UPDATED June 3, 2014
I just created a slide show video of a song by Natalie Grant called, "The Real Me."
The Real Me Video
I just created a slide show video of a song by Natalie Grant called, "The Real Me."
The Real Me Video
Thinness is not a virtue; and neither is beauty! Yet people worship these attributes and the people who possess them as if they were! Look around you. The culture and media predicates what is considered beautiful. They also feed us messages that fat is ugly! We are all puppets who buy into the propaganda and adjust ourselves to “fit in” so that we will not be ridiculed or considered outcasts. Many scorn, bully, and discriminate the fat and less attractive while they openly worship, praise, and revere the thin and beautiful.
Being naturally thin and beautiful is a gift from God that no one should boast about. The most genetically gifted in this area are Supermodels who get paid millions of dollars a year for their looks and perfect features, but God didn’t create everyone to win the genetic lottery. According to Forbes, Gisele Bundchen, the highest paid Supermodel of all time earned an estimated $45 million in 2012. This is why millions of young girls and women want to be beautiful. They think that attaining these physical attributes and gaining fame and fortune will bring them true happiness. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look thin and beautiful. What’s wrong is the idolatry and the motives involved in attaining something that God didn’t create us to be.
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| Gisele Bundchen early in her career on the left and at the height of her career on the right |
This article will expose the sins involved with defaming the fat and the worshipping of the thin and beautiful. I will uncover presumptuous sins that are under the radar that we don’t realize we are committing in these areas. I will also share my own personal experiences in seeing both sides of the coin.
What I’m pointing out here is nothing new. For centuries the beautiful have always been revered and pursued by rulers and the masses while the plain are typically ignored for the most part. What is alarming is that this attitude is getting worse even in Christian circles. Facebook, Twitter, and reality based television shows like “The Real Housewives…” and “Keeping up with the Kardashians” are propagating this mentality in the minds of millions.
Worshipping beauty and thinness is not only wrong in many ways, but an abomination in the sight of God. The scripture tells us that what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God. (Luke 16:15) Why? Because the things that God highly esteems is not seen on the outward man, but rather in the inward man. So if pleasing God is your goal, it is best to focus more on the inside than the outside. Clean the inside of the cup instead of polishing the outside for all to see. This will not only improve your countenance, but may also improve your appearance!
Proverbs 31:30
Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.
We were ALL fearfully and wonderfully made. He views us as His marvelous work. He fashioned some to be tall, some short, some thin, some fat, some with brown eyes, and others with blue. Then he colors our skin in different hues; from black, white, yellow, and brown tones. Some of us are curvy and round, while others are flat and straight. He also knit our inner workings: our personality, temperament, intellect, etc. He ordains our steps and pre-scripted each day of our lives. He leads us into paths of righteousness, but cannot make decisions for us. So it is still up to us to make decisions with each day of life we are given. We decide what we think, what we wear, who we talk to, and what to eat. So when our wills and decisions lead to unrighteousness, He even gives us a way out to escape the trap of sin and wrongdoing.
God doesn’t want us to focus on outward appearances, because He doesn’t. He loves ALL His children the same; whether fat, tall, beautiful, or plain. He gives us all the same amount of attention. He has plans for all of us to live out; according to His purposes. Some will live their lives in the limelight with fancy cars and clothes while others’ lives will be hidden and forgotten by the masses. His love doesn’t change. He looks at our hearts and our character. We will all go through the same tests in different forms. He looks at how we think and treat others. He sees whether we choose to love Him by following His commands and meditating on His Words; or if we will choose to conform to the culture that is against His statutes. The world as we see it will eventually pass away upon His return, yet we immerse ourselves in unrighteous acts as if it were going out of style.
Psalm 66:18
If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me…
Before King David was named King by the prophet Samuel, he was merely a harp playing boy who tended to his father’s sheep. God told Samuel to go to the house of Jesse, because that is where the next king of Israel will come from. Jesse gathered all his older sons for Samuel, but didn’t think to call his youngest, David. God didn’t choose the older, stronger, more obvious choices. He chose the one who had a heart for God.
1 Samuel 16:7
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
The world may not have chosen you, adored you, or given you a second look, but God chose you since the beginning of time and loves you with an everlasting love that is unconditional and unwavering.
The obsession to being thin and beautiful is not a dying fad; it is here to stay!
The Beauty and Personal Care Industry rakes in an estimated $426 Billion in revenues per year and continues to grow.
The Weight Loss Industry is a $20 Billion a year cash cow.
