Those Awful Before and After Photos

Around 1767, the Burmese army attacked a monastery in Bangkok. They slaugh­tered all the monks and broke every rel­ic, leav­ing intact only a sin­gle clay stat­ue of Buddha that was too tall and heavy to topple.

Fast for­ward to 1955, when a new group of Thai monks was tasked with relo­cat­ing the clay Buddha to make room for high­way con­struc­tion. As the monks attempt­ed to lift the stat­ue off its pedestal, the ropes broke, and the Buddha tum­bled over, clay vis­i­bly crum­bling as it crashed down. The monks were heart­bro­ken until one monk saw some­thing glim­mer­ing beneath the rub­ble. As the dust cleared, the monks could see veins of gold shin­ing through the new­ly formed cracks in the clay. The monks care­ful­ly chipped off the rest of the clay, reveal­ing a sol­id gold Buddha ten feet tall and weigh­ing over 5 tons.

Why had this price­less rel­ic been cov­ered in clay? To fool the Burmese army into think­ing it was worth­less dur­ing that 1767 siege. The ruse worked, and now the pre­cious Buddha is one of Thailand’s most beloved treasures.

I’ve been think­ing about the Golden Buddha all week. My online feed is a seem­ing­ly end­less body-sham­ing parade of the diets, detox­es, and exer­cise reg­i­mens that go hand-in-hand with New Year’s res­o­lu­tions. But the post that made me grit my teeth in frus­tra­tion was one from a well-known fit­ness and weight loss com­pa­ny describ­ing how to take the per­fect before photo.

The most impor­tant self­ie you’ll ever take!

Snug-fit­ting work­out clothes are fine, but a swim­suit is best.

Make sure to leave your face neu­tral; save the giant smile for your After photo!

When you see your after, you’ll be glad you did!

This from a com­pa­ny that prac­ti­cal­ly guar­an­tees weight loss to clients who fol­low their pro­gram faith­ful­ly (side-note, because it bears repeat­ing, though it’s an unpop­u­lar and incon­ve­nient truth; all the research stud­ies on keto and carb-cycling diets were con­duct­ed on rodents. Humans and mice are not the same species. In fact, sci­ence is dis­cov­er­ing more genet­ic dif­fer­ences between mice and humans every year. It’s uneth­i­cal for a com­pa­ny to claim that its pro­gram will work for all humans because it worked on a small num­ber of rodents. Proper nutri­tion does not require com­pli­cat­ed math. But I digress).

We are fun­da­men­tal­ly con­fused about what we tru­ly want. This “before and after men­tal­i­ty” asks us to treat our body in a cer­tain way so that it will look good, when we should treat our body in ways that help it feel good.

Any pro­gram that asks us to take – and post – these pho­tos is sub­lim­i­nal­ly promis­ing us that hap­pi­ness lies on the oth­er side of the after shot. This is an emp­ty promise; these pho­tos only per­pet­u­ate a cul­ture of com­par­i­son, inse­cu­ri­ty, body shame, and seek­ing val­i­da­tion out­side of our­selves. They point us in the wrong direc­tion ener­get­i­cal­ly because noth­ing out­side of us lasts in a mean­ing­ful way. The inside mat­ters more. The inside mat­ters most.

In the relent­less hus­tle to trim down and tone up, we’ve for­got­ten that under­neath all the lim­it­ing beliefs, inse­cu­ri­ties, and body dys­mor­phia, we are gold­en gods. Our before pho­tos are no less gold­en than our afters. Maybe it’s no coin­ci­dence that gold and God are only a sin­gle let­ter apart.

We’re called to love our bod­ies. Loving your body only when it’s toned and thin is like lov­ing your chil­dren only when they are well-behaved.

We’re sup­posed to move because we love our bod­ies, not because we hate them. We’re sup­posed to nour­ish our bod­ies because we remem­ber that we are price­less trea­sures, not because we are dis­sat­is­fied with our shape or size. 

If we relent­less­ly chase looks over feel­ings, no amount of weight loss will leave us whole. Chasing appear­ance instead of emo­tion dis­con­nects us from our divine nature. When we’re dis­con­nect­ed from the divine, we can­not help but feel lost, sad, scared, or worth­less. We’ll nev­er see our bod­ies as more than incom­plete projects requir­ing depri­va­tion — with food — and pun­ish­ment — with exer­cise. Exercise and nutri­tion mat­ter, of course, but good choic­es — if they are to become habits — should arise from a place of self-compassion.

When we eat from a place of self-love rather than self-loathing, we will find the feel­ing of whole­ness we seek.

Still strug­gling to own your worth? How about this? Billions of years ago, two neu­tron stars col­lid­ed and sprin­kled our infant plan­et with pre­cious met­als, ensur­ing that every future being would con­tain sil­ver, plat­inum, and — you guessed it — gold. It might also inter­est you to know that the high­est con­cen­tra­tion of gold in the human body occurs around the heart. Those side-by-side pho­tos? If you look close­ly, all you’ll see is two peo­ple equal­ly wor­thy of love, as price­less as that gold­en Buddha.