The more wicked our culture becomes, the more they will celebrate sin and hate what is good. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!” (Isaiah 4:20-21).
On a cover of a popular magazine [Cosmo] recently was a picture of an immodestly dressed obese woman [Tess Holliday]. Our culture is trying to normalize obesity and even celebrate it. You can see this happening with other sins as well. We must never fall into their trap, dear women. We must never try to normalize something that God clearly calls sin.
Many cultures have few obese people because the portions they eat are much smaller than in America plus they are a lot more active. Supersize Cokes, fries, and all-you-can-eat buffets may look attractive to the budget but the diseases caused by carrying an extra 50-100 pounds and eating junk food will rob us of a full life. Hence, God tells us not to be gluttons and overeat. All of His commands are for our good!
Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit and as such, we are called to discipline our bodies and make them our slaves. I know it’s difficult in this day where there is an abundance of food but we must still never give up the struggle. I have four close friends around my age who have struggled with their weight their entire lives until a few years ago or so. How did they finally manage to not overeat and be overweight? They all joined Weight Watchers or had some other type of accountability group because having accountability and learning the value of portion control are extremely important in the battle over weight. Without these two things, it will likely be impossible for most of you to ever achieve the weight you desire.
Gluttony means “excess in eating; extravagant indulgence of the appetite for food.” If you are overeating on a regular basis, you are sinning the sin of gluttony and need to confess it to someone and ask for accountability. The ideal accountability partner can be your spouse who is with you the most or consider Weight Watchers and go on a regular basis. Learn to eat in moderation nutritious and healthy foods.
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All sins that we struggle with need to be confessed and we must ask others to keep us accountable if we are unable to do it on our own. Other sins like drinking excess alcohol, sexual sins, and bitterness are just as destructive or worse than gluttony and are often hidden but need the same approach of making our body our slave, repentance, and accountability, instead of being a slave to our flesh.
— Lori Alexander, The Transformed Life, Celebrating Obesity, September 6, 2018
Wow. She’s a real piece of work! I wonder if she’ll keep her own words in mind at the next potluck or social event that her church hosts? More eating occurs within churches, all in the name of “fellowship”of course, than most social clubs I know of. You have your men’s breakfasts and your ladies luncheons; new members luncheons, small group fellowships, usually a Christmas luncheon, and everything in between.
Just another case of someone pointing the finger without realizing that she has fingers pointing back at her.
Her essay is very naive. Imagine I overeat (relative to the calories I expend) say a handful of peanuts every day. So about 1/4 cup of peanuts at 214 calories. Hardly a glutton, but this many extra calories will result in 78,110 extra calories per year. At 3500 calories in a pound of fat that’s over 22 lbs of fat you’ve just packed on in one year. The reality is that appetites and related set points follow a normal distribution in the population. Lori Alexander is one of the lucky ones that probably doesn’t need to do much except respond to her tummy when it is full. Which leads to the next question: Why does a population have fat people? Well in modern times famines are rare, at least in 1st world countries. But in the past those would be the survivors of a brutal famine. I don’t know if the LORD invented population genetics or not, but I’d bet it just worked out that way.
You wouldn’t gain 22 pounds. Heavier bodies use more calories so your weight gain would slow down and your weight would reach equilibrium with calorie intake so you wouldn’t gain anymore.
Yeah her snobbish words make me sick. There are fat people who have Lipedema, endocrine problems, thyroid disease AND lower metabolisms. I can tell Lori has never had to worry about losing an extra lb in her life. Her body works. Why does this woman consider herself the expert on everything? She’s never had to experience obesity. I’ll be blunt her god screwed the hell up, inventing obesity and not designing the human body to burn off excess naturally or not be hungry or desire foods that would pack on pounds.
