“Dr. Waldron,” the woman said to me as I prepared to leave the exam room. “I have one more question. How can I lose this extra weight?”
I sighed inaudibly as I sat down to discuss the situation with her. Dealing with weight gain is not the sort of thing that is easy to tack onto the end of an office visit and there have been many lengthy books written on the subject.
Americans seem to struggle with this. They spend an average of 33 billion dollars on weight loss products every year and 65 percent of Americans are either overweight or obese.
The whole discussion is a challenging one. We want a quick fix—to take a pill or add in a fat-burning food or do a simple exercise that will melt the extra weight away simply and quickly. The reality is that while we gain weight quite easily, it is much more difficult to lose that same weight. Maintaining weight loss is harder yet.
In the Beginning
We don’t know much about life before the fall in Genesis 3. We do know that …God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good… –Genesis 1:31.
It is safe to assume that Adam and Eve did not struggle with their weight before sin entered the world. They were created perfectly which meant that they would not have struggled with metabolism issues. They also did not have the uncontrolled appetites for food that their descendants deal with today.
Two things happened with the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. First, humans started to have physical ailments—their bodies did not work as well as they did before. Adam and Eve were still able to live much longer lives than humans today, but metabolic diseases and other illnesses began to develop. The second thing that happened was that they began to have a sin nature.
Those two things have led to a lot of problems… Among them are metabolism and weight issues.
What the Bible Says About Food
Our bodies need to eat nutritious food—without eating they would deteriorate and eventually die. There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God –Ecclesiastes 2:24.
The Old Testament law was restrictive regarding what the Jewish people could eat. Under Kosher Law, the number of clean animals was far outweighed by the numbers of unclean animals. More than that, the book of Proverbs mentions several times that overeating is dangerous. Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags –Proverbs 23:20-21.
From the New Testament we find the early church no longer required Gentile Christians to follow Jewish laws regarding their diets. The Jerusalem council specifically required …that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood –Acts 15:20. Otherwise, it seems that they were free to eat whatever they wanted.
What did not change in the New Testament was the idea of self-control. The Fruit of the Spirit lists temperance as one of the things Christians should have and Paul made it clear that he was focused on controlling his desires, lest he become a castaway (see 1 Corinthians 9:27).
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s –1 Corinthians 6:19-20.
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are –1 Corinthians 3:16-17.
Scripture is clear that Christians should take care of their bodies, put their desires under the control of God, and avoid things that have anything to do with idolatry.
Reasons People Gain Weight
It is easy to break down reasons for weight gain into two big categories:
- problems with metabolism
- problems with excessive calories.
When we think about metabolic issues, these include things like thyroid problems and diabetes. These disorders affect the rate at which our bodies burn calories. One of the main ways we have to increase our metabolism is to increase our activity levels, particularly exercise that increases the heart rate—cardiovascular exercise.
Excess calories mainly come from overeating. It is important to remember that people eat for lots of reasons other than because they are hungry. People eat because they are bored, lonely, sad, and yes, sometimes because they are hungry. Some medications, particularly steroids, can increase appetite and negatively affect the metabolic rate.
We call the number of calories our bodies burn while at rest, the body’s metabolic rate. There are a couple of different formulas used to calculate our basal metabolic rates. They use height, weight, age, and gender to determine how many calories your body will burn in an average day. There are a few applications and websites that will do this calculation for you. https://www.active.com/fitness/calculators/bmr The important thing to know is that this is the number of calories you should consume to maintain your current body weight. Eat fewer calories than this number and you will tend to lose weight, take in more calories than this number and you will gain weight.
Is Weight Important?
From a medical standpoint, being overweight is associated with several different things. It tends to increase insulin resistance and it can lead to diabetes. It increases blood pressure. It can lead to obstructive sleep apnea, and it worsens arthritis in the back and legs.
Being overweight is not necessarily an indication of a spiritual problem and depending on a person’s genetics, it can be difficult to get it where it should be according to the charts. Even though most people feel much better when they are close to their ideal weight, Scripture does not indicate that there is a specific weight or body mass index (BMI) that Christians should not go over.
The important thing is that our lives are to be under the control of God if we have yielded ourselves, appetites, and all, to Him. We should try to be healthy in order that we can best participate in Kingdom building. More than that, we should attempt to set an example for others of a life that is yielded to God.
Myths About Weight Loss…
There are many things that people believe about weight loss. We will look at a list of things which people repeat. While there may be a grain of truth in them, they are not completely true and may discourage activities that can help a person who is struggling with his weight.
…Vigorous exercise is the only way to lose weight.
Many people believe that the reason that they can’t lose weight is because they can’t do enough exercise. They struggle with pain, arthritis, or some heart or lung condition that makes them unable to do vigorous athletic endeavors.
Maybe they know someone who took up running and lost a bunch of weight and that seems like the right way to do it. They just don’t feel able to take that path and feel hopeless about the whole endeavor.
