For the Health of It

Mo'Nique used to be the face of "Big is Beautiful." She once declared, "Skinny b****** must be destroyed!" She viewed her weight simply as being contrary the current cultural aspiration to thinness. 

But then her significant other made her realize another view.

“When my husband asked me my weight, I answered and he said ‘…That’s too much weight. I want you around for a lifetime and that’s not healthy.’ It was at that moment that I went through guilt, I went through shame, because of my size. Because I never felt love like that before.”

Reports differ as to her weight loss, but 80 pounds seem to be the average. 

 

She's eating right. She's exercising. She doesn't look like a starving waif, yet she's healthy. 

I constantly bully my audience with healthy recipes because I am trying to spread the gospel of the Rambam. We have the responsibility to care for our bodies, Shabbos brisket aside. Once, if—and that's a big if—a cow was shechted for a Shabbos, do you think everyone got a slab of their own to consume? Um, no. 

I know of a woman who beams with happiness when her husband wolfs down heaping, fattening seconds. I am quite sure she is trying to kill him. 

We can enjoy, in moderation, the sugary, the salty, the fattening. But not every day, all the time. Respect our selves by respecting our bodies. 

Yes yes, getting hit by a bus is still an option. Freakish, inexplicable diseases are a possibility. But why not avoid the avoidables, if possible?