Fit To Be Untied: May 2011

Monday, May 23, 2011

When The 17-Day Diet Fails

One of the most popular marketing niches in publishing and blogging is health and fitness. That's because so many of us want to be “untied” or free from the control of food.Featuring a review on a successful plan like “The 17-Day Diet” doesn’t hurt reader interest either, particularly because the plan works.

I’ve had tremendous success and use the principles to maintain my weight, including weekly weigh-ins for reality checks. But if our weight is the only thing we measure, this plan fails.

Judges 2 tells us that the people of Israel had a heart problem. They worshiped other gods. As a result of their sin, God did not give them victory in battle when the other nations ransacked their land. Israel cried out in despair, not because their sins had offended God but because they were suffering from the consequences of their sin. God took pity on them and sent them a godly ruler or a judge who led them to victory in battle against their enemies. But when the judge died, the people rebelled and behaved even worse than they had before. That’s because they were seeking relief from consequences and not God Himself.

For those of us who are believers, our weight loss motivations should be connected to loving others. One friend of mine was concerned that being overweight communicated messages of selfish overindulgence to the women around her. In my women’s class, I certainly felt like a hypocrite teaching about being more than a conqueror when I wasn’t able to conquer a bag of Doritos. But if I’m going to be honest with myself and you, there were other motivations for conquering my carb addiction. I was more remorseful about the consequences of tight pants and not measuring up to man's standards than I was concerned about how my behavior offended God.

It was also much easier to use the 17 Day Diet to end the gluttonous behavior than to confess why I was a glutton in the first place. The fact is my overeating was a faithless act. Overeating was a statement to the world that, for me, God is not enough.

When I’m at dinner and unable to savor what I have on my plate because I eat too fast, it’s because I receive food as if it’s my right to consume it, rather than a gift from my Heavenly Father to enjoy and savor. When I’m stressed out and unthinkingly popping snack food in my mouth for immediate relief, it’s because I don’t remember and behave as if God is my portion in times of hardship. When I’m at a gathering and have one more glass of wine because everyone else is, it’s because I don’t believe that being controlled by His Spirit is better than anything else. This is what makes me physically heavy and spiritually shallow.

The 17 Day Diet is a great plan that has brought some tremendous success to me and the people I love. But what makes it just like all the rest is that it offers no help when I place more emphasis on the condition of my waist-line than I do on what my waist line says about the condition of my heart.

Getting Untied

I turned 40 two years ago (it’s easier to say it that way, okay?!) At first it was a novelty—at the time I was probably in the best shape of my life, so I didn’t think much of it. Then I took a people-oriented job that required I sit at my desk for 20 hours a week. The desk part was no different from the job I held before—it was the people part that had changed. In the last two years, as my social calendar filled and my friendships blossomed, so did my waist line. I have yet to find a social gathering without food. What’s more, I’ve found that, over 40, the extra 15 pounds doesn’t come off like it used to.

So lately I think a lot about food, fitness, and the failure to easily achieve what I want in my body by manipulating the first two. But I’m not alone. It seems like more people than ever before are obsessing over food, exercise and weight loss. By far my most responded-to posts on Facebook are those that have to do with food, weight-loss and exercise. And why not? Our food supply has been tampered by chemicals and hormones. We’re told by the FDA-backed corporations that these are harmless. We’re told by proponents of the organic food movement that commercial food is poison to us and our children. It’s hard to know who to believe since both industries are profit driven. If our food isn’t pure, it’s certainly abundant—and as a culture we are literally eating ourselves to death. We are more than 30% obese and our condition invites heart disease, colon cancer and diabetes.

On the flip side, we feel like failures when compared with the cultural icons of beauty. Whether fat or thin, most women simply can’t achieve the bikini bods that grace the covers of women’s magazines, promising a thinner you in 30 days or less. We don’t like our pictures taken. Ironically, some of us don’t even like to go to the gym because we think we are too fat. I’m not a trained medical professional. I’m not an athlete. I’m just an ordinary person caught up in all this mess and, like you, wanting out. It’s enough to make me seriously consider a theological commitment to the rapture.

Thus, enter, stage right (not too far right): the Christian perspective, without which we are left to the tyranny of extremes. When it comes to food, fitness and exercise, it is too easy to feel what in “religious talk” is called bondage. We can become obsessed, single-goal focused and short-changed on life. We can become tied to an ideal that we can never or probably should never seek to achieve. My goal is for something different. I want to be fit to be untied from this—and I’m not sure exactly how that looks, but I know it’s a journey that has far more to do my heart than just food and exercise. Will you join me?

Fit To Be Untied

Monday, May 23, 2011

When The 17-Day Diet Fails

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Monday, May 23, 2011

When The 17-Day Diet Fails