Developing a Wellness Approach to Body Size: Introduction
It has been presented in the previous sections of this unit that most humans cannot try to change their bodies into current society’s ideal for size, weight, and shape without great risk to physical and mental health. You do have the ability, however, to adopt attitudes and behaviors in life that lead to personal satisfaction and wellness at the size and shape most natural for you personally. The focus is on long-term changes in eating habits and activity levels. If you eat right and implement healthy behaviors, you will look and feel good at any body size. One author’s comparison of this current tendency to “carve up the human body into unnatural shapes” as similar to this world’s current problems of pollution, global warming, destroying of natural lands and resources. We have not yet learned to live in harmony with nature which has its beautiful designs, great variety of life forms and sizes, but also limits for exploitation and molding to human designs.