It's no secret that I've always been overweight. From a husky kid, to a chunky teenager, to an obese adult...weight has always been a struggle for me. I've always been in a cycle: reach a weight where I'm absolutely miserable, decide to lose weight, lose 30-50 pounds, start feeling better, forget about how miserable I felt, "reward" myself, fall into the "no, this is fine, I feel fine, and I can eat what I want and just maintain this" pit, and end up back at the miserable position. Ridiculous, tiring, frustrating, and discouraging are all acceptable words to describe this cycle.
Right now, I am in that point before complete misery (I'm not there yet. I can still breathe in my pants.). So, I'm slightly unhappy with my weight, but not just completely MISERABLE. However, my unhappiness amplified as I asked myself every woman's favorite question before an event where she will be with a large crowd of people: What am I going to wear? Those pants are kind of tight, so I'm not sure I want to walk around in them all day. But, my fat pants are well...my fat pants...and they make me look and feel fat. What shirt minimizes my stomach the most? What a hassle. Then, all day, there's the constant struggle to not look fat. Sit up straight. Hold it in. Don't ever look winded or slumped. Watch how much and how quickly you eat...after all, you don't want to look like a hog. Since I've always been overweight, I normally don't notice this constant dialogue in my head.
But, on Saturday, I heard it. I looked around at all of the other people not standing a certain way, or sitting a certain way, or constantly tugging at their clothes this way or that. Wow. What must it be like to not have to constantly be on patrol of trying not to look/feel fat?? To just sit...and act as you wish...because you're not worried about looking or feeling fat. It really made me realize the amount of anxiety that goes on in my head regarding this subject. Then, I remembered something that I'd read in my Bible a few days ago: 1 Corinthians 7:32 "I want you to be free from anxieties..."
Wow. God's ideal plan for me is to live a life free of anxieties. That is God's BEST for me. What keeps me from that? Sin. Gluttony. Idol worship. In America (and particularly the South), we overlook gluttony. We look at drug addicts or alcoholics with the mentality that they are sinners, have a problem, and need to get rid of it ASAP. But, people who habitually partake of too much food are just fine. It's not fine. It's one of the seven deadly sins. It doesn't just mean that we can't buy clothes at the mall or that we need seatbelt extenders on planes...it means that we are STUCK in the sin of over-indulgence. We eat when we're happy. We eat when we're sad. We eat when we're bored. We would rather enjoy our food than have the healthy body that God intends for us to have. Our will above His will = idol worship. BIG problem.
In the past, I've always decided to "go on a diet" in order to fit into some clothes, achieve some workout goal, prepare for some event, etc. But, this time, my goal is to place God's best for my life as the #1 priority. I don't want any sin to stand between me and the anxiety-free life that God has for me. Nothing is worth that. There's no food on this earth worth that. So everyday, day by day, when the voice in my head goes "You know what sounds good? Pizza." or "You should go out to eat with them. It'll be fun. You deserve it." or "Everybody's eating it. You want to fit in.", I'm going to have to respond with "Pizza is not worth the panic that goes on in my head constantly to not look fat." "Going out to eat is not worth not being able to feel comfortable in my skin." "Eating what everybody's eating isn't worth this constant struggle." God's best is THE best...and it isn't food.
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