Weighing In

Weighing In

Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? . . . You must honor God with your body.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20

During my lifetime, I have probably lost close to seven hundred pounds. It has happened like this: I lose ten and put on fifteen. Then I lose fifteen and put on twenty. You may know the drill. So I finally decided I had to get serious about taking the weight off and keeping it off.

At the time I wrote this, I had been going to Weight Watchers (WW) for more than a year, and I had done well with the program. I enjoyed the meetings because our WW coach was upbeat, funny, and knowledgeable. We always had a great time and learned a lot while we were there.

The coach was a real inspiration to us. She had lost 110 pounds on the program and had been a WW coach for many years. A couple of years earlier, she found out she was pregnant with twins. Although she was thrilled about the babies, she had to watch herself gain 85 of the 110 pounds she had lost. What a bummer!

But by the time her boys were a year old, our coach had lost almost all the 85 pounds she had gained. She looked svelte again and felt great. So we were all as proud of her as she was of us—we had a mutual admiration society!

Her story makes me think of the woman who went to a WW meeting and said she was still trying to lose the “baby fat” she had gained from the birth of her son. That seemed a bit odd, because she did not really look the age of most women who are having babies. She seemed quite a bit older than that.

Someone in the class asked her, “How old is your son?”

And she replied, “Forty-four!”

Dear Father, I want to honor you with my body, but you know it’s not easy for me. When it comes to food, please help me to stay focused on what I need rather than what I want. Amen.