There’s never been a time when I never thought about my body.  For as long as I can remember, dating back to 1986 when I was seven years old and someone commented that my belly was cute and my lisp was cuter, I remember having a third eye.  Two eyes on the world, and one eye, located in the central part of my temporal lobe kept a vigilant eye on my body.  Similar to the Eye of Sauron in Lord of the Rings that’s always waiting for Frodo to slip the Precious on his finger so the Eye can locate its whereabouts.  The Eye never sleeps, just waits.

There’s no other time of year where one’s body is more punished than the new year, and by punished, I really do mean punished.  It’s looked upon with frowns, wrinkled foreheads, pokes at the mid-lower-higher-frontal-back area with short, frustrated breaths.  Vows to “get into shape” sound more like threats upon oneself than promises to be healthier.  The Fiery Eye is hard at work.

Women, especially, punish our bodies.  If not physically, we certainly torment our bodies mentally.  Scheming, thinking, plotting on different ways to *finally* get the body, shape, piece or area of ourselves to look *just* like that way we think it should.  And women are never at a deficit for resources to put their plans into action.

Nearly every woman I spoke to recently mentioned transforming their bodies this year.  And I began thinking of the toll this kind of mentality has on us.  I began wondering how our perspectives, our self-inflicted mental knife wounds, about our bodies, scar and limit us.  I began looking around at us – covered in scarves, hats, and heavy warm clothes, and wondered what our bodies would say if they could talk beneath all the layers we wrap them in.  More importantly, what would our bodies say to the thoughts we have about our bodies.

Nothing can take the place of being healthy.  But being healthy is such an encompassing endeavor and it often gets mutilated to solely mean what you put in your mouth.  We forget that how much sleep we allow ourselves, how stressed out we become, how often we say yes when we really mean no, how often we allow the time to make love with our partners, whether or not we smoke, whether or not we bike and walk instead of driving, when and if we pray, when and if we cook really good and healthy foods – all of this matters.    Caffeine.  Alcohol.  Processed foods.  Laziness. TV.  Depression.  Reluctance.  Darkness.  These are all factors of health.

It’s not just about carbs, see.

If you’re like me and you do want to have a magnanimous healthy year, follow some advice that was bestowed on me: if you want to change, do something different.  If you don’t want to change, keep doing what you’re doing.

If it hasn’t worked for you in the past, it won’t work for you this year.

Try something different this year.  Try love.