body manipulation. While these three reasons sound “normal,” the truth is, these shouldn’t be the true motives behind our desire to either exercise or start exercising. If you have worked out because of these same reasons, I want you to give yourself grace, but also know that you don’t have to do this anymore.
I still remember sitting in church one Saturday evening and listening to our pastor speaking about the Sabbath. I have grown up with the 10 Commandments all of my life, but to say that I always fully obeyed them, would be a lie. To say that I even fully understood them, would be an understatement. But right then and there as I was sitting in the row with my husband, I just knew that the Holy Spirit was speaking to me through my pastor’s words.
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