Weight of Grace

Previously Asked Questions

I don’t understand why, as a faithful Christian, I struggle with overeating and overweight. Why doesn’t God give me the discipline I pray for?

There is not a really short answer to your question, but your question reveals part of the problem. The struggle we have with overeating is not a matter of discipline but of the Spirit-given fruit of self-control. When we try to deal with our “flesh” through a “law” like dieting, we are doing what is contrary to our Spirit-filled makeup as a “new creation in Christ,” since we are no longer under law, but guided by the Spirit. Galatians 5:16 says that when we live according to the Sprit, we do not do as the flesh desires. (The flesh is our desire to do things our way rather than God’s way.) Learning to live by the Spirit in the area of eating is a process that involves allowing the Spirit to be our Counselor in regard to those beliefs we hold that motivate us to medicate our emotions with food (like the binge “Bridget Jones” goes on when she loses her boyfriend). The Spirit also desires to reveal to us our often unacknowledged beliefs that actually make us feel emotionally more comfortable at a larger size or weight (for example, in order to avoid unwanted advances from men).

Isn’t overeating like alcoholism? Won’t I have to fight the desire to overeat my entire life?

The short answer is “No.” The reason this is not true, especially for the Christian, is that God designed people to eat moderately and gave us internal mechanisms to know when and what to each and when to stop eating. Just look at small children. If they’re not hungry, it’s very difficult to get them to eat. If they are hungry, they cry and whine until they’re fed. They naturally know when they need to eat and when they’ve had enough to eat because they can feel it in their bodies. As we get older, various factors cause us to distrust these innate signals. It takes time, but we can relearn how to eat according to the natural physical signals we experience but have learned to disregard. As believers, we are free from the compulsion to sin (act apart from how God made us) (Romans 6:17-18), so we are free to explore the reasons we have ignored our natural relationship to food and free to start thinking and acting in new ways as we are guided and empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Why can’t I just lose my weight on a diet and then start eating naturally after that?

This question is understandable and reveals a desire to quickly lose weight. There is tremendous pressure in our culture, even among Christians, to be “thin.” However, for most, returning to natural eating and one’s natural body size is a fairly long process that does not usually involve quick weight loss. From the time I started rejecting dieting and allowing God to speak to me about the deeply held beliefs that were motivating my overeating and staying large until I started consistently staying at a normal, healthy body size was about two years. For others, it takes more or less time, depending on the issues involved and the degree to which the individual is convinced about this being the godly way to go.

How do I know what my ideal God-given weight is?

There’s no easy answer to this question, but I believe the answer is the same for everyone. When a person returns to eating when hungry, eating what one's body really craves and then ceasing to eat when hunger is satisfied, after about a year or so one's true weight emerges. I was always yo-yo-ing and often 20 to 35 pounds overweight until I started realizing that diets were part of the problem rather than the answer and that our bodies were designed to tell us when we need to eat and when we need to stop eating and even what we need to eat. I also realized that our bodies give signals for when to drink water, when to get more active (I avoid using the term "exercise" because of negative associations) just like our bodies give signals about when to use the bathroom. In our culture, we are told to ignore (or "control") these physical cues and force ourselves to mentally, rather than physically, determine when to eat and what to eat. This gets us away from the way we were as small children when we ate only when we were hungry. Naturally slim people don't worry all the time about when to eat and how much and what. They just naturally respond to hunger cues and don't eat for emotional reasons. I know several naturally slim people who wouldn't eat a piece of the yummiest cake if they were already full. In fact, I'm one of those people now. Once I discovered what the emotional reasons were for my eating and turned to God to help me resolve those issues (through living by the Spirit and renewing the mind) and once I relied on my body to tell me when I needed to eat (rather than relying on a diet or on my stress or depression), I turned from being a constantly struggling compulsive eater to a natural eater whose size has fluctuated very, very little since the fall of 1986. Going from a person whose weight changed constantly to a person whose weight is constant was a process that, for me, took about 18 months.

How did you find the courage to change [from dieting], to even attempt to give yourself permission? Some days I am determined to follow-through and then other days (when my belly feels bulging, when my body feels huge) I am paralyzed by fear. And so off I go back into my rules and strict regulations. It's such a prison. I get so stuck and I can't emphasize how MUCH I desire freedom. And the real catch: I realize that the freedom begins with my choice of accepting it. But this awful fear: What will people think when I gain weight? What about all my clothes that won't fit? Will my husband find me less attractive? Will I be able to deal with the weight gain and changing body????

The fear of gaining weight is the #1 deterrent to women finding true freedom from overeating. At the time I made the choice to "let go and let God" with my eating/dieting, I was only 31, but I'd already lost and regained 30 to 50 pounds nearly every year of my life for 15 years. So that convinced me pretty well that dieting was only working for short periods of time. Also, my binge-ing behavior was becoming more and more extreme, which scared me. But what pushed me forward the most was realizing that it was just flat the right thing to do – trust God completely that no matter what my size He would take care of me. Yes, I did gain some weight. I had been rigidly dieting and binge-ing, which resulted in my staying around 145 pounds (which was actually a pretty good weight for me, but I thought I was horribly, horribly fat). I totally stopped weighing myself, so I have no idea about the pounds, but I went from size 10 clothes to size 15. I'm sure that sounds very scary to you. I was size 15 for about 6 months. I had very little money at the time because I was in Christian ministry and my contributors were inconsistent in their giving, BUT the mother of a friend of mine – who heard that I was taking a faith step regarding my overeating – bought me several outfits from a catalog and sent them to me. It was amazing! They were lovely clothes and fit as though they were made for me. To tell you the truth, the more difficult transition was when I lost from size 15 to size 9/10, having thrown away my "small clothes" because I believed I'd never be that small again. Again, though, God provided in a combination of ways and I was never without a more than adequate wardrobe. God knows what you can and cannot handle and will give you the grace to go through any changes that occur. And this may encourage you, some participants in Weight of Grace groups don't gain any weight. I do think that a key, though, is to be willing to be whatever size you need to be in order to have freedom. I personally do not believe that most people naturally carry a lot of fat on their bodies. When you quit dieting, though, and start trying to reconnect with true physical hunger, this can mean a period of time with a little more weight than ultimately is natural for you.

Being attractive to your husband has way more to do with whether YOU consider yourself to be attractive. Surely you know some very happy couples in which one or the other spouse is what our culture calls "overweight." A now out of touch friend of mine who weighed 260 pounds considered herself to be quite sexy – and a number of men thought so too. She wasn't a Christian and was quite promiscuous. I used to think that I was hideously ugly if I weighed over 135 pounds (I'm 5' 7"), but then I started to reconsider. My spine stuck out. My legs weren't very shapely. And, as I got older, I lost more and more of my bust. Now, at 53, I find I look far sexier (especially naked, which is when I think it counts if you're married) at 150 pounds. (I only know my weight because of rather frequent trips to the doctor due to pesky borderline-positive PAP test results. I NEVER weigh myself to check to see if I'm okay or not!!!) I suggest you look at paintings of nudes by Renoir. There was a time when having a very large bottom, round stomach, and plump thighs was considered the ultimate in beauty! And "plump" was a positive description! We don't have to conform to the standards of this time and place when evaluating our attractiveness.

You don't have to psych yourself out. Start talking with God about it and ask Him to give you an accurate perspective about your appearance, about possibly temporarily gaining some weight, and about what He's equipping you to do in order to enjoy being exactly the person He created you to be – a natural eater whose body weight doesn't fluctuate all the time.