Wisdom, “Fitness,” and Moralism

Recently, I have run into a lot of “Christian” exhortations on social media for people to lose weight and “get fit.” I use quotation marks around Christian, because, in some cases, they are simply outright mockery about physical appearance (but not all are so bad).

The reigning moralisms about healthy (“moderate”) food intake are unhelpful for either virtue or health. There is no intuitive difference between wanting to eat for whatever reason, and being “really” hungry. There is no internal signal that one has eaten “enough” and one should now abstain. There is no sensory guidance that one can use will power to follow or that one can ignore for the sake of culinary desire. God made food. We like to eat food. And, apart from some basic knowledge of biology and math, no one can intuit how much is too much. (Or rather “too much” [Proverbs 25:16] is already probably far more than is healthy on a regular basis. One could avoid that extreme and still not be “healthy” enough.)

So there is no story about a lack of self-control versus the virtue of self-control at issue in the amount someone eats. All of that is made up. It is virtue-signaling, or guilt-crippling, mythology. Lots of stuff people assume about “gluttony” isn’t actually what the Bible means. (I wrote that article ten years ago now and I still think it holds up except for the last paragraph where I question the conventional health science regarding obesity. I have come to think the conventional view is probably more accurate than not.)

There is virtue in setting a goal, adopting a plan that will reasonably reach that goal, and exhibiting the diligence (discipline + patience) to actually follow the plan (with course corrections as you spot deficiencies in the plan). Physical health can be such a goal. No obese person changed to a healthy body composition by intuitively eating less or moving more. The vast majority have done it by quantifying food, monitoring food, and recording food according to a plan. The same is true for physical exercise. Those that keep the weight where they want it, do so by the same means. They don’t “learn how to exercise self-control” in the sense of impulse control. They work on reducing the need for that kind of self-control as much as possible.

[There are a few others that have managed this by eliminating certain types of food as a substitute for tracking and regulating the amount of food. This may involve something closer to the traditional concept of self-restraint, because one decides the certain thing are “bad” and others are “good.” If this method works for you (at the moment) I think you are free to pursue it. But, the Bible is clear that all foods are good for people in general (1 Timothy 4:3, 4). So I can’t see how this practice can be claimed as especially virtuous by Christians.]

Imagine a few people, who are lucky enough to wake up on their own in a way that works with their schedules, mocking everyone who uses an alarm clock to get to work on time. That is about as sensible as assuming overweight people lack self-control. Except it is possible to change one’s sleep habits in a short time with immediate result. Changing body composition takes a long time, so the obese person gets to wear his “shame” for months and years before the results materialize, especially for strangers who won’t hesitate to judge them.

Keep in mind that a person whose appetite has, thus far in life, allowed him to develop a “healthy” body composition, is useless as a model for those who are obese. There is a substantial difference between eating to maintain a physique, eating to reduce mass (and still more of a difference between that and eating to preferentially reduce adipose tissue without becoming emaciated–losing too much lean body mass). The slim preacher has nothing from personal experience to offer the “sinners in need of repentance” (in his mind). The situation is reminiscent of one of Jesus’ critiques.

Thus, dissatisfaction with one’s fitness level is a double edged sword. The feeling can motivate a change in behavior, but the only behavior that can possibly work will have to be able to endure longterm dissatisfaction. It will, as paradoxical as it sounds, require one be satisfied with one’s present fitness level, in order to improve in the future.

In addition to following a sustained plan, with nothing visible to outside observers to show for it, a person has to be confident the plan will eventually work and be worth it. For a lot of all-too-human reasons, this confidence is often lacking for those who need it. Preaching virtue and moralism at them is not going to give it to them.

For these reasons, I think recent claims that Christians should all have “a strong and austere aesthetic,” are pretty much worthless for changing people’s behavior.

(This was an easily found example, I do not wish to spend time with the author’s so-called “Christian nationalism.”).

• A minor side note here: Nothing in the Bible (or in the author’s appropriation of Thomism) give him any special insight into the alleged dangers of seed oils or into a diagnosis for population-level changes in testosterone. I mention it because I think such pretensions are fairly common among fitness moralizers.
• Another side note: “dad bod” was originally coined as a term to designate a moderate interest in fitness that did not go to bodybuilding extremes. “The dad bod is a nice balance between a beer gut and working out. The dad bod says, ‘I go to the gym occasionally, but I also drink heavily on the weekends and enjoy eating eight slices of pizza at a time.’ It’s not an overweight guy, but it isn’t one with washboard abs, either.” Why it has now turned into a term of derision for an unhealthy physique needs to be explained not assumed. And again, to my point about patience above, it took me personally a long time to attain a dad bod and it took even more time to get beyond that. Furthermore, it would never have happened if I had thought I should stop short of bodybuilder-attention to resistance training and dietary discipline. Does the writer not realize what he is demanding? Or is he trying to give an appearance of not being extreme even while he demands a huge lifestyle overhaul? (Or does he thinks that giving up seed oils will improve physiques?)

The main problem here is that judging people for how the eat is explicitly condemned in Scripture because we are not the boss of other people.

As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

Romans 14:1-4 ESV

Nor does one find support in the Bible for pursuing one’s physical potential over and above other potentials one could pursue. Personally, I think that sentence, “Pursue your potential,” is the most appealing in the paragraph. But it has to he offered as an option and presented for it’s inherent attractions. Not commanded.

After all, you’re asking people to take care of themselves as responsible agents. Treating them like children in your care is a self-defeating way of going about this. No matter how strong and austere you want people to be, you leave the impression that this is your ideal physique:

I do want Christians to be able to help one another and recommend good ideas to one another. But there has to be a way to do it that doesn’t come across as if one has authority from Jesus to run other people’s lives.