Exercise is important. Most medical societies recommend that people exercise at least 150 minutes a week. While exercise does boost our metabolism and helps our hearts and lungs, it still may not change a person’s weight very much.
Most people burn between 200 and 300 calories with a half hour of exercise. While this may sound like a lot, a body must burn 3500 calories to lose one pound. In addition, most of us are hungrier after we exercise, and it is awfully easy to eat an extra 200 calories that basically negates whatever was burned during the exercise time.
…Carbohydrates make you gain weight.
Carbohydrate is the medical term for sugars. The calories we consume in our diets come from one of three sources: carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Carbohydrates are present in desserts, but they are also present in many starchy foods like rice, corn, pasta, bread, and lots of other things.
There are several diets, like the Atkins Diet and the Keto Diet, that push those who follow them to cut out as many carbohydrates as possible. People often do lose weight on these sorts of diets. Unfortunately, these diets are difficult to maintain long term as they are quite restrictive.
The healthiest thing is to eat carbohydrates moderately and steer towards the healthier options. Using whole grains and more complex carbohydrates is important. A bowl of oatmeal may have a similar number of grams of carbohydrates as compared to a sugary breakfast cereal, but it will be broken down more slowly by our bodies and is easier for them to deal with.
…Starvation is the only way to lose weight.
Starvation does result in weight loss—there were no heavy-set people who came out of the concentration camps in World War II. This certainly is not the only way to lose weight, nor is it a healthy way to lose weight.
We know that when people starve for extended periods of time, they will begin to lose muscle mass, their bones will get weaker, and their metabolism will decrease. Most people who starve themselves will end up regaining all of the weight they lost within a few years and because their metabolism has been downgraded, in the long run it will be harder for them to keep weight off.
…You just need to eat ‘___’ fat burning food to lose weight!
I specifically left the food blank above because it seems that this is always changing. Maybe you’ve read that Greek yogurt, or cinnamon, or goji berry juice will help you lose weight. Studies indicate that there is no magic food that will melt fat away.
If these foods work, it is because you have replaced something unhealthy and rich in calories with something healthier. For example, if your normal breakfast consists of 5 strips of bacon, a glass of orange juice, 2 slices of toast, and two eggs and you replace that with a glass of water and a bowl of oatmeal, you will probably lose weight. It is not because the oatmeal is “burning fat,” but rather that it has significantly fewer calories than the breakfast you were eating before.
Some foods have almost no calories and probably take as much energy to eat and digest as humans get from them. Celery, iceberg lettuce, and mushrooms all fall into this category. The problem is that if you put peanut butter on the celery, salad dressing on the lettuce, and fry the mushrooms in butter or oil, then suddenly they aren’t the low-calorie foods they purport to be. We humans are very good at fixing low-cal foods so that they both taste better and are no longer low-calorie.
…Fat free and diet foods are the key to weight loss.
There are many foods and condiments on the market that have reduced fat and claim to be lower calorie than the normal versions of themselves. These often have a lot of different chemicals and sugar substitutes in them to get the taste and texture as similar to the regular versions as possible.
Sugar substitutes seem to be healthier than sugar when used moderately, but they also seem to encourage people to crave sweeter foods. Studies have linked artificial sweeteners with the onset of glucose intolerance—something that could lead to diabetes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3095502/ Dieticians seem to think that of the various sugar substitutes, Stevia is the safest.
All in all, our goal should not be to try to eat all the same foods, just with fewer calories, but rather to eat a variety of healthy foods and moderate-sized portions. This is what will lead to a better metabolism and not simply getting reduced fat versions of our favorite foods.
…The solution is diet pills.
Over time I have seen many people take medications and supplements, both prescription and over the counter varieties, to try to help them lose weight. These medications and supplements are supposed to do a number of things—reduce appetite and increase the metabolic rate are several of these.
They often work in the short term. People lose quite a bit of weight in the first few weeks and think that they have conquered their struggles. The problem is that over time, they usually get used to whatever it is that they are taking, their appetite returns, and their metabolism goes back to normal.
While these sorts of solutions may give short-term help, being healthy in the long term, means figuring out a healthy eating plan and exercise schedule, then sticking with it long term. The goal should never be simply to “take off ten pounds,” but rather to be as healthy as possible.
We’ve covered a lot of things not to do and probably reading between the lines you can see some of the things that are helpful to do as well. A second part (Lord willing) will be coming with the next issue to discuss positive things that we can do to achieve a healthy weight.
With all of this, it is important to remember that our goal is not about achieving some sort of earthly beauty. The aim, rather, is to treat our body as the Temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:19). I have heard this verse used to explain why we shouldn’t drink, smoke, or get tattoos, but we need to treat it with respect when it comes to eating and exercise, as well.
As we care for our bodies, we will be better able to meet the needs of the people around us and we will be prepared to meet whatever plan God has for our lives.
