Having to Battle Obesity for my Health

Having to Battle Obesity for my Health

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            My family members won’t be surprised to hear that my physician has told me that I am “borderline” diabetic.  If I learn to eat right, exercise, and lose a good portion of my excess weight there remains a chance the diabetes might be controlled without medicine.

            I learned about my condition a few days before a lady opened up through her Twitter feed about how she doesn’t like her recent photographs because she had put on weight.  I suppose a couple of years ago I might have paid little attention to such a comment.  But struggling with my own weight, and being freshly aware that there are physical health consequences as well as emotional struggles that go with those extra pounds, I found myself wanting to encourage her.  There were some others joined that conversation.  Being overweight in our modern Western world seems almost normal now, and being obese is described by some as an epidemic.  I hope to offer a little bit of encouragement for those struggling.  I am gradually losing some weight this year and a recent trip to the nutritionists is helping me more.

            The first thing I would like to share in regards to this battle is some wisdom from St. Paul.  Let me make something clear.  I know that gluttony has been described as one of the seven deadly sins, but for a lot of people in today’s world I am convinced that our overweight problems come as much from an unwise pattern of what we eat maybe even more than our eating too much.  I share St. Paul’s wisdom not so much because I think you who are reading this is dealing with sin, but because I think St. Paul’s advice is simply brilliant psychology.

            St. Paul told the Philippians in the third chapter of the letter he wrote to them of how he was forgetting the things behind him and was reaching forward to the things ahead.  I felt like I understood St. Paul a little better the other day when I thought of how he laid out the struggles we have in obtaining Christ-like virtues by using different sets of vocabulary in regard to those things we want to leave behind us and those we are seeking to make our own as we move forward.  He tells the Philippians in chapter 2 to not be selfish.  Selfishness is a word describing our human nature before Christ’s redemption showed us what is truly meant for one who loves.  Selfishness is a word of the past we are to forget.  The negative words associated with our past, our failures and our weaknesses are words that seek to define us by our past.  That is the past St. Paul describes leaving behind.  Do you see how St. Paul did not say to the Philippians, “You were selfish and now I just want you to quit being selfish.”  He wanted them to get past selfishness.  So he changes the vocabulary to new words that the Philippians can claim as their new destination.  “But looking ahead, consider other’s needs as well as you own, esteem others as more important than yourself, remember Christ who emptied himself on our behalf.  St. Paul wanted the Philippians to leave a futile past behind and to move forward into a blessed future.  He helped the Philippians to process this move forward by giving them vocabulary describing the way ahead so as to be able to allow the words imprisoning us in our past to recede to unimportance.  This is the very opposite of shaming someone for their past, this is a method aiming at allowing the forgiven soul to rejoice in the fullness of life that is before us.

            It seems to me that this is important as we think about the changes we need to make in diet and exercise.  Let me give a couple of examples from my life.  There are those vending machine cakes, for me it was the ones with the real imitation fruit flavor made of mostly high fructose corn syrup.  They are loaded with calories but not nutrition.  I kept coming back for them.  The other thing I kept coming back for was fast food restaurants on the way home.  Part of me when thinking of making changes to my way of eating thinks in terms of how much I will have to give up.  But perhaps we need a new vocabulary and new images to pursue in the future.  On Twitter, I follow a couple of people who I think probably eat a pretty healthy diet.  On Occasion they take photographs of their plates and tell what they are eating.  There is a beautiful looking salad, tasty looking vegetables, maybe some fruit, a little meat and everything looks so delicious.  Think of how our love for vending machine real imitation fruit flavor high fructose corn syrup hasn’t enhanced our lives but enslaved us from tasting a world full of healthy fruits, nuts, vegetables, berries, meats, mushrooms, lentils and all of them good for us, and yet here we go through the drive in for fast food, or taking our boxes of processed food, and our vending machine foods.  We need a vocabulary change in the food we eat.  We need something to look forward to, and not just something to leave behind.

            The same is true of exercise.  We don’t need to set ourselves up for failure.  I can remember knowing runners in my life and thinking I need to start running.  After feeling like I was killing myself I gave up on that big time quick.  Perhaps running is better than walking, but on the other hand walking is immensely better for us that a sedentary lifestyle with our butts stuck in our chairs.  Walking can be boring, but can you walk while chewing bubble gum?  Let’s go for a different image.  Can you walk and carry a camera at the same time?  That is what I’ve decided to do as I get a walking regimen in place.  I will carry a camera and instead of thinking about walking I will be wondering if today I’m going to get rewarded with a surprisingly good scene to catch with my camera.  Besides if there is something that needs to change about my blogs it is that I might write fewer words and include more photographs.

            Perhaps the way to escape obesity isn’t by depriving ourselves of food, but learning to feed our dreams, imaginations, and vision for the life to which we are being called and beckoned.  So leaving behind the futility of one thing let us press forward to the beauty of another thing.