Resolutions, Rebranding, and the Body You Have

Last updated on: January 4, 2022 at 4:26 pm by Jennifer Fitz

Resolutions, Rebranding, and the Body You Have 2022-01-04T16:26:58-05:00 Jennifer Fitz

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

What caught the eye of your internet-mom this afternoon was a weird bit of cross-discourse about body image, fat-shaming, and weight loss. No links, I’m going straight to bullet point answers to the questions and arguments these various voices are circulating:

Why yes, our culture is obsessed with body image, and it can’t help but fuel psychological hang-ups about being thin enough (women, generally) or muscular enough (men, generally). For women, in particular, take this challenge: Keep a tally of what portion of movies and television shows feature a female lead who isn’t noticeably slender. It’s a thing. The star is always skinny, that’s how it works. It’ll mess up your brain.
Absolutely, sloth and gluttony can cause weight gain. Doesn’t work for everybody, but it works for a lot of people.
Other things cause weight gain too, and you can’t control all of those things.
Also, some people just aren’t slender even when they are perfectly fit and healthy. Other people have serious health problems usually associated with obesity even though they are slender.
Therefore: Being either ashamed or proud of your weight is an emotional time-waste for most people. Your weight may or may not be something you can control, and it may or may not be an accurate reflection of your health.
Furthermore, it may be relatively easy or more difficult for you to adopt practices associated with good health, so pride, once again, is not just a deadly sin it’s an absurd one.
What you can control is the effort you put in to taking care of your health. Not your weight, your health.
While physical health is not more important than spiritual health (so you are deluding yourself if you look fantastic on Insta but your soul is a fetid pit), making an effort to improve your physical health is a good spiritual exercise.
There’s nothing like trying to work on your physical health to help you uncover other underlying factors that need to be addressed more urgently. So even if your resolution to be a better steward of your body doesn’t work out the way you hoped, if you allow it to do so it will help you discover things about yourself that you need to know. So that’s good.

What I’m going to recommend you work on is one of two things:

(A) Make an effort to improve your blood sugar. See, for example the results of this study reported in Science Daily: “Long-term blood sugar history predicts risk of severe COVID-19 among diabetics: Two- to three-year history offers more accurate prediction than shorter time period.”

If you are not sure where to start on dealing with your blood sugar problem, here’s a list of a few resources I mentioned last time I lectured you at length on this topic.

If you aren’t sure you have a blood sugar problem, invest $20 in an inexpensive but reputable-brand glucose monitor available over the counter at Walmart or your nearest pharmacy and for goodness sakes find out. Type II diabetes doesn’t tap you on the shoulder one night in a wave of the wand from the Sugar Fairy; it’s a condition you develop slowly over time, and which you can detect before you start developing serious health problems, rather than waiting for some random doctor’s appointment to finally catch it farther down the road.

It is one of the cheapest, easiest, most potentially life-changing diagnostic tests you can run, and you can do it at home whenever want.

And reminder, y’all: Even though you’re fully-vaxxed (good) and all your friends are fully-vaxxed (good for them, too), COVID infections are spreading among people who are carefully ensconced in their vaccine-mandated bubble, and they are causing serious disease among fully-vaxxed patients with underlying health conditions. Poor blood sugar control is the one underlying condition that is both tightly associated with serious disease and death and which you can have some control over.

PS: If you’re doing everything your doctor says to do to control your diabetes and it’s not working, then resolve to find out if there is a different approach to managing the disease that might work better for you.

(B) If you don’t have a blood sugar problem yourself, resolve to be genuinely supportive of people who do. And by that I mean I quit friggin’ flooding the world with cookies. And the like.

You know what I mean. You don’t need to drop hints. You don’t need to assist other people with their meal choices. But you could just completely quit bringing food to non-meals, and start only bringing real, unprocessed, unsweetened foods to actual meals. That would be fun.

(Also: Did you really need to have this meeting? Because there are people who’d like to be out getting in a quick walk, and instead you are making them just sit there? Fewer meetings is a great way to help other people improve their health.)

***

Finally, as long as we’re talking Plague 2022, resolution for everybody: Join the Clean Air Club.

Photo of a rusty pipes with big colorful valves courtesy of Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Duisburg, Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord — 2020 — 7824-6” / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Disability & Chronic Illness

It's All Catholic

Rant-o-Rama

Thinking Topics

Previous Post

January 2, 2022

In Jeopardy: What are the Real Differences Between Men & Women?

Next Post

January 6, 2022 Clean Air Club, Solar Edition?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Books Catechesis Catholic Q&A Chastity Church Craziness Come See Me Talk Disability & Chronic Illness Economics Evangelization Facepalm Forgiveness Good Things History Homeschooling Human Rights It's All Catholic Listen to Me Survey Series Liturgical Living Marriage Modesty Not Satire. But almost. Rant-o-Rama Sacred Art & Music Satire South Carolina Spark Clutter Stick that Corner Suffering Thinking Topics Writing Stuff

Select a Month September 2026 July 2026 June 2026 January 2026 December 2025 September 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 November 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 May 2019 April 2019 February 2019 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: Philip baptized the Ethiopian eunuch after explaining Isaiah 53 to him.

Select your answer to see how you score.

TRUE FALSE