This month I’m reading…The Body Revelation

July Woman Alive book club with Claire Musters.

The Body Revelation Alisa Keeton - Tyndale Refresh (978-1496462602)

So many women have poor body image and/or spend their lives trying all sorts of diets and fitness regimes in an effort to feel better about themselves. A US-based fitness professional, author and podcaster, Alisa asserts in The Body Revelation that there is a better way and that we shouldn’t view our bodies as problems to be fixed.

Structured like a training session, the book has six stages that are organised within the warm-up, the workout and the cooldown, with a ‘metabolise’ section for the reader to interact with at the end of each chapter. Also included are links to recordings on Alisa’s website where she provides meditations and audio to accompany readers as they move for 20 minutes, as well as an ‘adverse childhood experiences’ questionnaire, to help readers process past pain, and a food journal template.

Can you explain how you got interested in fitness initially?

I went with my friend to her mom’s aerobics class at 14. Like most 14-year olds, I was making that transition of child to young adult, asking the bigger questions of life like: “Am I pretty enough? Do I fit in? Do I have a group of others to belong to?” I was asking these questions while I was beginning to see the dysfunction of my parents’ marriage and the frustration that came with my dad’s ongoing infidelity and my mom’s codependency. I didn’t know it then, but I was carrying around a lot of anger and sadness in my body. As I lay on the floor in the cooldown phase, my eyes filled with warm tears and a warm sensation rolled over my body. Then the thought popped into my head: “Everything is going to be alright.” From that moment on, I was hooked. I saved my allowance and babysitting money each week to attend weekly aerobic classes with a room of 80s spandex-wearing moms.

How did you first encounter God?

Looking back, it was in that class when I was 14. But since I didn’t know that was God back then, it wasn’t until I was an adult, carrying my childhood pain into my marriage, that I realised I needed God and then another encounter came.

Newly married, we were headed for divorce. It seemed I inherited my mother’s spiritual disease of needing a man to love and heal me. I thought getting married would solve my inner aches and pains, but it only magnified my need. As a successful fitness trainer with everything looking good on the outside, on the inside, my soul was a restless, anxious, angry mess. I felt the need to go to church when a fellow trainer at the gym invited me. I resisted at first, knowing my husband wouldn’t go with me, but eventually, in my misery, I went. The pastor’s sermon that day was on John 4, the woman who had had many husbands and had come to the well to get water. She, like me, was thirsty for love, hoping to find it in men. I was gripped when Jesus told her she would never be satisfied with any other love but his. That was it for me! I knew God saw me, knew me and was choosing me. And I knew everything was about to change.