Life After Kale and the Scale

Dawn Clifford

Jesus never said anything about dieting. Love one another? Yes. Thou shalt lose weight? No. That was not one of His commands.

Sure, the world was different back then in Biblical times. They didn’t have the abundance of food or the conveniences we have today. But our God knows the past, present, and future and He knows our every need yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Our God is an all-knowing God. Knowing everything He knew about the future of humankind, He didn’t include a single message even close to, “change your body shape and size and then you will have life and have it abundantly.”

Nope, it’s nowhere to be found in the Old or New Testament. Then how did we get here? How did we stumble into becoming a society obsessed with weight? And when I say obsessed, I mean OBSESSED! Messages about thinness wallpaper the checkout isle, from magazine cover to magazine cover.

The dieting industry has become a 60 billion dollar industry with consumers constantly looking for the “magic bullet” and the quick fix. While chasing after this elusive goal, they jump from one deprivation-ridden system to another, with nothing to show for it but large quantities of chewy kale, complete wardrobes in five different sizes, none of which fit, and a damaged self-esteem.

Sound like hell? Well, it’s probably eerily close to it. The message that losing weight is an honorable and worthwhile endeavor is an earthly message. It doesn’t come from God. And if it doesn’t come from God, there’s only one other place to look as a primary source. If you think about it, it has evil written all over it.

It’s the perfect set-up for abundant feelings of failure, guilt and shame. It would be one thing if it were working; but it’s not even working. Most folks who lose weight gain it back eventually, along with a list of disordered eating behaviors, insecurities and a sluggish metabolism.

Clue number two that dieting was not God’s idea? Striving to lose weight, like most temptations, starts out with hearts and minds in the right place – “I just want to improve my health.” However, like most sin, it easily twists and turns into an obsession, where we allow our value and worth to be defined by the scale.

Striving to lose weight keeps us focused on ourselves, our bodies, our curves, our scale and every morsel we put in our mouths. In short, a life of dieting keeps us from living abundantly.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not what I signed up for in the short time we have on this earth. Are you ready to break free from the chains of dieting? To truly live in Christ’s freedom?

That’s our mission at BodyBLoved. We want to pull you out of the dieting pit and set you on a path towards healing your relationship with food.

We get it; you’re not crazy about your body. But here’s the thing – your body isn’t the problem. The problem is that we live in a society where we are made to believe that beautiful, intelligent, and worthy is a certain dress size. That’s the problem. What if instead of trying to change our body, we ask for God’s help to change the way we THINK about our body?

God has set it on our hearts to help solve the problem. He’s directing our steps to support you in finding the footing to climb on up and out of a dieting mindset so that your heart can soar.

You have a lot of lovin’ to do. When your eyes are fixed on Him instead of on your weight and food concerns, you’re freed up to love God and love others. Please, oh please, don’t let dieting get in the way of that.

Look, I’m not saying to stop taking care of yourself. This isn’t a suggestion to waste away your days on the couch with a bag of potato chips (though that’s fun to do once in awhile).

Stick around to see what we’re up to and we’ll show you an alternative to dieting that honors your health and well-being without the hangry (that’s hungry + angry) and deprivation that accompanies weight loss plans.

God never said thou shalt lose weight, but he did say, thou shalt have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3) “Other gods” equals idols. Has losing weight inadvertently become an idol for you? It’s time to trash the scale and question the kale. (Sure, it might be tasty on the right salad, but really? What’s with all the kale?) Dieting isn’t going to solve your earthly needs. Only the One who made us can do that.