As an athlete, I have mead more books than you can imagine on nutrition, exercise, and physical performance. There is literally no one size fits all with regard to optimum nutrition, performance, exercise, metabolism, etc. Some people respond well to carbs, others don’t. Some people pack on muscle with less effort, others don’t. And nutrition science is notorious for confounds – humans predictably under report caloric intake and are poor at keeping track of what and when they eat. Some people have insulin issues, others don’t. There are so many factors in weight loss, gain, and general health.
But for Lori, I guess looking at someone’s physical size makes it easier for her to label someone a sinner. She doesn’t even have to ask them any questions about their behavior- she can look and judge!
I am surprised she didnt mention the tattoos…..
I do not mean to encourage trolling, but it wouldn’t hurt to go over to her Facebook page and make your rational opinions on this known. I did. She moderates comments on her blog and never lets any through that disagree with her. However, she has a much harder time policing her Facebook page and it’s a chance for the deluded masses that follow her to hear the truth and break the chains of legalistic enslavement.
Obesity is s sin? I am going to explain why claiming obesity is a “sin”, and why diet programs like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, are an insane catch-22 medical scam.
By from Amazon online a copy of the 1982 book “The Dieter’s Dilemma” and also google online the words “diets fail gene take over”. Contrary to popular misconception and what this ignorant person, Lori Alexander is writing, people are not fat or thin because of how much, or how little they eat, but because of what genes they inherit.
Most fat people fail to permanently lose their excess weight, despite their best efforts with programs like Weight Watchers, but it is not their fault. Fat people have the misfortune of inheriting the obesity gene, or what is often called the “thrifty gene”. When fat people try to lose weight with diet and exercise programs, their bodies outwit their best efforts by slowing down their metabolisms, until all of the lost weight eventually and forcibly returns, often with even more weight gained than before.
At the other extreme, there are lucky model-trim people, who because they inherited the right thinness gene, eat the equivalent of chocolate-covered elephant every day and never gain a single pound. As someone with a life-long obesity struggle, because I have the misfortune of inheriting the obesity gene, I rage with envy for these lucky model-trim gluttons! Oops! Christians also claim envy is a “sin”.
At this point in time there is only one, safe guaranteed way to be thin: have thin parents. As a freethinker and a former Christian myself, Lori Alexander is an insane idiot who is saying “God” is condemning fat people for the obesity gene that he supposedly cursed them with in the first place!
I am all for efforts to save endangered wildlife species. But, now I will explain why I am against the animal rights movement, such as P.E.T.A. It is absolutely necessary to experiment on live animals to advance medical progress. This is an excellent example, scientists are using mice in medical experiments to delete the obesity gene. This means this is real hope, that a real cure for obesity as a genetic disease may happen someday. So as fat person, I don’t give a damn whatever happens to the mice being used in medical experiments to cure obesity, even if it means they die! So don’t expect me to join P.E.T.A. anytime soon!
I do wonder what Lori Alexander’s pastor looks like? A lot of Evangelical pastors are as overweight as some of the members of their congregations, so obesity as a sin isn’t mentioned much. In the ancient world, where adequate food was a goal not always met, being obese could be seen as a sin, because an obese person was obviously getting more than his share of a limited resource. In some of today’s world, that is still true; but most of us have more than enough food available, and little incentive not to consume it.
Restaurants serve “festival food” in huge portions–food that we would rarely eat if we had to buy the ingredients and prepare them ourselves–available every day if we choose to buy and eat it. The ancient world relished honey as one of very few sweets available, and regarded salt as valuable enough to count as compensation for work–hence the word “salary.” We have both sweeteners and salt available cheaply, and eat them in amounts dangerous to our health, since our bodies are organized to crave what once were rare resources.
How we convince ourselves to act against our bodies, I do not know, but I doubt that Mrs. Alexander’s fat shaming is going to be of much use. Weight loss programs make money precisely because they do not work for long. Most seriously overweight people have tried repeatedly to lose weight, without long term success. They don’t need skinny people, unless those people are among the few who were once fat, telling them what to do.