Imagine yourself in the following scenario. Over a period of three or four months, you begin to experience mysterious symptoms—a marked decrease in energy, intermittent insomnia, sudden cravings for sweets, and irritability. You feel like something isn’t right, so you schedule an appointment with your practitioner to receive an evaluation and hopefully some answers. Your practitioner listens to your concerns, agrees that something might be off, and runs some routine lab work. When you return for your follow-up appointment, your practitioner sighs and says, “The good news is that all your blood levels are in the normal reference range. The bad news is you’re just getting older. These things happen. Come back next year, and we’ll run the labs again.”
How would you feel? Probably invalidated and defeated, right?
What if, after hearing from your practitioner that you’re fine (despite not feeling fine), you seek out support from an alternative practitioner you follow on social media who offers an exclusive program for those willing to pay for it. You spend a couple thousand dollars in lab work not covered by insurance, start taking fifteen different nutritional supplements, and begin a strict elimination diet that’s free of gluten, dairy, corn, soy, sugar, alcohol—and all joy. You’re determined to do everything you can to address your symptoms, but you begin to stress so much about doing the right things or missing a step that your symptoms get worse instead of improving.
Now what do you do?
The Stressful Pursuit of a Magic Fix vs. Loving Your Body as God’s Temple
Unfortunately, this is a scenario often experienced by my clients. While I love helping others address root causes and find assistance from targeted supplementation and dietary changes, the alternative method can sometimes send people on an endless quest to find the root cause of their issues, as if uncovering one missing puzzle piece will solve all their problems. Sometimes this approach helps, but other times a very rigid, rule-based journey to health ends up creating nothing but more chronic stress.
When Health Obsession Becomes the Enemy
I call this the never-ending journey to find a magic fix. It’s a pursuit that typically begins with curiosity and self-advocacy but can sometimes escalate into a fixation for some of us. We become preoccupied with our health journeys to the point that we’re obsessed with finding answers, and that obsession becomes a stressor—especially when the answers elude us. And when that stress is ongoing and chronic, it can lead to inflammation and negative health outcomes, both emotionally and physiologically. Which means our pursuit of the magic fix only adds to our stress.
This stressful pursuit of a magic fix isn’t new. Diet culture has been loud and in our faces since early in the twentieth century through magazines, then radio and television ads. Growing up, I tried all the diets in hopes of fixing not just my body’s appearance but my satisfaction with my body’s appearance. It didn’t take very many crash diets for me to realize that adhering to a strict diet was relatively easy, but learning to accept the shape of my body at any weight or size wasn’t. I never found the magic size or number on the scale. I only grew unhappier and more stressed out about my body.
Diet Culture vs. Loving Your Body as God’s Temple
Fast-forward to today and social media has only amplified diet culture and body dissatisfaction. We now have 24-7 access to news cycles and influencer posts driven by an algorithm catered to our interests. So if searching for health solutions is important to you, you’ll likely find every available magical fix showing up in your feed through sponsored ads and influencers who claim to have been where you are. I’m not one to blame everything on social media, but I do think the age of information overload compounds the phenomenon of health obsession.
Biohacking and the Quest for the Magic Fix
Maybe it’s just the algorithm feeding my health coaching interests, but these days I see less interest in dieting for body modification and more interest in biohacking—optimizing human health, performance, and longevity through the latest research and tools. There’s always a new study, device, or technique promising to change the expression of our genes, increase our longevity, and decrease our health symptoms. But chasing every new thing can be both pricey and stressful. At worst, it can take us completely off course, leaving us feeling worse than before.
Focusing too much on one thing as the answer to all our problems can also cause us to lose focus on the basics, such as getting good rest, eating nutritious food, moving our bodies, and practicing mindfulness. And the most important basic that is commonly overlooked when pursuing the magic fix is this: learning to listen to our own unique bodies.
Learning to Listen: The Key to Loving Your Body as God’s Temple
Allow me to remind you of something that may seem obvious but is often overlooked: You are the only person in your body. You are the only person with your body. Nobody else has the exact same body as you—not even if you’re an identical twin. God has designed your body to speak to you via symptoms, and there is wisdom in listening to the signals it sends you.
God’s Design for Your Unique Body
Your body is every bit as much a part of God’s miraculous creation as the beautiful sunset you capture and post to your Instagram story or the expanse of the ocean that fills you with wonder. It’s not selfish to be grateful for how you’ve been designed. It’s not prideful to marvel in awe at all the things your body does to keep you alive every day. God’s masterful design is on purpose just as you are here on purpose, for a purpose.
Reminder: Your body is a temple, not a remodeling project.
You don’t have to force yourself to believe in your inherent worth and value if you don’t feel ready, but perhaps you can allow yourself to be present in the body you have. If you find the idea of loving your body difficult, you can start by appreciating its function and design. You can listen to the signals it sends you and commit to partnering with it going forward.
From Magic Fixes to God’s Grace: How to Love Your Body as God’s Temple
Your body is not your enemy. Your body is the vessel you’ve been given to live out your purpose. Step away from the quest for the magic fix and instead focus on listening to the needs of your body. You only have one.
Adapted from Live Beyond Your Label: A Holistic Approach to Breaking Old Patterns and Rediscovering a Healthier You in Mind, Body, and Spirit by Erin Kerry, releasing in September 2025.
