For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
Psalm 139: 13-14 (NIV)
Yes, you did read that title correctly. And you’re probably
thinking, What? Telling someone they look
good when they’ve lost weight is encouraging and loving. She's full of
crap. And you’d be right. I am full of crap. But not about this.
This subject is a hot topic in my marriage right now. The
ninja has recently been trying to convince a few people, somewhat
unsuccessfully, that telling someone they look great when they’ve dropped a few
pounds causes more harm than good. Of course, he is particularly sensitive to
this topic because he is married to me, a women who he patiently and lovingly
served as she recovered from an eating disorder last year.
I mention my eating disorder because to understand my
stance, you must first understand what recovery from an eating disorder looks
like. One of your first goals is to stop dieting. No more counting calories,
calculating points, or swearing off fat. Instead, you start to listen to your
body, let it tell you when it’s hungry, when it’s full, and what it wants to
eat. And then, once you start feeding your body what it needs, when it needs
it, it will naturally settle into the weight that it needs to be at. The weight
that God, in His infinite wisdom, designed for your body.
Now this is the hard part, because often settling at your
natural weight does not leave you looking like you belong in a Victoria’s
Secret catalog. And then you have a choice: You can either beat your body into
submission, forcing it into losing more weight through starving it and
over-exercising (only to have it rebel and gain the weight back later), or you
can start to redefine your idea of beauty. In other words, if your body, as God
designed it to be, does not fit into society’s definition of beauty (i.e., a
Victoria’s Secret model) is the problem that your body is wrong, or is the
problem that society’s definition of beauty is messed up?
If you are a Christian, you already know society is messed up.
You know that it jumped on the crazy train back at the Garden of Eden and has
been off track ever since. And as a Christian, you know you are called to
recognize the craziness and through Christ strive for something better. So why
are you letting this jacked-up, sinful world dictate how you see your own
beauty, or someone else’s beauty?
What are you really saying when you tell someone that they
look good because they’ve lost weight? Are you saying, “Hey hot stuff, no
matter what you do or what you look like, I will find you beautiful because you
are God’s creation.”
Or are you saying, “Hey there, you now are closer to fitting
society’s standard of beauty and that’s necessary in order for me to think you
are attractive. I hope you don’t gain the weight back like 95% of dieters do
because then you won’t look as good, and I’ll definitely be paying attention
when that happens.”
And if you’re unknowingly speaking to someone with an eating
disorder, perhaps you’re saying,“Wow! You look fantastic when you starve
yourself/vomit up your food. Keep up the good work.”
Hmmm. I suppose that could be considered encouraging…
If you still don’t agree with me, if you still believe that
complimenting someone on weight loss is a good idea, let me leave you with
this: Does God love us for our achievements or does He love us despite our
faults? Does God call us to only love those who have got it together, or to
reach out to those who are broken and lost? Which would be more Christ-like, to
give someone encouragement once they lose weight and fit some worldly “ideal,”
or to offer them love, to cherish them, to make them feel beautiful and wanted
when the world tells them they are fat and ugly?
