Stuff Fat People Like

Let me preface this post. A while back I began reading this site called Stuff Christians Like. In my opinion, it is extremely awesome. And hilarious. The whole premise of the blog is about confronting the stuff we like that may be getting in the way of the God we love. It is funny, but it exposes some things that can, at times, be hard for me to read. The truth hurts, right?

Anyway, the writer (Jon Acuff) makes it clear that he never addresses anything that he himself has not been guilty of doing/saying/thinking, etc. So before I make every last one of you hate me, please know that anytime I do a "Stuff Fat People Like" post I am only drawing from something I have found myself guilty of or struggling with. In addition, use of the word "fat" is not offensive to me. As a 5'4" person weighing in at 229 lbs, I was fat. There's not really any way around that. Plus, "Stuff Overweight People Like" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

And here we go:

Stuff Fat People Like #187
Deciding who is not fat enough to be on a diet.

I grew up with a wonderful mom. She has always been a godly example for our whole family. She is beautiful, a hard-worker, a gifted baker and she is skinny. She has to work hard at maintaining that figure of hers. In my fatter days, it always bothered me that she put so much effort into monitoring her food intake. Why did she need to be worried about that? I was the fat one.

About a year ago she decided to go to Weight Watchers. Oh good grief, Mom! I thought. Why are you doing that? You look FINE! She proceeded to lose about 10 pounds that had been bothering her for some time. She has maintained that weight for about a year and is now a WW "lifetimer."

There is a revelation I have had over the past 3 months (and here's the sting): You don't have to let yourself get 100 pounds overweight before you try to get it under control! Really fat people are not more entitled to lose weight than kinda fat people. We are all called to take care of our bodies no matter what size we are. So GO MOM! You are amazing to me.

Shame on me for ever trying to make someone feel dumb for wanting to take care of the body God gave them. We should be striving to encourage one another. Skinny, fat, old, young, weird...period. We encourage--and it is good for us.

But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. Hebrews 3:13

The happy ending here is that God doesn't see fat. He sees the heart. What does He see when he looks upon yours? That's really all we have to be concerned about.

Check out this post from Jess! It really got me thinking on this...