These obsessions are the tools of Satan to ensnare millions to fall into 2 Categories:
1 - The Haves
2 - The Have Nots
The LIES
If you “Have It” you are happy, loved, adored, rich, carefree, and stress free.
If you are a “Have Not” you are unhappy, depressed, unloved, scorned, ridiculed, poor, desolate, and stressed out.
The Beautiful and Thin (B&T) are happy because they can get anything and everything they want.
The Fat and Unattractive live sad and sorry lives wishing they can attain what the Beautiful and Thin (B&T) have.
The TRUTH
Everyone goes through stress! Fat, thin, beautiful, or plain we all experience stress. Everyone to some degree has experienced unhappiness and dissatisfaction in this world. The most beautiful and thin are some of the most insecure unhappy people around! We all want to be loved and adored. The only true love that lasts is from God. This is love free for ALL to receive, but not all have received or claimed this love. Just because the beautiful and thin have more loving and adoring fans, they won't be completely happy until they receive the love of the Father. God is the only one who could fill this void. beauty and thinness is fleeting, so to maintain it takes work and lots of deprivation. Yet in the end, we all will reach the grave and none of us will look pretty! So the obsession to remain beautiful, young, and thin is a vicious cycle that will only produce an unhealthy mindset. This mindset does not honor God.
The beautiful and thin are not carefree. They are consumed with their looks and live for the opinions of others, so they basically live in a goldfish bowl. They live for the “Likes” on Facebook as if it means something in eternity.
Psalm 39:11
When with rebukes You correct man for iniquity, You make his beauty melt away like a moth; surely every man is vapor.
The Cure for Fatness
My knowledge of Fatness is vast due to my own personal struggles. I have read hundreds of books about health, nutrition, and weight loss over the last 25 years. I’ve been to weight loss clinics, fat loss retreats, and medically supervised water fasts. I even attended a conference at a world class weight loss clinic where the doctor was part of a “Think Tank” of doctors from all over the world dedicated to solving the obesity epidemic. Their findings were hard to swallow. They found one only cure for Fatness. Unfortunately, this cure has complications and may lead to death. This cure is only suitable for morbidly obese patients. The Cure? Gastric Bypass Surgery. It was the only procedure/plan that cured 70% of its patients from obesity. This was a problem for me, because I wasn’t FAT enough to undergo the surgery. According to their findings, the other “Diets” and plans were mostly gimmicks. At that time, there were 17,000 diets for weight loss. Other diets fail because they don’t provide long term success. They stressed that weight loss is easy, but maintenance was the hardest part. Only 20% of those who dieted kept the weight off due to permanent lifestyle changes. The rest gained all their weight back and more.
Laws of Adiposity
One of the best books written about Fat and one of my favorite books that has changed my life and perspective forever is called “Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It” written by Gary Taubes. He’s not a doctor or a Fitness expert, but rather a Science Reporter. He wrote about scientific findings researching Fatness and Adiposity (the study of fat storage) that were conducted in the last 100+ years in many cultures from all over the world. His findings were eye opening and sobering. There are 3 Laws to Adiposity:
1 - Body Fat is carefully regulated by enzymes and hormones.
2 - Obesity can be caused by a regulatory defect so small that it would be undetectable by any technique yet invented.
3 - Whatever makes us both fatter and heavier will also make us overeat.
"Eating in moderation and being physically active (literally having the energy to exercise) are not evidence of moral rectitude. Rather, they’re the metabolic benefits of a body that’s programmed to remain lean. If our fat tissue is regulated so that is will not store significant calories as fat, or our muscle tissues is regulated to take up more than its fair share of calories to use for fuel, then we’ll either eat less than those of us presupposed to be fat or we’ll be more physically active or both because of it.
This implies that our emaciated marathoners are not lean because they train religiously and burn off thousands of calories doing so, rather they’re drive to expend those calories…because they’re wired to burn off calories and be lean.
We don’t get fat because we overeat; we overeat because we’re getting fat."
My Story
I was born FAT. I was big boned, robust, and meaty. I was teased as early as the age of 6 for being “Fat.” I was called “Porky Pig, Fatty, Fatso, and Chunk Chunk Chicken.” I was teased incessantly by my brother, sister, and cousin. They did this until I cried. Where do children learn to tease and ridicule someone to tears without remorse or the sense to stop? They were all very thin with lightning speed metabolisms, so I stood out like a sore thumb.
On a Side Note: The irony of this story is that these three former Fat Teasers are so close to me now that they are ones I would seek wisdom from when I meet “The One,” because they have my best interest at heart.
