Why telling someone they look good because they’ve lost weight is un-Christian

 For you created my inmost being;
    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.

 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?

A new kind of resolution

It seems like everywhere I turn right now I hear about New Year’s resolutions. I find it quite fascinating actually – it’s as though everyone in the western world suffers temporary bouts of amnesia, forgetting that last year (and every year before that) these same resolutions ended up in the crapper two weeks into it. But this year will be different right? You will finally drop that weight. You will finally run that marathon. You will finally learn to speak Arabic, read Moby Dick and knit socks for everyone in your family.

I can’t really judge; I am the worst at making unrealistic goals and then beating myself up when I don’t reach them. The beginning of every year usually goes something like this: In addition to learning a new language and writing the next great American novel, I will magically turn my body into something found in a Victoria Secret’s catalog by denying myself all desserts and anything else delicious. I will also plan to work out two hours a day (if Madonna can do it, so can I), getting up at 4 in the morning so I have enough time.

I end up spending all my time reading magazine articles about kicking bad habits and posting encouraging sticky notes on my mirror (“You can do it!”). I brought bags of celery in my purse to birthday parties and glared at anyone who dared to eat the cake in front of me (“Bastards!”).

Two weeks later would find me sleep-deprived and curled in a fetal position on the floor, clutching a pint of ice cream and with chocolate smeared all over my face.

So this year I’ve decided to stop. the. madness.

I’ve spent the last several months learning to accept my body the way God made it. I’ve ditched dieting. The extra junk in my trunk is going to stay where it is. And I’m determined that my resolution will not involve trying to change that.

Instead, I want to focus on what matters. I want to spend my time doing what I was put on Earth to do: Worship my God with a joyful heart.

But since my heart is rarely joyful, and I have an awful tendency to overdo it (see above), I’m going to start small, i.e., my one resolution is to read the Bible every day this year. The online reading plan promised me I could do it in 15 minutes a day. And I can handle 15 minutes.

What are your resolutions this year? Are they doable?