I’m not special. I’m pretty ordinary. Over the past three years I pushed my aging and injured body from kinda fat to fairly fit. Call it the last hurrah before I’m too old for that stuff. Of course, the real reason was a calling from God.
Sure, it’s a good idea in general; all the more so as our civilization crumbles into chaos and a degree of oppression not seen in a very long time. The tools of both oppression and fitness are a lot better this time around, so being as fit as possible could just come in handy. But in my case that wasn’t it. This started as one of those gossamer threads of conviction that struck me a few years ago and I’ve been faithful. I enjoy working out; I like how it feels. The hard part was learning when and where to back off so as not to aggravate the old injuries. A photograph won’t show you that I’m trim and hard enough for blue veins to start bulging in lots of places on my body, and my stomach muscles are starting to show.
Yes, it also required changing my diet. There are general principles, but you have to tune things to fit your needs. None of it is a simple matter of science, because science doesn’t know everything, nor can it. God’s moral character is hard-wired into the universe and you have to pay attention to that first. You probably can’t afford a perfect scientific diet, so you have to compromise and that means having a base of convictions from which to operate. It’s not a mere matter of pragmatism, but what will God support for you.
My wife is following her own sense of calling and chases fitness, too. It’s different for her. There is progress, but her results aren’t quite as dramatic as mine. She has more to overcome. So she gets less flirting from other men than I do from other women, but I don’t love her any less. She’s still my only passion. She is still my best friend and reliable ministry partner; no one else could compete with that. Such is the fire that still burns between us.
It’s not as if other people don’t understand that, but they are still quite surprised to see it. Our culture militates against that, assumes too much other things as the norm. They especially think attraction must be tied to physical appearance. Even those who push a social agenda against it are forced to deal with the fact our culture is dominated by that.
You can try shaming all you want about it, chubby ladies, but everyone is pretty sure you could shed the weight if you wanted. I’m proof of that, all the more so with my age. It might take longer, and you probably won’t like the dietary changes required, but it can be done. It’s just as wrong for folks to shame you for being fat, but don’t ever imagine you can change the culture by shaming. It just makes you look even more of a useless bitch. We have enough of that already.
I follow Christ and He wasn’t an activist. He didn’t come to change a fallen world; He came to open the door to those who find themselves drawn to escape the Fall. Shaming language only cows fools who aren’t worth anything. Shaming about fat or fat acceptance is equally evil. You don’t change people; you change yourself. If you don’t feel called to trim the body fat, at least make yourself into the man or woman of character that God intended. A critical part of that is a realistic assessment about how others view you in terms of sexual attraction. It also means an honest assessment of how your own sexual wiring works, that our social mythology is completely wrong about what actually triggers a response in men and women. Get real and deal with it. Learn to elevate that charisma factor, because you most certainly can do that a lot easier than losing weight or gaining fitness.
