Goal for the Day: Reevaluate Your Body Image

We all spend a great amount of time being told how we should look. Women and men alike see images of unattainable perfection in the media. We need to remember that, first of all, the people that we see in shows and advertisements spend most of their time working out and sculpting their bodies. Secondly, they have a lot of help from makeup and lighting to digital manipulation of images. There’s nothing natural about the way these people look, and while their images are appealing, they can hardly be considered realistic.


This time of year, we’re all presented with dozens of messages about weight loss and exercise. I’m a proponent of keeping fit and having a healthy lifestyle, but I’m also a fan of living an interesting and fulfilling life—that includes eating the things that I enjoy (in moderation) and doing something more with my time than obsess about how my body looks.

Everyone’s ideal fitness level is different. Unless you’ve spent your entire life trying to make yourself into a living approximation of a statue or unless you intend to spend your entire life glued to a weight machine, you’re not going to look like the women and men in magazine ads or fragrance commercials.

So, today, take a good look at yourself in the mirror. Of course there are things you don’t like about yourself. But, this time, make a mental list of the things that you do like. Your idea of what your weight should be might not be your true ideal. Consult with your doctor to see what your most realistic health and fitness goals are. You should be working toward living a healthy and long life, not to trying to imitate some impossible illusion of beauty.

Everybody is different. Some of us are naturally thin, some of us are rounder, but, as corny as it sounds, we’re all beautiful in our own way. When we’re healthy, we’re all the more beautiful. We don’t need to look like gods and goddesses to be gorgeous.