James 4:3
“You do not have, because you do not ask.
And when you do ask, you do not receive,
because you ask with wrong motives,
that you may squander it on your pleasures”
Think about how diet gurus try to sell you their shakes and protein bars and 6-week weight loss programs. There’s usually a stunning model who’s ripped and tanned on their website or product packaging saying “You could be me. You could have this life” with their eyes. Why does this work? Because we are drawn the idea that we could look like them, have what they have (money, adoration, power, status, sexual attractiveness), and feel what they must feel.
Yet I contend that many such “motivators” fail to produce long term results because they feed the very flesh we are trying to starve.
We are often drawn in toward the quest of weight loss via fantasy. Our minds spin an image of perfect abs, catching a perfect partner, or perfect fulfillment and happiness. But these are truly only fantasies. The fact is that even if you banish every last pound from your overburdened frame, you will remain unsatisfied about something to do with your appearance. I remember the morning my wife reached her goal weight: down almost 100 pounds. From the bed I heard her step on the scale in our bathroom followed by a celebratory giggle. I knew she had “made it” and I laid there awaiting her triumphant return to the bedroom. She did return minutes later, but with an unexpected frown on her face. “What’s the matter?” I asked, confused. “I don’t like how my nose looks” she said.
My jaw dropped. How could she say that? She had spent a year and a half planning, preparing, denying herself, and going without. She had truly sacrificed. How could she enjoy her weight loss victory for such a short amount of time…mere seconds…before reactivating the fault-finder and pointing it back onto herself? The truth is that the fantasy of weight loss almost never matches the reality. Even after attaining one’s optimum weight, there is still plenty of remaining dysfunction! Losing weight does not fix every bodily flaw. It does not necessarily transform our character or our emotional make up. No, the reward of losing weight is….a lower weight.
Dueling earthly passions
Many of us (overtly or covertly) hope to be attractive to the opposite sex after the weight is gone. After I lost 100 pounds, I wouldn’t suggest that I became a model, but my appearance was at least more tolerable to women. And I noticed in a big way. It’s not that many women actively began flirting with me; I tend to put out the “I’m a married, Christian father of three” vibe pretty strongly wherever I go. But I noticed that women smiled more. They made eye-contact more. They reached out and touched me more. Let’s just say that this is not necessarily great for the other aspects of my animal-self (As an aside, men also began to treat me differently too. I sensed greater feelings of respect from many of them). I get that there is a carnal reward for losing weight that cannot be ignored. But for Christ followers, that cannot be our heart’s motivation. We must not seek to spend our weight loss results on our pleasures, as James says.
Most reading this site desire to love God. They are motivated by a hunger for the eternal.
So then why would we put our hope upon another sin that leads to our downfall? Why, after escaping the corruption of our fleshly appetite for food, would we cast ourselves headlong into a fleshly appetite for sexual passion? Why would we desire to become an object of lust? I am convinced that if you want to be on “Team God” (or rather have him on your weight loss team!) you must surrender these passions, along with your passion for food.
It might not be about attractiveness for you. Maybe it’s about something else. At the end of the day, impure motives will not help us if our greatest goal is to honour God with our lives. The “grand thesis” of this site is that we should desire to glorify God more so than attempting to lose weight for selfish and worldly reasons.
So my advice: surrender those impure reasons for wanting to lose weight. Aim higher. Write a list of righteous motivations for losing weight. If you present godly motivations at the feet of the Almighty, there is a better chance that he will grant you your request.