Since late December my life–and everyone else within earshot of a TV or the Internet–has been plagued with dieting. Ads about dieting, talk show episodes about losing weight. Blog entries about the perils of avoiding office birthday cake. It’s part of the postmodern human ritual, the rite we go through to punish ourselves for the enjoyment of the holidays.
This January more than any other I’ve been struck by one thing over and over again. Dieting in many cases is a socially-acceptable way for people to be completely self-absorbed. I don’t diet anymore, but I have plenty of years invested in the Weight Loss Industry. I stopped playing along when I realised that more people leave Vegas without losing money than keep the weight off from any diet. Ever. Casinos are a better bet than any of the modern marketed weight loss techniques.
Of course, I do have the advantage of my weekly poisoning to keep my weight down, so I’m an unfair sample.
But of the many memories I have from dieting professionally, a few are very vivid.
- Journals kept with all my food intake listed
- Charts and graphs outlining my weight and progress at losing
- Support groups, diet buddies, online chat rooms and forums
- Inspirational sayings taped to the refrigerator
- Little “reminder tokens” in various places (on my desk, on a charm bracelet, on bookmarks)
- Bible studies and prayer groups focusing on the goal of weigh loss
And it struck me that the dieting business in this country, with no small bit of help from Oprah and Good Morning America, has turned dieting into idolatry. We worship not just the idea of thinness or “health” (as the new popular euphemism goes), but the process.
I also suspect that many dieters also enjoy the aspect of having themselves be the focal point of supportive attention. We adults don’t get grades that often. We don’t win prizes on a regular basis; there is no 4-H or Scouts for adults. So the only chance many of us get to hear “that’s fantastic!” or “great job!” is when we go on a diet and tell other people that we’ve managed a minute alteration in our personal relationship with gravity. It is unfortunately NOT socially acceptable to ask another person to tell you your good points or why they are friends with you. So we look for love in the pursuit of the socially acceptable yet ultimately unobtainable. And since pretty much everyone is familiar with the dieting struggle such acceptance and understanding comes easily.
In my life I know exactly one person who has been successful maintaining a weight range s/he is happy with. That person also never tells you when s/he is ‘dieting.’ The ‘diet’ itself consists of small cutbacks in intake and small increases in activity. S/he never makes a big deal of it. The last time this person (Let’s call her/him “Pat”) went through what Pat calls a “corrective spell” I didn’t know it until it was over. Pat informed me that Pat’s outfit was a couple of sizes smaller and didn’t fit six months ago. I wonder if there isn’t something to that, that the truly successful weightloss has to be very internalised. Completely the opposite of the modern religion of the diet industry.
OK, I can understand all dieting tricks you list, up to and including prayer groups. Though I have to say that focusing a prayer group on weight loss seems like a guarantee that one’s prayers will be ignored. But … Bible study for weight loss? Do you just read Numbers over and over and imagine subsisting on nothing but manna for an extended time? I mean, how is that even supposed to work?
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I’m not sure which program Kat is talking about, but the Christian weight-loss program I was part of, First Place, had a Bible study component. We didn’t study only Scriptures that had to do with food, health, or stewardship; we studied all sorts of verses and passages. It was more about focusing on one of the four major areas of health. Fit4 has four components: physical (that’s the exercise, nutrition, and food tracking component); mental (becoming more informed about nutrition, exercise, and health); social (the accountability; the fellowship; the encouragement); and spiritual (Bible study, prayer, meditation). We also memorized Scripture.
The idea was that the battle to make wise, healthy choices, rather than unhealthy, unwise ones, was not only physical and mental but was also spiritual. It can be spiritual warfare… and for the Christian, the Word of God (the Bible) is the sword to use.
An example… one Bible verse that I’ve used in the course of my life as a Christian, to say no to temptations of all sorts, include food-related ones and to remind myself that I can choose what is good and wise and healthful is this:
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” — Philippians 4:13 (NKJV)
Saying the words isn’t anything magical — it is a reminder of a reality in the supernatural: that Christ’s power is available in my life and that I can trust Him.
First Place was very akin to Weight Watchers — just had the added dimensions of Christian disciplines that made it so different.
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I do agree with Kat that one can get caught up in the self-congratulatory nature of the weight-loss process… and totally lose focus on why one is doing all that work in the first place.
Somehow this ties in nicely to something that’s been bothering me about seeing lots of women publicly declaring their foods eaten (or not eaten, or guiltily and regretfully eaten) and/or exercises performed each day via Facebook statuses and the like, I just can’t quite yet articulate it. [Which is to say, thanks for writing this so I could have it rattling around in my brain.]