Full nakedness ! All joys are due to thee . . .

Don’t worry, I’m not about to start posting naked pictures of myself on here. That. Would. Be. Bad. This will be an entry about exercise. It’s a leap, I know.

I’m trying to love and accept myself as I am, really. I’m struggling with the idea of that, though, because I don’t much like my body right now. I think liking your body too much when every chart on earth says you are a fatso is not such a healthy self-esteem thing. Personally, I think it’s better to acknowledge that the old bod is not so great anymore than it is to be in denial. Denial is not your friend. I’m on the outs with denial, remember. Denial and I are no longer chatting on the phone every morning and deciding to wear matching outfits.

I was flipping through my stack of diet books (a post for another day) and came across this really interesting quote in a Jorge Cruise book.

Exercise is a form of body praise.

Hmmm. I like that much better than my old form of body praise, which went something like this:

I don’t care if you have rolls and you require lycra and a good bra to get into clothing – damn it, I still love you.

I don’t hate my body, exactly, I’m just in a little tiff with it. I’d like to get back to praising my body, but I need to find another method besides my Frenemy, Denial.

You know what you get when you search for Praise for your Body? You get Donne – To His Mistress Going To Bed – a poem in which Donne is smoothly talking the pants right off some chick who’d rather be having sex in the dark with her linen nightie pulled up a chaste amount. That’s some pretty nice praise in that poem, but it’s sort of meant to result in him getting lucky. I’m sure it worked – what girl doesn’t want to be the subject of a poem? In case you missed this one in English Lit, you can read it here:

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/elegy20.htm

So, I also came across the Gâyatrî Mantra in my search. In case you missed your Islamic Mysticism class one day, here it is:

We meditate on the glory of the Creator;
Who has created the Universe;
Who is worthy of Worship;
Who is the embodiment of Knowledge and Light;
Who is the remover of all Sin and Ignorance;
May He enlighten our Intellect.

But that one is about the brain, not the body. So we have the extremes here: Wooo Hooo Go Naked and then Remove Sin and Enlighten Intellect. Sigh. I do love the search engine Google, but sometimes you get the gamut.

So, I think I need a new mantra to praise my body and I just realized how simple it is, really.

To My Legs Before Going To The Gym

Get thee up, thou full-fleshed and lazy limbs;
Work out hard – for that’s what the Creator intends.
Treadmill, stair-stepper or just a long walk,
Off your lazy ass; waste less time on talk.