Staying Healthy and Losing Weight

I have been ruminating (never a good sign) on some ideas lately concerning diet and exercise. Strange, I know, since it isn’t even the beginning of the year when everyone is supposed to think about those things, but nevertheless I have been thinking.

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I don’t think diets or exercise are wrong. Especially if you consider that a diet is just a compilation of what you eat. You can have a good diet or a bad diet. You can eat healthy food in healthy proportions or you can eat unhealthy food in unhealthy proportions (and any mixture of those four).

The question I have been thinking about the appropriateness of saying “I need to exercise/diet/get surgery/etc. in order to lose weight.” 

I believe there is biblical principles why we should do certain things to be healthy, but when the reason is to lose weight, I wonder. I know that sometimes to be healthy, you have to lose weight. I am fine with that! Just call it what it is, “I am doing this to be healthy.” Perhaps it is just the amount of people that I see that have lives which revolve around weight (and often times their looks). Perhaps it is just sensitivity to the gods that food and appearance can become in our lives. Whatever it is, I wonder if it is every appropriate to say, “I am doing this to lose weight.”

In my mind, when we talk about being healthy, I see “healthy” as not being the end goal. The end goal is being able to do something because you are not healthy. That may be to live, to feel better, to be able to walk, to avoid illness, to avoid surgery, to save money, etc. I would hope that the glory of God in whatever I eat or drink (1 Cor 10:31) is the foundation. However when weight is the issue, that seems like the end goal as well. “I want to be this weight.” Why?

Granted, the attitude can be the same in either case. I can be self-centered, egotistical, and body-worshipping about my health as well as my weight. It really isn’t the phraseology that is the most important. But, I have to wonder…

Here is a post that started me thinking.

What would you say?