If that wasn’t bad enough, I was put on a strict diet by the age of eight; by my mother. I wasn’t allowed to eat ice cream, sweets, treats, or anything children liked to eat. The pressure to be THIN was placed on me early and often.
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| Preschoolers as young as 3, are already weight conscious |
I was always HUNGRY, but I wasn’t allowed to eat the foods I enjoyed. This led to an eating disorder where I hid food. At the age of eleven, I asked my sister to get ice cream for me and sneak it into our bedroom at ten o’clock at night so my mother wouldn’t see me eating it. When everyone else got cake and ice cream at parties, I was the only one not allowed to eat it because I was on a “DIET”. I cried a lot and felt very hungry and lonely for many years. My eating disorder continued into my high school years. I binged on food then I starved due to guilt and self hatred. I developed a LOVE/HATE relationship with food and myself early on from the ridicule I endured from family and classmates.
If facing adolescence wasn’t hard enough, the onslaught of hormones and severe acne added to my growing pains. The thought of feeling FAT and UGLY plagued me every waking minute of the day. This led me to a deep depression and lack of interest in my studies. I was already considered “DUMB” by my peers and everyone else due to Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.), which I later found out about as an adult. So in my mind, I was fat and dumb. You’d think suicide would cross my mind, but it didn’t, by the Grace of God. The thing that saved me was my crushes on BOYS. That’s right! My boy crazy mentality saved me from losing my mind and gave me something to focus on while in school. I know it sounds absurd, but it’s the truth!
Even though I was INVISIBLE to the boys I liked, it was enough for me to stare at them and have moments of three-word interactions with them once a year, that I would replay i my head over and over again. This is what got me through elementary school and high school. I wasn’t allowed to date coming from a strict upbringing. Not that anyone asked me out, but I did eventually have a boyfriend in the 11th grade, which ended in heartbreak.
The SWITCH
I was a senior in high school when my mother asked our doctor to prescribe something for me for my “weight problem.” I was 17 years old when I first started taking diet pills; I was a size 14. It was like MAGIC. I didn’t feel like eating. I had no appetite. Then I started to exercise. I started walking at first, then jogged about 5 days a week. I felt so good for a change and the weight was melting off by body. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to eat properly so I was having fainting spells from not eating. After tapering off food, I eventually lived on diet coke and an apple a day. I went from a size 14 to a size 4/6.
Suddenly I wasn’t invisible anymore. Guys started to notice me. In fact, something funny happened the Summer I graduated from high school. My sister Rachel who was always svelte and never had a weight problem or self-esteem issues wanted to do some modeling over the Summer and asked me to drive her to an agency in West L.A. When we got there, they were looking at me. After she met the owner in his office he asked her to call me in so he can talk to me. I didn’t do it because I was scared and my self esteem was so low, I didn't really believe the nice things he said about me. Plus the agent wanted me to lose 10 more pounds! I was down to 128 pounds starving on diet coke and an apple. This meant I would have to give up the apple! Even though I looked beautiful on the outside, I was still an insecure fat girl on the inside, fighting off demons. This happened on two other occasions: I accompanied a friend to a Hollywood agency who was trying to break into acting. The agent was also interested in me. The other time was with a Full Figure clothing store about 5 years ago.
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| Me at age 20, at wearing a size 10 |
I went to Hollywood Parties and even met some celebrities like Johnny Depp and Sylvester Stallone, but deep down inside, I still wasn’t happy. Something was missing. I wasn’t caught up in my looks because I remembered what it was like being fat and invisible. I knew that if I ate more and lost control, I would lose my looks in an instant. I was right. I was only a size 4/6 for about 3 months, because my body couldn’t live on diet coke and an apple; so I started introducing food back into my system. My weight stabilized at a size 10 when I didn’t starve myself. The diet pills didn’t fix the fact that my body wanted to be a size 14 by nature. Its magical power wore off, so I would have to get a stronger dose, but it wreaked havoc on my mood and sleep patterns. I would be in a foul mood and easily get agitated due to the high levels of caffeine. Then I couldn’t sleep at night from all the caffeine, so I was a roller coaster ride trying to maintain a size 10. Still at this time I didn’t know healthy eating.
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| Me at age 21, wearing a size 8 |
Ecclesiastes 2:11
Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun.
"I am not even sure where being skinny became a quality that matters more than say “character” or radiating beauty, kindness, compassion.unless you are “skinny” it seems to me we are invisible. like nothing else we are matters. I hate that feeling. I hate that MOST of my waking day is wrapped up in the ever maddening pursuit of SKINNY.I should rebel. but then I would be less skinny and that would mean I am more invisible and that would be bad." -- Cindy (Online Commentator)
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