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 If you want to learn how to lose weight, ask a fat person. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but I promise you it’s true. Most husky fellows I know, including myself, have lost hundreds of pounds throughout our lives. It’s not taking off the weight that is a struggle; it’s keeping it off. As with everything else, consistency is key. That, and changing your eating and exercise habits, not for a month or a year, but for life. It doesn’t matter what diet you choose to follow; everyone begins with the task of clearing out their cupboards, refrigerator, and pantry of all the things they’ve been eating thus far. Why? Because the things they’ve been eating are what made them have to step through doors sideways.

Some people just can’t bear to part with so many goodies and insisting that it’s unseemly to waste all that money by throwing away perfectly good Twinkies, they decide the best course of action is to eat their way through all the junk food first, then start their journey to a slimmer, healthier self. Three months and twenty pounds later, having gone through most of their stockpile, they decide it’s time to replenish and go to the same store, buying the same things, with the cycle repeating endlessly until the only option is a mobility scooter.

If you’re serious about dropping weight, you don’t put off clearing out your house of anything you know you shouldn’t be eating. You don’t delay, you don’t wait until the first of the month, or until after your birthday, because it would look odd if you didn’t have any cake. You grab a trash bag, and you start throwing things in. There’s always a homeless shelter or a charity willing to take dried goods, so the excuse about waste doesn’t hold water.

If the environment you create for yourself affects the chance of failure or success when it comes to the flesh, why would you think the spiritual environment you create for yourself doesn’t affect your success rate when it comes to the spiritual man?

When you begin a diet, you make no provision for your sweet tooth. You do your best to insulate yourself and avoid the temptations that would make you fall off the wagon before you even start. You are diligent in what you eat and how much you eat and begin to exercise more than you normally would because your purpose is to transform yourself into something other than what you currently are.

You don’t get rid of the old junk just to replace it with new junk. The source of your nutrition must change, as must what you define as nutrition. You commit, you have a goal and a purpose, and you keep track of your progress because that is the ultimate judge of whether what you are doing is working or not.

If, a month into your diet, you weigh more than you did when you started, then something is amiss. But that’s not right, fat man. I replaced fat with muscle, and muscle weighs more than fat, and that’s why I weigh more. Then why are your pants tighter? You put a lot of muscle on around the midsection and nowhere else. It must be a new technique you’re using.

Because we are so unwilling to put in the time or effort, there is a myriad of snake oil salesmen promising a quick fix for something we know there is no quick fix for. Take this pill, drink this tonic, stand on your head, and recite the alphabet backward, and in three days or less, you’ll be back to your fighting weight from thirty years ago. You can pay in full or make three easy payments; the choice is yours, but act now because supplies are limited.

Is it reasonable to spend more time on this fleeting thing called flesh than it is on our eternal soul? Is doing more for the here and now than we ever thought of doing for the eternal Kingdom in any way justified?

I know these are uncomfortable questions, but they are questions we must answer for ourselves if only to prove that we’re nowhere near having done all to stand. Every time we get a bit winded, we plop down onto the nearest permissive doctrine that allows for slothfulness and idleness and begin to look at those pushing onward with a critical eye.

Oh, he’s just self-righteous and rejects grace because he is actively resisting sin. Is he, though? Is it self-righteousness and works salvation, or is it a sincere desire for continual sanctification? The guy that lost a hundred pounds didn’t do it because he is trying to fat shame you. He did it for himself. The fact that we think it’s all about us and everyone must be sensitive to our lack of spiritual progress says a lot more about us than about those striving to enter through the narrow gate.

Whether it’s cutting weight or resisting temptation, you have to make the choice. It doesn’t matter how many doctors tell you your heart’s pumping canola oil. It doesn’t matter how many shepherds ask you to stop riding the fence; ultimately, you must choose the path you walk with all the implicit and explicit consequences.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.